Showing Posts For Kaon.7192:

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What if detecting an invisible enemy was a boon on the detector and not on the invisible person. So, for example, someone who is invisible would appear (to the detecting person only) like one of the assassins in COF p2.

The invisible person would still get all the bonuses from being invisible (condition removal, boon generation, etc.).

It would therefore, take some coordination to track down the thief. “He’s to you’re right, left, behind you, he’s running away”

This method could work just as well as what I suggested.

More testing will have to go into this to determine which method would be the better approach. But both are certainly much more fair to the Thief than simply giving everybody access to Revealed.

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

The signal to noise ratio in here is astounding by the way.

Makes me appreciate the people trying to engage in an actual discussion, even if we’re in disagreement.

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Actually this is the definition of a hard counter towards stealth, though not a hard counter towards thieves. (There is a difference) This ability completely invalidates stealth for it duration and removes an benefits that stealth gives the affected. That is the very definition of a hard counter. That part that needs to be considered here is how large of a counter to thieves is a hard counter to stealth. If its a large counter which currently I think it is, then the class or stealth mechanic needs to be reworked.

My opinion remains that the change they should make is that when “in combat” stealth provides only the pseudo-invisibility that the thief npcs have throughout the world. Where they are basically a translucent shadow, very hard to see standing still but definitely noticeable to those looking carefully when moving. They would not be target able but would be hittable by any aoe or projectile. This would make it so they can still get the benefits of stealth other than the escapability of complete invisibility. This would also not pigeonhole the ability to deal with stealth.

We’ll have to disagree about the semantics of the hard/soft counter terms at use here, but arguing semantics is usually a waste of time.

Revealed completely disables the Stealth mechanic while it’s active. Revealed disables the invisibility effect, but also all Stealth-related utility effects that the Thief traited for, as well as Stealth attacks that are paramount to offense for many Thief builds.

What I’m suggesting is a new mechanic that disables only the invisibility portion of the Stealth mechanic (and the targeting issues that come with it). This allows for counter-play to invisibility without completely crippling everything else tied to the Stealth mechanic.

Stability completely disables control effects, condition clear completely disables conditions, blocks completely disables any blockable attack (most in the game), etc.

You do not understand what a hard counter is. If this is your definition of a hard counter I’m pretty fine with it, and you should be too since it’s perfectly in-line with the rest of the mechanics in the game. If you aren’t fine then there are a lot more mechanics which suffer from the same problem which you should start complaining equally about.

Stability does not disable the CC mechanic completely for your target (he can still choose to use CC’s on other targets), and doesn’t remove existing CC effects unless the skill itself is a stun-breaker.

Similarly, block does not stop your target from attacking others, or from using unblockable attacks on you.

This distinction is important because the game is not meant to be balanced around solely 1v1 situations. Yes, these are still “hard counters” in my definition, but CC, direct damage, condi application (Condition clear doesn’t even make you immune to new condition applications, so I’m not sure why you even brought it up. Condi immunity, however, does qualify as a hard counter) are all game-wide mechanics that all classes have roughly equal access to. As stated clearly in the OP, I only have a problem with the concept of hard-counters for class-specific mechanics.

Revealed is targeted specifically to disable a player from using the Stealth mechanic completely for its duration. Although Stealth is available to other classes, Thieves suffer disproportionately from Revealed due to their dependance on the Stealth mechanic (I’m not talking about the invisibility aspect) to access some of their best forms of defense, sustain, control and burst.

If the problem people have is with the invisibility aspect of Stealth, develop a counter for the invisibility. Leave the rest of the mechanic alone.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Upcoming Larcenours Stike

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Guts just explained a few things on stream:

Feline Grace
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feline_Grace
Dodging returns some of the endurance used.
User recovers 15% endurance after dodging, effectively lowering the cost dodging to 35% endurance.

This makes the thief effectively be able to dodge 3 times with a full endurance.

Withdraw
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw

Heal with 3/4 sec evade, 15 second cooldown, aaand…

Vigorous Recovery
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Recovery
Gain vigor when using a healing skill.
Vigor granted lasts 8 seconds.

…it grants 8 seconds of Vigor.
Which is even more powerful on an S/D thief, since full endurance = 3 dodges as opposed to 2.

Signet of Agility
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Agility

And if you run out of dodges, you use signet of agility, refill all your endurance and suddenly you have 3 more dodges.

I know ANet wants the thief to be the best dodging class thematically, but it can’t have both dodges, damage, and boon steal in one spec.

If these things get somehow nerfed S/D thief should be fine.
Perhaps a rework for Feline Grace (the minor trait) would fix most of the problems.

I find the biggest contributor to perma-dodge is actually Sigil of Energy, especially for Thieves that use S/D on both sets.

Without the extra 1.5 dodges every 9 seconds, the dodging isn’t nearly as rampant.

Not sure how this could be fixed without affecting other classes and builds that use them though…

1st Time Rolling Thief, Tips or Advice?

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Reroll.
15characters

Cost of bag slot expansion

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Wow that timing…

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Dat lack of punctuation.

On topic: TL;DR Offer a counter without completely negating a traitline.

I don’t want to hear it from you thieves. You want something that completely negates a traitline and a bunch of skills? Okay, have our pets. If they die, the beastmaster traitline is shut down, and the actives for our signets are shut down. I don’t want to hear it.

