(edited by Kaon.7192)
Here’s a rather novel idea. How about buffing Vital Shot’s direct damage scaling and making Unload grant Haste (4s) and evade frames (1s) instead of being a damage skill on its own?
It could become a secondary ranged DPS set that can also set up effective melee bursts (Unload -> swap to melee), rather than competing with Shortbow’s as a utility set.
Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
fine.I actually thought that was fine, too, although I didn’t think the 35% increase was enough to justify moving it up a tier, since the healing is massively underwhelming as it is.
Then I realized that, after this patch, if I put 30 into Acrobatics for this trait there’s absolutely nothing I’d want in the Master slot. I’d probably still take the vigor-on-heal trait, but nothing remaining in the Master tier looked even remotely appealing enough for me to want to pigeonhole myself into Acrobatics.
Yes at roughly 100 hp/s if you spend all of your ini all the time, it’s extremely lackluster as a Grandmaster trait, especially when comparing with the sustain options of other classes or even our own Shadow Rejuvenation.
The bigger issue is that they don’t affect Rank points (just Glory, the currency), and that Glory is worthless at the moment…
-There was a good idea about condi transfer (maybe a venom Trickery Adept Major trait? 10s cd), this fits the flow toward party support if it worked with sharing, and makes taking 1 venom more viable without sharing. Venom share not OP at all with no break stun or defensive utility.
-Another good idea posted was a Shadow return chained skill on Steal, I would add an Ini cost or slightly longer steal cd if used. If not used, it is wasted when steal cools down. This may also lead to removal of Shadow return on Shadowstep, for a huge cd cut.
Wow. I think it’s safe to assume you’ve pretty much read through the entire thread since I think you saw my post back on page 4. XD
I’ve actually made a new topic for it here.
A rework of Steal is what I feel would be the most important and impactful change they can make for the Thief class at this point.
If Steal itself is potent and genuinely useful at its base level, it would decrease the dependance of Thieves on certain weaponsets for survivability (Sword) and mobility (Shortbow), and open up so many build choices for Thieves due to the fact that it is available for every Thief build to make use of, regardless of weaponsets, stats, or traits.
Iterating on my earlier suggestions, my ideal Steal mechanic would do the following:
1) Have a 30 second base cooldown shared between F1 and F2 (can only use one or the other)
2) F1 – Targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Upon success, steal 2 items, one offensive in F3, one defensive in F4. For 10 seconds after using F1, this will be available as a Shadow Return that is also instant but does not break stuns.
3) F2 – Ground targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Shares a cooldown with F1. Also available as a Shadow Return for 10 seconds after use. Randomly selects an enemy in the AoE and populates F3 and F4 accordingly. Does not populate F3 and F4 if no enemies are in the AoE.
4) F3 & F4 – Use offensive or defensive item, respectively. Only one of the two can be used per Steal. Overridden by another set of items if F1 or F2 is used successfully on a targetThis new Steal would accomplish the following:
1. Give all Thief builds at least 1 way to counter CC through reaction and preparation, instead of through the passive mitigation that all other classes have access to, bringing all builds a step closer to pre-nerf S/x in terms of viability
2. Give all Thief builds a mobility boost in F2, so that Shortbow becomes less of a requirement for roaming (Even with shortbow, many warrior builds have clearly superior sustained mobility)
3. Make it easier for Anet to balance the Shadow Return mechanics since Steal is cooldown based
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it, and give it better situational utility through the choice between an offensive and defensive ability
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a more viable alternative to Acrobatics and Shadow Arts, and possibly making it possible to build more interesting traits around the new Steal to address some of Thief’s weaker areas (see some of my suggestions below)…
A rework of Steal is what I feel would be the most important and impactful change they can make for the Thief class at this point.
If Steal itself is potent and genuinely useful at its base level, it would decrease the dependance of Thieves on certain weaponsets for survivability (Sword) and mobility (Shortbow), and open up so many build choices for Thieves due to the fact that it is available for every Thief build to make use of, regardless of weaponsets, stats, or traits.
Iterating on my earlier suggestions, my ideal Steal mechanic would do the following:
1) Have a 30 second base cooldown shared between F1 and F2 (can only use one or the other)
2) F1 – Targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Upon success, steal 2 items, one offensive in F3, one defensive in F4. For 10 seconds after using F1, this will be available as a Shadow Return that is also instant but does not break stuns.
3) F2 – Ground targeted Shadowstep. Instant, but does not break stuns. Shares a cooldown with F1. Also available as a Shadow Return for 10 seconds after use. Randomly selects an enemy in the AoE and populates F3 and F4 accordingly. Does not populate F3 and F4 if no enemies are in the AoE.
4) F3 & F4 – Use offensive or defensive item, respectively. Only one of the two can be used per Steal. Overridden by another set of items if F1 or F2 is used successfully on a target
This new Steal would accomplish the following:
1. Give all Thief builds at least 1 way to counter CC through reaction and preparation, instead of through the passive mitigation that all other classes have access to, bringing all builds a step closer to pre-nerf S/x in terms of viability
2. Give all Thief builds a mobility boost in F2, so that Shortbow becomes less of a requirement for roaming (Even with shortbow, many warrior builds have clearly superior sustained mobility)
3. Make it easier for ANet to balance the Shadow Return mechanics since Steal is cooldown based
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it, and give it better situational utility through the choice between an offensive and defensive ability
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a more viable alternative to Acrobatics and Shadow Arts, and possibly making it possible to build more interesting traits around the new Steal to address some of Thief’s weaker areas (see some of my suggestions below)
Possible traited effects for the new Steal below. These are just some ideas I’ve thought of that could address some of the problems Thieves have with low sustain, condi removal, and group utility. It should go without saying that some of them could be problematic when paired with eachother or existing traits, and therefore should be tested and cherry picked accordingly and is not meant to be blindly implemented in bulk.
