Guild Wars 2

Yeah, things like having played free living story additions wasn’t enough. I gotcha.

misterdevious.6482:

I made a second thief specifically for constant pistol/pistol/pistol/pistol pew-pew with weapon swap reduction runes and quick pockets.

If Ricochet is really gone, then there’s going to be a very sad gigantic norn thief with giant pistols who likes to pew constantly. His headband can only hold so many tears…

I know your pain. I have a norn thief p/p built just for ricochet, and I’m sad its gone too. Very sad. In fact, its the only change that REALLY bothers me. But, what’s done is done. shrug Since I’ve been ragging on others about their tears of rage over some change or another, I’m not about to follow suit with this.

Wow, after reading page after page after page, I just have to say…

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

I don question a few choices they made. 10 stacks vulnerability added on Consume conditions for instance. But every class also got buffs in other areas.

This may have weakened some builds. Maybe that was needed, when some builds became so ubiquitous that other builds were too weak. Perhaps they could have buffed other build options instead of nerfing the problem ones.

But be that as it may, while I lost a couple builds that I’m not entirely happy about, I see potential for some new builds that excite me.

In other words, come on guys, it isn’t all bad, for ANY of the classes there was good too!

Naekuh.7925:

RIP Warrior….

You went from the strongest class @ launch.. to absolutely USELESS…

Not only they nerfing everything on it, they are also nerfing the mobility on GS.
So in what way is the warrior getting any love?

OMG seriously, let’s quit with the hyperbole. None of the classes are or will be useless.

And no, they didn’t nerf everything, on warrior or any other class. Some things on warrior DID get buffs. rolls eyes

Amins.3710:

SlimChance.6593:

Since Vulnerability now increases ALL damage(direct and condition), shouldn’t Protection reduce ALL damage as well???

Woah – you want the Developers to use Logic?

WAY too much to ask man, WAY to much. Instead, they just give Resistance, which is a new boon only able to be applied by, oh… a couple classes.

Welcome to the new Condi Meta.

Since a condi remover removes ALL stacks plus they are adding in resistance as well, I think Protection reducing condi damage would be overdoing it.

ok, I know its weird, but am I the only one that thinks the engineer trait aim-assisted Rocket is kinda cool in concept? LOL

Hm. high Precision + Sharper Images + new Duelist’s Discipline + new Confusing Combatants = lots of bleeding on a target, + some confusion as well.

Hm, Fencer’s Finesse is pretty cool too. Every time you hit? Nice!

I used to run a lot of sw/sw + sc/p in the early days, because I liked the idea of pairing p.Duelist with p.Swordsman. These traits just increased the appeal of using that build again

lioka qiao.8734:

Looks like my heavy siphon wellomancer is gettin a big buff.

as is my vampire/death shroud build

Elxir infused boms: I’m sad those are gone as I specifically built an engineer to use it, but:

Soothing Detonation: When you combo a blast finisher nearby allies are healed.

Not quite the same thing, but if working with a team mate it might actually be better. I’m not sure how many fields the engineer can come up with on his own with the changes, I’ll have to look…

Unless it heals for dramatically more? Might be fun to combo with water fields….

Rym.1469:

You did not make Blood Magic any more appealing.

That’s untrue. I love the blood magic changes.

Vael Victus.2654:

I love the necromancer traits, especially blood magic. Excellently done.

Question on thief pistols: why the hate? I was hoping to see some support for my p/p sorta-cheese thief, I’m really gonna miss ricochet.

And I thought Healing Signet was getting a tiny nerf?

I have a thief built entirely around the ricochet trait. Its not my main, mesmer is (and I’m pleased about that), but losing ricochet makes me very sad.

Extreme.8350:

Morfedel.4165:

Side note, but the healing skill anti toxin really needs to be modified.

hm. Or does it? I just realized that with condis getting buffed, and with torment already being nice and confusion about to get buffed, maybe its value will actually increase?

How is it getting buffed? they nerf base condition dmg and they add the new boon which make players immune to conditions sounds like a big nerf to me.
In pvp all i see is power builds occasionally a sword condition ranger which just die.
The condition numbers are not final so rly gotta play it to know for sure.

unlimited stacks for one. Also, confusion was pretty nerfed, the changes coming to it are most definitely a boon.

Side note, but the healing skill anti toxin really needs to be modified.

hm. Or does it? I just realized that with condis getting buffed, and with torment already being nice and confusion about to get buffed, maybe its value will actually increase?

MailMail.6534:

Thanks for stopping by! Unfortunately, condi Mesmer kind of evens the playing field against thief. That being said, an equally skilled thief vs Condi Mes should still lead to a thief victory 60% of the times.

Since I maim Condi Shatter, I’ll give you some advice based on my encounters:

• Use your condition clears only when you’ve been “bursted” with confusion/torment. It takes a lot of ramp-up time for any condition Mesmer to be threatening. If you can clear the stacks, it gives you an opening for offense while we try to desperately ramp it back up.
• Don’t panic and smash keys when heavily confused. As Fay has coined, confusion is an “idiot-tax” but kind of easy to avoid if you’re patient due to the generally low duration. Mesmer is a pretty under-powered class that thrives on other players panicking and making petty mistakes. Don’t be that person that dies to confusion, because confusion really sucks as a condi. lol
• Keep your distance. Weave in and out while using stealth efficiently. If you keep your distance, it will be easier to dodge clones trying to shatter. The condi Mesmer loves a good melee 1v1 as this is where Scepter2/Staff145 excels. [Good] Thieves can usually out maneuver me if they come in and out of melee effectively in order to bait our “burst”.

