Guild Wars 2

As always, +1 for Fishing and its associated infrastructure. It would be a huge positive addition to the game.

They are simply responding to players who don’t know how to counter thieves. I watched a video a short while ago where Anet was suggesting that the end-game (principally WvW here) needed to be balanced around absolutely new players who would be frustrated when encountering thieves). Bizarre. But, that is what we are dealing with here. One, I suppose, can try to counter this through trying to shape the memes, but, but I think it’s simpler for me just to not play my thief in WvW. We will always be dealing with the next nerf occasioned by frustrated ‘new’ players.

D/P is the ‘new’ D/D. It simply ‘works’ like the D/D build worked pre-nerf. I played it a bit post-nerf—but, I myself, don’t like it as much as Sword/Dagger (profanity filter didn’t like S/D in conjunction with the rest of sentence) in PvE, so with the return of Reveal to 3s, I’m back to S/D.

There are a couple things wrong here such that a modern gamer reading the OP recognizes, immediately, a glaring non sequiteur.

Almost anything of value in the game requires a good deal of grinding/farming. I’m not saying this is wrong in itself—simply present. I’m fine with optional grinds. From the standpoint of time to acquisition this requires more than ‘casual’ activity. Also, the addition of vertical progression means that you must ‘keep up’. If you walk away for an extended period of time, when you come back, you will be at a lower power level than other players. The incentive here is a strong, coercive (that’s the hook in VP), reason to not walk away. By definition, contrary to a comment above, it is a mandatory, required grind. It still mystifies me that there are gamers who don’t have a basic handle on this common gaming element.

GW2 is not unique at all among modern games in this regard, and it is most certainly not ‘casual’ in this regard.

Agree with OP. The idea of forcing PvP in an instanced area for “world” completion is silly. The world you complete should be the one you see when you open your map. WvW should not be a part of map completion. But it is.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I forgot to add: I’m a Glass Cannon Thief. I die almost as fast as I kill. So that’s pretty balanced IMO.

This is the key. All classes must be balanced against each other and the environment. For classes to be meaningful there must be something unique that they bring to the table that other classes don’t. In WoW a hunter is able to track other players and beasts, elementals, et al. That is a huge advantage; but, other classes also have their advantages and they are balanced to provide interesting counter play.

Let me begin by saying that I don’t see an inherent problem with stealth. In WoW stealth was much more pronounced than in GW2 and rogue’s were always annoying, but not invincible. They didn’t have the burst that thieves have in GW2, but thieves in GW2 don’t have the stealth that rogues have in WoW. It’s all about counter play. Are there ways to counter stealth that make the game more interesting for all players? Yes, all classes in WoW had abilities to counter stealth. A hunter in battlegrounds could lay a trap at his feet. A rogue should never fall for this but they do. There are abilities like flare that will bring a rogue out of stealth. Rogues were annoying (their signature ability), but they made for more interesting gameplay.

In GW2 the problem people perceive is not stealth per se, it’s the burst that d/d thieves had. You have to realize that a glass cannon thief is a walking opener. They are nothing without their cooldowns. The key is not to participate in their opener, do a little damage and then watch them run away. Most players in GW2 don’t understand this. They are annoyed by the stealth (as well they should be) but they don’t understand how to counter it.

I generally hate L2P posts, but this is an area that warrants it. The thief is an extremely fragile profession. You have to be on the top of your game all the time just to survive. Stealth is an essential mechanic to their survival. Stealthy classes are actually not new to MMO’s as the OP suggests; they have been around a long time. They provide an interesting style of play for all involved…except those who haven’t learned to counter them.

Even though the Thief is not my main and I never play mine in PvP/WvW, I vote for retaining the mechanic as an interesting albeit annoying mechanic.

Exp’d MMO players know that it is impractical to maintain alts at a competitive level in the presence of vertical progression. In WoW I had 6 max level characters through Cata, But, I only leveled one character in MoP. When the power level of the game is ever increasing, alts become a liability at some point, not an asset.

