Guild Wars 2

Tabootrinket.2631:

I’d personally be more inclined to a dodge that would knockback people we cross without damage, so the dodges could also be used as interrupts.
(we could call it something like : “tackle”).

Adding stealth mechanism into Daredevil doesn’t seem to fit the theme.

I’d argue as long at the Daredevil is picking 2 out of the 5 core Thief trait lines Stealth will regularly be an element in their gameplay .

Also, maybe an f3 button to toggle on and off the dodge abilility would certainly help surviving confusion, or staying in stealth.

Heh. I’d be concerned that if you need a toggle to turn them off because NONE of them work for you there’s a more serious problem at work . Now, reworking Bound to not do damage/break stealth as you suggest is probably easier than starting from scratch…

Notsoperky.4291:

Seriously? It’s not like thiefs lacked damage that they can throw on you in milliseconds whilst their venom has you immobilised, you had to increase their damage by a HUGE 25%.

If you’re getting abruptly killed by a thief… I PROMISE it’s not because they shot you with a pistol.

If anyone needs me I’ll be on my venom thief insta-downing people in wvw with 2k toughness…

Please do. Partially because it’ll give you some grounding in REALITY and partially because if they are magically vastly over-performing (hint: they aren’t) then mass migration to the flavor-of-the-month is the fastest wait to get it looked at.

Karl McLain.5604:

We are looking forward to the new functionality, but there’s a few pains that we’re getting through. During the next beta weekend, you’ll find that the Leap combo finisher for Bounding Dodger only works if you land inside a field. This is not intended and we’re already working on the fix for it (it’s in testing now). For now, it’s going to be trickier to get your leap finisher from Black Powder. There’s also a bug in the skill facts that indicate that it delivers a blast finisher, but it in fact a leap and will remain as such.

-Karl

Karl,

Considering that none of the Daredevils’ enhanced Dodges work well with the traditional stealth gameplay of the thief (Dash is cool but it’s too fast for the stealthy in-fighter while the other two both do damage, breaking stealth) would you consider dumping Bound entirely for an option specifically tuned to work with stealth? Essentially an option that uses normal dodge distance and doesn’t do damage, but is still GM-trait levels of cool?

Just spit-balling earlier I’d suggested~

• Flitting Shadows. You Dodge now places you in stealth for 2 seconds if you are not Revealed or removes Revealed if you are.

~Letting you burn a dodge to create the potential to stealth again when revealed.

But really ANYTHING that fits the normal range/not an attack/GM-level-cool profile would go a long, long way towards giving the Daredevil an option that meshes with many of the more aggressive tools at their disposal.

Thanks!

myren.5490:

So the “personal” cough TRAHAERNE cough story was overall ok in spite of our spotlight being robbed. So I’m curious as to what Trahaerne’s role in HoT will be. I got a feeling Rytlock will be stealing Trahaerne’s spotlight so here’s to hoping Trahaerne becomes corrupted and we get to kill him.

We see him in the HOT release trailer. At the end. Livin’ large.

like majority/minority is something we’ll ever demonstrate here or EVEN MATTERS.

Its NOT A DEMOCARACY and you’re not being asked to vote.

That said, all the Especs are in flux. While they’ll take feedback into account, most of the driving force for change comes from metrics, so the best way to bring about change is to play the spec you’re concerned with this coming weekend and in the future as time goes on after HoT’s launch.

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Well, my main Necro has run Axe + Focus with max’d vulnerability duration increase (givers weapons, sigils, runes) for years and always wrecks face to my satisfaction (or out right glee) so a straight up buff to range AND damage is like Winter’s Day come early to this like death-monger .

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

I will give it some thought.

Arcaedus.7290:

I dunno about you guys, but I logged in, rubbed my shield all over my face, pressed 4 and 5 multiple times and said to myself “we soooo deserve thisssss” …. no…. just me? >_>

My shield just filed for a restraining order, so no, you’re not alone.

Very happy with the shield; it’s a step in the right direction. It could still use some tweaks here and there, but we’ll get to that in time.

In terms of “fixing” shield, I think the next place we should turn our attention to is the trait. It’s honestly not very useful, and is redundant considering shields already provide additional toughness.

Yeah, agreed: the trait needs some attention. Only Item left I want for the Shield itself is 900 range on #4. That would let you pull some mad-skill saves on allies from the rear line.

They’ve systematically stripped all range-increasing traits out of the game. They’re not gonna turn around and pout one back.

Nike.2631:

If I had to bet money on it I’d say we’ve seen 4 out of about 6 of the changes for thieves (with pistols getting a little more detail as to how much each individual skill’s damage was buffed). A little hard to tell as the announcer was clearly digging into stuff that might otherwise have been saved for Tuesday and they had some painful time-management issues going on.

