I wish the Borderlands weren’t necessary.
WvW is so much better if everything takes place on a single map. Otherwise everything feels disjointed and doesn’t feel like a server-wide effort. Obviously there are technical limitations but I think a map about twice as large as the Eternal Battlegrounds would be significantly better than the 3 Borderlands + EB.
So far ANets approach to dealing with the massive amount of Bots in this game has been to ban users and close exploits etc. etc. All fine and dandy I guess but there are two sides to this issue.
1. Yes, banning botters helps mititage the issue although it’s a very reactionary meassure.
2. People bot not only because it’s technically possible, but also because so many DE are so incredibly simplistic.
If we had less DE that could be beaten by a number of bots spaming a single ability into the general vicinity of the enemies then we might not have such an issue. Just look at those “base-defense” events in Orr, by far the most “farmable” events in game.
They reset every 10-15 minutes, spam waves of useless enemies that drop good loot and don’t even require you to move most of the time. Perfect for an automated program.
Making these kind of events less relevant and profitable while buffing other, more engaging events, would probably go a long way towards dealing with the Bot issue.
People bot because they can, both technically and because of shallow game-play. Both issues need to be addressed.
I kind of agree,
Orbs were obviously implemented to give the Borderlands something meaningful to fight over. This is understandable since they’re often considered a “side-stage” to the Eternal Battlegrounds.
But it doesn’t really work that way. The Borderlands are already fairly important, simply due to the number of bases and points they contribute.. They really don’t need the Orbs to encourage people to fight there.
And then there’s the issue that Orbs give the already dominating faction another upper hand. It just doesn’t seem right.
If they changed the Orb and Undermanned buff, I’d probably feel differently.
German don’t have overseas players. Hence they get screwed at night. ANets response so far has been “deal with it”.
Yes, when it comes to certain issues ANet has the same amount of perspective as the opinionated teenagers who spout their usual one-liners in defense of night-capping.
Downed state abilities are just stupid beyond reason. Keep the pebble tossing if you must and the self-heal too.
But get rid of the rest.
In WvW and PvE I too go for a more mixed set rather than all out glass cannon.
I too prefer Vitality to Toughness but both are equally viable. The more you have of both, the better they are.
The Portal does fall outside of the usual power-spectrum to quite an extreme.
I don’t understand why it’s not limited to 5 people.
Karma is actually so easy to get especially after this update.
Badges apparently done in less then a week as well with alts.
Dungeon tokens – 180 per day…All ectos and T6 mats can be bought from TP and u’ll probably get about 30% of them just farming karma.
I’m not worried about ANYTHING else, but the precursor. I only started farming for legendary 1 week ago, I decided to start from karma farming and I get a lot of cash + ectos + t6 mats while farming. I’ll need that cash for crafted gifts and icy runestones.
But after I have all 3 gifts I still need the precursor which is either 300 kittening gold for 1 item, or 0.1-1% chance from forge. Great stuff.I can’t enjoy the game if I’d throw 100g into the forge and get nothing back, doesn’t work like that for me.
This is how I feel about it too.
I just recently made up my mind to go for it and mapped out what needs to happen. I don’t expect to have it in a week, but possibly in a month.
The grind, all things considered, is fine. Karma, Mats etc. can all be farmed organically while playing the game the way it was meant to be played.
But once you get all the gifts…you’re still left with the pre-cursor. And that’s where kitten gets real because this crucial element is left to a very sodding poor RNG mechanic.
I’d just like to add something to the discussion.
Especially when dealing with significant investments (and I consider Exotic Weapons significant investments) there’s an acceptable range of RNG and there’s an unacceptable range.
I consider anything less than a 10% chance to be unacceptable. They had a similar loot system for PvP in SWTOR and it was universally hated. A mathematician can crunch the numbers but if the chance really is closer to 5% then that means a significant number of people will only have a 3% chance. That’s close to 140 Exotic weapons blown. And that’s only the less fortunate. The really unfortunate…oh my…
The thing with low RNG rates like that is that for every lucky guy who get’s his with a few tries you have another poor sod somewhere who’s becoming increasingly frustrated as RNG simply won’t favor him.
Relying on RNG is poor design.
Hmm, this does sound….like something they must have completely overlooked.
“Yo dawg, we heard you like PvE so we put some sharks in your PvP so you can PvE while you PvP.”