This is all based on a power thief. If you’re a condi thief, then you should probably have a 80% win rate considering 50% of condi Mesmers don’t take condi clear themselves. I actually take Feedback instead of a condi clear these days…

Please come back for further discussion. I’m kind of in and out of hiatus, but if you would like to practice, mail me in game!! <3

I tend to take either null field or arcane thievery for condi. Usually the latter, esp as thieves love to do that ssteal and get every boon on the planet… take three at least, plus giving him back the condis he gave me.

I sometimes take null field instead, but offensively its easily avoided. on the other hand, defensively, along with slapping down a chaos storm if he comes in at me anyway, is a nice duo.

Quadox.7834:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

So frankly I just don’t buy that “you aren’t playing your role but he is” bs. For all intents and purposes, its turning the fight into a 4v4, meaning we are both neutered while the other 4 on each team determine who the victor will be.

And frankly I neither buy nor CARE about the “your roll is x his roll is y” crap. Its not how its played out in the pvp games I’ve been in. Its all baseless.

Heh. I’m not exactly asking you to ‘buy into’ what role classes/builds play in team fights. I’m telling you how it works. You can disagree if you want, but that doesn’t make my statements less correct.

Nor does it make what you say any MORE correct. Saying something is not the same thing as proving something.

Feel free to believe your statement is correct all you want. Unless you can PROVE it, its really baseless, and thus making it your theory, not a fact you’ve proven.

In other words, theorycrafting. You say the thief is doing his job. I say we are neutralizing each other. Either way, you CANNOT argue that what happens is it turns the game into a 4v4 from a 5v5. And that IS fact.

Not that it matters. I really had that problem of constant thief fighting exactly one time, ever. Every other time ever one or the other has won.. and more than half the time the victor has been me. So… shrug

The proof of what I’m saying is in literally every tournament match ever, just watch some.

The thief does 2 primary things. They target the enemy glass cannons to remove them from team fights. They also utilize their high mobility to decap points.

Mesmer does 2 primary things as well. They use portal to help ferry their team from one fight to the next, and they provide heavy aoe pressure in team fights.

And I’ll say it for…the third time I think. When a thief jumps on you, the thief is doing exactly what they’re on the team to do, the rest of their team depends on them to jump on you. You, however, are not doing what the rest of your team depends on you to do. Your team is depending on you to provide heavy aoe pressure, not duel a thief. The thief is doing what they’re supposed to do, you’re not.

It may be a 4v4, but your team is relying on you to help out due to how they’ve built the comp, and the thief’s team is relying on them to take you out, due to how they’ve built their comp.

You say the primary role of the thief is to take out the enemy glass cannon (mesmer, in this case). If the thief doesn’t kill the mesmer, or if the mesmer even kills the thief, the thief isn’t doing his job at all. His job is to kill key targets, he dies doing so. Since Morfedel claims he wins more than 50% of his duels versus thieves, there is no problem here. Im not saying it is smart to try duel the thieves on normal conditions or anything like it, i just had to explain why this “role” thing doesn’t apply to a case where morfedel wins.

What bothers me is this superiority mentality being expressed: if you don’t play my way, you’re playing wrong, period. It’s arrogant and not even justified.

Every tournament ever. snort. It’s not all tournaments.

I play unranked mostly. Why? Because I love the chaos. i love not knowing what kind of team make up I’m going to end up with, and against. I love dealing with a mixed bag, where I can end up with great or crappy players on my team with the same on the other side. Heck, the most fun I ever had was when we logged on and 8 of the 10 people on both teams combined were mesmers. We all had a good laugh at that.

For the same reason, I prefer solo or small team roaming in WVW over zerg play.

So, yes, I’m well aware it isnt as hypercompetitive as tournament play is, but again, I don’t care. I have two builds that does very well against thieves. Not 100%, and obviously skill of the player also comes involved, but I’ve done very well.

Sadly, in wvw most thieves end up running, and my builds can’t prevent them from doing so, but I usually count that as a win in that case. In pvp its another matter, what with the importance of point capture and all, and many thieves will stay on target.

If we were talking strictly tournament play I might have agreed, but we never once mentioned that as the sole item we were discussing. As a matter of fact, the OP SPECIFICALLY mentioned PUG play, so Fay here went completely off the reservation with the whole “Every tournament ever” crap…

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

So frankly I just don’t buy that “you aren’t playing your role but he is” bs. For all intents and purposes, its turning the fight into a 4v4, meaning we are both neutered while the other 4 on each team determine who the victor will be.

And frankly I neither buy nor CARE about the “your roll is x his roll is y” crap. Its not how its played out in the pvp games I’ve been in. Its all baseless.

Heh. I’m not exactly asking you to ‘buy into’ what role classes/builds play in team fights. I’m telling you how it works. You can disagree if you want, but that doesn’t make my statements less correct.

Nor does it make what you say any MORE correct. Saying something is not the same thing as proving something.