But overall anything we haven’t seen yet is going to be small buffs to stuff very few people use presently. Maybe enough to reconsider them in niche builds, but nothing that drives a new highly competitive “meta” build for thieves.

Patch Notes:

Thief

• Vital Shot: Increased damage by 24%.
• Unload: Increased damage per shot by 26%.
• Sneak Attack: Increased attack damage per shot by 25%.
• Traps have been normalized to last for 5 minutes before expiring. Shadow Trap has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. All other traps have been reduced from 1 hour lifetime to 5 minutes.

• Potent Poison: Increased poison damage from 10% to 33%.
• Vigorous Recovery: Increased vigor duration from 5 seconds to 7 seconds.
• Expeditious Dodger: Increased swiftness duration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Ankle Shots: Removed the hidden range increase that this trait unlocked.

Some days I really feel for Cassandra. Counting Pistol damage as one item, exactly six notes. The power of True Prophecy isn’t as fun as it sounds…

COMMENT FOR LUCID SINGULARITY

Please add Slow to the conditions with -100% duration.

Wow, a nearly perfect map of perceived power.

Probably because you’d be charged for another one by the time it ended…

Xillllix.3485:

I think Tempest has plenty of defensive traits already.

How about pursuing the concept of field modifiers.

Field modifiers would adds or change an effect on blast (as fury with fire line, for other lines)

For example a Lightning field modifier: Gain 2 seconds of quickness on blast and 2 seconds of super speed on leap

“When a character triggers a combo on a field you created, it is triggered twice.”

“Technomancer” rendered as a Staff/Consecrations Engineer Espec sounds reasonably entertaining . Would definitely get the gizmo aspect in there compared to Eles. There’s some FX already done for the watchknights you could probably repurpose. There’s a lot of flexibility tied up in their toolbelt skills thugh, so if you’re dropping that, whatever you replace it with will need to be dead-on for theme and no slouch for game-impact.

If you’re interested in digging into all the needed steps to flesh this out here’s how I formatted a complete Espec for Rangers.

They’ve decided to balance around enemies that have an IQ rather than a script. This is not news. WvW is balanced around sheer numbers and pretty much absorbs any changes because if I have 75% more people, I win, regardless. The majority of PvE is balanced around rolling your face on the keyboard and collecting loot .

Hmm…

• Looming Storm. You gain 300 Toughness while your current attunement is ready.

An Anti-DPS reason to build up to Overload readiness without immediately casting it
(and has interesting synergy with Strength of Stone).

This might come as a shock but they do tend to nerf things that are winning a disproportionate amount. Decap engineer comes to mind. Condi mesmers might be annoying as all &#)@! to fight, but they’re not tipping the balance overall or there would be the nerf-bat of Damocles hanging over their head too.

But really, lets see what all tomorrow brings…

DeckerDontPlay.1639:

The lack of complaints regarding Mesmer is very discouraging to me. Everyone is so focused on ele for some odd reason.

Because PU getting cut in half just spontaneously happened without any special urging by EVERYONE EVER.

Xillllix.3485:

Indeed, condi/shatter mesmers and engis are way more broken than d/d ele ever was.

You can say that, but the people with the metrics don’t seem to agree.

jassking.7934:

I feel like its a game of stealth and death on my thief whenever I try to go toe to toe with you guys in pvp

What heal and elite are you running? What cleanses?

That’s not actually unusual in the MMO industry. You see that sort of bargaining all the time. It is by a large an empty threat as most people invested enough to make the threat are thoroughly hooked.

Kinda sexy, actually.

Wild Idea Moment (disregard if you’re not feeling the crazy today)

What if triggering overload immediately KICKED you out of your current attunement, putting you in one of your other available attunements at random. Really play up that wild and out-of-control surge of power? Its a drawback justifying some of the love Overloads still need and it’s intensely thematic for wielding forces beyond the scale other Elementalists dare.

It also raises skill cap as a good Tempest has to be able to respond quickly to leverage whichever attunement he lands in without being able to control where he’s gonna land after the Ka-Boom.

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#2: Weapon Viability. Currently, nearly all thieves use D/P + SB in PVP.

I want to add on to this. I think there also needs to be a good reason to take something other than shortbow. The problem that I am seeing is that shortbow is a weapon that gives us access to our mobility, when really I think that it should be a weapon that supplements it. Also to clarify, since many of you might think that I am just lobbying for shortbow nerfs, it’s not quite that simple. I’d like to see that mobility given back elsewhere so we will be more mobile without shortbow (maybe Daredevil has solutions to this).

