Complaining about a very specific thing might generate a small adjustment but it takes a LONG time in most cases. Perplexity was OP for years, PU Mesmers basically ruled roaming for months, Durability has been busted for months, Confusion has been perpetually broken sans a handful of months, etc.
You do get that I’m complaining about them being op because the game is bugged not because anet made the Elites faceroll, yes?
I’m “fine” to lose against them if I’m even allowed to hit them.
Rev hammer 2 can be hard to see coming and will knock you flat if you’re running glassy. Zerk gunflame will get you too. It sounds like you’re talking about power dmg or I’d suspect trapper thief.
Not much else that can sneak up on you without being obvious at least after you’re downed. A good power thief maybe but you should see a flicker before they stealth to stomp. They don’t really need elite spec for that either.
That’s why I said it’s a bug. Doesn’t have to apply to you – I don’t know what makes me (and probably others) special.
I’m running a D/D power thief – so my 2 main attacks are single target, I have only one port (which helps sometimes) – people who run a class/build with lots of aoe damage might not even notice that there are bugs.
But I haven’t been able to even hit thieves for 1,5 years – I complained plenty of times and they fixed it a few weeks ago. I had problems with other classes as well but thieves was really bad – now the same applies to most Elites – so I do know that I’ve had a bug the past 1,5 years and I do know that this is a bug as well. I’m no programmer that’s why I’m asking anet to examine if there are indeed programming bugs for (wvw) combat.
ETA: For example: I would see a hammer swing if I’m facing a rev 1 vs 1 – but I’m not seeing it – I get the damage in, port to them, miss them, get the next damage in without seeing that they did anything.
Your 1. point has already been changed before – but I don’t remember whether it was possible to build a WP in a keep that’s not on your home BL.
The mobs weren’t harder on the DBL but their numbers have been decreased that radically that the wvw maps really seem dead nowadays – I guess the same will apply to the DBL.
That’s kind of my point about EOTM. Many of the people who say that it’s a karma farm map probably haven’t set foot on it in a long time. That, or only once in a very rare while.
I didn’t mean to derail the thread, I just wanted state that OP’s experience in EOTM is actually fairly accurate as it’s not a whole lot different from real WvW anymore. The PUGs are worse (because a lot of them are new to WvW/new to the game), there’s no teamspeak and scouting isn’t quite as common, but there are still lots of fights, roamers, sometimes guilds and commanders who don’t care about XP at all and just strictly go for killing the other zerg.
I can’t speak for Jaye but I know thet EotM NA and EU have been different back in the day. And the general mentality on NA is vastly different than the mentality on EU. EU: “Server xy nightcapping? Sucks but whatever” NA: “THEY HAVE A BETTER COVERAGE!!! THAT CAN’T BE I’M TRANSFERRING UP!!” We’re currently against a server who’s got no linked server, I think last or second last tier EU and they really crushed both our other servers who both have linked worlds with their 100 man blob yesterday.
Btw: OP doesn’t state whether they’re NA or EU
ETA: My point was: People on NA might have created a “wvw-like” EotM while wvw on EU still was and is good enough, so EotM likely still is karma train.
Ah, I did not know Jayne was EU. In that case, my statement that EOTM has changed may not be relevant. On NA at least, it is much less K-train focused than what it used to be. Maybe on EU it’s still the same as it’s always been, then.
No idea, haven’t been there for a few years – but it was different back then because when I came to EU and was a low silver rank people wanted me to duel a warrior “Nah, I can’t he’s got a high gold rank – he’s way better than me” – then he played unfair in one duel and I had him down in 3 strikes. Basically the rule was: The higher the rank the easier the kill. I guess they’re still karma training while the rest is in real WvW.
Going to have to sincerely disagree. That pretty much captures the NA experience for the past three years.
Jayne and I are on EU – and my experience is as well that we’re trying to get to the fights and not to avoid them. There are exceptions, sure.
And there you have a “PvE vs WvW” problem again: We’re brushed with the NA solutions although we don’t have the same problems.
Can you please have a deep look at how the classes interact with each other?
