Guild Wars 2

Excellent post by Sylosi.6503. I hope the developers will read it. The engineer traits are generally weak when compared to other professions. And having just 3 utility slots, which are often spent to kits, don’t give us enough real utility. Any effective engineer builds needs to be very specialized, not making it versatile, like the Anet envisioned.

Deniara

Infinite Ball story line is good. And I think the Asura’s golem story line is even better. By far the funniest personal story lines I have encountered in the game. Kudos for the designers who wrote them! This is one of the reasons why I made another Asura character, just to experience the other personal story line options.

Deniara

(real reasons why spvp is not popular, continues from above message)

4. Both teleporting and stealth, especially when combined with very fast burst damage, and ability “loan” these abilities to your team mate (mass invisibility, shadow refuge, portal etc ) are game breaking mechanisms (also they are game breaking in WvWvW and to a lesser extend in pve, allowing players abusing them to pass significant number of game content very easily). Many players don’t mind being killed, but almost all players hate when a totally unknown invisible enemy downs them so fast they didn’t have time to counter it. Fast movement speed etc. should NOT work in stealth. Make stealth so that its user is barely visible, aka translucent, e.g. like a character who has just consumed onnomberry ghost (so the rendering code is already in the game). The person who is in stealth cannot be targeted, thus anything else than a ground targeted aoe would miss that person. Movement during stealth should be 50% normal speed. Thief already has a trait (fleet shadow) to counter it. Stealth would still be very very powerful! Any damage on the stealthed person or stealthed person using a skill should or reviving allies should immediately break the stealth. This would also fix the highly annoying invisible reviving seen in WvWvW.

Now the risk and reward with stealth, teleport (clone) etc. type of mechanisms is just too good for the hotjoin spvp. You can pretty safely make a glass cannon, able to take down anything else than a full bunker in just few seconds. And even if you fail your attempt you can always disengage e.g. flee in stealth or just keep spamming key #2 (heartseeker).

5. Downed state. Give all professions equal downed state e.g. pvp and WvWvW. E.g. only bandage. Now the downed states are totally inequal e.g. compare engineer’s grappling line (downed skill #2) with thief’s shadow escape (downed skill #2) or the elementalist’s vapor form (downed skill #2) or mesmer’s deception (downed skill #2). The poor engineer can pull an enemy next to him (duh), while the three other options offer a very handy escape and give more time to bandage up. Reviving, especially with multiple allies, happens way too easily. This is an even bigger problem in WvWvW. If you are playing alone or in a very small group against a big enemy zerg, it is very difficult to score kills. Enemy zerg in WvWvW can always revive a downed ally in just seconds.

I think many of the people who keep posting “l2p” messages are probably forum trolls, afraid that their cheap & easy playing style or overpowered main profession would get nerfed in any possible way. Thus we get a skewed view of the reality here.

First fix the game, then we might have more players in pvp. Or maybe it is already too late and most pvp players left to other games?

Deniara

The reason why Guild Wars 2 pvp has so few players has nothing to do with “learn to play”. The real issues are:

1. The burst damage is out of control. I am talking about 7k-10k per hit, while the health of a character is only 13k to 30k. You can alone inflict so much damage on an enemy player that he gets downed in just few seconds unless he is a bunker. The fact is most players don’t like being killed faster they can react. I would imagine a new comer, who has never played spvp or tpvp, doesn’t know how to make a good bunker build, will enter the spvp with more or less weak build and gets insta gibbed during the first match. In most cases this newbie will never return the game mode again. We just lost a player… forever! The game designers live in denial and think more damage is better and that two dodges + 1 stun break with 60 second cool down counts as enough defense. The offensive skills have way too short cooldown compared to the defensive skills. The game seriously lacks reliable interrupts and shutdown e.g. compared to Guild Wars 1, which had 2 classes, ranger and mesmer, who were shining with interrupts, lots of shutdown hexes like backfire, empathy, diversion. Blind was giving 90% miss chance, now blind just makes one attack miss. Knockdown was also available often and could be used to interrupt and lock down enemies. Good teams and players in GW1 were able to reduce the enemy damage in those active ways. Now we only have short lasting blocking, some mild boons like retaliation and protection. And the most powerful ways of avoiding damage: stealth and teleporting, which are basically commonly used only by two professions. And those two professions currently enjoy a huge (unfair) advantage in the current hotjoin spvp meta.

2. The lack of skill balance. I mean skill balance also within the profession. Now certain weapons and utility skills are much better than the other. Thus you see almost every mesmer in the game wield greatsword vs other weapons. And warriors using also greatsword (= Greatsword Wars 2). Some utility skills and “elite” skills are more or less useless. I would not call a skill, which has 180-240 s recharge, unreliable operation and very short duration an elite. This has lead to a boring and static meta. Why to even give the professions several weapons if only one of them is good? There has been some great suggestions in these forums how to fix these issues. A lot of smart experienced players have made great posts. I have never seen any Arenanet developer ever comment in any of those threads. This is an example of utter disrespect towards the players, who post in these forums. The message becoming loud and clear: Arenanet doesn’t care about us.

3. Most people don’t like the conquest game mode nor the maps. I can imagine several reasons why Anet is not giving players other game modes like “deathmatch” e.g. in the style of 4 vs 4 Random and Team arenas of the Guild Wars 1. These wouldn’t work well in Guild Wars 2 due overpowered burst damage and lack of defenses. If GW2 would have compact 4 vs 4 deathmatch style arenas we would only see even more burst damage and bunkers (the only way to counter them). Imagine if a team using voice chat would 2-3 enemy team members unleashing their burst at a single enemy: wham, bam, dead in 0.5 seconds. I am NOT asking for very long fights, I don’t like 15+ minute marathon fights with small teams, but if the fight is over in just few seconds, sighs…

(continues in next message, as I reached the 5000 character limit)

I have completed the story with several characters and while I haven’t yet gotten all my 8 characters to level 80, I have been playing them enough to get a general feel, unlocking most of their skills and elites for pve and WvWvW.

Here is my list:
1. Thief
- unlike the other posters complained. Thief is fine for pve. Very easy to play and high survivability due superb mobility + superb downed state. So even if you get downed you can alone get back to fight without any armor repair bills. Thief is not meant to face tank your enemies and you can use other weapons besides dagger and pistol in pve.
- very linear and repetitive (boring) to play with too few viable options for the player
- reason #1 why people quit spvp or WvWvW
- thief burst damage should be reduced
- haste is too good, allowing so fast spike that reaction isn’t always possible
- heartseeker is currently spammable gap closer. It should have higher initiative cost and not autotarget / fly to enemy while inflicting huge damage
- steal / mug should do slightly less damage. The mechanic itself is fine
- cluster bomb is the most overpowered area attack skill in the game. Yes, even elementalists don’t have anything like it
- either change stealth into blocking (while being still visible) or make the stealth last a bit shorter time and in stealth characters should be able to move only half of the speed
- give thieves some support and utility e.g. shadow refuge is superb skill, but currently the only really good thief support skill. Maybe buff venom and trap skills and give thieves the ability to remove conditions from allies or remove a boon from the enemy?

2. Engineer
- By far the rarest character class in high level pve and WvWvW
- fun to play, but also requires more effort to play effectively than other other profession
- reason #1 to go away from keyboard / ragequit in pvp if you get an engineer in team.
- Engineer does less dps than any other profession, yet it is not versatile like Anet says it is. Fix: Engineer weapons should do more direct damage, perhaps benefit from the +power etc. stats of the main hand weapon?
- most traits are bugged/broken or underpowered. E.g. adrenal implant is a joke of a grandmaster trait, for example rangers get a minor trait called natural vigor, which does the same! Make the traits both useful and fix the bugs
- many weapon kits are also bugged or so quirky making them half-useless e.g. elixir gun doesn’t heal enough (increase the amount of healing, make it scale with healing power), elixir gun #2 misses 90% of the time against moving opponents. Med kit antidote doesn’t remove all conditions like it says in the description and pretty much useless if you get rooted (immobilize)
- many of the defensive abilities of engineer have too long cooldowns (60 s or so), reduce them to 30 s.
- too many random effects, not viable to competitive play
- Turrets are pretty much useless
- Elites are useless, besides the Supply crate

3. Necromancer
- probably the 2nd rarest class in high level pve and WvWvW
- very easy profession to play with high survivability due having death shroud, which is basically a 2nd health bar
- unlike the typical complaints seen in forums, necros can dish out good dps and burst with a power necro build (25 stacks vulnerability, dagger/dagger, axe/focus) also necro staff is a solid good long distance weapon.
- maybe give necros even more life steal, not by much, but 10% increase
- Some of the wells and other skills have too long cooldown
- Minions feel meh, basically like weaker versions of ranger’s pet. Some Ranger pets can tank better or inflict tons of different conditions. Does anybody find the minions useful besides taking up aggro in pve? Suggestion: give minions abilities to inflict some more conditions

Deniara

Human.