Here’s what I pitched to Karl with this very issue in mind…

I’m pretty excited about the Daredevil myself, but right now it really feels like thieves are needlessly beholden to the Short Bow for its #5 skill Infiltrator’s Arrow. There’s also a lot of unhappiness with the Pistol #2 skill Body Shot. Maybe you could kill two moas with one pull of the trigger with something like…

• Infiltrator’s Shot. Range 600. 5 Initiative. Shadow step to ground target and apply x3 vulnerability for 5s in a 120 radius (max 3 targets).

… replacing Body Shot. While similar to Infiltrator’s Arrow the shorter range and lower range-to-initiative ratio should not immediately obsolete it, and this version keeps the vulnerability found in the slot now.

Hope you’ll consider it!

Tuesday is gonna be interesting…

Glenstorm.4059:

My biggest issue with Overloads is that we are punished too harshly for trying to use them. Or rather, we are not incentivized enough to use them. The way I see it, Tempest’s biggest difference from vanilla Ele is that it discourages Attunement dance. However, if they want to encourage staying in an Attunement with the eventual goal of Overloading, then not only does the Overload have to be powerful, but there also needs to be some inherent bonus to staying in the Attunement while the Overload charges up. At the moment, our weapon skills have too long individual cool downs to make Attunement camping worth it, and auto-attacks other than Fireball and Lightning Whip are lackluster. Which is why I keep suggesting a Grandmaster Minor trait that gives us a stacking, Attunement-specific, non-strippable, non-shareable buff each second that we remain in an Attunement.

Would you be satisfied with something along the lines of~

• “When your current attunement is recharged you gain +15% cooldown speed on all weapon skills.”

Which would make Tempest completely unlike core Elementalists in wanting to stay in a single attunement to pump out that single attunement’s effects faster.

It makes popping the Overload (with it’s stun break ) a real tactical decision and not something you mash as fast as it comes up. Camp your souped-up sped up weapon skills or throw the big button and move on to another attunement?

rotten.9753:

Overloads have mechanical issues, strapping a simple numerical buffs and calling a day won’t cut it.

I’d like to believe we can see more than mere numerical twiddling even within the limited time remaining. IF we can identify the crucial code changes that will give the Tempest real, tangible pizazz.

Overloads are the only skills that are interrupted by an attunement swap.

Ok, so the needs to be changed. Done. Concrete request.

Overloads are easily interruptible.

I’m with you. Stability is far more essential to making Tempest deliver on the concept of a living whirling maelstrom of elemental energy than super-speed. Speedy Conduit needs to be a Major trait we can select and stability during overload needs to be come the minor trait. Because right now it’s too much of a trait tax to make the class work.

5 seconds is way too long for defensive overloads (which you usually need as fast as possible).

More front-loading on defensive overloads. Done. Or at least totally doable.

Karl? Thoughts? Three straightforward and clear requests here.

Can we actually talk about what would make people want to play a Tempest over vanilla Elementalist?

It seems like some of the Overloads are adequately sexy, so maybe just call out which one you think is the single worst of the 4 and why?

I see a lot of concern about the Tempest having to be a melee in-fighter to set up the overloads. Dose it need +500 Toughness while channeling? Would it make the class more unique vs. its parent if the Tempest had +150 TOUGHNESS AT ALL TIMES as part of swapping into this profession? Because last I checked we were still supposed to get something akin to half the Arcane line’s aspect cooldown for taking Arcane, so maybe tempest could give full-time 150 Toughness instead of cooldown reduction.

Leodon.1564:

@ Nike
I would like to see how your build plays out but how are you going to deal without having a stun breaker and little condi removal?

It’s a notable weakness but I’m hopping the multitude of cripples and the several options for long stuns and immobilizes give us maybe the first ranged build that can actually maintain range, limiting most professions opportunities to apply those conditions. Core Necro will still be a lively match up. Axe and piercing Shortbow both give you pretty good tools against condi-mesmer.

Ands while the Mad-Seed does go in on a very offensive footing you still have that ALL-CLEAR on punching f5 (Avatar State )and can hopefully keep that in reserve for a mix of condi-clear and a quick reset on your health before dropping it early to get back to attacking and building the next celestial transformation.

Nike.2631:

There will be people who leverage what it gives and people who will bemoan its not a straight upgrade to what we have now. You’ve made it abundantly clear which group you’re in.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Well, enjoy your boring trash spec, I guess. I’ll continue to enjoy the base profession as well as chronomancers and druids.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. Creating a new flavor-of-the-month that everyone flocks to is a FAILURE of design. Creating something that gets people to spread out across builds following their personal tastes is a success.