Let’s say we hedged our bets very well and have 8 level 80 characters, one of each profession. Want to wager a guess as to the time to acquisition just for the Ascended trinkets alone. It wearies me just thinking about it. Had GW2 continued along a horizontal path I would agree with you that multiple alts would make sense though not necessarily as a hedge against the nerfbat. I think it’s fun playing a variety of characters, just not very practical in GW2.

It used to be open regularly on TC. From mapchat today I’d say those days are gone. Anet has succeeded in creating a game where failure is the norm. (At least Anet succeeded—wish I could say the same for the players.)

Ayochak.8293:

Champion Risen Drake Broodmother became insanely hard.
As an expected result nobody is killing it anymore.

It’s a weird policy to “ameliorate” a game by making some of its content impracticable.

I’d like to think they just don’t want people to play there anymore. I don’t want to think that they are that bad at game balance.

Post the de-nerfs to Orr after some good changes to Orr in January, I didn’t really think that it could get any worse. But, after playing a couple hours there today I can say that Anet has topped themselves. It’s actually silly right now.

Agreed. If they had fixed the longbow with the last patch (along with all the other improvements), they would have gone a long way towards making the Ranger a competitive profession.

No, and that is one of the major failures of the game as currently implemented. I just played in Orr a bit and walked into a sea (literally, far too many to count) of vet spider hatchlings. It was the silliest thing I’ve seen yet with the whiplash slapdash balancing there. Players were down everywhere. It was not challenging and it was not fun. No one there, whether downed or running for their lives, felt like a hero. Of that, I can assure you.

Culling was episodic in PvE since launch. With the January patch (which addressed culling in WvW in a work-around manner) culling became pervasive and continuous in PvE in events with even moderate participation. Don’t know what happened but it has gotten progressively worse over time.

Now, with the insane number of hard-hitting, high health adds in DE’s (in Orr at least) the culling has exacerbated that piece of bad game design. They need to fix Orr DE’s and then leave them alone. Then it would be great to fix the culling.

Just did Shelt and there was a sea of vet spider hatchlings. Players down everywhere. I don’t know if this is a bug or bad design but it’s pretty silly for a DE anywhere. I’d love to have some kind of response on this. Is it buggy code, a joke, or not working as intended?

Ty for heads up on Yaks Bend. It’s still open.

Overall, nice changes in the right direction. If they had fixed the longbow they would have gone a long way towards making the ranged Ranger a competitive profession.

So many nice changes for a change. I didn’t see any mention of adjustments to CS DE’s, but haven’t encountered a champ in pent/shelt in about an hours play. Much less annoying than previously. For the thief nerf reversion (Reveal in PvE) I thank you Anet. I’m playing my thief again for the first time since the nerf.

As was said, try guesting on Tarnished Coast. All areas of the game are populated. Plenty of people leveling alts or simply new players. Your server will determine the quality of life in-game and there are several good ones. With guesting you can skip the pain if you can’t afford to transfer as long as you don’t care about WvW.

bPrepared.8104:

Could anyone provide a basic build I could look at? I never spent much time s/d, so I’m curious on what traits would work good.

My current build in terms of traits is:

0
30 (VI,X,XI)
25 (V,VI)
15 (II)
0

This is a general PvE build that I currently run with.

Though not specific to S/D there’s a good guide that will help you think about the builds possible with S/D at:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/64903-thief-a-basic-guide/

My thief is PvE-only and I played S/D until the nerf when I shelved my thief. The reverting of Reveal and the improved pathing/reliability of FS mean I will be playing my thief again. Very happy with these changes. Thanks Anet!

My thief was PvE only and I played S/D mostly until the nerf when I tried D/P and then shelved the thief. With this patch including reveal reversion in PvE I will return to the thief. In terms of FS, the improved pathing and reliability alone will be enough to use it regularly instead of rarely and incidentally. Very happy with these changes.

First rule of trolls: don’t feed them. If someone does violate the CoC then report them. If they’re trolling more skillfully then block them. If you see that others are responding to the troll then block them too. It’s highly unlikely that mature players will be supporting trolls and those that do are simply supporting the troll—block them.