Killing a pet takes it out of play, as much as killing anything else would take it out of play. This is not the same as applying an effect that disables the pet and pet-swap for x-seconds regardless of how much HP it had, which would qualify as a hard counter. Revealed disables Stealth and all its related effects for x-seconds regardless of how much Stealth duration remains on the Thief.

Doing enough damage to kill a pet is not trivial in a 1v1(2), especially since you have many potent options to prevent it from happening such as healing, pet swapping, defensive boons, and disables. If you’re built around your pet and let both of your pets die, of course you need to face the consequences.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Here’s what you’re forgetting: Revealed isn’t a hard counter. It’s a counter. It’s temporary. It lasts a few seconds and then ends. The ability of other classes to apply revealed temporarily doesn’t hard counter stealth any more than blocks and dodges hard counter damage, or condition clear hard counters conditions, etc.

Your frustration aside, you don’t know what a hard counter is. A hard counter is something that, when faced with it, you have little to no way of winning unless the enemy messes up extremely bad. A hard counter would be if a build could permanently keep the revealed debuff on you. This is not a hard counter, this is just a counter. A counter to a mechanic that, for the most part and for most classes, still has no other counter*. And no, spamming AoE attacking and hoping you guessed right and/or that the thief was stupid, is not an adequate counter.

Deal with it.

*Class balance aside, the mechanic itself has no counter. IMO this results in the currently broken state of the Thief where they suck at most things, but can’t be buffed in other places because of how powerful their stealth is.

We’ll have to disagree about the semantics of the hard/soft counter terms at use here, but arguing semantics is usually a waste of time.

Revealed completely disables the Stealth mechanic while it’s active. Revealed disables the invisibility effect, but also all Stealth-related utility effects that the Thief traited for, as well as Stealth attacks that are paramount to offense for many Thief builds.

What I’m suggesting is a new mechanic that disables only the invisibility portion of the Stealth mechanic (and the targeting issues that come with it). This allows for counter-play to invisibility without completely crippling everything else tied to the Stealth mechanic.

Cost of bag slot expansion

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What I really don’t get is why they limit Bank slots to 8…
Just take my money already…

Modified Anti-Stealth Suggestion

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

This is exactly what I suggested in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first

Nobody replying seem to have read the actual post though…

The amount of mindless hate for Thieves in the main forum is rather astounding…

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

Instead of skills that apply revealed, how about skills that nullify the invisibility aspect of stealth for the same duration?

This way, thieves heavy into SA still have access to all their stealth based traits and abilities(Might on stealth, health regen, condition dropping, stealth attacks, etc), but players can still see them, and thieves still follow all the rules of stealth (can’t cap a point, landing an attack triggers revealed, etc).

This allows for an effective counter for stealth without completely nullifying 30 points in SA. Countering a class mechanic is (arguably) fine, countering 30 trait points is not.

This is exactly what I suggested in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first

Nobody replying seem to have read the actual post though…

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

About cast ground targeting

  • For example, if I want to cast a 1200 range 360 radius AoE on a target which may stay at 1550 range, it sometimes is inconvenient to place the targeting circle to the margin.

IF, the ground targeting can be simply improved to be able to automatically judge the farthest range and cast spells on the location — even if the targetet is out of the spell range — many things will become more convenient.

This would be amazing for ground targeted mobility skills, but for everything else that’s intended to do damage, I can imagine it could result in a lot of wasted cooldowns. Having this as a per-skill toggle like auto-casting would be nice though.

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

This is worth repeating:

I will refrain from feeding obvious trolls and encourage everyone else to do the same.

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Condition builds that use condition traits are effectively nullified by warriors condition immunity for 8 seconds.

There you go.

You can survive 4 seconds of revealed every 40 seconds, (which has to be preemptively used).

Also, it’s more likely the case that the pet will reveal you, since that’s what the ability is about. And would serve as a better soft counter (requiring the pet to hit the thief to reveal), but then it would last 15 seconds, pick your poison.

You’re right. Berserker Stance and Engy’s condi immunity at 25% health are both rather uncomfortably close to hard counters, and I would agree in that they’re not shining examples of balance and probably shouldn’t exist in a well-balanced game. However, something had to be done about the condi-dominated meta in sPvP, and this is their temporary solution until they rework condi’s more thoroughly (or at least I hope that’s their plan).

However, Berserker Stance certainly does go quite as far as Revealed does to Stealth.

Firstly, Berserker Stance is not immunity, but a duration reduction of 100%, which can be overcome by condi duration increase. Secondly, any condi’s that were applied beforehand continue to tick at their full duration. Whereas Revealed ignores any and all factors that can affect stealth duration and removes any additional stealth duration remaining on the Thief.

Again, I’m not arguing that Berserker Stance or Engy’s condi immunity is balanced, just that it isn’t as much of a hard-counter to condi’s as Revealed is to Stealth. None of these should exist as far as I’m concerned.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Dat lack of punctuation.

On topic: TL;DR Offer a counter without completely negating a traitline.

Thank you for the TL;DR. I’ll append it to my post. =)

I will refrain from feeding obvious trolls and encourage everyone else to do the same.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Anti -stealth buff to rangers

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I don’t think giving other classes the Revealed status is an acceptable way to provide counter-play to invisibility.

