Guild Wars 2

Dee Jay.2460:

The goal of this redesign is to present Thief players with:

a) more interesting choices in combat
b) a system that rewards resource management over spamming
c) a more universal Stealth system usable by all builds and weapons.

The core of this redesign focuses on the replacement of Steal and reworking of Initiative.

1. Initiative

On a functional level, Initiative will remain unchanged. It will still be used as a resource for weapon abilities just like currently. However it will also be used as a resource for Stealth. As such, it limits how much Stealth can be used within a certain window and forces the player to chose between offensive pressure and stealth.

Also instead of regenerating at a steady rate of 1 point every 1.33 seconds Initiative will replenish faster, the more you have and slower, the less you have. As a guide line, Initiative should replenish as follows:

1 point every 1.0 second when above 7 Initiative
1 point every 1.5 seconds when above 4 Initiative
1 point every 2.0 seconds when below 5 Initiative

The goal here is to discourage ability spam without removing the choice. Players will be rewarded if they manage the resource well and starved if they dump it too quickly. Other MMOs have used similar resource systems to great effect.

Note: Some Initiative replenishing traits and abilities would require revision with such a system.

2. Stealth/Steal

Steal is no longer a base-line profession ability. Instead it replaces the current Infiltrator’s Singet and becomes a standard utility ability. Instead Stealth becomes the new profession ability. It would work like the current Blinding Tuft or Bliding Feathers you steal from mobs and Thieves. It would stealth you immediately until your exited Stealth either by attacking or pressing F1 again.

However unlike other Stealth abilities this Stealth would consume Initiative at a rate of 1 per second. This puts a cap on how much a Thief can stealth and forces him to chose between offensive ability use or defensive stealthing. For balance reasons Stealth would need a minimum duration of 2 seconds so people cant just dip in and out of Stealth constantly. The Revealed mechanic would function as usual.

Hi,

1) I liked the dynamic regen rate in other games too, but they tend to have a much larger resource pool relative to resource cost. With one CnD or Black Powder putting you into the slower regen bracket, sustained DPS would actually be more boring with your system because it would force us to auto-attack between every 1-2 Initiative cost abilities. Considering melee weapons already reward us for not interrupting auto-attack chains, we’re already encouraged not to spam completely mindlessly.

The way I see it, you would effectively have to increase the size of our initiative pool in order for the system to work like dynamic regen pools in other games, which might be cool, but it would be a buff to the class.

2) First, I really like Steal and would hate to see it diminished. It provides a lot of interesting choices in combat, which is one of the key goals your striving for. Diminishing it seems counter-productive.

As others have said, there’s a reason stealth is restricted. It should be pretty obvious how on-demand stealth for a ranged spec would be ridiculous.

My 2c-

As long as we’re talking about complete redesigns, I think merging condition damage and power would make the game in general more fun, especially for Thieves. Yeah, you might still spam Death Blossom, but choosing between direct damage and condition attacks based on the situation, your target, and your teammates would be pretty interesting. Of course, it might come at the cost of less build diversity, but I think it would be 100% worth it. Different builds would still have more ways to apply conditions than others (and/or more condition duration). In some ways, it might make more builds viable because you’d have more options available to you.

I didn’t get a chance to do the Halloween puzzle, so I was really impressed with this one. The way it’s timed and “grouped” is really, really cool. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without either of those two elements. I replayed it several times after I first completed it because I just enjoyed the experience. It took me about an hour of practice to get it the first time.

tonyl.5063:

I think what is REALLY missing from combat isn’t so much the lack of defined tank and healer roles, it’s the lack of the synergy within a group that you get in other games. What real benefit do you have of bringing my warrior over a thief in this game? Where does a Necromancer get his spot to shine?

Look at FFXI, who for as much of a boring grind the game was, they had some good ideas. Rogues would use an ability combo, they’d use sneak attack which was a guaranteed crit, with trick attack that transfers all threat to the person in their group they stood behind… So what would happen is someone would pull, and get positioned so the mob would be facing him, with his back to the tank, and the rogue would stand behind the tank, he’d use that combo and give the tank a HUGE lead on threat, which would let the group safely do a skillchain combo… Then what do we have in this game? A buff that you should put up anyway, and skill combos, maybe dispel people in your group?

