Guild Wars 2

[Please note: this is from the perspective of a WvW Roamer who usually plays either Guardian or Thief. Also, for the purpose of saving time here, I’m just going to assume Dagger-mainhand for the hypothetical thief I refer to.]

TL;DR Version: Shadow Refuge should be based around giving thieves more sustainability in a fight instead of being a means to simply reset a fight. (Skip to the boldface text below.)

In it’s current state, Shadow Refuge is an extremely boring skill to play against. There is not much counter-play for it (except for a select few skills that can knock an enemy out of it). When traited, Thieves only need to stand in it for 4 seconds, and then they are free to do whatever they want with 16 seconds of stealth. That is a huge amount of stealth for very little “cost” (i.e. using only 1 skill with a 60s cooldown and standing in a relatively large area for only 4 seconds). And even if you damage them a lot while they’re in the Refuge, so what? They still have 16s of stealth and there’s nothing you can do about it as long as they don’t get downed. This essentially gives Thieves the ability to reset any fight without even having to make much of an effort to run away.

As a Guardian who doesn’t particularly like using Shield and a Thief who doesn’t particularly like using Shadow Refuge (in its current state), whenever I see an enemy Refuge go down, I know that the only thing I can really do is run away to prevent them from opening with an unpredictable Backstab. This is how Shadow Refuge is against most classes. When you see it go down you usually just have to accept that the Thief is going to escape or reset.

Shadow Refuge should be changed to help give Thieves more sustainability in a fight rather than simply resetting the fight altogether. Right now it’s all to often just a skill that terribad Thieves use so they can easily escape once they realize you’re not an easy kill (no, I’m not saying everyone who uses Shadow Refuge is bad ).

As someone who plays Thief often (I usually prefer roaming on Thief instead of Guardian for obvious reasons), I would like Shadow Refuge a lot more if it lasted 5 seconds rather than 4, only gave 7 seconds of stealth total (8 when traited for Meld with Shadows), but healed for 4000+ (or something to that effect). The healing should only be active while stealth (so you can’t put down the Refuge and continue fighting if you want the healing). On a side note: I also do not believe Shadow Refuge should affect downed players, because it often makes it impossible to stomp/kill a downed player before they are revived (especially in outnumbered fights).

Why do I think this would make Shadow Refuge a more interesting skill to play with/against?
1. Thieves interested in staying in a prolonged battle can view this as a huge buff.
2. This version is based around the idea of the Thief staying and fighting, rather than just running away and resetting with 16 seconds of stealth. It gives them more health back, which allows them to return to the fight quickly and have a little more sustainability. Because it would give 2-3 extra seconds of stealth (after its 5 second duration), the Thief would still have a chance to reopen on their opponent with a Backstab.
3. It allows for more counter-play besides just knocking the Thief out with a select few skills. Thieves will have to focus more on evading their opponents damage while remaining in the Refuge so they can benefit from the healing and then reopen. In other words, it requires more skill from the Thief than Shadow Refuge currently does to be beneficial.
4. The Thief is a little more predictable. It will be clear that the thief is probably nearby even after the Refuge ends. Additionally, any Backstab coming from the Refuge’s stealth will be possible for a skilled player to avoid because the Thief will only have a short (and, may I add, reasonable) time-frame in which to pull it off. The Thief can, of course, chain stealth from another source to make this Backstab less predictable.
5. Thieves won’t be able to self revive with 16 seconds of stealth anymore! This means that when I see a Refuge go down I won’t have to spend the next 20 seconds running around looking like an idiot stupidly spamming skill 1 in a vain attempt to prevent a Thief who probably is not even downed from self-reviving! Yay!
6. It’s actually a… “Refuge.” Currently Shadow Refuge just makes you stand in one spot for 4 seconds and then you can do whatever the kitten you want for 16 seconds. Not much of a “Refuge.” More like an extended vacation from the fight. :P

Anyway, that’s my opinion. What does everyone else think of Shadow Refuge as it is now? All constructive criticism is welcome.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Dude d/d is getting a buff if anything. 33% more init regain. We MAY be able to drop the +2 initiative on stealth for the condi clear on stealth now. It will be OP if we can do that.