Revealed, as a self-regulation mechanic on Thieves for Stealth attacks, is perfectly fine. However, when given to other classes to apply on Thieves, Revealed becomes a hard-counter to the Stealth mechanic, completely disabling the mechanic and all it’s related effects and abilities and traits that depend on it. Revealed disables an entire traitline of utility effects for the Thief and disables the Thief’s best burst/control/condi abilities (Stealth attacks), severely crippling any Thief built around any of the above aspects.

Hard counters should not exist in a balanced game, because they result in rock-paper-scissors interaction between classes and builds that are simply not fun for the player on the wrong side of the equation.

The fact that hard-counters do not exist currently in GW2 for any other major mechanic for any class is what I consider to be one of the most impressive accomplishments in the design and balance of the PvP aspect of the game. This will no longer be the case once Revealed becomes available to other classes.


I would like to suggest an alternative to Revealed in the form of another effect that specifically counters invisibility, rather than the entire Stealth mechanic. Let’s call it “Detected” for now.

The Detected effect will make the Thief fully visible and targetable for its duration, but will not prevent the Thief from entering the Stealth state itself like Revealed does. This effect will provide counter-play to the invisibility aspect of the Stealth mechanic, but will still allow Thieves to go into the Stealth state to gain the effect of any traits he built for and to access stealth attacks that are a key component of a majority of Thief builds.

In other words, Detected would be a soft-counter to the invisibility aspect of Stealth, but will not hard-counter the entirety of the Stealth mechanic like enemy-induced Revealed would. Detected should be implemented in place of Revealed in the upcoming Sic Em change, and in the previously implemented Stealth Traps in WvW, and in any similar anti-stealth skills going forward.

I feel this would be provide counter-play to invisibility while being much fairer to Thief builds that rely on the Stealth mechanic.

Thoughts?

Posted this in the main GW2 discussions forum. If they’re dead set on providing counter-play to stealth, might as well try to suggest something a bit more reasonable than a hard-counter like Revealed…

Counter Invisibility, not Stealth

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I don’t think giving other classes the Revealed status is an acceptable way to provide counter-play to invisibility.

Revealed, as a self-regulation mechanic on Thieves for Stealth attacks, is perfectly fine. However, when given to other classes to apply on Thieves, Revealed becomes a hard-counter to the Stealth mechanic, completely disabling the mechanic and all it’s related effects and abilities and traits that depend on it. Revealed disables an entire traitline of utility effects for the Thief and disables the Thief’s best burst/control/condi abilities (Stealth attacks), severely crippling any Thief built around any of the above aspects.

Hard counters should not exist in a balanced game, because they result in rock-paper-scissors interaction between classes and builds that are simply not fun for the player on the wrong side of the equation.

The fact that hard-counters do not exist currently in GW2 for any other major mechanic for any class is what I consider to be one of the most impressive accomplishments in the design and balance of the PvP aspect of the game. This will no longer be the case once Revealed becomes available to other classes.


I would like to suggest an alternative to Revealed in the form of another effect that specifically counters invisibility, rather than the entire Stealth mechanic. Let’s call it “Detected” for now.

The Detected effect will make the Thief fully visible and targetable for its duration, but will not prevent the Thief from entering the Stealth state itself like Revealed does. This effect will provide counter-play to the invisibility aspect of the Stealth mechanic, but will still allow Thieves to go into the Stealth state to gain the effect of any traits he built for and to access stealth attacks that are a key component of a majority of Thief builds.

In other words, Detected would be a soft-counter to the invisibility aspect of Stealth, but will not hard-counter the entirety of the Stealth mechanic like enemy-induced Revealed would. Detected should be implemented in place of Revealed in the upcoming Sic Em change, and in the previously implemented Stealth Traps in WvW, and in any similar anti-stealth skills going forward.

I feel this would be provide counter-play to invisibility while being much fairer to Thief builds that rely on the Stealth mechanic.

TL;DR courtesy of Zacchary: Offer a counter without completely negating a traitline.

Thoughts?

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Fastest Possible BL Key Run? (22m?)

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Here’s something I’ve found useful for saving time when starting a new human character.

You can actually skip the first defense event, and sometimes the second. Just go straight to the boss spawn area. Walk past the garrison from the right side without going onto the bridge. If there’s a person already doing the boss you can join in and get out as soon as it finishes, otherwise you need to go to back to the garrison door from the side of the boss area and do the 2nd defense event.

Anyways, hope that helps.

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

You see what I mean though, some thieves are QQing, even though only ONE class is getting the counter.

“Everything needs atleast one counter” – Charak

Does any other class mechanic have a counter that outright disables the mechanic like Revealed does to Stealth?

Right. I didn’t think so. Therein lies the difference between soft-counters (like AoE’s vs pets) and hard-counters by the way. The latter should be avoided if at all possible if balance is the goal.

The revealed is similar to the hunter flare in WoW. A rogue never has perma stealth, he can only have one re-stealth every 2-3mins (pending preperation). If a hunter knows that a rogue is nearby, he can choose to flare up.

Mechanic (a): a Rogue can stealth and initiate fights to whoever he chooses
Mechanic (b): a Hunter can ‘counter’ play and gain the initation.
Mechanic ©: a Rogue can outsmart the hunter and make them pre-flare, and initiate after

Here is GW2 it can have a similar effect:

Mechanic (a): Thief wants to initiate fight, so he stealths
Mechanic (b): The ranger can pre-dodge if he knows a thief is nearby
Mechanic ©: Thief wants to re-stealth, so he has to be mindful about the rangers ‘revealed’ CD, either by juking an early CD or stealthing before the pet can ‘sic em’
Mechanic (d): The ranger either gets the lock and continues fighting, or loses target, repeating back to mechanic (a).

