Guild Wars 2

Orikx.9671:

Yes staff has great support capability and in some situations is better for support. I didn’t say it didn’t.
Doesn’t change the fact that D/D also has great utility and in some situations is better.
You said D/D is not support and is only burst DPS. This is just plain wrong and your posts prove you know little about D/D.
Furthermore your in your reasons for D/D not being good for support you blaim use an aura that can’t stun a champ often enough while then mention staff being superior because it has 3ccs on Air. One of which is the very cc you claim makes d/d bad….
Also, this game has a very big PvP element. Just because you don’t play it doesn’t mean all abilities should be based around dungeons.

My point was I want the trait to affect auras granted from combos and the aura on res trait, which it doesn’t currently.

a good portion of that d/d support is independent of D/D weapon skills. D/D weapon skills for support do have the 3 control skills, yes, but staff has 3 control skills on air attunement alone, 2 on earth attunement, and 1 on water attunement, regardless of traits, those control skills are there. Dagger/Dagger has only 2 combo fields, ring of fire, and burning speed, on 15s cooldowns. Staff absolutely trumps it for stacking might if you have a guardian or thief with you. 2 fire fields, 1 on a 6 second cooldown, a hammer guardian or shortbow thief will stack you to 25 easy. Then we move to water with 2 water fields and 1 ice field, which by the way, completely trumps all over dagger/dagger’s healing, which based on dagger/dagger skills alone, has 1 solitary heal. Staff has attunement heal, and evasive arcana heal that you count as part of dagger/dagger, while also having a heal over time geyser and long lasting regen with a huge aoe, both are water fields that can be blasted (healing rain can even be blasted by the elementalist themselves even with eruption) for more burst healing as well as whirled through for healing and lept through for a single target heal, and regen for ranged attackers outside of it’s aoe. Air staff has the only lightning field in the game, allowing ranged attackers and whirl combos to stack up a ton of vulnerability. Earth has a spammable blast finisher (though finishing the elementalist’s own fields with it is dicey unless you’re intending to switch and lay down the field after laying down eruption). I mean, that’s 6 combo fields. As well as 2 projectile finishers and 1 blast finisher on a 6s cooldown. Dagger/Dagger has 2 blast finishers on longish cooldowns, and a leap finisher.

The one aura on staff, is a bigger deal than both auras on daggers in PVE against champions that can only be stunned once every 5+ attempts. Blocking projectiles is huge, especially when some can one shot some party members, reflecting them is even better.

I guess what I want out of powerful auras is for it to affect combo field granted auras and ressing granted auras. It would make the trait that granted auras on revive worth slotting.

Orikx.9671:

The people I run with in WvW would disagree with you OP. The boons I provide are huge and increase my guard friends DPS a lot.

Dagger/Dagger isn’t a support weaponset though, you have less fields and boons, powerful auras is pretty much the only support a dagger/dagger ele can give. Speccing deep in water as dagger/dagger seems a bit backwards as dagger/dagger is a burst dps set.

We currently have lightning fields, with finishers to apply to them, however only 1 skill in the entire game can create a lightning field (static field).

I was thinking maybe changing “Lightning Field” to “Charged Field” in order to accomodate other potential skills that might create a field that could be used with it.

Charged Field could be created by Static Field, Swirling Winds, Lightning Cage, and I would suggest changing Symbol of Swiftness to a Charged Field (there’s tons of light fields)

another field I feel missing is an “earth” field.

Field creation could be done by Unsteady Ground, Churning Earth, Quicksand (Stone Spirit skill), Muddy Terrain

Projectile Effect: Weakness
Whirl Effect: Enfeebling Bolts (weakness)
Leap Effect: Protection
Blast Effect: Area Protection

emikochan.8504:

Powerful auras is amazing, look at the synergy.

Also D/D is 30 water very often. Staff has 2 auras and you can always use arcane wave

staff has only 1 aura. Problem is, the aura I’d most want to share, IS the one on staff, however, then you have a major trait, a 30 point one at that, for 1 skill. I suppose the fire shield for 3s on using a signet but that one doesn’t seem worthwhile.

If the trait worked with the aura on res, or auras on combo, it’d be amazing, but it doesn’t.

I guess cleansing water for staff, instead of cleansing wave (attuning to water when arcane specced applies regen, so it’d be redundant to have both)

Intigo.1653:

MarzAttakz.9608:

Personally switched out signet of restoration for Ether Renewal and dropped my cleric’s rings and amulet for knight’s rings and berserker amulet so I have more punch, while I do miss the massive amount of passive healing I think is a step in the right direction requiring more attention and finesse to use correctly.