Feel free to believe your statement is correct all you want. Unless you can PROVE it, its really baseless, and thus making it your theory, not a fact you’ve proven.

In other words, theorycrafting. You say the thief is doing his job. I say we are neutralizing each other. Either way, you CANNOT argue that what happens is it turns the game into a 4v4 from a 5v5. And that IS fact.

Not that it matters. I really had that problem of constant thief fighting exactly one time, ever. Every other time ever one or the other has won.. and more than half the time the victor has been me. So… shrug

The proof of what I’m saying is in literally every tournament match ever, just watch some.

The thief does 2 primary things. They target the enemy glass cannons to remove them from team fights. They also utilize their high mobility to decap points.

Mesmer does 2 primary things as well. They use portal to help ferry their team from one fight to the next, and they provide heavy aoe pressure in team fights.

And I’ll say it for…the third time I think. When a thief jumps on you, the thief is doing exactly what they’re on the team to do, the rest of their team depends on them to jump on you. You, however, are not doing what the rest of your team depends on you to do. Your team is depending on you to provide heavy aoe pressure, not duel a thief. The thief is doing what they’re supposed to do, you’re not.

It may be a 4v4, but your team is relying on you to help out due to how they’ve built the comp, and the thief’s team is relying on them to take you out, due to how they’ve built their comp.

Oh and, side note here, not all pvp matches are tournaments with organized teams. shrug but I forget, just like with other parts of the game, there’s apparently only one true way to play. Why dont you write up a manual of badwrongfun so we can all learn the wrong way to play and play your way instead.

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

So frankly I just don’t buy that “you aren’t playing your role but he is” bs. For all intents and purposes, its turning the fight into a 4v4, meaning we are both neutered while the other 4 on each team determine who the victor will be.

And frankly I neither buy nor CARE about the “your roll is x his roll is y” crap. Its not how its played out in the pvp games I’ve been in. Its all baseless.

Heh. I’m not exactly asking you to ‘buy into’ what role classes/builds play in team fights. I’m telling you how it works. You can disagree if you want, but that doesn’t make my statements less correct.

Nor does it make what you say any MORE correct. Saying something is not the same thing as proving something.

Feel free to believe your statement is correct all you want. Unless you can PROVE it, its really baseless, and thus making it your theory, not a fact you’ve proven.

In other words, theorycrafting. You say the thief is doing his job. I say we are neutralizing each other. Either way, you CANNOT argue that what happens is it turns the game into a 4v4 from a 5v5. And that IS fact.

Not that it matters. I really had that problem of constant thief fighting exactly one time, ever. Every other time ever one or the other has won.. and more than half the time the victor has been me. So… shrug

The proof of what I’m saying is in literally every tournament match ever, just watch some.

The thief does 2 primary things. They target the enemy glass cannons to remove them from team fights. They also utilize their high mobility to decap points.

Mesmer does 2 primary things as well. They use portal to help ferry their team from one fight to the next, and they provide heavy aoe pressure in team fights.

And I’ll say it for…the third time I think. When a thief jumps on you, the thief is doing exactly what they’re on the team to do, the rest of their team depends on them to jump on you. You, however, are not doing what the rest of your team depends on you to do. Your team is depending on you to provide heavy aoe pressure, not duel a thief. The thief is doing what they’re supposed to do, you’re not.

It may be a 4v4, but your team is relying on you to help out due to how they’ve built the comp, and the thief’s team is relying on them to take you out, due to how they’ve built their comp.

So a stunlock mes has the same role as a shatter mes? Must be nice to put all builds under the same umbrella.

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

So frankly I just don’t buy that “you aren’t playing your role but he is” bs. For all intents and purposes, its turning the fight into a 4v4, meaning we are both neutered while the other 4 on each team determine who the victor will be.

And frankly I neither buy nor CARE about the “your roll is x his roll is y” crap. Its not how its played out in the pvp games I’ve been in. Its all baseless.

Heh. I’m not exactly asking you to ‘buy into’ what role classes/builds play in team fights. I’m telling you how it works. You can disagree if you want, but that doesn’t make my statements less correct.

Nor does it make what you say any MORE correct. Saying something is not the same thing as proving something.

Feel free to believe your statement is correct all you want. Unless you can PROVE it, its really baseless, and thus making it your theory, not a fact you’ve proven.

In other words, theorycrafting. You say the thief is doing his job. I say we are neutralizing each other. Either way, you CANNOT argue that what happens is it turns the game into a 4v4 from a 5v5. And that IS fact.

Not that it matters. I really had that problem of constant thief fighting exactly one time, ever. Every other time ever one or the other has won.. and more than half the time the victor has been me. So… shrug

TyPin.9860:

I think one general rule when fighting condition builds in general is to keep your distance. Most condition builds rely on relatively short range or telegraphed abilities to become seriously threatening. Or in the case of clone death builds, it’s the illusions, who you simply should keep your distance from.

That might not seem very appealing with a power based thief, but shortbow can be quite effective. If you go close, do it only for a short burst and then gain your distance again.

Most thieves cant stay away from closing range to go all zerker on the mesmer’s butt though, lol

Quadox.7834:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Sebrent.3625:

Morfedel, it’s now about “can you beat a Thief”. It’s about “can you beat an equal (or better) skilled Thief?” as that is going to be the challenge in team game.