I have no troubles to fight against “vanilla” builds but I have no chance to even see what hits me when I’m fighting against Elites. I have no idea how the programming is – I do know that there’s differences between classes since I haven’t been able to fight especially thieves (I am one myself) since a patch 1,5 years ago and that was recently fixed. Now it seems that this bug effects all Elites, they seem faster than me, can just outrun my attacks and as I already said: I can’t even see what hits me when fighting against them.
ETA: I created this thread in the bug forum but it was moved here so probably those who are responsible for bugs will never see it :P
I still mean it though – check your combat programming for wvw, pls.
Some of the HoT specializations weren’t implemented in the best way, however, many of them opened up the field for some classes to perform better and in different ways, like druid, scrapper, and chronomancer. The elite specs just got created with better technology and in ways that allow defense and offense at the same time, and the base classes should get some revamps to allow competition with the elite specs, but it is not PvE’s fault since a few of the specs were made with pvp/wvw in mind, specifically the scrapper.
Wrong – it’s powercreep all around and the whole game has been made faceroll easy. It’s fine if you fight against mob, not so fine if you fight against other players – and that is my issue.
I’m actually doing whatever the kitten I want in this game – nothing against my server, I hope they know it, but I’m not staying in wvw to defend bay which has just been attacked by 50 anymore, I’m not shedding a tear when we lose something – I’m trying to have fun and that was it – If I cared like I used to, all the insanity going on in wvw would make me really cranky and the DBL did – be glad that I never spoke to someone while on that map cause all that swearing would have cost me that friendship
ETA; But I might have gotten you wrong. Yeah I did – sorry tired
Well TC was the probably most packed server on NA – at some point it had to hit them.
I mean how many “wvw is dead” threads have we got? So it’s Tier one to them and wvw for the rest of us
You know what also provides more vulnerability and requires less work? Autoattacking with staff on daredevil, but i guess that is the skill in this game deteriorating via an expansion.
Thematically i would agree, its a very cool skill. However, when with the new specializations adding in a mobile reflection field that you can continue to do REAL damage or cc in addition to that reflection field, it is terrible. Plus the cooldown on daggerstorm is too long in today’s terms so its useless.
What? It is a mobile reflection field – what are you talking about?
I’m not using it because it looks pretty, btw.
First off, just because you can carry a thief, doesn’t mean you should.
Not all groups are created equal in skill and adding alternate ways to build raids for success would actually promote more viable ways to play. Secondly/lastly, what does this part have to do with the OP or are you just being super random for no reason?
PvE players whined they need something to require skill – so they got PvE raids. And the faceroll Hot specialisations which destroyed pvp and wvw on top of that. And that is my point: the stuff you want for PvE would further mess with the other game modes and PvE is already fine, even if thief brings no group utility – which I do – I’m just not a healer or anything, I’m self sufficient, know how to survive and how to deal damage – that is my role – no need to turn me into a healer or anything. If that’s too much for PvE thieves or if others can’t live without a tenth squadmember bringing boons then you indeed shouldn’t roll thief, sorry.
From game balance a meta-game is derived and as such how the game mode is actually played. We have a dichotomy in which the game devs think a clever move is to maintain balance as equal as it can possibly be between all the different game-modes, which is, within the very roots of the idea, a clearly wrong move , or, by just listening to their arguments, more like a fallacy … as proven by the diminishing numbers.
Having the same balance for all 3 game modes isn’t neccessarily wrong, just that they dumbed down the game with HoT and balance all modes on PvE while balance isn’t important for PvE at all.
And thanks – I’m really wondering why others quit wvw as it often doesn’t seem as if the balance really is at fault but that “people just became bored” which I don’t really believe but which of course is a part of it.
I have a chart of the activity drop off after the reintroduction of ABL. Its quite dramatic. Activity was rising from linking and rewards and then just plummets after ABL is introduced. I cant say if activity wouldn’t have slowed if they had kept DBL, but neither can you. We can only deal with the reality presented. And in this case, it activity took a dive after ABL came back.
You already said that yourself, didn’t you?