That, or something similar must have been the line of thinking of whoever designed the Raid on Capricorn. Underwater combat is a big part of GW2, I’ve accepted that. But I really hate getting swarmed by pesky mobs in a PvP match.
Underwater combat is bad enough in PvE with it’s insane mob density, low-damage and constant adding of mobs. I don’t need this in a PvP map. I’m pretty sure nobody actually likes having those sharks around.
Going to the ruins is decided by picking straws, nobody actually wants to go there, but in the end you always send the Thief because he can at least kill someone without having to worry too much about those pesky things. But kitten is it not much fun.
It ruins an otherwise decent (and very pretty) map. I could almost live with 2 sharks, just to give whoever stays around and defends, a minor upper-hand. But 5? Really?
Whoever thought this was somehow acceptable needs to swim with sharks.
Do everyone a favor and scrap at least 2, better 3 of those annoying creatures.
Not to belittle other peoples experiences but I don’t consider night-capping problematic until one server control 60+% of the map at night.
Cool stuff, PvP is actually a lot more fun if it takes a little effort to overcome your enemies.
But then again, most maps wouldn’t work if killing someone would take 30 seconds every time.
- Quickness. Agreed! But this applies to more than just Thieves.
- Backstab. Disagree! Backstab in itself is not the problem. It’s the added Might stacks from Venoms + Singets that really push things over the top. Replace those traits with something more interesting and less bursty and you have a win/win.
- Unload. Considering how few people actually use Dual Pistols, I haven’t heard a single complaint about its damage output.
- Dagger storm. No, Daggerstorm is great AoE but doesn’t really hurt a single player that much unless he continues to shoot. This is something players will learn to counter over time.
I made a lengthy post about the exact same issue here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/How-to-nerf-Thief-burst-without-gutting-the-class/first#post362216
Backstab damage in itself isn’t the problem. It’s the extra Might stacks you get for using a Singet + extra Might stacks for using Venoms etc. that really push the burst over the top.
With my current burst build I can gain an extra 14 stacks of Might (2 Singets + 2 Venoms) before going in for a Backstab. That’s kind of a lot.
I think ANet…if they do intend to nerf our burst, would do well to address all these Might-stacking traits rather than nerfing the actual damage of abilities.
PS: I do agree that Backstab should be a big hitter.Especially since we don’t have perma-stealth in this game.
Some of these bots are so substantiated it’s hard to tell them apart from bad players.
Actually, when farming events in Orr everyone is essentially acting like a Bot.
Ok, this is an open question I have no obvious answer to.
Picture the following scenario. You’re in a tower or smaller keep, defending it with about 10 fellow players against an enemy random zerg of say…25 players.
What is the best you can hope to achieve in such a situation? Is there any effective way to break the siege? Is targeting random players and hoping for the odd kill or two the best you can hope for?
Is there a realistic chance of destroying attacking siege weapons?
Or must you simply call for help and hope for the best?
I’m asking because, outside of summoning your own zerg to relieve you, defending a tower seems almost futile. Even if you have 50% of the attackers numbers, it’s really hard to break up the enemy force.
Any tips or strategies on how to deal with such situations.
The best I’ve seen so far is hope that you have 3 Thieves, tell them to drop down and Daggerstorm all at once while the others storm in to mop up the rest. This can be very effective, although it’s hard to coordinate in random groups.
Ok, I too watched the whole thing and ended up wondering why you bothered to make this video. It shows nothing unique or interesting. All the footage is just completely average and some clips seem to be the exact opposite of impressive.
I mean you have clips there of you plus another player ganking a single Necromancer. What’s impressive about that? Why would anybody want to see such a clip?
Then there’s the clicking and keyboard turning which is just embarrassing for a PvP movie. Fair or not, but nobody takes clickers seriously (even if you’re just a half-clicker). Character movement too was bad overall, with seemingly random movement choices that didn’t follow any logic.
And a 100 second intro…really?
Next time make sure you have something worth showing before making a movie.
It’s not so much that Short-Bow is so good, it’s the fact that a ranged weapon is practically a requirement in all of GW2’s content and that Pistol/Pistol is a little underwhelming.
We simply don’t have enough options, that’s why 90% chose Short-Bow.
Good post,
I always felt that the size of the maps was too small overall, even if players like to complain about having to run back after respawning.
I also agree that the Eternal Battlegrounds is significantly better suited for WvW than the Borderlands are.