See, this guy is smart~

Many people gear way too defensively and use Signet.

I’m thinking soldiers myself, what kills eles and thieves is not sustained damage, which you can heal through, but sudden burst damage, which if you miss a dodge or something, you’re downed almost instantly, while higher hp pool classes can survive it and then heal.

This seems like a really odd trait to me. It’s deep in water, so you’d think group support, staff… however staff can only grant one aura, and the radius of granting the aura is awfully small.

I remember when ether renewal rooted you and had a longer cooldown. It was terrible. I only picked ele back up recently and it has been changed. Didn’t know it’d be the recommended heal over Glyph.

I still personally like glyph because the boons can be good, as long as you’re not in fire. I’ve used it to kite in air, and I’ve used it in earth to brace for a hit that might otherwise have killed me when I was out of endurance and burning retreat and mist form were on cd (desperate, but it has worked)

I’m up in the air about signet, I’ve not used it since beta.

it’s better to use soldier’s gear (power/vitality/toughness), perhaps carrion’s jewelry (condition damage, power, vitality), monk’s or other group supporting rune set (most of the healing power runes have party bonuses, also centaur’s for group wide swiftness). and having between 20-30 points in water. healing power doesn’t scale very well, but having 300-400 isn’t bad.

You mainly do your support via laying down combo fields, conjured weapons, and doing some moderate aoe damage and a little bit of healing mostly through applying regen regularly with some condition removal.

if you’re staying in water attunement waiting on recharge, you’re doing it wrong.

Electro.4173:

Having a couple non-AoE options (water auto attack is non-AoE as well, except for healing being applied around the target) is a good thing, IMO. Sometimes I don’t want to AoE.

Well I’m counting water blast’s healing aoe as the aoe in general.

I can understand in open world content while soloing, a desire not to aoe to not aggro nearby yellow mobs (chain lightning is a real problem causer there), it just seems to me that the point of staff is a group support, aoe weapon.

Alilinke.7690:

Eruption should explode faster so we can actually put the blast finisher down after laying down a combo field.

not sure what that has to do with either of these skills but that’d be nice, but I think it’s intended that you won’t blast finish your own fields.

I feel earth attunement in staff is lacking something the other autoattacks with staff has, aoe. I love the attack pattern of shockwave and was thinking maybe the attacks could be switched around.

Keep weakness on the autoattack and only affect the primary target with the weakness.. but just the aoe would be nice.

Stoning would instead be a small radius aoe damage + knockdown (to replace the immobilize from shockwave).

Crazy thoughts or no?

This music used to play when you viewed the vistas in Lion’s Arch, but didn’t always play. It’s beautiful, but it sounds very sad. Why such sad music 24/7 in LA anet? Lion’s Arch is supposed to be a lively, bustling town, and the music here makes it feel like it was freshly destroyed, not freshly rebuilt.

angryteen.2710:

Thanks Raine, i agree with you. Thats why my necro and ele and rather beefy, and both do very well in dungeons.

But just thinking of try something different this time, living on the edge lolol.

If full zerk gear doesnt work out im most probably going P/V/T gear and zerk trinkets. Or P/V/P gear and P/P/T trinkets

P/V/P gear doesn’t exist in pve.

Basically sword/pistol works great on trash, but is pretty useless on bosses. You’re just too squishy.

Not having P/V/P gear really hurts sword/pistol in dungeons. a 10-14k health pool just isn’t enough. But if you take any vitality gear, you have extremely low crit.

WvW isn’t designed to be balanced between classes anyway. Individual class balance is moot if you have a lot of people. Numbers and group tactics matter more than what classes you have.

wertyuio.8630:

while there IS power/prec/toughness, maybe anet thought it was too OP to add a power/prec/vit. i can understand why. someone did the math, and apparently, 1 point of toughness works out to .47 points of vitality in terms of effective health.

Not even close.

if you have a ridiculously high health pool maybe, but if your health pool is low (Thief/Ele/Guardian) vitality is much much much more valuable.

Toughness is about reducing sustained damage over time and making your healing more effective. Vitality is about being able to absorb more burst damage in a short period of time.

