Useful, permanent QoL improvement in the vein of bank and bag slots that doesn’t immediately confer some mindblowing advantage. You pony up the gems, and get the item, and your GW2 time is a little more convenient.
Also, you can make volcanos anywhere you go, even if you’re not an ele!
If everything in the gem shop fit this mold of “get what you pay for, looks cool, is somewhat useful but not overpowered” I’d wager the gem store would make a lot more money.
The dye packs on the other hand…
If you can hear it in your nightmares, there’s a good chance you’ll come across it in SAB.
Battletoads Level 3: Turbo Tunnel ;_;
Oh god… I had almost forgotten battletoads.
Well, that is why its there, its not really in the way to anyones traits. It is actually helpful and easy to avoid as well since its in that tree and not the acrobatics or trickery tree. It also goes with the “lifestealing” theme of Shadow Arts.
Oh I’d use a lifesteal trait in a heartbeat for sure, but I don’t know if I’m prepared to give up the idea of last refuge for a trait that would need to be scaled to minor level. last refuge, as it stands is fairly broken, but lets take the context of the ability: A stealth that gives you the option to withdraw or a breather to heal at 25%
On paper it sounds good, right? The only reason it sucks is because of its interaction with revealed. Remove its interaction with revealed and I’d much rather have last refuge as an auto-pick than a lifesteal trait that’s going to, by necessity, be a lot less powerful than your numbers. A core lifesteal trait is something I’d much rather see as a Grandmaster thing that you’d have to give up something equally useful to obtain. I could see it working as a GM in either shadow arts or acrobatics given those trees already have some pretty tough choices and give and take in selection. Mostly, if we have a lifesteal trait, I want it to be powerful. Not overpowered mind you. Not buttloads of life just for spending five points, but powerful enough to justify not taking a different GM trait.
Its a critical trait because most stealth users have criticals, even condition ones with (prec/cond/tough) gear. (so you can proc more bleeds/burns with on-crit sigils.)
The vast majority of condition thieves run carrion gear and don’t have any +crit because 2x +duration sigils or carrion gems and vit are vastly more practical for the only class with no condition related on-crit traits.
In fact, thieves are the only class that generally doesn’t run any precision on condition builds, or even condition hybrids because there’s not enough space in the build for a meaningful amount of +crit damage to make it worthwhile.
There is plenty of ways for thieves to sneak in criticals. Thrill of the Crime for example (20% Critical Chance.) is on our condition tree.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say we have a condition tree. My most successful condition builds (damage wise) were better served by ignoring the tree and putting those points in trickery in stead. The poison/weakness stuff in deadly arts is much more useful for crit/burst than it is for condition builds as the poison’s purpose in that tree is mitigating enemy heals and weakness is there to add some survivability to dagger autoattacks it seems. I get the feeiling condition duration is up there so that the poison on dagger auto can take care of itself without gear, and by extension handle a good weakness uptime without gear. Our condition damage is plopped unceremoniously in trickery, and virtually all of our condition damage comes from bleeds which deadly arts doesn’t help outside the passive bonus.
Defensive traits in defensive lines is a logical step, but in terms of more condition related traits , like with the added burning they’re thinking about, I’d rather see such things go in trickery as it lacks a lot of practical usability that makes grandmastering it attractive.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against critical related traits, but I am against crits being a fulcrum around which the vast majority of build options revolve. The gearing options are already extremely skewed toward crits, and thief probably has one of the most balanced selections of crit versus non-crit traits.
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Its a critical trait because most stealth users have criticals, even condition ones with (prec/cond/tough) gear. (so you can proc more bleeds/burns with on-crit sigils.)
The vast majority of condition thieves run carrion gear and don’t have any +crit because 2x +duration sigils or carrion gems and vit are vastly more practical for the only class with no condition related on-crit traits, bottom end natural HP pools, and no easy access to hard defensive boons to make toughness a better investment.
And only one of those builds (P/D) is a heavy stealth. DB spam is largely prohibited from extensive use of stealth by its initiative cost.
In fact, thieves are the only class that generally doesn’t run any precision on condition builds, or even condition hybrids because there’s not enough space in the build for a meaningful amount of +crit damage to make it worthwhile.
Sadly, the ascended gear doesn’t have a solid condion set without precision yet, but apperantly they’re working on it.
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I run mace/shield on my warrior alt with traits and I’ve never disliked it. Mace/shield with the bounce when you block trait is like having ranger whirling defense once every 20 seconds. Mace #2 doesn’t end prematurely when it reflects a ranged attack, and you still get the bonus adrenaline if you end without blocking melee, and shield #5 against masses of anything is basically free cooldown resets for burst skills.
Also, the stuns. All of them.
