Guild Wars 2

I tried to edit my original post, but it didn’t take, so here are some updates:

First a few other threads with some ideas around fractals or fractal related items…
Salvage Ascended Items

Token/Ticket System for fractal weapons

More Fractal Reward Ideas:
1. Pristine Relics – now can be traded for Jugs of Liquid Karma (1-to-1) & for new mini pets (see below)

2. Fractal Title Tracks
a. Fractal Frequenter – title available for completing the achievement
b. Level 48 – title for all the sadist, hipsters upset about proposed fractal reward upgrades (note: “In my day we walked to school in the snow, uphill both ways” was too long), this is achieved by completing a Level 48 fractal
c. Bane of the Jade Maw – Available for completing Jade Maw at level 80, also rewards you with the /fractal emote, type that in chat to summon a vision of the Jade Maw looking quite furious.

4. Fractal Minis:
a. Fractal bosses – all bosses are available as an exotic mini pet for 50 pristine relics
b. Jade Maw Mini – ascended mini, available for 1,000 pristine relics

5. Level 80 Weapons: Ascended versions of the fractal weapons but with variations to the skins and effects (note, not just a different color), so that they look distinct. These ONLY drop at Level 80.

PlagueParade.7942:

Maybe it’s a clue to One Eyed Willy’s rich stuff!

That’s a different JP

thanks guys, and thanks to whoever edited the title… ’preciate it!

6.6 gold for a Lvl 80 daily. Enough?

The purpose of this thread is to suggest improvements to the Fractals by tweaking the reward system and fixing some of the bugs on certain Fractals.

My assumptions are that the fractals are too inconsistent from both a difficulty and time completion standpoint and the rewards for the amount of time it takes to complete a fractal are grossly insufficient given the difficulty and time requirements of a full fractal run vs other PvE content.

And, yes, these are just my opinions:

1. Make Fractal Reward Levels Account Bound: The only reason I can see for the individual level rewards is the daily chest. In order to compensate for limiting a player to 1x daily chest per day, the daily rewards need to be improved and scale with the level of fractal you complete for your daily. Aside from that, opening the fractals up to account level makes team composition and subs much more viable.

My rewards proposal (again, just an opinion) can be seen in the attached picture, and I’m sure some of the percentages would need to be adjusted.

2. Remove Fractal Weapons… Add Fractal Weapon Boxes: “Oh sweet! My first fractal wea… oh, it’s a torch.” Enough of this, instead of weapons, give us a box that allows us to choose the fractal skin we would like.

3. New BUY-4374 Items: It seems strange to me that the Fractals, the content that introduced ascended items, has so little ascended gear. For starters, BUY should have a 3rd tab with all available ascended amulets at a cost of 15 (maybe 20?) Pristine fractal relics.

In order to continue to improve the fractal rewards, I’d like to see bloodstone, empyreal, and dragonite added to BUY’s first tab that exchange 1-to-1 for fractal relics but in clumps of 50.

Finally, now that we can get the fractal weapon we want, can we ascend it? BUY now offers a Fractal Inscription which sells for 500 relics. The inscription, upon purchase, prompts you for the stats you want it to have, any craft-able inscription can be selected and 1 Fractal Weapon, 1 Gift of Ascension, 1 Fractal Inscription and 3 Lumps of Mithrillium or Globs of Elder Spiritwood Residue can go into the Mystic Forge and produce an ascended version of the fractal weapon you put in.

4. Improving the Fractals: There are certain fractals that just feel right. They combine challenging content with a playtime (unless you screw up) of around 15-25 minutes a level. The boss fights, enemy spawns and completion time works. For me, those fractals are: Swampland, Snowblind, Urban Battlegrounds & Volcanic.

Each of those can be difficult, but once you get used to them and as long as you understand the mechanics and stay on your toes, nothing in them feels “cheap.” The Legendary Imbued Shaman is one of my favorite boss fights in the game, and I’d like to see more like him.