Modryn.7806:

While I agree, this missing stat option is a problem for certain classes, I think I can see why it does not exist. Imagine a Dagger/Dagger Thief with a larger health pool…I would hate to see that happen. There is a serious balance issue with this, but some sort of attention should be given to certain classes like glass cannon Elementalists. You don’t see them out there for a reason, their health pool would be somewhere around 14k. That amount of health can be taken away in under 2 seconds by some classes, I would know, my first 80 was an Ele spec’d as a glass cannon. I now play a Mesmer, who can achieve the same amount of dps, but with the benefit of higher health, illusions for distracting, AND the ability to stealth.

This is a PVE suggestion, Power/Precision/Vitality is already out there for PVP. You already fight backstab thieves with 20k health, they usually use Valkyrie’s (Power/Vitality/Crit Damage) while using a trait that gives them 100% crit chance out of stealth.. They only have about 25-30% crit otherwise.

It’s in dungeons that thieves and direct damage eles basically are left with might as well go glass cannon and just hope you never get a situation where you’re out of endurance/utility skill cooldowns and still getting shot at.

For professions with low base hp pools, vitality is much more needed than toughness (that is currently on the PVE Knight stat balance). Toughness pays off better when you have 18K+ health pool to work with, but at 10K base health, that toughness does very little in the situations the squishies suffer in most: burst damage.

Currently the only way to remedy that is to either build a condition oriented build using Carrion’s, completely ignoring crit and all the benefits of crits (procs, higher burst damage), or Valkyrie’s which always seemed like a silly stat combo to me, having crit damage but no crit chance on it (only really beneficial for dagger dagger thieves specced to get 100% crit out of stealth), or Power/Vitality/Toughness, which again, completely negates crit chance.

For Direct Damage Thieves that are not Dagger/Dagger (Dagger/Pistol, Sword/Pistol, Sword/Dagger, Shortbow, and Pistol/Pistol), a Vitality, Power, Precision (Vitality could be main stat like the spvp amulet, or it could be a minor stat, either way) would be more beneficial than the current options. This stat balance would also be beneficial to direct damage elementalists or some off builds of guardians, who have low base HP, I could also see rangers using it.

Some possibilities of names:

Cavalier’s
Gladiator’s
Brute’s

This is for PVE btw, this stat balance is already available in spvp.

I’m kind of up in the air as to whether I should be suggesting this stat mix or if it would be a waste. Currently if you need crit chance/power and some survivability, your option is Power/Precision/Toughness. I know Toughness increases your sustain and healing, however being geared in such a set leaves you at 10k-14k health which just means if you miss a dodge, or run out of endurance, many things in dungeons will outright one shot you or kill you before you have a chance to heal.

Power/Vitality/Toughness is a no go unless you’re dagger/dagger as only dagger/dagger can really make the best use of the 100% crit chance from stealth trait. Every other weapon combo can’t stealth often enough, or doesn’t have a big hit out of stealth to capitalize off the one time you can crit a significant amount of the time.

Wearing full knights/emerald gear takes you from 1980 armor to 2706, an increase of 27% damage reduction. Basically in a scenario of a missed dodge or you run out of endurance and can’t dodge, and get smacked by a hit that would normally do 20,000 damage on base armor… with Knight’s/Emerald gear it’d do 14,634 damage, and with a thief’s base health pool + 20 points in acrobatics + 1650 hp from runes, for a whopping 14, 455 hp, you still get one shot.

If instead of 726 extra toughness you had 726 extra vitality, you’d have 21,715 health, and you’d survive that 20k hit with base armor.

There’s a point when toughness overtakes vitality for even mitigating burst damage, when it comes to effective HP, but it’s certainly not at 10-14K.

So am I crazy or is this a set that we could find use for if you’re a pistol, sword, or shortbow oriented direct damage thief?

Saxon.1908:

I agree the Clocktower was MUCH harder and therefore more fullfilling when I did complete it. But my mate is not so good at Jump puzzles and struggled with the Wintersday one.

Someone above suggested 3 tiers of difficulty. I think this is a great idea, it gives everyone to have that same feeling of satisfaction. Seems easy enough to do. For example the Easy version of this puzzle might have been to get to the exploding Toy box’s- while the mid one stays as it is now and a hard one either adds more jumps after that OR ramps the existing one up a bit more with higher damage and/or other elements like wind or moving platforms.

I didn’t feel fulfilled when I completed the clock tower, only relieved that I’d never have to do it again.

There’s a sweet spot in challenge for people, if it’s too easy, it’s not satisfying, if it’s too hard, it’s frustrating and not rewarding when you complete it, only relieving that it’s all over.. the spot between is it’s challenging but in a way that is rewarding and not frustrating.

