Guild Wars 2

Staff is top DPS weapon for ele so IT IS useful.
You can also provide fury to the party.

I usually run 64202 or 64022.
I want blasting staff because when fights are usually decided by the first dps spike, it makes the difference when using meteor shower.

But with staff i don t usually get much aggro.

You forgot to mention the push on the GS.
Its actually really valuable to have a push and a pull in some situations like TA aetherblade or other.

spoj.9672:

LordByron.8369:

Players stack in a corner?
Boss should just go away and wait and aoe the corner if possible.

Then people would just safe spot bosses.

Are you saying this game can t have Artificial Intelligence on bosses?
Because if people find safe sposts it means a hole in the AI.

As it is stacking but since the AI is so bad that we can t even call it AI, its legit.
Safe spots would be exploiting by the same definition anet already gave.
(attacking from a spot where opponent can t attack).

Simon.3794:

i agree, RTL should be affected by Chill and Cripple so have it’s movement speed and distance reduced by 66%

Ok but then it should be affected by swiftness also.

and RTL hit the target too easily, we should make it like rush, where you almost miss 50% of the time.

RTL never hits and its quite famous to stun itself since release.

I won t comment the 20 skill stuff since i would gladly trade 10 skill for the same efficiency of a warrior.
Ele has mostly 8 skills with subpar copies in other elements and no autoattack.

Taku.6352:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

So, Mai has been toned down a bit, huh?

Yeah Mai is pretty much back to what she was but Horrik still tends to hit hard.

I’m sure mai never used to deal 20.000 damage in one attack chain.
She still do that in melee.

Only Pistol got toned down.

Thorwyn.8469:

But necro, yeah, there is absolutely no reason to take a necro in a dungeon.

Except they are awesome.
Expoecially in fractal they are extremeley valuable IF skilled, way more than a warrior.

What about no?
just give some AI to bosses (because running straight into players and using the same attack rotation is not AI).

Players stack in a corner?
Boss should just go away and wait and aoe the corner if possible.

Removing the trinity without proper mechanics was the mistake.

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

As a mesmer player, the old glamour build for WWW was one of the most overpowered thing this game ever seen.

As it is PU mesmer.

I can agree with pve btw, needing way more dps.
The PvE mentality of devs removing ANY sort of CC and non direct damage skill from the game is totally unexplainable.

They say they don t like the system, but then proceed to nerf anything not being direct damage.

P.S. revert powerblock and reflect nerfs.
Those are stuff used on reaction and thus MORE skill intensive that any tactic used nowaday.

I said more than once that promoting melee at all costs promoted a generation of players incapable of doing anything that copying a video.

I had 2 of those players in my previous guild, they could melee lupicus and stuff.

But IF they had to play slightly differently from youtube videos (because of party composition or teaching to new people or any other reason) they started wiping, insulting and booting pugs and complaining.

They obviously took something like 1 hour to complete any dungeon path without the “perfect party composition and youtube rotation” and every time you discovered something new they couldn’t accept nor do it.

The point is if you are not versatile in your tactic (See melee only) you are not a good player.

There can be a lot of reasons to actually range shaman in that stage (you have a phantasm mesmer in party or you have no guardian, other players need to recharge CD or once again someone died….).

But the sentiment that melee is the only answer to anything harmed a lot of players.
I still have never been booted, but i left lot of times when i saw similar behavior towards pugs; and also left a guild for that.

Best part is they will Always take 4 times the time required to complete any dungeon for their incompetence.
Sometimes they will find the proper Group to carry them, but finding it will take hours, while we can just play with anyone and succeed

Using FGS for roaming is like playing with the mindset of losing.
I know we were nerfed in mobility, but i still refuse the idea.

I’d rather use elemental or a racial elite (reaper of grenth :/ since i’m human).

FGS is useful just if you run focus and want to prevent a siege.
Attune earth=>cast FGS=> before cast is finished use earth 5=> ude FGS on a wall over a siege

Actually we have this issue that every single dagger with a certain graphic like “tear of grenth” and similar is held upward.

Could it be fixed or its intended?
Its ugly as it is with elementalist animations, and doesn t go well with mixing skins.

To tell the truth i’d rather play with *game mechanics" rather than having something removing them.
And i’d rather have interesting gameplay with what we have in game…something that is still hard to see in game.

For example i d really like to see some 5VS5 with a decent AI and not overpowered opponents with no brain.

Because despite Patches and stuff, most LFG asks Always for 2-4 warriors.
Also its strong and extremely easy to play.

Even if you mess up your traits or part of the equipment the DPS is still good.

Warrior is indeed boring but when you need gold, its the safest bet.
Expecially being nerf proof.