I have actually already done that because I prefer to play with both the condi-cleanse and blind on stealth. Definitely going to be happy with the extra initiative! Right now even missing one Cloak and Dagger is pretty unforgiving with my trait set up.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t limit this thought process to Elementalists. All classes have worthless traits.

Agreed.

I think Symbol of Swiftness should (at the very least) apply 6-8 seconds if you are not currently under the effects of swiftness and otherwise is should apply 4-6 seconds This would keep Symbol of Swiftness useful in any situation (whether you’re trying to maintain swiftness or gain it. Right now Symbol of Swiftness is absolutely useless if you even have just 1 second of Swiftness; however, it’s fine if you have no Swiftness. The change suggested by Anet will make it more useful for maintaining Swiftness, but less useful for initially gaining it. In some aspects it is an improvement; however, if I have no swiftness on me already and need to run like a motherkitten, only gaining 4 seconds on a 12-15s cooldown isn’t going to help me much.

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

…

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier

…

[emphasis added]

Yes! Yes! This is perfect! You took the words out of my mouth! I would have absolutely no grievances with the coming Elementalist changes if this is what happens! Redesigning bad traits to be good instead of shifting them around in a manner that hinders access to the good traits is what needs to be done!

Sanduskel.1850:

nope. the changes are right. don’t go back on this or else we will be right back to permastealth land.

I’m confused, did you even read what I said (or am I misunderstanding you)? My suggestion was an even more severe nerf to perma-stealth (or rather BP+HS) [which was meant to accompany the nerf to Infusion of Shadow]. How does that bring us “right back to permastealth?”

I’m depressed about the suggested changes because they’re making Cleansing Wave into a major trait. This means now we’ll have to choose between much needed condition removal (Cleansing Wave) and better Cantrip recharge rate (Cantrip Mastery). This is a huge blow to Elementalist survivability. Cantrips have such huge cool downs that Cantrip Mastery is a must, however taking Cantrip Mastery will now prevent you from being able to take Cleansing Wave, which is also a necessity when fighting anyone running a condi build.

rhodoc.2381:

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

This sounds OP.

Elementalists have the lowest base armor/health in the game. How are we supposed to stay above 90% health? xD Also, if you’re fighting a power build it’s essentially a wasted trait.

JonPeters.5630:

• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.

This is a decent nerf to Heartseeker + Black Powder, but I think it doesn’t go far enough. You said

JonPeters.5630:

We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game…

however, players will still be able to gain a lot of stealth from this combination from skills alone. Yes, it will cost more, however I don’t think it’s fair that thieves can stack stealth this easily.

What makes the stealth from Cloak and Dagger fair is that you know the Backstab is coming within the next 3-4 seconds. This knowledge allows you to counter it. (Also Cloak and Dagger can be counter with blind, aegis, or an evade) However, against Black Powder + Heartseeker it is impossible to know when that Backstab is coming because the Thief could have stacked up to 9 seconds of stealth.

Please give the stealth gain from Black Powder + Heartseeker a 4 second internal cooldown. This combo is already powerful and well worth the initiative it costs because you can gain stealth from any location. This allows you to lead on your foe with stealth gained at a distance, something Cloak and Dagger can’t do. It will still be very powerful even if thieves can’t stack stealth with it.

If you truly believe thieves should only be able to maintain stealth by using a lot of different abilities, please make this change as well.

John Smith.4610:

Hello all, I looked into this because we intended to have a release note for the changes to the champion loot.
We did modify the gold and bloodstone dust coming from champion bags, and a release note will be added shortly.
What I can tell you is that we made a mistake, this one fell through the cracks and I’m truly sorry. I’ve promised before that we won’t make stealthy economic changes without notes and I mean to stick to that promise.
Thank you all for pointing out the error, we will be more vigilant in the future.
Good luck in your adventures.