I have 8 different characters, all professions and all races. I found the Norn personal story to the be the most boring (with human personal story as the 2nd most boring story!). Norn females sound very manly, like some transsexual or something and I find that distracting. I wish haven’t made my ranger into a Norn. Sighs.
I think Asuras and Sylvari have the best personal story and best female voice acting (yes, it can be overly dramatic and emotional at times).

Deniara

Sand Beagle.9867:

5. Unviability of almost every weapon except the greatsword and possibly the warhammer.
Swords – useless due to low duration bleeds, and resultant inability to bleed stack effectively; useless burst.

This is NOT true. There must be something fundamentally wrong with your sword warrior build. My own (pretty much unique) warrior uses dual swords. I am ALONE able to reach the 25 bleed stack limit. Many hits cause dual bleed (one bleed from the attack itself + bleed from critical). And some bleeds last 20 seconds without any food buffs or using Krait armor etc. The problem is not the amount or duration of the bleeds, but the lack of direct damage. Conditions can be removed way too easily and there goes most of your damage in any condition based build. Off hand sword is currently very unpopular, maybe the most unpopular 2nd hand weapon choice for warrior. Offhand sword skills should have a slightly lower cooldown (maybe 15 and 12 s for skill #4 and #5). And sword skills in general should do a bit more direct damage, maybe at the same time reducing the amount of bleed damage to offset this change. After these minor chances we are fine.

I am not claiming dual swords is as good in pvp. It isn’t. Greatsword is currently overpowered compared to other warrior choices. To fix this:
1. Hundred blades should do less damage, maybe 30% damage nerf
2. Forceful Greatsword trait is the true reason to play greatsword as it stacks might with critical hits. This is too good to be true.

No other warrior weapon gives the mobility and might stacking as the greatsword.

I am not a warrior hater. In fact I have played warrior more than other professions. I think the burst damage of all professions should be toned down. Then we would see less bunkers and more variety in the meta.

Deniara

Jumping puzzle should be removed from WvWvW and it should not reward badges of honor nor siege blueprints. Currently it is one big farm for badges + blueprints with huge amount of people (10-20) sitting there all day and waiting to kill enemies who happen there and farm free blueprints for their world.

Deniara

Skale venom should be removed from the game. It is simply overpowered, making the same named thief skill pretty irrelevant. Thieves should have this as their class specific special ability. Consumables giving life steal or critical hit chance etc. shouldn’t work for WvWvW, only pvp. They just add more imbalance to an already out of control, imbalanced game.

Currently omnomberry pie is better than Superior Sigil of Blood, which doesn’t make any sense.

I also use consumables. One of my characters has 400 in cooking and one has 400 in weaponsmith, so I can basically craft any highest level buffs myself. But still I think having them in a WvWvW is a bad idea.

Deniara

Great video! Very nice commentary and game-play. Engineer is the most rare profession in WvWvW and high level pve. So it is great to see the underdog used effectively. I also use engineer in WvWvW against enemy zergs in sort of kamikaze hit & run style, but I use grenades. They do less damage, but offer more distance and are great at siege (attacking enemy walls or defending the walls).

In the video I didn’t see your enemies using much snares (immobilize, cripple, chill, pull, stun). My WvWvW experience comes from the top euro tiers, where the enemy sadly outnumbers us in so huge amounts that our server Blacktide has been dropping like stone. We always have the (useless) outmanned buff. Our side might have 3 to 10 people and they have 20 to 50. There enemy teams often use multiple snares against you. Yes, one stun break, block or elixir S won’t be enough. I have often been chased down for more than 20 seconds, when my defenses are already going down, sometimes even for minutes. The 33% speed boost won’t help as the thieves can spam short range teleport and heartseeker to close the gap and d/d eles are using ride the lighting and warriors using signet of rage + greatsword moves. Then the enemy front runner group finally catches you. While I am strong in 1-vs-1, I cannot win 1-vs-5. But the enemy zerg then needed to spend a lot of players to kill me. I get a good kill rate with this and I can imagine the poster’s build would work greatly if there is roughly equal forces and you can retreat back to your own zerg and the enemy would use less snares.

Deniara

PS. I still elixir gun is the funniest weapon to dispatch enemies in WvWvW. I know that weapon kit sucks, but it is so quirky with its operation and sounds. If you can kill with it, it just shows that some of the players in WvWvW, despite playing on the winning side, are really bad.

I am not going to argue that dual sword is the best warrior’s melee weapon setup. Greatsword probably is the best general option, because of the GS mobility skills and forceful greatsword trait. That trait simple is too good to be true and in current meta limits warriors to be yet another class waving their greatsword. But I have been using dual swords to great success in both pve and (to lesser extent) WvWvW. I have soloed the three Orr maps (Straits of Devastation, Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore) with my dual sword warrior. Some of the group events, especially those temple events, are very difficult to solo without the help of other humans. That is true, no matter what weapons you use. I have seen big teams fail those events with tons of warriors waving their mighty greatsswords. I failed many times before I got success as the respawn rate of the Risen was just ridiculous plus I had to alone kill those champion / veteran bosses at same time.

With correct mods, upgrades, traits and food, dual sword has high survivability. You can life steal crazy amounts if you spec your critical hit chance to 70% or better While dual sword does less damage than the greatsword, I feel that the total damage output is probably better (assuming the target is not immune to bleed and doesn’t remove those bleeds). I don’t have full exotic gear and only green weapons. At the moment I do around 5300 bleed per hit from my offhand sword + possible bleed from critical hit. This synergizes well with the rifle, making it bleed the opponents like no tomorrow. I have tested in the Mists: with full exotic gear, one can achieve around 7500 bleed/hit, but then the character will be a glass cannon and I don’t like that either.

Yes, those bleeds can be easily removed, basically taking away 70-80% of your damage. But the thing is most condition removal skills have pretty long cooldown, often in the range of 20 seconds or so. One can reapply new bleeds with every hit and hits come fast. Very few opponents can remove all those bleeds.

The problem with dual swords, an any condition, build is:
1. The 25 stack limit on bleeding. I can alone get those full 25 bleed stacks on my opponent if the fight is prolonged. If I would be playing in a party, that would mean some of my bleeds or my team mates bleeds would be wasted. That is why I say that direct damage is better than condition based damage. I don’t think dual sword would be that good for dungeons.
2. The bleeding damage is slow, especially using +50% etc. bleeding duration mods. The bleeds can easily last around 20 second. Making fights last longer, which is not always the best case. I wouldn’t recommend dual sword for spvp or tpvp.

Deniara / Ayna Merciful

It is pity to see our server Blacktide drop like a stone. We are still a high population server e.g. Lion’s Arch has overflow server at any hour I am playing. There is a lot of people doing the fractals and the low level pve areas are well populated. But the number of people participating WvWvW is really low. It is very difficult to keep your keeps and score lots of points if there are only so few people. Often the entire map zone is without a commander (that NPC commander doesn’t count). There is no organization, just some rare random PuGs with leveled up characters.

We still have some powerful guilds and great people, who really know to play. We just need to get our act together. The enemies are easy to kill.

WvWvW drops seem to have changed. In past week I have gotten much more badges and items than ever before, lots of level 80 green items with upgrades (to be salvaged) and yellow (rare) items. One can easily get 1 gold for playing WvWvW for just 2 hours and getting enough exp to get couple of skill points. I repeat: the enemy is easy to kill and the drop is good. Come to join the fun!