The population dropped after HoT/DBLs and then even more after the introduction of the ABLs because that was when more people realized that wvw has far bigger problems than the DBLs – doesn’t mean they were good or suited for wvw.
ETA: And that’s why the population will continue to drop. In my opinion it’s the balance, but I might be wrong.
The conclusion one can reach from this is that DBL wasn’t the problem.
DBL was a problem: A lot of people quit because of it, EB was “overqueued” and more people quit. It’s not the core of the problem, sure.
And you already said it yourself: Those who liked the DBL weren’t “The angry zerg that came to the forums” – it was/is few.
I think the biggest indicator of the health of wvw and what this game needs are GvG guilds – if they vanish the mode is really doomed (and they didn’t even use the DBLs). And I think most of them did vanish.
ETA: I have no idea whether or not I’m right with this, but in my opinion the since June/Oktober 2015 messed up balance is the reason why wvw is dying. If they would fix that and reintroduce 3 DBLs people would still queue EB because the DBL as they were were unsuitable for wvw. And the reason why the DBLs were designed like that was because anet listened to the people on this forum.
“People quit because of AP”
No, they just realized that this game is a mess, no matter whether it’s DBL or AP (people were blaming DBL when it was still the only BL for all problems wvw had). Eventually they gave up and the number drop is from wvw being a mess, not because the AP came back.
“Different balance”
The problem right now is:
We have a pvp team, no wvw team and a balance team. The PvP team can only juggle with runes and amulets, they can’t change the traits. They have to inform the balance team what traits are a problem. The other problem we have is that the damage is calculated differently in pvp and wvw – so what appears “too weak” in pvp might be “ok” in wvw. So, we already have 2 different modes which are already “balanced” differently.
In the end the best right now might be to separate PvE from pvp and wvw and have the pvp team balance the game – the damage has to be counted similar in both modes though. That will lead to pve players being confused once they enter wvw or pvp but it’s the best they can do as the pve balance for all 3 modes just doesn’t work.
ETA²: Pvp balance really is enough for wvw – it has been in the past when things weren’t that messed up (before June last year). Only thing we need now and then is that someone has a look at large scale combat – but the changes for “balancing” that are comparatively minor.
By putting AA on cooldown, players have fewer choices while stealthed. If on ICD theives have to burn init to resume fighting. One or two seconds doesn’t sound like much, but those seconds not pressuring an enemy can be crucial particularly against bunker classes.
I immediately felt the difference fighting D/P across all my builds. On my Stealth Condi Mesmer along with the Torch buff, D/P went from being able to directly counter to being mostly fodder.
I know that 1 s is (too) long. You have a point but I’d like to keep my 2 chances – I have actually no idea how to solve this mess – on the one hand it seems as if my chances against other thieves are better, but then again I haven’t been able to hit them for 1,5 years. And I guess no matter what we say: Anet really needs a thief pro to sort all this mess out – we’re whiny kids to them anyway.
Getting a full AA chain in is not that easy, you have mostly 2 chances to get your BS in and are stealthed while trying – the ICD sucks, yes, but in my opinion it’s better than being automatically revealed and going for AA.
That could be the next nerf, btw: “If you are hit by the stealth attack cooldown you’re automatically revealed” – there you have your AA chain
im getting even those shovels and sand from the pve map “i dont recall the name” while playing other game mode, i feel Anet is kinda lost in the rewarding system, rewards feel a bit of a mess overhall.
Silverwastes and you need those shovels to build up a guild hall – so people asked for them being obtainable in wvw as well. And that does make sense.
Maybe your main problem is poor inventory management.
ETA: A lot of stuff from these reward tracks is needed for guild buffs/upgrades – people would have to play PvE to get the WvW buff and that was wrong, so it’s better now, even if these reward tracks are “too much PvE” for you (no offense).
its all good n all using there’s gimmick builds to solo camps but vs a player with braincell’s it will not work. i would run a build that takes more then 2 mins to solo a camp (i know thats not possible) but can fight people then some cheap crap build that can only mow down npc’s
Of course it’s possible to take longer than 2 mins to take a camp – and while I was doing a camp capping marathon the other day I killed everybody who came to defend – but then you have to theorycraft again if the guy was experienced, what build he was running etc etc etc. There was no warrior who tried to stop me – I wouldn’t have a chance against that. ETA: And against a lot other classes/builds (depending on the skill).
