Guild Wars 2

Leadfoot.9071:

Destiny.6738:

Raptured.9307:

Ah if you are talking about his wvw video that is pretty much the build I run for spvp. It is even more effective for spvp (I runs similar one). Does crazy damage and is highly survivable. I’m surprised it isn’t nerfed, as it is the terror of hot joins.

NICE one! Have fun in sPvP anyway, but you are just badly informed about thieves. There is only one viable build in sPvP for thieves (classic BS). You won’t see other builds on a competitive level.

I’m truly curious why p/d perma-stealth thieves are not viable in tpvp? In a team fight they won’t have much trouble getting their CnD/sneak attacks off and putting out decent condition damager – same question for the deathblossom unicorn build I guess. Is it just that there are other classes that fill that role more efficiently or that they are easy to counter (not for me!)

You basically answered your own question. HGH engy far overshadows any kind of sustained condition damage build Thieves can roll in the current meta. Even if we take HGH out of the picture, Necro, Ele, Rangers, all have much, much better sustained condition damage builds available.

Single high bleed stacks are too easily cleansed in teamfights with all the AoE condi removals flying around. Not to mention you can only stack it on a single enemy at a time when Caltrops are inactive. The P/D build can’t even function as a proper bunker due to the reliance on frequent stealthing.

TL;DR being decent, or even “pretty good” at doing something isn’t enough to be viable. For a build to be viable it needs to be one of the best builds available to serve a certain role. For Thieves, the only build that fits this viability criteria is the roaming backstab burst build and its variations. Even venom-share is easily overshadowed by the support offered by Ele’s D/D aura-share, group healing and aoe damage.

Khairos.3890:

I disagree with people that complain about the exchange rate being too high but at the same time, I can at least understand their point of view- it’s not a feeling of “entitlement,” they just want a price that seems fair. They don’t want free, they want a good deal.

And to want that is just human nature.

I can understand why this viewpoint exists, but it really is rather self-serving, and irrelevant.

For gem prices to rise, there needs to be more players exchanging gold for gems than gems for gold. So obviously, those players exchanging gold for gems believe they are paying a fair price, even with prices where they’re at now, or otherwise they wouldn’t be making the exchange.

In addition, what’s fair is a matter of perspective. You also have to look at things from the other side of the exchange: those who buy gems to convert into gold. These players will also want a “fair” deal, and will definitely have a very different idea of what the “fair” price should be.

The people not willing to take part in either side of the exchange have no input in this equation. That’s how a market works.

Chaith.8256:

Sixe.5704:

This is a screenshot of a 1v1 or should I say 0v1 as I never saw the thief coming. Now I’m a necro with a bit over 2k toughness and 29,600 hp. Never got a chance to hit back, and all this in a matter of about 2-3 seconds. How is this fair is pvp? Should so much burst damage be allowed right after stealth? Not to even mention when they blink out before they spike you.

What a pile of misinformation.

Okay, first off. Let’s say you take:

• Soldier’s Amulet & Jewel
• 30 pts in Death Magic & 30 pts in Blood Magic
• Freaking 5 Dolyak 1 Earth runes

You are at 2,050 toughness, and 28,312 Health from that. How are you claiming to have 29,600 health and over 2k toughness? That’s not even achievable if you sacrifice every possible thing in sPvP.

I am 100% certain that you have around 1200 toughness or less, actually, from those numbers. The guy has 0 might stacks, and had 0 bloodlust when he opened – everyone knows how much damage Glasscannon thieves do. You probably run Carrion, and maybe mistakenly thought your armour value was your toughness value.

You soaked 38,720 damage from that thief, 11,056 was from his burst combo, that’s 28.55% of the damage you took. 71.45% of the damage you took was like.. dodge-able, & counter-able. Heck, if you even turned around and looked intimidating you probably could have forced him to dodge off you.

Like many people in this thread have said already, it took the thief at least 5.75 seconds to do this to you, because the second Flame Blast hit you before he Heartseekers you for the last time and then autos. Even though you’ve insisted it was was 3 seconds max many times, the likelihood of the Thief circumventing internal sigil cooldowns, or using cheats is a lot lower than the chances of you being.. wrong.

Sorry man! You’re going to have to look for improvement within yourself before giving feedback on the forums.

Hahaha this post made my day.

Thank you for demonstrating that the OP’s claimed timing AND stats are impossible to achieve.

This was a glass Necro with >5s response time, people. Nothing to see here.