I have around 5 stacks of unopened bags. You guys really aren’t going to temporarily revert this error???

JonPeters.5630:

• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.

This is going to really hurt Elementalist survivability by forcing them to choose between either Cantrip Mastery and and Cleansing Wave. Instead of helping Elementalists this change is hurting them. To spec for survivability both Cleansing Wave and Cantrip Mastery are very much needed. Please don’t nerf access to Cleansing Wave.

I really like a lot of other changes however.

WP’s just need to be removed completely from keeps. Even when they aren’t being used while the keep is being sieged, WPs still give the side that has them an absurd advantage. Death means nothing when you have a WP in a nearby keep or SMC that more than halves the distance you need to cover to return to battle. It often feels like my foes are zombies because they return from death so ridiculously fast.

This game is privately owned, so Anet gets to choose what you are allowed to say over chat. That is why people who get reported for being offensive in chat can get escalating account suspensions. Definitely report anyone being malevolent over chat and then /ignore them. I hope your problems with the ignore system do not persist.

Grandtomatoe.2045:

When was the last time you came across somebody getting rolled by 3 of your server mates and didn’t add in on the fight to get credit for the kill?

Personally, I never contribute in such boring fights.

I don’t expect every battle to be fair; however, the servers themselves should at least be somewhat balanced in terms of numbers/coverage. Where is the fun in either winning every fight easily or losing every fight without even standing a chance? Because Anet has done very little in the name of balance thus far, a lot of match-ups in WvW are just boring and frustrating.

Bind AoE loot to “F” and then bind interact to “Shift-F.” I did this a long time ago because I constantly spam “F” for loot and rarely have to use interact in comparison.

The loot system in this game is definitely not perfect (I would prefer a true automatic loot option); however, Anet has provided a reasonable solution to your problem. Stop blaming the poor Warriors, they’re only trying to help! :P

BlackAngel.1349:

I have to say I agree with some of the points here, mainly the size of the maps. Waypoints are also a big issue because you can hold on to a keep forever with enough coordination. imo you should only have your spawn waypoint and if you died defending the keep well then, try harder not to die. Having the same map but basically stretching them so that there is a good distance between objectives is the best way to work this and I hope anet are thinking about that because it will also make field fights much more interesting.

Agreed, WP’s detract from the gameplay a ton. It sucks when you kill someone and then they respawn 20 feet away from you. >.< Even the ability to revive allies from full death should be removed, imo. My guild group has often killed 10 people only to see them quickly revived by a couple of pugs while we attempt to fight the remaining 30. Thanks to WP’s and reviving (from full-death) it’s often IMPOSSIBLE to win an outnumbered fight in a keep, even against players with far less coordination. Death is not remotely punishing in this game, especially if you just part of a blob that will instantly revive you from death.

Ahlen.7591:

Is a success cuz now we can avoid T1

Lucky you…

Yeah, being stomped for 7 weeks in a row by tier 1 servers is going to be great!

Frankly, it’s ridiculous that there are any weeks in the leagues that “easy.” It’s supposed to be some kind of competition, but the servers are so insanely unbalanced that most have no chance of winning in their league. The whole system is a joke.

1. Better rewards for events.
2. Better monster AI.
3. The emptiness of the open world.

1. Population Imbalance / Match-up Imbalance / Coverage Imbalance
2. Wxp and Alts
3. Commander Functionality

posthumecaver.6473:

It is little bit of tough to understand what is changed from the class with a wall of text.

for ex. I think this is a new trait

‘Fresh Air’ – what it means by ‘Recharge Air Attunement on a critical hit’ recharging air attunment?

What is its effect to game play?

Basically, Fresh Air it allows S/D Eles to use their air burst a lot more often. You’ll almost always have access to air attunement again within a second or two after switching off Air. It has good synergy with the Electric Discharge trait.