Zaxares.5419:

Patience, guys. When the Aetherblade Retreat first came out, everybody went crazy wanting Mai’s Rapier. A couple of months later, we did indeed get it from Champ bags.

and it was an unexpected awesome move.
I’d better had it crafted but yet it was one of anet best decisions.

I do think that once a certain developer told me in this forum that many people loves instabilities.

I wonder if he can still say that.

They are as useful as fractal leaderboards.

@mage its an awful idea…. the development team proved to not be able to balance fractals many times.
Do you want to add a new RNG wall for pug runs?
They should first FIX fractals, then try easy thing or add new fractals.

They could also revert the 50 levels thing for the old 80 without instabilities.

Fractal already lost too much population.

Any bug glitches etc favouring player is promptly fixed even if totally irrelevant.

Any game breaking bug that makes the game frustrating is instead ignored for months.

As they did with dredge i could bet next patch will address mai trinn door and only many months ago they will fix (yes its bugged) mai trinn/horrik scaling.

What is not fun:
As for mesmer, having one of the most skill intensive and fun builds, and being forced into the 1111111 conjured dispenser or healbot in WWW, feeling even dumber than a warrior.

Unfortunately seems anet buff easy builds and nerf any interesting one instead.

Wanze.8410:

LordByron.8369:

The theory that demand drives the price and economy is fine can be applied to any mmorpg ever existed.

Doesn t prove economy is healthy anyway, nor that flipping is a good thing.

Doesnt prove that the economy is unhealthy or that flipping is a bad thing either.

We have huge load of empyrical data for that.
Stuff doubling in price in few days….
People with hundreds thousands gold and invsting most of their assets in gems+rare items pushing prices out of normal players.

Jagstang.6912:

LordByron.8369:

Are you telling that capturing during mistform would be game breaking as thief capturing during stealth?

Nope! That’s a confirmation bias if you got that from what I said. In fact, being stealthed is less OP than being invulnerable to damage. Now to be illogical like you, are you telling ME that being completely invulnerable and capturing isn’t as OP as capturing while stealthed.

The thief hate is strong with this one.

To tell the truth stealth is not much less OP that being invulnerable.

If an opponent is only invulnerable you can at least plan your defense and react.
If an opponent is stealthed you cannot react

If you are in mistform you can t do anything -.- and yet somehow you can be CC.
Not to mention the cooldown.

Ele has this issue:
It depends from strong traits but has awful skills.

That means being balanced is really difficult.
You either do awful dps or you do huge dps and die to a bird attack.

That is why even in PvE you see only lightning HAMMER ele and staff eles.
DD shouldn t be a tank weaponset :/

domness.6719:

LordByron.8369:

i just know it seems way easier at 50 than at 30.

Heh, to be honest, I think it’s exactly the same at 30 odd than it is a 50. In fact, we died less at 50… :S

checked…

Mai Trin and First Mate Horrik should now scale appropriately with fractal levels.

Means Mai and horrik now does like 2-4% less damage per tier (30-50).
And considering how much damage they do its totally irrelevant.

Now if you compare damage between low levels and higher you know that the dev who made the change, just changed the code and didn t even test or checked what he was doing.

Because if anything they totally broken the scaling.
So anyone suggesting mai trin is fine is suggesting a level 20-30 fractal player has to face a level 50 fractal with broken scaling and maybe added instabilities.

And i guess same broken scaling is applied to the other living story fractal.
Possibly anyone has wiped at fire/earth elementals or those funny charrs hitting for 15.000 with a fast melee attack.

Its infact clear that both living story fractals have scaling issues.
One was just broken last patch.

I still like people defending a broken fractal because they want to write L2p everywhere….

I would just remember that with people like them we would still have the old Dredge fractal, and possibly will have a fractured patch 2.0.

Before giving credit to them just look at how much the fractal population dropped.
Selfishness as i never seen before.

The theory that demand drives the price and economy is fine can be applied to any mmorpg ever existed.

Doesn t prove economy is healthy anyway, nor that flipping is a good thing.

Are you telling that capturing during mistform would be game breaking as thief capturing during stealth?

The difference is that with warrior you can facetank some slow attacks, with ele its a great problem if you get hit by normal Attacks.

If you interrupt your 100B you have it readi in 6,5 seconds, if you interrupt meteor shower you get it back way after.

If you need to cleanse conditions or few HP you lock yourself out of damage with an ele.

If you switch weapon with a war for a parry etc, your axe main hand and sw 4-4 will still give you good damage.

And so on.

Btw i totally agree that almost ant META build for PvE is the proof of the failure of the lack of trinity.
You can choose to play a skill intensive build and do kittenty damage or play a build that requires you to know and use 10% of your profession and be a “pro speedrunner”.

That is sad but its the price this game pays to the capture point centric balance.
At least PvE meta builds are nerf proof because they are unviable in pvp.

still easier to make 3 skins for 1 box in forge.

