Guild Wars 2

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Impact.2780:

TLDR

Had win loss win loss win loss pattern literally non-stop since yesterday evening. It is a joke.

Technically…. you should balance out at a 50/50 w/l ratio when you reach the division that corresponds to your skill level.

I haven’t gone anywhere. I started in Sapphire.

Please do not suggest to me that I am comparable to these people who:
- Tunnel vision a target ignoring the downed, allowing it to be ressed so they can be wiped.
- Focus a target down to 5% then switch the target to the full health tank and wipe.
- Play warrior and druid but expect the thief to be stomping in team fights.
- Zerg enemy treb at start.

I would take great offense if you were.

TLDR

Had win loss win loss win loss pattern literally non-stop since yesterday evening. It is a joke.

Used to like it. Would enjoy trying it again if it got some fixes.

I disagree. The game back then was better but not because of the old trait point allocation system. The 3 trait line lock didn’t really kill diversity, since most builds went 20/20/30 or 30/30/10 i.e. using only 3 trait lines. Builds got stronger, which made them harder to balance, sure, but there were some good games and some good competition between then and HoT release.

What actually killed the old builds we had with that older system was the trait changes and moves that came with that patch. So yeah, allowing allocation into more trait lines would increase diversity, but only because the traits that people would want to take were moved to different lines, and because, evidently, some trait lines still have entire trait tiers with nothing desirable.

Dragonhunter

/15

Full cap when you intend for an ally to rotate to hold the point because you’re winning another point and already, don’t expect to, or don’t expect to be able to cap it anytime soon, or if for some reason you’re going to win that fight and cap the point or have already capped it easily and can afford to take the time to boost the score a bit.

Decap when there are enemy respawns, a fight you want to win that would benefit from you returning to it, regardless of whether the point is captured or not. Even if the point you want to win the fight on is captured and your team can hold it without you, if you going there will get a kill and maintain staggered enemy spawns, do it.

S/D suffers from tougher classes having port-to-target skills. Before it was only guard and another thief that could, and you could still out-pace the guard to a point or decap vs another thief. Revenants and Dragonhunters now though, as well as other thieves, will keep up with S/D unless you get a sneaky disengage with a cloak and dagger + infiltrator’s return and they aren’t watching for it.

D/P stealths enough that you never know for sure when the thief is still there or left to decap, and port-to-target skills don’t work without a target, making D/P superior for decapping and forcing enemy to try and counter-rotate vs something they can’t see (e.g. stealth on the way toward a point then turn back and let enemy player go there for 0 gain).

Precision Strike is being increased to a 5.25s cool down.

A step toward balance. Let’s have:

• When elementalists attempt to switch to an attunement, there is a 25% chance it will go on cool down without switching them.
• When engineers attempt to use a toolbelt skill, there is a 25% chance they will be unable to due to a device error.
• When guardians attempt to activate a virtue, there is a 25% chance it will not activate.
• When mesmers attempt to use a shatter skill, there is a 25% chance the illusions will be unable to track to the target, and expire with no shatter effect.
• When necromancers attempt to enter shroud, there is a 25% chance it will instantly drain all their life force.
• When rangers attempt to use their pets, there is a 25% chance it will stow even during combat.
• When revenants attempt to switch legends, there is a 25% chance they will lose the stance and lose their healing, utility, and elite skill until their next swap attempt.
• When warriors attempt to use a burst skill, there is a 25% chance the skill will go off without hitting the target even when they are not blinded or out of range.

Because clearly, doing all that must be easier than fixing no valid path for thief steal., so let’s bring the other class mechanics in line with this one class.

Thank you.

Did not read. Too long + not enough time to spend on forums, but...

From the title alone:

Great idea. Much better than the armour and health tiers we have now.

The condi/cc mesmer right now is preventing a lot of builds like that even trying to come back.

For instance, any on-point fighter that doesn’t have a high up-time of stability and/or plentiful evades is going to be unable to contest a point vs a mesmer. This forces engineers to go scrapper.

D/D ele would be in the same boat except they can’t build for toughness, healing power, and damage anymore, so there isn’t much point to dagger off-hand; they need their base toughness increased, i.e. bring armour categories closer in-line or move ele up one.