For instance, you can attune to air and Updraft someone and then Dragontooth+ Ring of Fire + Phoenix them, and then switch right back to Air to instantly hit them with 2 lightning strikes and Arc lightning again.

Miss Firesss.3704:

SoS, thanks for having a little costume party with us! We are trying to have fun, but then SoR decided they wanted bags more, so they had to steamroll the quaggans.
:( Bad SoR.

I was the Dolyak! =D

STRanger.5120:

There’s the only thing I miss really kitten my Ele, S/D + D/D mobility, therefore RTL nerfed to the ground. This was my favourite skill even though it’s bugged as hell and it doesn’t deserve the 40s Cooldown, at least not if other classes have 12-15 CD on similar skills….

Yeah. I understand the nerf to the rotl distance, but the cooldown nerf is ridiculous. Meanwhile, Anet continue to allow warriors to have ridiculous mobility with whirlwind attack/Rush on greatsword alone (to to mention the numerous other mobility skills warrior gets).. The class with some of the highest HP/armor in the game clearly needs more mobility than the class with the least, right?

At least every Elementalist elite sucks horribly so I can just take Fiery GS to solve all my mobility needs….

The change to Unsteady Ground is horrible. It used to be a somewhat viable way to CC people with stability, but now it’s just an inferior Line of Warding… They should of just buffed the cripple duration.

As for the rest of staff, all it’s got that I like is decent CC and useful/convenient combo fields. Unfortunately the damage is still only good against afk players (and in some zerg fights, fine…). :/ Anyone smart enough to move 5 feet in any direction when a conspicuous red circle appears around them will continue to be invincible to staff Elementalists. Depressing…

Bread.7516:

“Daily and monthly achievement rewards now include Essence of Luck. To offset this, the amount of karma earned from daily and monthly achievements has been reduced.”

What a ridiculous justification for the karma nerf, which actually was necessary imo.. Obviously the real reason for the nerf was that karma was simply way to easy to get in absurd quantities, but why can’t they just be honest and say that…?

kingcragus.6810:

Chain interrupting you say. You do realise that for some one to spam interrupts on you, YOU have to be spamming abilities in the 1st place for this to happen. No sympathy L2P

Learn to think. Running around not using any skills isn’t going to help you against a condi engineer or necro. Not to mention the fact that all they have to do is wait for you to attack since the distinction between you attacking and you running around letting them kill you by other means is an obvious one. Spamming interrupts doesn’t mean they’re predictably using 1 each second. They could be using an interrupt once every 3-8 seconds. There’s no way to predict when they’ll be using their interrupts so not using skills is a horrible solution. How can you seriously defend a rune that you have to counter by not using skills?

grave of hearts.7830:

As you see you made a wrong accusation there.

Yeah, but to my knowledge that is a bug and has been reported and acknowledged. As far as Anet is concerned Necros should have access to copious amounts of confusion, which is a distressing thought.

So sick of fighting people using these runes. Interrupts are extremely easy to get in this game. Interrupts should have to be used strategically to counter certain key skills (ex. healing skills), but with this rune you get rewarded heavily for chain interrupting your opponents auto-attack. It’s ridiculous and takes no skill.

And why does every class need easy access to confusion? Necros already have access to 11 conditions, why do they have to get confusion on top of all of those??? They already have an insane condi burst. Why does a 700 damage/sec fear need to apply 5 stacks of confusion too?

/endrant

I totally agree with making team chat function over all maps as currently it is useless. To avoid confusion there can be a tag at the beginning of what someone says denoting what map they’re on (Ex. [SoSBl], [JQBl] or [EB]). It would be nice to have some kind of in-game means to communicate to allies on other maps to ask for reinforcements, etc.

Ghoulina.2976:

Gilburt.9146:

To the JQ who spam /laugh while spawn camping with Superior Bloodlust, superior numbers, numerous siege weapons, an upgraded keep, and access to virtually unlimited supply,

Stay classy…

All is fair in love and war, and the last time war was classy, we were pistol dueling.