Personally, I think the clock tower was too much, and a lot of it being artificial reasons. I actually think had this been a solo instance, the clock tower would have hit the sweet spot, I started having fun once the first 1/4 of the tower was done and most of the other people had thinned out and the challenge was 100% derived from the jumps and timer alone. I could see myself improving steadily each attempt when I got past that first 1/4.. however that first 1/4 I’d fall 9/10 times and not make any progress. It’s not consistent improvement because the people around you obscuring your view aren’t consistent. Same here to some smaller extent. The hardest part is the snowflakes part where you have multiple people going at once. You get in the line with all the max size norn and Charr and you’re screwed.

This puzzle I felt was a bit closer to the sweet spot overall, and if there hadn’t been other people obscurring the view I would have thought it could have been a little more challenging in design.

an idea, since this one is split into 3 paths, have an easy, medium, and hard difficulty path. You can reward more ugly sweaters or whatever token is being collected for the event from the harder difficulties, but don’t make completing the hard difficulties necessary for the achievement for the titles.

Thankfully the REAL sources of artificial difficulty from the last puzzle were mostly mitigated this time (lack of visibility due to everyone going at once, and a few blocks which would futz up your camera).

there were no funky blocks that zoomed in your camera, and splitting up people into different groups did help.

I would still recommend making other players on your screen translucent. Visibility issues are an artificial difficulty source. The difficulty should come entirely from the jumps themselves, and the timer. Number one source of falls in this puzzle are all at the beginning when people are obscured by other players

I liked the end with the mortars and rolling snowballs, while still being timed you had something you weren’t expecting, and by that point there’s only 1 maybe 2 people still doing the puzzle so the challenge is entirely derived from the puzzle itself.

I’d say really this was the “easy” maybe somewhere between easy and medium course..

for a hard course, have the candycane platforms move in and out of the columns they’re on, and have snowflakes not be stationary platforms till they disappear but rather falling platforms, the snowflakes continually fall but you have to be jumping on moving platforms while standing on a moving platform, add gusts of wind to the peppermint wheels

Anthony Ordon confirmed you will only be able to craft 2 toys for free, the rest must be purchased. But hey, it’s minis, it’s extras, it’s cosmetics.. so that’s how the money model works.

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

You need to look into those offhand skills. Yes, they have a lot of utility, but the fact that they have such low damage results in any pistol playstyle revolving around spamming the 1 skill that actually does damage. Whether it’s pistol whip, heart seeker, or unload.

a Dagger Dagger setup has good damage spread across it’s skills so there are multiple skills that can be used for damage and people chain together multiple skills rather than spamming (post HS nerf anyway)

Here’s my feedback.

I play sword/pistol and shortbow primarily. I play almost exclusively in PVE, with a little bit of WvW on the side

In the past, the playstyle involved using infiltrator’s strike to position yourself, pistol whip vs a single target that could be stunned or multiple easy to kill targets, and autoattacking while in black powder against veterans, targets that have knockdowns that could interrupt pistol whip, enemies that can’t be stunned, etc. Pistol whip resulted in faster kill times, black powder and autoattacking resulted in higher survivability. Head shot was only used in niche situations such as needing to interrupt an enemy out of melee range.

Since Pistol Whip had its damage reduced. I, and other thieves, have done testing and found that autoattacking results in more damage per second while in PVE. The result is pistol whip no longer finds very much use, only against targets that cannot be blinded, as autoattacking while using black powder results in higher dps AND more survivability at the same time. This is just not an engaging playstyle to rely so heavily on autoattacking. Many people I know who have thieves as alts agree that sword/pistol is very effective, and yet not very fun to play because it’s so heavily based on autoattack. The damage reduction to Dancing Dagger resulted in a similar very passive boring playstyle for Sword/Dagger, relying heavily on autoattack.

Since we have started splitting skills for PVP/PVE balance, could the PVE version of Pistol Whip get its damage back so that the combination is more active and fun to play again?

Another suggestion I have is increasing the damage of head shot. I know it’s primarily an interrupt but the offhand dagger skills do much more damage than offhand pistol skills and therefore have much more utility, where offhand pistol skills have only niche uses. At least consider raising headshot’s damage in PVE.

I still have the soggy bag and the 2 maps.

aren’t the karka still present on the island? I mean it’d be amazing if this event actually did get rid of them and for once an event had real impact on the world.