S/D acro thief was kind of lame, but I did like S/D when it was 10/30/0/0/30. Unfortunately even with acro now, revenant does the job better, and revenants can counter S/D’s rotations pretty easily.

Power necro I don’t think was ever competitive. In fact, I’d say it’ closer to being competitive now than it ever was, just no one runs it because condi version has boon corruption, and the direct damage can be done by a thief or revenant. Or perhaps the build just isn’t well known (Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper Staff+Dagger/Warhorn, Close to Death and +15% attack speed in shroud).

Shatter mesmer is kept out from the nerfs it took with HoT that removed the trait to refresh shatters at 50% health, the energy sigil nerf affecting clone on dodge, and revenants being able to stick to them, evade/block everything, and land their burst even through stealth and ports.

So...
...Tone condi/cc mesmer down
...Get rid of passively stacking stability which will no longer be necessary and is so lame anyway
...Bring back celestial amulet with perhaps slightly reduced stats, or at least new 4-stat amulet with 1050 power, 1050 healing, 560 vit, 560 tough, or even a 5-stat with 600 power, 600 healing, 600 vit, 600 tough, 600 <condi/prec>
...Nerf precision strike for real or at least so that it requires a target and strikes in a cone instead of seeking anything regardless of relative position and stealth

I wouldn’t go as far as compare it to turret engi, but it does need toning down. I never noticed it until I tried 1v1ing a friend’s mesmer on a different class. As a thief I never noticed how bad it was because I could avoid the interrupts, but on a different class unless I’m constantly generating stability, I’m going to get daze/stun locked because there aren’t enough dodges to avoid every shatter and cc skill. I understood why scrappers were the only other class that could reliably 1v1 them.

So yeah, it’s basically keeping anything that would entertain the idea of defending a point from doing that, thus restricting what is viable on a team. I bet we’d have seen some mercenary 2-kit core engineers returning with some success if not for mesmer as it is right now.

Don’t hit their block.
Dodge into the shattering clones, not away from.
Save important skills until after Blurred Frenzy or dodge, or after a dodge while they don’t have sword out.
Kite or use own defensive skills when they use their distortion since they can attack while it’s up and go full offense for a few seconds.
In team fights, target something else, let AoE/cleave hit the mesmer and quickly change target to them when they are at 50% health for a burst.

Half a dozen unranked games and I’m sick of off-season already. Let’s get some sort of ranked arena back please.

Unranked is basically hot join. At least that’s how it seems to be played.

Why not just leave ranked without the ladder enabled during off-seasons. Then we can still have matches with:
Standard models
Ranked matchmaking rules
Not as many test, troll or yolo builds as unranked
No Spirit Watch Sky Hammer (although I’ve not played these since the changes, but until this gap this point has certainly been valid and perhaps the most popular argument for keeping ranked open)

I try new games between off-season because I hate unranked. If I happen to find one I prefer to GW2 overall, then it’s: gg ANet, should have listened to your playerbase.

It’s as simple as that; no sense in camping the forums or spamming requests and posting in such threads. If everyone says it once and it masses, they might do something. If they ignore, then it’s their own mess.

So a few months ago there was a driver update for NVidia GPUs, which I downloaded as usual. That made me unable to play GW2 because the game would anywhere between a few seconds and 2 minutes of loading, start freeze-framing horrendously before finally crashing. No problem, I just went back to the old driver, which was 341.44.

However, I’ve recently decided to start playing other games as well as GW2 due to the periods of ranked arena being closed. Some work, some don’t. It occurred to me earlier today that I’ve been using a very old driver. I looked for updates, and indeed there were many versions ahead of me, so I downloaded the latest version, 364.72.

The games that weren’t working before, started working. Excellent, but now to test GW2. GW2 started running more smoothly... for the first minute. Then, it started flickering black; each black screen lasts 1-3 seconds. When I ran it in compatibility mode for each other OS, it freeze-framed instead of going black. Either way, compatibility mode didn’t fix it. It’s not as bad as the last driver I tried, but I don’t want to have to go back 20 driver versions just to run GW2, and render myself unable to play anything new that comes out, be it a simple console game, or an MMO.