1) Lower bound of 20s cooldown shared between F1 and F2 (scales with Trickery line)
2) Shadow Returns on F1 and F2 break stuns and AoE heals (Grandmaster Acro, Hard to Catch) – Remove rng and detrimental element from HtC, add more sustain options to Acro
3) Shadow Returns on F1 and F2 remove 3 conditions (Master Acro, new) – Condi removal option for Acro
4) F1 transfers 3 conditions and stuns target, F2 AoE boon rip and daze (Grandmaster Trickery, Sleight of Hand) – Condi removal/application option for Trickery, group utility in AoE boon rip + interrupt
5) F1 leeches from target (2k base dmg + heal), F2 lowered AoE leech (800 base dmg + heal per target) + blast finisher (Adept DA, Mug) – AoE dmg component, situationally higher sustain, blast for utility
6) F1 immobilizes and bleeds target, F2 AoE chills + torment (Master DA, new, moves Improvization to Trickery) – Control + condi dmg option
7) F1 Stealths self, F2 AoE smoke field (Master SA, Hidden Thief) – Group utility through AoE blind field, AoE stealth option when combined with the new Mug
8) Use of F3 does not preclude use of F4 and vice versa, Stealing recharges a random subset of utilities (Master Trickery, Improvization, moved from DA) – Gives Improvisation a useful non-rng component
9) F3 grants might, F4 heals (Adept Trickery, new) – Sustain and hybrid damage boost option in Trickery
Thoughts?
(edited by Kaon.7192)
No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.
Jon
This is a reasonable enough change IMO. Dependence of Thief builds on the CS line needs to be reduced to allow for better build variety and the only way to do that while avoiding power creep is by increasing Thief’s base effectiveness and reducing the effectiveness of certain traits in the CS line. There is no other way around it. Whether these changes go too far or not enough, however, is certainly up for debate.
Regarding Shadow Return, how about taking a similar approach and removing it from Sword altogether (change Inf to a leap finisher maybe?), and add Shadow Return as an F2 for our class mechanic Steal, adding a Stun Breaking/condi removal component?
This would accomplish the following:
1. Allow all Thief builds access to a more readily available Stun Breaker (that we really need due to being shoehorned into Zerker builds to be useful to our teams and the lack of Stability access), making other weaponsets approach pre-nerf S/x in viability
2. Give Thieves at least 1 Stun Breaker regardless of what utilities they need to bring on their bar (Venom share anyone?)
3. Make it easier for you to balance SR since Steal is a cooldown based mechanic
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a viable alternative to AcrobaticsWhile we’re on the topic of Steal, please also consider removing the ability to use Stolen Items from F1, and add a F3 that will be populated with an Offensive item, and F4 that will be populated as a Defensive item when F1 is used. A Thief can then choose to between one of these two items to activate based on the situation at hand, or to Steal again with an unobstructed F1 without using F3 or F4 if he needs to use Steal itself to reroll F3 and F4 or to activate traited effects.
These changes would make untraited Steal a much more robust mechanic on par with the usefulness of other class mechanics that don’t require traits to be class-defining.
Basically you saying “anet you killed S/D thieves so why dont you just remove thief sword as a playable weapon?”
Hell no you P/D,D/D thief will not get this buff on S/D thieves behalf
Your blind loyalty to a single weaponset is… unhealthy.
All other Thief builds sorely need access to something like the current SR that can mitigate stuns reactively, because we overwhelmingly lack passive CC immunity, damage tanking, and sustain options. If SR is nerfed to no longer being able to activate while stunned, we will loose even this sole option.
The change I suggested would grant every Thief build an extra stun breaker (maybe just instant displacement + traitable stun break?) that can be used after Steal.
It’d be easier to balance than the Initiative based Shadow Return in Infil since Steal is cooldown based, and vastly improve build variety through:
1) Making Trickery a better survivability line
2) Freeing up an utility slot in all Thief builds usually reserved for a stun breaker
3) Giving every Thief build access to a disengage mechanic that’s necessary for survival without access to CC immunity or damage mitigation or high sustain
Bumping this REALLY old bug for some more visibility.
Doesn’t seem like it’d be a very difficult bug to fix.
I too love the idea behind venom and traps but find them very hard to work in a limited toolbar. In order to survive one needs some sort of stunbreak and some sort of condition removal and this leaves little room for a venom or trap. Those builds are not really effective if you have only one on the tool bar.
I see a “venom thief build” as sort of a “shout warrior build” but the warrior has shouts that can do multiple things LIKE remove conditions. The venom is very limited and with long cooldowns that one venom on a toolbar is limiting options rather then expanding on them. When I find my survival abilities lacking or need signet of shadows for that extra speed it tends to be the venom skill I remove from my toolbar.
In terms of Venoms, one idea I remember reading about that I really liked was adding a passive component for equipped Venom utilities that grant a single stack of the venom passively on a cooldown of length depending on the Venom type.
Activating the Venom grants you an additional number of stacks for burst condi/leech/control exactly as it would now.
RE: Pistol Whip
Reducing aftercast is nice, but the current state of Retal really limits its use to fights off center point where each team has at least 1 Guardian spamming it.
Compressing its damage into fewer hits and shorter animation time would definitely help make it more viable in these kinds of fights.
Winston Charrchill
Something I’ve posted from another thread. These are probably out of scope for the Dec 10 patch, but should be kept in mind and discussed for future Thief changes:
Condition transfer is definitely something that should be explored more for Thieves as a condi removal option (Dancing dagger is 1 obvious skill candidate). It would alleviate much of our problem with lack of condi removal options, poor access to critical condi’s like burning and even fits well with the Thief theme IMO. Mesmers could benefit from some more condi transfer options too.
