My problem with Venoms is that you either have to dedicate yourself to them or you ignore them completely. Either you invest in them heavily in Dealdy Arts, use a lot of traits to improve them….and then use them in 2-3 of your utility slots or you ignore them completely.
For most people it’s not a very hard choice considering how easily Venoms can be cleansed and how subtle their effects can be.
I mean for every Venom you are using you giving up a potential utility skill like Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep etc. That’s a big trade-off.
Burst builds don’t really need to make that trade-off and have far more flexible choices.
As for traps…..I’ve found them to be highly situational and more useful in PvE with predictable mob-movement than PvP with a lot of improvisation.
Then again, if you have a build focused on Condition Damage Venoms have a place. My Pistol/Dagger build also uses Spider Venom.
Vitality is a better choice for starters but Toughness gets increasingly more attractive the more Vitality you have. Toughness also happens to scale with Healing incase you have a lot of that.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/113pjt/spreadsheet_for_optimizing_your_character_the/
I agree,
it’s just totally lame that you can be fighting a 3v1 because the Gankers decided to pick on you and actually manage to down one guy. But hey….all the other two noobs have to do is click on their comrade for 2 seconds and he’s back up while you still get shafted.
The entire system just sucks from end to end. It comes down to bring more numbers or stay at home.
I wish ANet would see it but they seem to insist on shoving their crappy game-mechanic down our throats just because it’s necessary for PvE.
Anything that increases the difficulty in this game is a good thing.
There’s a difference between tedium and challenge.
Overzealous mob respawns are tedious amongst other things.
Crits start off being 150% the standard damage.
If you invest 30 points into the Critical Strikes tree you can bump it up to 180% the standard damage.
That alone is a pretty hefty increase. You can push it higher if you itemize for Crit damage (with Berserker items for example) if you like.
However the kicker is that the base damage all scales with Power. It’s far more effective to increase your Power than it is to boost your Critical Strikes Damage directly.
Say you have an attack that deals 1000 base damage.
A Crit would deal 180% damage, ergo 1800 damage.
You could invest into boosting this Critical Strike damage to 2000 if you added an additional 20% Critical Strikes Damage.
However you could also boost Power, increasing the base damage from 1000 to 1200.
A Crit would henceforth deal 21kittenage, a little more than the increase in Critical Strike Damage brought you. And not only that, high Power also increases the damage of your non-critical hits.
Now I haven’t done the maths and I don’t know if a 20% increase in Power levels equates to a 20% increase in critical Strikes damage regarding the item budget but on a principle level Power > all.
I haven’t done the math myself, but I’d be surprised if this was entirely true. I think that crit damage bonuses do more for your critical hits than straight power does. It’s more based on the combination of stats you use. With a low critical hit percentage, you’re better off focusing on power, if you’re focusing on precision and have a high crit chance, you’re better off focusing on crit damage than you are on power. I’d be curious if anyone has actually done the math though.
Someone else did the maths for it on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/115mln/power_vs_precision_vs_critical_damage_what_do_we/
It too encouraged me to reconsider some of my gear choices. Previously I valued Precision more than any other stat as I wanted a high crit-chance since I don’t use the guaranteed Backstab-crit trait.
I ended up with some odd mix of Karma gear, crafted Valkyrie gear as well as some odd Dungeon items. All equipped with runes of Lyssa for the extra Precision and because it’s nice to have all the boons up during Daggerstorm.
Anyway, I’ve reconsidered and am now trying to get Power, Vitality, Toughness gear for my armor while probably rolling with Berserkers gear for the Accessories and weapons. It should provide me with a decent amount of survivability for PvE while maintaining the ability to burst in WvW. If my crit-chance ends up lower than 40% however I might have to drop Executioner after all.
I’m amazed this went through smoothly considering I got scammed out of 40S within my first week in game (and I only sent half).
Thanks for not fixing this most annoying of bugs.
It’s really fun having to relaunch the game at random intervals because of this BS.
You should always value the traits more than the stats. In the grand scale of things, the bonus stats in each tree don’t really add up to that much.