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I’m definitely collecting them for later levels, you definitely see the progression in difficulty. Even by 1-3 with the “floor is lava, don’t touch it” and then rapids instant death, I’m expecting some Mega Man like appearing/disappearing blocks over bottomless pits in later levels.
Josh you wouldn’t do that to us would you?
I can still hear the sound of those blocks in my nightmares.
Those blocks were evil. I forget which game it was but I remember levels with like three non-scrolling rooms of those in a row, so you’d jump off the last one to the bottom of the next screen, and then die because you jumped left in stead of right… and have to start the previous section all over again XD
TBH I’d be happier if less traits and sigils revoled around crits. Crits should definately be a build option, but there should simply be more options (for all professions) to run effective builds that don’t stack crit chance.
After all stacking crit chance is already its own return in terms of extremely good gain on damage over other stats. Why is it high crit also confers the activation requiremnt for the vast majority of sigils and a disproportionately high number of defensive traits?
The sentiment (a passive on-hit trait in the healing line) is a pretty decent one for thieves. Offensive healing. The numbers may be a bit whacky, but the cooldown would look good on a trait. Maybe have it do something whacky like work on a flat% from attacks, but scale based on something offensive rather than defensive for the heal like used initiative, number of skills (including steal) on cooldown, or some other interesting flavor that would enable more build diversity? What if thief could spec in to workable support somehow by sharing the heals to nearby allies? That combined with venom share might give us the ability to spec in to viable support builds like most other classes can spec in to.
Thanks for the balanced outside view of the thief, but as people have pointed out, HS spam is terrible and super counterable.
Where are you farming people with it? Low-tier WvW or sPvP hotjoins where people don’t bring CC or dodge ever? I’m not usually one to play burst builds, but when I do, HS is more often used for mobility or its intended purpose of finishing off a 25% bar. I learned very early on that against people HS spam is just plain ineffective. The first time a guy dies to HS spam he learns to spaz out after the second full health HS, blow CC and dodges, and then destroys you because you wasted a full initiative bar whacking air.
I appreciate you’re new to thief, and on low mobs and new players it can be effective, but stick with the character a bit more and I think you’ll find that HS doesn’t much need a second nerf, the first one was enough to balance it. Now, talking about release era HS… well that was a whole other can of hilarious worms.
Request: Can you put in another bonus level like the cart smashing, but instead make it sorta like the bonus levels in Golden Axe where you have to whack gnomes for baubles?
=D
This.
Gnome kicking was hands down the single most memorable thing about golden axe.
AND THEY NEVER STOPPED STEALING THE POTIONS!
Since we’re rambunctious after world 1, I feel like we’ll be pretty tired by the end of world 2. Also, PCs already have sleep and kick animations to re-use like you sdid with the scripting for the other bits.
It’s placeholder art. Moto’s invention is still in beta, and if you could ask him I bet he’d tell you that any images, emotions, sensations, or side effects are not necessarily representative of the final product.
Also, I think it’s a fantastic bit of personality in the Box that it’s obviously Moto in drag, just one of the many little things the game does to remind you that yes, you’re still in a box in tyria, and not an entirely different game.
It’s highly unlikely I’d imagine. The problem, financially, with finishers is that while there are a vast number of things the average PvE or PvX players spends them on, There’s very little in the shop to entice sPvP die-hards to buy gems. Sure, there are a few skins avaliable, but the bread and butter of microtransaction shops is in the consumables, and skins are simply not a bulk consumable that entices people to buy multiples.
For this very reason, I severely doubt seeing any non-gem avenue of collecting large numbers of finishers.
Obvious answer you’ll all hate:
Skins cost gold because Moto is using the skins to raise funds for further development.
It’d be pretty silly if he did all that talk about funding further development and never actually collected any money.
I just jump around the cage in a circle rapidly spamming the stick at the cage. Basically, I concentrate on jumping and the stick hits kinda automatically because I’m so close to the cage.
It’s especially hilarious when you come up against one and you’re running an acrobatics thief build. Just eat every autoattack and save all the dodges and death blossoms for each HS. It’s like a really violent game of leapfrog.
Best thing though is to make a point not to use HS at all during the fight, and then use only one as a finisher. It’s educational!
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precisely, I dare say there isn’t THAT many skills that absolutely no one uses to the point where complete removal/replace wouldn’t royally hurt them.
The only one I can really think of that, in its current version, has almost no use is body shot (this of course not counting underwater weapon skills) and thats only really that bad because the vulnerability doesn’t really last long enough for real use compared to other vulnerability stackers.
IMO they could just add swiftness to body shot and it would be a useful skill on any pistol setup without altering its cast time or cost. P/D would have a potential swiftness+cripple with dancing dagger for closing in to use CnD, and P/P would have a real kiting tool that also increased their unload damage a bit at the same time.
well most likely they’d be doing weapon skills, there’s not much point replacing current utility skills unless they are doing so with something that does the same thing but better as they could just add new skills in to be bought with the thousands of skill points we have laying around (in fact many people are asking for more skills)
Since they can’t do the same with weapon skills without introducing new weapons (or shock horror customization weapon skills) thats most likely where any changes would hit most.