This is counter-play, a smart thief needs to be aware if he’s fighting a ranger and watch the pets ‘sic em’ CD. The ranger needs to know the thiefs stealth CD and know when the best time to counter.

If the thief stealths forever, then there’s no enjoyment for the hunter because he lacks the counter option available. Similar to how a sniper in an FPS racks up kills but no one knows where the sniper is, so the enjoyment for the snipees are down because they have no counter to the sniper fire.

You have to understand that stealth can’t be left ‘as is’ every mechanics needs a counter hard or soft, but it can’t just ‘be’ because that would make the thieves focus primarily on stealth mechanics.

The comparison to WoW is a bit moot as the Stealth mechanic in these 2 games are completely different beasts. What works in 1 won’t necessarily work in the other.

There is one thing in your post that I can sympathize with though: Thieves shouldn’t be able to Stealth forever.

The fact that this is possible for Thieves right now through chaining Heartseeker in BP is bad for the game and needs to be fixed. But introducing a hard counter for the Stealth mechanic is not the way to fix it.

Reduce initiative Regen from infusion of Shadow to 1 ini per Stealth, or only allow it to activate when the Thief is not already Stealthed, are both valid ways to remove perma-Stealth through fine-tuned balancing rather than by introducing a hard counter.

Once you start introducing hard-counters, the meta will become convoluted with the Rock-Paper-Scissors type gameplay that is horrible for build variety and general fairness of fights between classes.

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

You see what I mean though, some thieves are QQing, even though only ONE class is getting the counter.

“Everything needs atleast one counter” – Charak

Does any other class mechanic have a counter that outright disables the mechanic like Revealed does to Stealth?

Right. I didn’t think so. Therein lies the difference between soft-counters (like AoE’s vs pets) and hard-counters by the way. The latter should be avoided if at all possible if balance is the goal.

Well they could make it so it just makes the pet see through your stealth and chase you down, and if it manages to attack you then it reveals.

Then you have counterplay to Sick Em by dodging/avoiding/cc’ing pet.

That would be a more reasonable implementation of Sic Em than I imagine they’ll have in place next patch, but I still maintain my position that no class should have a hard-counter to another’s major class mechanics.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

You see what I mean though, some thieves are QQing, even though only ONE class is getting the counter.

“Everything needs atleast one counter” – Charak

Does any other class mechanic have a counter that outright disables the mechanic like Revealed does to Stealth, and the opponent controls whether/when to activate it?

Right. I didn’t think so.

Yes, Rangers…When you flat out kill their Pet.

But to answer your question, stealth is not your mechanic..When will you Thieves realize this.

Steal is….Stealth is just something you have similar to Rangers with Evade to avoid damage.

It is not an actual Mechanic you have though.

That is called doing damage. It’s the soft-counter to anything in the game with HP, and is not even specific to the pet mechanic.

A hard-counter for the pet, more analogous to Revealed would be something that disables the pet and pet swap for x seconds.

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

You see what I mean though, some thieves are QQing, even though only ONE class is getting the counter.

“Everything needs atleast one counter” – Charak

Does any other class mechanic have a counter that outright disables the mechanic like Revealed does to Stealth?

Right. I didn’t think so. Therein lies the difference between soft-counters (like AoE’s vs pets) and hard-counters by the way. The latter should be avoided if balance is the goal.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Anti -stealth buff to rangers

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’m sorry, but you have your priorities completely mixed up when it comes to Stealth.

If there is a problem with Stealth, fix Stealth itself.

If it’s perma-stealth dagger/pistol that’s the problem, fix that, and tone down the initiative regen traits that make it possible.

If it’s C&D chaining that’s the problem, fix that and make revealed apply when you drop out of stealth even without attacking.

If Backstab being too easy to land is the problem, fix that and make only the first slot1 attack in stealth act as a Stealth attack, and the rest regular auto’s.

If it’s perma-dodge that’s the problem, fix that and leave stealth alone.

Whatever you do, please don’t continue down this path of turning Stealth into a mechanic that can be disabled at the whim of anyone who happens to hate thieves enough to run these Stealth disabling items/abilities/traits.

A mechanic like enemy-induced Revealed that disables a major class mechanic like Stealth has no place in this game, period. This is by far the most lazy and reactionary form of balance I have seen from you guys.

First stealth trap, now this. Two points make a slope, and this makes me very concerned about where you’re trying to take Stealth as a mechanic.

If you go far enough Stealth will be practically pointless as a build option for Thieves, and you might as well scrap Stealth entirely and give us something that maybe people will hate on less, so you don’t have to be pressured into making ridiculous mechanic-specific counters like this.

Just posted this in the Balance Preview thread that Jon claims to have read in its entirety.
Probably the best chance to have your voices heard before the patch hits.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

October 15th balance/skills updates preview.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’m sorry, but you have your priorities completely mixed up when it comes to Stealth.

If there is a problem with Stealth, fix Stealth itself.

If it’s perma-stealth dagger/pistol that’s the problem, fix that, and tone down the initiative regen traits that make it possible.

If it’s C&D chaining that’s the problem, fix that and make revealed apply when you drop out of stealth even without attacking.