Travlane.5948:

Jarettellis.7813:

Love the D/P build man, gave me the idea to use it as a secondary weapon set for my main P/D roamer in WvW.

Ran your D/P in some hot joins for spvp, and loved it (played a little asuran so it was even funnier since it seemed the bigger opponents couldnt keep track of me out of stealth).

Oh and that little trick: BV—>pop the signet—>Black powder—>Heartseeker than steal in midair to land the mug hit, heartseeker than BS is just too much fun. Love using that combo in WvW.

P.S. (couldnt remember if you talked about that little trick or if it was someone else) but keep up the good work

cant BS after mug and HS bc both remove stealth.

Heartseeker doesn’t apply stealth until the end of the animation, so a Mug can be used before you land the heartseeker. You then gain stealth from the heartseeker and can proceed to backstab.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Apolo.5942:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Julius.1094:

16- Ability to stack more than one piece of the same gear in locker, 2 would be ideal.

16) The limit of 1 is a technical limitation.

I thank you for your time here, but dude that is plain sad, where did you outsource the code for this to?.

Collections can clearly support more than 1 item per slot, as seen elsewhere in the game. The problem is that it takes 8 times the amount of space to support more than 1, and PvP has a ton of items. In this case, “technical limitation” means size constraints.

Hi Evan,

What do you think of using a similar system for sPvP skins as the HoM rewards?

Change the chest reward system to reward 1-time skin unlocks instead of items. Change the RNG result handling logic of the chests to reward a certain number of pvp materials for each skin that the player has already unlocked. This system would essentially result in the same rewards as a player who salvages all skins that he has already collected in the current system.

Let there be a basic set of merchants similar to what we have right now that sells the basic weapons/armors/amulets/sigils/runes. And add in a special Weapon/Armor merchant that sells unlimited copies of skins that you have unlocked for 0 glory.

Unless I missed some important loophole I believe this system would solve most of the inventory related issues on the list when combined with a proper template system. It obsoletes the salvaging system, and gives each player unlimited copies of the skins that he has unlocked.

And it seems to me that you have most of the required infrastructure in place already elsewhere in the game.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. =)

Lux.7169:

Lupanic.6502:

But even if you have the best build and does not make a mistake it is possible that a thief takes you down. Even top players are dying in seconds from time to time if a thief catch them.

Actually no. In high-end tPvP it’s almost impossible for a thief to 1v1 any class (besides warrior).

Thief is literally one of the weakest classes in the high-end spectrum of the ladder and they’re even weaker 1v1.

Pretty much this. Thieves have very little chance in higher tiers against any class 1v1 except other pure glass builds.

Their only role is to quickly finish off damaged and pre-occupied targets with no cooldown’s left in teamfights and using mobility to turn numbers in their team’s favor. They can serve that role very well, but only if the rest of his team can hold their own, which means that solo q tournies can be a very hostile environment for Thieves…

jcbroe.4329:

Grenix.1576:

HGH is a strong trait. Its also our ONLY strong trait. The rest of Engineer is pure crap, and a lot of stuff is bugged. (snipe, deployable turret for example) Also our elixer U has been broken with new changes. Now 1/3 of time those skills do just nothing at all because they removed invisiblity barier from the RNG.. If you think Engineer is OP then seriously look at some thiefs/mesmer/elementalist.. They are gods that you cant even touch sometimes.

And turrets just dont work well in pvp OR pve.. maybe in a 1vs1? I dont want my engi for just 1vs1 with turret builds.

I wouldn’t say its the only strong trait. It is a very strong trait, yes. But Incendiary Powder is also strong, as proccing the strongest damaging condition in a condition build definitely is useful.

Not all of the classes have access to burning in the game, or are considered viable when building for that as opposed to building for something the metagame considers them strong at.

Not that it is an issue with the class either, but it isn’t like this particular trait is making condi engineers any weaker either.

I definitely share this viewpoint.

Incendiary Powder is much too strong for a 10 point trait. 33% 2s burn on a 3s internal cooldown is over 50% burn uptime with rabid amulet and grenade’s multi hit attacks. Compare this to many classes that don’t even have access to burning, or Ele’s Burning Precision that gives 1s burn on the same IC, or even Guardian’s virtue burn that gives 1s burn on every 5 attacks, and you can see how completely out of line it is.