Boon steal definitely needs to be explored further also. The following themes should be looked into:
1. Let it scale to the number of boons a target currently has so that it can effectively punish boon spamming while not disproportionally penalize classes that make strategic use of fewer numbers of important boons.
2. Each boon steal skill/trait needs to define exactly what category of boons it can steal (Offensive or Defensive), and within each of these categories there must be a pre-defined priority list rather than the almost random manner that it’s determined at the moment. This will make it possible for skilled Thieves to make strategic use of even very limited boon stealing capabilities, rather than being forced to spray and pray against most boon bunkers.
I tentatively suggest the following priority lists (from high to low):
Offensive: Might → Fury → Retal → Swiftness
Defensive: Aegis → Stability → Protection → Vigor → Regen
In a similar vein I think conditions could benefit from categorization and prioritizing in terms of removal as well.
Tentative priorities:
Damaging: Confusion → Burning → Bleed → Poison → Torment
Utility: Fear → Immob → Weakness → Chill → Cripple → Vuln → Blind
Removal skills can then be used to target specific conditions of a certain category.
(edited by Kaon.7192)
All Anet needs to do with Last Refuge, is remove the revealed restriction in regards to stealth with it. Meaning, that even if you have revealed from something else, triggering Last Refuge will still put you into stealth, as if you never had revealed.
Trait fixed, and it truly becomes a last refuge.
Would do nothing to prevent LR triggering mid C&D and revealing you when C&D lands. We’re going to need a more thorough solution.
Best one I’ve seen is so far is making it drop a Smoke Field that blocks projectiles and can be combo’d with on your own terms.
(edited by Kaon.7192)
Also, as others have mentioned, please work on some kind of change for traits that can be detrimental such as Last Refuge and Hard to Catch.
Hard to Catch is less of a priority as it’s not mandatory, but Last Refuge is akin to a poison pill that Thieves need to swallow to get the rest of the benefits of the SA line.
No, I am saying that I don’t want the balance of the thief held hostage by a 15 point minor in critical strikes so we need to take that initiative away from there and put it into the base class mechanics, which is exactly what we are doing.
Jon
This is a reasonable enough change IMO. Dependence of Thief builds on the CS line needs to be reduced to allow for better build variety and the only way to do that while avoiding power creep is by increasing Thief’s base effectiveness and reducing the effectiveness of certain traits in the CS line. There is no other way around it. Whether these changes go too far or not enough, however, is certainly up for debate.
Regarding Shadow Return, how about taking a similar approach and removing it from Sword altogether (change Inf to a leap finisher maybe?), and add Shadow Return as an F2 for our class mechanic Steal, adding a Stun Breaking/condi removal component?
This would accomplish the following:
1. Allow all Thief builds access to a more readily available Stun Breaker (that we really need due to being shoehorned into Zerker builds to be useful to our teams and the lack of Stability access), making other weaponsets approach pre-nerf S/x in viability
2. Give Thieves at least 1 Stun Breaker regardless of what utilities they need to bring on their bar (Venom share anyone?)
3. Make it easier for you to balance SR since Steal is a cooldown based mechanic
4. Make Steal inherently useful as more than just a gap closer and situational utility tool without traiting for it
5. Add a survivability aspect to the Trickery line so that it could be a viable alternative to Acrobatics
While we’re on the topic of Steal, please also consider removing the ability to use Stolen Items from F1, and add a F3 that will be populated with an Offensive item, and F4 that will be populated as a Defensive item when F1 is used. A Thief can then choose to between one of these two items to activate based on the situation at hand, or to Steal again with an unobstructed F1 without using F3 or F4 if he needs to use Steal itself to reroll F3 and F4 or to activate traited effects.
These changes would make untraited Steal a much more robust mechanic on par with the usefulness of other class mechanics that don’t require traits to be class-defining.
(edited by Kaon.7192)
I really like all of these suggestions.
Offensive: Might -> Fury -> Retal -> Swiftness
Defensive: Aegis -> Stability -> Protection -> Vigor -> RegenI disagree on the defensive end – Protection is by far the most important. 33% damage reduction is insane – it allows a GC to pretend like its doubled its toughness for the duration. Followed by stability, vigor, and regen. Aegis is (IMO) the least important – 1 block that is telegraphed (since the aegis boon is visible) is fairly easy to counter.
My rationale with prioritizing Aegis is that otherwise it would outright block the attack that was supposed to Steal/Remove the boon(s) if it was not prioritized. If we were eventually given a wider variety of boonsteal options, not all of them would be unblockable like Larcenous. Off the top of my head I remember that one of the problems with the original implementation of Bountiful Theft was that an enemy with Aegis would completely negate the boon steal portion of the trait through blocking Steal.
Protection is definitely a powerful boon, but I can think of a number of key scenarios where you’d want to rip stability before protection if an enemy has both (interrupting stability stomps, for instance), but not many scenarios where it’s absolutely crucial to rip protection instead of stability. It’s usually viable to simply do damage at the reduced rate until protection is down and then burst, whereas stability needs to be prioritized to enable a number of important clutch plays that simply cannot afford waiting for stability to expire.
Anyways it’s a tentative list so the priorities are definitely debatable, but I think we both agree that some kind of pre-defined priority is definitely needed for boon stripping to become more than just a spray and pray mechanic.
I really like all of these suggestions.
Condition transfer is definitely something that should be explored more for Thieves as a condi removal option. It would alleviate much of our problem with poor access to critical condi’s like burning and even fits well with the Thief theme IMO.
Boon steal definitely needs to be explored further also. The following themes should be looked into:
1. Let it scale to the number of boons a target currently has so that it can punish boon spamming while not overly penalize classes that make strategic use of fewer numbers of important boons.