I personally am also running a 15/30/0/25/0 build for PvE and WvW. Lotus Poison is just a really good trait which is why I always try to get it. Weakness is just really good in PvE (and not band in PvP either). But anything beyond 15 points in Deadly Arts only really pays off if you use a lot of poisons, which I don’t.
25 points inc Acrobatics also add 10% extra damage when your Endurance bar isn’t full…which is pretty much all the time after a fight has initiated. The tree also adds a lot of much needed survivability for PvE.
I can’t comment much on the synergy with P/D since I mainly use D/D + Shortbow in PvE.
Crits start off being 150% the standard damage.
If you invest 30 points into the Critical Strikes tree you can bump it up to 180% the standard damage.
That alone is a pretty hefty increase. You can push it higher if you itemize for Crit damage (with Berserker items for example) if you like.
However the kicker is that the base damage all scales with Power. It’s far more effective to increase your Power than it is to boost your Critical Strikes Damage directly.
Say you have an attack that deals 1000 base damage.
A Crit would deal 180% damage, ergo 1800 damage.
You could invest into boosting this Critical Strike damage to 2000 if you added an additional 20% Critical Strikes Damage.
However you could also boost Power, increasing the base damage from 1000 to 1200.
A Crit would henceforth deal 21kittenage, a little more than the increase in Critical Strike Damage brought you. And not only that, high Power also increases the damage of your non-critical hits.
Now I haven’t done the maths and I don’t know if a 20% increase in Power levels equates to a 20% increase in critical Strikes damage regarding the item budget but on a principle level Power > all.
Why would you even activate Assassin’s Signet?! the passive power boost has better DPS that the active one…
The passive boost is 90 Power. Not a huge lot. And in PvP where you only need to DPS for a few seconds of every minute I’m sure the using the Singet is better.
But now it’s +15% damage to Cloak and Dagger and Steal(?).
If we assume Steal deals about as much damage as Cloak and Dagger the damage of the combo was reduced by ~6%, and the two next attacks deal +15% damage. Overall it may have made Backstab Thieves even stronger.
On top of that it’s now easier to perform the Backstab combo.
This is what I’ve been thinking too.
It just makes bursting someone that much easier when you can just pop the Singet before you engage them. And Assassin’s Reward should now apply to all attacks.
Honestly, this might have made thing worse than they were before.
I’m not sure what to make of this change. Either it’s good…or it’s going to make thing even worse.
While previously hitting Assassin’s Singet just before the Backstab (and not before the C&D/Steal) took quite a bit of finesse and good reaction times. After all you have 3 different attacks all hitting within a second.
And yet now I can just pop the Singet before I even engage a target and get a 15% damage boost for Steal, Cloak and Dagger and Backstab + the following Heartseekers all at once.
Sure, you may no longer die to a 5-digit Backstab that often but you’re still going to die just as fast as before.
The good thing is though that it should now make Assassin’s Singet a viable choice for more than just Backstab builds.
From a technical point of view, GW2’s launch was pretty ok from my point of view.
I did suffer from lags early on due to some provider issues and I still need to force the game to use port 80 to not get disconnected (rather than the standard port) but besides that, the game itself has been pretty smooth.
Lately however I’ve been experiencing more frequent crashes and total freezes than before. The game seems to be getting less stable, rather than more stable.
The most common crash-bug is one where the sound will start looping….giving off a weird WWWEEEEEEEUUUWWWWEEEEEEUUUU sound (like UFO’s landing) just before the game freezes and crashes.
This typically happens in “crowded situations” like popular DE, WvW Sieges or Dragon Fights. Needless to say this is really annoying because it manages to ruin the best parts of the game.
I didn’t bother writing down the error codes since I’ve submitted a crash-report every time.
I just need to know if something is being done about this issue in tomorrow’s patch.
I didn’t find the video all that insightful and somewhat poorly constructed.
I welcome the effort but I think you should have gone about it a bit differently. You start straight off with the Mats and some random, unexplained items although an uninformed player won’t know what these even mean or what they are for.
It just makes everything seem more confusing than it really is.
I would have preferred if you simply said:
1. This is Twilight, it is a Legendary weapon.
2. It is crafted in the Mystic Forge by combining 3 so called Gits + a so called Precursor weapon (and then explain briefly what a Prec. is and how it can be obtained).