Grenade kit doesn’t have access to burn naturally, and this would have kept things somewhat in balance if it wasn’t for this trait (i.e. there would be a need to switch to pistol and get in range for blowtorch to stack long burns, and confusion, grenade for every other condition).

In my opinion this trait is the biggest problem with the build, and is the only thing that needs to be toned down. Instead of nerfing anything else on the engy, we should try to bring other classes on par with the Engy’s access to the 4 major damaging conditions, and possibly, their access to might.

Here’s a list of what conditions other classes are missing at the moment:

Ele – Poison, Confusion
Guard – Bleed, Poison, Confusion
Warr – Poison, Confusion
Necro – Burn, Confusion
Thief – Burn, Confusion
Mesmer – Poison
Ranger – Confusion

Guardians and Thieves are in the worst condition (lol pun) right now when it comes to condi builds because Guardian only has access to burn, while Thieves have poison and bleed but cannot stack bleeds effectively enough to compensate for the lack of burn and its higher base damage.

Elementalist condition removal is certainly a bit over the top. Meditation Guardian has strong condition removal, but isn’t nearly as bad as Ele. But lol you’re complaining about Thieves’ condition removal? Maybe on the really gimmicky sustain builds that don’t have any place in the meta at the moment…

However, you do have a good point regarding the fact that most classes only have condition builds that rely on a tiny subset of conditions that get cleansed way too easily. HGH engy are so strong right now precisely because they can very efficiently stack every damaging condition in the game on top of the might stacking.

Every class should have this kind of access to at least the 4 major damaging conditions in my opinion.

To my understanding, here’s a list of conditions that certain classes lack, and would need in order to have condition builds even approaching HGH’s effectiveness. Feel free to correct this list if you see anything in error.

Ele – Poison, Confusion
Guard – Bleed, Poison, Confusion
Warr – Poison, Confusion
Necro – Burn, Confusion
Thief – Burn, Confusion
Mesmer – Poison
Ranger – Confusion

My theory?

Tarban.

Nettle.9025:

swinsk.6410:

I don’t think I saw him once BP+HS+steal to backstab.

This doesn’t work if you are traited for mug. If you steal in stealth with mug, the mug damage will break the stealth and you won’t BS. That is why a d/p thief will BP+HS+BS then steal.

I played d/d for probably 300 tourney games or so, and d/p for another ~200 and still going. I personally find d/p superior in every way, once you get used to the burst combo. The OH pistol skills are just far too valuable.

Also, a d/p thief can stack 8 seconds of stealth at will if they have full ini, 12s if spec’d into shadow arts. If you have fast ini regen, you will come out of that stealth with full ini again. So that’s something neat a d/d can’t do.

There is a more nuanced and more effective d/p burst combo that does not require you to steal AFTER backstab.

The stealth applied by leap finisher only applies after your heartseeker animation finishes. You need to use steal after starting the heartseeker, but before its animation ends, so that the mug hits while you are not yet stealthed. Once your heartseeker ends, you will gain stealth for the backstab.

Other players can move up or down in ratings too FYI.

The fact that you were 1 place away from eachother says nothing about the absolute difference in rating in between your two positions.

Even if your volatility and rating gain was the same for those 2 matches, there is always room for other players to rise or fall in between your ratings.

EDIT: Never mind I didn’t notice that the order was different too. Volatility must be the reason then.

Aervius.2016:

Blind should stack in intensity, not duration.
Each attack removes one stack of Blind.

Blind stacking in duration really doesn’t make sense though, for something that only lasts for 1 attack. Although I guess the same applies for Aegis, so at least they’re consistently irrational.

Yes D/P is considered the optimal burst set at high level play precisely because all 5 skills on the bar are great on their own and have amazing synergy.

Headshot especially. SPvP as a burst without a reliable interrupt is going to have a hard time against any high sustain bunker.

Not sure about PvE or WvW, but in sPvP Ogre runes are generally considered the optimal runes for burst. The 4% dmg increase scales up your crit dmg as well. So if your crit dmg is over 50, that it is essentially 8%+ crit dmg.

Most burst builds tend to prefer the 4% dmg increase on non crits + 11%+ crit dmg + 165 power + rock dog (good distraction lol) over what’s offered by Scholar + Divinity.

Although if you’re always going to be opening with your full burst combo, then a full set of scholars will be optimal. But you’re just asking to get pummeled if you try that in high level play.

Basically, as others said, you just need to keep your distance to deny him a chance to c&d you. That’s where most of the sustain and damage in this build comes from.

