Guild Wars 2

I do not think wow system was better than gw2 (the core mechanics), but who cares.
I am writing about what I think needs to be improved in gw2 mechanics.

possante.8310:

Mufa.1326:

possante.8310:

im gonna say what happen : you play bad because you try atack on melee a mesmer with already 2 clones up, if you are a canon glass thief you cant do that you will die in seconds.

this wasnt a OP mesmer issue, was just a very bad move by the thief.

i dont know the lvl of the thief in video but this mistake is common on low lvl thief. rwally nothing important see here, you play bad period.

Really? So melee should not approach mesmer who has two clones up? Wow, what a great game design you have in mind. Do you understand how easy it is for mesmer to get two clones up? And then it is game over for melee?

No it is not ‘bad move by the thief’ it is ‘severely OP mesmer class’ if it is true (and currently it is) that melee player should not approach mesmer who has 2-3 clones up already and sitting among them because mesmer can just instantly ‘blow him up’.

yes and i will say again. use your shortbow, that weapon isnt just for run away when you are almost dead.

mesmer can create clones easy, you with your shortbow can kill all with just one shot.

please explain me how easy is to have 2 clones always up, he will spend all dodge? he need have mirror images? ( and that mean or he dont have blink or null field wich will make him a easy kill) ne need have a target to create phantasm?

if he is using staff is a easy kill for a thief just use your shortbow, shatter mesmer with staff do almost 0 damage with staff

if you are a thief use trick shot and cluster bomb to destroy clones , if you dont use it to destroy clones you are basically a rookie thief

And I will tell you again: If mesmer with two clones is a ‘no-go-zone’ for melee then the class is broken.

Players should not be forced to carry ranged option just to deal with mesmer class. Mesmer class needs fixing. And fix is incoming (devs have spoken).

possante.8310:

im gonna say what happen : you play bad because you try atack on melee a mesmer with already 2 clones up, if you are a canon glass thief you cant do that you will die in seconds.

this wasnt a OP mesmer issue, was just a very bad move by the thief.

i dont know the lvl of the thief in video but this mistake is common on low lvl thief. rwally nothing important see here, you play bad period.

Really? So melee should not approach mesmer who has two clones up? Wow, what a great game design you have in mind. Do you understand how easy it is for mesmer to get two clones up? And then it is game over for melee?

No it is not ‘bad move by the thief’ it is ‘severely OP mesmer class’ if it is true (and currently it is) that melee player should not approach mesmer who has 2-3 clones up already and sitting among them because mesmer can just instantly ‘blow him up’.

Yes, i have tried it. Have you?

It is good enough to (for example) cast elementalist who clicks on ‘ride the lightning’ straight into target even if elementalist is facing completely opposite direction.
It is also good enough for thief to hartseeker and hit the target behind him. That should not be the case. He should face the target before doing heartseeker, not just press single key and autoface/execute the skill and hit the target even though he was facing completely opposite direction.
In general what should you do when person suddenly moves behind your back: You should turn quickly (manually) and when person is in proper viewing angle, execute the skill.
What should not happen (and it does) is that you just stop in place and hit the skill key and you sudenly auto-face the target. It is such a dumb down mechanic.

So it is not useless.

And no, i did not get ‘owned’ by anyone. I am commenting on a bad mechanic. One of the reasons I did not play gw1 was that the movement seemed completely dumbed down. Once you selected the target, you would essentially autostick on the target and there was no need to control your movement much, you would just sit there executing your skills.

I wanted to start the topic about auto-facing the target on key press (execution of some skill).
I think this is a very bad feature to have in pvp aspect of the game. Movement/positioning should be large part of the game (skill required), good movement/positioning should be rewarded, bad movement/positioning punished.
Obviously there is an intent to have this since there are traits/skills that reward us for ‘flanking’ or being ‘behind’ the enemy (extra dmg, crit, stun instead of daze etc…).

Now, please notice that when you execute majority of skills, the character auto-faces the target. This has two bad consequences:
1. It removes the need for player to become better and track his target (use movement skills to face the target (to keep it in certain viewing angle)).
2. It nullifies the reward to the player who did circle his target (all that movement is simply negated by auto-face that automatically executes on simple autoattack skill).

I will note that not even WoW had this dumbed down movement: In wow if you faced away from the target your skill would not auto-face you and you could not damage the target.

WoW had another aspect that was dumb but (mostly) fixed in GW2 (thankfully): one could spam the skill even when target is out of range, and skill would not execute and go to cooldown (or cost some energy/mana etc) until target moved into the range as to be hit by the skill. It is good that GW2 removed this bad feature and that skills execute whether the target is in the range or not.

In my opinion autofacing, should be removed as well in the long term. If Anet is afraid that this will cause huge outcry (some ppl may whine that they have to manually face the target after being used to autoturning, it can be a huge step change), they can do it gradually (implement it on subsets of skills over time). If the feature could be in WoW, it should not be dumbed down in GW2.

SteepledHat.1345:

Mufa.1326:

Trigr.6481:

I really don’t see why your upset about this encounter.
….

What is upsetting is that he got taken from 100% to 0 instantly (AOE on top of that and with low cooldown).
Note that mesmer could react to his burst because thief’s burst is fast but not instant.
Thief could not react to mesmers burst, because mesmer’s burst is instant.
What thief could have done is ‘predict’ how mesmer is going to react and then dodge before proceeding with his burst.
Note that ‘predicting’ what other player is going to do and take action in advance is completely different than ‘reacting’ to what he is doing.

Luckily, devs are fixing this, problem solved.

You can’t react to most thief burst since most thief burst comes right after they unstealth. However, most thieves do the same thing over and over. So they’re very predictable.

I’d also like to point out that if a mes downed you like it did in the video, a warrior’s burst would crush you. So let’s nerf them too!