3. Then you go through each Gilt individually and break it down into it’s components. Ideally you would have some sort of graph you could always fall back on to keep everything in perspective.
4. Stuff like Bloodstones and Obsidian Shard etc. should probably be shown in game as well because not everyone knows what they are and where to get them.
I drew a simple tree-diagram for my Legendary and it puts things into perspective well without being overwhelming.
Random samples are random.
Some dude a week or so ago actually sampled the games he was playing over the past week and thus had a much more objective view on the matter.
At the time, he counted more Mesmers than Thieves and generally speaking, there wasn’t a huge popularity difference (although the gap between Necros and Mesmers was pretty big).
Now things may have changed since then and there probably are even more re-rollers messing around with Thieves. But since SPvP offers no form of tangible rewards it really doesn’t mean anything.
I haven’t encountered culling issues in sPvP but I have seen it lag. Then again, I’ve never experienced an 8v8 clusterkitten around a single node.
I think we’re all hoping tomorrow’s patch will address the culling issue once and for all. Maybe that will deal with the sPvP issue as well.
Isn’t the raging aspect more of an issue with team-play and personal rating based on team-performance than it is with the actual system itself?
I mean there’s nothing wrong with ELO. It just sounds like people don’t want to be ranked.
And honestly I don’t accept “people would behave badly” as a good reason not to do something.
Aegis Blocks the next incoming attack iirc.
If that attack is Backstab (or some boss ability) for example, that’s quite useful.
I just want Thieves to get nerfed so these forums can finally be bearable again.
It seems like every thread I visit on these forums inevitably turns into a Thief hate thread.
It always depends on the build and weapons the Thief is using.
But generally speaking they are one, if not THE most mobile class in game. Some classes may be faster over short distances but in the end…they all get caught eventually.
The score is not primarily to determine a winner. There is no prize for first place.
The score is to determine a ranking to match you up against similar servers. Granted, this is currently compromised by the free server transfers, but never-the-less it’s what it’s for.
I don’t buy that. According to me and most of the community the score defines the winner. The current problem however is that a server can easily come out with twice the points of the 2nd server without actually being “twice as good”. A slight margin of player activity during certain hours in enough to secure a great lead.
Yet the actual performance doesn’t scale with the score. The score scales exponentially.
This means the leading server will just find itself in a matchup completely outclassed again.
Currently a 100% lead on another server only means you were “slightly” better or had just a few more people on every night.
It depends if you’re following more of a Critical Strikes build or more of a Condition Damage build.
P/D lends itself more towards Condition Damage (arguable)
D/D works both with both builds
Shortbow is everyone’s favorite alternative weapon. Has more Synergy with Critical Strikes but is always a viable choice.
Sword mainhand likes Critical Strikes and doesn’t have any Condition Damage iirc.
P/P works with both.
Sword has a lot more going for it than just Pistol Whip. Rainy made a video about it just yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRq-nyaRlLw&feature=g-user-u
Holy crapper this is awesome!
I can’t imagine you invested so much work into this computer model. I really appreciate the effort because I’m much in favor of a more flexible scoring system.
However I’m not sure if I understood all the details of the model or the exact formula you were applying.
My concern however is that a very vocal part of this community believes that the scoring system doesn’t need fixing. They will probably be too close-minded to even consider the benefits of your proposal which is a real shame considering the effort you obviously invested.
Anyway, you got my +1
PS: Closer matches benefit everyone. Just look at the current Tier 1 battle which is close as hell. It’s way more fun than being the dominating force after the first night.
1. Always carry supplies with you (indicated next to the timer at the top of your screen) you can only carry 10 supplies and should use every opportunity to refill that supply.
Preferably you should take supplies from supply camps fully supplied (you’ll see an indicator) keeps and towers. Try to avoid taking supplies from contested towers and low-supply buildings unless necessary.
Supplies allow you to build, repair and construct various siege equipment as well as walls and keep upgrades (that’s why people like to maintain a healthy level of supplies in their keeps).
2. Follow the Zerg
I admit there are a ton of Thieves around.
But most of them are terrible…like really, really bad. You’ll still end up winning most matches against rerollers.