If Backstab being too easy to land is the problem, fix that and make only the first slot1 attack in stealth act as a Stealth attack, and the rest regular auto’s.

If it’s perma-dodge that’s the problem, fix that and leave stealth alone.

Whatever you do, please don’t continue down this path of turning Stealth into a mechanic that can be disabled at the whim of anyone who happens to hate thieves enough to run these Stealth disabling items/abilities/traits.

A mechanic like enemy-induced Revealed that disables a major class mechanic like Stealth has no place in this game, period. This is by far the most lazy and reactionary form of balance I have seen from you guys.

First stealth trap, now this. Two points make a slope, and this makes me very concerned about where you’re trying to take Stealth as a mechanic.

If you go far enough Stealth will be practically pointless as a build option for Thieves, and you might as well scrap Stealth entirely and give us something that maybe people will hate on less, so you don’t have to be pressured into making ridiculous mechanic-specific counters like this.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Mechanics that are too forgiving

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Problem: Currently there are certain mechanics that are too forgiving and thus could be abused. By making changes we can get rid of these exploit-like tactics and create more skilful play.

Warrior:
Currently, burst skills only go on recharge if the attack connects. If a burst skill is evaded/blocked or misses through blind or you misjudged the range, your adrenaline stays full.

Which is stupid since it makes dodging pretty much ineffective since you can just pretty much spam Earthshaker/Skull Crack until either hits after stability is down and one of the factors that’s making warriors easy mode. You can pretty much stun a target every 5 seconds with Earth Shaker or Skull crack which ever hits and the opponent won’t be able to avoid it.

It also allows Hammer/Mace warriors to use Earthshaker as a mobility tool as long as they don’t hit anything and overall this mobility is even better than the ele’s.

Solutions: Make burst skills expend adrenaline regardless of success/ Make burst skills share a cooldown between weapon sets.

Thief:
Similar to above, a you can simply spam stealth and a Sneak Attack i.e. Backstab until it hits since you are not revealed if the attack misses or gets dodged or blocked.

Solution: Make the Revealed debuff apply regardless of whether an attack from stealth hits or not.

Mesmer:
Currently Shatter skills only go on recharge when they produce an effect, i.e. if you have no illusions up and are not taking Illusionary Persona, the shatter skill is recharged instantly bar global cooldown on shatter.

Solution: Make shatters go on full recharge. This will force mesmers to be more aware of their illusions as they go down.

A fairer solution to the Thief one would be to make only the first slot1 attack upon going into stealth produce a stealth attack (Backstab, Sneak Attack, etc), with the latter attacks becoming regular auto-attacks if the first missed or was blocked, evaded, etc.

This way the Thief only gets 1 chance to land the stealth attack, which raises the skill floor and allows for proper counterplay, and revealed still only applies when you actually deal damage.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Theory about last refuge:

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I know it is not on subject, but what would you say about black powder+cluster bomb on top on someone’s body? It procs reveal.
May be you’ll say it is how things should work, but what about HS+Steal out of Black Powder? It gives you stealth succesfully.
Why similar mechanics are working in different ways?

I made a bug report and thread about this a loooong time ago that didn’t gain any traction whatsoever. But here it is anyways: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Blast-finisher-behavior-in-smoke-field/first#post998384

Also posted it in the Thief bugs compilation thread but not sure if ANet has taken a look at it yet: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Bugs-and-Issues-Compilation/page/8#post1921948

Kaon.7192

Blast finishers on smoke fields applies stealth and then immediately revealed on the first use if an enemy is damaged in the blast. This is inconsistent with the behavior of leap finishers that apply stealth AFTER doing damage and significantly diminishes the usability of blast finisher on smoke fields in combat.

RE: Last Refuge: Please swap it with any of the SA Adept traits.

How to counter get out of jail free button?

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Perfect example of how jacked facing a thief is right now. I’m fighting a thief as a turret engie (Ya I know, but it’s fun :P). Hit him a few times and place my turrets as he enters for the kill. Pop my turret abilities and he gets perma-blinded, has like 10 seconds of burning, has 6+ stacks of bleed, Rocket Turret lands the first knockdown, I time the supply crate for the second stun, rocket turret knocks down a third time. All knockdowns in a row without him being able to act after eating the first one.

At this point the thief still has all the burning, bleeding, and now poison on him, is at 5% hp, and is stunned on his back while immobilized. Shadow Return, Hide in Shadows, runs away at half health with no conditions on him already out of combat.
.
.
.
So lets add this up, shadow return removes 3 conditions, teleports you back to where you started from up to 1,200 away, and breaks stun instantly. Hide in Shadows removes all damaging conditions, so any conditions that hurt would be gone and the thief is far away stealthed and running away.

I really don’t know what more I could have done. I condition stacked, immobilized, stunned, and generally wrecked his face but he gets a get out of jail free card. I mean ya I wrecked his face because he was blatantly terrible (rocket turret knockdown is MASSIVELY telegraphed), but he still doesn’t even have to die for being terrible.

The Shadow Return part is something you could have countered. In fact, it sounds like you could have killed him if you just baited out the Shadow Step and waited out 10s before unloading your stunlock and condi burst.

Shadow Return only persists for 10 seconds after a Thief uses Shadowstep. And it shows up as an additional effect on the UI and leaves a big white circle on the ground where he teleported from. Use some small annoying CC’s to bait out the Shadow Step, watch for the big white circle (small one is for the much less potent Infiltrator Strike Shadow Return) in addition to the Shadow Return icon, and save your burst and best CC’s for after it runs out. You’ll have a 40 second window during which the Thief likely won’t have any stun-breakers or multi condi cleanses asides from his heal.

