Guild Wars 2

Tachii.3506:

Although D/P might be “easy” to play with, I still think it’s the most useful set simply because all 5 skills have their usages.

The whole “omg OP he can run away” mentality is kind of silly to be honest. If a player runs away from you in WvW it means you won the fight. There’s nothing at all to complain about really. If you really wanted to kill players go to PvP or something where running away will cost them the match or point with more direct consequences.

I died a couple of times yesterday because warrs and guards dragged me over the whole map into their guild zergs…wasn’t able to down them XD.
Every class can get away if it wants

Rebound.3409:

U know what the sad part of all of this and bigest mistake will most definitely be? After we “rebuild it” …to look exactly the same as before…nothing changed. The proper way would be to reshape LA, modernize it..make it look better. If someone builds something from scratch it builds it with new materials..new looks new everything.

But let’s be serios..ANet is notorious for recycled content galore.

I’m not for rebuilding it the same but for creating maps with empty spaces (maybe with pre-defines streets, estates and plazas), so every player can build their own house as a form of character/account progression that doesn’t include MOAR STATS.
It would also be possible to include our beloved guild halls there.

etiolate.9185:

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

You said it: you constantly knock thieves out of SR. It is easily done. Why should there be anything bigger than the 3 sec Revealed debuff on something so easily achieved?

Murtygale.2635:

I suggest creating a status called ‘Alertness’ or ‘Awareness’ so that when attacked by a stealthed character, any other attacks recieved by a stealthed character in 10s will be glancing blows, BOOM no more thief stacking encouragements.

I suggest creating a system called “Resilience”: whenever I eat a Warrior burst (like an 8k Eviscerate), the Warrior does glancing blows for 10 secs and their stuns are disabled.

With Lion’s Arch destroyed at the end of Living Story’s season 1, I feel it is an opportunity, no, our obligation to rebuild the city bigger and more beautiful than it ever was.
Every server could be in charge of building its own copy of the city, allowing players to build their own houses, which would cost money for both building and taxes to the city as a gold sink form of realism and immersion. A couple of different neighboorhoods (maps)could be used as a template (which get more copies with more players settling – let’s be honest, at a certain size, everything in a city looks the same).
Achievements of individual players could be displayed as furniture/parts of the house (“i defeated 10.000 players”-chimney with a head of zhaitan above it), while a server-wide form of achievement points (earned in WvW?) could be introduced to buy stuff like statues and fountains (or crafting stations etc.).

Well, that’s just an idea that came to me when my proud krytan heart was broken after the fall of Lion’s Arch

transferred from FoW to AM. Mostly because WvW didn’t really existed on FoW (except for roaming). When people transferred to Vabbi, not even that was possible.
On AM, people actually defend keeps/towers and there is room for zerging, smallscale and roaming.
I will definitely stay.

1. Definitely. And maybe add the feature to not lose stacks upon downed/death

2. Not so sure about it, sounds like it could be exploited to farm gems.

3. Yup. That would encourage to actually form more than one zerg and makes ZvZ less of a lagfest

Hamster.4861:

Give or adjust a grandmaster trait so that Rangers can see through stealth.

That would be so ridiculously overpowered that Warriors need a GM trait that makes them immune to ongoing damage to stay king of the game.

teh persun.6517:

Now, I’m sure your pitchfork is at a fine point know, and you’re ready to burn the bridge I’m obviously hiding under, but I do have a perfect buff for thieves. When ever they are poking the spine, a.k.a behind their target, they’ll do more damage. I’m not saying “hire a masseuse tomorrow”, no, I mean “Every chiropractor’s wet dream and worst nightmare” levels of damage.

No. No no no nonononono.
That would encourage exactly that kind of gameplay on the thief that everybody (legitimately) hates: the instagib that doesn’t allow any counterplay.
For stealth, I only see a slight problem for new players that encounter d/p thieves. For other stealth builds, I like the way that ANet went: when the thief is in stealth, dude, you better run (and crit dmg nerf was awful regarding this) but before that, he has to get into stealth. Trying to CnD? Lol, dodged. Shadow Refuge? I guess the floor is lava now, on a second thought, let’s just push the guy out.

Cygnus.6903:

Then again, give me a viable build that is not improved by Fast Hands? This is not meant as an insult, I have just never seen nor encountered a viable warrior build that is better, or even equal, without it…

Fast Hands is a strong and easily obtained trait. Simply because of that you will find no build that doesn’t use it. Other builds just seem unviable because the trait exists.
By your logic, Shadow’s Embrace should become part of the thief’s class mechanic. It is a really good trait that every stealth thief uses (because it’s basically the only condi clear). It is strong, sure. But would the thief become unviable if it wouldn’t exist? Surely not.