The controls provided by the game are adequate to deal with this problem (and it is a problem in every game with people). If they are somehow circumventing the controls in some way report them and they will be dealt with.

I have a number of people on my block list and I don’t have any problem with trolls in this game.

I agree with the OP title but not so much with where the OP takes it. Any game as sociologically rich as an MMO is going to follow a liturgical calendar of some kind. The content is holiday themed and not so much temporary as cyclical. I have no problem with this.

Where I think Anet goes wrong is with the “monthly” content delivery. You don’t have to read long in their marketing literature to know that this is a huge factor for them in the creation of a value proposition around GW2. Hey look, you are getting an expansion’s worth of content over a couple months.

Being a software developer, I tend to see the monthly delivery schedule for significant content as more a detriment than anything associated with value. The “events” generally don’t work in some significant way and it’s not surprising as there is barely time to conceive and code, let alone test anything in a month. We’ve also seen the inability to deliver on schedule with the Living Story. We got teasers because there were not enough developers to go around. It’s funny as here, with the SAB, it would be one temporary project trumping another temporary project for developer resources.

Meanwhile, basic problems in the game go unattended. I don’t need to list them here as it would just derail the thread. Read the forums. Play the game.

I don’t see it so much as temporary vs permanent as simply priorities that are askew tied to a development cycle that is too short.

Vayne.8563:

Drew.1865:

marnick.4305:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Dante.1508:

why should paying customers not complain, and ask for fixes?

You paid 50$ to get access to the game and that’s it. Do you expect them to send you loveletters now? You can complain and I am pretty sure the devs appreciate it if it is constructive but most of the time you just see people crying and begging for changes for their own benefit.

People are entitled to complain all they want. That’s fine.

Well thought out, constructive posts will likely get noticed by someone at Anet. Unfortunately, a lot of posts are either lacking in data, lacking in thought process, or worded so offensively, with so much hyperbole, that it’s hard to take them seriously.

I don’t think people realize if they worded their stuff in less offensive ways it’s far more likely to be passed up the line.

It has been confirmed that CMs take important stuff up to the devs on a daily basis. If all the trolls would post coherent posts, that would increase the noise in these daily updates and drown out some of the more important topics. Don’t encourage people to write proper suggestions

Hopefully they only take the complaints you approve of to the devs because those are the only important issues. And by coherent posts you must mean anyone that writes a post you disagree with is a troll? Yeah that makes sense….

You forget about a little thing called human nature. And human nature is human.

SO you see someone that just badmouths everything, and you know…it’s not a great look. You take what he’s saying with a grain of salt, because so much of what that person says is just negative assumptions. Not factual.

Someone else comes along and says much the same thing, but calmly, without offering offense. Language and use of language is very important. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “It’s not what you say but how you say it.” That cliche exists for a reason.

Why should anyone take seriously anyone who behaves that way?

’"It’s not what you say but how you say it." That cliche exists for a reason.’

It largely exists because most people prefer to nod their heads rather than use them. The cliche has resonated well in the pop-business culture as it meshes nicely with the later 20th century’s apotheosis of image over character and the general trend to confuse medium and message since McLuhan.

As communication is about the transfer or exchange of information or meaning, the content of communication is crucial. It can be communicated well or poorly, but it’s all about what you have to say, not how well you say it. Through dialogue it’s often possible to arrive at even the poorest communicator’s intended meaning and it’s often worth the effort.

This is also an ideal attitude for working with ideas on the forums. There are a variety of viewpoints here and people of various levels of skill in communication. But, most complaints are put forward as ideas. It is therefore better to engage with the ideas presented rather than move ad hominem and focus on personalities or the specific ways people share them. This usually raises the level of debate and prevents the most common form of derailment which is to move from the ideas to the people offering them.

I applaud the fact that you didn’t call out the player by name. I agree with that policy as we, as a player community, don’t really have access to the facts of each case, and we are not in a position to remedy any given situation anyway. But, Anet is. If there is a remedy to be had, Anet can effect it. So, report the player.