Yes, it takes more effort on your side to catch him than it takes for him to escape. But that is just par for the course if you want to overcome inherent class traits (Thieves are supposed to be elusive and not easily caught).

Legendaries tradeable, Ascended are not

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Why exactly would you consider making Ascended tradeable a mistake?
.

For the same reason that tradeable Legendaries are a mistake. Instead of players out in the world playing the game to work towards their goals, you have the “I have more (real/fake) money than you” game where people simply buy their way through the content.

Legendary weapons are now the equivalent of Ascended weapons, prettier skins or not. In the game there is functionally no difference between them. If you have one you essentially have the other.

If you’re playing the game for vertical, stat-based “progression” then you’ve got the wrong skinner box. Slightly bigger numbers make no significant difference in this game, people only think that because they have come from games where stats lock you out of content or create an impenetrable wall in PVP between players.

Legendaries and Ascended are both time-based goals that give goal-oriented players a reason to keep logging in. And I agree with Anet that these things should be kept off the Trading Post.

Looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree on the equivalence of Legendaries and Ascended.

One thing we seem to agree on is that Legendaries should be kept off the Trading post. Why do you feel it is too late to do anything about this? It really doesn’t seem like it’s a decision that they can’t afford reverse. There may be a backlash, but it won’t be much compared to the backlash during the introduction of Ascended weapons, or even the backlash during the change that made Legendaries tradeable in the first place.

If this is indeed the direction ANet wants to go with then they need to at least be consistent and correct their easily correctable mistakes.

Dynamic Time Gating using Mystic Coins

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

ANet’s use of hard-coded time gates is becoming a lot more liberal than most players would like to see.

I believe using Mystic Coins as an ingredient in recipes to time gate is a superior solution in time-gating content. Compared to hard-coded time gating, using Mystic Coins, the leniency of the time gate scales automatically to match the desirability of the released items and to the time elapsed since its release due to the Trading Post’s supply & demand mechanics. This is more reasonable to me and feels much less restrictive than the hard-coded time gates that ANet currently has implemented.

Mystic Coins are already ingredients in Legendaries and certain Exotic skins, but it needs to be more prevalent in new content for it to become an effective time gating method, due to the current surplus in Mystic Coins in the market.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, I have a large stockpile of Mystic Coins at the moment. But I do stand behind my position that Mystic Coins are the best way forward if there need to be some form of time gating in GW2.

Legendaries tradeable, Ascended are not

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

So… say you asked me for change for a $10 bill and I thought it was a $20 and gave you four $5s. I realize the mistake too late, but that doesn’t mean you can come back and give me another $10 and get four more $5s.

When you learn from your mistakes you don’t repeat them.

Why exactly would you consider making Ascended tradeable a mistake?

Legendaries, I understand, as it is a prestige item and making prestige items tradeable undermines their status.

However, Ascended items are, for the most part, valued only for their utility. It is the extra stats they grant over Exotics that makes them valuable. These items are required for vertical progression, in other words, to remain on equal footing with other players in the game. Limiting trade for these types of items is a rather despicable way to “encourage” players to do content that they would otherwise rather not do.

I am of the position that the ideal equipment acquisition system would be exactly the opposite of how things are currently implemented in GW2. Utility items (best-in-slot stats with mediocre skins) should be freely tradeable and require reasonable amounts of effort to obtain and have no time-gate in any shape or form. Prestige items (good or great looking skins) are the ones that should have limited player trade, require a wide variety of content to be completed, and possibly be time-gated to allow ANet to keep up with player demand for high quality skins (at least until they implement User Created Content).

Legendaries tradeable, Ascended are not

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I really hope there is a good justification behind this that I’m not seeing (i.e. not just to enforce time-gating of progression).

Legendaries are the prestige items, while Ascended are utility items for the most part (extra stats). It doesn’t make any sense to limit trade on the utility items while allowing prestige to be flat-out bought, thereby ridding them of any prestige they may have had. This is pure hypocrisy from where I see it.

If you want to time-gate vertical progression, the least you could do is allow players with spare time to capitalize on it, and give others the possibility to acquire it through trade. The time-gate will still serve its purpose even if the end result is tradeable. The burden of time will just be better distributed toward those who can afford to expend the time.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Last Refuge should cure "Revealed."

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

This still won’t fix the rather common scenario of LR triggering right before an attack lands (i.e. a C&D, or shortbow shot), in which case the attack will trigger revealed after LR triggers.

Best solution I can think of is still to swap any of the other Shadow Arts adept major traits with it.

Rune for thieves eagle vs. pack

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Ogre is by far my favorite for consistent, general purpose DPS.

160 power and 4% dmg for non-crits, and (3 + 4*(150+crtdmg)/100)% dmg for crits, which works out to be 11% for 50 critdmg and 13% for 100 critdmg. The rock dog is not particularly reliable, but when it does spawn it gives a decent boost of 1k every 3 seconds until it soaks up 6k of damage for you and your team.

It also happens to offer the highest burst potential (whereby only power, direct %dmg boosts and critdmg matters) for both crits and non-crits asides from Scholar at 90%+ HP. This is why many high tier burst builds in sPvP run with it.