2. Each boon steal skill/trait needs to define exactly what category of boons it can steal (Offensive or Defensive), and within each of these categories there must be a pre-defined priority list rather than the almost random manner that it’s determined at the moment. This will make it possible for skilled Thieves to make strategic use of even very limited boon stealing capabilities, rather than being forced to spray and pray against most boon bunkers.
I tentatively suggest the following priority lists (from high to low):
Offensive: Might → Fury → Retal → Swiftness
Defensive: Aegis → Stability → Protection → Vigor → Regen
This post is both a suggestion and a bit of an experiment on a new post style for me (apparently the Devs prefer bullet points over walls of text).
Anyone who has tried it extensively should have found out by now that HtC is not particularly reliable as a stun breaker due to some of its detrimental tendencies. For instance:
1. Wasting itself on trivial mini stuns that you wouldn’t normally want to stun break
2. Taking you out of melee range when you need to keep up melee pressure
3. Teleporting you closer to the enemy when you want to disengage
With the Dec 10 patch, ANet proposed to disable the use of Shadow Return while CC’ed, so Thieves will become even more vulnerable to CC lockdown than we already are. Access to Hard to Catch in its current unreliable state as a Master trait is simply not enough to counteract this change, because no one will ever use it for any serious build as its oftentimes a liability due to the tendencies listed above, among others.
As such, I would recommend changing HtC to the following:
Healing skills are instant and break stuns.
This change would have the following benefits:
1. Thieves can choose between access to an extra stun breaker with very low cooldown (Withdraw) or one that also reduces condi pressure (HiS) or their healing signet could break stuns if for some reason they want to play a poor-man’s sustain warrior.
2. This stun breaker would be available to any build regardless of which utilities it needs to bring (venom share anyone?)
3. This stun breaker is reliable due to its on-demand nature, as opposed to the forced reactive stunbreak + RNG shadowstep of the original
Thoughts?
(edited by Kaon.7192)
Mostly decent changes, but the Vigor aspect of it is woefully inconsistent.
Guardians and Mesmers still have perma Vigor kitten pt minor traits while Ele’s exact same trait is moved to Master, and Engy and Thief can no longer maintain perma vigor through traits alone.
Consistency is important in making balance changes.
On a related note: “… We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor …”
So then why exactly are these Vigor on Crit traits, that essentially grant perma vigor with even a tiny amount of extra boon duration, completely unchanged?
Lastly, Shadow Return and Evasion are two of the ONLY viable defensive mechanics for Thieves in sPvP (Stealth is not viable since you loose the ability to contest points). Both are certainly slightly over the top in the current meta, but nerfing both in the same patch is definitely a bad idea and could have massive implications for Thief viability in sPvP.
Today there were some changes to how glory and rank points are handed out at the end of a match. First off, instead of being based on personal score they are now based on win or loss. Secondly, rewards are now interpolated based on the duration of the match up to a time we have determined to be a little shorter than the typical match.
Laying the Groundwork for New Game Types
There are several reasons for these changes. The biggest reason is to lay the groundwork for new game types and map mechanics. By normalizing rewards we can be much more flexible with map layouts, game types and mechanics. Game modes will need to reward players equally without directing players to one mode or another based on perceived differences in rewards or encouraging players to play a specific way in order to maximize rewards. As an added benefit, we can also begin to be more flexible with Custom Arena settings.Time interpolation falls into this category as well. If we introduce a mechanic that leaves the potential for the match to be over very quickly, such as regicide, we need to ensure that doesn’t lead to collaboration to farm rewards or encourage players to play this mode simply to maximize their rewards.
Team Based Rewards
The second big reason for this change is that we have seen that certain builds are much more effective at scoring points than other builds. For example, we see that typical bunker builds score lower than all other types of builds because they serve a vital role of point defense. All members of a team should share in the rewards equally. Again, this lays the foundation for new game modes. We don’t want to limit ideas for new modes because it creates one role that is potentially more or less lucrative than another role.The numbers chosen for the rewards are based on the data we have collected. On average players who earn the most glory earn about 120 glory per match. We therefore set the minimum numbers to be on par with this number and scaled up from there. Along with this change you will see that Solo Arena and Team Arena both reward significantly more glory and rank points for winning. This is both to compensate for the queue times as well as to reward the higher risk that is taken in these areas.
As an added anti-AFK and botting measure players will need to score at least some points to get rewards. The standard AFK detection continues to be in place and players detected as AFK will receive no rewards.
Also, as before, players will continue to earn a small bonus for having the highest score personal score in each of the game stats.
Well done.
Very nice changes here to discourage mindless zerg tagging and encourage playing to win in hot joins.
Still, it doesn’t resolve the issue of hot joins being a complete waste of time unless you happen to be present at the end of a match. Many solo/team queue players play hot join to kill time during long queues and it’s rather unreasonable to give no rewards for this scenario at all.
How about giving players a fraction of the base glory reward (that of loosing a match) every 20 seconds or so for the first 7 minutes of a player’s participation in a match instead of the match end base reward? At the end of the match, add a bonus glory reward for winning, and for top scores for each category. Then I think you’ll have a system that rewards participation fairly while still reasonably discouraging early leaving.
Proper scaling needs to be implemented, not necessarily lower scaling. The key to success in TTS runs is having only the bare minimum number of people defending turrets, while the remaining majority spends all their time DPS’ing Teq.
Teq’s health needs to scale to the number of people within 1500 range of his actual hitboxes, not to the total # of players in the area. The players at the turrets are defending instead of DPS’ing Teq himself, and are already scaling up difficulty of the defense event. They shouldn’t scale up Teq’s health at all until they come within range of Teq proper.
Also, removing the spawn window and introducing set spawn times for world bosses would definitely help with the player turnout at the very least.