Shatter your clones as soon as you summon them, Phantasms as soon as they finish their first attack. They can c&d on them to get stealth also.

I wanted to start this exact thread but you beat me to it.
Completely agreed on all points.

PvE/PvP split should be by damage/healing coefficients or skill durations only. Mechanics splits are completely counter-productive when it comes to easing new players into the format. Not to mention how ridiculous it is that sPvP is where the nerf is staying.

The all caps title doesn’t exactly help make your case though.
Your points are good. Don’t cheapen them with a title like that.

I am also pretty confused as to why 4s revealed is going to stay in sPvP…
It’s as if they thought thieves were in a decent state prior to the revealed change…

For someone who plays all formats of the game (me), the discrepancy in revealed between PvE/sPvP will likely throw off their game in sPvP.

Revealed duration needs to stay consistent at 3s. Just tweak the numbers that made you consider the revealed change in the first place.

I’m pretty sure it only moves your body and makes it look like you’ve broken the stun/knockdown.

You still can’t act throughout the rest of the stun duration.

So it’s not a stun breaker, but still useful for repositioning when your stun breaker is down.

Julius.1094:

Kaon.7192:

I believe invisible bags could prevent an item from being deposited by deposit all.
What we need then, is a way to purchase invisible bags using glory. =)

That’s an even better idea, nice going, it should have like a blue color behind the bag slots so you know which one it is and then anything put there is not affected by deposit all. Would be nice for pve too.

Invisible bags are actually available in PvE since the beginning of the game. You can either craft them or buy them from the trading post.

I think the 8 slot ones go for about 30c last time I checked.

SPvP should be self contained though, so it would be ideal if there was a way to buy invisible bags from glory vendors. I mean… you can already buy regular bags from them for 500 glory each.

Random Skelk once came out of nowhere and attacked me right before I logged off.

Broken armor +1 OTL

Heart of the Wild is what me and my guildies call it.

But congrats on the solo run. =)

I believe invisible bags could prevent an item from being deposited by deposit all.
What we need then, is a way to purchase invisible bags using glory. =)

I like the idea of having the shot from shadow strike fire regardless of whether or not the dagger strike hits. An additional condition of some kind would be amazing as well. Preferably burning.

Would be nice if they could integrate some form of evasion and strong mobility into the P/P set. We do need a viable alternative to shortbow.

If Legendaries are tradeable, the same should apply for Ascended items.

But ANets wants everybody to waste time grinding for the stat advantage, so that’s never going to happen. This is one of the most appalling inconsistencies in the game IMO.

Very nice list.

The only thing I would add to it would be the ability to make complete custom builds and allowing us to swap between them on demand when not in a match.

I use it personally because of the time savings it provides.

Also, I like using grenades on my Engineer…

WyldKat.4712:

I’m still having fun… is something wrong with me?

Nope, I have a lot of fun playing the game too. =)

But I do believe it would become more fun, and is healthier for the game as it progresses into an eSport, if ANet balances on a shorter iteration than monthly.

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems plaguing sPvP in this game is the feeling of stagnation caused by month-long delays between balance passes combined with ANet’s balancing philosophy of making small, incremental changes each pass.

Most successful eSport games have balance passes that are for the most part small, but always frequent. GW2 only has half of the equation for their balancing process, because for some reason, ANet has decided to tie the timing of balances passes to the timing of their major feature/content releases. And this, I believe, is the root cause of most of the frustration in the sPvP playerbase.

The first step to addressing this would be to completely disassociate balance timing and feature/content delivery timing. Features and content require rigorous internal testing to iron out potential game breaking bugs, which makes them time consuming by nature. Balance, however, (at least the subtle approach to balance that ANet is striving for) is heavily dependent on agility, the rate at which your team can repeat the cycle of evaluating customer feedback and the current balance state, introducing meaningful changes, polishing away issues, and reiterating into the next release.

It would be risky to jump into a new process right away for with a still relatively inexperienced team. So I recommend setting up public test servers to experiment with a more agile balancing process (weekly/bi-weekly maximum), that would allow players to try out changes in the pipeline, give early input, and discover issues that simply cannot be detected in controlled QA environments. This should be a similar infrastructure to what ANet’s internal QA team operates on, but on a much larger scale.