Ruby Orbs are my 2nd choice. 120 power, 84 prec, 12% critdmg is a very nice balanced distribution for DPS. Plus they’re cheaper than most popular DPS Runes.

6 Piece Scholar set is great for those fights where you can faceroll and barely get hit at all, but for anything decently challenging, you’re better off replacing the 6th piece with a Ruby orb for 180 power, 10% crit dmg, 14 prec. Although even then this set is still completely overpriced for what it offers DPS wise. You take Scholar for 1 reason only: Burst. For burst builds, you want your initial burst to hit as hard as possible and disengage if they’re not dead by the end of it, and this is what Scholar excels at.

Eagle runes’ overall burst potential and DPS really suffers due to the lack of a power boost. The only decent use case is for timed bursts when targets falls below 50% in PvP, but even then your burst potential is significantly lower than with any of the above.

Similar story for Rune of the Pack for the lack of any %dmg or critdmg boosts. As a Thief you’re not going to be struck often enough for the m/f/s to pop often enough to matter, and if you are, might as well take Back Fighting to go along with it because you’d likely be in down state often enough to justify it.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

I just sold my Magetech peace, what do i do?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

It’s unfortunate that this happened, but I kind of doubt ANet will do anything about it. Open a support ticket and try your luck.

Account Wardrobe has been suggested before and is very crucial to the reward structure of GW2 but ANet has never officially acknowledged it as far as I know.

To people saying Liadri is "easy"

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Beautiful post. Agreed completely.

Liadri is hard. It took me well over 100 tries to beat her and finish Light Up The Darkness. If you spent any significant time and/or effort to beat her, turning around and calling it easy would be belittling your own achievement.

A few quick Light Up The Darkness tips

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

You can quickly strafe left and right at a distance to make Liadri’s projectiles miss you completely, in case you’re having trouble sustaining yourself in phase 1. Wells and visions always appear in the same positions relative to the first well, so memorize these locations and head toward them immediately after throwing to minimize your phase 1 time. Don’t be afraid to stand in the AoE if you need to in order to save time, and practice your dodge timing. Also, to save even more time in phase 1, you can actually pull visions into wells, and they will turn into an orb without exploding in your face if you position yourself correctly.

On the second phase, the AoE is always in an hourglass shape that alternates in a 90 degrees rotation. This means that the next safe spot will always be at 90 degrees in either direction from the previous safe spot. These safe spots are important because throwing the orb roots you for a rather significant amount of time, so you want to be in one of these when throwing in phase 2 because you cannot dodge to cancel the throwing animation.

As soon as the current AoE falls, you should approach the next safe spot (90 degrees to your left or right) that has a well in or near it, and kite/DPS Liadri while guiding the visions into the nearest well. If no well is nearby, use the opportunity to DPS Liadri instead until the AoE falls.

Once a vision has turned into an orb, pick up the orb and move to the next safe spot before throwing. When there are visions around it, use your AoE CC’s to stun/slow/push Liadri and the visions.

The only real sources of uncertainty here are the random pulls and your DPS on Liadri. There is not much you can do about the former, but with enough attempts eventually things will work out as long as you have the latter covered.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Community Created Aesthetic Content

in Suggestions

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I thought I’d make a quick bump of this thread, seeing as Guild Wars 2 is still stagnating in terms of cosmetics.

In the past few months, we’ve had a handful of new weapon skins and even less armors, with widely varying levels of reception.

In the same period, the Steam workshop for Dota 2 and TF2 have had thousands upon thousands of new submissions, and have no problems sustaining their player bases through 100% horizontal progression.

In the mean time, Everquest Next, a very promising upcoming MMO, has also announced that it will feature a user created content store.

If you weren’t taking this idea seriously before, I’d say it’s time for a reassessment.

“In Team Fortress 2, just to be really clear, the community itself makes ten times as much content as we do. We have people who are making $500,000 a year selling things in the workshop. We can’t compete with our own customers. Our customers have defeated us, not by a little but by a lot. They’re buiding content that’s just as good or better than what we’re building and they’re building it at a spectacular rate.”

-Gabe Newell at the DICE summit.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Requesting video of devs finishing liandri

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What I’m most curious about is whether or not ANet’s own testers brought up the various technical issues with the arena design (gridded floor making AoE circles hard to see) and horrible camera angles at edges, and if so, why had the designers chosen to do nothing about it before releasing the content (if they didn’t, well, then here’s another case for a public test server).

I personally enjoyed the difficulty of the fight, despite having spent a much longer than average 100+ tries on my Thief to kill her and another 10 or so to get the 8 orbs achievement. The sense of accomplishment is unlike anything I’ve done before in GW2.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Daggerstorm Evade

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

And the Thief QQ on forums by about 300x, and for once it would be well justified…

1600 Rare Greatsword into the Mystic Forge

in Crafting

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Precursor prices have settled recently so it is pretty safe to assume that they are approaching equilibrium.

If you have yet to spend on MF as much as it costs to buy outright, then the chance that you would have gotten a precursor is most likely below 50%.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Fighting stun locking zerker warrior?

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

My Sword/Dagger sustain build (10/0/30/30/0) with zerker gear has a pretty good win ratio against these Warriors. Good Shadow Return placement is vital especially now that it doesn’t break stun anymore.

Daze a few times with your sneak attack and watch for stability to pop, then steal it with Larcenous and proceed to face stomp. Save steal to shave 33% off their heals with poison if you don’t see a healing signet on them and then burst them down with whirling axe.