If you cannot react to thief burst, then you hare really slow and you cannot differentiate between 1second burst and instant burst (which is a huge difference). Which begs a question, what are you doing in this discussion?

Bringing warrior burst into this is laughable. Warrior burst is the slowest of all mentioned. It takes frenzy/charge/100b. Even if you get hit with the charge (which can be dodged even when hasted) you have to stand there for 1.5 sec and not stun break in order to die to warrior burst. Warrior burst is simply the worst of all mentioned bursts and it is for killing bad/slow players, or you have to force the enemy to burn his stun breaks, and then hit him with relatively slow charge (0.5s hasted) in order to really land it.
I guarantee you that any warrior would take ‘50 blades’ over ‘100 blades’ that does half the dmg but it is instant.

Wise.8025:

Jumper.9482:

If I had 0.25 seconds to react to him summoning extra clones and shattering like inbetween Thief hits, then fine, I’d say its relatively balanced and it was my fault for not reacting and not shadowstepping away in time like I do to 90% of the thieves that try that combo on me.
But he shattered me with clones that didn’t even appear on my screen until I was down. (for 3k+ per hit, mind you. As much as your standard 50-25% heartseeker.)

Excellent point Jumper. As much as your standard 50-25% heartseeker, which can be spammed vs a mesmer shatter which is on a CD.
…..

You guys are pathetic. You are taking his words completely out of context.
It is one thing to get hit instantly by 16K. It is completely another to be exposed to the chain of 4 × 4K that takes 3 seconds to complete and can be easily dodged. (I will not even get into the fact that HS makes that kind of dmg when target is low health, while mesmer spike makes that dmg without any condition).

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Mesmers burst (without mirror images), is one of the hardest bursts to set up against a skilled player out of all of the burst classes. If that’s how we are going to balance the game, around skilled players (you know like thief burst and warrior burst is fine for skilled players and is a l2p issue) then you can’t complain.

Dude, pressing few keys in a fraction of second is NOT skill. I know you and many ppl think it is (devs too), but it is not.
Let me give you simple rule: If it can be macro-ed, it is not skill. If something that can be macro-ed is stupid powerful, then it is BAD GAME DESIGN, not skill on your part.

Skill is in the interaction with enemy:
1. movement (getting behind enemy, facing the enemy when attacking). Of course ANET chose to DUMB DOWN the game by making spells, attack autoturn you, which not only does not require player to have skill when executing offense, but also negates the skill of other player who just circled behind your back. Congratulations on autofacing him by pressing one key.
2. playing mind games with the enemy.
3. reacting to your enemy (e.g. dodging big hits/cc, breaking out of stun fast, etc).

They made d/d elementalists a bott-able class that just cycles through same key sequence pretty much and gets very good results…whatever.
Now they allow for insta blowups.

ilJumperMT.4871:

Mufa.1326:

Trigr.6481:

I really don’t see why your upset about this encounter.
….

What is upsetting is that he got taken from 100% to 0 instantly (AOE on top of that and with low cooldown).
Note that mesmer could react to his burst because thief’s burst is fast but not instant.
Thief could not react to mesmers burst, because mesmer’s burst is instant.
What thief could have done is ‘predict’ how mesmer is going to react and then dodge before proceeding with his burst.
Note that ‘predicting’ what other player is going to do and take action in advance is completely different than ‘reacting’ to what he is doing.

Luckily, devs are fixing this, problem solved.

Spam Disabling Shot on Shortbow. Oops you can avoid mesmer burst.

Use Shadow Step to get out of immoblize. Oops you can avoid mesmer burst.

If you are not immobilzed, dodged TOWARDS the Clones. Oops you can avoid mesmer burst.

You guys are purposefully going off topic.
The question is not whether you can avoid it (anything can be avoided with very low cost: well timed dodge), but whether you can ‘react’ to it.

To understand my point: Imagine if 100b was instant skill. So one moment you are standing with full health next moment you are just down because you ate 18K dmg.
That is what mesmers currently have. Yes, it requires more than 1key to be pressed, but it does not matter. Pressing 1key or “5keys in a fraction of a second” (or making 5 key presses into macro so it becomes 1 key press) is just a matter of practice (no it is not what should be called ‘skill’ although I see a lot of confused people (including some devs?) who think it is).
The fact that it is essentially instant and that other side has no time to react is an issue. Noone wants to play the game in which they just ‘blow up’ instantly from full health without given option to react.
Melee character HAS to go among clones, so that nonsense about clones running to you is just stupid. Shatter is instant when you are among clones. Telling us not to go among clones is the same as telling us not to touch mesmer.

Now, the second set of points:
1. Blow ups should be ‘fast’ (how fast can be discussed) but not instant.
2. And fast blowups should be expensive (spend few utilities maybe elite too (something like warrior and thief).
3. Fast blowups should be on high cooldown (40-60 sec).
4. Fast blowups should leave the guy who is doing spiking vulnerable after he attempts to blow up the other player (i.e. high risk high reward).
5. When player specs to be glass (to blow up others fast) he should not offer much of anything else to the team.
6. cannot be aoe (single target).

Note that thief burst and warrior bursts are following above outline pretty well (warrior violates it a bit with pbaoe feature of 100b).

Note that mesmer burst violates above outine pretty much on every point.
1. Mesmer burst is instant.
2. it is not expensive (one utility, one dodge).
3. Not on high cooldown (mw on very low cooldown ~10s)
4. Mesmer burst is riskless. Mesmer can follow up the burst (or include in it) with blurred frenzy which gives 2 sec of invulnerability, and then switch to staff and teleport away. It can actually be done automatically breaking out of warrior or thief burst (since skill acting to create two clones is also a stun breaker), so it is great counter to other classes bursts.
5. And mesmer offers so much to their team besides the burst.
6. Mesmer burst is aoe.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Mufa.1326:

What thief could have done is ‘predict’ how mesmer is going to react and then dodge before proceeding with his burst.
Note that ‘predicting’ what other player is going to do and take action in advance is completely different than ‘reacting’ to what he is doing.