And for me, like many others, it comes down to what they remove and what they replace it with, for example my 2 main weapon sets (d/d and shortbow) I use most the skills and would be sorely upset if they changes THOSE ones but stuff like dancing dagger and disabling shot which are my two least used skills in the set, well I wouldn’t be ecstatic but if they where replaced with more useful skills I’d not complain.
But then I know some people use both those skills who would be as upset as I would be if they removed deathblossom for instance.
Yeah, I’d be upset if dancing dagger was changed radically. I run a Signet of Malice build, and Dancing dagger through a shadow field (like a necro well or SR) does a nice chunk of healing with 4 hits of lifesteal stacked on top of 4 hits of SoM stacked on top of HP from assassin’s reward. In most cases Dancing daggers is my active heal on the builds I run.
Any build that’s setting up gear to primary passive heal (through Signet of Malice, assassin’s reward, etc. stacked together) tends to get better effective survivability from halving between toughness/vitality due to the way armor interacts with constant passive healing. Less incoming damage makes your heals a bit more effective in the long term. Essentially, limiting the rate at which you take damage while leaving the rate of heal constant results in more constant effective HP when using stacked passive heals with SoM. This sort of setup is also the one and only reason to consider healing power as a gear stat as otherwise the ratios and cooldowns on the heals just make it a bad investment.
This isn’t true for active healers using withdraw or HiS, as those heals benefit much more from having enough vit to soak accumulated damage between heals which prevents overhealing and ensures a greater ability to withstand accumulated small amounts of damage between burst heals since the damage reduction from accumulated defense numbers isn’t enough to increase thief EHP more than you’d have if you just stacked vitality in the timeframe between heals.
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I’d much rather they alter the existing skills but keep the same “feel” like what they did with Shadow Trap.
In Theory, if you toss out the numbers and just look at what our skills are intended to do, they’re a good crowd of skills. The problem is the number or what that “idea” behind the skill is implemented poorly in a lot of cases.
For instance, venoms are a good “idea” in that they’re abilities that stack extra effects on to attacks, and each one has a different theme based on the “mob” it came from. In practice they suck because the effects aren’t very powerful and have a very limited number of charges. However, you could replace the core mechanics of the skills and keep that theme. For instance, say with venoms, make them a duration based buff that effects all of your attacks for X seconds while the venom is active. Or hey, how about un-nerfing basilisk venom back to it’s release version of “Best single target CC in the game” and simply increasing the cooldown to balance it in stead of gutting it.
I think there’s a core good idea at the heart of every thief skill, it’s just that the mechanics or in some cases just the numbers need to be adjusted so that mechanic is actually useful in real gameplay.
Or, you know, they could fix it so it’s always useful.
Just have it grant a 4s revealed immunity when it triggers. That way if it pops mid-fight and you insta-waste the stealth it doesn’t hurt you, but if it pops while you’re already under revelaed you still get the stealth and you can actually use it for something useful like escaping with your life.
I’m all for making thieves and warriors capable of “bunker buster” specs. However, I’m not for pigeonholing thieves in to a single role in combat either.
Take a look at warrior for instance. They’ve done a good deal of work improving its spec diverstiy, including the recent major buff to banners to allow for working control, damage, or support specs.
Thieves, on the other hand, suffer from lackluster control or support options, even when traited heavily in that direction. Stealth nerfing is also a blind nerf, caltrops nerf is another control nerf, etc.
Personally I like mobility. After the nerf I rerolled D/D acrobatics/bleed and I’m having a blast with having to wrangle 4.6 million dodges and all the timing. It’s a lot of fun. However, it’s also still substandard to what a D/D ele is capable of. In the interim I’ve got less support options than before (and my P/D support setup was already kinda bad before) and my non-burst damage build options require substantially more effort and skill for equivalent or poorer damage than virtually every other class in the game. In top of that, control is extremely limited in that there aren’t any solid traits/utilities to back up sword control builds in a meaningful way (traps should be that option, but they’re just bad)
I’m all for having a boon hate option, but lets not design classes around being one trick ponies while we’re at it.
The point we’re trying to argue is that you won’t save time by doing only zones 1 and 2 because then you’re spending more time creating characters.
I’ve attached a sheet that assumes you start a character from scratch on both scenarios unlike my previous example. This creates a more realistic example considering you’re planning to use an extra character slot to farm. I have character creation until end of intro personal story at 4 minutes.
As you can see is that it takes 80 min to do 4 complete world runs. It takes 84 min to do 6 complete zone 1+2 runs. This difference widens the more runs you do. There’s a correlation between the time it takes to set up a character and the time it takes to run zone 3. I can tell you that it’s very possible to run zone 3 quicker than 6 min.