Seriously? This is a video game…

To the JQ who spam /laugh while spawn camping with Superior Bloodlust, superior numbers, numerous siege weapons, an upgraded keep, and access to virtually unlimited supply,

Stay classy…

Each subsequent stack of the bloodlust buff should be smaller. Ex.

Minor Bloodlust: +45 stat increase (total)
Major Bloodlust: +75 stat increase (total)
Superior Bloodlust: +90 stat increase (total)

This would make the main benefit of have all 3 stacks denying the buff to your opponents while still giving your team a slight stat increase.

Also, the main problem with the buff now is the unbalanced match-ups. If match ups were more balanced (in terms of coverage) then I think the bloodlust buff wouldn’t have the issues with snowballing that it potentially has now.

Colt.9051:

clint.5681:

This thread is extra boring right now

Zerg zerg, blah blah blah, same ol same ol, blob blob… I feel like solo roaming

Just hide your loot bags before you head out.

Colt.9051:

Best laugh of my day: This whole group chasing me for a good while for only going for a nearby sentry. How bout something a little more productive to do with those numbers? :P

Btw, I love getting zerg chased, keep it up xD

But if they did something more productive they would have never gotten the 16 copper spike from your precious loot bag.

Some awesome stuff here, but please don’t forget about focus on Elementalist. Only half the skills on it are useful right now. It really needs to be reworked heavily! There’s a good topic about it in the Elementalist sub-forum.

I also really hope Ele staff can be more viable in the future. It’s way too slow right now and is pretty much only good for providing combo fields and some CC (in WvW zergs). D/D, S/D, and S/F are all more viable than staff even in PvE, but especially so in WvW/sPvP.

I would love to see some changes to focus. Earth/Air mostly acceptable, though some could use some minor changes, but Fire and Water on Focus are horrible. Here are my ideas:

Firewall: Explodes and deals damage and causes burning the first time a foe passes through it. For the rest of its duration it will continue to apply burning and deal less damage each time a foe walks over it.

Focus Fire 5: Should be a new skill. Please not Fire Shield. QQ Fire is the damage element, so this skill should have some damage potential while still being somewhat defensive in nature.

Freezing Gust/Comet: Should be combined into Focus Water 5 and radius and damage should be increased. Also, it should be ground targeting.

Focus Water 4 should be a new skill. Perhaps something involving a water field to give focus some healing?

Swirling Winds should give you 2-3 seconds of swiftness each second you are in it. So by staying in it for it’s full duration you could build up a decent amount of swiftness that would allow you to kite your foe.

Gale should possibly have a reduced cooldown and maybe even be AoE. Currently gale does have synergy with DT/Phoenix so it does have it’s uses.

Some good ideas. Staff just needs to be made faster across the board. It’s just so slow that you can run around randomly while fighting and avoid 90% of the damage. It needs faster damage that’s harder to dodge (or walk…) out of.

Lava Font needs to deal faster damage, Meteor Shower needs to have a faster casting time, Gust needs to be wider, Eruption needs to be way faster, etc.

Right now the only things staff is good for are easy combo fields and some CC. It’s damage is all horrible and extremely easy to avoid.

Kronyx.2570:

Just reset overlook, a gift for kaineng. need to get some red back in EBG ^^

Thanks! <3

SHAKA ZULU.3128:

Wow I sure am excited for this completely even matchup!!!!!!!!

Same! I don’t feel compelled to play PvE instead of WvW AT ALL!!!

Probably the best solution would be to allow people to select which affects they would like to be active on their legendary. Players could enable/disable the foot effects, enable/disable the day/night transition, enable/disable projectile effects, etc. They would just have to add an interface similar to the one that allows players to choose the stats (though I can’t say how difficult this would be to do).

Personally, though, I love everything about the new Meteorlogicus, but I think it would be awesome if Anet gave player’s more options to customize their legendary.