If you can’t, then there is really no reason for your team to have you as you’re a liability. As I previously stated, a Thief can already +1 faster than you due to greater mobility.

So, if you can’t when the encounters over the Thief, you aren’t providing any advantage.

Your team can still win, but the advantage won’t be coming from you. You are thief bait which makes you a liability and puts them at a disadvantage that the other 4 members have to now make up for.

First of all, I also stated I’ve beaten more thieves than I’ve lost to. But if you mean it isn’t an advantage if the thief is busy with me the entire time? Frankly, I think its neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, but rather a wash. Any time he spends with you is time he isnt spending on someone else, and if you two are locking horns for some time, like I said, it turns a 5v5 to a 4v4.

This is ignoring the different roles of thief and mesmer. I elaborated on this in an earlier post, but I’ll go over it again quickly.

The primary role of the mesmer is to deal heavy aoe damage in a teamfight. The primary role of a thief is to take out the enemy glass cannons.

When you’re embroiled in a 1v1 with a thief, the thief is performing his role on the team, and you are not.

This is true, if he kills you. If he doesn’t, then the opposite team are losing out on the many advantages of the thief, for example the ability to quickly decap.

This.

Fay.2357:

Quadox.7834:

Fay.2357:

Morfedel.4165:

Sebrent.3625:

Morfedel, it’s now about “can you beat a Thief”. It’s about “can you beat an equal (or better) skilled Thief?” as that is going to be the challenge in team game.

If you can’t, then there is really no reason for your team to have you as you’re a liability. As I previously stated, a Thief can already +1 faster than you due to greater mobility.

So, if you can’t when the encounters over the Thief, you aren’t providing any advantage.

Your team can still win, but the advantage won’t be coming from you. You are thief bait which makes you a liability and puts them at a disadvantage that the other 4 members have to now make up for.

First of all, I also stated I’ve beaten more thieves than I’ve lost to. But if you mean it isn’t an advantage if the thief is busy with me the entire time? Frankly, I think its neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, but rather a wash. Any time he spends with you is time he isnt spending on someone else, and if you two are locking horns for some time, like I said, it turns a 5v5 to a 4v4.

This is ignoring the different roles of thief and mesmer. I elaborated on this in an earlier post, but I’ll go over it again quickly.

The primary role of the mesmer is to deal heavy aoe damage in a teamfight. The primary role of a thief is to take out the enemy glass cannons.

When you’re embroiled in a 1v1 with a thief, the thief is performing his role on the team, and you are not.

This is true, if he kills you. If he doesn’t, then the opposite team are losing out on the many advantages of the thief, for example the ability to quickly decap.

Not entirely. Half the advice in this thread has been to run really far away from a thief to stop him from killing you. If you do that, the thief could decap a point and be back to mid before you’ve healed up and gotten back in position.

That wasn’t advice by me. I advocate fighting and killing the thief. I win more than I lose against one in pvp. Nowhere near 100%, but more than 50%.

And to answer to his role vs mine, honestly, who gives a kitten? If he’s concentrating on me he cant hurt the rest of my team, nor can he run around speed decapping, nor can he, for example, go after our ele or whatever.

And there’s a decent chance i’ll win.

So frankly I just don’t buy that “you aren’t playing your role but he is” bs. For all intents and purposes, its turning the fight into a 4v4, meaning we are both neutered while the other 4 on each team determine who the victor will be.

And frankly I neither buy nor CARE about the “your roll is x his roll is y” crap. Its not how its played out in the pvp games I’ve been in. Its all baseless.

MSFone.3026:

Might as well add that depending on how they build, running may be your best option as if they go really bunker, they can’t chase you and you are probably not going to kill them. The build can be done is such a way that it’s entire purpose is to kill people who try to kill the mesmer. Unless you have zero condi clear you can leave them alone and be pretty ok. A condi mesmer will (usually) only really jack you if you try to pressure it too hard.

This is really important for you to note. Its important to know when to run, and thats NOT when you are almost dead from condis. If you wait til then, you are almost certainly dead, barring something that can wash all the condis off fast. If you wait until you are near death, you likely ARE dead. Running when you still have some breathing room is the better alternative, planning on surviving the stacks of condis on you.

For example, in one fight I had, in pvp, the thief, I had LOTS of condis of several kinds on him: bleeding, burning, confusion, torment, vulnerability, etc etc, and many stacks of each, and his health was very low; he used Shadow Refuge and disappeared. I was trying to figure out where he was, but he was gone quite some time. I thought he’d run off, started to turn away, and then he suddenly appeared out of nowhere, downed, right in the heart of where his shadow refuge had been. He was cloaked quite some time, but still died at my feet.

And the problem is, if you’re running, and you have several condis on you including torment, the running is going to kill you even faster.

So if you even think that you might run, you need to keep a condi remover available to save your backside if and when you do turn.

The other option, of course, is to fully commit 100%, give up the idea of running, and try to get him down first, saving your condi cleanses to save your life in the fight instead of for the run. It can be done, but the fight won’t be as easy as they are against most other mesmer builds by a long shot.

Jekkt.6045:

ventari as a natural guy would prefer an apple over an android i guess.

Thats a good thought! I hadn’t considered that!