There are some that need some reworks:
Aquatic: Boss is too easy, make his attacks more powerful but give him a slight reduction in HP. Also, no more underwater fractals.

Uncategorized Fractal: Almost there, the only issue with this one is the stupid invulnerability on the harpies. I believe this has to do with the KD that moves the Harpy’s target out of range, but it just seems so inconsistent and buggy. I’d recommend you remove the Harpy KD (kind of a cheap mechanic in the middle of a JP style level) and have the harpies’ AoE attack cause a 1s stun and 1s burning or something along those lines.

Dredge Fractal: Too long. Remove Rabsovich and halve the dredge spawn in that room to cut out a pointless time-delay. For the final boss, have condition damage scale with damage on the Suit/Elemental when he (she?) is superheated.

Cliffside Fractal: The left/Right seals seem out of whack in comparison to the other seals. I think the spawn either needs to be toned down or the vulnerability stacks need to be reduced, maybe have two types of baddies spawn with only 1 type capable of putting vulnerability on you. Other than that, a great fractal.

So there you have it. Make the fractals account bound, greatly improve the fractal rewards and I think you’ll have a very nice, challenging PvE meta for players who like dungeon content… and yes, just my opinion. Leave your thoughts, suggestions, criticisms below. And thanks for reading.

How about Sword 2 shadow-steps even if there isn’t a target

And Steal does the same as well as stun breaks. That’d be a start.

As a thief, I’m wondering… what’s left to shave?

As people have mentioned, right now, all we can craft is fine food. We can make rare dyes that rarely produce rare dye… Anyway, it would be cool if for 500 chefs we could make:

1. All current lvl 80 foods with 1h times instead of 30m

2. Exotic dyes – wasn’t there talk about this? Even if the exotic dye is just another version of the Unided X Color set but with only masterwork/rare dyes as a possible “drop” from them.

boredinbc.2786:

Name: The Staff

Type: Its a staff

Precursor: ???

Stowed: Looks like a long wooden staff, with maybe a ball, or some sort of rectangular thing in the top. Some carvings along the shaft, I don’t know, nothing too gaudy or intricate. I wouldn’t want to put too much stress on the design team.

Wielded: don’t let the humble look fool you, even though The Staff has no particle effects or visual tomfoolery, it is a powerful artifact no doubt. One could use it to reach things just past arms length. Use it to shoo small animals, or lean on it when injured. The Stakitten possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Your Precursor

I thought it would be neat to see what types of legendary weapons, armors etc. the community would like to see. If you have an idea for a legendary weapon, please post it here.

Try and give as much info as possible regarding the way the weapon or armor piece would look. Bad and/or hastily photoshopped (see below) concept art is welcome.

I’ll go first, my idea is for a new legendary shield called Wrath.

Name: Wrath

Legendary Weapon Type: Shield

Precursor: The Wall (using the Krytan shield skin)

Stowed: When stowed the shield would have a wispy, black edge that appears to be pushing out into its surroundings. The surface of the shield would be black with an onyx sheen and the center of the shield would glow and flicker. The embers would glow and fade while thin tendrils of flame flickered in and out of existence. All effects would be contained within the black borders of the shield itself.

Wielded: When drawn, the edge of the shield would become clearly defined and flames would leap out from it. The embers in the center of the shield would burst into flame and liquid flame would pour from the shield, spilling onto the ground near the bearer’s feet where it would hiss and smoke. As you walked, the shield would leave a small trail of this flame and as the weapon moved around it would spew embers and fiery sparks.

That’s what I’d like to see, how about you? Stowed concept attached.

Black Teagan.9215:

Zacchary.6183:

So stinky and crumbly, yet so delicious!

Discuss.

The same discussion is there —> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-is-cheese

Parody

Thanks again everyone, for the responses. Added a new idea i had regarding Improvisation, 2% additional damage for each type of utility skill equipped vs the 10% bundle damage.

I was starting to get worried when there were well over 10 posts in a row of representatives from each of the three servers actually carrying on a polite conversation regarding the matchup.

I see you’ve all fixed that now.