Other people I’ve spoken to have been able to update their driver to the latest version without having any trouble playing GW2, but have no idea what might be different for them than me.

Any thoughts on a solution would be awesome. I would even use a program to switch between two drivers as needed, if it came to it, but I don’t think such software exists seeing as how you’re told to reboot after a driver change.

Edit:
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel i7 3770
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 555
RAM: 8GB
(Desktop)

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

What are some suggestions for Legendary Titles?

Maybe legendary titles should act like the old gvg titles or the heroes ascent titles.
When you win matches or get tiers/divisions, it increments. Then the title has the tiers in itself. So if you have like 300 wins in legendary for example, Terrifying legend. Upwards towards like Legendary Champion/legend.

If wins is too frequent, then you can do division crosses. Just as long as you can’t bug the title by losing and regaining the same division cross. Example going from legend 2x to legend 1x by losing, then winning the pips back for the division cross into legend 2x.

But then we’d have the same problems as with that system. At least this way, all the titles are the same rank (until the division means something, then the title associated with that time may have some standing), so you can use whatever one you prefer and have it reflect your position. With the Avenger(lowest I can remember) to Legendary Champion system, if you preferred Reaper, or (as is my case) Mist Walker, you’d use that and it wouldn’t reflect your true rank. That might not bother some, but it seems to be important for the majority.

Edit: But playing off that idea anyway, I would prefer titles for having reached legendary division X, Y, Z times instead of wins in that division.

No idea but one thing is for sure. If this new system really does put same MMR players together vs whatever, then the higher MMR players should be the ones in higher divisions and the lower MMR players be in the lower divisions.

Yet, we consistently see players in diamond and legendary who have no damage or offensive pressure yet still manage to die non-stop, have no awareness and or no team orientation/play, and no idea how to rotate. So either they got carried up by better players of SIMILAR MMR, which means their MMR is broken, or either MMR or the algorithm is so broken that it can’t distinguish between different ratings.

I get matched with - as in, on the same team - with players you know are very good from having encountered them before, and players you know are good because they have put on a good display in competitive tournaments. Yet, at the same time, I get matched with people who, if their character wasn’t moving on the map, I would genuinely assume were brain-dead. Does the system see me, these competitive tournament-going players, and the beyond-bad players we all know and love, to be at the same level? ANet?

1) Legendary doesn’t make you "so good." There are so many people diamond and above with no clue.
2) Legendary doesn’t make you legit. You can still stronghold farm you way to it.
3) If the PvEr cares enough about titles they will know it’s not from their mode. If they don’t care enough to know, then they don’t care, so why care what they think?

Rename it to "Ground Hammer" and relocate it accordingly. Fixed.

Boon corrupt on auto is somewhat okay in the scheme of things... Looking at how ANet has added so much cc and stability to classes compared to how it was only a year ago. I much preffered the simpler, less bloated combat of last year; it felt like strategy, mechanical skill, communication and coordination counted for more. But ANet is ANet, and here we are.

It should, however, require traiting into. It shouldn’t be a free buff. Perhaps it would be better implemented by adding the effect to the lingering corruption trait or whatever it is called, at grandmaster tier in curses. That being said, a lot of things shouldn’t have been free buffs and is the reason the game is in this mess. One might say this is simply necro’s turn to be afforded that treatment.

If you’re going to stay on DH, run renewed focus. Maw is only good vs. noobs and thieves.

Simply put: rotate to…
1) …survive or help an ally,
2) …win via outnumber or favoured matchup,
3) secure or maintain a snowball.

You can theorize all these scenarios based on your comp, your build, your enemy’s comp and builds, who has what on cool down, who is low, who is on respawn for your team, who is on respawn for the enemy team etc.

But what’s the point unless you’re discussing a particular rotation in a match you just had. In practice, you do keep track of these things, but in the back of your mind. They are considerations your mind keeps track of while you play. You already know why you rotate.

Ultimately, you rotate to win points. To win points, you need to survive, and you need your team to survive. The real considerations are therefore those that tell you when to do it.