You say there’s a lot of teamwork and a lot of opportunity to work together as a team, I say you’ve never played a game where you TRULY work as a team.

Well, you mentioned EQ2 as a shining example in one of your previous posts, and I played that game quite successfully for quite a while.

The main difference between EQ2 and GW2 is that your role in EQ2 is set at character creation while GW2 allows you to switch roles based on character customization. My Inquisitor in EQ2 was always a healer (even if he also provided some DPS and utility). My Thief in this game can be a tank with AE damage or a single-target glass cannon depending on my character customization choices.

The roles are still there, but they’re not defined by class. I can’t tell you why you should take a Warrior over a Thief unless you specify how each character is built.

ZaiTh.6378:

How is it you think that 5 abilities is depth? That is quite opposite unless you are playing a solo or console game. After reading so many posts on here, it leads me to believe that GW2 is a lot of folks first MMO.

Keep in mind, that is 5 abilities for 80 levels. You won’t do much more than that….forever.

It’s not so much the number of abilities you have but rather the number of options you have to consider. For example, my friend was yelling at me for not doing a blast finisher in his smoke field to set him up for a stealth stomp in a WvW skirmish.

I played EQ2 for years, by the way, which has dozens and dozens of abilities for each class., but more abilities does not necessarily mean more depth.

Funny, I’d pretty much swap your pros and cons. The leveling and story was much worse than SW:TOR’s imo, but maybe that’s an unfair comparison since BioWare poured so much money into that aspect of their game. On the other hand, I pretty much like all aspects of this game’s endgame, and I love that we don’t have dedicated healers.

Omega.1473:

Gryph.8237:

It is probably my biggest problem with gw2 combat… no role, no cooperation, no need to group.

No roles? I completely disagree. Talk with your group and establish roles. Do some fights and figure out who’s drawing the most aggro through their armor rating + damage dealing and then adjust accordingly to support that player. Plan your utilities to complement each other. Know who’s setting what fields and who has what finishers. Are roles easily defined? No, but that’s a huge step forward in my opinion. Because you can’t place anyone in a box and can’t assign sole responsibilities to any one person, you all share the glory and all share the shame.

Basically that.

There is tremendous potential for cooperation and coordination in this game. Maybe it’s not rewarded enough though, since, unfortunately, most people don’t bother with it.

I’m really liking my Sword/Pistol Thief for dungeons. The evade on Pistol Whip combined with heals and lifesteals (primarily Omnomberry Pie) allows me to stay in melee a lot, and the AE damage is great if the mobs are pulled together.

We also have solid utility with practically limitless blind fields, an instant ranged interrupt, group Fury+Might (and Swiftness) on Steal, and the ability to steal boons off mobs and grant them to allies. That’s not even considering the Venom Share build, which I think is supposed to be our support spec.

Tulisin.6945:

Whelm.9072:

Any thoughts about taking away Bleed from pistol entirely and making it a dedicated Power set?

I’m rather a fan of having condition damage or power damage be viable with any mainhand weapon, to the point where I’d rather see S/x get some way to apply burning/confusion than see other sets “streamlined” into one or the other. Following the “both these skills are awesome, just not necessarily with the same build” paradigm is a good way to mitigate the direct skill comparison thieves fact as a result of the initiative system.

On that note, an apply-burning-on-daze/stun trait would be an interesting way to boost Head Shot, Tactical Strike, and PW.

How is P/P even an option for a condition build as it stands now? Vulnerability doesn’t improve condition damage, so the only thing remotely condition-y about the weaponset is auto-attack.

If it’s important that P/P be an option for condition builds (personally, I don’t think it is), they should probably replace Body Shot with a condition attack, a la Heartseeker+Death Blossom for D/D.

I like gw2skills.net for sPvP, but is there a build editor out there that is more PvE/WvW focused? Like where I can pick my individual accessories, maybe put orbs on armor, ect?

Just repeating two of my favorite suggestions in the thread so far:

1) Tailor the rewards to fit each path. Nerf the rewards for the easier/quicker paths, buff the rewards for the harder/longer paths.