Whoa, how long did it take you to find the absolutely worst players in GW2 to fight against? They basically stand there and wait for the kill or smash buttons without hitting anyone of your team (some of the are even upleveled).
I would like to see your party against more skilled opponents (video quality is fine).

I think this would only lead to the following:

Warriors using F2 in dungeons and speed clear like crazy.
Anet realizes inflation and reduces all damage for all classes by another 10%.

Anet wants the warrior to be king of everything with minimal effort/skill. Just accept it and play it as well, it’s actually fun from time to time.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This is not only to punish the skill spammers but to allow the use of a skill when Initiatives are tapped out at the cost of putting it in cooldown.

Just like you said, CnD will be off the Exhaustion when stealth time and revealed time are considered. This is what I meant by not directly affecting those who uses the skills tactically. However, for those who choose to CnD as soon as they go off stealth will have to suffer the Exhaustion cooldown timer.

Sneak attack and Auto-attack will be unaffected since they don’t have Initiative cost.

Another idea that is tied to this that I have thought of is to redesign Improvisation that instead of resetting utility skills at random, it can remove all Exhaustion cooldown on skills. Quick Recovery can instead reduce the Exhaustion cooldown by 20%. Etc. I think that it will open up a lot of opportunity for improving the Thief playstyle.

As of now, it’s in a sad state being pigeon holed into certain build. I honestly do not believe that anyone will be just OK with this.

I’m with you regarding the supression of skill spam but these changes wouldn’t change the playstyle of most builds (and they would still be considered OP by new players) and would add a lot of “instagib-potential” due to the ability of making 1-trick-ponies 1-trick-ponies that can use their trick twice. While I do think a lot of people would appreciate the increased strategic gameplay, I am positive that it will lead to thief-QQ skyrocketing.

I think this would only make resource management harder for thieves while having only marginal effect on executed gameplay. In the case of CnD it would give six secs of exhaustion, the skill gives 3 or 4 secs of stealth and the following attack gives 3 or 4 secs of revealed. So you already have a similar “cooldown” on a sneak attack (and it’s similar with the blackpowder + HS cheese).
This would only punish terribad HS spammers (and would deprive me of the pleasure of seeing them bunnyhopping through the fields when they lose target) and would not mitigate the thief hate.

Kitt.2567:

2. Make enemy commander mark visible in a battlefield. (not minimap)
However, not blue color but red color commander Mark. Give huge badge to ONLY a person who FINISHED this commander lol.

so people should pay 100g for a “kill me” sign? nobody would tag up ever again if it just leads to a zerg focusing entirely on you, killing you the instant you try to get out of the spawn zone

ManaCraft.5630:

The format would no doubt be better off without the additional inflation – including the world bonuses and bloodlust stat buffs, since you didn’t bring those up. I don’t think you’re going to have a lot of luck promoting that particular point of view though. The broader player mass has always been loath to give up their power creep once it’s implemented. There’s usually an overwhelming amount of resistance to change when it comes to taking away bonuses. Developers don’t tend to be cooperative either, making it notoriously difficult to turn back the clock.

Yeah, bloodlust etc. certainly falls in the same category (and while I -of course- also use them along with guard buffs, aquiring them feels tedious). And let’s be honest: we all back off some seconds earlier than we must because we fear losing our precious stacks.

For the foodbuffs, some people say they like the diversity or power creep. I don’t think that is the case. Foodbuffs are used to enhance the meta build or defend against the meta. condi users use +duration, condi-“defenders” use -duration. we basically pay a lot of money and receive nothing because we use foodbuffs to counter foodbuffs.

Also, this thread’s intention is not to promote any kind of view, i’m just interested in other people’s view on the buffs.

In my opinion, buffs like applied fortitude/strength and foodbuffs as well don’t belong in WvW. They slow down the game by forcing people to stack up their buffs, reduce the already poor rewards for WvWing by forcing people to spend money on food and most importantly, they repel new WvW-players who simply don’t have the money and time to grind WXP by showing them they cannot compete with established guilds/players.

Anyway, that is just my opinion, I’m really interested in yours:
http://strawpoll.me/1632480

BurrTheKing.8571:

I still don’t understand why people think that pressing your heal is so much more skillful than not having to press a button.

that’s because you are spoiled by warr with HS. you never need to plan the use of your healing skill to make sure it doesn’t get interrupted. it does need more skill to avoid a 5/10 sec block than an unstoppable 4k/10sec healing (that’s why i suck with ele).