Believe me, not only will I be enjoying the two variations of Dragonhunter builds I’ve posted, I’m gonna be PvPing like a madman helping build the metrics in my own tiny way: if they suck they get buffs (or at least avoid the nerf bat) and if they kick butt the sheer glee after all the trash talk thrown at them will be a warm fuzzy spot in my war stories for years to come. I literally cannot loose.

Please play nice .

It is still uproariously funny what we did get – a build that can push some massive green numbers while lacking all kinds of preventive tools. Their additional weapon should be called a mop, not a staff, because its geared towards cleaning up after someone else has a nasty spill . And having a mop OBVIOUSLY makes the Druid a better Guardian than a Guardian. ((snicker))

At this point hysteria is the new Thief.

Shogun.7401:

We don’t see these kind of communications from dev’s in thief community.

Be honest: we don’t see enough of this in ANY profession board, Thief, Ranger, or whatever your class of choice is.

They’ve been doing slightly better lately with announcements followed by erratic commentary. If they committed to just a bi-weekly update in each of the 9 boards I think we’d all go straight to downed-state from shock.

Slightly less than one-in-don’t-worry-about-it-you’re-not-getting-one.

There’s already a Thieves-Only Server.

…but it has perma-Stealth.

>.> <.< ((poof! vanish!))

Black Box.9312:

Mercurias.1826:

Dragon Hunter gives Guadians multiple ways to be better at the same things they were already good at.

Name 2 things that Dragonhunter has that improve the base class enough to sacrifice an existing traitline.

Good luck. You’re gonna need it.

The ability to do damage at 1200 range without the target just walking sideways out of it would have to be one…

A second heal skill on F2 seems like a good candidate for number two.

The new fortification trait in conjunction with aegis-o-rama on Fragments of Faith wont’ suck.

There will be people who leverage what it gives and people who will bemoan its not a straight upgrade to what we have now. You’ve made it abundantly clear which group you’re in.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all.

I just returned from San Francisco and am going to crash hard from the busy weekend at Twitch Con very soon, but first I wanted to clarify something…

Welcome home, Irenio. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the full notes in written form on Tuesday because it seems like there was some Guardian info garbled in the rush to beat the clock. I’m sure we’ll have some measured, thoughtful discussion (in and amongst the caterwauling) come Tuesday .

PS Hope you liked the Packmaster!

Heh… Triggering Elemental overload ALSO triggers a weapon swap. Make overloading the ONLY way an Ele can swap weapons in combat and you’d see heads literally explode trying to process all the new permutations that puts on the table…

If Moa put EVERYONE’s Signets all on cooldown, then I think there’d be a case for Necro minions popping. But as it stands its entirely too situational of an interaction and it punishes one family of builds excessively.

Are you saying you’d bring every other build to fractals? I’m not getting the level of expectation here. Every build is more or less good in the different environments. There are several environments where Druid is going to offer new (and I hope highly successful) approaches that have nothing to do with being a dedicated healer.

That’s a good thing. Because a lot of people are watching the video rather than reading the actually abilities and feeling like druid is a one-trick pony.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Happy for y’all that y’all have a good build for PVP.

What makes you think it won’t be fun/effective in PvE?

The Druid trait line can be threaded to avoid heavy emphasis on healing and deliver amazing tools for kiting (perma-swiftness in combat? Su-weet!) and vicious immobilize and bleed while leveraging the two aggressive glyphs.

The Mad-Seed is not a healer. Its a watch them bleed out and die while stung up on brambles CC machine.

The wings we got are left overs from when the Devs thought they were doing a Paragon Espec (Spear, Shield, and Wings? Yeah, seen that all bundled up together before in Tyria…).

I’d rather they hold off on more wings until they have the tech for terrestrial spears and can deliver the complete feathery Paragon package.

That ending…?

I love TRAHEARNE’s new look.

Because a Sylvarii firstborn necromancer that can MASS SPAWN flesh golems just screams “raid boss”…

I’m pretty sure the design effort being put in is not intended to see everyone in the same set of stats again. It’s less to kill zerker meta and more to kill Lone Wolf meta where everybody is the same DPS-with-whatever-support-you-can-cram-in. More than stat-diversification, I bet you they’d like to see some ROLE DIVERSIFICATION.

In that arrangement, there will be a need for skilled ’zerker wearing characters who can dodge every bit of dodgable damage dishing max DPS while a control specialist is negating some of the worst hits and some of the constant unavoidable pressure and a support character is empowering everyone , deflecting and nullifying some of the big hit and refilling HP a bit faster than everyone can (and had better be) healing themselves. And just like now, as your team gets better at the mechanics, everyone shades towards hit-it-harder.