In short: You guys can speak of which build is the best to kill enemy players all you like that topic is far too complex – and thief usually isn’t tanky, so every build should be good enough to clear a camp in a decent time.
ETA (yeah, I know) : The important point is to chose the right weapon to do that and D/P is the wrong choice. Or: If you want to take longer than 2 minutes to take a camp: use D/P incoming fight guaranteed – problem: Most people don’t run around solo anymore – the longer you take, the more likely a group will come.
I am always cynical & critical of everyones self proclaimed skill. Sorry if my statement came across as hostile.
Not hostile but arrogant as you assumed that I don’t know how to play, that’s why I self proclaimed that I in fact do know how to play – If I didn’t, my CnD would still miss each and everything. Btw: I’m not only using it with steal so the “precast you used it to early” doesn’t apply to your theory of what my problem was.
The blind on CnD idea would provide defense upon using the skill. Basically your asking blinding powder to be added to CnD. We already have tones of active defenses, be damage reduction while in stealth, dodges galore, or damage reduction via weakness/dodge damage reduction buff. We don’t need this. This idea does not solve either of the issues of landing CnD or landing a stealth attack. It just band aids failed CnD attempts.
The blind only applies when CnD hits, not when it misses and it’s nice to have against all the AoE damage. Unfortunately Anet didn’t know what to do with SA Grandmaster traits, so CiS was moved from adept to grandmaster and a D/D thief now can’t take CiS and SRej – Deceiver, this guy needs some thief lessons.
Well if we are weakened then it would be fair I’d say but then we would tickle the opements even more then we already do with shortbow
Yeah tickle – SB doesn’t do much more than that.
And don’t forget that Necros work differently than thieves – they usually use condis to their advantage (but don’t ask me how exactly all this self poisoning, weakness etc works – probably what me put off necro as it’s too emo).
If I’d play necro I’d test that – but actually headshot is pretty nasty too.
I don’t think so actually, have never really seen anyone using it successfully in a 1 vs 1 except for evade spam or blast spam if the opponent was already out of everything.
I’m afraid you didn’t answer my question why SB would be OP with that buff :P
Sb and d/p are not in the same category tbh and shouldn’t be compared.
No idea what you mean as I didn’t compare them.
I think having anything blocking projectiles with the inative system would be broken tbh.
Not sure – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrosive_Poison_Cloud sounds pretty spammable as well. What would be the worst that could happen in a zerg and in a 1 vs 1? SB is pretty useless in a 1 vs 1 (unless the enemy is already low health or you’re out of evades) all I could do would be standing in a poison field, wasting my initative and then? Doesn’t sound OP to me, tbh.
Yeah we’re playing GW2, it would only be fair if the one class that requires skill (Thief) can also be played like the rest of the 8 classes. (Faceroll spam, passive childish defenses, CCs galore)
You can actually do that with thief: D/P daredevil is your answer.
ETA: Kitten, I always forget that pvp has got different rules: I’m speaking of Daredevil in wvw.
It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever anyway – “I’m not that tanky, still a skill hits me hard” – well ok then, what was your point again?
ETA. But maybe that was the opposite of what he wanted to say. Anyway – since I’m apparently a fan of zerker’s (tankiest charakter: Soldier’s warrior with I bet zerker trinkets) I’m off to the skills editor to see what not mediocre is.
Full Mistrel plus some nice trait granting 40 toughness per whatever gives me 3525 without food so far. Might be a bit harder to get these stats in PvP though. So I’d say: 3000 Armor is mediocre.
I think he means 3k Armor, not toughness.
My Marauder/Zerker (+2 random rings which have some toughness in it) Rev brings it to 1200 toughness and 2440 armor.
I feel rushed to give my feedback as it might otherwise be too late.