BurrTheKing.8571:

Against many builds the fact that it lacks a burst of healing is very much a weakness. When a Thief loses to me it’s because they spend too much time playing passively in stealth. The longer you draw out the fight the higher the chance the Warrior will win.

that has nothing to do with your skill as a player. the ability to stretch the fight to length, get short pauses etc. is built in the class. it’s not only the warriors strength to more easily gain the upper hand the longer the fight lasts (which would be legitimate), the problem is that the class itself enforces long encounters and other classes can do nothing about it.

Lifestealer.4910:

oh and forgot to add, how broken thieves are in wvw and spvp with those 13k+ backstabs.

1. go play thief.
2. come back here and tell us about your experience with backstabs

Crovax.7854:

my bad, totally forgot how skillful wvw blobs are. hurrdurr.
try actual pvp with GS/hammer on a higher mmr, then come back complaining how OP it is.

whoa, guess i hit a nerve here.
i never said that this combo is OP, just that it makes lootbags rain without giving a thought. i did not claim the warr to be OP at all, just that the class plays itself. this is, however, also true in smallscale/1v1. you can make far more mistakes than other classes, miss dodges etc., the class will mitigate your bad playstyle for you.

Crovax.7854:

GS, together with rifle is by far the weakest weapon in spvp and even zergfights.
You should apply ‘thinking outside the box’ to yourself first; taking GS solely for mobility gimps you significantly in duelling and teamfight scenarios.

and still, right from the start, i was quite successful with GS/ham in wvw and hardly ever die.
you didn’t get my post. on warr, i don’t *need * to think out of the box, heck, i don’t need to think at all. the class does everything for me and that get’s boring really fast

Harper.4173:

Why do you have you thief in a zerg fight?
And even there the ability to go invisible and just avoid the zerg is incredibly good.

so instead of clusterbombs and choking gas/spiking targets you propose the thief’s role in zerg fights to go invisible and do nothing to help the team at all? well, since it’s a thief, people will probably call even that op…

Harper.4173:

So stuns are damage mitigation now?
Also you mention mobility – warriors have good landspeed not in combat mobility. You should note the difference.
A class with good in-combat mobility is thief. Or mesmer.

i can not hear you over the sound of my awesome GS mobility (that is the easiest way to avoid a thief-BS btw). and yes, stuns ARE damage mitigation, in fact, they are a 100% dmg mitigation. you are really proving my point: a lot of warriors cannot think out of the box, because the class is a fuzzy comfort zone that doesn’t force them to.

Harper.4173:

Warriors have nowhere near as much damage avoid/mitigation as Thieves or Mesmers. .

my experinece with jumping in and out of zergfights with both warrior and thief say otherwise.

Harper.4173:

Warriors can do what? get hit and hit back. We have no mechanic that allows us to mitigate damage.
.

stances, stuns, mobility… do you actually play that class?

what you say strengthens the experience that i made with my warrior the last weeks: it’s an easy beginner’s class that supports brain-afk too much and hampers skill development of players. the proposals of OP might not be perfect but i really like the idea of pushing the warrior more into active gameplay. i really think that will greatly improve the joy of playing that class

thieves were never really great in a zerg fight but at least they had a role to fill. picking casters, engage people who left the blob etc. after the patch, this is not possible anymore. 5k backstabs on mesmers are nothing to generate pressure, let alone down someone.
yesterday, i took the consequences and switched to my ham/GS warrior – what to tell, lootbags rain again. jump in and out of zergs, stunning/downing a couple of them, rinse and repeat. it’s so easy and i have to admit, it’s fun.
i was able to down 5 people (who were at half hp or so) with an earthshaker and a subsequent faceroll on the weapon skills on a narrow part of the eastern borderlands tower.
apparently, that’s what people want. while high damage spikes and a fighting chance afterwards got nerfed to oblivion, (almost) stun-locking multiple enemies seems acceptable.
i know, it’s sorta low but i encourage every wvw player to do the same. make the meta data scream “we have a problem with the other classes” while having fun smashing people’s skulls!

“dem OP Theifs nerf pl0x”
here’s the deal: backstabs do less dps than autoattacks now

Nova Stiker.8396:

Even supportive pets or tanky ones have been reported to hit high as well. I got hit by an owl that landed 7k, it does more damage than a zerker Backstab thief.

more damage than a thief – works as intended

guys, it’s not that bad! consider all the new possibilities of gameplay!
i for one will probably hang my dual daggers up and start a career as an npc.
with exciting new tasks like resetting sieges 24/7, buying trash items from other players, sup running over and over (but not attempt to flip a camp – after all, i’m a retired thief) and mining, mining, mining, cooking, cooking, cooking.
i will probably spend some money on new costumes, since actual armor doesn’t fit my new role

Jana.6831:

Wasn’t attack multiplied by the percent? That would be 2,5 and 2.
But attack is gone anyway and I’m more confused, but glad they added ferosity so people would understand all of this better.