Guys you can t simply say something is accepted in many esport game is wrong.

You should give some reasons.
Your L2P attempt, its instead being predictable like gw2 AI and not paying for mistakes.

A decent thief can do whatever any other player do, that is called mind games, like faking retreats and stuff.

Thief is a class that removes any sort of counterplay, (except in PvP); any sort of mind game from the opponent and puts the thief Always on the offensive side until he commits so many mistakes he would be dead 3 times with any other profession.

In WWW its the profession you see more often used by unexperienced players because its has the lowest skill floor in game as roaming profession.

Its also the ONLY profession able to troll and survive zergs.

If its so balanced why preventing stealth to capture points in PvP?
Revert it so we all see how fair it is.

I can tell you that being kicked depends on how bad the Group is.
If you are able to carry an extremely bad Group you won’t be kicked.

Unfortunately most people kicking Others needs badly to be carried.

They can t because level 10 would be more rewarding than running 50 since the droprate is so low.

I have 1,5 full healer set from fractal…
And i still drop only healer stuff because RNG is fine.
Also apothecary weapons and any stats with healer in them….

P.S: i still hope for the stat change scroll to happen…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

why not starting by reverting mesmer power block?

I’ll try next time i see mai to make some screens.

But didn t people in this section explain in detail how to evade that during Living story?

Aberrant.6749:

So now thinking about what your opponent will do in a given situation =’s reading minds. Wow. I do this against every class… heck I do this in every game. I am professor X.

That is called prediction.

If you can reliably predict your opponents probably means your opponents are bad.
As it happens for most WWW thieves.

If the only counter to something is “prediction”, just playing RANDOMLY removes the counterplay at all.

1 per month.
But if i quit the game for a week i Always magically drop 3-5 in a week.
Same for guildies.

This game rewards you if you play less.

You know what?
I just remember that most professions have skill like OLD mesmer ileap.

Elementalist dagger 3 if it hits can be delayed.
Thief also have a similar skill.

Last patch made ileap way inferior to counterparts.

There is no need to change the skill, just revert the change and it becomes as it should be.

afaik first attack is always the pistol
It says evade.

The guy unfortunately deleted the chat that i could use to check the vid.

(i’ll raise the gangplans or stuff like that and she uses her attack).

What i can say is that 2 days ago once again i found myself alone at mai trinn.
I could stay alive for 10 min to kill her and i would notice if i gate hit by her pistol since she takes away 80% my HP and i play ranged (ele scepter/focus for mai).

I usualy as said evade short after she lift pistol, there is also an acoustic tell (pistol shot).
If you see flashy stuff (with a “swish” sound) you are late.

If i remember well the Attacks works like this:
Lift arm
Shoot projectile (evade this)
Shoot a light stuff with teleport (way later than previous)

They told me it works like a thief skill also (or i would say it resembles ele earth dagger 3-3).

Some time ago, someone posted a screen of a stat change scroll that he datamined from somewhere.

Maybe it was a fake or maybe not, but having scrolls to change equipment stats would really make this game better for many reasons:

1) grindy equipment like ascended, becomes “patch proof”.
2) improves build diversity since you can try stats at will without risking to end with useless equip worthing thousands gold.
3) makes fractal and random boxes drops useful for once…

Would be good to include those via crafting and not via TP since we need to be able to change stat reliably often to try new stats.
Something like 1 exotic insigna of the desired stat+ some dark matter+ the item you want to change.

TY.

Wethospu.6437:

LordByron.8369:

—
P.S. once again you can avoid the pistol.
But as Always anet made the tell almost invisible (mai lift the pistol and shoots an invisible projectile) and the attack effect (the teleport with lights etc) seems the attack itself.

Dodge few seconds after mai lift pistol and the second part won t even happen.
—

If only repeating this would somehow make it true.

last time i did it was 2 days ago when all pugs died.
._.
here for example

P.S: we still have 3 workarounds… lets see if they fix workarounds before fixing mai as they usually do -.-

Npc gets stuck due to awful AI and the dredge fractal team made changes that makes the BAD AI so inconsistent that you end up with 0 NPC really often.
Coupled with that the same bug they still didn t fix that mobs regenerating life as out of combat in the square.

As they did with dredge, cliffside, water and now MAI TRINN they keeps boosting numbers without fixing what really matters nor balancing rewards (40 still gives better rewards than 50).

That is why most fractal player are upset with anet.
They work to make the game unpleasant rather than the opposite and never plan their fix.

The most significant fix was when there was a bug during cliffside spwaning infinitge and increasing amount of chanters + fanatics.

People could use the workaround to pull the boss in a corner with 2-3 chanters (today they are 0).

They hastily put a wall in the stage and made the fractal impossible at higher levels.

Took 3 weeks to fix it when they saw nobody played fractal anymore (you couldn t find any party for hours really).