I just trebbed a tower for 15 minutes and took down 90% of the walls health. Because I couldn’t get there in time I got absolutely no reward. That’s ridiculous and needs to change. Helping my team shouldn’t be a waste of my time…

I would also like to see other peoples ranks, however because they are character bound they wouldn’t necessarily say anything about a players level of experience in WvW. For all you know that Assaulter is a Bronze Legend playing on his/her alt.

The majority of new content/achievements should be permanent (or reoccurring) with some temporary elements (ex. perhaps story instances, etc.) to introduce the new content.

Sometimes I feel like I have to push back certain goals (ex. Ascended Back item) in order to not miss out on the Living Story content (achievements in particular). This is especially true of the 2 week content (ex. Cutthroat Politics) rather than than 1 month content (ex. Bazaar of the Four Winds).

Adding check boxes so people can turn certain effects on/off for their legendarys would actually be awesome and a solid step towards the unachievable goal of pleasing everyone. I really hope they consider doing this.

I wish they would just make it account bound. How am I supposed to be encouraged to play my alts when all of them lack the WvW abilities that my main has? If my main has Defense against Guards and Guard Killer maxed, why would I ever want to give up these advantages to play on an alt? Especially when it will take forever to get them again.

Also it feels like none of my characters actually represent my actual efforts in WvW because my World Ranks are dispersed across multiple characters. This makes the highest rank I have achieved lower than someone who has only played on one character in WvW for the same amount of time.

bradderzh.2378:

How could that even be regulated? How can you define participation? Is logging in to do a daily sentry slayer achievement and then running off to 1spam a dragon wvw participation? Is using wvw as a means to get back to lions arch without paying waypoint costs wvw participation? Is jumping on your borderlands to get quick access to a craftingstation/bank/trading post wvw participation? Or how about karma training all the pve events?

It seems like it would be far to difficult to regulate or even calculate… If I am throwing gold into upgrading our keeps I don’t want ‘mr wvw for daily achievement’ to get the same rewards as me AND then go on to farm 10-20x the amount of gold us true wvw’s can make…

Sure wvw is fun, but I want cool shineys too…

The achievements will probably have more to do with taking/defending objectives (camps, towers, etc.) and killing enemies (players, dolyaks, etc.). Hopefully, the meta-achievement is designed so that even if someone just comes to WvW the bare minimum to get the final reward they’ll still have contributed enough to deserve it.

KStudios.2850:

Reminds me of that story about the hobo and the wealthy Roman senator (don’t remember the source, might have been Biblical). A Roman senator pauses one day to speak to a hobo about life. The senator, despite being extremely wealthy, has several spoiled demanding children, a wife that loves him only for his influence, and all the other bothersome nuances that come with maintaining that type of lifestyle. Meanwhile on the other hand the hobo’s only trouble in life is that the senator is currently blocking his share of the morning sunlight. The senator walks away lamenting that a common bum has a better life than he does.

You might be referring to the anecdote involving Diogenes (a Greek philosopher) and Alexander the Great. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_and_Alexander

Here’s a video of Koroshi soloing a tower on his engineer. Sometimes he just hides inside a tower that’s being taken by an enemy zerg and then solo captures it back after Righteous Indignation ends.

http://youtu.be/xuiaG4hGOz0

Condition Thieves are arguably better for soloing towers/keeps because they can spam evades/stealth while maintaining a large stack of bleeds with the right build.

… Why are npc’s that are supposed to be unreachable even possible to kill???

The invasion meta event fails (or almost fails), in-part, because a ton of the events spawn champions that persist after the event has completed. Because of champion loot bags, players stay to slay the (now) irrelevant champion instead of moving on which wastes valuable time. Champions can keep players occupied for over a minute after the event that spawned them has ended which delays the completion of other events.

It would be nice if armor repair could at least be removed so I don’t have to pay money when I get zerged down while trying to flip a camp or defend a tower.