The way I have seen it work best is where only officers are given access to high-level items and gold and players go through officers to obtain high-value items. This doesn’t answer the problem of a rogue officer, so trust will always be a factor. And, trust is what security is built on along with mechanisms for limiting damage from bad actors. Perhaps a finer grained security would be helpful and this is where reporting this kind of activity would be helpful to Anet as well.

Bottom line though, you must assume that anyone with permissions to access items in the guild bank could access them so grant access accordingly.

The neverending story here on the forums.

Condition builds are less than power/crit builds in PvE—and they shouldn’t be. (They are also a problem in WvW where condition removal is pervasive.)

A condition build is perfectly viable as a open world solo build in the game. The problem comes in in PvE around group play. Without a condition build present, you’ve already got bleed stacks on a mob. Add one condition necro and you’ll have no problem keeping the stacks capped. But, adding two doesn’t make any sense in terms of team damage as you are already at the cap. This is just wrong. The problem is obviously the way that Anet has chosen to manage the damage. They do it by stacks on a mob and DoT damage should be by player in terms of damage and ticks. There is no reason for condition damage to be less than direct damage in a significant fight. It’s just damage delivered differently, i.e., over time, as opposed to being front loaded. When I left WoW Affliction Warlock’s were giving Arcane Mages a run for their money in the raid parses. And, this is how it should be; there is no reason for their to be a material difference in the sustained damage in a significant fight.

As it is, a condition build is not a significant contribution to team damage in typical PvE scenarios. There are additional issues, but the basic problem will remain until Anet finds they must, like all other games I’ve played, maintain damage by player.

If you are truly interested in what they are wearing do what I do. Get on your, preferably full-sized, Norn and travel to Rata Sum via the accountancy wp. Just stand around grunting in the middle of the room—as you would normally do in the middle of any room. As the typical Asura bores easily they will soon be doing figure-eights in and around your knees all the while giggling with great glee. From your superior vantage point, and the fact they are basically under your skirts, you will be a to see exactly what they are sporting and at an incredible level of detail. Another problem with the game solved.

Vayne.8563:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Zeppelin.6832:

Hence the problem with horizontal progression. Going after different “skins” is great, but you can only wear one set of armor at the time. Eventually you’re going to settle on what you like, and then what? There’s nothing else to do on a character.

Except play the game. That is what GW is supposed to be all about. You level, outfit your toon, then just play. It worked in GW1 for 7 years.
GW2 was created as a game with horizontal progression, it was advertised as a game with horizontal progression and it was sold as a game with horizontal progression.
Players coming in now and complaining that they don’t like horizontal progression really have nothing to complain about. The arguments that “the other games has this, the other game has that” are not valid and meaningless. This is not the other game.

It did work for Guild Wars 1 for 7 years…but Guild Wars never went mainstream. It had a core group of players who adored it, including me, but everyone I knew was off playing WoW.

Guild Wars 1 sold 7 million copies over 7 years or a million copies a year. WoW has ten million active subs at the moment. Sure it was successful, but the devs want to do something “big” and to do that they need numbers. Far more numbers that Guild Wars 1 provided them. For that matter, of the 7 million people, just about everyone I know had multiple accounts, because it was cheaper to do that than buy character slots. Between my wife and I we have five accounts. So it wasn’t necessariliy 7 million people who own the game.

Guild Wars 1 had a staff of 50 people. The staff making Guild Wars 2 is five times the size. That’s a huge difference. In order for Anet to make the game they envision they need more people to play it.

I was absolutely fine with the way things were in Guild Wars 1, and I wish more people could be fine with it too…but I strongly suspect that’s not the case.

There are people who came to GW2 from WoW to escape the grind. I was one of those. There is a growing niche of players who realize the emperor is wearing no clothes. The treadmill goes nowhere; it’s simply a time-sink to entertain the simple. I would like more. Something along the lines of the GW2 pre-release marketing.

I just went through Queensdale on my charr doing map completion. There were a minimum of 20 in each DE and people everywhere, once I got out of overflow that is. I’m on Tarnished Coast, but try guesting on any very high pop server. There is no shortage of players.