Didn’t really have the time to try the hammers (sorry, not really playing at the moment).
I like their use in structures but I don’t think I appreciate their use on field. Especially regarding golems like someone told above. Again: didn’t have the opportunity to try it but if it repairs a significant amount of health, then I see they are a problem.
Also: It’s kind of nice being able to backstab catas but in the end: Give (defensive) siege a purpose again – it’s already hard enough to live through all the AoE on walls, now burning all the supply on repairs and the AoE and canon-backstabbing thieves – kitten , it’s getting out of hand.
So my sensible idea: Hammers are only useable when not in fight and siege is only destroyed by non crits non condis, like before.
And in case you want to know what killed wvw:
Free transfers
Ferocity Patch (reason: condis were OP and being tanky didn’t really help afterwards)
Stability changes
Players locking tiers on NA /scoring in general
June 23th Patch
HoT- Elites
Desert Borderlands
Linking
It might appear to you that recent changes made people quit but in fact it’s a long line of poor and/or risky decisions.
To your DBL: I’m still usually a solo roamer and I really hated that map – also there’s solo roamers/havoc groups/zergs/blobs why trying to force people to play only one of it? DBL is only suited for havoc groups.
So you still wvw because you can run a faceroll class and build and have fun why all of those who don’t stand a chance against that quit?
Fights like these (minus the faceroll) were really common until June last year when things got out of control.
Uhh Jana from one thief main to another, the rest of us are allowed to have fun even though your D/D build is dead lol.
- a former s/d p/d thief
I don’t care what you played before – you didn’t get my point. People are quitting because of “your fun”. If I had any faith left I’d say that this video is proof that wvw finally needs balance and would thank you for that. Maybe I will 3 months from now.
Well and I’m the attorney of SA and daggerstorm:
I don’t care about Rending Shade but if you’re running D/D (which you should in PvE), then you have CnD which adds 3 stacks of vulnerability = 3% more damage to your enemy – and hey it stacks.
Daggerstorm is one of the best designed skills in this game – if you don’t know how to make it work it’s your loss – but I would appreciate it if people who don’t understand it left it alone.
Also: PvE raid squads usually have more than enough boons to make up for one thief.
The skill in this game deteriorated with HoT and I still had hope that some of it would come back but it seems as if it will only get worse.
And: I really hate PvE – you can sleep through most of it – why do people want buffs for that snoozefest?
Enemy: D/P + staff thief Daredevil – all npcs were dead when I arrived. His mistakes were a) getting hit while being in SR (you don’t stand in the middle of it!!) b) switching to staff – had he stayed D/P I would’ve stand no chance (he tried in the end but that was too late).
ETA: That to defended camps and your discussion whether S/P or D/P is better. There is a reason why everybody and their mother are running D/P and you can have the “hardest hitting” skills in game – doesn’t help you if you miss.
Nah, they should make choking gas like necros field and block projectiles. If BP blocked projectiles, it would be broken.
If BP blocked projectiles it would be the only reason why I’d stop shaking my head every time anyone brings or recommends D/P for PvE – and yes, it would be completely broken in pvp/wvw.
I love the idea of choking gas blocking projectiles (additionally to the benefits of poison) would buff zerg thieves (cough) and also make SB more viable against D/P.
What issue did this change address exactly? I’m confused as to why it was necessary.
We got VS as a baseline (so PvE thieves have a better chance to get in a PvE raid party) (because SA doesn’t offer a damage boost anymore as they took that out last June – would be stupid to use SA in a raid) – and because every thief now takes it and because it’s so OP, we had to be nerfed. So the thief specialists flipped through this forum and found 3 complaints in the past year: “Condi D/D thief”, “Rune of the Trapper” and 2 Guards complaining about us not having a cooldown while in stealth “you can spam backstab”.