I was actually hoping that someone would tell me to swap my this gear for that gear

yup, you’re right, my bad. that brings it to a total of 20% crit dmg nerf.

Jana.6831:

That doesn’t help me at all, sorry. I have been at 97% cit damage before this update ankitten ow at 197% ferocity – I know that the cit damage before multiplied my attack, so when I was doing a cit hit I had nearly twice the attack as with a normal attack. Don’t ask me what ferocity means and I don’t know where attack went – that’s kind of why I started this thread.

if i get your post right, your pre-patch crit-bonus was 97%. since 150% was the base that added to a crit bonus of 247%, meaning your crits did roughly 3.5 times the damage of normal hits. after patch, your crit bonus is 197%, meaning roughly 3 times the damage for crits.
so basically, your crits suffered a 15% nerf

ShakeyStorm.7180:

You find warrior disengage insane? Maybe that is your problem. When you get hit hard, disengage. Thieves can disengage/re-engage at their whim. Knowing when to fight and when not to fight is part of strategic gameplay.

Warriors are more forgiving with mistakes because it is a beginner’s class. When you get more skilled, you can start going on less toughness more power OR change to a skill dependent class.

New players will find thieves very weak because it will die all the time if not played right.

Veteran players handling thief is immortal and can pawn anyone anywhere anytime may it be 1vs1 or 1vs5. If you do not believe go ask Yishi.

you didn’t really get the point of my post. it wasn’t me needing to disengage, it was the warrior doing it at will. making it impossible for me to keep up pressure (as he healed right up). i played my thief for a while now (and i refrain from running d/p, because reducing each class to one cheesy build kills the game imho). i die rarely on my thief but what you basically suggest by “knowing when to fight and when not” is to avoid warriors right away. it cannot be beneficial to a competitive game when the strategy against one class is “run, you cannot beat it, you can only avoid the fight”. i come from Fissure of Woe originally and we are used to 1v5 fights (and i’m not that bad at it) so this isn’t about my skill as a player but about a sheer design flaw in the warrior class.

Killface.1896:

Thief crying he cant win a warrior ;O

Go D/P and BLIND BLIND BLIND,if same skill lvl you will win

few people are still bad enough to not avoid the initial blind and walk into the smoke field. even fewer do it with hammer/gs.

it’s not as much a nerf warriros need but a redesign.
i had a good fight with a hammer warrior yesterday. he dodged well, chained skills etc. he was quite good and, as i’m a fossil who still runs d/d thief, i had a hard time to land my cloak and dagger to gain stealth.

and here it starts.
scorpion wire to create an opening for CnD doesn’t work (stability), neither does basilisk’s venom (endure pain). beside the fact that i had to eat a lot of damage and burn an immense amount of initiative on gap closers just to keep close, i managed to land CnD from time to time and even land a couple of backstabs…which did around 7k damage and were outhealed quite fast since insane disengage ability (and no i didn’t use dancing dagger). it went on for quite a while and i got defeated, i simply could not do enough damage without avoiding it myself (the hammer stun chain did around 12k total to me when it hit me). there was nothing i could do because that guy put just a modicum of effort into dodging and reading my skill animations

and that is what bugs me about the warrior: it is incredibly forgiving. do one mistake on your play as a thief and you are done. do mistake after mistake (get hit by CC, eat a backstab, get conditions) and don’t even care. the warrior evens out a large lack of skill. i recently started to use my warrior for wvw and it is unbelievable easy to make it rain lootbags (and i have used him only for pve for almost a year now).
i wish anet would finally remove the safety leash and the autoplilot from that class. i know it is the first adress for new players but it is simply too easy to play.

Raiff.6742:

You people are mad because we got a faster LB skill? That has yer panties gnarled? What about Engineers? They already are considered useless by the majority of the player base. Now they get…A BUBBLE FOR THEIR TURRETS THAT THEY NEVER USE! Seriously, gain some perspective folks.

turrets already give players in wvw a hatd time, they are quite powerful when used correctly. what makes this GM trait awesome is the fact that a couple of engis can greatly improve defense when attacking towers/keeps. a party of good engis can easily perma-reflect around rams.
i really like the way they start going, giving each class a unique task in wvw (instead of “more hamwarrs!”)