WvW would be so much better if they somehow combined the 4 different maps into one big zone, largely absent of large bodies of water.
Not everything has to be fun at the expense of others.
Yeah…QQ directed at Thieves has been about burst damage more than anything else. Nobody has complained about Pistol/Dagger Bleed builds.
French server are already congregating towards the top of the ladder while German servers are congregating towards the bottom (there are a few exceptions).
If only everyone could afford to have a huge overseas player base…
French server moving up the ladder, German servers moving down.
4 buttons you say? That’s 3 more than most people claim.
The fact that all PvP maps revolve around capturing and holding is what makes bunker builds so potent.
If we had more game-modes like CTF, Last Man standing, Team Death Match etc. things mike look a bit different.
I hope they don’t listen to you.
Thieves are OP in one aspect, and that is burst damage. They are fine, or even underpowered in other areas but that doesn’t justify such high burst.
They should address this just like they should address various bunker builds, be it Engineer, Guardian or Elementalist and any other gross imbalance.
Auron put it straight, you don’t know anything. He said that we have to “sacrifice everything to get [an effective] burst” and that’s so true. Thieves are in that regard balanced.
The cons of the thief balance out their high damage output. This is HOW IT SHOULD BE because the thief was intended to resemble an assassin, and if you know anything, assassins inflict high critical damage but they pay with low armor and defense, and health. People are complaining because the thief is “too” unique – they don’t resemble any other class and play completely different from their counterparts.
That’s why thieves go down so quickly and tend to flee combat when they’re at a disadvantage – because they have no defense from attacks and will most likely go down. Speed, acrobatics, and high criticals buff the thief, but their low armor and defense debuff them.
I went down within a second of a warrior who used Rush to catch up to me, then hundred bladed the crap out of me. Why didn’t I stand and fight since I had “burst damage” (as you put it)? Because I have no defense against his powerful attacks.
I hope ANet doesn’t listen to YOU.
You have a very simple understanding of game-balance if you think it’s a simple matter of stacking offense at the cost of defense. Balance doesn’t just work like that.
By your logic it would be ok to deal 100.000 dmg as long as you only have 1 HP (obvious hyperbole). But any designer will tell you that’s no ok (unless you’re playing Unreal Tournament with Instant Gib).
All stats need to fall within a certain spectrum of power. You want fights to last anywhere between 5 and 25 seconds or there is simply no room to react and respond. Currently Thief glass cannon specs fall out of this spectrum towards the damage end while other classes fall out on the defensive end (they’re too hard to kill).
The reason why excessive burst isn’t acceptable is because as a Thief, you get to pick most of your fights. You’re one of the most slippery classes in game, you have stealth, another form of defense/utility that allows glass-cannons to persist longer than other glasses would be able to under normal circumstances etc.
I have played MMOs for well over a decade. I know an imbalance when I see one and Thief burst is such a thing.
No, I’m just tired of unskilled noobs, in every single game, crying over any type of assassin class with stealth, it’s always the same story. So we can crit for 8k average, that takes time to set up right. What’s going to happen when we can only crit for 4-5k average? We will use all are cooldowns and intiative’s for nothing while any other profession can just heal, remove conditions, block, or become immune, all of which a thief don’t have, they will be on there way while Thief will have no choice but to run with nothing left.
Sorry but I think you’re the noob here. A big part about being mature and realistic about your class is admitting when something is overpowered and needs to be addressed.
Thief burst damage is an issue. I play a very minor variant of the spec shown in the video above and it really does work that well. Not just against other glass-cannons, it works against pretty much everyone. In fact, I can’t remember ever having lost a 1v1 since using that spec.
The only times it fails is if the target happens to dodge at the same moment you Steal. Then you may get screwed. But dodging an instant ability is a very random event and happens in maybe 1 of 20 cases.
Thieves as a whole may not be OP, but the this single aspect of their class, is.
I like the way you think. Trolling the community is probably quite healthy for the psyche of a balance-dev. You can’t let the QQ get to you.
I found the Short-Bow on my Thief to be notoriously laggy, in almost every situation. Daggers however, aside from Backstab constantly missing, don’t seem to suffer that much.
This isn’t anything specific to German servers, it’s a wide-spread issue.
These free server transfers have to end.
Shut up and take our money ANet, sooner rather than later.
To ensure people still play will their friends, give every new account a 2 week grace period for free server transfers before locking them in.