But that doesnt aply to Steal+CnD too ?
U never seen it coming (no cast bar or any kind of indication of his right hand moving from range ) just a small poison that can stay for 30 sec and u have to predict how the Thief will behave and dodge accordenly

1. steal+C&D does not take you 100%-0. Not eating backstab (and heartseekers) is a matter of reflex. So you do not need to dodge steal+c&d you need to stun break and dodge backstab and heartseekers.
2. poison does 100 per sec if done to you by burst build. So you have plenty of time to remove the poison without suffering any significant dmg from it. Posion duration is irrelevant (and poison from steal is 10s, not 30s), it is relevant only for the first few seconds where it requires you to clean it before you apply heal. If you let poison sit on you for 30 seconds you are incompetent and have no place posting in discussion like this.

Trigr.6481:

I really don’t see why your upset about this encounter.
….

What is upsetting is that he got taken from 100% to 0 instantly (AOE on top of that and with low cooldown).
Note that mesmer could react to his burst because thief’s burst is fast but not instant.
Thief could not react to mesmers burst, because mesmer’s burst is instant.
What thief could have done is ‘predict’ how mesmer is going to react and then dodge before proceeding with his burst.
Note that ‘predicting’ what other player is going to do and take action in advance is completely different than ‘reacting’ to what he is doing.

Luckily, devs are fixing this, problem solved.

I do not have horse in the race (I do not care if thief burst is nerfed since I do not use it) but:
Thief (Warrior) burst and mesmer burst cannot be compared.
With a stun breaker thief burst is avoidable pretty much 100% of time, even when they pop haste along with it (yes I have seen some do that).
Warrior burst is even slower then thief’s so the same as above applies.
Mesmer burst in its current state is instant, you have to guess when it is going off to avoid it, you cannot REACT to it (by react I mean: detect it is happening, and then execute appropriate sequence to avoid most of it) (and please, stop talking about clones ‘running to you’. That is simply nonsense if you play melee you are always in the range of clones dmg shatter since that is where mesmer sits (among his clones)). Dmg shatter simply needs to do MUCH less dmg considering how frequently they happen (low cooldown), considering they are instant, considering they are AOE, and considering what other options mesmer brings to the table (group haste, teleport, rez). Shatter dmg should be severely nerfed.
Let us not pretend it takes some mad skill to pull of that mesmer (or thief) bursts (the video).
Thief one requires no skill (since he initiates the contact he just needs to press few keys in a sequence), mesmer burst in video above requires decent reaction time and rest is just muscle memory press few keys (if someone has problem pulling it off, just sit there for few hours and repeat the same sequence, you will be ‘pro’ after that).

What needs change in thief (and other classes) bursts: Heartseeker should not be autoseeking the target (autoturing and autochasing the target should be off for all attacks and all classes). Then people would have to face proper direction (enemy) when spamming hs, which would sufficiently slow down the finisher of the thief burst to hopefully minimize complaints.
Also simply spamming your spells would not autoturn you to the enemy who positioned himself behind you to get well deserved dmg bonuses effectively negating his (movement/positioning) skill with no skill input on your side. Even WoW did not have this dumb feature. Wow’s dumb feature was that if you are out of range you could spam your skill and it would not go off until u get into range. But if enemy circled you, you had to turn to negate his positioning, just pressing your attack would not autoturn you to him and negate his effort/skill without any effort/skill on your side.

daydream.2938:

But. Dont we want matchs to be determined by skill? IM agreeing we need to restricct the ability to make changes, but allowing some change means that some matchs wont be write offs from the start because of unfairable matchups.

What about between rounds? Surely some changes should be allowed to be made then?

They are determined by skill. Skill of using your setup to win. And skill of making the setup that best fits your play-style.
Match is a write-off only if you are bringing severely unbalanced build into the game and do not have enough skill to compensate for the gaps you left open, in that case it is a signal for you to respec or to train more.

Let us look at dummy example:
it is 1v1 dueling. You are a thief and decide you will kill enemy by stacking bleeds. You will use evasion via db to mitigate the dmg. You got 100bladed many times by glass warrior and spiked by glass thief so you decide to also carry some vitality and toughness. You carry no (or little) condition removal.
You meet another condition spec that does carry a lot of condition removals (so he can frequently clean your bleeds). It hard counters you. You need to compensate with your skill (dodge/evade his main attacks). If you cannot and you repeatedly die you have two choices:
1. Practice until you actually CAN close the counter gap with your active skill (well timed dodges, evades etc).
OR
2. sacrifice something (do less dmg, or carry less toughness or carry less vitality ) to get better condition removal. That way you do less dmg to all enemies, or you have tougher time with burst but you have easier time with condition.
It is up to you (and your team in the case of team setup) what tradeoffs to make.

I do not get your argument, should we be constantly running extreme setups with huge gaps that in turn attempt to exploit some huge gap that other team is having? So you lose the first fight in the mid, you reconfigure come back and win the second. Then they reconfigure, come back and win the third….etc….is that how it is supposed to go? Sounds lame to me.

I will have to disagree with you.
It is true that people can spec in such a way that they can survive a lot of mistakes. However, their damage will suffer in that case. Hence while they will be able to live long with mediocre performance they will, at the same time, not be able to kill anything.
The better you become the less you should spec in a way that your defensive mistakes are forgiven and put more into offensive capabilities (supposedly your survivability will stay high due to skill but now you will be able to kill more opponents and kill them faster).
So I do not think that tradeoff between offense and defense has been designed badly, rather it is a problem of (the only) official game mode available. This would be obvious to people who 1v1 a lot (or generally play deathmatch type of game). Small (yes aoe can pretty much cover it) point control, the (only) official game mode ppl play, besides being really bad pointless and boring, is giving importance to these pointless specs that put everything (or almost everything) into defense and do not have to do any dmg essentially. His job is to ‘hold the point’ as long as possible, and the most forgiving way to do that is to ‘tank up’.
In deathmatch this build would be almost completely useless, they cannot provide any help to the team to kill enemy, so that is 20% dps loss to the team right there (assuming team of 5), while defensively they would not help much either because they would be ignored and just killed last after all dps-ers are dead and enemy team can focus on them.
So blame the designers for forcing us to play this boring game mode (guilty), not for bad core design (not guilty).