Lean back a moment and recall the last situation you got seriously owned.
Maybe you got instant-gibbed by a Thief, driven crazy by a Mesmer, stun-locked to death by a Hammer Warrior or gibbed by a 100 Blades. Maybe you fought a 2 minute duel vs. another Guardian unable to drop his health below 50% etc etc.
All the situations occur and leave the player perplexed. He/she doesn’t understand what happened and at first glance it seems unfair.
So what options does one have at this point?
-You can create a profession that just owned you, get into SPvP, learn the skills and build…and finally learn how to counter them. Possible yes….but very time consuming and demanding.
-Ask your Guild Mates/Friends if they play said class. Possible, but chances are slim you’ll find someone playing that specific build on that specific profession.
-Ask on the forums: Not to bash anyone but these forums are pretty badwhen it comes to giving advice or PvP tips. Between “Dodge everything” and “L2P” you find very few helpful answers. And even then these are often pure theory and highly impractical.
_______________________________________
Now in others MMOs you have a 4th option.
Duels.
In fact Duels and small scale PvP are a great way to learn about other classes without actually playing them. If everyone had a little more understanding about every profession there’d probably be a lot less QQ around these forums.
I mean how are you expected to avoid xyz ability-combo when the only place you can practice it is in the chaos of sPvP where half the time you don’t have any clue what build the others are playing.
Duels would really help people learn the intricacies of other professions. It would provide them the opportunity to fine-tune their play in a controlled environment.
I think duels need to happen. They’d do the game a lot of good.
It’s the culling issue, not a Thief issue. Hopefully the next patch will fix it. Then you should be able to see the Thief coming and be able to target him when stealth ends.
I fully expect Thief burst to be nerfed as well so everyone can put their pitchforks back in the barn.
Remove repair costs, add waypoint costs.
Voila….reduced the negative perception of death in WvW without actually changing the bottom line.
I had something wonky happen to my Thief as I used Scorpion Wire on a Guardian just as he/she was passing through the door. He/She must have had Retaliation up because the Scorpion Wire reflected back at me and pulled me through the gate.
I thought it was pretty funky at the time.
Well ANet announced recently that they had a feature in the works that would “greatly enhance the number of players able to partake in WvW”.
Maybe a feature similar to yours is already wip.
And while I think it goes a bit against the idea of building server communities and server pride etc. I think the upsides outweigh the downsides by a lot.
No, no limit on queues, no limits on player participation.
I’m with the naysayers on that. Whatever alterations are made, they shouldn’t be aimed at balancing the populations.
The only modifications that need to be made are to the scoring system.
Keeps and Forts simply shouldn’t be worth as much during low-activity hours as they are during high-activity hours. When you have 20 people on each side the scoring system should simply downscale the point-rewards do an acceptable level.
When activity kicks in again, the score scales upward again.
Simple, intuitive and it puts no artificial limits or boundaries in game. It’s simply saying that what was decided when 100 faced 100 is equally as important as what 20 achieve against 20 (relatively speaking).
That, and I’d also like to see player kills added to the score, but that’s not directly related.
People act as if “leading” a zerg was such a momentous effort.
A Commander is nothing more than a rallying point for a zerg. If someone is willing to pay 100G to be such a rallying point….fair enough.
Once you involve voice-com it really doesn’t matter if and who that blue tag belongs to. Because that is when the real commanders appear.
Yeah because instant weapon switches and internet latency aren’t a thing.
For a game that places such a high value on it’s world-building and visual aesthetic I find waypoints to be counterproductive.
It makes the world feel like a series disconnected zones rather than….a world. Loading screens etc. do their own part at contributing to that factor.
It makes me sad to imagine just how much better the game would be without all the waypoints and loadscreen…if we just had 1 seamlessly explorable world rather than a collection of zones.
It seems extremely unbalanced just how much better the Mesmer is in just about every situation compared to all other classes.
Their support abilities are unrivaled and add completely new mechanics to WvW. Now if all classes had such tool, if Thieves could stealth an entire Zerg for 20 seconds, if Elementalists could Rally an entire Zerg etc. then these abilities might be fair game.
But they can’t and as such, Mesmer abilities fall out of the usual balance spectrum.