Look, the science has obviously been printed on paper. That means it’s REAL SCIENCE.
I’m not sure why, but it made me extremely happy that you went to the effort of printing, then scanning this.
Exactly. If you want to make platform games, make a platform game.
Don’t make a mmorpg, then stick a platform game in it. I don’t remember the part in Risk where everyone has to go out for a soccer game.
What about the part in Risk where availability of reinforcements is determined by the attacker’s choice of a round of charades, a drinking contest, or a best 2 of 3 match of Street Fighter?
Or the part where removing an article of clothing counts as a weapon of mass destruction?
You and I play Risk very differently it seems.
Crazy Idea… Considering you were in Lion’s Arch, did you perchance try asking the people around you for directions?
Not everyone is an old hat veteran, but the vast majority of players know the names of all the main cities off the top of their heads, and the vast majority of those know where the LA gate hub that connects them is.
If you can’t suspend disbelief then Call Of Duty 53 is that way
Kinda this.
I’d like to chime in that even the “serious” CoD franchise has a joke mode. That joke mode is kitten zombies. Case in point, you’d be hard pressed to find a game developer that doesn’t throw in a few easter eggs or a big head mode here and there, even for the grittiest, most M-rated fare.
If it’s a matter of immersion, the first guy running around in pink shorts in orr is probably going to destroy immersion a lot faster than a few holographic bunnies.
This game, since relase has never been terribly “immersive” or “gritty” Sure, it’s a departure from GW1. However it isn’t a departure from the tone of GW2. The game as a whole is decidedly early teens saturday morning cartoon. It’s got a backbone of story and lore, and some serious moments, but for the most part its a fairly lighthearted game, which isn’t suprising given the firm “T” rating.
Tyria is a lighthearted fantasy setting now. Yes. Even the Charr. They’re what pass for “gritty” in tyria. If you hadn’t picked that up in the past seven months I don’t know what to tell ya.
Personally I think SAB is a well designed little game in its own right, and the “spill over” on to actual tyria is no more or less invasive or offputting than the wintersday or halloween events.
It’ll be over soon. In the mean time, how about that flame and frost content, eh?
Great stuff… but now every time I see him I’m going to be mentally going “RYTLOCK BRIMSTONE!”
(Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)
It is Trail of Knives. You’re throwing a 3-bounces knife with a 1-sec cripple on it. It usually leads to a trail of tears one way or another. It’s what you got for damage while down on land. In theory the cripple might slow them down enough for you to get to use shadowstep, er, shadowlurch, whatever skill and then the smokey poofy thing and pray someone comes along to help, or die, something.
But mostly it’s your damage knifey thing. No one is throwing your internal organs. At least until after you’re done with them. Yar.
You can also execute a stealth attack with that poisons. I killed a thing with that once and rallied.
Well with the caltrops and 1 second increase to revealed my condition bleed build felt pretty awkward to play so now I am playing around with sword/pistol instead of pistol/dagger. The changes honestly doesn’t look like it will hinder a pvp burst thief at all and is almost entirely pve. Thieves will still be able to just stealth continuously as long as they don’t break stealth by attacking and if they do it will most likely be because an opportunity showed itself and it was worth it.
Condition bleed builds however seem to have taken the brunt of these 2 changes at least and they didn’t do more damage then straight up dagger to begin with so I don’t see why they needed to be hit. But I will just change traits for a while to something else I guess.
So does anyone know a decently fun sword/pistol build for mostly farming and occasional pve stuff?
All truth. P/D was just hit so hard I put away my pistol for a while and respecced for acro dagger bleeding/power hybrid in stead of stealth P/D, gear worked out fine with a second dagger.
It’s fun, but it’s not as much fun as shooting people. I played P/D as much for the aesthetic and fun factor as I did for the playstyle. AcroBlossom is fun… but I look goofy doing it. That I hate.
As a P/D since headstart, I’m feeling the nerf pretty hard, but only in PvE. What’s most frustrating is that the timing of vital shot isn’t exactly on the 1 second mark, so you can’t que C&D any more and get a reliable stealth to keep your damage going. In stead it’s three vital shots… wait for half of number four, hit C&D
In addition, my bread and butter mitigation from blind on stealth is suffering timing wackiness as well. As previously you could time C&D to lock down a single normal mob with blinds and reliably mitigate a lot of damage on multiples, they’re fitting in a lot more hits now which has be considering swapping to my PvP Trait setup for PvE as blind isn’t mitigating as well against groups of mobs.
The timing is pretty ungainly now and the caltrops nerf just makes me kinda sad in general at the loss of damage but it still does its job. Before this patch, P/D (and the thief in general) felt smoothly timed and rewarded smart footwork to avoid/mitigate damage at mid/close range and keep your rotation going. Now it just feels kinda clunky and broken as the attacks don’t sync up with the revealed timer.