I’m wondering if, with the advent of the Resistance boon, if they will modify Rune of Resistance to grant said boon.

Just a thought.

KelsteNa.7903:

Hi what’s the point of setting phantasms, illusions in PvE since every single mob just has some obnoxious AoE that kills them after 1-2 seconds.

Not all npcs do. I use phantasms all the time and they don’t all get one-shotted.

But there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly is that their stats are built off your own. If you are zerker, for instance, they will be more fragile. Secondly, you can take traits, gear, and skills to make them more survivable:

1. Persisting Images, +20% health
2. Signet of Illusions, +50% health
3. Triumphant Distortion, 1 second of distortion to phantasms when summoned
4. Phantasmal Defender, half of all damage of all allies gets sent to Defender
5. Gear that increases your defensive stats

Add #4 with Vengeful Images, which you get automatically if you took Persisting Images, and each attack packet triggers retaliation twice, once for the damage hitting the target, and once for the damage being shared to the Defender, meaning an AOE hitting three phantasms will hit the generator of the phantasm with 6 hits of Retaliation.

Also taking the trait that accelerates all your weapon’s recharge skills by 20% plus Illusionits Celerity means you can recharge your weapon-based phantasms 40% as your original ones dies, and Ether Signet will let you throw out another phantasm quickly.

So your phantasms may not stick around long, but combining those items will let you throw them out fast while the originals get at least a couple hits in before death.

Sebrent.3625:

Morfedel, it’s now about “can you beat a Thief”. It’s about “can you beat an equal (or better) skilled Thief?” as that is going to be the challenge in team game.

If you can’t, then there is really no reason for your team to have you as you’re a liability. As I previously stated, a Thief can already +1 faster than you due to greater mobility.

So, if you can’t when the encounters over the Thief, you aren’t providing any advantage.

Your team can still win, but the advantage won’t be coming from you. You are thief bait which makes you a liability and puts them at a disadvantage that the other 4 members have to now make up for.

First of all, I also stated I’ve beaten more thieves than I’ve lost to. But if you mean it isn’t an advantage if the thief is busy with me the entire time? Frankly, I think its neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, but rather a wash. Any time he spends with you is time he isnt spending on someone else, and if you two are locking horns for some time, like I said, it turns a 5v5 to a 4v4.

Clearly, though, victory would be more important, because otherwise, while you are keeping him busy, he’s also keeping you busy, and neither are contributing then in any real way.

Hm, maybe a rifle thief could be based off one of those sylvari sniper people that we see in Orr and in HoT. Oh, right, Pale Reavers.

That would be cool having their hyper long range sniping abilities, but it would probably be too broken.

Infenso.6329:

I really hope one of the guys/gals from the dev team read this.

Why, so they will add an Apple or Google Play icon to the tablet?

Uden Reavstone.3426:

If it’s an Android, who made it? Samsung? Also, can we use the Tablet to go on to Wiki?

That’s a good point. I mean, if we can use Ventari’s Tablet and it’s a Galaxy G6, maybe the one with the curve, that could be awesome!

Being able to actually open up the wiki in game, not just using a command line to open it up out of game, could be really awesome too.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Morfedel.4165:

I think the best way to balance zerker builds against others is to have at least some high value battles have attacks that are exceptionally dangerous to builds that are very low in defensive stats, thus vastly increasing the risk that full offensive builds will go down while more defensive builds can stay on their feet and continue to fight.

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

Although then we might end up with everyone having two armor sets in their inventory, their zerker and their non-zerker to accomodate for those circumstances lol.

You mean something like the current fights such as Tazza/CoE golems? Those are so much fun that I often lfg “heavies only” just so my zerker ele can tank the whole fight for them.
/s

No, thats not what I mean at all. What I mean is what everyone else is saying, we think the game should have most if not all armor sets have pretty much equal value across the game, even if maybe some gear is better in one instance than another.

And I’d bet you that the Devs never intended for one armor set to dominate. After all, they already did a small nerf to zerker and other armor set by changing crit damage to ferocity. Not much, but it sure seemed like a shot across the bow to me.

Linnael.1069:

PvE players hate it because they can’t run around as fast out of combat.

PvPers and WvW roamers hate it because it’s just strengthening disengage, which is boring and annoying.

Zergers don’t care because you can’t use dashes without breaking the blob anyway.

Come on Anet. Smart positioning is already made half pointless by shadowsteps, and now you’re just dumbing down PvP even further to implement a change that makes PvE players unhappy?

Remember when Ride the Lightning got huge nerfs because it ignored cripple/chill/swiftness? This functionality used to be a massive balancing point for certain skills. Are we going to see similar nerfs to every other mobility skill in the game?

Edit: The post originally containing my response to the series of comments wondering about the techniques behind my statistical modeling has been unfortunately deleted. I’ll just say that if you would like, feel free to read the title as “No division of the playerbase is positively effected by these changes at a general level.” I would recommend an in depth study of mass communication techniques and strategies to anyone who has further questions.

uh people who WANT to disengage will love it!

Nike.2631:

The third fix that’s been actually been talked about — and we’re starting to see happen — is to reduce the base functionality of skills/abilities and increase the contribution from the relevant attribute. We just saw a Zerker “nerf” announced today~ conditions are going to do less damage if you have less than (currently proposed) 700 condition damage. If your Zerker build does any damage at all via conditions, like say the occasional burns all Guardians generate, then your damage is going down. The fight lasts a little longer, and you are exposed to greater risk.