Cameirus.8407:

how do you die on a mesmer? seriously, how?

I levelled mine and the only issue I had was finding enough mobs to round up to make it interesting.

You can faceroll multiple vets and champs on a mesmer.

Not sure about thief, I’m not a fan of that type of class, but maybe you need to adapt your playstyle.

Guardians can to an extent just tank stuff, other classes have to move more to avoid dmg.

Yeah, I have to admit my Mesmer’s theme song was u can’t touch this leveling. The damage wasn’t overwhelming but the profession is pretty untouchable and therefore it was possible to take on pretty much anything. The thief is different though. It really doesn’t start coming together until the mid-40’s or so. There were many points where I wished I just had a bit more initiative or a bit more something. I can see a case being made around problematic leveling and the thief. Not impossible, obviously, but not as smooth as other professions.

Rich vs Poor, Men vs Women, Old vs Young, one race vs another race…

Class warfare. It doesn’t actually exist IRL, but it is necessary to create for certain ideologies to survive. Our educational institutions have been remarkably effective in creating and promulgating it. It even comes up in gaming communities. Maybe it is preferable in a gaming community to simply deal with the actual class warfare, you know, warrior vs guardian, that kind of thing.

No one NEEDS gear progression. It is a tired, old answer to the question of providing a sense of progression and brings a host of problems to a game. Get current with the best thinking in game design. There are other ways to do it—much better ways to do it.

BTW, your proposed way hasn’t worked, has it? You consumed WoW and SWTOR and both offer gear progression. And, if you haven’t noticed, Anet agrees with you. They haven’t realized, however, that the pace of their gear progression won’t satisfy the hardcore grinder. Perhaps they are beginning to notice; I haven’t really noticed.

The time is actually ripe for a new kind of MMO, one that is current with the best thinking in game design.

Geotherma.2395:

I have 11 alts, I bought one. Enjoying the volcanic animation as I play ^^ I don’t need my other 10 alts farming ore. Cheap $10 purchase, can’t wait to see more cool animated items ideas from anet.

11 definitely qualifies as an altoholic. I have 13. I bought one for my main farmer. Not so much because its cool or going to save money—simply for the convenience—I never have to think about a pick again. I’m OK with it as an option in the gem store.

It is a very bad idea. I have all the professions at 80 and it doesn’t sound like much fun—at all. In fact, it sounds perfectly horrible. However, I believe it is almost certain to happen.

Elementalist: Human/Asura/Sylvari
Engineer: Charr/Asura
Guardian: Human/Norn
Mesmer: Human/Sylvari/Asura
Necromancer: Charr/Human
Ranger: Charr/Sylvari/Norn
Thief: Human/Asura/Charr
Warrior: Charr/Norn/Human

Agreed. The experiment with risen and krait is a failure. You never know, but I hope Anet realizes this.

I really don’t think this one will function as a gold sink though some will convert gold to buy it. Because of the conversion rate, the rational decision would be to spend dollars (or pick you IRL currency) on this not gold. As such it will not really take much gold out of the game and will affect Anet more than the game in economic terms.

And, I don’t imagine that having the unlimited use picks in the game obviating the need to purchase picks is going to affect the economy much. The benefit of unlimited use tools is more convenience than economic I should think.

Opened on TC ~15 mins ago.

Vayne.8563:

Barbelo.5916:

Depends on where you wanna go. Thieves and eles aren’t really “in demand” classes but they’re welcome everywhere except in certain COF p1 parties. Both classes have anti-projectile skills so they’re good for FOTM. Thieves are desirable for Sons of Svanir and Dredge fractals.

I’m not sure I still understand why most people want at least 1 heavy armored class in their parties. Any class can take lots of damage, just depends on how they’re built.

People insist on heavy armor professions because they’re conditioned from other games. My mesmer is as survivable as any warrior I’ve ever met. Not sure I’d quite put my mesmer up against a guardian, but I’m not far off.