I imagine full zerker (traits + equip) will definitely have a difficult time against them.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Finding Bounties: Is it fun?

in Guild Missions

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Its no less fun than the treks … but I do understand what you are saying. and I agree it is upsetting to have 15 min to find and kill 2 mobs and lose the bounty because it took 12 min to find the first one alone.

Always cross your fingers that you get Trillia Midwell and Poodaboo (arguably the two easiest ones to find)

Several others are also relatively easy or at least straight forward to find but regardless of the target I have a hard time imagining how the search can be fun. It is just a lot of time spent run around staring carefully at your screen. There is no process or mechanic. It is a braindead as can be. Whacking barrels and poking rats doesn’t really count either.

Yes this is basically my entire complaint. I wouldn’t mind looking for bounties if the process itself is more engaging. But in its current state it’s just wasting players time for the sake of making bounties more difficult to complete.

ITT: We come up with ways to fix Last Refuge

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Swap it with any of the other SA adept major traits that won’t randomly place the user in unfavorable situations, while the people insisting it’s helpful for them can choose to take it as their major adept trait…

Exploits... oh fun!

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

C&D precast + a shadow step of some kind (Shadow Step, Steal, Infiltrator Signet, etc) near the end of the animation could make it look like he gained stealth by C&D’ing nothing.

Finding Bounties: Is it fun?

in Guild Missions

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

We do pretty much the same for finding Bounties, except with usually 5 or less players, so it tends to take quite a bit longer, which probably does end up adding an extra layer of tedium to the process.

Regardless of length, do you guys find the process of searching for Bounties fun at all?

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Stealth disruptor

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

The decision to implement a hard counter to a major class mechanic in itself was enough to rid me of any remaining faith I had left in ANet’s ability to make sane balance decisions for WvW…

Shadow trap nerfed

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

If traps were made visible when inside enemy Forts/Keeps/Castle and set to expire in 1 minute then that scenario wouldn’t be any more of an issue than a Mesmer ressing a dead Mesmer by leaving a portal inside a keep, which is currently possible.

Again, I’m just trying to suggest that Shadow Trap without pathfinding limitations can work within the confines of the current meta with enough tweaks.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Shadow trap nerfed

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

@Kaon
10k is the range of a treb, isn’t it? With that kind of awesomeness at my disposal, I’d just form a guild of thieves dedicated solely to teleporting back into objectives and taking them before anyone can respond. All we’d have to do is put those traps at obscure locations inside objectives where people are unlikely to go and port back after the enemy takes them. Chain stealth if there are still a bunch in there and wait for a chance to strike, or just play mindgames with them. Even if the attempt fails it slows down the opponent and trolls the hell out of them. The rage and tears on the forums would be a sight to behold. Taking SM would effectively lock down the entire EB population of a server for quite some time to even hope that maybe there are no thieves in there. It would be more overpowered than having NATO bomb the kitten out of a jungle tribe somewhere in nowhere that just invented a spear. I love it. Can I please have this Anet?

You can do essentially the same with Mesmer Portals, except it only takes 1 Mesmer to portal 20 players of any class back inside a keep. You don’t see this too often anymore because 1) Portals are visible and expire 1 minute after placement 2) People have adapted to this tactic by scouting for Mesmers and their portals after capping objectives.

ANet has stated multiple times that they would like Mesmer portals to be able to keep this functionality. So decreasing the expiry time for Shadow Trap to 1 minute and making it visible within the perimeters of any non-friendly Fort/Keep/Castle would essentially make it function as a 1 man portal, and allow it to be dealt with the same way people deal with Mesmer portals at the moment. In fact, it would be easier to deal with since simply triggering the trap would remove the Thief’s ability to teleport inside, because it would then turn into an useless pathfinding shadowstep.

Basically, my point is if ANet thinks Portal’s pathfinding-free mass teleport should exist in the WvW meta, then with enough tweaks to its behavior, a Shadow Trap with an pathfinding-free component of some kind would not be unreasonable to have as well. In fact, any Thief who has tried to use Shadow Trap extensively in WvW can tell you that shadowstep is simply not a viable mechanic for long range teleport due to its quirky pathfinding requirements.

P.S. not entirely sure but intuitively I feel Trebuchet range is much more than 10k, as 10k is the range of merely 11 or so Infiltrator Arrows, and I recall having seen Treb shots fly what looked much farther than that.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

[PIC]22,215 damage. YUMMY

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’m sorry, but are you seriously running dual pistol as your only weaponset? I would recommend swapping one of the elixers for a Grenade kit as it synergizes much better with Carrion, offering better Direct damage and Condition damage in AoE AND more on-crit condi procs. Then I would swap the offhand pistol for a shield and use it mainly as a defensive set for the 3,4,5 skills. Grenade kit tends to handle Thieves especially well since you can spam AoE’s around yourself and eat through their tiny HP pools while they try to position in stealth for a backstab.

This really does seem more appropriate for the Engy forums… Mostly a L2P thing.

Finding Bounties: Is it fun?

in Guild Missions

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Honest question: does anyone consider the process of searching for Bounties to be fun?

For me and most members of my guild we find it to be nothing more than a chore. We can’t help but feel it’s just there to make it less likely for smaller guilds like ours to successfully complete Bounties.

The fights are great though.

(edited by Kaon.7192)