Deniara / Ayna

PS. If anybody at Blacktide is interested to make a 5-man roaming force, I got some crazy ideas. My WvWvW mains are an engineer and warrior, both are not the typical build (I keep the details secret). Surely a 5-man strike cannot change the course of a war, but we can cause lots of havoc and have fun at the same time.

Yes, it seems to work with critical hits. So if you use Sigil of Water you should invest trying to maximize your character’s critical hit chance (precision gear). For example my warrior has over 50% critical hit chance with any weapon. But I found other sigils better e.g. sigil of air or sigil of fire. Plus food upgrades which steal health on critical. I would say Omnomberry pie is better than any sigil of Water for solo use
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Omnomberry_Pie

Deniara / Ayna Merciful

Being lone wolf is possible. I belong to a huge guild with over 300 members, but I barely know my guild mates and I do the pve alone. I have only once did dungeons with my guild mates, which was fun as they knew that dungeon well.

Like others have commented, it is possible to do all the pve map zones + personal story alone, except for the final mission: Victory or Death (Arah dungeon story mode). Theoretically Victory or Death is also soloable. I managed to get pretty far with my warrior, but finally after 4+ h marathon I gave up. So I recommend joining some team for that final mission. Also some of the Orr map temple events can be real pain to solo. I call that the “hard mode” in pve. The Risen often spawn faster than I can kill them + you have solo kill that champion / veteran boss alone. I have more often failed than succeeded such occasions, but I have 100% Orr map completion on both of main characters.

I often do WvWvW, usually every evening. I play for Blacktide, so my experience has been from euro tiers 1-3 Supposedly the most difficult opposing worlds in the game. Enemy has been outnumbering us 2 to 20 (yes, sometimes we have just 3 people on the map zone and I can see dozen enemies not so far from our gates, ouch!). I have respect for my opponents. They have better coverage, better participation, good gear. Some of them are true experts in using the siege and have huge organized parties or effective 2-5 roaming groups. But in a fair fight they almost always lose, because I specialize in playing unusual combinations (people don’t know how to counter them if they have never played against such build). I am rarely ever in any party. And even if I am in party, I have never used voice chat there (funnily when I was playing Guild Wars 1 guild-vs-guild in in top 100 guilds, we always used voice chat). Despite lacking the obvious advantage of being in a team and voice chat, I have been able to get 1:5 to 1:15 kill rates in WvWvW (1:15 means 15 kills per death). I don’t like zerging and I don’t play cheap gank characters like thief (but playing thief in pve is kinda fun, it is so strong and always able to escape). You can e.g. capture NPC posts (supply, Harathi, Skritt, Quaggans, Hylek) alone and thus help your world. And if you see enemy players who are alone, you can run after them, immobilize and kill on spot.

So lone wolf can be both fun and effective.

I hope I didn’t sound egoistical. I am also eager to help new and old players. I have shown some people how to get 100% completion on some map zones: how to do the difficult skill points and vistas. So if you need help, I can do that on Blacktide (which is a full server at the moment, but the queue should be very short). Doing pve areas together can also be fun.

Deniara

Excellent analysis by Specterryu Quipter! You really put a lot of work into those detailed analyses. I agree with almost everything. I wish the developers of this game would post such detailed analyses in these forums as well. But I don’t remember ever seeing a developer comment anything on the engineer sub forum.

None of the Specterryu’s ideas would make engineer overpowered. It would still be below the damage output of the top tier professions, in fact dps would be lower than any other profession. Warrior is my main profession. Everytime I switch from my engineer to my warrior it feels like somebody turned on the “easy mode”. So much better damage, so much better survivability and much less key presses required to do the same.

Here are my additions:
1. The damage of rifle #1 could be increased
2. Elixir gun is very much fun, but clearly underpowered, thus very few people use it. I would either love to see elixir gun #5 heal more or elixir gun attack #1 cause slightly more damage. Elixir gun skill #2 travels so slowly and quirky that it hits only 10% of the time against moving enemies, making it pretty much completely useless. Make the elixir F travel faster along a straight path.
3. Medkit’s drop antidote doesn’t remove all conditions despite it says so in its description (bugged). Since you need to walk over the antidote I find it underpowered, because you can e.g. be immobilized and then just watch that antidote in front of your character, unable to use it, and enemy team hack you into pieces.

Oh and please fix all those broken traits, such as short fuse (which doesn’t affect grenades, even though it reads so in the description). I think the biggest problem of the engineer profession are its traits. Most of them are seriously underpowered compared to what the other professions have e.g. Adrenal implant.

Hilda thinks logically.

This is a probably an intended design choice by the developers, because if large number of enemies would be immune to some condition, this would even further deteriorate the effectiveness of condition based builds and weapons. Already direct damage rules mighty over the condition damage. Condition damage occurs more slowly over time and has a limit of 25 stacks max.

I know the Risen are undead and probably thus should be immune to bleed and same for golems, who are supposed to be robots. But imagine if the developers would suddenly make them immune to bleed. This would make e.g. warrior’s single hand sword even worse weapon than it currently is. And lead to even more warriors using the great sword, which is already by far the most popular weapon of choice. And maybe some people have heavily invested getting some cool-looking Legendary sword.

Deniara

I don’t know the internal politics or what is happening with Blacktide. Can somebody comment on this forum what has happened and why?

Most of my WvWvW experience comes from past 2 months, playing for Blacktide. We are often outnumbered one to 3-20 against the enemy. And as everybody knows scoring kills is more difficult when you have huge enemy zerg against just few of you. Still I have had a blast of fun. I always kill more enemies than they can kill me. I usually just roam alone, not in any team and of course sometimes I tag alone with some group (it is impossible to avoid zergs). And no, I don’t play thief or any other cheap character in WvWvW. Some people have a sense of honor. And backstabbing shouldn’t reward anybody with badges of honor (nor some silly jumping puzzle).

I am from Finland and I wish more people would fight with the spirit of Finnish-Russo Winter War 1939-1940. Finland was then alone against the mighty Soviet Union, heavily outnumbered and lacking weapons. Despite the impossible odds, Finns were fighting back fiercely. The Soviet Union barely managed to conquer enough land to bury their dead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

This is the spirit we should have at Blacktide!

I must salute the French guilds from Visunah Square, Arborstone, Jade Sea and Augury Rock. You are fun to play against. You know how to use the siege and retreat much better than I could (besides our side lacks the supply to build them). Always tons of siege flying at us. But you are weak in open field and fair fights. I once again today scored over 10 times more kills than I died. Killing enemies with elixir gun is the biggest fun ever (yes, I know that weapon kit sucks, but hey, if I can kill with it… ).

Deniara

Excellent analysis by Mofogie. I agree. Here are my ideas how to fix this:

1. All the professions should have same downed skills e.g. give them all just bandage (which is anycase downed state #4 for all professions). This puts everybody to same line. Now some professions have unfair advantages in downed state e.g. elementalist have vapor form and thieves have shadow escape (teleport) and stealth smoke bomb (stealth). Elementalists could still select mist form as an utility skill, but it has 75 s cooldown
2. There should not be any rally if you kill an NPC or monster in WvWvW.

Both of these fixes are easy to implement technically.

Deniara

I think MrAptronym’s suggestions to bring down the damage of all profession in line with the damage of the engineer class is a very good suggestion. I hope the developers, especially the game designers, are reading his thoughtful post.

Currently the biggest problem in the game balance is the burst damage. Having too much damage, happening way too rapidly with way too few counters (e.g. interrupts, chances of causing the attack to miss) with too long cool downs (once you used your stun break, two dodges, what’s next?). This had lead to the boring static meta, which is dominated by the bunkers and glass cannons.

If the burst damage of all professions could be toned down, I am sure we would see more interesting builds and more variety.

Several people have complained about the lack of hard mode in pve and the dungeons being too easy. After completing alone all the 3 Orr maps with my engineer, I can tell that hard mode is there. Try to do some of the temple group events e.g. Temple of Eternal Radiance alone playing engineer without the help of any other human players. That is the hard mode and will teach other players how to play. ;-)

Deniara

RapidSausage.4620:

in terms of pure enjoyment, engineer.
in terms of actual overall usefulness, ranger.

I couldn’t agree more RapidSausage.
I have 8 different characters, all different professions.