Wasn’t this advertised as a game where you didn’t have to wait to have fun?
(edited by Kaon.7192)
It depends on what aspect of sPvP you’re trying to grow.
Growing the Hot Join Only playerbase isn’t exactly healthy for the game. Hot Join should not be the mode that is the most rewarding when considering an equal time investment. This is counter-intuitive to its intended role as a mode to ease players into the officially supported gamemode of 5v5 Conquest.
My suggestion is to change their official names to Practice Arenas to reflect their actual usage in the sPvP realm. They should be something that people can use to jump in, test their builds, jump out, and get rewarded for whatever they accomplish in that time, as was the case in the previous reward model.
Solo Queue and Team Queue, however, need to have their reward models revamped to completely overshadow whatever you can achieve in the same amount of time in Practice Arenas. Because this is the gameplay that the classes, skills and builds are balanced around, and until a new player has experienced these modes, you can’t honestly claim they have contributed anything positive to the health of sPvP.
Growing hot join is bad, why? Because of the way the format is? What if changes were made to the format to alter your opinions of it? Or are you saying that there is no possible way that hot join could ever be good for the game?
If hot join is a mode to ease players into PvP, why is it a bad thing that we are discouraging people from leaving the game in the middle?
There are definitely ways of improving the Hot Join format. Maxing out at 5 players on each team for all the official servers would be one obvious way, improving the win bonus and devaluing mindless tagging would be another. I don’t doubt that with enough such improvements, hot join would make a good format for new players to actually learn real sPvP, and only then would growing the hot join player base be good for the game. You can try to grow the current hot join format as much as you like, but I’m not particularly optimistic about the retention rates of the current hotjoin player base when you start to make changes that force them to play differently from what they’re accustomed to from playing hot join in its current state.
Regarding the match end reward change: There is a middle ground between discouraging leaving, and making hot join a complete waste of time unless you’re present at the end of match. I think this can be accomplished by simply greatly improving match end bonuses rather than by removing all progression during matches as you have done. Especially when some of your most dedicated players use hotjoin as a way to squeeze in a bit of extra progression in between ranked games. The last thing you should be doing right now is making progression even slower for them…
(edited by Kaon.7192)
Common legitimate use cases that this change negatively affects include:
-Playing in Hot Join while waiting for solo/team queue now rewards essentially no glory because it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to finish a match before queue ends. Even if you do finish your first match, the early half of your next match would likely reward nothing.
-Players with flaky connections dc’ing before end of match will not be rewarded glory for anything they accomplished before that point, even if they connect back before match ends.
But more importantly, this change doesn’t put nearly enough of a dent in those disgusting glory farm servers that can still gain glory at many times the rate of regular play.
Ban the server owners and anyone who has spent more than a dozen hours in those servers since their introductions (I’m being generous with the definition of willful exploitation here).
This is an exploit that completely destroyed whatever pitiful value Glory, the only currency sPvP players had access to, had remaining. Please deal with it with at least a fraction of the gravitas that you have demonstrated for exploits that devalue gold and undermine the PvE economy.
Frankly this double standard you have shown so far on this issue speaks volumes on how seriously you guys really take sPvP as a game mode.
Sorry, what double standard? Could you explain what you mean by that?
We realize that the change is only a band-aid for any exploiting that’s happening, which is why we are looking into other options for that specifically (I literally can’t give any more details than that, as we see the number of players participating in this increase when we do share more).
What if this change was thought of not as an exploit fix, and more of a change to hot joins to improve them? How would you feel about it in that case?
In that case I would like to ask WHY there has not yet been a proper exploit fix.
Why exactly should the number of players exploiting factor into the priority of an exploit fix?
What most of the sPvP player base are up in arms about is the fact that the players who HAVE exploited this (even if they’re as few in number as you would like to claim) have made a complete joke out of the glory and rank system, and completely undermined all the time we have put into sPvP to reach the ranks we’re on.
These players remain completely unpunished, and it’s not unreasonable to infer from your lack of an official stance that they’ll remain unpunished. The existence of these players mean that rank now means absolutely nothing, whereas before it was at least a vague indicator of the amount of time someone has spent playing sPvP.
Would you have handled this exploit in the same manner if this was a PvE exploit that allowed players to devalue gold to the degree that this exploit did to Glory? All the widespread PvE gold exploits so far have resulted in bans for at least the worst offenders almost immediately after it came to your attention. Is it too much to ask that you do the same for this sPvP exploit?
You don’t see the double standard here? Really?
Is it possible that this change could help to improve hot join in the long run, though? Just curious what your thoughts are, without bias. I know the feeling of disappointment when something is taken away, but I’d like to know if you think this change could actually help the growth of PvP.
From what I understand, people are upset that they can’t come and go from hot join and still be rewarded before the match ends. If hot join is the place where new players are learning PvP, is it healthy for people to be coming and going as they please? Is it good to promote that habit?
It depends on what aspect of sPvP you’re trying to grow.
Growing the Hot Join Only playerbase isn’t exactly healthy for the game. Hot Join should not be the mode that is the most rewarding when considering an equal time investment. This is counter-intuitive to its intended role as a mode to ease players into the officially supported gamemode of 5v5 Conquest.
My suggestion is to change their official names to Practice Arenas to reflect their actual usage in the sPvP realm. They should be something that people can use to jump in, test their builds, jump out, and get rewarded for whatever they accomplish in that time, as was the case in the previous reward model.
Solo Queue and Team Queue, however, need to have their reward models revamped to completely overshadow whatever you can achieve in the same amount of time in Practice Arenas. Because this is the gameplay that the classes, skills and builds are balanced around, and until a new player has experienced these modes, you can’t honestly claim they have contributed anything positive to the health of sPvP.