I would also blame devs for mixing up ‘skill’ with ‘robotic key pressing’. They call elementalist a class with ‘high skill requirement’. No, d/d ele has no skill requirement pretty much in its current state. As it is a bot could play it and achieve better results than 99% of players out there. Class requires pretty much no reaction to what enemy is doing (except to pop stuns/invuls and even that can be programmed (on stun or on low health) ). It even does not require you to face target much (since skills autoturn you, autoclose/charge, and they are largely aoes). Just robotic key sequence pressing gives excellent bunker results and what is worse they also do decent dmg (aoe on top of all). No devs, that is not ‘high skill requirement’, anyone can learn proper key sequence with some practice and keep pressing them over and over again. Skill is in properly reacting to other player, playing mind games with them, properly positioning yourself when taking offensive action (yes facing proper direction when casting a spell, not facing 180 degrees away from enemy and letting the spell autoturn you)….

What i would also blame devs for in terms of bad design is: autoturning. “Ride the lightining” will go after target even if you are facing the other way. Same with ‘heartseeker’ etc. Same with ton of other attacks. Really? You should attack in the direction you face and if you miss, well…too kittening bad, learn to face your target.

daydream.2938:

Hi. My first post.

This seems to be an issue thats really divided the community based on the way each side is posting. And both sides seem to be making some valid points. I think the way out is to stop thinking of this as an entirely either/or situation and recognize some room for compromise.

1 Gentlemen compared swapping out abilities to swapping out cards in a magic tourny. But of course you can do this. its called a side board. And it adds to the meta immensly.
But you cant swap cards out mid game.

Its lame to watch the Ui open up constantly in esports, and its frustrating to play like this, at least for me. And its annoying to carry so much extra stuff.

What i would recommend is a respawn ‘starting area’. Before you exit the starting area you can change things. When you true die and respawn then you can swap weapons/utilities If you find a need to adapt before exiting the starting area to rejoin the match. Im not sure about also allowing armor/amulet swap. But probably.

However, while on the match board outside the starting area no changes permitted. Even while out of combat in the map you cant swap.

This position has the advantage of being a compromise between both sides.

It functions somewhat like the sideboard in magic.

=)

No. Again it leads into inside-the-match build wars. Oh, we just got wiped on this setup. Let us try something else…etc.

If you bring an extreme setup into the match where you seek to easily destroy people based on specializing in feature_A but you are at disadvantage if they specialize in feature_B, then tough luck, you deserve to be wiped, or compensate for the disadvantage with your ‘skillz’.

If you think that gap is too much for your ‘skillz’ then respec for the next time so you decrease reliance on feature_A to win, but also expose yourself to lower gap if enemy specializes in feature_B. Proceed to do so until you find some type of balance (between advantages you seek to gain, weaknesses in spec you leave open, “skills you use to compensate for your weaknesses” and “skills that allow you to seek lower spec/setup advantages to win” )

Another problem is of course “cost” of mesmer burst:
Warrior needs to put in two utilities on high CD and be exposed to recieve 50% higher dmg if countered (he can avoid that by popping third utility).
Thief also has to pop his utilities and his elite. All on high CD.
Mesmer needs to put in one utility (in example i gave) and be safe afterwards (staff kiting (teleport, essentially stun break on 8 sec timer), pistol 2 sec stun, BF 2 sec invul on 8 sec timer, 2 sec immobilize on 10 sec timer, etc etc).
I really dunno what anet is thinking designing this class. Simply stupid.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

It’s not simple, use your brains.
@ Kitiara, not everyone uses macros – the solution is to ban abusers, not to nerf a class.
AoEs can destroy clones, a shatter combo takes like 5 seconds from blank without utilities involved, 3 if Mirror Images, 1-2 with macro (?).

Macro or no macro it is irrelevant. Nothing easier than to sit for few hours and train your hand to press 5-6 keys quickly (even if it took that many and it does not). Some people call that skill (o my god look at me, how fast i can mash 4 keys)….I laugh.

Existence of combos that insta ppl 100%-0% without possibility to react is a problem in any game. Neither warrior nor thief have that, both of their combos can be escaped with stun breaker and reasonable reaction time (if you want nerf them both I do not care, but mesmer one is worse because it is instant + it is more frequently pulled).

You claim it is not insant: it is once 3 illusions are up and ready, which he can easily achieve by switching to staff.
If you approach mesmer when he is surrounded by his illusions he will daze shatter them then just: mirror images, dodge and mind wreck and u are done. I do nto say this is what they do, but it is an example what can be done. This is for example instant, first shatter leaves me with tons of weakness stacks and leaves mesmer with ton of might, second just puts me to 0% or leaves me scrambling to live with 10% health.

Daays.4317:

Mufa.1326:

To ppl saying how this change promotes ‘build wars’:
What do you call constantly swapping builds (weapon sets) in the middle of the match. Oh, he has A, so I will use B to counter him, at which point B will disengage and switch to C to counter me etc. Simply nonsense! This promotes people being mediocre at all possible builds and constantly swapping to counter enemy’s build, rather than excelling at few chosen builds and learning how to maximize their use.

GW2 isn’t as you described.

A>B>C>A

By being able to constantly swap between weapons/armor and creating a trait setup that is versatile, you allow people to play off the cuff and adapt.