2) Switch all dungeons to the fractal system where you can’t zerg stuff. Kills two birds with one stone if you also make the checkpoints more convenient than the waypoints.

I think that’s all I’d really change. Overall, I love the dungeons in this game.

Thanks for this list. I was just going to look into the viability of healing power myself. It’s not exactly a self-heal, but Cluster Bomb (Blast Finisher) + Water Field =

Area Healing: 1320
Healing Coefficient: 20%

Same thing happens to me. Was going to upload my own video, but it’s the same as Johnny’s. I don’t lockup or anything, but the sound forces me to relog.

I think Initiative is actually a really cool mechanic. There’s still a limit to how often abilities can be used, but it limits your overall ability usage instead limiting abilities one by one. That means you simply use whichever ability is right for the situation rather than letting cooldowns dictate which abilities you use. Instead of asking “should I save this cooldown?” you ask “is ability X worth more than A/B/C (or some combination of those)?”

I wish the entire game used initiative instead of cooldowns. How much better would 1v1s be if they never came down to who had their stunbreaks or elite skills available?

Proeliator.8740:

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

You can run Static Discharge Engi builds without kits (well, just the med kit) that are basically as effective for beginners as D/D thief builds. Maybe beginners aren’t aware of that, though.

I like how the thief population went up even with the PW nerf. I just started doing hot joins on my D/D thief after the PW nerf because I was too lazy/cheap to get daggers for my PvE/WvW gear.

Teulux.6732:

Funny because it is in almost every other game out there. Slow gameplay = boring.

Agree 100%. The reason I play this game is because it’s fast-paced.

As far as thief goes, the nerf train is hitting it hard. Heartseeker → Pistol Whip → Backstab → Death Blossom (?)…there have been some Dancing Dagger complaints, too (and it is pretty awesome against two targets). Give it a few months and there won’t be much class left!

I doubt I’d play this game if it were my first MMO. Maybe the WvW would hook me, but I’m only willing to put up with the shortcomings in MMOs after seeing SWG’s immersive sandbox and EQ2’s life-consuming depth. I’d probably quit this game before level 30 if I didn’t know that there was more to it than easy hearts and events.

Remove the overall point system. Match servers based on their playtimes/population. Give server rewards based on what you currently hold.

Outside of the servers with full coverage, I wish they’d match servers based on playtimes. My server (TC) has a strong NA presense, a weaker Euro presence, and a practically non-existent Oceanic presence. Since this system only takes total score into account, we end up matched up against servers like SoS and DB, which have pretty much the exact opposite playtimes (especially SoS). Even though the scores may end up fairly close in those matches, they’re not really competitive at all.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who like seeing the score, but I tend to agree with the OP that the net effect is negative.

I was really enjoying the match until last night. The orb hacking and especially the rendering/culling issues really put a damper on things.

Tough nerf to take. Didn’t really see it coming, since the damage wasn’t very good in the first place (without Quickness). I guess they musta figured it was too much for a skill with a stun+evade. I like S/P too much to just switch to something else…hoping it’ll still be fun in a tanky/interrupty kinda way.

Gah, didn’t know about this and thought we were just doing better. That’s a shame. I’d support giving back the other orb ASAP, but I haven’t been playing in the borderland where we own it.

Had to take a break…hoping it fixes itself :P

Varathiel.9128:

1. During off peak hours if the winning team has more players than second place, not overwhelming but just 20-50 more, but team 3 has almost nobody those 20-50 are able to completely decimate the other team. Simultaneously team 3 is continuously taking team 2 objectives while they are (hopefully) taking team 1 objectives, which allows team 1 to gain a more commanding lead on team 2.

2. In the current server ranking system it is always better for team 3 to focus on team 2 after a certain point. And everyone knows it is better for team 1 to focus on team 2 to keep them at bay. So, instead of the two lower teams teaming against the powerhouse team 3 battle for second place.

1. True, and throw in the fact that the first place team usually has more orbs than the third place team.

2. This is just an issue with the players that might eventually correct itself. The ratings provide no reward (in fact, a higher server rating indirectly results in lower rewards next week) and aren’t even presented in game at all.

While I agree the three faction theory falls apart when one side is basically free points, I think it works pretty well most of the time if the players are acting rationally (which is a big “if”).