Having these servers could vastly improve the quality of the balance changes in the monthly releases (until you make the full transition), eliminate much of the stagnation problem for players who choose to partake in these servers (which I imagine will be a fairly significant portion of the sPvP player base), and provide a chance for ANet to improve transparency when it comes to making balance decisions.

Eventually, as ANet becomes more used to the weekly balance passes, they should transition into a more agile balance process for the main servers as well. The experience gained from the test servers should help ease the transition.

Any thoughts?

hackks.3687:

There is a period of time in which the ele can’t hit you after updraft – which goes for all launch skills but we’ll stick with ele as the example. The window of time includes when they are launched backwards and you away from them as well as the time it takes for them to close the distance and get back to your new location. This is a fact. I know it because I can count on it every time it happens and it doesn’t require super human reflexes like dealing with an instagib. There is ample time to pan your camera, see where they are in location and skill rotation and gauge whether you even need to pop your stun break at all. I could point out a handful of other CC skills that are more problematic than a launch/knock back.

If I’m not getting your point it’s because you’re not making one based on actual fact. You’re also missing my point that the issue you and others are having with this can be overcome with a little knowledge and a little practice. No twitch reflexes. No gimmicks. Just understanding and awareness.

Unless you’ve got any questions I’m going to leave it at that. Good luck.

The ele (or anyone else using a launch) doesn’t have to do anything himself except call out the target.

No amount of practice or knowledge is going to stop a well coordinated team from focusing you into oblivion while you’re in the air.

Disables that cannot be broken, however briefly the time, are simply too powerful in a team setting. This was why Basilisk was brought down to its current state, and launches need to follow suit.

I honestly cannot understand how anyone can see this as anything but a horribly broken mechanic.

Yes this is definitely in crucial need of a fix.

Punishing players for reacting immediately to a disable simply does not make sense in a competitive game.

I remember a Dev saying something about a tie breaker involving total individual scores.

Nice video.

Although it really doesn’t make sense why those classes should have perma vigor while we don’t. =/

I would use shadow trap in all of my builds in sPvP if it was reliable at all for hopping between points.

In PvE, ambush trap is pretty good for straight single target dps.

The rest don’t really have much of a use case over any other utility.

I do really hope they do make the revealed timer consistent across formats.
For someone who plays all aspects of the game, separate revealed timers could become a nightmare.

And I’d rather have them revert the timer back to 3s and tweak the numbers that made them consider the change in the first place. Or at the very least do a balance pass on the vast number of stealth related traits and abilities that were heavily affected by the revealed timer change.

As someone else mentioned earlier, the prices on these are justified given that it allows you to completely plug off a gold sink from the game.

If its costs were any more accessible, its impact on the economy could become quite significant.

Julius.1094:

Dear Anet, once custom maps are out, so people can test stuff in a controlled environment, practice, duel, etc. hotjoin needs to just go. It teaches new players all sorts of bad habits as it is not an actual reflection, even remotely of what serious tourneys are like (which is why it is also bad for testing builds). If you get rid of it you will have a lot more people to queue to tourneys and can support separate queues and rankings for solo queue and premades, which also needs to happen. Yes I’m aware the premade queue would be longer, but so what, full pugs vs full premades isn’t good for either.

New players will then just solo queue and if the matching system works (cough) they’ll get matched up with and against lower rank players, and even if they get their kitten kicked, at least it will be kicked in an actual tourney environment where they can watch how the more experienced players are playing and actually learn how to play conquest from the start.

Custom Arena’s alone aren’t enough to really replace hotjoins. They would also need unranked 5v5 matches, which they said are coming as well.

We got Yanonka to half health and then he reset to 80% health in place even though there was still 4 of us next to him…

And after that he kept resetting from 80% to 100%… Made it completely impossible.

Please fix him ANet…

2. I also hate the fact that certain game music overrides our playlist choices (especially in dungeons and story missions). I really would like to be able to turn this off. The CoF and CoE themes are getting really old now.

3. I believe this is only an issue for LA. Other cities do play tracks from City. That said, it does need to be addressed, as LA is the go-to city hub for most players.

8. Battle music in sPvP often fades out to silence as soon as a battle is about to begin (when we approach a point or an enemy)… Anti-climatic much?

In addition to your list, I also hope to have the MainMenu playlist extended until the loading screen ends. Having to stare at a static background is bad enough, why give us silence as well?

Also, it would be amazing if the game could pause and resume the current track instead of starting from the beginning of the next track when the playlist changes from ambient → battle → ambient.