All this does it turn the game into a crappy version rock, paper, scissors.

Because in RPS, you can choose to throw anything. Imagine how fun RPS would be if you could only throw rock. Every. Single. Time.

Removing choice is always, always, always a bad idea. It dumbs down game play and promotes hard counters.

Being versatile is never a bad thing in any game.

I completely disagree, it is exactly the controlled constraints that make things interesting.
I mentioned this on other (same topic) thread:
If your statement is correct then, in the limit, they should allow us to switch everything (traits, weapons, utilities, elites, heals, sigils, runes) at any point of time (combat no combat). They should simply let us create ‘presets’ and switch between them with one keystroke. Imagine that flexibility, one moment you are extremely tanky, the next you are pure glass…so flexible. That is maximum flexibility in this game, but it is really really really bad idea.

I also heard arguments that ‘game will be boring to watch now’. That also is not true. FPS like “quake” (excuse me for being so old) are very interesting to watch, yet they offer no variety spec wise at all. It is all in how you play one and the same character.

I also heard arguments that ‘there is no (less) room for skilled player to differentiate himself now’. That is also not true. Sorry for using quake as example again:
Quake had no spec optionality, yet very skilled player could blow up team of 8 mediocre players easily.

This extreme spec optionality ‘on the fly’ to me is equivalent of:
1. switching the deck mid game in ‘magic the gathering’ type of game.
2. asking that all figures in chess be given ‘flexibility’ to move like a queen+knight (yes, more flexible, but no, not a better game).

Grimpaw.7493:

Cooldown on swap seems like a good idea Mufa, that would general balance with the power of the utility. Probably with a minimum cooldown of X seconds for things like signets with passives, etc.

This is what I think:
1. The best idea is to block it completely. There is simply no need to give this optionality. Some classes which have too many useful utilities (both 1v1 and group) and easily switch from one role to the other on the fly.
2. If they do not completely block it, then it should be heavily penalized: Whenever the swap is done, the new utility on the bar should be put on immediate cooldown and I would also add increased cooldown time penalty on all utilities (like X% increase cooldown times on everything for each swapped utility for that match). This penalty would keep accumulating, as to prevent many swaps and as to prevent swapping back and forth. This would act pretty much as #1 (with large % penalty) but may warrant one or two swaps in a match in extreme cases.
3. Bare minimum is to put the newly swapped-in utility to (complete) cool-down as stated above.

To ppl saying how this change promotes ‘build wars’:
What do you call constantly swapping builds (weapon sets) in the middle of the match. Oh, he has A, so I will use B to counter him, at which point B will disengage and switch to C to counter me etc. Simply nonsense! This promotes people being mediocre at all possible builds and constantly swapping to counter enemy’s build, rather than excelling at few chosen builds and learning how to maximize their use.

JonathanSharp.7094:

…. WE MAY NOT LOCK DOWN utilities down the road, so that you can still have some adjustment when out of combat….

BAD idea. As a bare minimum utility must go into cool-down upon swap.
Just think this simplistic scenario:
Bunker ele defending home point. He equips his utility bar with stun breakers in order to counter CC from burst thief or warrior.
He gets informed that fight is not going well at mid point they will be going down soon. So he quickly rides the lightning and ‘burning speed’ while swapping his stun break for 165s cooldown glyph of renewal to provide his team with super powerful situational ability.
Simply NO….he should really either provide resurect to the group and sacrifice his tanking OR the other way around. He should NOT excel at both (provide resurect on demand and have stunbreaks available when bunkering on home point).
And yes, this promotes skill: now he will have to dodge warrior’s stun, or get 100bladed if he cannot (which will promote his learning 2 play).
So, at minimum, when he swaps to resurrect, it should go into coool-down so he cannot use it immediately.

yup…macro (double) shatter is definitely insane. I go from 100% to 10% in fraction of a second and then have to scramble to survive. I would not be surprised it insta-downs many decent builds.
At least stupid thief burst can be escaped (for most of the dmg) with decent reaction time, and it takes the whole bar of thief utilities (and elite and steal), so given thief is left pretty useless after that. It is kinda high reward / high risk kind of play.
That cannot be said for the mesmer, who on top of everything else also gets this kind of burst? I have to say this double shatter insta burst is worse burst than thief spike on a class that brings so much more to the fight.
It is insanely BAD design, what are those guys in anet thinking when they allow for this. It is like high reward, no drawbacks whatsoever kind of design.

hit 5, make sure u do not run into walls….

Just one more thing to say to ppl using p/p as primary set and whining all the time:
The main problem with p/p is not that it has bad dmg (it has lower dmg than melee, but that is how it should be), but that it lacks access to the most powerful thief mechanic: stealth.
Stealth (and mobility) is what gives survivability to thief.
So if you want to make decent p/p build, you better carry a lot of ‘enter stealth’ utilities.
You should take deception line traits (shadow ref, blinding powder), you should spend trait to decrease their cooldown, take hide in shadows and then go play. Going out with p/p without such utilities will just mean you die fast.

With those utilities I mentioned you will have access to stealth approximately every 11-12 seconds. So whenever opponent closes on you, stealth up, get some range, open with sneak attack and proceed to unload. While others have to spend initiative to enter stealth you can spend it on unloads. Also try to keep ini up for some blinding powder to mitigate dmg if all ur stealth entrees are down and the enemy closes in.

swinsk.6410:

P/P is terrible. Why beat this dead horse?!

As primary I agree. As a secondary weapon to provide ranged burst quickly in certain situation it is the best choice thief has. So it could be used as secondary weapon choice.

reikken.4961:

Mufa.1326:

2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.

that’s because pistol whip stuns and evades (and got nerfed. see next line). Unload does nothing

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the problem is haste. Haste + dps skills is too good if the dps skills actually do good dps. Therefore they’re balanced to suck at dps without haste.