The aspect of the game under discussion has nothing to do with conditioning from other games. It does have to do with the learning that comes from being an experienced gamer. People adapt and notice what works. The warrior profession is simply good at what it does—damage. Is that enough? No; well maybe in cof1; but, elsewhere most groups find an anchor guardian is helpful around managing aggro and positioning mobs. And, the Berzerker warrior we are talking about is squishy as hell in heavy armor. I don’t know if you’ve played one, but it’s rather surprising how fast the large health pool drains when focused. What people in the thread complaining about glass cannon warriors soloing dungeons fail to understand is that players who can do this invested a lot of deaths (theirs or someone else’s) in learning the fights. And, knowing the fights perfectly they are still one mistake away from death. Be careful of what you take away from youtube—I’ve seen people playing every profession doing amazing things. That doesn’t, however, mean that every profession is ‘amazing’ or even OK. The Berzerker warrior fills a combat role in an emergent ‘trinity’ (don’t worry, your Mesmer is included); it is not therefore necessarily a problem in itself. I’ve suggested elsewhere what the actual ‘problem’ is and ways to address it.

I don’t find the game boring at all and I consider it one of the best games I’ve played. It is grindy as all get out. I really don’t mind the optional grinds like the legendary, but the addition of vertical progression and a non-optional gear grind was a huge misstep.

There are many areas of the game that need work, but Anet has shown that they can make an excellent game—they just need to focus on managing it well over time.

Nottix.7864:

Snip..
Engineer Grenade #1 uses auto attack like it’s water version. Many engineers’ fingers will thank you.

I don’t play my engi because I can’t find a build that works for me without grenades. However ground targeted spam while kiting is an RSI in progress. This would be a significant improvement to the profession.

1. Return Orr to it’s actually improved state in the 1/26 patch. Remove Champs and multiple Vets from DE’s. Debuff the nobles. (I think that return to the actually fixed state of 1/26 should be all that needs to be said.) Humans always run the risk of becoming silly—we learned that from Monty Python—Orr is silly. While you are at it fix the Temples so that that the fights are not chaotic failure-fests and a Temple or two actually opens. And revert all DE’s that you toyed with to their 1/26 state. The game felt fairly balanced at that point. Developers should be able to try new things. However, trying new things is only a safe course if the developers have broad experience and management has reality-testing down. Trying new things should never equate to repeating the mistakes of the past. I think right now you should focus on doing stuff you know works. Maybe try new things later.

2. Return Thief reveal to 3s. The change to 4s did nothing to address any presenting problem but did destroy the flow of the off-hand dagger.

[BTW, it’s pretty sad when you see a pattern of reversion to a prior state as being improvements, but oh well]

3. Profession balance. Focus should be on re-engineering the engineer, then ranger and necro buffs/fixes. Don’t need to list them here as they are plastered all over the forums and have been since launch. Definitely buff longbow auto-attacks and extend this to the warrior as well. The longbow is a nice weopon; there is no reason for it to be a nice weak weapon.

4. Fix condition damage. This would be a huge buff for the the condition Necromancer but it would bring balance and group utility to any condition build. Lose the stacks on the mob and maintain damage by player in terms of damage and ticks. Right now, because of the bleed cap, if you added 10 more necros to a group you’re really not adding much damage. Additionally, if a Necro gets Ascended gear he’s not adding much damage. Learn the lessons from the past and maintain damage by player. Please don’t try to excuse it from technical limitations again as we’ve learned that lesson as well. The “I’m sorry the computer can’t do that” really hasn’t worked well since the 1970’s. (Those were the days.) This is simply something that needs to be fixed.

That would be more than enough for a patch. True, there’s no 8-bit graphics, sound, or jumping involved so it’s not going to tickle that niche. I’d argue that it will tickle a very large segment of the player population—especially if it is messaged right.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot about the titles. Please add titles to my list of improvements through reversion to a prior state. The ideal would be a default state where they are visible only on mouseover. If that can’t be managed then the option to hide them altogether will work. (Visible on mouseover would be the ideal.)