The portal should really be limited to 5 people, as should the Quickness field. Most other abilities have the same cap…why are Mesmers the exception?
I mean they are already the best 1v1 class….why must they also be the best WvW class?
People tend to vastly overestimate how much people care about them.
OP seems to be that kind of person. I doubt 99% of his server population have any idea who he is.
You don’t see people’s names and unless your entire zerg has the same guild tag, nobody is going to register that either.
The only individuals people tend to kitten and whine about are those camping the jumping puzzle. But none of them is ever a remarkable individual and always ends up getting stomped eventually.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Yeah because you can totally do all that crap when you are chain CC’d for 9 seconds without being able to do anything.
It’s terrible balancing if “no stun break” = guaranteed death.
I prefer things to be less deterministic and you know….actually not being stun-locked to death. I thought we let that kitten behind us in WoW.
In my book this is every ounce as bad as Thief Backstabs.
I’m getting increasingly annoyed by ANets stance on this issue.
Not doing anything is the wrong stance. It’s an ignorant and passive and it’s hurting the game.
I’ve been both on the beneficial side and the losing side of night-capping. In fact I’m a night-capper myself. And I tell you it sucks. There’s no enjoyment in steamrolling entire maps just because you can muster 30 people where the enemy only has a dozen.
Seeing those 2 hours of player vs. doors be rewarded with a MASSIVE point lead by the morning is just dumb.
The scoring system is at fault here, not the players.
The scoring system simply cannot ignore current player activity.
But you know what, I’m absolutely confident you will change the scoring system at one point. Maybe not now, maybe not in a month, but eventually, eventually you will see just how bad it is.
Hey, I believe I’m from one of your opposing servers (if you’re from the EU).
We’ve gone from being dominated at night to dominating at night.
In fact, I might have been part of today’s night crew.
And I agree that it’s kittening stupid that we can PvD our way to a massive point lead. I mean our server isn’t great and we’ve been on the losing end of night-capping too, but it’s still just poor design.
Ignoring the issue isn’t a way of dealing with it.
If at least our PvD wasn’t rewarded as much. But we can grab all the Orbs and all the major keeps all while accumulating a massive point lead. We’re 24 hours into the new match up and it’s basically “good game” because we have 20 more players online at night.
Dodge and stun breaker is enough to survive.
Well it’s kind of difficult to Dodge or Blind anyone if you’re locked out of all your abilities once he’s started his CC chain. You can’t always see them coming you know and weapons swaps are instant.
First off, what do you want to do at 80 that you can’t already do?
You want to WvW? Off you go right now.
You want to PvP? There’s nothing stopping you.
You want to run dungeons? Most of them are accessible while leveling.
You want epic dragon fights? Those too are only a few levels way.
I say this because you’ll be doing exactly the same at level 80 as you are doing now.
But if you still insist on level quickly, buy a crafting booster and level a crafting profession. If well prepared you can do 20 levels in an hour.
I think they should replace repair costs in WvW with waypoint costs.
Same result (ie. people have to pay when they die) but less negative associations with death and discourages constant waypoint use.
Ok, maybe I’m missing something but it seems like if they catch me without a stun-breaker I die without being able to do anything.
It goes stun into stun…into another stun, at the end of which I am typically dead.
Most of the time I can’t use a single ability because of this kind of chain CC.
Is the only counter to such a thing a stun-breaker? I mean even if you do use it successfully the fact that they can chain one stun into another…with the recipient unable to move or act….just seems stupid.
I’m asking for help here. Maybe there’s something I don’t know, some mechanic I missed. How can I not be caught in this kind of CC stun chain?
I think you should ask here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer
I like the one at the Bank in Lion Arch about how trade and commerce brings everyone together.
It kind of outlines how to deal with many of the current Islam vs. West conflicts.
When the Thief comes into 900 range (the range of Steal) simply Dodge towards him.
Voila, you deny him Steal (for Bladewhril thingy), C&D and probably even Basilisk Venom all in one move. His Backstab might even fail….after which it should be an easy fight.
Because a Backstab Thief rarely has more than 16.000 HP.
I met “Charlock Holmes”
Craft a Legendary is essentially GW2s endgame.