‘Zerker armor is the tool and the reward for experience. New encounters should put us back at the learning stage again where you run soldiers until you’ve got it dialed in. But even then they’re looking to make content where not everyone slides over to ’zerker as they get more experienced.

WingLegacy.7159:

AGAIN, we don’t have any aggro system!!! now get your kitten together and move on!

Heh. That is so not true in my experience. It’s just mobs are semi-smart and want to hit things when their attacks are up rather than move. If you stand there and face tank they’ll stick to you like glue because they’re wagging their tails and swinging on you merrily. It’s when you run out of blinds and aegis and have to dodge they start to slide off looking for who hits them hardest because hey, if they have to move before swinging, they’re gonna move towards the biggest threat.

That and spirit weapons have an undocumented force-taunt. Which is weird, really.

babazhook.6805:

If it takes 20 seconds to recharge all Endurance without any other bonuses for a 2 bar endurance thief, than it should take 20 seconds to restore all endurance on a three bar endurance thief.

I’m gonna put this as plainly as possible: If they thought that, they would have reused existing code and given us back the already working and tested Acrobat trait that did exactly that and played properly with Sigils of Energy and the Signet.

They WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY to not do that. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying it is patently obvious that trait scared them. Badly.

12+ years of playing MMOs for me and the thing I’ve seen the least in any game anywhere? Reversion. Its the bloody mantra of the industry: “There is no going back.”

Just looking for a way forward. Because some degree of increased Endurance gain would be really, really nice.

Shalien.9018:

We definitely didn’t get the vocally-passionate dev. Let’s hope he’s the secretly-implements-what-the-community-actually-wants dev.

My honest opinion working with and training RPG game designers for more than a decade?

He’s probably the most thoughtful of the personalities we’re seeing. He’s trying to hit a sweet spot where his designs won’t have to be nerfed later (which is generally more damaging to retention than being buffed after a weak start). He’s a bit conservative compared to the others, but there’s morsels of steak under the sizzle.

That said he’s got to be looking at the relative reactions to the various Especs and wanting to have a ‘hero moment’ or two of his own delivering some nice, defensible adjustments that build enthusiasm for his flock before all decisions are locked in.

I hope that impulse to be daring shines through. Soon.

Just my take.

Assuming Karl hasn’t walked of in disgust at the hissy fits thrown his way here for the last few days maybe that’s a good enough, earnest enough, reasonable enough cause to fold some measure of increased Endurance generation into the base functionality of the Daredevil.

But if he is paying close attention (and I dearly hope so) I want to come to the table showing we understand there are comparable traits out there, that we remember the design history of Vigor, and that we know turning that particular faucet even a little bit is going to go a LONG way towards getting this spec into fighting trim. He went for Stunbreak on Elemental Overload. Maybe we can appeal to that sense of whimsy again .

(…BUT… if we must make a trade to make it right, I want something in my hands ready to offer.)

Slowmelt.8547:

It would help, but base regeneration should also go up, even so.
In those longer fights, that’ll be the difference between life and death.
Raid fights and world boss type content definitely will have this sort of thing going on.

While I agree with you in spirit, in practice I just can’t imagine they’ll give us permanent, un-strippable Vigor and the possibility of Vigor beyond that… I mean looking at an existing trait of that sort: Natural Vigor is only a 20% gain and takes up the entirety of the Adept minor trait slot for its line.

Make no mistake: the Devs are (rightly) afraid of Vigor and its ilk. There was a massive game-wide nerfing of endurance boosting effects. Getting even 20% is gonna take a persuasive sell. It would be excellent to have something like Natural Vigor, I’m just not sure what we have to trade or where to cram it in?

Hmm… If Escapist’s Absolution was folded into Driven Fortitude (which is looking more and more reasonable these days) that would open up a Major slot. +25% endurance gain would look good in that tier scale-wise using Natural Vigor as a baseline, but Staff Master would also have to be tuned up slightly or it would be left in the dust by an always active partial Vigor.

Terrorsquad.4802:

One small request as a Thief main (with above 2.3k hours on the class)

I would love to see the in-combat running animation changed.
It’s like we’re running with a Hammer.
Would be nice to see us run with the staff holding behind us with 1 hand!

I am so with you on that. A couple of rounds of Suikoden and its staff wielding protagonists have left me trained that one-handed behind-the-back ready-pose is the definitive “I’m just chilling but I can bust your face at any time…” stance for staff.