Hype.8032:

I think dancing dagger should move faster and cripple longer to make it worth using. As far as the other suggestions, I don’t use those skills/traits now and I still wouldn’t after those changes. When I look at suggestion threads I’m wanting to find things that will improve our weaker weapon sets.

Thanks for the feedback. Imo, the pistol change I suggested would make that set more viable. Putting at least 20 in CS and 30 in Trickery would net you a base 15% increase in pistol damage and always hit two targets (if they are close enough together).

These are some thoughts, ideas on changes to the thief to improve some build diversity and give more viable non-stealth alternatives. At least, that’s the intent.

Not saying that all these should happen at once or even happen, but maybe there can be some constructive discussion and the devs might take notice… even if this is all they do with the ideas.

Anyway, here they are:

Skill Changes
Death Blossom: evade increased to 3/4s, dmg per strike increased to 225

Dancing Dagger: daggers are now heat-seeking

Haste: CD reduced to 40s, quickness duration reduced to 4s, haste effect remains at 6s, skill now grants 2.5s of stability.

Roll for Initiative: CD reduced to 30s, Initiative gain reduced to 3, burning added to conditions removed by this skill

Scorpion Wire: now dazes target for 1/4s at end of pull

Trait Changes
Master Trapper: Traps recharge 20% faster and use ground targeting

Hard to Catch: moved to master trait level

Fleet of Foot: moved to Grandmaster, internal CD increased to 30s, now breaks stun on dodge

Assassin’s Reward: base heal increased to 100, now scales at 10% with healing power

Hastened Replenishment: moved to master trait level, initiative gain reduced to 2

Ricochet: moved to grandmaster trait level, pistol shots deal 5% more damage and bounce to an additional target.

Edits:
Critical Haste: removed, replaced by

Swashbuckler: sword attacks deal 5% more damage and dual skills with a sword have a 30% chance to remove cripple and immobilize on critical hits.

Power Shots: Shortbow and harpoon gun damage is increased by 5%. Trick Shot and Cluster bomb range increased to 1,200.

Improvisation: Stealing recharges all skills of one type (venoms, signets, traps, tricks, or deceptions). Deal 2% more damage for each type of utility skill equipped.
——————————-

That’s all for now, I don’t think any of those are too absurd. I would like to see something happen to S/P as well. I don’t like that PW roots you, seems counter intuitive to the thief’s play style… but I don’t use S/P enough to make the case.

I’m going to guess this has something to do with getting lucky with “improvisation” and a crit on the final back stab…

I might try this out tonight.

bhagwad.4281:

You forget that hotjoin is the heart and soul of pvp in guild wars 2. You can get a lot more glory and rank points in hotjoin. It is by definition the end game in pvp.

I lol’d. 15 chars?

Alex.6940:

I dislike the ability to attain perma-stealth with dagger/pistol… but if they’re in stealth there’s little you can do to stop them from ‘abusing’ the game mechanics to stay in stealth and heal up.

Try standing in their b/p, one HS in and they are revealed.

I remember HB (germanic sounding guild name) on BG used to /laugh all the time. Haven’t seen a /laugh in a while though.

Auto-attack can still ruin HT, I still use it and really like it. It is a great opener for a fight and has saved me a couple times in a drawn-out duel.

Where are we talking about d/p?

PvE – no one cares

Spvp – I have no experience on thief in structured tourney, hot join, who cares

WvW – d/p is not the #1 troll, invisibility spam build. That belongs to any x/d build in WvW where zergs, noobs and the hordes of red and yellow NPCs do not dodge CnD.

Thanks for all the feedback, made some updates and adjustments based on some of the feedback.