1a. Unload keeps you far away from your enemy while you are delivering significant spike.
1b. It is more difficult to mitigate with dodge (most common dmg mitigation) then PW: If you dodge asap against PW you will avoid 90% of dmg. If you dodge too early against pw you will eat few last shots that carry the most of the dmg. Your statement is simply false.
1.c PW roots you in place and direction of attack, unload lets you move around (i.e. your mobility is not impaired for 2 sec or so, which is VERY significant).

2. Haste is not an issue, it is mitigated by invuls for X seconds, blocks for X seconds, CC, dodges, etc. Haste is simply L2P issue. People complaining about bullrush/frenzy/100b just do not know wtf they are talking about.

Tulisin.6945:

3. In the situation noted, sword/anything would serve you better than P/P, thanks to Infiltrator’s Strike. P/P does have situational uses, but they’re rather limited, and thanks to recent changes to make P/P at all competitive you have to take pistol-specific traits. Dumping two or more traits specifically into pistols makes P/P a very poor choice for “situational swap weapon”.

One of the main problems with Unload in specific is that Pistol Whip does what Unload does (huge hit volume) so much better. There are certain buffs that could be made to thief traits to make Unload much more attractive, like removing the 1 second CD from the vuln-on-crit trait. The problem is that these same buffs would affect Pistol Whip even more than Unload. I’d like to see Unload be revamped as a whole into something less focused on hit volume.

Answer: That is not true. S/anything is not better than p/p in situation I noted.
Remember: You want to dump ur initiative in order to finish off enemy at low health while your movement is impaired in one or more ways (let us say you are rooted/slowed).

If you go with s/anything:
you do infiltrator strike which costs 3 ini i think. Then let us say you do pw, your pw will hit unless oponent clears root and dodges fast. But even if it hits, you will manage only small dmg before he is free from both root and stun to dodge away with you doing almost no dmg.
Now, you are still slowed (only one second passed), did not do any dmg, 1 sec passed and you burned 8 ini.
If you want to close on him again, you will have to do shadow return (4 ini?) and again infi strike (3 ini?)…..so essentially no spike there, you will just be burning your initiative (i counted 18 ini there) for no dmg and even now you just have him rooted for one sec.

With p/p: you simply unload multiple times (probably about 3 times). With one dodge he may mitigate part of the dmg of one unload but he will eat two more. So in this situation (slowed and unable to close gap need to deliver finishing spike), p/p does much better than s/anything.

1. Unload is ranged, sword is melee. If you want safety of the range you should have lower dps. I do not know why people think you should be doing the same dmg standing safely on the ledge at 800 range as going into the melee and taking all the risks that implies.
2. Even sword skills that are initiative costly like pistol whip do not have much higher dps (if at all) than sword auto.
3. Maybe, just maybe, p/p should be looked at as a good situational 2nd-ary weapon choice, rather than your primary choice, and people should stop trying to make it primary choice because you will have to sacrifice dmg for the safety of range and as a thief you have no need for that in this game. Here is where p/p is better than any other weapon set thief has: The situation where you are snared, rooted or you simply cannot close the distance to your opponent who is low on health and you have your initiative bar pretty full. If p/p is your secondary weapon choice, you can switch to p/p and unload on him to finish him off. p/p has the best ranged spike of the thief weapon sets (bow’s explosions require you to be in melee range pretty much). It has other perks (blind field and interrupt) (but so does d/p).

yeah, they should definitely swap in Schwahrheit.4203 instead of chief in that trial.

Silferas.3841:

@Mufa.1326 You have answered nothing of what I asked. The closest thing to answer that came from you was to make a build that had no hard counter, which is like ordering me to go hunt unicorns with a rope woven from Santa Claus’ nose hair. There is no such a thing as build that can do everything, and most importantly builds that try to do too much of everything usually end up failing at everything they do. If you cannot even understand this much, there is no point in me having discussion with you any further.

I think that for normal person it is sufficient to see where this ‘spec’ flexibility is going: In the limit it leads to switching everything, traits, entire equipment etc with one keystroke during the battle. That allows for maximum flexibility spec wise. However, it is not good for the game. There is your answer as far as this goes.

What was allowed before (people changing characters 30 sec before game start, changing characters between maps, people swapping to a weapon just to gain a speed buff, etc etc) is simply nonsense. They should face a tradeoff of more speed, or more defense, or more condition cleansing, or more dmg, etc when they are setting up character/team (weapon/trait/equipment choices). Once they apply for tournament they should get locked into those choices and simply use their mad skillz to compensate if they are at disadvantage. If they cannot….to quote those same people: L2P and also ‘learn to make a balanced build’.

You can make a character that has no hard counter. Of course, you will have to trade off.

People who enter fight with composition that hard counters something but has obvious weaknesses would:
1. Not be at the top (they will win against those who they hard counter and lose against those that hard counter them).
2. Lose to balanced skillfully played build. Balanced skillfully played build should come out on top on average. You cannot be hard countered and once you build up enough skill you will defeat any niche builds (you will adjust to them through the way you play your character).

I would say this is not working as stated.

XiL….your character is NOT random, you made it, so you trade off between strengths and weaknesses.
Build a balanced build without hard counters and learn to play with it.
If you build a niche build that hard counters some builds but with obvious glaring weakness(es) then yeah, it becomes more like a random number generator for you. You either encounter build that you are hard counter to or you run the risk of running into something that hard counters you…or you meet balanced build that you do not hard counter but who beats you due to his skill (he figures out your weakness and then uses it to beat you). (or you better have teammates that can compensate for the holes in your build)

Adaptability can have many meanings: Should you build balanced character and adapt through your skill when playing that character (by skill I mean using available options at appropriate time), or should you adapt by clicking on equipment pieces /skills / (or traits) and adapt by essentially respeccing inside the match?