Overall I’m killing things noticable slower with P/D and spending more time cluster-shotgunning single mobs with a shortbow in PvE. I’m seriously considering putting on a MH dagger and running DB spam for a while in stead since I’m already geared for durability anyway.
In PvP… not much of a problem. You can’t get perfect rotations on humans anyway so the revealed extension doesn’t really make much of a difference. It usually takes four or more seconds after a sneak attack to get positioned for another C&D anyway, and caltrops is still a largely wasted slot due to human beings being smart enough to not walk in to it or dodge out of it. Uncatchable is much easier to use reliably now, so overall P/D feels slightly buffed in PvP as the nerfs didn’t really affect it outside of the occasional time that caltrops kicks off a bit earlier than you’d like while attacking/defending a hallway or point of some sort.
So… basically, you guys are saying the caltrops nerf was warranted because it can stack bleeds and cripples in a large aoe and is a working zoning tool.
At 15s it was one of a few good utilities avaliable to condition builds. At 10s it’s still good, but it drops condition damage builds further behind, and those builds were already behind not only direct damage, but condition builds avaliable to almost every other class in terms of damage and utility.
I personally don’t think dropping one of our best PvE utilities in duration, especially when attached to a patch that drops our already “almost okay if there’s only one target” DPS in to the toilet by way of an extra second on reveal, a nerf that drops thief damage across the board for every single build that uses either of our melee options in either hand.
In WvW… I feel buffed in this patch due to the uncatchable buff.
In PvE, I can actually notice how much longer it takes to kill things.
Meanwhile, Warriors got a much needed adjustment to lol100B faceroll by way of the haste nerf (which was a good game-wide call, thieves included) but were generously compensated by having their party utility seriously buffed.
I still love my thief, but its frustrating to see such a big nerf not come with a little compensation in terms of mobility, trait support, or something meaningful outside of a marginally better chance of landing a minor trait and an extra secon on a utility that was nerfed along with the rest of quickness.
Moreso, it’s just plain puzzling to see a nerf to caltrops specifically, as it was a niche skill for builds that were already pretty well balanced.
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Sure caltrops nerf sucks for condi thieves, but it was warranted.
I’m also confused at why you as a person feel that cutting 5 seconds off of the duration of caltrops was “warranted”
Enlighten me.
I dunno, I mean I like the models, they’ve got a very unique look, but I’ve been wanting a wider selection of emblem’d weapons/armor for a while now.
I get what your saying but once you put an emblem or something its no longer about the look of the weapon but the fact that its showing an emblem. The emblem becomes the key part of the item so it dose not mater what the item was.
Added note:
Now they do need to rework the old guild weapons to show emblems better and add in more weapon types that you can put emblems on.
I disagree. There are plenty of places on the new items where a small, classy emblem would look good (unlike the loud oversides emblem placements on the current weapons/armor)
For instance, on the shield, that little square section mid-bottom, or on the pistol/rifle on the flat of the side right above the handle, or on the blades, the little flat section just above the hilt.
Emblems as a detail (because it’s thematically a reward from your guild’s contacts for the services of your guild) rather than a HEY LOOK AT ME I’M A FLAG MASQUERADING AS A WEAPON!
It’s the difference between wearing a t-shirt with a huge full frontal print logo and a polo-style shirt with a little breast pocket logo. In both cases the “brand” is communicated clearly, but in one you look like a tool and in the other you just look like a guy that bought a shirt, and the shirt company likes to sign their shirts.
Now whether or not your emblem is something you’d consider classy is for you to take up with your guild leader of course.
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I dunno, I mean I like the models, they’ve got a very unique look, but I’ve been wanting a wider selection of emblem’d weapons/armor for a while now.
The models are awesome.
They don’t display guild emblems anywhere in the preview though.
Is the preview broken, or do these guild skins simply not have guild emblems?
Until now, everything with “guild” in the name was recognizable because it actually displayed the guild logo. I liked that.
I’d like the new skins better if they came with a guild logo on them, even small ones.
As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.
You’re aware you just double-nerfed the already poor damage of P/D in PvE with the changes to caltrops and revealed right? Caltrops took a significant hit to duration, and the additional revealed means that the bread and butter attack sequence that P/D can use to kill things was just extended by one attack. This is something you messed with early on by accident (when sneak attack revealed on all five shots) and reverted back to the standard 2-shot rotation.
Was this simply not considered, or did you deliberately decide we had too many bleeds?
This doesn’t change the build much in PvP as you can seldom hit a perfect rotation against competent players anyway(2 autos between CnD) so it remains largely unchanged as you’re still taking at least three autos as before when facing down a live person. On top of that, Caltrops isn’t/wasn’t all that horribly useful in PvP to begin with.