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Common legitimate use cases that this change negatively affects include:
-Playing in Hot Join while waiting for solo/team queue now rewards essentially no glory because it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to finish a match before queue ends. Even if you do finish your first match, the early half of your next match would likely reward nothing.
-Players with flaky connections dc’ing before end of match will not be rewarded glory for anything they accomplished before that point, even if they connect back before match ends.
But more importantly, this change doesn’t put nearly enough of a dent in those disgusting glory farm servers that can still gain glory at many times the rate of regular play.
Ban the server owners and anyone who has spent more than a dozen hours in those servers since their introductions (I’m being generous with the definition of willful exploitation here).
This is an exploit that completely destroyed whatever pitiful value Glory, the only currency sPvP players had access to, had remaining. Please deal with it with at least a fraction of the gravitas that you have demonstrated for exploits that devalue gold and undermine the PvE economy.
Frankly this double standard you have shown so far on this issue speaks volumes on how seriously you guys really take sPvP as a game mode.
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This was to stop an exploit players were using to farm glory and rank points. You will still get all the glory and RP you earned during the match when the match concludes.
This was a very short-sighted change that fixed practically nothing about the exploit and made life worse for legitimate players.
Simply teleporting players before landing back into the waypoint areas and adding an unbreakable knockdown animation for the duration of the remaining spawn timer would have had zero affect on legitimate play and dealt a crushing blow to Skyhammer farmers.
I honestly can’t imagine what could possibly be going on in ANet’s decision making process that could lead them to these kinds of horrible decisions.
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So learn to stealth before sic em is applied. Isn’t that what you tell others to do? Dodge before the BS, or swing melee where you think the stealthed thief is?
Again, those of us who don’t rely on perma stealth aren’t up in arms about this. I enjoyed my fights last night. Challenging but fun.
It is not possible to LEARN to Stealth before Sic Em is applied because it’s instant cast with absolutely 0 tells, and 0 possible counter play. You can get lucky and Stealth before your enemy decides to randomly use it, but that misplay will only cost him a 5 second cooldown on Sic Em instead of the full cooldown. And if you’re NOT running Perma-Stealth, it’ll be ready to use before you can Stealth again.
Let me reiterate, Sic Em affects Perma-Stealth Thieves the least out of all Thief builds that make use of Stealth due to the lack of targetting opportunities. If you still can’t see a problem with this kind of design, I’ll take evilapprentice’s advice and stop wasting my time.
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I agree with the overall sentiment that there are several Apex Predator builds right now that are completely overshadowing all others for each possible role in sPvP.
ANet seems to be waiting for people to discover other builds that can match or beat those builds in their quest to improve build variety, when they should really be doing the opposite and tone down the Apex Predator builds. Otherwise the game will continue to suffer from slow power creeps that will eventually bring sPvP to its knees.
so do any of the thieves not do any attacking at all? because if i remember correctly when you spam 1 running behind someone and it finally hits you get 3 to 4 seconds of reveal as well.
why are you so bad that a 4 second reveal from a ranger will kill you. and it can’t even do anything while you’re stealthed.
if you’re so bad at the easiest class in the game then you need to roll a cleric guardian and have nothing but heal skills.From this point on, anyone who makes it clear they haven’t read anything I’ve said up until this point is just wasting their breath – more so than usual, as hard as that is to believe from the displayed lack of reading comprehension.
if you were any good you wouldn’t be kittening about something you already self inflict on yourself.
Inflicting Revealed on ourselves is a regulation mechanic for Stealth attacks. Analogous to an empty Adrenaline bar preventing Bursts or an empty Life Force bar for DS.
Having Revealed applied for x seconds by an enemy is a hard-counter, comparable to emptying the Adrenaline or Life Force bars for x seconds, effectively disabling the use of either of those mechanics for the duration.
Imagine if the undodgeable, instant-cast, 2000 range Sic Em had either of those effects instead of Revealed. And imagine if ANet has stated that they’re planning to implement other skills with such effects down the pipe.
What does this do for the viability of builds that revolve around these underlying mechanics? This is why reasonable Thieves are up in arms about this change.
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You can run, dodge and stealth before the skill is used to avoid it. Try it. You are making a broad claim with blinders on. I see pets malfunction all the the time. If this hadn’t been handled this way, sic em would never work. Maybe you need to comprehend how other classes work.
Run – 2000 range away from the Ranger you mean? Even with Thief mobility that is not a small feat and will put important utilities on cooldown and/or use up most of your initiative. All it will accomplish is put Sic Em on a 5 second cooldown.
Dodge – Read the title of the thread
Stealth – So rerolling a perma-Stealth Thief is the only real counter to a skill that is supposed to be a counter to Stealth?
Clearly this skill is ANet game design at it’s finest. /sarcasm
Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…
We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.
This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.
Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.
Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.
And if you feel pigeon holed into stealth. Think about how ele feels with their trait line.
Many of us feel exactly the opposite. Stealth was always unviable in sPvP, and it’s becoming more and more worthless as a mechanic to build around in this game mode because of the changes that they’re making to appease the WvW crowd.
And the only only valid complaints the WvW crowd has is against the perma-Stealth D/P Thief abusing a broken mechanic that most reasonable Thieves would agree should have been fixed ages ago.
To add insult to injury, the change that they’ve implemented affects perma-Stealth builds the least out of all possible builds that make use of Stealth to varying degrees, because Sic Em requires a target and being in Stealth forever is the only way to avoid ever getting hit by it.
You still steal a 15s water field from rangers. Ranger’s own water field is only 10s now. Please, consider things like that before carrying on too much guys.
Not sure where you’re pulling this 15s number from, because the stolen water field lasts 5 seconds. Please, consider this before pretending to know what you’re talking about.
(Not that this is even relevant to the discussion, I just can’t stand such blatant misinformation.)