Only problem with the Haka is it’s a dance that only looks good if you do it in a group.

sorrow.2364:

Devildoc.6721:

sorrow.2364:

Devildoc.6721:

Not yet, but backstab nerf is in the works, the C&D nerf was just the first step. the nerfs are coming. I actually called the DD, Cluster Bomb, and C&D nerfs.. and I’m actually sad that I was right.

Have you got any proof in support of what you are saying or is that your apocalyptic view of ArenaNet plans?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Backstab-time-to-nerf/first

Look for the red post.

It was pre 15th November patch, so the nerf bat has already spoken on CnD.
Still waiting for proofs.

Do you seriously think patches with changes get pushed out that fast? They don’t put in a change in a week after they say they’re going to, it takes a few weeks, the November changes had been in works for a month or more.

Backstab is still on the agenda, they’re still looking at it.

Marduh.4603:

Devildoc.6721:

then why am I getting hit after stunning the mob while swinging my sword?

There’s a gap between.

Sign holds 1 second debuff on the target. Use the stopwatch.

Okay, but I am being hit while swinging my sword, early in the animation of swinging the sword, I get knocked down, and the channel is interrupted.

If what you’re saying is true, then there should be no way I get hit during the channel. However it happens frequently.

sorrow.2364:

Devildoc.6721:

Not yet, but backstab nerf is in the works, the C&D nerf was just the first step. the nerfs are coming. I actually called the DD, Cluster Bomb, and C&D nerfs.. and I’m actually sad that I was right.

Have you got any proof in support of what you are saying or is that your apocalyptic view of ArenaNet plans?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Backstab-time-to-nerf/first

Look for the red post.

yeah instead it’s a train of karkas that spit at you for 10k damage and it’s a multi hit attack so dodging won’t evade all of it.

… are there any future plans for this landmass? Anything to keep us coming back? Or are we back to Orr?

3 points of feedback:

1. Mobs are overtuned, starting at level 82, with event mobs at 84, meaning we hit them for very little and they hit us like a freight train. This leads to problems with the other 2 points of feedback.

2. Being culled instantly by mobs you can’t even see isn’t fun, or challenging, it’s just frustrating. I couldn’t see enemies to dodge their roll attack, or jump attack. i just suddenly took a ton of damage and died. The rendering problems are really bad. Enemy players or mobs need to take precedence when the engine is rendering objects for us. It’s more important for us to see our enemies than our friends.

3. The reinforcement phases and escort phases took so long that they were actually boring. Everything being a veteran, and level 84 so they took forever to whittle down, for half an hour per phase just got really boring. Everyone was ready to move on after 10 minutes, max. The adds need to die faster in events like this (don’t scale them 4 levels over players would help) and there needs to be less of them so we can just move on faster and keep things exciting for these events.

Okay I like that we have a new level 80 zone to play in and all, but Southsun cove, after this one time only event (which was okay despite some rendering issues and the reinforcement phases carrying on too long).. there’s 2 jumping puzzles, which people will do once, 2 tier 6 nodes of each type+ passionfruit, and that’s about it. Aside from this one time only event there isn’t really any compelling events that I’ve seen (compared to dragons and cathedrals).. so what’s next.. now that this weekend event that launched the zone is over… what’s going to keep us coming back?

The fact that we take more damage and do less damage to the mobs here? (is that even really a draw?)

Farming 1000 karka shells for the earring for alts?

For a place with a ton of shipwrecks on or around it, I’m surprised at the lack of hidden/sunken treasure chests in the area, and for a touriist resort I’m surprised at the lack of tourist attractions, unless getting mowed down by rolling karkas is a tourist attraction.

so.. what’s the deal here?

Marduh.4603:

Devildoc.6721:

.75s-1.25s: mob is stunned, rooted, can be attacked by other mobs and take damage during this time.

Stun rounds up to 1 second

then why am I getting hit after stunning the mob while swinging my sword?

There’s a gap between.

sorrow.2364:

Pistol Whip evades the whole channel time, the time in which the thief swings his sword exactly.
The evade is quite long and reliable. The stun, also, makes sure that about an half of your whole channel time lands, it isn’t meant to be an interrupt.
The only skill which is similiar to Pistol Whip is Blurried Frenzy of Mesmer, which deals less damage, has no stun, roots you in place but has a bit longer invulnerability. No one said that Blurred Frenzy is a bad skill because it deals low damage.

Wrong, there is exactly 1s of evade in Pistol whip. the animation breaks down as this.