Was P/D really that problematic in PvE when compared to what’s avaliable to mainline power/crit specs?
Can we expect some compensation in terms of durability or bleed duration in a future patch?
Don’t get me wrong, the little buff to uncatchable’s range is nice but it can’t begin to make up for the loss of already sub-par damage from bleeds.
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The thing is, MF is just a bad concept. It would be nice of the magic find was a bonus on top of normal statistics. But to exchange proper armor for a minor chance to get a better item logically annoys your team mates. Its just not very in the spirit of the game.
MF through consumables is fine if you ask me, because it stacks with what ever you are wearing. But I don’t get MF gear. Who thought that was a good idea?
MF through consumables is the same exact situation.
By eating an MF consumable you’re giving up consumable buffs that would increase offense or defensive stats. If you’re going to play the MF-Selfish card either commit to the argument or not.
MF doesn’t create a problem. People blaming MF for bad runs creates a divisive and accusatory community that’s as caustic or more to a productive PUG than “LFG HEAVY ARMOR ONLY”
MF gear isn’t the problem. People yelling at each other over it is.
Make it a unique champion monster and I’m sold.
The idea that a person in your PUG, by wearing MF, hurts the group in some way is fundamentally flawed. It’s hurting your run time at best, not your chances of completion. The players picked up off the floor would have been on the floor in zerkers or any other non-MF gear and you’d still be making sub-optimal runs because your teammates aren’t playing optimally.
Actually, it does, because Berserker’s will have shorter fights. The shorter a fight is, the less chances you have to screw up, and the less easily you are worn down over time.
Berserker’s has better protection than Explorer’s by virtue of not having to fight as long.
You’re missing the point.
The guy screwing up over and over in MF is still the guy screwing up over and over in zerkers.
I’m not going to direct this at you, but most of the MF complaints I see are motivated by people looking for someone to blame when things go south. Often this screwup of the instance group is predicated by the antisocial attitude of people who demand that others adjust to them while being completely unwilling to adjust to others. In short, people who are bad team players… in a team environment.
“I should not have to have a longer run because you want better drops”
“I should not have worse drops because you want a shorter run”
Two sides of the same coin IMO.
It’s a weird concept, talking to to other people, but this was pretty much what we did before gear inspection.
I kinda like it better that way. Anything that fosters player-to-player communication is a better design IMO. I think the current linking system does the same job (after all, you could “gear check” to get in to some group and then swap to identical gear with different stats anyway)
Believe it or not, not everyone PUGs instances.
Some of us have regular instance groups.
Some of us have regular instance groups to run nothing but MF gear because we like challenging fights with good drops as opposed to fast grindy runs that burn us out in a month.
Run time isn’t the only metric by which efficiency or time well spent can be judged, however, I find it extremely selfish for anyone to crap all over the fun of other players by DEMANDING that a certain suffix is REMOVED FROM THE GAME or FUNDAMENTALLY ALTERED so that they won’t be personally inconvenienced on their ten minute faceroll warrior CoF runs.
The idea that a person in your PUG, by wearing MF, hurts the group in some way is fundamentally flawed. It’s hurting your run time at best, not your chances of completion. The players picked up off the floor would have been on the floor in zerkers or any other non-MF gear and you’d still be making sub-optimal runs because your teammates aren’t playing optimally.
Aren’t the majority of the interface text sections font-based already? I’d imagine the extra time to get a proper chinese option is down to translation, as they would want to translate all of the chat bubbles and text so you guys can get a better experience.
I support this though. You guys should be able to play in your native language, especially given that the first game supported it.
I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the guests who came and helped us succeed in completing our first bounty hunt on our first try.
It’s a beginning of a beautiful friendship, and we hope to see you next week!
You know, I think it’d be nice if grawl turned out to be the only species able to get along with the Karka in a sort of native-american style reverence/use way.
So the Grawl sort of become “stewards” of southsun, helping the karka hatch and hunt, maybe riding around on them, etc.
Like Luxons and giant turtles.
This would, invariably put them at odds with the Consortium, who are trying to push the Karka out and exploit their land… and thus… conflict which could drive the DEs and story arcs of the entire zone in a much more interesting way.
Updated OP again. Schedule has been moved back one hour to 6PM server time based on needs of some guild members.
Then why are you arguing about my change? Your hit-volume is low, the change would increase your healing a lot due to being able to heal every second and not relying on gimmicks or high hit volume attacks, not decrease it.
While it may theoretically increase passive healing, it would directly kill 100% of my ability to tactically burst heal with dancing dagger through my own and the necro’s shadow fields, use daggerstorm+mad king birds to total tank, sustain things like graveling mounds with a shortbow, use enemy groups ressing as a health fulcrum, and a number of other situational tools that my gear is actually set up to do so that I spend less time in stealth and more time actively bleeding, snaring, blinding, burning, and otherwise softening/finishing targets.