I wouldn’t make too much of DB’s night crew. It’s 8 AM PST and CD already has a commanding lead in points per turn despite being orbless.

Interesting start so far. CD’s little 5-ish player strike teams have done well in TC’s borderland.

SherlockBrolmes.4725:

1. Reset the maps to the respective thirds twice during the week. Winning teams will have more DEs to complete, so it’s less boring for them, and struggling teams will be able to retake a minimal base of operations, without being humiliated by 10 ballistas pointing at their spawn…

2. Reset the orbs (perhaps with the map resets). Again, the orbs are often the most exciting part of the weekly matches. The more orb fighting there is, the better. Orb fighting isn’t exciting when the guys with the orbs control the whole map.

3. Provide some sort of stacking buff to losing teams based on a point ratio. There’s no reason that the clearly dominant team should have extra health, endurance, and stat boosts after the first few days. There should be stacking buffs that grant extra stats, health, endurance (only within WvWvW), as well as stacking siege buffs. Something like 100,200,300 to stats and 1.5x, 2x, 3x siege damage, as well as 1.5x, 2x, 3x NPC effectiveness depending on the scenario. As servers start to close the point gap, these buffs go away, and the winning team can reassert their dominance. (Naturally this needs to be balanced to where winning teams don’t just take a break and give up until the score gaps close… not that this is so terrible a thing).

4. Mistwrought buff. Some sort of increased chance to get siege plans when your team is way outmanned/outscored.

5. 3 day to week long lockout on server transfers to competing servers. I’m sorry, but if you haven’t been able to transfer to play with your friends at this point, and they just so happen to be on the server you were just randomly matched up with, then you can just wait a few days. If you really can’t wait, perhaps there can be some sort of expedited server transfer ticketing system, with a history where players who abuse transfers can be identified and appropriately punished.

1&2. Resets kill the fun factor. Not only would you avoid building siege and upgrading keeps prior to the reset, but taking orbs or territory prior to the reset would seem pointless.

3. You’re not supposed to be rewarded for playing poorly, and what’s the point of a long match if you implement mechanics that force each match to go down to the wire? You might as well just argue for shorter matches.

4. Those siege weapons will probably just be saved for the next match, giving the losing team an unfair advantage.

5. I’ve never transferred servers or anything, but I guess this is a good idea.

Personally, I think they just need to increase the incentive for losing teams to play (rather than introducing mechanics that practically force them to remain competitive). No one likes losing, but people would still play if there was a point to it.

I think the server bonuses are supposed to provide that incentive (raising your score is rewarding no matter if you’re in first or last), but it’s obviously not really working. The rewards are too abstract, and people don’t really pay attention to them. Instead of getting a bonus to gold from kills, it’d be a lot better if everyone received a check in the mail praising the WvW crew.

But beyond that, I think it would be cool if there were “desperation events” that rallied everyone on the map to a certain goal (offensive or defensive) and rewarded them with plenty of gold and karma for succeeding (and, of course, even some for failing). It’s difficult to complete events when your team is getting roflstomped, and it would be fun to go all out to hold that last tower, even if it’s not significant to the overall standings.

As others have said, the two weaker servers are supposed to gang up on the stronger server. It’s practically impossible to keep the lead when you’re 1v2, which balances the score. The fact that the third-place team often attacks the second-place team is a player problem not a game problem.

I don’t solo a lot, but I had some fun solo fights the other day on my thief just roaming around supply camps, skill point challenges, and the veteran mobs. The nice thing about thief is that you can escape if the zerg shows up (and if 1-2 people break off to chase you…).

Only thing on the list I don’t like is 10. Random loot is fun for me…token grinds feel more tedious.

And regarding 8, I’m surprised to see complaints about the level scaling. I ran a level 35 dungeon and a level 60 dungeon today on my level 80 character, and it was still fun, relatively challenging, and rewarding. Great system, imo.

(Barely played WoW, so ignoring that comparison)

Wow, this a common thing and the GMs have done nothing about it? No response from ANet? Unbelievable…

The best thing GW2 does is remove stat progression from sPvP. It would take an amazingly, ridiculously good game to get me to ever play sPvP with gear progression again.