Do that same sort of pass for healing skills and healing power and Zerk will be the right choice for the very, very skillful… and a death sentence for the sloppy .

That might well be an ideal way, still rewarding zerkers if you are one of the top notch players, while encouraging those less skilled to use less fully focused aggressive sets.

I’m a bit clumsy at the keyboard, so I’d probably go with a set that had one defensive stat

Hume.2876:

Gear could have an economic dimension. Maybe every gear piece could have power, precision, and ferocity; but while soldier’s gear complements that with vitality and toughness, zerker gear might have an economic benefit — perhaps used zerker weapons could be turned in to NPCs for unique rewards, for example, while ‘used’ zerk armour could yield much better salvage (turning certain pieces of used armour in to an NPC would be a bit weird).

Like I said I am not worried about the ‘costs’ of switching armor types to the ‘new’ Meta. I just don’t see the point of it. Making everyone where something like Celestial doesn’t accomplish anything either.

You are not thinking this through..

There TWO proposed ‘fixes’ to the Zerk meta.

1) Add in additional unavoidable damage such that you will not able to wear Zerker gear.

2) Make the other armor sets relatively ‘stronger’.

Neither approach has shown even the tiniest bit of merit. With the first approach you end up with everyone switching to the new meta – which is the new minimum viable defense level. So it might soldiers or knights etc.

But the game play does not change one iota. All it does is alienate the players who acquired ascended Beserker gear. What good is that to Arenanet?

With the second approach – make the defensive armors better – sure you can get some people out of Zerk gear. But this time it HURTS gameplay. Instead of having your most skilled players using all the tools in their toolbox to speed through content.. You end up with people ignoring mechanics. If say Clerics were boosted such that it did 90% of Zerker damage and you could live through three boss attacks instead of 1 with zerkers then you would indeed have a lot of people switching to Clerics.

But this sucks for arenanet too. You want your game to play like Bloodborne not baseball simulator 2000..

The THIRD fix – that no one is really talking about is the Holy Trinity. That provides a natural reason to use alternate gear sets in PvE. And the lack of that is the reason why everyone intelligent specs their character like the DPSer they are..

The idea of unavoidable damage wasnt to kill zerkers in one hit, just make them take some pain, along with everyone else, but with their lower stats it would hurt more.

But never meant for it to be a one shot kill. I foresee things like unavoidable damage that doesnt one shot anyone, but does bring on some pain… the moreso to those with low defensive measures… or say DoT effects that will buzzsaw the vitality of the zerker lower, but still not “one shotting them.”

This would have effect of having the zerker race to DPS the target before they fall themselves, and perhaps a few really good dodges and some skill use at opportune times would survive, but not as safely as someone with more defensive stats, who would have the opposite problem of extending the fight because of lack of dps but would be less likely to fall quickly.

something like that would make a good tradeoff, I think.

Hume.2876:

This. Honestly for me its relatively trivial to switch all my guys to orange gear that’s more defensive. But people who have put in the time to get ascended Zerkers are going to be ticked.

It happens. There have been other changes to gear that has caused people to be unhappy, but the devs did it anway. And I’ve heard an upcoming nerf for celestial gear is on its way… people who worked kitten their celestial gear are going to be ticked, but it isn’t stopping the devs that way either.

Fay.2357:

cyyrix.6105:

Very true, but the idea is that by running power shatter, you’ll help your teammates score more of those “bigger victories” overall…you accept a weakness to thieves for the greater good.

Perhaps because the thief took longer to kill you, he didn’t +1 a fight somewhere else, so your team won that fight and capped the node. That’s far more valuable than 5 points!

Anyhow, at least now we’re thinking in terms of a match instead of a 1v1!

Nobody was every talking about a 1v1, you just decided to try and derail a conversation with that accusation.

Regardless, you’re failing to consider the comparative roles of a thief and mesmer on a team, so let’s take a look.

Mesmer: Aoe burst damage + finisher + boon stripping in team fights. Provides a significant amount of general team fight pressure.

Thief: Remove the enemy glass cannon from a team fight.

When you’re dealing with the thief, the thief is actually performing precisely the role that they’re on the team to do, while you’re contributing literally nothing. This is specifically the reason why the thief is such a hard counter to mesmer. Taking out mesmer IS the thief role, and in the process of fulfilling their role, they directly inhibit the mesmer from performing in the singular fashion that they’re on the team for.

If we are talking pvp, 1v1 where the rest of both teams are elsewhere, I’d say its a wash; if the thief is hammering on me, then he isn’t hammering on a team mate.

And if I can beat him, even better. I’ve beaten my fair share of thieves, though its not a 100% record by any chance either.

Haha, just remembered this time I kittened off a thief just because I was playing condi shatter. He was one of those that beat me first pass, but after that, he CAMPED the spawn pt just to take me out over and over. Got me the second, I got him third and fourth, etc.

Ended up being a 4v4 match with him and I soloing each other entire game, just because he apparently really hated mesmer condi shatter. Not much I could do about it, even when I won he came after me as soon as he respawned, so… yeah.