Removed any condition application from Double Shot and increased the damage a bit

Added more mobility to the P main by changing P2 to Onslaught

Gave unload a 2s evade and gave it reduced damage at greater distance to compensate, with the new P2, getting into range for the full dmg effect of Unload is possible…

thoughts?

edit: VB may be too specific as stated here, possible reduce the dmg and remove the “remove boon” condition and replace it with “if tracer hits”

Pistol main hand
1. Vital Shot – no change, other than to make P1 a chained skill
-> Body Shot – reduce dmg to match vital shot, vulnerabilty duration reduced to 2 stacks for 3s

-> Double Shot – (275 dmg, same cast as VS & BS), fire two shots dealing extra dmg

1. Sneak Attack – no change

2. Onslaught – Leap at your foe and shoot them from point blank range, deals additional damage for each condition on your target (PBoT, 250 base dmg, 5% additional dmg for each condition on target, 600 Rng, 4 int).

3.Repeater – no change

3.Shadow Strike – add 2 stacks of bleeding for 3s on initial stab, no other change

3.Unload – Evade (2s) and blast your foe repeatedly with both pistols dealing more dmg the closer your are to your target
<300 rng 101 per
300-600 rng 80 per
>600 rng 65 per

Pistol Offhand
4.Head Shot – really tempted to increase daze to 1/2s, but say leave it as is for now

5.Black Powder – no change

Too OP? Not enough?

Idea is to give thieves a second AoE option and increased dmg with P/P

Stays in line with the recent boon hate additions given to thief via the sword

Adds an extremely powerful AoE in Vicious Blast but with a conditional element to keep it from being a spammable skill

VB would remove a boon from each foe it hits

More dmg in Unload as an AoE with short bleeds, but an easier to evade skill

Trying to make P/P an attractive option to condition spec thieves with lots of conditions

for wvw, i really like the Yishis vids

very helpful in his explanation of what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, etc.

here’s what i run

I’m now trying to find a balance between giving up some of that toughness for a little more dmg…

This is designed solely for WvW.

Kryyg.8576:

snip

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

gracias!

XIII.6351:

I guess its time to part ways for the last T1 pillars.( Reminds me of pokemon where the 3 legendary dogs moved out.)
It’s been a blast fighting BG and JQ, even though its the same ol matchup we’ve had for months, everyone from all servers still go out there and give a fight.

Good luck to us 3 tyrants for the next matchup. Keep fighting and give your opponents a hell of a fight!

Cheers

As far as I know, we’ll be stuck with eacth other next week too. Or did something just change?

Vial of Condensed Mists Essence should be a drop from WvW. It can be rare, but it should be in there… we are fighting in the Mists after all…

Kincaidia.3192:

I don’t know about these suggestions – Anet has shown (and rightly so) amazing reluctance to impact the established style of play. The solution would have to only impact the abuses of stealth, which is limited to long-term duration by either C&D or BP+HS.

My money is that they’ll implement something that doesn’t allow more than 50% in stealth over a long (1m+) duration.

And I would be all for it.

That’s an interesting concept, but I think the only way to do that is a hard cap on stealth or an adjusted debuff.

You would either have a stealth limit of 3s (pve/wvw) or 4s (spvp) to match the reveal and guarantee the 50% split on being in and out of stealth, or the other way to do it is to match the debuff with amount of time you’re in stealth.

As for people claiming that thief is balanced, the point isn’t whether I agree with you or not. The point is that no other class generates so much hatred, and its stealth abuse that is at the heart of the tears…

Top thread on the thief forum right now

I may be wrong on this, but I don’t think Anet is done tinkering with stealth because—despite all the nerfs (linked in my original post)—people are still complaining about it… a lot, and I think the stealth trap was an attempt to quiet all the whining in WvW, but I don’t see it working. I haven’t bumped into one stealth trap yet in WvW while running havoc or solo.

So I expect another nerf. We can either try and influence that nerf or just rage about it. Try making this assumption, Anet comes to you and says, “We are going to nerf stealth and you’re going to tell us how to do it.”

What would you do?

Shout/bunker Guards are the worst for me

I rely on being able to interrupt heals w/ pistol 4, which most guards block with their heal, because I run a tankier spec

Combine that with their retal and burning on block, and those fights are hairy.