Ranger is much easier to play than engineer, which is perhaps the least powerful and most difficult profession to play. Yes, engineer is versatile and more fun, but it does little damage, unless you make it full glass cannon and even then the dps is supbar to other classes. I really love playing engineer, pity Anet skill balancers don’t share my love.

Both ranger and engineer have their fair share of bugs (pet AI, ranger targeting, broken engineer kits and traits), but I ranger would probably suit you better. I find rangers boring to play, so my ranger is only level 65 at the moment. If you select a sturdy pet e.g. bear, you an easily solo most bosses of the game. Basically your pet tanks next to the boss, soaking up all the damage, giving you 100% damage reduction. Ranger’s weak point is lack of AoE (barrage and some axe skills are only decent ranger aoe), but Anet said they are going to nerf AoE, so it won’t be the problem.

If you had trouble playing thief and staying alive, I think there is something fundamentally wrong in your build and playing that profession. Thief is one of the easiest professions with the best escape skills in the game. You can easily have 2-3 stealth skills at your disposal. So basically you can always decide when you want to end / disengage the fight. For pve you should try shortbow, sword and pistol, instead of dual daggers. Daggers do amazing one target damage. In level 1-30 areas, most enemies drop with 1-2 key presses and even bosses go down very fast, but if you want to solo big mobs alone, the before mentioned weapon choices would be better. Many people in these forums (basically those play thief as their main) tell that the dps of thief is bad. It is true that warrior can more easily dish out more damage in the long run, but the thief dps is not that far if you use the right build (see thief forum for such builds, yes there are better builds for pve than the dual dagger thief). My thief definitely does more dps than my engineer, despite she is lower level.

Deniara

I have 8 characters, all different professions. I have also at least one character of each race. I have tried to select different personal story paths for my 8 different characters. I find several advantages in this approach:

1. Less chance for boredom. The skill system of this game is quite simple and using the same 2-3 weapon combinations with the same character gets boring. With many different characters you get to experience all the 3 different orders (Durmond Priory, Vigil and Whispers) and get to know more about the lore of the game. Some races, especially the Arura, have really great introduction missions (1-30 level missions).
2. Chance to learn how each profession works. This is especially useful in WvWvW or pvp, because you know the weaknesses and strong points, skills of each profession.
3. If you play just one character you often get random drops or map completion rewards, which your character is unable to use. With 8 different professions you can use any item in the game to their max potential.
4. I also have 8 different crafting talents. I can craft items for my other characters. E.g. one of my characters has 400 in cooking and she is able to cook delicious (and highly useful) foods for all my characters.

It is true that the high level pve give better drop than the low level areas, but if you are just into farming you can make decent money also farming some low to middle level areas. A lot of people need the basic materials (copper, iron, wood, vial of blood, venom sacs) for crafting. Anycase I am not into farming and none of my character is rich, so I am not expert on this topic.

Deniara

Pinder.5261:

Deniara Devious.3948:

It is pretty obvious Anet lead designers haven’t played engineer much at all.

Comments like this keep the developers out of the forums more than they bring developers in. The tone of conversation goes both ways. If you (and the community you represent) want developers to make an appearance, then the community needs to behave themselves in a manner that will encourage developers to visit them.

You are right. I apologize the tone of my comment earlier.

But the thing is: It is not the task of the game players to encourage developers to visit the official forums of the game. This is the task of the management of Arenanet and NCSoft.

They should encourage their employers to participate the discussions here by rewarding them. E.g. give $50 reward for each Arenanet employer who posts an intelligent forum message. If one developer does 50 posts per month, he/she would receive $2500 bonus = nice!

Now the lack of communication, keeping players in the dark, not replying the questions even when several players repeatedly ask for that is sure to lead to player frustration and leaving the game.

Maybe there are some “gestapo” rules inside Anet, forbidding the developers comment here? Maybe there is financial trouble and lack of resources, not giving the developers enough time to post even one message per week?

We can only speculate…

Deniara

It is pretty obvious Anet lead designers haven’t played engineer much at all. They are probably themselves playing warrior, guardian and thief as their main and elementalist and mesmer as their alts. At least the game seems to be biased like that. I can be wrong as there is very little communication. No developer has ever commented any of the threads I have originated or participated.

Arenanet should reward its employers for communicating here. Now most people, like you, are yelling at a wall. I feel your frustration.

Deniara

Pity I cannot view this stream, but I really don’t understand the Arenanet “logic”. So AoE is too powerful e.g. level 80 engineer doing 2-3 × 200 dmg with his grenades is “too powerful”. But single target damage e.g. thief doing 7000 dmg with Backstab is okay?!?!
Siege weapons do less dmg than backstab. Ah, but now I get the “logic”, engineer is all about being versatile, so engineers don’t need damage.

And if the “issue” was some persons getting aoed during their downed state, then why don’t you give equally powerful downed states to each profession. E.g. engineer has grappling line (downed skill #2), which pulls one enemy to you during downed state. Duh! Who would want even more enemies dancing around her? And thief has shadow escape (#2) and smoke bomb (#3), basically teleport away from your enemies + stealth, giving handy way to get away from your enemies and some real chances to use bandage.

Developers: Please give us real reasons. This doesn’t make any sense.
And like the other people on this thread commented, this would just lead to even more zergs in WvWvW and probably also even more thieves. And basically ruining the necromancer profession. Sighs. People want versatility, not be forced into one very narrow game-play the Anet developers want.

The real problem are NOT AoE, but:
1. Huge number of bugs.
2. Lack of rewards in many game forms:
e.g. defeating champions you get blue items
WvWvW rewards, except the jumping puzzle, are a joke
3. Burst damage is out of control, leading to people playing either bunker builds or glass cannons. Solution: cap the max dmg per hit or give each profession better tools avoid / mitigate the damage. Some purely protective skills have very long cooldowns (60 s), while attacks can be spammed. This leads to hit & run, zerging etc. Killing is NOT the problem and most weapon skills do not need more dmg. I have never had trouble killing. The problem is the lack of counters or counters have way too long cooldowns.
4. There is no real counter against stealth (Anet tells AoE is the counter to stealth… oh yes… let’s make AoE weaker). I guess Anet wants even more invisible armies popping up with several mesmers syncing mass insibilibity and portal.

My server is often seriously outnumbered by the enemy in WvWvW. There can be just 2-3 people in the entire map zone, while enemy has dozens roaming by. If there is even weaker AoE, how can you score any kills against the enemy? Ah, we have the “super useful” outmanned buff. It gives us more karma.

Deniara

Blacktide has still many good players left and some very high population guilds, like ours which has well over 300 members. We will be back someday. It is just many people are taking a rest from WvWvW and waiting for the February update. I really hope it is good.

Deniara / House of Mirrors [HoM]

I am using Elixir S with my Asura engineer all the time and I can also confirm the bug. The camera bug is annoying, running becomes very jerky and the camera is way too close the ground. It makes really difficult to navigate, but still I rather have elixir S in my build. It is a true life saver, especially in WvWvW.

Ayna Micro

Jonny.9370:

Oh, and Deniara, Backstab doesn’t require a thief to be behind the target, but using it without being behind the target makes it hit just as strong as the final attack in the autoattack chain. In other words, you might as well spam #1 if u dont stand behind your target for the double damage backstab. Also, C&D doesn’t give you invulnerability so I have no idea where you got that from. Those 2 things made me question your credibility.

Thanks for pointing out my typo. I meant to type vulnerability, not invulnerability. Cload and Dagger applies 3 stacks of vulnerability on the target. I think the combination of all these 3 is too much (good damage, stealth + vulnerability). Anycase, I edited my original article.

It is true that backstab hits for less damage from the front. But seems that you don’t need to be directly behind the target. You get full damage from hitting from the sides. Really it makes no sense that one hit from a small dagger does more damage than a hit from a ballista.

If you think I am some thief hater, I am not. I would want the burst damage of this game reduced. Yes, this means also toning down skills from some other classes e.g. hundred blades (if you stun your target, 100 blades is going to hit and hurt really bad).

The cooldown of most defensive skills is too high. *Give us more tools to fight against the burst. *Now it doesn’t help if the stun break skill has 60 second recharge and the player has already used it, another stun comes in. No matter how skilled that player is, stunned + high burst -> dead.