Ithilwen.1529:

“Zerk” sucks. I’d like to see it get cut back some more. I hate being 1 shot killed by thieves and slinking rangers.

I’ve never been one-shotted, but I’ve been hammered down fast. I’ve also beaten (or driven off, as thieves for instance can usually just IA and get away) zerker thieves before, without using zerker builds myself, but admittedly it isnt easy.

Jerus.4350:

Sure being close for quick pickups and boon sharing is good, but that doesn’t mean you have to be humping each other in a corner.

Ok +1 just for that lol!

cthaeh.2168:

Morfedel.4165:

cthaeh.2168:

Morfedel.4165:

Honestly, I think stacking is a way to exploit flawed AI, not a tactic per se. I’d bet if you talked to the developers they would say that they had never intended stacking to be a tactic to beat these guys.

This actually made me laugh out loud. Yes, I’m sure the developers put all those short duration, small AOE skills and the entire freaking combo system in just so you would never use them.

Wasn’t talking about combos, was talking about stacking. Its not the same thing, not by a long shot. Glad you got a good laugh, but try addressing the actual subject and not some tangent.

Oh, sorry, forgot this is one of those threads where people who have no clue how the game works come to complain that it should change. You see, this game has skill combinations. Some skills are combo fields and some are combo finishers. If a combo finisher is executed inside a combo field an effect is granted to all players or enemies within in its radius. The radius of pretty much every skill in the game is very small, so you have to be close to your enemies and allies in order to take advantage of this system. One would even say you have to “stack” on each other to be inside these combo fields. So, I ask you, how does one take advantage of such a combo system without stacking? Since you seem to understand developer intent so well, why would the developers create such a system if they had no intention of players being close to each other and the enemy?

Geez, I’ve only been playing since open world beta 2, I had no idea about this whole combo thingie! I’m so glad you came to explain that to me!

You can combine fields without stacking in many cases. Of course, you cant do that with might stacking, but many combos are offensively designed to harm the foe rather than buff the group, and guess what? You can do that from range, hence not needing to stack your GROUP to stack the COMBO!

I know, I’m shocked too!

NikeEU.7690:

Morfedel.4165:

maha.7902:

how to get rid of stacking

step 1: make a group specifying no stacking
step 2: complete dungeon without stacking

mission successful

did you happen to notice another post in here where he tried that and couldn’t get a group to join him?

It worked when I did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jra3jV_ckYg

Glad to see all the responses in this thread from people who are completely clueless about the game’s mechanics or game design in general.

As the saying goes, YMMV

But its good to see that there are people out there who are cool with it.

Despite the fact I’ve never liked how vampiric effects were implimented in gw2 vs gw1, I still have a vampiric build for my necro; hm, four actually (wells, minions, crit-based, and a vampiric/death shroud hybrid). Regardless, I’ve been hoping they would improve on vampiric builds. I’m hoping this will do it!

Arantheal.7396:

@Belenwyn:
Have you looked into the canges to engineers inventions and explosives line?

Our bomb-on-dodge will get a trait to become a blast-finisher.
Our elite kit (mortar) potentially has blast-finisher as auto-attacks. (and the mortar itself already comes with a healing field)
In inventions we get a trait that allows ALL our blast-finishers to heal allies. (master in inventions)
We will clear 1 condi by default when using a healing skill (+the 2 from healing turret itself). (minor in inventions)
We will stack regen (not that we didn’t already had perma-regen) for each cleared condi on us and allies, (minor in inventions)
and here comes the overkill:
We get a trait that heals allies for a fixed percentage of ALL heals we receive. (grandmaster in inventions)

Run this with sigils of water & benevolence + monk runes in cleric or settlers gear and you have one hell of of a healing powerhouse…

Wouldn’t surprise me if they tweak the numbers to make bloodmagic necros a thing as well, since they already announced the implementation of vampiric aura anyways.

Whats this about vampiric auras?

EDIT: Nevermind, I googled it and found the info. thanks though!

Mightybird.6034:

Stacking is PLAYER driven NOT game/mechanic driven believe it or not you can melee something WITHOUT stacking PERIOD FACT end of discussion.

Not precisely. When stacking becomes a big giant easy mode button, it’s not easy to encourage people to intentionally make it harder on themselves, even if the easy method is also boring.

What I mean is… yes, it is a player driven issue. But it discounts the facts that humans are like water: they tend to flow down the path of least resistance. Even if, to mix metaphors here, the path least traveled may end up in the end being more entertaining.

Most people tend to be so goal-driven that they decide not to smell the roses, but trample over them. And furthermore, these bosses are, for the most part I suspect, intended to be more challenging, but the stacking has trivialized them. And almost no one wants to run the risk of failing at a dungeon if they can stack and finish it quickly.

I’ve seen other people complain about stacking, even as they did it themselves! Player driven? I suppose. But if the fights were made more challenging, it would become a non-issue.

maha.7902:

how to get rid of stacking

step 1: make a group specifying no stacking
step 2: complete dungeon without stacking

mission successful

did you happen to notice another post in here where he tried that and couldn’t get a group to join him?

cthaeh.2168:

Morfedel.4165:

Honestly, I think stacking is a way to exploit flawed AI, not a tactic per se. I’d bet if you talked to the developers they would say that they had never intended stacking to be a tactic to beat these guys.