Mesmers are tough as well, but I find if you keep pressure on them (d/p) and have SB off-hand, you can do fairly well against them.

Is there any other profession which garners as much negative thread discussion as the Thief?

No
Not
Really

And one more for fun

At the time of this posting, those 4 threads are all on the first 2 pages of the WvW section.

I don’t see Anet removing stealth, it’s a unique gameplay feature, but it’s pretty obvious based on what’s happened to our class that Anet is paying attention to all the anti-thief rants on the forums.

Thief players even go out of their way to help other classes learn to counter them.

My suggestion on a stealth nerf is the following:
1. Revert to 3s base revealed across the board
2. Adjust the revealed debuff so that every time you take damage while in stealth (condition ticks don’t count), it increases the duration of your revealed debuff by .5s with a hard cap somewhere in the 6-8s range.

As for a parallel buff, I’d start with signets leaving their current passive effects as is but changing their actives:
1. Assassin’s Signet: If you are revealed, your next 3 attacks do 30% more damage
2. Infiltrator’s Signet: Shadow step to your foe, if that foe is below 50% health regenerate 3 initiative (increase recharge to 40s)
3. Signet of Agility: If you are revealed, block the next 3 attacks (duration 2s). If 3 attacks are blocked in this way, lose 2 conditions. (increase recharge to 40s)

Note: “If you are revealed” means you have to be under the revealed debuff for the active effect to trigger, otherwise you just burn the CD.

This patch is great. Earrings are still a pain, but that’s what it is in PvE (or you can do the guild things, still takes a while)

The new Oil Mastery looks really interesting… Larger area, more damage, removes siege, 33% damage reduction and projectile blocking (anyone know what the recharge on the 3 skill is for oil?).

chance to get ascended and precursors from chests… also nice!

really liking the sound of this update.

this would be awesome, esp if you could ride the dolyak

Ioflux.4369:

Glory =/= rank. You do not double your rank points with glory boosters.

Yes, sorry, you are correct. I was confuzzled. On the other hand, I’d still like to see this system implemented!

Psychogene.6780:

Consectutive winning rewards system would work under a full premade queue system. In this current system, absolutely not. It’d be like rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.

Hopefully, the split queue will be here soon…

In light of this thread, I was curious how the community felt about increasing glory rewards for consecutive wins in tpvp.

The idea here is to make tpvp the place for the most potential glory and, well, reward winning.

I did some quick math on this and if this system was implemented, and you managed to never lose, it would still take 3,906 tournament wins to reach max rank (assuming you started at 0 rank, ran a glory booster the whole time, NEVER lost a match and averaged an additional 300 glory per match: 3,906 – 0), so I don’t think it would be too much of an increase in glory gain.

Even if you started at rank 60, you still have about 2.6k consecutive wins to go…

Math:
1. 4,600 glory x2 for first 10 wins = 9,200 glory + 3,000 for 12,200
2. 8,971,500 – 12,200 = 8,959,300 glory left to get
3. 8,959,300/2,300 = 3,895.348 wins, no .348 wins allowed, so round up to 3,869
4. 3,896 + 10 = 3,906 consecutive wins to max rank.

I heard a rumor we even have a TS server somewhere…

Just wanted to say thanks to all the servers we faced on the long road to a T1 win. Especially to BG and SoS (back when…). I think character is revealed in adversity and no two severs showed us quite so much adversity as BG and SoS. Thanks.

Thanks to our Oceanic and Asian brothers and sisters for sticking it out day after day, out-manned & out-gunned but never out-played.

Thanks to our Euro crew, esp. our new friends for being the catalyst to take what our O/A crew gave us and build on it.

And thanks to our NA for your quality and perseverance, to the guilds that were here from day 1 and the ones that transferred in when we were stuck in the lower tiers… You’re the glue that holds the server together.

Finally, thanks to GSCH and Roger Rall. I don’t know what type of man it takes to get thousands of people petitioning a company to name a server after you, I can only hope we all aspire to such quality.

I’m proud to have been part (a very, very small part) of this.