Hmm but that internal cooldown of 10 s seems not to work, i still remove condis every stealth, pretty sure every 3s
Nope, its works correctly.
How the discription say, do you remove 1 condition every 10 sec in stealth.
It dont said that you can remove only one condition in 10 sec.
So the second part of the trait affects absolutely nothing except for Shadow Refuge?
Great job shaking up the condi-dominated meta ANet…
Also notice that nothing changed, from the time that a Dev posted in the general forum about asking for suggestions. Why bother asking for suggestions if you are going to do what you want anyways?
This is by far my biggest complaint too. I have seen absolutely zero changes to what they said they were implementing after a month of feedback.
Can a guardian? A warrior? Mesmer? Engy? Necro? Ele? Or god forbid another Thief?
What about any of the above plus a Ranger with Sic Em equipped?
The point I’m trying to make is we need to react now lest we fall prey to this age old metaphor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
Phys, I agree with some of your points, but you can’t call the hatred of thieves irrational. It has been earned by the large number of people who abuse the daylights out of the stealth mechanic. While it may be human nature to use every tool at your disposal, it’s what these people do with their perma-stealth that infuriates people. No one complains about perma-stealthing in the middle of zerg. It’s the people who use to prey upon the unsuspecting that really turns people off. You can argue that’s part of the game, like it or lump it, but people don’t complain about getting jumped by a guardian.
It’s too bad really. The first 5 thieves on my server who come to mind are very skilled players. They don’t lurk on the other side of doors. They are excellent team players who use their stealth to cover allies and I often see them shadowing small groups like an escort, using their abilities to defend. I’ll take that kind of player anytime.
Yes Thieves who abuse Perma-Stealth are despicable and are the root cause of a large portion of valid Thief complaints.
Still, we need to be advocating for precision changes that target Perma-Stealth specifically instead of for changes that cause the most collateral damage to people who don’t abuse Stealth in the same manner.
Pet’s dying is caused by taking damage. This affects all entities in the game, players or pets. It’s by no means a counter to Pets specifically.
I’m not saying pets are well designed in this game, but the state of pets has little relevance in this discussion.
EVERYTHING is the counter to our pet. But yet you thieves are QQing that you have a single counter ON A 40 SECOND COOLDOWN! Jesus you guys are such carebears, QQing because you can’t play easy mode as easily as you could before in WvW. Get the hell over it.
I assume by “EVERYTHING” you mean taking damage. Taking enough damage to die will take anything out of play. It’s not a hard counter specifically to your pet mechanic, and you have plenty of opportunity for counter-play in terms of mitigating, healing, and outright negating damage through pet swap on 15s cooldown.
If you want to talk complain about your pets being useless or too easy to kill, feel free to do it in another thread. But until another class gets a button to disable your pet and pet swap completely and instantly for 4s, this thread is not the place to discuss it.
“Refer to my post above for comments on perma-Stealth.
While this particular implementation has plenty of problems, the main implication of the change is that this is only the beginning of a campaign of similar anti-Stealth changes. It’s safe to assume that ANet intends to make further use of the Revealed mechanic as a hard-counter going forward.
For all those of you who advocate to wait until enough of these are implemented to affect gameplay significantly before complaining, I urge you to consider this metaphor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog"
Well, now you are really making my point. Instead of speculating about how this change today will impact gameplay, we should also speculate wildly about changes to the game Anet hasn’t even thought of yet.
I agree with several other posters that eliminating the ability to stack stealth to silly levels would be better than a reveal, on ONE skill, for ONE class. But after reading all the posts crying about the massive unfairness of this act, any sympathy has vanished.
It’s not fair! Now I can’t be in stealth for 3 seconds, every 40 seconds! Of course this only matters is I run into someone who actually uses it…
My entire build and play style is based on being in stealth all the time. This, in combination with the built-in evasions in my attacks and the blindness they cause, is key to my success. What am I supposed to do if other players can see me? Some of them are going to try and kill me! I don’t want to raise my toughness past the 917 I already have.
We thieves are squishy enough as it is. Seriously, they make us wear light armor and there are no ways for us to get vitality or toughness besides traiting for it. Oh wait, that is every other game ever made, except this one.
Engineers, Elementalists, and necros are all long range characters. We have to get really close!
ANet has clearly stated that this is only the beginning of their Anti-Stealth changes. I don’t think it counts as wild speculation to say that similar mechanics as Sic Em will be implemented for other classes on different skills.
I agree with several other posters that eliminating the ability to stack stealth to silly levels would be better than a reveal, on ONE skill, for ONE class. But after reading all the posts crying about the massive unfairness of this act, any sympathy has vanished.
Please don’t give up on rational thought and discussion on what is better for the state of the game out of simple spite.
The honest complete truth, there is a group of people who have an irrational hatred of thief/rougue type classes and mechanics. They will always hate these classes. Its similar to the 300 lb 6 foot 6 guy who hates the tiny skinny guys who wont fight fair. They want the rules of engagement on their terms.
While it isnt the end of the world, the fact is this doesnt really make sense, 1 class, with 1 anti stealth mechanic isnt a counter for invisibility as a whole. Also the trend of having UNAVOIDABLE counters to your main class mechanic is a bad idea. IM NOT TALKING ABOUT INVISIBILITY ITSELF. Im talking about the skills which are currently only usable in invisisble state, and the traits that benefit from invisibility.
following this logic, how would you feel about a 2000 range skill that cannot be evaded, that stops adrenaline regen, or that destroys all your pet summons and you cant summon any more for 5 seconds.
The devs are listening to the irrational hatred of theives. As the OP said, they should have made mechanics that counter the effectiveness of not being able to be seen, not the class mechanics that go with it.
you realize two rangers can disable theif class mechanic for 10/32 seconds.