ETA: Yeah it’s really that easy to destroy the fun of a few hundreds – just post a random complaint on the forums – chances are it will be in game in no time. And yes, anet this is a shame.
it also feels very clunky in pve (so at the very least remove the cd there)
You rarely get CC-ed or have to face blocks etc in PvE – removing the ICD there would lead to the illusion that everything is fine and PvP and WvW don’t need improvements.. Stuff like this just leads to way more confusion. Funniest thing is that I had one build for PvE, WvW and PvP before June 23th 2015 and it worked really fine – can’t do that anymore (and that’s also pretty confusing – thank god there’s gliders because I always forget that I have CiS only in wvw).
Also: it’s rather easy to get used to it in PvE – if there’s no lags and bugs.
I’m not too happy with how they buffed P/P either “Lets take might away from SA because it’s too OP – Whoopsie” – but anets answer to everything is MOAR damage. Their argument why D auto was buffed was because they acknowledge that thief also has to use initative for defensive purposes – and the same applies here: A P/P thief gives up all his defenses – so you can argue that unload is too powerful but the thief has got nothing left afterwards, so is nerfing it really justified (in the current state of the game)?
If you dont want your loot, give it to me, I get hardly a thing being a support water ele!
Full bags?! Never heard of it!
But here’s a water field to keep you alive so you can fill your bags!
If you weren’t so arrogant towards GH I would :P – I couldn’t care less about loot – but then again anet was very generous to me by giving me spark when my thief was 2 weeks old – I’m good since then. I do want the Mystic Clovers though.
ETA: I got some nice skins for which I would have to farm some dungeons – that’s nice too – it’s just too much for me personally, I get why it was “needed” for wvw – just let me turn the wobbly off and I’m fine.
The 40k while was the enemy was downed – for some reason the damage then is more than usual – so it was about 22k until that guy was downed, the rest doesn’t really matter, does it?
unload is one of the few attacks that when used successively fast enough, the dmg number shown is a total dmg, not for a single skill
Thanks for that info. Rapidfire does as well as do other skills. Has got nothing to do with what I wrote though.
The 40k while was the enemy was downed – for some reason the damage then is more than usual – so it was about 22k until that guy was downed
Or does the damage done to you when you’re downed really matter to you?
ETA: I get that it’s not perfectly worded but the reason the OP is outraged and thinks this is the skill that will kill every zerg (question is why it doesn’t already do – P/P has been buffed a few months ago) is that it does 40k “within 2 seconds” 18 k of that damage are rather neglectable.
That build is not for roam or solo, but if the dude go with the zerg can focus on anybody and do an instakill. Which you can’t reproduce because no class can laid down 40K in 2 seconds. No amount of healing will save you there.
The 40k while was the enemy was downed – for some reason the damage then is more than usual – so it was about 22k until that guy was downed, the rest doesn’t really matter, does it?
I don’t know if you’re running in a zerg but if; do you notice how many walls of reflection are up?! It’s very unlikely that 3 unloads will hit and hit the same target as even people in a zerg know how to dodge.
I have no idea what exactly happened in this video since I don’t play pvp – and I do agree that the might stacks on unload were a bit over the top and somehow straight past the point (of the problems P/P has) but I don’t think it’s as dramatic as you make it out to be. But hey, you can ask for a 1s cooldown on projectiles for thief on the thief forums – it’s very likely it will be in game with the next patch, while the other 8 classes still faceroll their way to victory.
PS: Give it a shot to see how it works out Oh and equip the OP baseline venomshare for which we were slapped with the 1 s stealth attack cooldown, cause it’s so good that we had to be nerfed in advance!
I prefer getting chest instead of loot — as many chests as there are in the game, there are far more different sorts of loot. I prefer letting it pile up until I’m not actively playing, then I rapidly open -> salvage -> deposit -> vendor sigils/runes. It’s quick and I can postpone it longer when stuff remains in loot boxes.
The motion in the corner of the eye makes me nervous – would be great to have an option to turn it off – but in the end I’d rather have anet working on something more important – the QOL changes the past year(s) were pretty good, we can hold out a bit longer. Just wanted to chime in that not everybody is overjoyed about the reward tracks.
I’m aiming solemly at the end-reward – so the wobbly chests are pretty annoying to me too. Especially in fight. Like the funny “xy capped” “Dude, I don’t give a kitten”.