0.75s: can move, windup time before stun, no evade.
.75s-1.25s: mob is stunned, rooted, can be attacked by other mobs and take damage during this time.
1.25-1.40s: rooted, start of sword swinging, no evade
1.40-2.40s: rooted, sword swinging, evading
2.40s-2.65s: rooted, sword swinging, no evading

It’s a small window but it exists. open up on a Risen Brute with pistol whip rather than waiting for his knockdown (and interrupting it) sometime, you’ll see.

sorrow.2364:

Devildoc.6721:

They want autoattacks

Lots of autoattacks

They want you doing nothing but autoattacks

Because the whiners from outside of the thief class want us doing nothing but autoattacking, and their voices are heard.

People like you make the community thinks thieves are a bunch of noobs.
Backstab build was barely untouched, it wasn’t what community asked for, so it is a clear proof that ArenaNet doesn’t give a kitten to what people say in the forums.

Stop with those kind of posts, you just make yourself look ridiculous.

Not yet, but backstab nerf is in the works, the C&D nerf was just the first step. the nerfs are coming. I actually called the DD, Cluster Bomb, and C&D nerfs.. and I’m actually sad that I was right.

Daeqar.8965:

Devildoc.6721:

Virtually every other class, now I don’t play a ranger, so i wouldn’t know them, and if they aren’t this case they should be fighting it…

all of their weapon skills are higher damage than their autoattack, even taking dps of the entire chain into account. Autoattack for them, is something they do while waiting on cooldowns, or in between skills, but it’s never their best dps option.

Thieves, depending on your weapon, autoattack has now become the biggest dps skill you have. it essentially defeats the purpose of initiative, which was designed so that thieves could do burst damage. Autoattack initially, in beta, and at launch, was intended to be something a thief falls back to when initaitive is low, or while they’re waiting for the opportune moment to burst. Because our skill use per minute is lower than any other class because of the shared nature of our resource, our autoattack was buffed to make sure our sustained dps didn’t fall behind everyone else.

Now, as they’re stripping away damage from skills…

we won’t be able to burst using initiative anymore, autoattack becomes our primary damage.

It breaks the class’s original design.

There’s a lot of truth to this conceptually, however I would just note that we’re not quite that bad off, yet.

Top basic dps for each weapon set is still limited by initiative, at the very least via combo.

D/D – CnD->Backstab (or Heartseeker)
D/P – Blackpowder->HS->BS
P/D – CnD->Sneak Attack
P/P – Unload
S/D – CnD->TS (this is probably the set most slanted towards autoattack currently)
S/P – Pistolwhip
SBow – point blank Clusterbomb shotgunning

We’re not yet to the point where simple autoattacking is our best recourse for dps on any of the weapon sets. Although, I do agree with you that thieves are becoming more and more dependant on autoattacks and how it fits in with class design philosophy.

S/P: Pistol Whip does less DPS than autoattack chains (Pistol Whip has a longer total animation), haste and doing it twice in a row because you can nail most people with the stuns almost back to back is the only PVP use.

S/D: C&D + TS does less than autoattack chains, the daze, not the damage was the use here… it used to be somewhat good damage because of C&D.

Shortbow: if you’re at any distance the flight time of cluster bomb results in less damage over time than autoattacking, especially now in PVP. It can still hit more targets which is a plus but the main reasons to use cluster bomb are its blast finisher ability, the fact that it’s 1200 range and has a high arc that can hit people where your autoattack cannot.

sorrow.2364:

Edelweiss.9815:

In most situations it’s better to use Black Powder and autoattack. Especially in group situations.

Well, no.
There are very few situations were there is absolutely no enemy attacking from range, probably in low level area, and Black Powder make you exposed from long range attacks, which is a big downside in most cases.

Pistol Whip makes you unattackable for the whole channeling time. This means a lot.
It is like making a comparison between invulnerability and AoE blindness, you would prefer invulnerability in most cases.

No, it doesn’t. It makes you unattackable for about 40% of the channel time in the middle. You can easily take hits while pistol whipping. It is an unreliable evade.

Blacksarevok.8104:

sorrow.2364:

evade+stun+more dps > autoattack

Damage is fine, it can still melt mobs’ hp bars. Obviously it won’t kill anyone with 2 casts of PW, but the evade, the stun and the faster attack rate makes that skill better than your autoattack.

It isn’t all about raw numbers guys, there are more factors that make a skill powerful.