I could list a whole bunch of scenarios like…

• We’re not going to win this fight but can sustain it. It’s neutral and we can keep it neutral if our team has favourable matchups on the other points.
• I’m not going to win this fight, and it is the enemy’s cap or will be soon, but it’s very good to keep this player(s) out of the other fight(s) at the cost of me for the time being. I just need to be sure to rotate out when I still can unless backup comes.
• If I rotate to help Bob, will be win the point and I get back here without the fight being lost? And if you do anyway…
• We’re going to lose this fight and go on respawn if we don’t rotate out now.
  The list goes on.

But really, it’s very simple; it’s basically the same set of questions each time; the answer to which, in time, comes to you effortlessly when it’s needed, and without pause to even ask yourself the questions:
1) “Is my action improving chances of winning this or another point?”
2) “If I go there now will I get/keep that point?”
3) “If I leave this point now will I hurt chances of winning it?”
4) “If I stay am I going to die?”

In fact, once you know when you need to leave to survive, and when your team needs to abandon a fight to survive, where to go becomes very simple. If you can’t win, leave, and keep rotating until you can win. This is what rotating to win all comes down to. It only requires slightly more thought to throw in knowing when not to leave when you don’t need to if leaving would be bad for your team, and everyone rotating isn’t the better alternative.

After that, it gets a bit more… debatable, when you try to counter-rotate. That is, momentarily placing yourself in your opponent’s shoes and applying your rotational knowledge to work out where they are likely to go next, and then rotate accordingly, ahead of time to deal with it. These are the rotations that often result in conflicting opinions and then bloated considerations like cool downs, positioning, match timer etc. come into play. But by this point, factoring them in should be pretty easy, especially if you can imagine being in X position yourself, and know your team mate’s capability.

Just needs new options. New options which have been needed for a looooooong time…

Upon items entering your inventory:

• Auto-salvage anything of quality equal to or below <select:{fine,basic,masterwork,rare,exotic,ascended}>
• Auto-<select:{salvage,delete}> salvageable trophies
• Auto-deposit collectibles

The MM changes suggest there will be a lot of one sided games as the higher MMR players climb over the lower to reach the higher divisions. From a few games earlier, it does indeed seem to be the case. The "we" is probably a group on the losing side of one such one-sided match. Solution is to work at getting better - because this system can indicate to you whether you need to, while the previous system just put you against others at your level so you never really knew where you stood overall. Alternatively, wait for others to climb so that your division is left with only those closer to your MMR - i.e. wait your turn to climb. I’d hope people would choose the former.

Quitting, of course, is also an option.

Then maybe that game isn’t for you. I mean, if you need your enjoyment in the patch notes rather than the game. Personally, I’d rather get what I came for - the information - and then get into the game.

If you really want clutter, a long presentation and some thought process on changes, watch whatever the twitch shows are called (On Point and Points of Interest?).

It’s been getting rarer and rarer to find that in sPvP. Less good players whose name you come to recognise, who you know will present a challenge when you see you are vs. them. More new players, players that can’t play, or both, that actually make your gameplay worse when you lose all motivation for that match after realising MM put you with or against such people - a "Why?!" Match.

Surprise shot is alright but usually it’ll just guarantee a hit from your next auto attack if at all, since so many builds run on-demand immob break, and duration reduction. In the past it benefited from the condi duration granted from the DA line but trait lines don’t give stats anymore.

Trick shot, as someone already mentioned, is alright if it can bounce between two foes, otherwise it doesn’t boast the single target damage to even be worth using, except that there is nothing else to use while waiting for cluster bomb to land.

Cluster bomb is slow, easily avoided by walking, and the detonate to be able to cast it faster at point-blank range often bugs and spawns the smaller bombs underground so they deal no damage (the chances of this happening can be reduced by minor positioning adjustment but it can still happen). Still, it has its uses and is not considered bad.

Disabling shot kept being altered by ANet and was only left alone after they bugged it so that as it ends, it jerks you toward the direction you just moved away from. All this is is an evade or a cripple (i.e. usually used for one or the other). (Also used to - If you can time it right - cripple someone jumping from a building onto the clock tower so that they fall (lol)).