Iove.3902:

This has been the standard 25/30 since launch. I don’t know what you’re doing different besides d/p and most Thieves have been using d/p in tournaments because it has always been superior in tournament play. Thanks for making a video though, will help new players.

He is doing something different, and that is only using heartseeker in a d/p setup… which is frankly the very opposite of helpful for new players trying to understand the d/p set…

Isn’t this Caed’s build?

Even the burst sequence he described is a neutered version of Caed’s (without BP + Backstab which is about half of the burst lol…).

You might be interested in trying an old condi build that I played a while ago thats made specifically to counter the issue you posed here.

15 points in DA for mug and weakness on poison,
30 in SA for blinds and Regen + condition removal in stealth,
15 in Acrobatics for extra dodges and Vigor on heal,
10 points in Trickery for Caltrops on dodge.

Weapons are shortbow and d/d, runes full ***Balthazar***. Amulet choices include Carrion if you want to be more offensive or Shaman/Cleric if you want more staying power in team fights or the ability to outlast people in 1vManys.

Healing skill is ***Withdraw***, utilities are shadowstep, refuge, caltrops, elite is thieves guild.

Withdraw + Balthazar runes will allow you to inflict a 5s (tooltip says 3, but testing says 5) AoE burn every 15 seconds. The flame blast occurs at the end of your roll so if you’re new to Withdraw and can’t position yourself and your camera to make the roll end exactly where you want, then you’ll need some practice with that before you can use the build to its full potential.

My opening is cluster bomb from range and then withdraw to your target, put down caltrops and detonate cluster bomb when its in range, drop choking gas and swap to dagger and do a c&d and backstab and then alternate between dodges, autos, c&ds, blossoms. It sounds long but all of this should happen within a second or two after the cluster bomb lands. By the end of it they will have 5s burn, 20s+ poison, 8+ stacks of bleed, 10s+ weakness, 10s+ cripple, and 5s of vulnerability + blind.

A couple of usage notes:

You have no hard-CCs, so save your steal to poison their heal if they don’t have poison on them at the time.

Save blossom for right after they remove an existing stack of bleed to capitalize on the duration. In a typical fight your target should have poison, weakness, 3+ bleeds, cripple at all times, making your fire “burst” a pain to remove.

Refuge when you’re low on health for basically a full heal. When you refuge you can use the time to setup caltrops and choking gas, which will not reveal you.

C&D often for the direct damage, might stacks, sustain, and 2 extra conditions to buffer your other ones from removal.

Reapply the choking gas from shortbow only when you’re close to full health and don’t need the extra stealth sustain from offhand dagger. 9s weapon swap can feel like an eternity when you need to pull off that c&d. The only other time you should be switching back to shortbow is when you’re facing multiple bursty classes and need to escape.

Don’t underestimate your direct damage even when using condition focused amulets like shaman’s. The 300+ power boost from balthazar and 15 in SA will make your backstabs and heartseekers carry some decent weight.

Try to use direct damage for finishing people off unless you think you can land a perfect fire blast before they can heal up. Other conditions are inefficient for this purpose. You can also try to use steal or shadowstep mid-withdraw to land your fire blast in addition to mug damage if you’re completely out of position and follow up with a c&d backstab or a few heartseekers.

Save your thieves for finishing someone off quickly in a 1vMany or a bunker that you absolutely need to take down right now.

Have fun! =)

Milennin.4825:

How do you get there solo, though? Is it possible to just run all the way to Lupicus? Never really been in parties that skipped huge amounts of mobs in there…

Anyone have any input on this?
My friends are casuals for the most part and probably aren’t as interested in watching or doing this as I am, so I’d rather solo it and not waste their time if it’s possible.

Oni.5429:

Knowing when the shatter recharge trait would proc could open so many possible strong plays. Right now it’s always ‘’oh, shatter recharge! What a waste!’’ or ‘’Oh, shatter recharge, kitten yeah!’’ with no real strategy in it.

Exactly this.

This addition would be amazing for everyone who uses traits or rune/sigil effects with ICDs.

Maybe give each ICD trait the roman numeral icon, and put a different color hue on the backgrounds to differentiate between traitlines.

Not sure where would be a good place to fit them though…

Dear ANet,

There is no question that you have some great artists capable of creating some amazing looking pieces of equipment.