Honestly, I wish they could have found a way to seamlessly remove stat progression from PvE as well so that the dungeons could be tuned even more tightly. As it is, my goal is to complete all the dungeon paths once, but I doubt that’ll take very long. If they had tuned some of the paths to require perfect play (and maybe even a little luck on top) just to complete, they probably would have held my interest longer.

I’d say 5 days. Both my server’s matches have been clearly decided after 4-5 days, and participation/enthusiasm drop as the matches drag on.

Dee Jay.2460:

Now this doesn’t just happen with bosses, it applies to a lot of trash to. I can’t count how many times I’ve got bored of ranged DPS and Shadowstepped into melee…only to get one-shot by who knows what. It happens all the time, in every instance, with all sorts of mobs and it’s frustrating.

I can get behind melee being the high risk/high damage option. That’s ok….but melee would have to deal 10-times more damage than it currently does to off-set the risk you put yourself in.

I really hope this is addressed soon because I’m already seeing “LFM XYZ explorable mode…no melees”.

I agree to an extent when it comes to bosses (some bosses more than others), but you can melee trash without hardly any risk as a thief if you (or one of your teammates) spams blind fields.

Leiloni.7951:

You can’t stunlock a mob in this game. Stun typically doesn’t last for longer than a second or two so it’s impossible to chain cc a mob. Do you see people getting chain CC’d in PvP? No, you don’t. What makes you think we’d be able to do it in PvE dungeons?

Five people focusing one target? You could absolutely lock that target down in PvE (or PvP). Just as an example, the sword backstab for thief is a 2 second daze that can be used as often as you can get into stealth.

EDIT: And I mean, that’s not even considering blinds…it’s pretty trivial for even just 1-2 players to keep blinds on a single target full time.

But there’s not much “action” in stunlocking a mob. You’re practically going back to CHeal rotations from Everquest, heh. And if you’re stunlocking a mob, you don’t need anything else that you listed in your first paragraph.

Leiloni.7951:

What’s wrong with people not getting hit, though? When you have a trinity, the tank keeps the mobs off the team and the healer keeps everyone alive who does get hit. With no trinity, we are not supposed to get hit. We have small, situational heals and various shields to deal with damage. But the idea with GW2 is that it’s an action combat game. Good teams are supposed to get through encounters without getting hit much. Why force us to get hit and take the skill out of our hands? That completely defeats the purpose of a trinity-less game, doesn’t it?

If they wanted trinity-like combat, they probably would have just used the trinity.

This game is different starting with the downed state. Getting downed isn’t a big deal and recovering from it is a significant part of the game. Then you’ve also got active dodges, which everyone from the toughest to weakest characters has access to. If the game were just about CC locks, what would be the point of dodge?

It seems like you’re trying to make the game play more like other MMOs you’ve enjoyed while the developers have gone out of their way to make it play differently.

I’ve only done a few dungeon runs so far, but AC and CM have definitely lived up to the billing for me. I think the combat system meshes very well with the content (at least when you consider the ease of swapping skills pre-fight), and I understood the CC immunity system without needing a tutorial. I haven’t seen any significant attack without a tell, but I do have to admit that I didn’t notice the rings from the snipers in CM at first.

I haven’t felt the need for any sort of trinity, but, at the same time, I love how players can synergize. For example, I think it’s awesome that a S/P thief can create smoke fields to vastly improve the DPS of a D/D thief (by giving them easy stealth for backstab). It’s just really cool how you can form a group with three thieves (or whatever) and still make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes, it’s very frustrating. I don’t really understand how it works.

Good points, hope to see more about tPvP soon!

Elementalist is easier to finish, imo. At least Engineers can use the pull to interrupt sometimes.

Well D/D Thieves don’t have any CC, and Backstab requires stealth and is positional…

I started running this build on my Thief after someone destroyed my Mesmer with it. It’s not really as powerful as I thought, since you can get out of the spam even without a stun break (unless my spamming skills are lacking?), and if you dodge the second/third PW, the Thief is kinda screwed with low initiative and no endurance.

I really wanted to use this elite skill, but the casting time is just terrible.

Wow, I love steal. The randomness is honestly kinda fun.