It would be cool if it rewarded something you need to forge a Legendary. Maybe not a direct pre-requisite but maybe a different vital component.
You are wrong Auron and you are the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udk3CEtc7E
Add WvW into the mix, with Orbs, culling bugs etc. and players can easily get killed in 1-2 seconds.
I play that spec myself, and it really does work that well. A 45 second CD and 14k HP don’t justify practically one-shotting people.
18,372 – Warrior Necro
15,082 – Engie Ranger Mesmer
10,805 – Ele, Guardian, Thief
I believe this is really a massive problem. I’m all for difference between classes but you can’t have such a massive difference between something as essential as HP. WoW used to have such differences too…less pronounced if I made add….and got rid of them too. They make it impossible to balance around.
Imo there shouldn’t be more than 5000 HP base-difference between classes.
13.000 HP
16.000 HP
18.000 HP would make things much better to balance.
Long term however I think it would be better for everyone to have the same base HP.
I hope they don’t listen to you.
Thieves are OP in one aspect, and that is burst damage. They are fine, or even underpowered in other areas but that doesn’t justify such high burst.
They should address this just like they should address various bunker builds, be it Engineer, Guardian or Elementalist and any other gross imbalance.
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Posted by: Dee Jay.2460
Bots would not exist if players would stop buying gold from them. So ultimately, part of the demand is player-created. But it can be resolved because the majority of players are legit.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of bots are actually run by private players who simply want to gain an upper hand, rather than gold-sellers who are trying to undercut ANet.
The fact that GW2 doesn’t have a subscription fee makes running a bot very affordable.
If ANet wants to get rid of bots they need to make their content more engaging and less farmable. If all it takes is a series of Bots to spam auto-attack to beat an event then something is wrong with the event.
I think the damage meter will allow people to perfect builds.
Which is exactly what ANet doesn’t want. GW2 is best when people don’t think about numbers too much but instead focus on building a character that suits their play-style. Once people factor in numbers the theorycrafters start taking over and for a game like GW2, that doesn’t really have cutting edge content, it’s not necessary.
Yes, I’ve always liked global chat-channels even if they are prone to spam.
It would obviously need a fairly strict message limit of like one message per minute or so. I know plenty of people hate global chat channels however so it should always be possible to turn it off temporarily, ideally with a single click.
A more sophisticated system would be if I could list myself as LFG and then select the dungeons I’m interested in from a list. Maybe even with my preferred route. People who are LFM could then open this list and see who’s interested in their current dungeon.
It depends on your build and play-style.
If you’re an all-out burster, I’d recommend the Lightning damage Sigil since it does roughly 2000 damage against most targets. For your off-hand I’d take either the +5% Crit or +5% Damage, whichever you prefer.
If you’re not just a glass-cannon the Freezing proc can be quite useful. Obviously not so much if you’re already using the Ice Venom but good if you’re not. Slowed enemies with longer ability CDs are much easier to deal with.
Bleed stacker then again might prefer something that increases their Condition durations or Bleed damage. Again, it depends.
As most of you know, Thief burst damage is currently under observation. As a glass-cannoneer myself I know the extent of Thief burst damage and how stupid it can get against some classes.
Hence I want to debate how to best deal with the burst situation without gutting the class overall.
I’ll start by saying the best place to address this issue is by altering the traits. The good thing about traits is that you can always pick another if one gets nerfed overzealously.
I’ll also like to point out that one of the reasons why Thieves can have such high burst is because of various stacking effects. For example:
1. Venomous Strength + Singets of Might allow us to stack a large number of Might stacks to prepare for burst. Especially when coupled with the Assassin’s Singet this can result in quite an extreme damage boost.
2. Haste leads to more burst than any other ability in game. It’s a 100% DPS increase which, considering the fast nature of sPvP, can actually be valuable than a simple 100% damage increase. However since Thief abilities have no cooldowns, Haste is much more effective for Thieves than many other classes.
3. Volatile damage of Mug is something I’m finding hard to explain. In PvE Mug will typically hit for roughly 700 at level 80. Yet in sPvP it has been known to crit for over 5000 damage. Considering the range and instant nature of the ability, that does seem rather excessive. I’m not sure where this extra damage comes from but it needs to be looked at.