Choking gas is still in the typical ANet vs. thief state. Other classes had their condi durations increased when stats were removed from trait lines. Thief’s conditions were left the same duration, but choking gas got special treatment and actually had its duration nerfed. It used to be very good for debuffing support roles on point, but now the duration isn’t long enough to be worth it. It used to still have a use to make a basilisk venom hit through block but now basi does that itself.

Infiltrator’s Arrow is what makes shortbow viable. Without this we might see some P/P use... A set that’s been complained about needing a buff for as long as I can remember on this game.

I switched to D/P when the vigor changes forced S/D to take acrobatics, and the specialisation changes made it so you couldn’t go 10/30/0/0/30 and have more damage than 30/0/10/0/30 D/P. D/P and S/D both had to go DA+Trick, and where S/D was forced into acro for self survival, D/P went SA for self survival and some party support in downed-ally situations. This remains true. The only way S/D has a chance at competing with D/P - even old DA/SA/Trick D/P - is with Daredevil.

Now, if you get Daredevil, you get what you’ve always lacked: damage while evading. This makes S/D very strong, in theory. Except, a thief needs to be able to deal with other thieves, and while building for evades with S/D was alright vs. D/P’s stealth before, it isn’t now, because D/P also takes Daredevil and therefore has the same number of dodges that you do. This means S/D will have a harder time vs. D/P than before, but it is still possible to out play them. D/P still has the advantage of stealth plays for his team, while S/D has more mobility, but classes that pose a threat to thieves - DH and Rev - have targeted teleports. So S/D’s mobility won’t always get them away, while D/P can prevent the player porting to them by entering stealth.

I’ll clarify as well, that I think S/D can only try and compete if it takes Bound.

vox.9027:

assuming ArenaNet balanced it well

Lol.

Using WASD to move, and your 1-4 keys for skills is nothing new. It’s common in many games because it’s easy to do. Some games opt to default bind abilities to QERFCXZ - all those around WASD - because some players find that easier, too. What this means is, no, it’s not too hard, but also that it does come down to individual preference.

Some players like WASD. Some move their movement keys over to the right, so they become ESDF, so they have more letter keys easily accessible from that position. Some move their movement keys up to WQES so they are closer to the number keys which are bound to their skills.

When I started this game, I went up to about level 30 on my first character using the keyboard for everything at first, and then just for movement and my mouse to click the skills. All because I did not know you could hold right click to steer your character. Using the keyboard to turn is so much slower and awkward. You hurt your reaction time, your awareness, your ability to direct attacks toward a target etc. With the combat system GW2 has, not using the mouse makes the game less enjoyable.

I advise rebinding your skills such that you can easily reach them from the hand position that covers your movement keys, and bind each such that the same finger won’t be needed in more than one place at once. Then, work on using these new binds. Stick to them. You’ll feel worse and want to go back, but that’s just because you haven’t muscle-memorized them yet. Your memory and muscle memory will be conflicting - memory says use the new binds, but your more immediate reaction from muscle memory will be to the old binds. Once you update your muscles to be on the same page, you’ll see a significant improvement, and be happier for it.

Edit: Your keyboard layout is also a factor. For example, some keyboard keys are larger, or have keys spaced further apart. A very common example is the difference in F-key positioning. If you use the F-keys, you may notice 3 different starting positions for that row when you change keyboards. The first keyboard I used (which was a standard free-with-computer keyboard) had F1 in line with 1, the second (a membrane gaming keyboard) had F1 in line with 2, and my current one (mechanical gaming keyboard) has the F1 above the space between keys 2 and 3.

Evade on AA is already taken by ranger.
Boon corrupt on AA is taken by necromancer.
Boon remove on AA is taken by mesmer.
Thief’s would be boon theft, but on AA that’s pretty strong, so if they ever did it, it’d have to be something like 33-50% chance to steal.

The skill always hits the same number of times. If you only see damage from one, it means your positioning is off, causing the other hits to strike air. Try using it when you’re standing back a bit from your target. It is also weakness on demand which synergises with weakening strikes if you take it.

League season ended.