Good fights should last more than few seconds. Now I feel this game is a bit too much hit and run.

Deniara

The fact is: thieves can spam most of those skills almost endlessly or at least while the combat still lasts. Plus have the easiest way to get out of trouble while being essentially invisible.

Any decently designed thief build has ways to make initiative regeneration faster. First which comes to my mind is infiltrator’s signet. Thieves have numerous traits, which either refund initiative or refill it e.g. quick recovery, quick pockets, kleptomaniac, initial strike, infusion of shadow, patience, opportunist and signet use. As a thief player I find it very rare to see my initiative run out.

Since the dual dagger thief build seems to be the most common, I will analyze it’s basic game play a bit:
1. Get close to your target
2. Use dagger skill #5, cloak & dagger, which applies stealth, vulnerability and does nice damage <- too goo to be true, because it only costs 4 initiative when used with the infusion of shadow trait
3. Wait few seconds and enjoy your invisibility if you want
4. Make sure you are close to your target still and use dagger skill #1, BackStab. For some strange reason backstab doesn’t require the thief to be positioned behind the target. You just need to be invisible, making it super easy to use. BS does more damage than any other fast repeatable skill in the game. It does more damage than a ballista hit in WvWvW! How can one tiny dagger hurt more than a ballista?!?
5. Now you can either put yourself in stealth again by repeating steps #1 to #4 or if the target tries to get away from you, you can just spam dagger skill #2, heartseeker, which which speed buff e.g. signet of shadows, pretty much instantly teleports to your target and does massive damage as well. Heartseeker has low 3 initiative cost, making it pretty much spammable.

So basically it is spamming buttons #5, #1, #2, usually in that order or #5, #1, #5, #1… not much skill required. :-)

Suggestions how to fix the thief class:
1. Reduce the damage from backstab and heartseeker. Let them still do significant damage, don’t make them useless. Maybe some of their damage could be slowly affecting bleed instead of instant direct damage. In fact bleed damage would fit the skill names very well
2. Increase the initiative cost of heartseeker to 4 (still pretty much spammable) and make its leap animation twice as slow, now it teleports to its target way too fast and easy.
3. Stealth can remain, but during stealth the movement speed should be halved. Now it makes no sense that thieves can have superb mobility (signet of shadows) and being able to remain in stealth roughly half of the time. Existing traits, like fleet shadow, could be used to counter the reduced speed while in stealth. This change to stealth behavior should apply to ALL character classes, so mesmers, engineers etc. who are using stealth should also get reduced movement speed. Also if being subject to any damage or initiating any attack skill should instantly lead to loss of stealth.

These changes would not break the thief class, but would greatly reduce the annoyance factor and countless of forum threads about thieves being “overpowered”. The reduced movement speed while in stealth wouldn’t have that much impact in pve as most of the time is spent fighting against the mobs or pretty much stationary bosses.

Deniara Devious <- that character is actually a thief, but not my main as I find playing thieves a bit boring

Greatsword is also the most popular weapon of choice for mesmers due its fast long range auto attack and ease of use. I also see a lot of greatsword wielding guardians. Greatsword is pretty much no brainer for Ranger in WvWvW, because it offers the best mobility, decent chance for ranger to get away from trouble (assuming auto targeting turned off). Greatsword and more greatsword…

I find this both extremely boring and yet another example of bad game design. Greatsword wielding tends to look extremely goofy for all professions. I mean who an earth would be spinning around like a mad man in combat with such heavy long sword? Warrior wielding dual sword or sword + shield looks aesthetically much better than greatsword. Of course most players choose the greatsword as it offers two mobility skills: #3 whirlwind attack and #5 rush, while all the other melee weapons offer max 1 mobility skills! Whirlwind attack is cheap, good & effective against mobs. Warrior’s greatsword isn’t great on conditions: basically just vulnerability and cripple, but it does more direct damage than e.g. the dual sword or dual mace combination.

What the game “designers” of this game fail to understand: Direct damage is superior to condition based damage. Thus in order to make the weapons balanced the condition based damage should be clearly better.

Let me explain: There is no limit on stacking direct damage. If 5 players are attacking the same target, e.g. a dungeon boss, their direct damage directly applies to that boss. But for some weird reason there is 25 stack limit per condition. My dual sword warrior, who does crazy amount of bleeding and critical hits, can easily hit that 25 stack bleeding limit alone. It would mean that if any other character in a party would do bleeding damage, some of the damage would be ignored. Also there is a lot of condition removal. Bosses shrug off conditions. In spvp and WvWvW, all good players and teams have usually several ways to remove conditions, often many conditions at same time. Condition damage occurs in time. Slow conditions like bleed are not that effective in spvp or WvWvW, because they tend to be removed well before their full or even half effect.

The fix:
1. Re-evaluate the weapon skills. No need to do any drastic changes e.g. slightly reduce the cooldown/recharge of some of the less popular weapon choice skills.
2. Add some direct damage to weapons, which used to do most of their damage via conditions.

Now everybody would be happy. Greatsword wielding warriors, mesmers and alike could still continue their love with their greatsword, but we would finally see some variety.

But this is off course just wishful thinking, as I know very well that this forum only exists to vent: Arenanet couldn’t get less about its players. I have never seen a designer comment on any thread I have participated or reply to emails or bug reports or suggestions. There is almost no communication towards the players.

Let’s just rename the game into Greatsword Wars 2 or Thief Wars 2, because there is no variety. And none of the Arenanet developers read or comment this forum, except maybe once in a blue moon.

Deniara

Dragoon.9536:

engineer have the most active weapons and skill you know if you equip net turret and use rifle net you can effectively kite and apply about 15 pt and even 25 if you do it right to ur enemy by using the traits and the one that apply 10 pts of vul. so in essence you can pretty much apply a 10-20 % damg increase for your entire team at every sec. tell me that isnt broken

First of all you are now talking about “sitting duck” trait. Most of the professions offer a way to apply invulnerability. This certainly isn’t specific to the engineer profession. E.g. warrior’s greatsword applies vulnerability on auto attack! Plus warrior can select the “rending strikes” trait. Thief pistol skill #2, body shot, applies 5 stacks (!!) of vulnerability at demand from 900 range and thieves can also opt for “sundering strikes” trait. Tell me that they are not broken!

Deniara

Goorman.7916:

Problem:Engineer does deal little damage with his weapons.
Answer: There is no problem, that is his point. If you want to deal damage as an engineer you have to use weapon bundles, if you want to deal damage with your weapons – you have to use warrior lol.
Classes are designed to be different.There is nothing wrong with that.

I have to disagree strongly. Basically all professions are about dealing damage. Since they are no dedicated healers, the main purpose of this game is to deal damage to your enemies. Surely there are some trade-offs when it comes to survivability vs dealing damage, but engineer class definitely isn’t in the top of my list when it comes to “easy mode” survivability, in fact I would rank guardian, warrior, D/D arcana line elementalist, guardian, mesmer (illusions, invisibility, teleport etc) etc. above engineer in that respect. When it comes to support, I would say guardian, elementalist and mesmer are my top choices.

The weapon kits and device kits also deal pathetic damage and many of them are so bugged, making them more or less unusable. E.g. elixir gun attack #1 (tranqualizer dart) does about 300 total base damage with a range of 900 (untraited). And grenade kit attack #1 flies slowly as hell (easy to dodge) with a range of 1200 (untraited) and does 2 × 120 = 240 base damage, assuming both grenades hitting the same target. This is much less compared to what other professions do.

A good game is about versatility: a series of meaningful choices. Now GW2 is narrowed down few over-powered classes and weapon choices, which are mostly braindead easy to play. And that will lead quickly to boredom and people moving to other games.

It appears very much so that Arenanet skill “balancers” have couple of favorite professions, mainly: thief, warrior, guardian (and to a lesser degree): mesmer and elementalist. For some illogical reason engineer has been already nerfed several times, despite it is the rarest character class. I fail to understand the reasoning behind this. If engineer would be overpowered, then surely a lot of more people would jump in the bandwagon and play it.

I play 7 different professions myself and I will soon start my 8th character. I will probably eventually get all my characters to level 80. Switching between lots of different characters seems to be the only way to avoid boredom, as otherwise the game is very repetitive with totally broken skill balance.