I don’t use SoM as a passive part of my play, but as a very deliberate and active one. That’s what makes it worthwhile.
The “gimmicks” as you call them are integral to the entire setup of the build and how it interacts with the rest of the group. The use of SoM, as I use it, is literally the centerpiece of the build, not an afterthought. They’re what let me tank in PvE, they’re what let me personally move zergs in WvW, and they’re what let me create highly effective zones of denial and being the generally debilitating toolbox that I am in these situations to the betterment of my group.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against SoM being made a little more desirable to other build types, but the cooldown and flat +heal removes all of the above. I really do think the active itself is where to put the adjustment, and I don’t know if you picked it up but I think changing that active to a short duration “super life leech” would keep the current use of the skill intact while making it more viable for use in more single target/evasive situations.
Honestly, the healing of it needs improved. How could you improve the heal without adding a cool-down?
What most of the people here, including myself, are saying is that the passive healing is actually fine. The tradeoff is that you have to work at it to make that passive healing something that works. So, Unlike HiS or Withdraw SoM is a skill you can’t just put on a bar and expect to be effective. That’s the point we’re trying to get you to see.
You’re right, you can’t just straight buff the healing without a cooldown. It would turn builds like mine from “durable” to "deals same damage but now passively outheals everything.
However, you also can’t attach a CD to the SoM passive because then you’re destroying builds.
However, for the purpose of making SoM attractive to builds that don’t already use it I really, really, really do feel the answer is to address the active, not the passive. Tuning up the heal, but balancing it with a CD so that it fits your definition of “good” in situations it underperforms in kills the skill in every single situation it excels in currently. How don’t you see that as a problem after all of this discussion?
If we want to reinforce the passive, I think we had a discussion in another thread about improving its healing power ratio. (Wherin some large number was given, and I believe we discussed why massive buffs are a bit much.)
Now, the HP ratio could stand to be touched up a little, as SoM is the one and only reason currently to even glance at the stat on a thief… but think about SoM in terms of “How can it be made more attractive to more builds without shafting the way it’s already being used”
By build thrives on SoM’s passive. No matter how good the active is, I would scarcely use it because, for my build, the passive is just plain better. However, not all builds can take advantage of the actual power of SoM.
Thus, we’re left with the active heal. If we don’t touch the passive, but in stead make the active fun, engaging, and with a nice flavor that makes people want to use it (like, say, how people run certain utility signets primarily for the active) Then we’ve got a solution that keeps SoM intact while opening it up.
I think the trick here is actually attaching a powerful, useful effect to the active, and keeping the cooldown as is. I still stand by my suggestion of making the passive 4s of uber-leech… and if that’s not good enough I dare say… stability, stunbreak, cooldown resets or even limited haste in addition?
This keeps the current use intact, while making the active highly desirable and worth losing the passive on cooldown. If designed well enough it makes the active attractive enough that builds might use it specifically for the active.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Updated OP with current schedule.
We’ll be running public access bounties every Sunday on TC at 7PM Server time.
For anyone that needs an invite get with myself (PopeUrban.2578) or whisper one of the following people ingame most nights:
ChronicOne.1965 (POPE Member)
WolfeMan.5324 (POPE Member)
PopeInnocent.4605 (POPE Member)
In addition, I’ve created a new rank for event staff, so if you’ve got a group of friends, or you’d just like to help spread the love for these public access missions just let me know and I’ll give you a staff ranking you can use to invite people as participants.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Shadowsteps should = teleport
As in teleporting, not running instantly and getting blocked by gaps/trees/rocks
That’d be a start. imagine how much more (actually) mobile we’d be is shadowsteps worked like they look like they should work rather than how they had to work for balance reasons in GW1
Then why are you arguing about my change? Your hit-volume is low, the change would increase your healing a lot due to being able to heal every second and not relying on gimmicks or high hit volume attacks, not decrease it.
While it may theoretically increase passive healing, it would directly kill 100% of my ability to tactically burst heal with dancing dagger through my own and the necro’s shadow fields, use daggerstorm+mad king birds to total tank, sustain things like graveling mounds with a shortbow, use enemy groups ressing as a health fulcrum, and a number of other situational tools that my gear is actually set up to do so that I spend less time in stealth and more time actively bleeding, snaring, blinding, burning, and otherwise softening/finishing targets.
I don’t use SoM as a passive part of my play, but as a very deliberate and active one. That’s what makes it worthwhile.