If argument is that ‘more respeccing flexibility is always better’ then why do not we take it to extreme and allow respec of traits as well during the match?
Actually how about we request ANET to allow us to preset unspecified number of spec and then switch between them on single click? We could request them to allow us to switch to equipment preset along with traits on single click? That way you can go from one spec to another in one click. How about allowing us flexibility to do it during the fight? Not good? Yeah it is kittenty idea, and allowing ppl to swap equipment during the match is just one aspect of it.

Locking in weapons/“trait spec” does not limit your ’adaptability. Rather it requires you to build more balanced character and then compensate/(adapt) through your skill, rather than ‘adapting’/compensating by one click giving you new weapon/equipment piece (or by changing traits which should also be allowed if argument is that “more respeccing inside the game is always better”).

And Schwahrheit.4203, stop with that ‘top’ player attitude….makes me laugh. No ‘spice’ will be lost, you will just need to adapt through your gameplay rather than through swapping weapons.

@Sarcasmic.6741: If your mesmer buddies did not go off the topic claiming they have no tools, then I would not need to answer them.

@Leuca.5732 (the pro)….rotation is not unrealistic. I already tested it and killed a decent warrior in my first fight on the mesmer I made for testing (and I should not be killing anyone in my first fight using the class). I used exactly that rotation (with of course mixing it up, sometimes you bring BF snare and shatter together, sometime you use stun bf and shatter together, etc etc… no class can afford to be a robot in this game (except d/d elementalist) ). Rotation is just a starting outline for a fight and then you adapt to the circumstances.

@knight.8926 … I tried it.

@Sarcasmic.6741 … please, you are answering me as if I complained or called for nerf of all those abilities I listed. Try to read my post in the context of the discussion: People were saying ‘mesmer does not have the tools to fight without 2sec invul on 8 sec cooldown’. I then listed some of the tools they have at their disposal. Then you come with your ridiculous post beating on the straw-man. Save the energy dude.

This is not ‘np complete problem’. It is easily solvable in the context of control.
1. You just need to define objective measure of ‘balance’ (what ‘balance’ means; I suggested it means having the same probability of finding the class represented in the top X players on ranked ladder in different types of games (1v1, 3v3, 5v5) ).
2. You need good feedback that tells you how far away from the target (balance) you are and in which direction to move classes (nerf or buff).
You will hit the target pretty quickly.
Without objective measures there will always be drama on the forum. With objective measure you can always point to ladders and say: Your class is correctly represented among top players….l2p, class may have steeper learning curve but you want to play it so live with it …etc.
Not only this, but as players find new builds that disrupt the balance, you will get the info quickly and be able to adjust again.

I think all this talk about balance is meaningless until they set up infrastructure to provide objective criterion to evaluate balance.
Correctly implemented ladders (1v1, 3v3, 5v5) and looking at subset of X top players in each segment (X being 100+) would provide such objective criterion.
Each class should be about equally represented at the top (Z classes -> 1/Z probability of finding the class among top X). If class is represented below the percentage it needs buff. If it is overrepresented it needs nerf.
There is simply no need to talk so much nonsense (ppl claiming balance is nonexistent and cannot be achieved, others claim all is peachy…both are wrong, balance is pretty ok but some fixes are needed).
What is there to talk about if class_A is represented 30% or 40% among top 1v1 players? Or if it is represented at such level among the pool of players of top 5v5 teams? Anyone thinks it does not need a nerf?

And to balance the classes should become pretty easy once you get objective criterion and the feedback mechanism:
So many useless/subpar skills/utilities hang around in the available pool that it is easy to scratch them completely and put something else in its place that buffs the class in some particular aspect of the gameplay without affecting too much (or at all) other aspects. Also, it is easy to see what top players utilize the most to hit it with nerf.

Yes they can, but you need good feedback mechanism, like (for example): ranked single match, 3v3 and 5v5 que and you need 1v1 and 3v3 (and 5v5) ques and (separate) rankings.
Then you look at the feedback data: If you detect that among the best 100 players (or pick a number to have large enough samples) you see only 1% of class_X in particular type of ranking (1v1, 3v3, 5v5) you know you have an issue with that class in such-and-such sized match. Then you ask yourself how could you buff them up for match of that size without affecting 1v1 too much for example (if class is well balanced there) (maybe you need to generalize some ability to apply not only on caster but also an allies etc).
If you see 50% of top rankings go to class_Y, you know you need to nerf them in some sense, then you start investigating what the issue is. Such a feedback mechanism would eventually lead to a decent balance.
But you need good feedback mechanism in order to establish a ‘control’ (balance). Otherwise you will keep randomly applying control (‘fixes’) based on bad/biased feedback (forum whining, asking few ‘top’ players(having too small of a sample size), etc).

LOL…only 8? Where is the challenge?
There are 3 things that make 1vX where X can be anything (yes you can fight 30, 50, it does not matter) possible:
1. Bad players.
2. Culling issue.
3. WvW unbalanced equipment.
Good players benefit from 3 as well and know how to counter 2.
Bad players are bad players, it is impossible to balance them against good players (unless the game detects how bad you are and applies appropriate buffs on you to compensate for the lack of skill)…..proof: single player could kill a group of 10 bad players in quake and quake was a ‘perfectly balanced’ game (FPS).

Follidus.8027:

Yes, a ladder/rating system is nice for top tier players, but honestly I think the most important thing about it is helping lower tier players get into the game more by playing people around their own skill level.

imo it’s the lower tier players that are the most important if you want to see this game succeed. I think custom arenas are more important for top tier teams, anyway. But that won’t matter if there aren’t lots of lower tier teams out there trying that are having fun trying to get better.