Without raw damage, most scenarios favor the use of Black Powder over Pistol Whip. In fact, this is one of the biggest issues with the kit currently: now that Pistol Whip is no longer considered a damage dump, it directly competes against Black Powder for a role in our arsenal. Most situations will favor Black Powder however, especially since it’s a combo field. PW doesn’t really have a well defined use anymore now that it no longer does relevant damage, outside of getting health back via signet (which is very niche).

My main uses of pistol whip right now are as an interrupt and a self heal, and it’s a worse interrupt than headshot.

sorrow.2364:

evade+stun+more dps > autoattack

Damage is fine, it can still melt mobs’ hp bars. Obviously it won’t kill anyone with 2 casts of PW, but the evade, the stun and the faster attack rate makes that skill better than your autoattack.

It isn’t all about raw numbers guys, there are more factors that make a skill powerful.

actually it’s evade (while rooted in place) + stun (that is shorter duration than the cast time to use it) + less damage.

You realize that for most mobs I can run around them in circles autoattacking and they never do damage to me. I can pistol whip and get knocked down in the instant between the stun wearing off and the evade beginning, or get hit at the end of the evade while I’m still rooted in place.

Evade was never the core function of Pistol Whip, evade was a thing put in to help compensate for the fact that you are rooted during the animation and left wide open to attack. You evade for 1 second out of a 2.65 second animation.

The “stun” is only useful as an interrupt, it’s too short otherwise. I can stun Risen brutes, and then they get out of the stun and knock me down with their hammer before the evade comes in, happens all the time, unless I specifically interrupt their knockdown attack. It also does nothing to champions.

So no, it’s better to do 1 of two things most of the time:

1. use black powder and autoattack them to death, taking no damage.
2. autoattack while circle strafing them, taking no damage.

Either way results in higher dps btw.

evergreen.2438:

It’s so simple i think. before they nerfed heartseeker and combat thieves fin.

now they nerfed thief again and again.

now cloak and dagger nerfed. it is the key skill of backstabber thief. so backstab builds became % 40 useless. backstabber thieves will decrease and maybe end.

what do you want from me ANET?

I dont wanna play with crap condition builds.

They want autoattacks

Lots of autoattacks

They want you doing nothing but autoattacks

Because the whiners from outside of the thief class want us doing nothing but autoattacking, and their voices are heard.

Just a reminder.. the puzzle would have been better without the blinding white mist on the geysers.

Timed jumping puzzle with moving platforms = fun
Timed jumping puzzle with moving platforms you can’t see = not fun

drkn.3429:

And if more people got a similar attitude to the Clocktower, we wouldn’t have so many people claiming it’s impossible, broken and not fun – if something’s challenging, it’s meant to be so, so that it’s even more rewarding once you’re done. And if you decide to give up, it’s not the design’s fault – unless really no one can beat it for a longer while, but we time and again, with each part of the game, get enough proofs that everything is doable and fun. If you have the right attitude, that is.

For me reward from challenge depends on the nature of the challenge. If the challenge is derived from intelligent AI that is still bound by the same rules you are, or timing/precision/player skill/strategy, that’s rewarding.

If the challenge is based on things like, not being able to see clearly what’s going on (bad UI or graphics display problems/framerate drops, clipping, intense bloom, objects obstructing view), lousy controls, or AI that is dumb but relies on instantaneous reaction timing and aim, that’s not fun.

IE if you’re playing an FPS against Bots and you round a corner behind the bot and the instantly turn around and headshot you faster than you can blink.. that’s not fun challenge, that feels like artificial challenge.

Also, I’ve been playing Dark Souls lately, and that game has redefined what I see as a rewarding challenge now. As in GW2, you have to manually defend yourself if you want to survive, ie dodge, block, use heals at the right time, etc.

But a couple things Dark Souls does that GW2 doesn’t that make DS a little more rewarding. GW2 DOES have mobs that actively dodge and block, however, you know they’re limited on their blocking, so you just wait out their blocking stance for a few seconds and then wail on them. DS, they don’t have a cooldown on it, so they’ll raise their shield quickly and frequently, and avoid attacks by rolling out of the way, or backstepping. Not only that, but they will also actively parry you, leaving you wide open for their counterattack, which will now be a critical attack and do huge damage.. Parrying is a key strategy for the player to use as well because of the free crit attack, I had no idea the NPC’s could behave like a player and utilize that move. On that subject, in GW2, if you dodge, there’s a FEW traits out there that give you a benefit for evading, but in DS, when you dodge roll behind your oppnent, not only do you save yourself from taking damage, but you’re behind them and get a free critical backstab. If you parry an incoming attack, you throw off their defenses and get a free critical hit., these hits are signified by a slow motion “kill cam” shot sequence. Not only that, but killing an enemy in such a way rewards more souls (exp/currency) than simply swinging your weapon at them till they die.