Deniara

I disagree. The problem with the engineer rifle is not skill #4 nor #5, but the pathetic damage it does compared to any other character class. The lack of direct damage makes many people dismiss engineer as a viable choice and at least according to my observations engineer is the rarest profession played at high level in WvWvW and level 80 pve areas. I know there are some high dmg engineer rifle builds, mainly the static discharge build, but that build is pretty much single specced pure glass cannon, while other character classes can do better dmg without being so limited just to be that glass cannon.

Both my warrior and engineer are in level 80 with pretty comparable / similar gear (similar amount of points in power). Yet, my warrior does 3-4 times more damage with the rifle. Warrior has better armor, higher hit point pool and warrior’s rifle has 1200 range compared to engineer’s 900 feet max range (engineer needs to invest 10 points, tier 1 trait to get similar range). Warrior rifle seems more reliable (less buggy), able to hit target easier and do I need to mention kill shot.

To fix engineer rifle, one should do the following:
1. Hip shot should either inflict a dmg causing condition e.g. bleeding or do 3 times more damage. Yes, a huge increase, still less than e.g. warrior does with bleeding shot or range does with bow auto attack #1. The base dmg at level 80 (without any mods) should be around 750 per hit (instead of the current 250).
2. Net shot should have faster animation. Now it is way too easy to dodge the net shot, basically it hits only stationary enemies or enemies who run in 100% straight line away from / towards you. Currently net shot also seems bugged. If you don’t hit with it, the engineer is rooted the ground. Fix this annoying bug
3. Blunderbuss has very short range, yet it only does around 1000 total base dmg, which is way too little. Triple the dmg as well, but only for very short range (<400). So blunderbuss wouldn’t do any comparable dmg at higher range, but be effective at short range.
4. Overcharged shot is great. It is just the type of game design I want to see more. It forces the player to think: I am going to be able to knock down the enemy, but also knockdown myself at same time (similar to warrior’s frenzy ability, you have plusses, but also minuses). Keep it as it is!
5. Jump shot is one of the most underrated skills in the game. Don’t change it, except make the animation twice as fast. Now it looks goofy as the engineer floats so long time in mid air, but the ability to cause vulnerability and do sort of short range teleport is great utility for the engineer. Using rifle skill #5 in combat requires skill and this is what this game should be about (unfortunately it isn’t)

Deniara

SPOILER ALERT

There is an alternative route to that vista. I discovered it after failing the jumps just like you did. Basically you 1st jump to the cliffs on the left side of the “finger” shaped rock where the vista is. Then you jump from that cliff onto that rock and the rest is easy. I did it with several characters and if you come to my server, Blacktide, I can show you how to do that vista the easy way.

Deniara

enji.7459:

PVE is a deadzone. After trying out WvW to see what was up with the culling and finding out engineers blow kitten even more now, I decided to jump on an alt and hit up a chain DE in the Harathi Hinterlands that used to be awesome for xp and drops. It ran across a good part of the map too.

Zone is dead as hell, and there is no way that chain of DEs is ever getting finished again unless a guild decides to level up together or something. It couldn’t even be finished without a good 10+ people contributing if I remember right. What a waste.

Engineers blowing out kittens in WvWvW? Oh well, at least in euro tiers #1 and #2, the most common character class seems to be the thief. Last time I looked I had 4 people from my server nearby: ALL of them thieves. And there was lots of enemy teams with 1-2 enemy thieves roaming and looking for single lone targets or small groups. Also groups of guardian + thief, mesmer + thief, elementalist + ranger + guardian + warrior + mesmer etc. Engineer is probably the rarest profession in WvWvW. In fact when I play engineer, I rarely ever seen any other engineers, especially on the other side. I see huge enemy zergs with 20-30 people, but zero engineers there!

Except for that huge Harathi boss who summons 4 winds and does crazy burning damage, I think the dynamic events of that Harathi map can be soloed easily. Yes, even those dynamic events where you need to defend the camp from two sides can be soloed. I did that with my elementalist, also one warrior or engineer was enough to do most Harathi Hinterlands dynamic events without any other human players nearby. Basically the key is: kill fast or cause serious (preferably area) condition damage which will kill the baddies very soon (even if you are already running away), move fast, time your dodges well and dodge like no tomorrow, hit & run (retreat to heal yourself). I can imagine it would be a problem if you play one of the most popular builds e.g. a greatsword warrior. Those GS warriors have great mobility and do huge direct damage, but many of them tend to be a bit of glass cannons, not that efficient for soloing. Greatsword is still overpowered, but I prefer to stay out of OP choices and use something else. Tip: if your character uses blocking, most enemies stop attacking, giving you time to rest (recharge, regenerate etc). Also stealth makes things more easier (guess what character class is master of stealth… the one dominating the WvWvW meta).

Still I very much understand the frustration of most players who are alone in map zones. Arenanet: please merge the low population servers and adjust the spawning rate of monsters to be lower if that pve map zone has fewer people.;

Deniara

I know the problem. While most pve zones can be easily soloed (yes, even the group events done completely alone without any other humans by one mile), I can imagine most players will have trouble soloing the Ruins of Orr: Straights of Devastation, Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore. The sheer number of the enemy and their fast respawn rate makes those three Orr maps very hectic to solo.

I am afraid Arenanet won’t solve this problem anytime soon, even though me and some other people have already suggested two working solutions:
1. Adjust the respawn rate of the monsters according to the number of people active on that map zone. In other words: if there are just few people in that map zone, the respawn rate would be considerably slower, giving this solo player better chances to kill the monsters before they spawn again
2. Merge low population servers together. More people in one server = bigger likelyhood to see other players.

I have 100% completed and soloed all the three Orr maps with two different characters (warrior and engineer). I did just one skill point with a group, everything else was me alone. Yes, doing some of those temple events without any help from other human players was painful, slow and sometimes I failed, but I kept trying. If you are interested I might write a guide how to solo the three Orr maps, which seem to be give the biggest problems for most players. I think it can be done with any character class.

I hope I can help. I play on Blacktide, so if you come to my server I might sometimes give a hand to complete some map zones.

Deniara

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Depends on your definition of good.

If you mean to be in the top tear then it’s all about numbers.

If you mean a server which uses tactics and tries to plan properly, try the middle tier servers.

Having just popped over to a tier 1 server to see how it was like, I found it completely boring! Everything they did was based on having more players than the other servers. And if their zerg didnt take a point the first try, then they just kept filing in until they got it. There was no sense of fun there at all for me!
You can see this from a post by a Sea of Sorrow member a couple days ago trying to recruit more for their server when they are #1. The only way these top tier server can play is not by outfighting their opponents, but outnumbering them.

Exactly. I play myself in euro tier #1. Its all about capping with zergs. The one with the more players wins. Actual player skill and tactics don’t matter much at all. You can see exactly same tactics used day after day. This is not players’ fault: Anet designed WvWvW so that it rewards numbers over tactics & skill.

Visunah Square (VS) and Seafarer’s Rest (SR) are always outnumbering Blacktide on those hours when I play. Sometimes we have just 1-2 green dots in entire map, plus one NPC commander in the base, which is under attack. Once you go outside your home base you encounter dozens of enemies.

But there are some great players in top tier as well. I don’t belong to Red Guard [RG], but I think their WvWvW play is the best I have seen.

Deniara

I agree, I should have written my post in a bit different way and posted it to suggestions. I will do that later.

If somebody complains about thieves, few things seem to happen and one of them is a lot of posts which are basically just useless flaming back, in the style of “learn to play”, “you cannot play well enough, learn how classes work”. And sadly nobody proposed any working solutions besides me. Sighs.

Yes, I have beaten thieves in 1-vs-1 both in spvp and WvWvW. But but: *the point was: many people really really hate that invisible opponents can down them in couple of seconds. And yes, some people quit playing the game because of it. * This topic pops in most interesting surroundings. One starts to talk about GW2 in gym, pub, messenger chat. Yes, many people complain about the problem. Clearly it is an issue.

By the way my character can kittener food for my main character and alts. YET I think food upgrades etc. do NOT belong in WvWvW. In fact if I would have designed WvWvW it would be more like spvp when it comes to equipment, skill + trait allocation. Yes, even level 1 characters could then have level 80 gear + traits + skills if they enter WvWvW. Make the game so that skill is rewarded, not numbers and grinding. Now WvWvW is a big number game. The more resources you pour in (siege etc), the more active players you have, the better your server ranking is.