After countless months of complaints about Skyhammer and Spirit Watch, and how we need separate queues for people looking for a decent match and those looking to test or run strange and often unviable builds, and ANet finally listened and made unranked and ranked and removed Skyhammer and Spirit Watch from ranked, the geniuses at ANet then decided that when league season is over, ranked will be disabled so not only does everyone have to join the queue where Skyhammer and Spirit Watch are in the map pool, but those looking for decent matches have to queue with those running nonsense builds as well.

Didn’t it start with removing Minstrels, and the reason was because of unkillable druids? I can’t really remember because I didn’t notice any trouble, I just saw it on the forums. Anyway, it turned out after removing it, that druids were just extremely bugged. They could blast their water field like 5 times with a single skill that was meant to blast only once, and they could get double healing springs (or whatever its called).

Then bunker mesmer and quickness res was a problem, so instead of just nerfing it, they deleted celestial and soldier’s (and two others that were of little consequence but the game is probably better off without them to be fair). Soldier’s, which had been in the game forever, and had seen use in some viable builds that weren’t overly tanky, I don’t think had ever been really complained about.

Too much change in one go, and tipping the scales the other way instead of actually balancing. The meta isn’t being allowed to evolve. It’s just been jerked this way and that; big sudden changes. With an expansion it is unavoidable, but with following patches, it should not be. Adding and removing amulets in addition to other class changes in one go is just too much.

I miss the metas before HoT. I don’t miss the bunker meta just passed.

Silverkey.2078:

This is a case where pro league is against us. The reason they don’t want balance changes more frequently is that they don’t want to change the meta without letting time to pro teams to adapt.

But I think they should have first balance properly HoT before starting pro leagues. And I perfectly agree that small regular patches is a better way to do that.

The last patch is a typical example of "overcorrecting". For example they wanted to nerf bunker chrono so they:
* removed quickness rez
* removed defensive amulets
* reduced alacrity effectiveness
* destroyed well of precognition
* removed durability rune
* nerfed energy sigils
* nerfed chaotic dampening
* nerfed chaos armor
* nerfed resistance on F5 and glamour

This is obviously overkill. And many changes are like this. If they had more regular updates, they would have been able to do small shaves and slowly adjust the build until it is balanced and healthy for the game.

Don’t forget to include the buffs. The buffs to necro’s boon corruption and thief’s auto attack damage was part of the plan to combat sustain builds to prevent a bunker meta. Not only did they over-nerf, they buffed a solution after the problem was no longer necessarily there to solve. This is a perfect - and perhaps easier to see - example of why balance patches need to be less game-altering each, but more frequent. They should nerf what is problematic first, then, after seeing how it impacts the game, re-evaluate the situation and determine whether they over-nerfed and need to revert some, need to compensate the nerfed classes in other areas, or if the problem still persists and further nerfs or buffs anywhere else are needed to complete the rectification.

With the context unknown, that statement means absolutely nothing. When I see it, I assume he’s talking about the match prediction code starting both teams at at equal value before proceeding to consider different aspects which would influence either team’s chance of success. This means both teams are considered equally. They start at the same value, and go through the same test, through which each condition has an effect on the initial value. To have them start at differing values before any tests indicate what they should be would be tantamount to using RNG for match result prediction...

Now if I’m right about what I assume he’s saying, I’d expect nothing less. If I’m wrong, it’s to be expected with a sentence taken out of context like that.

It also affected Engineer, Elementalist, Revenant and to a lesser extent, Thief. While it didn’t butcher them, it affected them, which was the purpose. What ANet should have done was compensated mesmer for its remaining role being underpowered post-HoT and out of consideration of its dependency on the energy sigil pre-nerf. They tried to buff the condi aspect, to be fair, but other classes outperform mesmer in that area by far - necro can corrupt boons, and engineer can provide some decent party support and utility - so it might as well not have happened.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Fistandanthilus.6824:

Evan Lesh.3295:

It sounds like you want profession-specific MMR?

WTF!! I thought profession-specfic MMR was long ago implemented!! Oh my god what are you guys doing?!

I was under the impression that we had profession specific mmr already as well. Pretty sure comments were made that this was a thing specifically so people could feel more comfortable trying new classes. Since you’re not likely to be awesome at it right out the door, and don’t necessarily want to be thrown into games at the proficiency levels of say, whatever you main.