So let’s break that down…

You’re rewarded for properly defending yourself by getting a huge damage boost on your next attack, which is shown to you in a slow mo quick cam, and it rewards you in more exp/currency. Then to boot, if it’s a very difficult enemy, you are guaranteed something useful as a drop, independent of the chance based item drop they may also have for you. In a black knight’s case, they drop an item used to upgrade a weapon of your choice, very useful. They may also be blocking the way to a chest, killing them gives you access to the chest with some valuable item inside.

GW2 however.. you’re not rewarded for playing more skillfully, you’re just not punished. When you dodge, your only reward is not dying, and that’s if this attack would have killed you outright. You won’t get any more reward for dodging, you won’t deal extra damage for dodging, there’s no fancy/rewarding animation that makes you feel like a BAMF. Jumping puzzles as well.. the only real reward for jumping puzzles most times is just the achievement, which is largely an intrinsic reward. The loot from the chests is pretty bad.

When I completed skipping stones… between a combination of the artificial difficulty of the blinding white mist, and the lack of anything good in the chest… I didn’t feel proud or accomplished, I only felt relieved that it was over and I’d never have to do it again. Not a good feeling to be leaving a challenge with.

I have one complaint/suggestion on the puzzle.

The white mist from the geysers blinds me so I have trouble seeing the platforms in the geyser parts. I turned off post processing and it did help some, but it was still glaring to me and felt as a source of artificial difficulty.

I feel the puzzle could have been challenging in a fun way without the visibility problems.

Veteran Karkas intentionally have 2 life bars, 1 is armored, the second is when you break through their armored shell.

What I’m finding disappointing is that the challenge in this zone seems largely based on the fact that Karkas are 2 levels over you and hit ridiculously hard. I swapped to my knights/emerald gear and still find myself getting hit for 2000 damage per hit on their spit attack, which can hit 4-5 times, and dodging won’t get out of all of them. I’ll evade 2 of the spits and still be hit for 6000 damage. Fighting more than 1 at a time, like in say.. the Lion’s Arch event today.. you get destroyed. They didn’t hit nearly this hard yesterday. I wouldn’t mind that type of damage output from the veterans maybe but not the normals.

I see res symbols all over the place in a group of Karkas, they’re absolutely shredding people and even dodging isn’t saving them. About the only way I’ve found that effectively deals with them is to spam black powder and make sure they’re all standing in the field constantly, and telling people to bring their karkas to my cloud to mitigate their ridiculous damage.

Aside from that, I find it disappointing that this zone has only a few Tier 6 crafting nodes and no really compelling events (meaning there won’t be reason to continue to go there after this weekend). The events seem really ho hum aside from the event to find the golem parts in the worm field, even that I found it a bit frustrating how long they’d follow you after dodging them. You’d dodge them 2-3 times and then were a sitting duck and then they’d one shot you.

Inflated mob stats is a very boring way to increase difficulty, and also unsatisfying to overcome.

I just can’t see myself coming back here if the highlights of the area are basically you take way more damage here than anywhere else.

You think it’s bad now wait till you get level 80, have full exotics and people won’t take you because you’re not a warrior or guardian.

Some groups currently do that, 4 warriors, 1 guardian, because they have highest base armor, warriors have highest base hp, giving them decent survivability even in berserker gear, and they do the most damage out of any class in pve, along with solid support via shouts and banners.

Meanwhile other classes get nerfed instead.

There are some ways to play with magic find that do not hinder you that much. Going FULL magic find is problematic but if you use omnomberry bars, a banner, and 5 pirate runes and 1 traveler’s/noble’s rune you should be fine if the rest of your gear has appropriate stats.

I use Knight gear and emerald jewelry, with the aforementioned rune sets. It gives 60% base magic find and with the consumable and banner and a magic find booster, you can get up to 150% magic find, almost capped. I find even running at 90% magic find just with runes and an omnomberry bar to be a significant increase in loot, while still keeping stats viable. Pirate runes are in fact handy because you can buff people around you with might.

Yes, PVE only, please, autoattack is really really boring.