The world with the highest amount of active players at all times of the day wins. This is very obvious in Tier #1, where my guild is. Visunah Square and Seafarer’s Rest currently greatly outnumber Blacktide and thus lead in points. It doesn’t make me angry. I just stated this as a fact. I cannot speak about what is the situation in other tiers, because I don’t server hop.

Suggested solution:
The points awarded in WvWvW should be reversely proportional to the proportion of the active players that world has in its tier at the moment.

So e.g. let’s say world A has 100 active players, B has 200 and C has 300 players at certain time. That is 600 players in total.
A completes a goal worth 100 goal points. They get 100/(100/600) = 600 actual points
B completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(200/600) = 600 actual points
C completes a goal worth 200 goal points. They get 200/(300/600) = 400 actual points

So B will need twice as many goal points to get as many actual points compared to A, as they have twice as many players. C got less points because it has huge amount of players (50% of entire player base of that tier)

This elegant simple solution would also solve partially the night capping problem. If almost the people on world A and B would be sleeping and only C would be online and doing the night capping, C would get very little points from it compared to those few not-sleeping guys on servers A and B could get tons of points by just doing simple and easy goals.

I feel that 1-vs-1 fights should last more than just couple of seconds. Too much burst damage means that the person with the fast net, fast computer and and computer has an unfair advantage. If any character class, be it mesmer or guardian or whatever, can inflict 7000+ dmg/hit, that is a big big problem and should be fixed for spvp and WvWvW. I know that mesmers can right now dish out tons of dmg shattering their illusions, but at least one can usually see the mesmer approaching.

Please stop flaming. Think about how to solve the problems.

And I really hope Arenanet would comment / communicate!

Kolly.9872:

so you wrote 2 posts for just telling us that people are quitting the game cos of thieves?

My original idea was to write just one long post, but these forums don’t allow over 5000 characters per message. I had to split my message into three. The last two are NOT about thieves and in fact the 1st one is not just about thieves. That is why I put the character class thief into quotes: “thief” problem. The problem of too fast spike damage affects all character classes, combined with culling issues + lag especially in some WvWvW servers it is serious. Did you actually read my posts?

I was wishing for constructive criticism and ideas how to fix the problems, because the GW2 player base is bleeding.

Deniara

3. The end content is mostly repetitive and boring. There is just one level 80 dungeon which people like to play: the Fractals. While the beginning content of Guild Wars 2 in mostly superb and the game offers 5 different rich, beautiful cities and beginning areas to give it a lot of replay value, the game’s personal story begins to drag after levels 48 and it is pretty much the same for all characters. Instead of letting the player to be the hero, the lime light is stolen by a character called Trahearne. There is a separate thread about people’s complaints about Trahearne, so I won’t refer it further.

Basically length wise the latter half of the pve story is about the Risen. This may come as a big surprise to those players who thought they had bought a fantasy game and then find out “oh, I am fighting endless zombie hordes” (zombies = Risen).

The Orr maps are full of Risen, which respawn way too fast. I have 100% completion on all Orr maps for two characters. I did solo everything except for 2 specific skill points, but I understand many players will have significant trouble completing those maps without the help of other humans. It is very difficult to get into groups there. Basically you try to invite others and nobody joins your party. Or if you are trying to solo a group event to gain access to a contested skill point, some other human players appear. They just rush to commune with the place of power and leave immediately afterwards, leaving me to kill all the enemies alone. Oh, so fun and fair. :-)

Often major part of map teleport locations are contested, meaning you cannot even teleport there. Fighting the same and same Risen again and again, plus kiting away from endless hordes (without killing them) gets tedius. When the game is repetitive, it starts to feel too much like a dull work. People want to fun and variety when they play games.

Solution: reduce the respawn rate of Risen, making the Orr maps easier for solo players. On many low population servers I can imagine how painful it must be do Cathedral of Eternal Radiance alone.

Rewrite the end part of the personal story (levels 70-80). Make it progress faster, eliminate half of the redundant dialogue. Give players much better rewards after finishing Victory or Death. I can help you there. In fact I already made another post on this topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/My-version-of-Victory-or-Death-and-marriage/first#post1082123

Suggestion: After gaining 100% completion on a certain zone of the map, you could teleport there with half of the price and teleport also to the contested areas. This would not affect game economy and would encourage players to get 100% completion of map zones.

(continues from above)

2. Failure to communicate with the customers. Communication is a two pay process. My online friend’s GW2 account was hacked. They asked her guild friends gold to get her account back. She wrote me that Anet support department is very very bad. " I can say I don’t have a good time talking to them. :’P"

These forums are full of people’s complaints, but also sometimes very wise constructive criticism and ideas to improve the game. I very rarely see Anet employers reply to even the most popular and long threads. Why can’t you hire a person who really reads the forum messages and replies to them?

Also the replies should be free of arrogance. I know you made two very popular MMORPGs, but you will remain popular only as long as your customer base is happy. Keeping the customer happy is priority number one. If hundreds of people complain about some issues and there is no reply from Anet employers, this is basically same as saying to your customers: “we don’t care about you… keep moaning”. You should be sympathetic about your customers. Have some die hard GW2 players among your staff, whose paid job is communicate back towards the customers. “I feel your pain. I am now talking with the lead designers about ways how to fix… soon”.

Make the users feel that you really care and do stuff to address their issues, which take the fun out of the game!

This is a public letter mostly aimed for Arenanet developers. I wish both Anet and the players would comment. Please try to avoid flame wars, stick to constructive comments or just support some other person’s ideas.

I teach game design and programming at university. I am also fairly active in IGDA. I know a lot of people who play or played Guild Wars 2. Here is my summary why some of the stopped playing GW2 and went back to play other MMORPGs like WoW and SWTOR. Instead of just complaining I am actually proposing working solutions to each problem:
1. By far the most common complaint I have heard among my GW2 friends and students has been the “thief” problem. Most people do not like that enemy player, who is stealthed / invisible most of the time can kill them in just few blows. This is in fact a symptom of a larger problem, not just specific to one character class (see my solution below). People like fair fights, which last a reasonable amount of time: not too slow (many minutes to kill), not too fast (few seconds to kill). People like to see the enemy instead of fighting against invisible opponents. I know thieves can be countered, but it doesn’t make any sense to everybody in the game to prepare themselves and assign their stats and skills just to counter this problem. This is a not a kitten contest about whether you can beat thief using particular combination or not. Nor is the problem solved by giving advice like “learn to play better before complaining”. The fact is and remains: people are quitting Guild Wars 2, because of the “thief” problem.

Suggested solution: Thief traits and skills, which give invisibility should be reduced in duration and/or get a cooldown. They should be in line with Mesmer skills and traits. Mesmer is another character class, which commonly uses stealth. Let’s look at the Mesmer skills first: The prestige, Decoy, Veil and Mass Invisibility grant stealth. The last one of them is an elite skill. Their recharge times are: 30 s, 40 s, 90 s and 90 s. So Mesmer can remain stealthed less than 27% of total time, while spending big part of the skill bar to obtain those skills. Thief, on the other hand, hugely benefits from traits like hidden thief and meld into shadows, which add together 3 s to duration of stealth. Weapon skills like Cloak and Dagger don’t have any cool down, instead rely on a class-specific initiative mechanism. Initiative regenerates 1 point per 1.33 seconds. So even without using traits like quick pockets or quick recovery, kleptomaniac or hastened replenishment, you can trigger Cloak and Dagger every 8 seconds. Skills like Heartseeker have too low initiative count, making them spammable. Change the initiative count to 6 to put it more in line with warrior’s sword skill #2 (Savage leap), which does less damage than Heartseeker, yet has 8 s recharge.

Another big problem is the amount of damage per one hit. Skills like backstab can do over 7000 points of damage per hit against a medium armor opponent. That means that a 80 level character will die with just 3-4 hits. Combine this with skills like haste (quickness) and we have a huge problem. I am sure I am not the only person who is playing GW2 with less than optimal net connection. Sometimes the delay to get commands through (I am not talking about me being stunned or interrupted) is 1-2 seconds. If my dodge roll or skill activation activates 2 seconds later after I pressed the key, it won’t help anymore as my character is already dead or close to death.