All of this with the FACT that theif is not top teir in any game mode. Theif is constantly getting nerfed and getting ignored for good balance changes because he doesnt make people feel good about themselves when they play against them.
Honestly i wish they would just remove stealth completely if its going to cause them to ignore/weaken the class to the point of ineffectiveness. turn stealth to camoflauge, which makes all hits glancing and disables name tag (tab targetting) outside of 300 range people can see the predator like effect while active.
Thank you for taking the time to actually read and considering my concerns seriously.
Coincidentally I have also made a post in the Thief forums about removing Invisibility entirely from the Stealth mechanic. Needless to say it’s not being very well received.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Stealth-Mechanic-Without-100-Invisibility
Pet’s dying is caused by taking damage. This affects all entities in the game, players or pets. It’s by no means a counter to Pets specifically.
I’m not saying pets are well designed in this game, but the state of pets has little relevance in this discussion.
This whole conversation is a little premature. We are talking about 1 skill (sic’em) on 1 class (Ranger) with a 40 second cool down. Rangers don’t have a whole lot useful utilities and most builds require some very specific ones to function. Most Rangers still carry Signet of the Hunt to keep their 25% movement, which leaves only 2 slots open. The Beastmaster Ranger is a rare breed. How often do you see one? You should probably wait to see if anyone actually uses it before crying that you’ve have been massively wronged. Incidentally, balance would be if all classes had a skill to cause reveal, including thieves.
On the other hand, if you perma-stealth thieving types are having nightmares about packs of Rangers running around and revealing you, well that serves you right for the large number of your brethren who run around killing sheep to ramp up their bloodlust and then lurk around a resource node waiting for someone to start the gathering animation.
Refer to my post above for comments on perma-Stealth.
While this particular implementation has plenty of problems, the main implication of the change is that this is only the beginning of a campaign of similar anti-Stealth changes. It’s safe to assume that ANet intends to make further use of the Revealed mechanic as a hard-counter going forward.
For all those of you who advocate to wait until enough of these are implemented to affect gameplay significantly before complaining, I urge you to consider this metaphor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
What about the skills and traits getting countered by a blind, a block, a dodge or even a stealth?
All of those are counters to a game mechanic known as “attacking”, that all classes are affected by reasonably equally.
Revealed outright disables the use of a single mechanic that Thieves and Mesmers have a whole class of builds based upon, and disproportionately affects these types of builds, and will effectively take them out of the repertoire of viable builds for competitive play. As if Stealth wasn’t already unviable enough in sPvP.
Just watched the livestream. Ranger Sic Em will apply 4s Revealed instantly, and cannot be dodged.
It’s worse than I thought. No possibility for counter play except perma-stealthing so they can’t acquire a target to begin with.
Disgusting.
lol try relying less on perma stealth. it’s a scrub build anyway and it gives thieves a bad name.
Reading comprehension much?
One of the worst problems with this implementation is that it affects perma-stealth builds the least out of all builds that make use of Stealth, because they can’t be easily targeted to begin with.
I have stated multiple times that perma-stealthing is a plague on the Thief profession that skews the balance perception of the Stealth mechanic. It needs to be removed from the game through disabling Infusion of Shadow procs while already Stealthed, but instead of fixing the root of the problem, ANet decides to implement a hard counter to Stealth that disproportionately punishes Thieves that use Stealth sparingly.
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I can’t imagine how ANet could have taken into account all the concerns raised in this thread and the other one I made in the Game Discussion forums and still decide it’s perfectly fine to go ahead and implement it as is.
Without a proper justification from ANet, it’s reasonable to assume that they simply ignored the 2 weeks worth of feedback we provided despite asking for it.
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Just watched the livestream. Ranger Sic Em will apply 4s Revealed instantly, and cannot be dodged.
It’s worse than I thought. No possibility for counter play except perma-stealthing so they can’t acquire a target to begin with.
Disgusting.
Just watched the livestream. Ranger Sic Em will apply 4s Revealed instantly, and cannot be dodged.
It’s worse than I thought. No possibility for counter play except perma-stealthing so they can’t acquire a target to begin with.
Disgusting.
3 out of the last 4 threads created since this one in this sub-forum have been LFG posts.
Clearly there is demand. Make this happen please.
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Speaking as someone who has already bought a previous harvesting tool for my main.
If they’re account bound, maybe buying it for the new skin alone would make sense. But as is? Fat chance.
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I want D/D to get more luvvvv, it’s still fun to play, but I REALLY wish I could change Crippling Dagger and Death Blossom -_-
D/D looks freakin’ BA
To what?
Deathblossom is an extremely effective groupfight condi spam and initiative-burning evade for when you don’t have any endurance (or want to save endurance) It’s also the only skill that makes D/D plausible as either a condi or crit build.
Dancing dagger is an extremely effective chasing tool, as well as a great self heal when used through darkness fields like your own shadow refuge or necro wells. It’s a 100% projective finicher that can proc combo effects up to 4 times per cast, making it extrmeley good as a lifesteal for heals (I actually use shadow refuge more as a combo field for this than for stealth!)
I think the biggest problem with Dancing Blossom is the fact that it’s not a full-frame evade like flanking strike or disabling shot. In the beginning and end of the animation you can still get hit (and will if you’re playing against decent players, or just enough lucky randoms). Shortening the animation time and making it evade for the entire animation would fix this up quite nicely I believe.
As for Dancing Dagger, yes it’s definitely one of the best projectile finishers in the game. But as you said the only decent projectile finisher combo field is dark, and there simply isn’t enough of those in the game to make projectile finishers genuinely useful. I find SR too important for team utility to use JUST for the combo field. As a chasing tool, the initiative cost is too high and cripple duration too low for it to be worthwhile compared to an Infiltrator Strike or Heartseeker.
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