How long can Anet continue to ignore these tears? I see only one solution to this thief epidemic:

1. Stealth – no longer makes you invisible, instead makes you become 2x larger and expands your hit box by 100%. All enemy players within a 1,200 radius automatically target you and their projectiles become heat-seeking with 100% chance to crit and projectile finish.

2. Shadow Stepping – changed to Hide in Plain Sight, all shadow stepping skills now turn you into an ambient creature. Good Luck and DON’T MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS! Think bunny thoughts!

3. Steal – can no longer heal you or do damage to your opponent, instead you steal up to 2% of your opponent’s gold (note, on person, not in bank), but they get it back if they down you.

4. Thieves Guild – summon two thieves who immediately hide and wait for you to die. Once you’re dead, they riffle through your pockets looking for loose change.

5. Dagger Storm – changed to Spin to Win, summon Pat Sajak and a giant wheel. Spin the wheel while shouting “Come on big money!”

6. Hide in Shadows – goes on full CD if you are not in an actual shadow when you use this skill.
——————————————————————————-

That should do it…

edit – corrected 1. to Stealth…

/signed…

and give us an option to toggle all skill queuing on and off

Gandarel.5091:

Anyone noticed that on the scale Bear comes before Tiger?

yeah, yeah… adding text boxes in an excel graph is a pain, i got ‘em backwards… someone pointed it out already… BUT. I’m too lazy to change it.

that’s a lotta glory…

What would you change and how?

I’d like to see trait adjustments:
Improvisation: Dual skills apply a random condition for each boon on your target (30-second cooldown)

Assassin’s Reward: Keep the same, but slight improvement to the healing provided

Buff Stealing
Finally, I think it’d be cool if they reworked our F1 class mechanic. Expand it to F1 – Steal, F2 – Steal again, F3 – Cut your Loses.

This would require some rework to our on-steal traits, probably start by adding CDs of 40-45s, so you couldn’t double-mug, etc…

F1 Steal – works just like steal does now
F2 Steal Again- would work just like steal does now but with a reduced range, say 200 +/-, possibly less
F3 Cut your loses – sacrifice your queued steal skills and gain 4 initiative (or maybe some other benefit like a stun break with 2 seconds of evasion or 3-5 seconds of stealth? 3s for Adept, 4s for Master and 5s for Grandmaster?). Would require that you have a stolen skill in both F1 and F2.

Each would have the same CD and CD reduction as our current F1 based on Trickery points.

Might be worth assigning tiers to stolen skills as well, so you couldn’t have the same stolen skill in both F1 and F2 (having two Fears would be sweet but maybe a bit op). For example Necro could have T1 – Throw Scale, T2 – Fear.

These changes would add some more boon hate, improve tanking a bit and provide some more utility to our F-mechanic.

The arrah shortbow looks really nice, the spvp one (shortbow of the dragon’s deep in pve).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Shortbow_of_the_Dragon%27s_Deep.jpg

Not pictured, but it has a nice effect of bluish fog/smoke coming off it.

Sardonia.8196:

Anyone with a score update before I head home from work

Arc, thanks for putting this together… I’ll try and be on around 9:30pm EST tonight.

NA, EST, would like to be a part of this…

edit: You don’t happen to have a TS account, do you?

make sword 3 a while moving skill… everything else i’m fine with on sword.

As a thief noob, I have geared almost full PVT with some emerald trinkets to complement. I did this to have a back-up when i failed to dodge, stealth or blind foes as I learn the mechanics.

I run a full bunker spec at 0/0/30/20/20, I would never run this in tourney but because my focus on thief right now is wvw and I can quickly fill up perception sig and use master maintain and BoCBSS, I can still crit fairly regularly but I don’t get the dmg numbers of dmg focused specs. My BS is 3kish on a crit at best (against 80 full exo).

As i get more comfortable with the thief mechanics, I’ll start to test 10/30/30/0/0 and less tanky gear… but for now, the tanky build keeps me alive longer and that helps with learning the class, it’s more forgiving.