However, it has become painfully obvious now that you simply cannot create new skins fast enough to satisfy the community without resorting to hiding even marginally desirable skins behind ridiculous grinds or RNG. For a game like GW2, whose entire endgame is based mostly* around horizontal progression and attaining a particular “look”, this is practically a kiss of death because even players who desire horizontal progression will give up eventually if the progression is perceived to be unreasonably slow, or capped due to the lack of new desirable skins.

The answer to this is to let the community take over the creation of the bulk of your content that is purely aesthetic, i.e. skins. This is really the only feasible way to keep up with user demand in a (mostly) horizontal progression system, and it can work spectacularly for regular players, content creators, and developers alike.

Valve is a pioneer in this field and has had tremendous success implementing user generated content for TF2 and more recently, Dota 2, both of which have horizontal progression as a major focus. For both of theses games, players enjoy an almost endless supply of new skins to work towards acquiring, content creators get recognition and revenue from creating and selling skins, and Valve has a majority of the burden of creating purely aesthetic content taken off their shoulders so that they can focus on refining game mechanics, adding new features, telling new stories, creating some of the more “special” and theme-fitting skins, and planning cool events, all of which, I think most can agree, is a much better use of their time (not to mention they get a majority cut of the skin revenue as well).

TL;DR: Give the community the tools and infrastructure, and we’ll make better skins at a faster pace than any professional team of artists anyone can possibly assemble, as has been proven in other games like Dota 2 and TF2. Players will have an endless supply of great skins to choose from and progress towards. Content Creators get acclaim and income from popular skin creations. And ANet gets a majority share of the revenue from selling skins on the Gem store, and can turn their in-house artists’ focus to creating timed content-related skins and artwork, which is a much better use of their time.

Think about it.

I don’t really agree with most of the changes OP mentioned, but I would actually love a quicker weapon swap trait.

9 seconds feels very limiting in intense fights.

rootnode.9546:

Grimwolf.7163:

rootnode.9546:

I said “nearly” permastealth. The 3 seconds of being revealed before they can stealth again is not enough. So the additional second gives other classes a way to react better.

A maximum of 50% up-time on stealth is near-permanent?

Read it again. I’m talking about this scenario: thief appears, attack, disappears. Appears, attacks, disappears. These, previously, 3 seconds of minimum time of appearance, were too short to react (or 2 seconds, including clipping).

As you mentioned, removing culling will in effect give people at least a whole extra second to react. Giving it another whole second without seeing how things work out first is really against their balancing philosophy.

rootnode.9546:

I said “nearly” permastealth. The 3 seconds of being revealed before they can stealth again is not enough. So the additional second gives other classes a way to react better.

It seems like you’re a bit confused about what people refer to as perma-stealth in this context.

We are referring to the exploit when a Thief casts c&d, and then wait for the stealth to end and immediately cast it again, only popping out of stealth for less than a fraction of a second when timed well.

This works because the revealed effect only applies when you attack while stealthed. If you just wait and let the stealth expire, there will be no revealed applied.

They said in the SotG they will fix this by adding a revealed effect even when stealth expires without attacking, thus putting an end to this exploit entirely. However, all they did with this patch is increase the length of the revealed effect, which still only applies when you attack while stealthed and doesn’t apply when stealth expires naturally.

So essentially they nerfed all legitimate use cases of stealth yet left the exploit completely untouched. Hence the rage from the thief community regarding this change.

TL;DR No, this change will not give anyone a better chance of fighting back against the real exploiters.

Adaneshade.2409:

Come on guys…. just nut up and learn to use it, we needed this nerf.

This was not the nerf we needed. They backed out on the one that we really needed to stop the c&d chaining exploit, and gave us this instead.

Daeqar.8965:

Scootabuser.4915:

…revealed apply to us even if we leave stealth without doing any damage.

That wasn’t as much of a nerf as this was.

Disagree completely.

That change would have destroyed a thief’s ability to turtle and play defensively, which with this change remains entirely, 100% intact. Taking that defensive ability away from the class just to preserve a little bit of offensive capability would have been a huge mistake.

Frankly, I’m ashamed that so many thieves on the forums are so short-sighted to think the 4s revealed is a worse nerf.

There’s a difference between playing defensively versus popping out of stealth only for a fraction of a second every 4 seconds, the latter of which is the only “playstyle” (read exploit) that the originally proposed change would prevent.

Instead, this new change is a blanket 33% nerf to the entirety of the stealth mechanic EXCEPT for those who make use of the aforementioned exploit, ahem, excuse me, I meant “playstyle”.