______________________________________________________
My suggestions would be to alter some of the aforementioned abilities that stack Might onto already bursty abilities. They could reduce the number of stacks for Singets of Might for example while increasing the duration or simply replace it with a different boon or effect. Instead of stacking 5 Mights for 5 seconds it could stack 2 Mights for 15 seconds.
Haste I believe has no place on the Thief class. Without the limit of cooldowns on abilities it’s just going to result in other weird burst scenarios. If it must be kept, it should be limited to a 50% speed increase whereas you could probably remove the negative downsides. Overall however I think it would be healthier if the ability was replaced with something more interesting.
And regarding Mug, I think the damage formula needs a little fine tuning. It should be less volatile than it currently is. Anywhere between 1000 and 3000 damage seems reasonable. But beyond that is going to be hard to justify for such a low-tier trait.
Anyway, those are my 2 cents worth of how to balance Thieves. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Yes, Venoms indeed need to be made more appealing. The 45 seconds CD really limits them. Somewhere between 30 and 40 seconds would be reasonable considering most condition removal CDs are about 30 seconds.
Singet/Sigils…my bad.
Anyway, I use the lightning damage proc sigil on my mainhand weapon and the +5% crit-chance on my off-hand weapon.
You can only have one proc-effect active at the same time and the lightning one does the most damage.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
SWTOR introduced Oceanic servers and I don’t see why GW2 can not. The Australian player base coupled with the Asian player base should be enough to warrant 1 or 2 dedicated Oceanic servers.
NC Soft, the owners of ANet iirc, are a South Korean company. So I’m sure they’d be able to figure out something if they put their minds to it.
Well stated OP,
I feel that most of the “difficulty” in PvE is derived from the INSANE mob density in many zones coupled with a ridiculous respawn rate.
Instead of dying because a mob proved to be more challenging than expected you die because some designer thought it was somehow acceptable to have mobs respawn every 10 seconds out of the middle of nowhere.
We’re slowly coming into the phase of the game where a vast majority of the player base has reached level 80 and is thirsting for stuff to do in game. While there is plenty of stuff to do not everyone knows about it or has the drive to pursue whatever may be out there.
Hence I propose and that the game selects a random Achievement every week for the player to accomplish, and if completed rewards this with a significant amount of Karma and a little Gold.
The game already has an Achievement system in place so you’d really just have to program an algorithm for combining different achievements to a weekly one. Unlike regular Achievements, these would be unique to the week and they’re replaced every Tuesday after reset.
Every Tuesday you’d receive a letter from the Priory/Vigil/Order telling you about your specific Achievement of the week and what rewards it would entail.
For example, one week my weekly Achievement may be “successfully complete 7 different jumping puzzles in 7 different regions”.
The other is could be “Participate in the capture of 4 keeps throughout the week”.
“Kill all three Dragon lieutenants”.
“Achieve a new rank in sPvP”.
Etc. etc. these could all be randomly generated and they’d encourage players to pursue things they might not go after otherwise. Considering how focused GW2 is on exploration this sounds like a good idea.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Thief Clusterbomb is also pretty effective if there aren’t too many people around as the bomb needs about a second to explode.
But as you can see, almost every class has a tool to compete in these events. The fact that it’s a competition is the big issue here.
Downed state sucks in competitive PvP.
1. It makes skillful play practically useless since there’s no way you’ll win a 2v1. And even if you should manage to down both, they’ll just rally once they shred you to death with pebbles. You gain nothing from skillful play.
2. Coordinated teams actually prefer to leave their enemies in downed state rather than have them respawn. It buys them a few extra seconds of piece and quiet. If my enemy prefers to leave me on the ground for 30 seconds rather than finish me off, then it clearly indicates something is wrong.
3. Downed abilities are really imbalanced and interrupts are annoying. You can finish off certain classes reliably and the 3 second animation just takes way too long.
Overall it’s just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad and really hurts sPvP.
Being able to backpedal around for 1 minute pressing whatever comes off cooldown is just as kitteneeing a Thief coming towards you in your peripheral vision only to find yourself downed about 2 seconds later. This is no hyperbole as I’ve done it countless times today on my Thief.
Ideally even a player who is jumped by another should have enough time to react and use at least a few abilities before going down.
Ideally 1v1s should last at around 10 seconds between two DPS focused players and not surpass 30 seconds in any case. This gives players time to use at least a handful of abilities while leaving room for counters, dodges and tactics.
Duels obviously last longer than actual sPvP fights so don’t take them as a standard.