Sergoros.4398:

LordByron.8369:

I disagree.
Despite everything elementalist still have seen the most severe nerfs.
To the point that had skils totally redesigned and Others nerfed of more than 200%.

Mesmer just recently saw some strong nerfs but its anet politic.
If its easy to play buff it.
If its hard to play nerf it.

Wat? Mesmer been under nerf hammer from the 1-st days. Even since betas… Time warp nerf. Phantom nerf. Timewarp ON phantom nerf…and etc and etc…

Ileap is a little nerf comparing to others…but non the less painful.

that is cute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLFmrEjNs4Q

Aberrant.6749:

LordByron.8369:

i would argue that “Learning” to play against invisible opponent is an oxymoron.
But when you are short on arguments L2P is Always the answer.

Thanks for proving my point.

If you took the time to play a thief for a short while, then played your normal main and dueled against one a bit… you would be able to learn quite a bit about what they do in a given situation, and how to counter them. This is a great way to help learn how to fight against any class, I highly recommend trying it.

I started out as a thief @ launch, now I hardly ever play mine, but I don’t have many probs against them unless their build counters mine (which hardly a problem with the thief). I learned. You can too.

Looking @ your other posts it seems you main an eng. If that’s right and you’re complaining about thieves… you’re doing something wrong.

I’d rather say you proved mine instead.

If your opponent is able to predict you, he is either lucky or a mind reader or more easily you are being predictable.

Being predictable is the main trait of an unexperienced player and as i said it all comes from thief side.

I often remember how soulcalibur IV developers refused to put a custom mode in its ranking games because skills like invisibility (2 seconds once per round) couldn t be included in ANY serious game mode.

Having no tell, and no reaction window simply removes skill from a game.
Prediction may be part of it, pushing it too far simply comes to luck.

Not to mention that you can easily browse internet for the most ridiculous stealth skill in a game and see what you find.

i would argue that “Learning” to play against invisible opponent is an oxymoron.
But when you are short on arguments L2P is Always the answer.

@marauder.

Yet no thief layer would trade that ability in Exchange for something else.
The number of stealth thieves even when other builds were effective, speaks for itself.
nuff said

What if you have to choose between an elementalist and a warrior?
Also something that never gets tested is how often ele has to use his defences (evasion, healing etc) and how often warrior needs.

That in some content lowers ele dps drastically.
For example even at bloomhunger you can t spam your dps so easily.
Cast aftercast and cooldowns forces you to wait for the proper window, thus lowering your dps by a lot.

Warrior has a great autoattack instead and low CD, that helps spamming whatever you want when you want without caring much if you will have to interrupt to evade etc.

warrior may be OP
But thief has a mechanic that makes most fight totally onesided expecially in WWW.

You can lose if you play really (really really really) bad, you win if you play good but opponent skill is not tested in the process.

Aoes near a wall are totally random…

You can be hit by aoe on wall despite there is nothing on the floor.

Many players feels pro despite all they know is following youtube videos

They lack a B plan and if something goes wrong they just blame pugs.
Happens a lot with my guild i find myself often to say that if they kick pugs i would quit also…and its their fault since carrying 1-2 players its the norm in most pug runs thus if the runs fails can’t be pug fault.

Unfortunately this game elitism led to a general lack of experience.
Any unexpected or new tactic is usually unwelcome if not put on youtube even if fast, easy and safe….

High level fractals tends to be different
People is more experienced and openminded and you can often choose between 2-3 tactics for every encounter.

Low level fractals instead are like dungeons….just copy youtube or leave.

i just know it seems way easier at 50 than at 30.

i agree that if its very doable at 50 due to players experience, 3 times out of 3 i had almost to solo her at 20-40 totally ignoring team mates because at lower levels is totally messed up.

And its way easier to solo than if you have 4 party members.

This fractal is great because it shows everything is wrong in PvE at the same like:
- no aggro mechanic
- huge numbers to replace AI
- bad collision detection
- wrong tells to confuse players
- lack of trinity without a real counterplan

but more than anything, developers making changes without any test
and they don t even revert issues fast unless they favor players.

P.S. once again you can avoid the pistol.
But as Always anet made the tell almost invisible (mai lift the pistol and shoots an invisible projectile) and the attack effect (the teleport with lights etc) seems the attack itself.

Dodge few seconds after mai lift pistol and the second part won t even happen.

Its like swamp fractal… they put wooden passages that closes when you pass, and instead you have to jump on trees…. total nonsense.
Luckily they have dulfy

I disagree.
Despite everything elementalist still have seen the most severe nerfs.
To the point that had skils totally redesigned and Others nerfed of more than 200%.

Mesmer just recently saw some strong nerfs but its anet politic.
If its easy to play buff it.
If its hard to play nerf it.