They made it, then turned it off before applying the patch with it, and since then as far as we know it’s been left. It might even still be untested for all we know.

I suppose this is the reason for it – that there is no class locking once your match is found.

fumcheg.1936:

Impact.2780:

fumcheg.1936:

Impact.2780:

fumcheg.1936:

You can lock class switching but still allow trait/weapon/utility change too keep the possibility for players to adapt classes considering the team composition.

This is true; I’d forgotten to consider that possibility. However:

• People are stubborn
• They won’t necessarily know how to play a different build
• They might not even know a different build
• Players already like to have multiple characters of the same class with different builds on each for when they do need to switch, and preventing switching would prevent this. Allowing same-class character swaps would require a fair bit of designing and coding to work into what is already there, or, they would have to actually get around to build-templates (although, these are coming “soon,” right?)

we are talking about how to solve class stacking problem, not how to make everyone happy…

We’re talking about class stacking problem in an attempt to make people happy… If you don’t want to be happy, then you don’t care for problems.

I don’t care about making ppl happy. I care about solving the problem which has explicite negative impact on PvP. There are always be ppl who like to switch and stack classes in itself and you can’t make them happy by removing that possibilty.

So you’re not people -.^?

fumcheg.1936:

Impact.2780:

fumcheg.1936:

You can lock class switching but still allow trait/weapon/utility change too keep the possibility for players to adapt classes considering the team composition.

This is true; I’d forgotten to consider that possibility. However:

• People are stubborn
• They won’t necessarily know how to play a different build
• They might not even know a different build
• Players already like to have multiple characters of the same class with different builds on each for when they do need to switch, and preventing switching would prevent this. Allowing same-class character swaps would require a fair bit of designing and coding to work into what is already there, or, they would have to actually get around to build-templates (although, these are coming “soon,” right?)

we are talking about how to solve class stacking problem, not how to make everyone happy…

We’re talking about class stacking problem in an attempt to make people happy… If you don’t want to be happy, then you don’t care for problems.

fumcheg.1936:

You can lock class switching but still allow trait/weapon/utility change too keep the possibility for players to adapt classes considering the team composition.

This is true; I’d forgotten to consider that possibility. However:

• People are stubborn
• They won’t necessarily know how to play a different build
• They might not even know a different build
• Players already like to have multiple characters of the same class with different builds on each for when they do need to switch, and preventing switching would prevent this. Allowing same-class character swaps would require a fair bit of designing and coding to work into what is already there, or, they would have to actually get around to build-templates (although, these are coming “soon,” right?)

Yeah the thief buffs were mindless. What they really needed were some minor traits in trickery made baseline, new traits to replace them, and possibly some tweaks to existing ones. There was also a suggestion I liked which was to add blinding powder as an F3 skill instead of a utility.

It is typical of ANet, to nerf the problem - which is what we want, instead of buff something to create a solution leading to power creep and more overpoweredness. But then to buff a solution anyway, so instead of turning imbalance into balance, they just invert the scales - 5-2 becomes 2-5 instead of 2-2.

They nerfed bunker mesmer, which was great. Removed. Main problem fixed; now we can have a better meta inwhich we can look to see what other problems there might be. But they didn’t stop. They removed celestial so elementalist needed buffs to be viable, but instead buffed thief and REALLY buffed necro, which now that we’re already out of a bunker meta - with bunker mesmer dealt with - they didn’t need! Alright the corrupt boon change would have been alright on its own, and some buffs that thieves actually asked for would have been welcomed, but of course not.

Everything was fine except, either don’t remove celestial, or, instead of buffing thief and necro, that effort should have gone into elementalist in light of being hit hard with that amulet’s removal. Instead of merely being hit hard, now, they are almost free kills to thieves and necros.

Evan Lesh.3295:

It sounds like you want profession-specific MMR? In order to do that, we would have to enforce a profession lock upon queuing. There is another thread advocating this idea with the benefit of removing profession stacking.

Profession-specific MMR would be great.