Warlord.9074:

MarauderShields.6830:

so warrs are crying over that tiny 30 hp/s nerf which will change nothing at all and will barely be noticeable?
you guys…are a little spoiled, aren’t you?

try playing a warrior vs other highly skilled and competent players 1st then comment.

i have a lvl 80 warrior (still partly exotic though), if you die because of the missing 30 hp/s, you would have died anyway. it’s nothing, even without taking adrenaline health and regen into consideration.

Khandarus.2738:

I rather be able to draw my swords before getting cut to ribbons, leave them on the side :P

it would be quite difficult to sneak with the Ortband of the scabbard scratching over the ground

so warrs are crying over that tiny 30 hp/s nerf which will change nothing at all and will barely be noticeable?
you guys…are a little spoiled, aren’t you?

Alissah.9281:

Healing Signet active: “Heal yourself and gain 5 seconds protection. (Instant cast, breaks stun)”

Problem solved. The protection and stunbreak could easily make up for the lost healing, if timed correctly.

yeah right, an uninterruptable get ouf of jail card with a 20 sec cooldown…
the point of the changes is to force activation of the skill to give a chance at interrupting it. the effects are fine, they should just increase the active effect and reduce cast time to 3/4 – 1 sec.

glaphen.5230:

Thief and Elementalist are faster and sacrifice less.

i assume you never chased a warrior down burning all your initiative while the warrior went back to full health and no cooldown? running warriors are in the comfortable position to decide whether to keep running or snuff out your toon at one point during their rocket launch run.

This might have been already proposed but…

while condis are the undoubted meta in WvE/PvP, they are a bit lackluster in PvE.
Why not tone them down a little to make Power builds competitive in PvP/WvW
AND
reduce the health points of mobs in PvE while increasing their toughness. that way, condi builds can get useful in PvE while power builds keep their usefulness.

the point of ferocity is (beside consistency to other stats) the reduction of overall damage. this seems to be needed since speedruns in dungeons are way out of hand and dominated by full zerker equipments. balancing wvw was never the goal here and the meta will shift towards condi even more with the new gm traits.

BUT here comes the funny thing: the average speedrun party consists of mostly full zerker Warriors.
so Anet made the warrior king of everything and got a tanky as kitten damage dealer that hits almost as hard as full zerker thieves in PvE. so by reducing overall power/crit based damage the warrior will be better balanced for PvE – at the cost of rendering all other power/crit based classes uncompetitive.

Anet, have you ever asked yourself why thieves don’t play D/D in PvP?

Tao.5096:

so as summary,

Age of Condition ’hoes shall begin soon.

Enjoy being kited and DoT’ed to death.

^this.
with stuff like crit immunity for earth ele and general decrease of crit damage, we will see the end of power builds soon.

this sounds like the final coup de grâce for my beloved d/d thief. i have not yet decided wether to join the condi crowd or start practicing with my warrior (although, the -8% signet heal reduce my regen from 780 to only 750…needs buff!)

fair enough. IF we can also agree that CnD triggers stealth on blocked/evaded attacks for compensation.

Celestina.2894:

Oh and one more thing, for zergs, I assume one can’t just go melee in that case?

when two zergs collide, i found it a good strategy to kite around the dense battle areas (shadow refuge makes it easier) and attack the backline.

a) most of the glass cannons/upleveled are there (easy kills, drain damage from enemy zerg, little resistance)
b) most players don’t realize you there until it’s too late
c) if people do go after you, these people don’t fight at the front (so you drain damage from the frontline again)

when played cautiously (stealth and go out before you get overrun), this can work well.
in smaller zergs you can even go into the enemy zerg from behind and troll with CnD (without backstab) – but keep away from the hammertrain.

the big downside of this is, when you’re downed, you’re dead. nobody can help you then

Krisztian.8405:

How about some dirty fighting skills?

Such as: a stun breaker which would throw dirt in opponent’s face after knockdown or kickin dirt in opponent’s face. these would result in short blinds ofc.

Fighting like a good guy is getting old. Especially when every other profession have tricks up their sleeves, while all of our cards are on the table.

sure, makes sense. warriors have almost everything on them anyway, it makes no sense doing a kitten job and exclude the last pieces of mechanic from them.

in addition to your examples, we need utilities like:
Camouflage – gain stealh for 5 secs
Ruse – create 3 phantasms
experimental weapons – gain access to the engi’s kits

D/D is not a weak build and it feels viable against most players. It’s the existence of other cheesy builds (looking at you, perpelexity…) that give it the feel of being weak. sadly, that puts pressure on going D/P (or S/D). Anet schould rework Dancing Dagger and Death Blossom to actually convince me to use them (D/D needs condi remove).

Oh well, in three months we will all have joined the condi crowd anyway…