The “gimmicks” as you call them are integral to the entire setup of the build and how it interacts with the rest of the group. The use of SoM, as I use it, is literally the centerpiece of the build, not an afterthought. They’re what let me tank in PvE, they’re what let me personally move zergs in WvW, and they’re what let me create highly effective zones of denial and being the generally debilitating toolbox that I am in these situations to the betterment of my group.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against SoM being made a little more desirable to other build types, but the cooldown and flat +heal removes all of the above. I really do think the active itself is where to put the adjustment, and I don’t know if you picked it up but I think changing that active to a short duration “super life leech” would keep the current use of the skill intact while making it more viable for use in more single target/evasive situations.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
The build you use sounds like a bleed-stacking build that abuses caltraps.
It is good in PvE, except when you main a warrior or necromancer. If you have any of these classes, just assume your not doing damage, because your probably not due to the bleed cap, therefore your probably easily replaceable. I mean your not really doing anything for your group.
Actually our group includes:
Thief
Necro
GuardianX2
Ele
Our warriors rerolled guardian pretty early on and the necro and I actively avoid stacking condition duration because the bleed cap makes it completely pointless. In stead it’s overall more useful for dungeons/wvw in our situation to up our respective survivability and utility. We’ve essentially got two utility+DoT toons, a single pure GC, and two utility+raw damage. This is absolutely a case of “build adjusted to team composition” at the expense of “build for solo roaming.” There’s very little we’ve run in to we can’t handle with the “shutdown” composition we’ve set up.
Similarly, despite the horror stories I’ve heard of people running condi builds in DEs and getting bronze and whatnot I’ve never had problems with it.
Caltrops is pretty nice for PvE and some zerg fights, but it often gets replaced with scorpion wire, smokescreen, or blinding powder depending on the situation.
Again, your experiences may vary but the point is that changing the core function of SoM is not a good way to make it more useful for more builds/situations.
problem is for those situations there already heals, your basically taking one skill you don’t find that useful and making it like the ones that already exist.
As said I use it as my main heal skill in pve, this is from basic mob farming to fractals, with evasion and high burst hits I can keep myself up against all but instant death attacks for the most part.
The only times I swap it out is when I need the utility the others give (such as stealth and burn removal on HiS or the evasion and cc break of withdraw)
Just like anything it has its uses for some builds and less for others, but changing it to fit a build it probably wasnt designed for will only ruin it not improve it.
If you find its not working for you, stop trying to use it on a slow hitting build (only ones I could think of for thieves would be a backstab style one in which case why wouldn’t you use HiS that heals and sets up your next hit) you don’t use venoms on a non condition build do you? or do you want them changed so they do a big hit as well but conditions get half duration so that non condition builds can use em?
So why would you want it for this skill?
Honestly, the change would bring higher HPS in real fights.
Against single or highly evasive multiple targets. Where superior heals already exist. Which are already less useful than SoM in large target count situations. The vast, vast majority of fights I’m in in PvE or PvP don’t ever fit this mold. I’m not asking for Withdraw or HiS to be adjusted so they’re better in this situation. SoM isn’t used much because the specs that get the best use out of it are lackluster in damage, and the vast majority of thieves roll specifically for the damage output. Compounded upon that is the fact that the class, due to its reputation and marketing, draws a largely disproportionate number of solo roamers.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
This is a bad change to SoM. Period. It turns a skill that’s fun and unique in to a skill that’s boring and passive. With increased heal with a throttled cooldown, you don’t have the OPTION of setting up a burst heal with SoM any more, and in stead you’re pushing the button for the burst, and you’re getting a burst heal that does… nothing but a heal.
This destroys the entire playstyle of the skill. For what? More faceroll uptime on every thief build? Churning out a thief-base equivalent of the signet warrior? Why?
Could SoM be made more attractive and have greater utility in its non-optimal situations? Yeah. It could. Removing entirely the ability to use it where it’s most optimal is the wrong way to do it.
Using high hit volumes for burst of healing while maintaining a low level of passive healing IS the core mechanic of SoM. Just as much as stealth is the core mechanic of HiS and the long evade is the core mechanic of withdraw. That’s why the active heal is pathetic. Not to just give you the finger, but because the burst heal on SoM is, literally high hit volume attacks.
That mechanic is exactly what makes the skill worth putting on a bar at all. Regardless of the amount healed. That interaction is precisely what makes it an interesting skill. Removing that ability from SoM completely destroys SoM. Heck, you might as well change to effect to “grants X health every Y seconds while in combat” because that’s the general effect with a 1s cooldown.
Kind of sorry to say, but Omnomberry Pie “made” that build, and when it was nerfed that build become “unviable.” or “less-viable.” in almost all situations. Its just not enough. SoM will not be improved either, even though it probably needs to be.
I’m still using SoM
and I never used omnom
because I don’t stack crit, and it was begging for a nerf.
and I still do just fine in dungeons, fractals, and WvW
because I actually built for it and my group actually appreciates that I do the jobs that I do with it
Expecting an omnom-crutch build to work without the omnom is, yes, completely not viable.
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