As for preventing class stacking, I’m not sure it’s a good idea. It would hurt queue times significantly for a lot of players and it wouldn’t be entirely accurate, or fix the problem. For example, you’re aiming for build diversity with your balance patches, and classes like engineer and guardian do have builds more different than one could class as a variant, such as bunker guard, medi guard, bunker dragonhunter, marauder trap dragonhunter, bruiser engi/scrapper, marauder scrapper, pistol/shield condi engi, and marauder rifle engi. Some players even choose less viable builds differing from the roles you’d expect to see from their class, such as marauder elementalist/tempest. Such a system would treat a bunker guard the same as a medi guard, when having the two together wouldn’t necessarily be a problem – in fact, it’d be better than having a medi guard and a reaper in a team with already 3 other damage-build players.

An alternative would be a system to prevent role-stacking, such as determining role based on stats. For example, if they have more than the base healing power, then flag them as support, else if they have an amulet with toughness, then flag them as a bruiser, else if they have an amulet with condition damage, flag them as condition damage dealer, else flag them as direct damage dealer, and use these flags to put together a role-balanced comp. However, this would also hurt queue times, and would still not fix the problem, ultimately, because it would impose a comp-type in a game where the meta is meant to be able to shift freely by player discovery and developer balancing. So it could become out-dated in terms of the metagame, and give significant advantages to players queuing as a party of 3 or even 2.

Pulmonary Impact hit this hard before, it’s not new. I don’t know what causes it either. I remember a match where every time the enemy thief used it, it hit me for over 4k, yet when I tried it, I could only hit 2.8k. The stats, build and gear were the same. It appeared to be almost random.

Random... RNG... Like critical hits.

Pulmonary Impact can’t critically hit, apparently, and it never appears as a critical hit. Yet how can something reading as 1.9k on the tooltip hit 4.2k-5.3k on occasion, if it isn’t critically hitting?

I think perhaps it is bugged. That the code that prevents it from critically hitting is bugged in that it stops the skill from ever showing that it critically hits, but doesn’t actually prevent it from critically hitting. So it would look like it isn’t critically hitting, while it actually is.

I think it’s still possible to cast them while in the air anyway... They just can’t be "activated" while in the air. It’s the same way jump-dodge works. Since jump is client side, you can activate the skill, and press jump before the server receives the skill activation command, resulting in it being activated while in the air, just as you enter the air, but without the server registering that you are in the air.

Press, fast enough, anything like RTL+jump, heartseeker+jump, burning speed+jump etc.

Kicker.8203:

Impact.2780:

This basically indicates ANet see acro as more of a pug queue trait line, with no business trying to compete with the other 5 for competitive play.

I don’t think they realized what they did.

I should hope they do realise, else there is no hope for this game!

Acrobatics has some nice ideas, but currently they would only see use if those useful things were moved to other trait lines to fill spots left by other things from those other lines made baseline. It’s just both redundant and inferior.

I especially liked how they added regen to upper hand. As the OP describes it, it’s more of a nerf in coordinated team play. This basically indicates ANet see acro as more of a pug queue trait line, with no business trying to compete with the other 5 for competitive play.

Galandil.9641:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yes I get that, but let’s assume that I’m under the effect of Hard to Catch where I already have +100% endurance regen. Does Vigor makes it +150% regen? Does Vigor + ES makes it +175% regen?

I just tested Hard to Catch vs Svanir, it works exactly as Signet of Agility: when you suffer a Hard-CC, you get +100 endurance (not 100% end regen).

It doesn’t matter if you have Vigor or not active.

Huh.

This proves true. I’ve not used hard to catch since briefly between the vigor change forcing me into acro, and before HoT, when I still ran S/D. Yet the tooltip changed… Another missed change like our 10% healing increase on Withdraw perhaps?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yes I get that, but let’s assume that I’m under the effect of Hard to Catch where I already have +100% endurance regen. Does Vigor makes it +150% regen? Does Vigor + ES makes it +175% regen?

I’d forgotten about that change to hard to catch. In this case it can’t be known because it would depend on whether the game engine combines the modifiers with addition or multiplication, with or before applying them to, the base rate.

Either way, how much the final modifier exceeds the base regeneration rate (or how much the final value exceeds 2*Base of the base regeneration rate) is of little importance if it gets chopped down to a modifier of 100% (or a value increase of 2*Base) before being applied.