Actually ladder is exactly there so that people of similar skill play each other. Good ladder system sorts people out. You cannot ‘challenge’ people who are too high above you. System should make you play one game with guy ranked ‘slightly’ above you and then one ‘slightly’ below you and so on. So you have to beat the guy below you to keep your rank (and give him the chance to progress) and then you play one game to ‘challenge’ guy above you to take his spot. This system very quickly sorts people out.
In short span of time, low skill people will be on the bottom of the ladder where they will oscillate a bit but not be able to break into mid tier. Mid skill people will be in the middle where again they will oscillate but not be able to break into top tier (until they improve). And top skill people will be at the top where they will fight each other and oscillate slightly.

Ladder based on the skill rather than grind (number of games played (or ‘wins’ collected)) is easy to make. Look at how chess players are ranked. Generally speaking: you progress by beating those ranked higher than you and you do not progress (or at least not by much) by beating those ranked lower than you (but you still have to fight such games to keep your current ranking). Players will not be able to progress by grinding noobs/newbs no matter how much they do so.
New guys who have skill will progress up fast.
To deal with inactivity just put in automatic decay in ranks if player does not play for some time (allow for reasonable amount of time without any decay (let us say few days or a week) and then start decaying them at accelerated rate if they do not play (this is to prevent someone who is ranked first to just stop playing and stay ranked high).

Jake, Asterisk:
You do not have to stay with sword in order to pull BF every 8 seconds. I explained above how you pull BF about every 8 seconds and still do normal weapon rotation (10 sec on sword/pistol and 10 seconds on staff).
Not just L2P for two of you, but also ‘learn to read’.

Josh, you are just insisting on lying. 2 sec invul is available to mesmer every 8 seconds. Claiming it is every 20 seconds is a lie. You will not respond to my post because you have no answer, stop pretending to be ‘above it all’.
Tonight I rolled mesmer to test. Yeah, you can easily use BF 4 times in 30 sec as i described above. I went straight to duel a decent warrior and killed him. Should I be able to do so in my first fight on a class? No, but it happened for some reason.

Schwahrheit.4203… I was not talking to you, warrior.
Seether.7285 I am aware that 1v1 is not the only determination of skill. However, it is the only objective method I am aware of (unless the difference in skill is super obvious). Without objective criterion topic like this is meaningless…people will just post names of themselves or their teammates/friends.

lol…just more of pathetic staying off topic and talking about me.
I guess authority on the topic are mesmers only, the very people who benefit from this issue? Really laughable.

Isreal, Phase retreat is stated as 10s cooldown on wiki. But it does not matter, 8s is even worse.
You CAN trait for both staff and sword reduction (20 duelist 20chaos and 30 illusions) but it may not be the best. I just gave an example of what can be done.

As for gap closer with staff: you do not need it. You do not have to shatter during staff (but you can if enemy closes to you or if you want to use it defensively), you can kite and do dmg from distance. Bad autoattack? Well, when warlock and you and two clones are doing it, it quickly reduces enemy’s health.
You have gap closer on 10s- on sword. You can pull two gap closers on single sword rotation if you want.
It is just too funny to see how you guys actually do not want to talk about rotation example that pretty much either:
1. keeps you invul OR
2. enemy stunned OR
3. enemy rooted OR
4. you kiting the enemy with two gap openers in 10 sec + fied/shield to keep him off you if he closes in.

Why do not you go back to the topic.

Israel, I do not know where to start with your post that is just demonstrating that you should not be posting.
I guess i will do it in order:
1. What i gave you is not ‘hypothetical’ scenario, it is realistic rotation with which mesmer pressures the enemy. Of course not everything will go ‘exactly’ and that is where good player is differentiated from bad player (how he can respond to things not going ‘exactly’ or how he can slightly delay or mix up the rotation to adapt to the enemy).

2. Now you are justifying 30%+ of game time invulnerability due to one skill with bugs on some other skills you have? Pathetic. That is just nonsense, bugs need fixing and cannot be used to justify this unbalancing feature of the skill.

3. Your skills can be blocked/miss, etc? Well, guess what, other classes have the same issue. You are just talking nonsense to distract from the real issue.

4. Focus vs pistol: Again nonsense, all classes face tradeoffs when picking weapons. Again you are simply rambling to distract. As for CD on magic bullet: I am well aware of CD and if you read my post with rotation in it you will see I still manage to use it in every sword rotation. So yes you can use it ‘only’ once per sword rotation. poor you.
5. You need gap closer with staff? You are a joke. WTF do you need gap closer with staff. Luckily devs are not as clueless as yourself and you gave you what you actually need: gap OPENER, and on very low timer (8s again if you trait properly).
6. Staff bad dmg? Did you know those things apply burning on enemies? no? laughable.
7. Yeah…i am sure you ‘could go on’ sprouting nonsensical nonsense like you just did. Is your goal just to distract from the real issue by talking nonsense?

Haldunius.7864:

Nothing to counter. Your guys’ posts do it for me. Got a bunch of bad players lighting up the torches and stampeding towards the nerf gates.

Actually, here I have a counter. Go play another game and stop trying to ruin this one for everyone else because your bads.

Mufa:
Really lol? So ‘you are a bad player’ or ‘you are whining’ is now an fail-proof answer to any balance discussion?

Well I can easily take that “argument” away from you. Let us meet in the game and 1v1, after I am done with, you will have nothing left I guess.

I order for him to hit you 10K-14K:
1. you have to be complete glass
2. he has to put all his utilities (signets) CDs into that backstab.

Come on….how is that 45s cooldown easily missed spike comparable to what we are talking about????

I play against those thieves all the time and kill them all the time. Just use ur stun breaker. It is a reflex problem. You are too slow and those builds are good 1v1 again slow people. People who react appropriately will just get hit with mug+c&d (and then quickly heal) when not seeing thief approaching and people who see them approaching do not get hit with anything (you see thief with basilisk on, precasting c&d at distance and you dodge) and he misses his 45s cooldown main spike and is left there useless and to die (or waste his heal to get 3sec headstart and try to run away).