Does anyone stop and ask the question, why is 99% of the effort failure in this game. What’s up with that. Is it normal that every effort results in failure or is that more a failure on the part of the game?

Vayne.8563:

SneakyErvin.3056:

Vayne.8563:

I can’t wait for the warrior nerf. It’s going to be entertaining as hell.

Wrong approach. Better to buff all classes that are behind instead of nerfing the warrior to the substandard level. Or they could just make content harder on glasscannon specs.

The problem with buffing everyone, as I’ve said elsewhere, is that the content, already easy would become easier. Just about everything in the game would have to be adjusted if you adjust all the professions.

And if you do that, then you end up with one profession being more powerful/doing more damage than the other professions.

The problem with buffing all classes to the warrior’s level is not that the content will be trivialized. You are effectively saying that all content is trivial for the warrior and I would argue with that. The warrior is the easiest profession to level and faceroll at many stages of the game. I would argue that to play the game at the highest level player skill is required.

I’m not talking about cof1 when I’m talking about LFM-Warrior. I’m talking about all the other dungeons/paths. Remember in the GW2 trinity we are talking about a zerker warrior. It takes skill to play a warrior in that environment and the content is not trivial for the warrior. Mistakes easily cost death and that’s not what high level dungeoneers are about.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the answer lies in both balancing classes (making all equally successful, contributing comparable sustained DPS, but differently so) and re-thinking combat. One aspect of combat that must change is the maintain of a bleed cap on mobs. This makes a condition damage build irrelevant/redundant in a group. Without a Necro in a group you typically have a lot of bleeds going. Since a condition Necro’s main contribution is DoT around bleeds he not adding much if you are already near the bleed cap. In fact, adding 10 more Necros is not going to add materially to the group given the cap. Damage needs to be managed by player in terms of damage and ticks. That will solve one problem around combat and ‘class’ balance.

Additionally, to move beyond the Guardian/Warrior/Mesmer trinity you need to re-think combat roles. You do not need to resort to the historical trinity, but I think there will be perceived problems with combat (and therefore professions) as long as there are no meaningful combat roles. What’s meaningful? Meaningful means that if I wasn’t there fulfilling my role, the fight would not go as well. The reason I say this is because it’s the way humans go about objectives IRL and in games. To fight it is to fight being human. Simple. I don’t know what the answer is in a uniquely GW context, but I trust that there are many creative people at Anet that can get this sorted.

Dante.1508:

RebelYell.7132:

Vayne.8563:

There are always people out there who want to play a profession because of the feel of the profession rather than the numbers the profession generates.

I love the feel of Engineers and Necromancers. Otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time lobbying for them to get numbers that suit those feels.

I also love both classes, Ranger too, i do not love how weak they feel and how nonviable they are compared to the other “better” classes like Mesmer and warrior, and i’ve played every class..

Same here. I have all the professions at 80 and love them all. Anet did a lot right and it’s always good to remember that when offering constructive criticism. The professions I rarely play are Engineer and Ranger. Ranger largely because it feels weak and because of the pet AI. (I mained a hunter in WoW for several years.) Engineer feels weak without grenades and ground targeted spam is an RSI in progress. Necro I actually love to play pretty much as is and it’s sad that the way condition damage is managed makes them irrelevant/redundant in groups.

Those white-knighting it by positing player skill as the problem with the red-haired step childeren among the professions are really not helping. Any experienced gamer will recognize at once that there are basic problems in class design. Some, like engineer, need to be re-engineered. Others, like Necro, in addition to class-specific issues, suffer from how condition damage is handled in the game. There is actually a reason for the Guardian-Warrior-Mesmer trinity and it isn’t because all the bad players decided to take up the Necro, Ranger, or Engineer.

All the games I’ve played have learned the same lessons around damage over time. Player damage needs to be managed by player. In the case of DoT, that’s damage and ticks, not shared stacks on a mob. Several posters above, inconceivably, seem to think Necros are fine as they are. Because of the bleed cap, in any typical fight, a condition Necro is doing miniscule damage and if you added ten more of them the damage wouldn’t materially increase.