Suggested solution: This would affect all character classes fairly and would not affect pve at all. Disable the use of foods and sharpening stones, potions etc. in WvWvW and pvp. Now top players can use both a superior sharpening stone and foods like plate of truffle steak/fire flank steak combined to provide a hefty bonus to power and precision or similar (for condition damage). This puts everybody to fight more on common ground. Victory based on skill, not who has the best buffs and equipment.
Put a cap to amount of damage per one hit and/or critical hit chance in pvp / WvWvW. E.g. limit the max damage per one hit/skill to about 1/5th total health of the character or around 3000-4000 points. Falling damage would be handled normally. Currently hidden killer gives 100% critical chance while under stealth, 50-60% sounds more reasonable.

The “thief” problem needs to be addressed fast. More and more people are going to quit GW2 and they will not wait until the February update.

Advice to Anet: Please do NOT fix this problem by introducing new complicated mechanisms or timers. Keep the system simple. Fix the cause, not band-aid it.

Thank you for listening! And sorry if my English wasn’t perfect. English is not my native language.

Deniara

Added stuff missing from above post: The Ruins of Orr maps are problematic especially on low player base areas, because most map locations can be contested and there is no easy way to solo the group events (especially events like Cathedral of Eternal Radiance are very difficult, if not impossible, to solo. This problem exits on high load servers as well, because some players have a real life, work, family and kids are forced to play on such hours when other players are either sleeping or doing other things.

Simple fix: reduce the amount of spawning Risen based on the number of players active on that map. If the map is almost empty of players the risen should respawn very slowly. The group events should scale better to suit solo players. And solo players should get much better rewards after completing level 70-80 group events alone.

Warning: This contains possible spoilers about the end game content

The final mission, Victory or Death, is way too long, lasting about 4 hours. Make it at least 2 hours shorter. And give players a good reward after completing it e.g. an exotic level 80 item which is usable by that character. You can make that item soul bound and make it once per character reward, so it won’t affect the game economy. Now it is very difficult to find a player group who would want to do Victory or Death, because the rewards are so low and almost nobody wants to do it again.

Better yet, make Trahearne do Vizier Khilbron at the end. In other words turn evil.
I personally believe that Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Russian Folktale is the best guide tool to make epic stories. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

At the end the hero (= player) should be rewarded with either spouse, riches or power, or any combination of any of those three. Yes, get married and get a powerful item + gold or a small castle, building house of his/her own. In Propp’s story model there is a character called False Hero. Trahearne would fit this role perfectly. Trying to steal the credit from the hero.

Here is my reworked version of Victory and Death:

Beginning as it is. But then after defeating the Mouth of Zhaitan, Trahearne suddenly casts a powerful spell, which renders everybody else, but the player hero, helpless.

Trahearne: “Why didn’t the spell work on you? Why are you not helpless like all the others? Is it some strange magic which got imbued to you during our journeys or was it the dream?”
Player: “What are you talking about? What is happening to others?”
Trahearne: “I am sorry, but this is the best way. The dragon would have won at the end anyway…”

Now Zhaitan reveals himself from the shadows.

Trahearne: “Zhaitan promised that I would be the next king of Orr”
Player: “You are insane. Orr is the land of the dead. I should have seen it coming. You were summoning undead. Nobody knew more about Orr than you. How long have you been working with Zhaitan?”

Trahearne: “It doesn’t matter now. All I need to do is kill you to get my final reward”.
(yes, the dialogue should be kept that short and simple).

Then follows an epic duel between Trahearne and player. If the player wins, he gets a chance to possess Caladbolg, Trahearne’s magical sword. The sword is strongly corrupted. The more player uses its powers the more his corruption meter rises. When the corruption reaches 100%, he will be one with Zhaitan. The player can always opt not to use Caladbolg at all and use his/her normal weapons.

A final match between Zhaitan and the player. The final battle location is designed so that the player can use his wits to avoid the dragon’s deadly breath by going behind pillars or running back into temporary safety into so small (dead-end) tunnels where Zhaitan cannot reach him. Zhaitan will summon undead veterans to kill the player if he is hiding too long time. After Zhaitan is defeated all the Risen perish and the player can loot the Dragon. And of course dragons have a huge treasure hoard. Player is given a token of matrimony (one time use, account bound), 2 gold coins and an exotic level 80 weapon of player’s choice.

The token of matrimony can be used once to marry another character if that other character also agrees that. The marriage status is displayed when other players view that character.

Thank you for listening. You are free to use my idea.

Deniara

Spoiler warning! This post contains a lot of possible spoilers about the end game content.

This is a lengthy public letter mostly aimed for Arenanet developers, including my suggestions how to fix these problems. I wish both Anet and the players would comment. Please try to avoid flame wars, stick to constructive comments or just support some other person’s ideas

I don’t have any statistics on this topic, but I can pretty safely guess that majority of players who have bought GW2 will never ever finish personal story. In fact my hunch and guess is that most of them get bored of the game before level 50. Arenanet can debuff or verify my claims.

The beginning of the game is great, especially the Asura’s Explosive Intellect and Sylvari’s Fighting the Nightmare. Epic stuff at level 1-2! In fact the Guild Wars 2 beginning is so great that I have used it as an example in one of my game design lessons how to make it right. Many other MMORPGs do it wrong by sending the player to deliver messages or items from location A to B and squish low level monsters like rats, skeletons or spiders (= boring). Congratulations Anet!

BUT the 48-80 level content of the game feels totally different and like it has been designed by people with completely different mindset. Most of the missions involve fighting against the undead, aka Risen. While the first few encounters, like the Claw Island are a climax and the “dream” (Light in the Darkness) are memorable and worth replaying, most of these missions are boring, dull, repetitive and overly long. Fighting against an almost neverending Risen horde, feels a bit like the dreadful “Library” level in Halo 1 and that is not a compliment.

The game’s real hero is a Sylvari called Trahearne. The player character is just a side kick, doing all the dirty work, while Trahearne gets the cool sword Caladbolg and the player is left with crappy green and blue items. Trahearne is wooden, his voice acting is dry, his dialogue is overly long and boring. He doesn’t feel like a real leader and many things he does are without good explanation e.g. why he fights against the undead, yet can summon them. And why does he know so much about Orr, more than any others? There is a separate thread about people’s complaints about Trahearne, so I won’t refer it further.

Many of the end game missions (levels 70-80) are bugged. Events which were supposed to trigger, don’t trigger. Or then there are collisions bugs, especially underwater, which can prevent player progression especially underwater. Any skill which causes knockback lead to the hero’s NPC ally or the boss monster ending up inside the stone. In my case when me and Apatia were approaching the Krait cave the boss monster always spawned inside the cave’s ceiling even though I didn’t use any weapon skill to cause knockback. I had to restart the mission 3 times to finally get the boss appear in the cave.

It seems the developers tried to make the game a bit too big compared to available resources. The end game content doesn’t need that much variety and length, as so few players reach there, compared to the fact that it should be bug free and high quality.
Many players struggle to travel in the 3 Orr maps: Straits of Devastation , Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore. Most of the map teleport locations are contested way too often.

The end mission is overly long and almost nobody wants to replay it. I made another topic of it as this forum doesn’t allow more than 5000 characters in a message (sighs).

Solutions:

Remove 1/2 or 2/3 of the personal story on levels 70-80. Now there seems to be at least one personal story mission per level. A better progression speed would be 1 personal story mission/2 levels. Most of the end content missions are not memorable nor fun. They are just tedious, not that difficult, but overly long. The end of the game should feel like an epic battle, not just a long “click click… one more enemy down” marathon. The end game has some “jewels”, which should be kept there e.g. Temple of the Forgotten God (I think the only big problem of this mission is players getting lost in the temple, thus maybe remove the 2nd orb thing, 2 orbs, not three, should be enough). Some others like Close the Eye are just dull. You could combine it with

Temple of Forgotten God so the eye gets defeated already there. Remember, often less is more. The longer the game is doesn’t equal how good it is.

Thank you for listening! Sorry if my English wasn’t perfect. English is not my native language.

Deniara