This actually made me laugh out loud. Yes, I’m sure the developers put all those short duration, small AOE skills and the entire freaking combo system in just so you would never use them.

Wasn’t talking about combos, was talking about stacking. Its not the same thing, not by a long shot. Glad you got a good laugh, but try addressing the actual subject and not some tangent.

Darkwolfer.7819:

Sollith.3502:

In most cases stacking is not about “using an enemies strengths and weaknesses against it.” In most cases is about a dps race with minimal down time between dps skills.

For example:
When players start playing more “dynamically” with content that stacking is the normal method of operation, skills such as the warrior great sword’s hundred blades starts missing, because the enemy moves out of range. In this case, not only is there a loss of pure dps, but also from potential might stacking from phalanx strength.

Similarly, any smaller aoe fields, attacks, etc. can miss by having an enemy move out of range of the attack and fixed position skills.

While there are plenty of skills that have leaps, sprints, etc. (to the point that it makes ranged weapons almost pointless… gg anet), they usually aren’t designed to be used as a primary method of dps (lower damage compared to other skills, cool downs, etc.).

Players stack because they don’t have to think and can just “dps, dps, dps, dps.”

The problem comes partly from just poor design on the devs side of things, but also just because players are going to always try and find the most mind numbing ways to do things (because “efficiency” lol). The latter can be reasonably remedied by decent content design.

I can understand pulling a phalanx tactic here and there, stacking for a few seconds to stack buffs, etc. but the way things are now (especially in dungeons) is just broken.

Ideas they need to use more:

• make more use of some boss mechanics already in the game that require players to move enemies into an aoe field to weaken/stun/etc. enemies (ex. the dredge fractal bosses).
• Spawn unique items integral to specific battles that one player in the party picks up, gives them some aoe invuln skill that they have to use after certain boss indicators (certain charge animations, etc.) that the party has to stack in to survive. This item could also be used in other ways too depending on the battle (stuns that correlate to certain boss skills; red stun used for red charge skill, blue stun used for blue charge skill, etc.) Kind of like Grast’s guardian barrier thing in AC I guess (but more player interaction, less npc).

Open world content should have more coordinated events like Tequatl, but with more variation in size (not requiring nearly a full map pf players). Make some small sized versions (3-5 player for the core event group, scaling the event by adding mini events around the main one or something), and mid sized events (10-15), etc.

Unfortunately, Anet will probably not update anything in the currently accessible areas. Any improvements on content will most likely only be seen in the expac; the current areas will probably be left to become obsolete and pretty much barren of players for the most part.

You brought up some good points. Particularly about the missing abilities. This goes back to the trinity though. No tank means no mob holding position. Players can play tanky but mobs hit so hard that being tanky really doesn’t matter. It is a viscous circle of unhappiness.

Now that Taunt is coming out, though, that could change lol

Is he using an iPad or Android? Really, I hope it’s Android, because, you know, propriatary software sucks when an open development platform is more advantageous. We could each then look for third party developers to provide different types of apps to run when we are channeling Ventari.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Stacking is a result of pve being to easy.

If they had mobs that were deadly, hit hard enough, or had aoe attacks that were more sophisticated like causing blind to the point that you had to avoid them. Stacking wouldnt work.

And that actually was one of my proposals. Heck they could have an escalating AoE that does more damage the more enemies are within the AoE. Unavoidable moderate attacks. Extremely dangerous avoidable attacks. Regeneration that stacks intensity the more foes are clustered on them. Greater chance when stackined on him of the enemy, say, moving away and switching to extremely powerful long range attack and playing keep away

Plenty of ways to break stacking without breaking stacking, I guess is what I’m saying. the problem is, are there any actual easy ways to implement these things? I suspect not. And I suspect the dev team is more focused on completing new revenue-generating content than in fixing what they probably consider comparatively minor issues.

Wuselknusel.4082:

It falls into the same niche.

I disagree. Zerker is a completely separate issue, and frankly, as I’ve explained elsewhere, I don’t think its meta is as justified as many proponents have claimed. My issue has been that full bunkers are worthless in most circumstances, but I find other sets are as viable as zerker are just fine IMHO.

In other words, it isn’t the same niche. And trust me, I get what you’re saying. Very subtly delivered, but not conducive to a polite debate.

you know, honestly, I don’t think that zerker is all that awesomely great. I’ll admit I’ve rarely seen the use of making a full bunker build, but most of my builds usually have armor with at least one, if not two, defensive stats.

In other words, almost all my gear has at least one offensive and one defensive stat. Ironically my full offensive armors are mostly assassin rather than berserker, for various reasons (usually building off crit triggered effects, duh), and I really dont think that zerker is the only way to go, that its so good it has to be meta, and I’ve argued that before.

My ONLY gear complaints are for the full bunker ones. I think THOSE aren’t all that great except in very specific circumstances (I occasionally like to run a bunker in pvp or wvw for…. well, a couple different reasons that I won’t elaborate on here).

Wuselknusel.4082:

@OP: Here is the thread you are looking for:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Please-fix-zerkmeta-dominance-let-others-play

Character colision may be cool, but ANet wont implement that.

thats about zerker builds, not stacking. Not quite the same thing.