For the people who don’t understand the problems in a given area of the game it might be best to withhold comment in those threads dealing with them. There are problems. Having an opinion that there are no problems, or minimizing them, is not helpful. There are plenty of threads about diversity of armor or weapon skins that can benefit from more opinions. This area of the game can benefit less from opinions that everything is fine and more from constructive criticism and possible solutions.

stone cold.8609:

In a thread over in the PvP section of the forum, it looks like the developers are going to be balancing PvE, WvW, and PvP separately for this next patch. I thought it might be good to start a thread so that the PvE/dungeon Thief community could make some suggestions as to how to re-balance the PvE class in light of this new information.

My suggestions are just to revert some of the prior largely WvW/PvP driven changes:

Revert the 4 second reveal debuff back to 3 seconds.
Revert the change to the stealth aggro table mechanics.
Revert the change to pistol whip.

These changes would greatly enhance my playing experience and would not be game breakingly overpowered for PvE only, since they weren’t when they were in the game previously. Anyone else have suggestions?

Yes, yes, and yes. It’s sad to see that the major improvements needed to thieves in PvE are reversions—that speaks volumes in itself—but this would be an excellent place to start.

Nice video and I actually liked the ‘search’ for the thief—it was hilarious. OP, I think you have a future on youtube.

I suppose it’s a good thing that Anet listens to the community. It’s a shame they don’t have a reality-testing filter to employ after listening. I was PvE-only with my s/d thief and loved the fluid playstyle. The stealth nerf utterly destroyed it and it now feels like I’m fighting the profession as much as I’m fighting the mob. Anet, success in class design (as when you succeed in producing a fluid playstyle) is a good thing, not something to remove as a problem. The world is full of voices; the trick lies in listening to the right ones.

PinCushion.7390:

People think Thieves are OP? They’re not fun to fight, but not really OP. I main a Necro, but have played Ele and Guardian quite a bit as well. Those classes have one thing in common. All of their advantages and disadvantages are based on stats and mechanics. Necros have shroud. It gives them more hitpoints. That’s a stat.

Thieves have Stealth. It deprives me of the ability to target them, and creates uncertainty about their true location. Those aren’t stats.

Death Shroud happens on the screen, and in the game, and has a quantifiable result that can be understood while it’s happening.

Stealth doesn’t change any stats (most of the time), but just changes how much information I have about the current encounter. The result is not quantifiable because it isn’t based on a mechanical change. I can’t make a build to “counter stealth” really. I can make a build to “counter boon spam” or “counter condition spam.”

This has been a common thread in every MMO that included a profession/class with abilities that made them stealth/invis. They’re usually not all that OP. They’re just incredibly unfun to fight. Winning is an irritating chore, because it involves a lot of blind swinging and hoping you guessed right. Losing is just losing because you can’t
see what you’re doing.
Not OP, really….

Just.
Not.
Fun.

Another way of putting it is annoying. It’s a basic aspect of the stealth mechanic and present in all stealth classes in all games. But, that’s what you balance around. A thief/rogue who makes a mistake and is left without a cooldown has just punched his squish ticket. There are always effective counters, but they are always annoying—charmingly so.

I’m afraid that you’ve excluded the correct answer in your OP, i.e. the problem is player experience.

Give the following video a watch:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/81076-guru-state-of-the-game-with-arenanet-dev-tyler-bearce-jonathan-sharp-and-karl-mclain/

You will find a serious discussion of a rather bizarre train of thought, i.e., thiefs and mesmers may be a problem because absolute beginners have a problem with them. I’m actually not kidding; watch the video.

Did you see Mike Judge’s movie, Idiocracy? Not a very good movie but it posed an interesting question: what would happen to the world if society supported the dumbing-down of every aspect of it. If you have any question as to the likely outcome, watch the movie.

You don’t balance a whole game and level 80 professions around new players. You do avoid barriers to entry and support learning, but you don’t balance end-game professions around absolute beginners. I’m sure Mike Judge would be interested in the outcome of such thinking, but it’s facepalm material for a lot of us. Watch the video.