@Jonny.9370 and @Daecollo.9578
It is not about cooldowns. It is about actually seeing the ability and having a chance to react. There is a massive difference between reacting to something you can actually see being performed and simply guessing what they will perform next.
Warrior:
Thief:
How do I dodge something I can’t see, you say? Well how am I supposed to know whether you are going to hundred blades me immediately or wait till I blow CDs? Are you going to use Bull’s Charge or maybe swap on hammer/mace/shield stun? How will I ever know how when to use my stunbreaker? How do I know what traps you are dropping and when? How do I guess when you decide to shatter your clones? How do I know that my burst won’t be completely negated by your blurred frenzy? How am I supposed to burst if you are just going to pop a pushback as soon as I start? How am I supposed to fight if you are just going to pop fear if I get close?
See? I can whine about how this game makes me play intelligently rather than have every fight an A+B=C encounter, too.
The thing is, you can see the warrior throw a bola. You can see the warrior bull’s charge at you. You can even use a stunbreaker or condition removal to get out of either of them if you failed to evade them. You can see the Hundred Blade’s and dodge roll, block, hit distortion, teleport, etc. depending on your class. People have nothing to indicate even a 0.5 second before when you are going to backstab them. That is the difference. I can react to something that I can see. I cannot react to something that I cannot see except by trying to guess when you are going to backstab or, depending on class, using something like Ride the Lightning to get the hell away from where you stealthed, but that’s letting the Thief force a reset on the fight.
Whether or not you have blown all your stamina and cooldowns when someone uses their high damage attack is a completely different issue.
A large part of GW2s combat that was advertised was using the actual animations in combat as visual cues instead of simply staring at icons. When fighting most classes, they have been quite successful at this. Even when fighting some thieves, it has been very successful. When it comes to the ease by which a Thief can consistently backstab a player in a single fight, how much damage it does, and the lack of any visual indicators they have an anomaly.
The problem with the constant stealth is that now people have, at best, a very small window (~1-2 sec) window to exchange hits with the thief from the time they become visible to the time they re-stealth…
Ok, so the stealth is automagic/garunteed? Oh, you’re just neglecting the personal responsibility to which the onus is on you for not dodging the c&d (unless they blew a long cd stealth). Cool, bro.
First, landing cloak and dagger isn’t difficult.
Second, landing cloak and dagger when there are NPCs around is trivial.
Third, when they miss a cloak and dagger they still have Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refugee, and/or Blinding Powder. Assuming they were full initiative, they can also try to immediately Cloak and Dagger again as you have enough initiative to cast it twice back-to-back when full.
Inconsistency:
- Shadow Refuge stacks stealth
- If you have stealth, shadow refuge will give you more stealth
- Allows you to sit in shadow refuge and stack stealth duration
…- Mesmer Veil does not stack with any other form of stealth
- If you have stealth from anything, running through it gives you nothing
- Prevents you from running back and forth through it to stack stealth
Mesmer Veil does not give you the reveal debuff when you leave the casting area, Shadow Refuge does. Comparing apples to oranges doesn’t make sense, FYI.
My “clones” are on a 180sec timer, think I should get one every time I dodge.
(1) Good point with reveal debuff
(2) Your “clones” actually hurt when they hit people. Mine apply a condition, at best … unless I blow them up ;-)
(3) You did not touch on the fact that it stacks while Mesmer’s Temporal Curtain and Veil don’t, nor does the Guardian’s Symbol of Swiftness … why does this one thing get to stack its boon but others don’t?
(4) Veil is 90 second cd utility. Mass Invisibility is a 90 second cd elite. Neither one stacks stealth. Both only give stealth. Shadow Refuge is a 60 second utility that stealths, stacks stealth, and heals … I’m only asking that either it stop stacking stealth or the others be able to stack their boons.
I know a bad Thief simply dies. They are a squishy class. The issue is when you compare a good Thief to a good Non-Thief. A fight against a good Thief that uses the stealth heavy build is a fight where you barely see your opponent. It’s not a fun fight. You have to burst the Thief down very quickly else they simply attack-stealth-repeat. A fight against a good Non-Thief has you dodging skills whose animations you see, both people constantly fighting. There is no, “oh, I just got backstabbed, let’s wait for him to unstealth again … backstab there he is … now let’s wait for him to unstealth again”.
The problem with the constant stealth is that now people have, at best, a very small window (~1-2 sec) window to exchange hits with the thief from the time they become visible to the time they re-stealth. This exchange does not often allow for big hits from the non-Thief except for a few skills that track while stealthed and conditions are near useless due to the traits removing conditions while stealthed.
Due to the design of these attacks to be high damage, particularly Backstab, which is also instant, the thief is able to exchange high damage for low to medium damage and then regenerates again while stealthed, further mitigating damage exchanged.
A further issue I have with inconsistency:
Hundred blades, eviscerate, unload, blurred frenzy, sneak attack, etc. all have visuals that give me a chance to dodge roll, block, etc. to mitigate that damage. There is no visual to enable me to do the same with the Thief’s backstab, yet it hits just as hard as the above (except possibly hundred blades). Furthermore, due to the ease by which they can go in and out of stealth, the Thief can consistently make use of this instant, high-damage attack with no visual cue. I think it’d be fair for a thief to unstealth for the 0.5 sec it takes to swing the backstab in order to give people a chance to mitigate it. Seeing as how a thief can stealth for more than 3 seconds at a time via traits and stacking stealth, blocks are insufficient.
Inconsistency:
Full Exotic Coral Jewelry and Rampager gear (Armor and Weapons) with Coral Orbs in your armor will net you 70+% crit chance w/o food.
Obviously that can be increased with food, sigils, etc.
Don’t forget:
Pets can be trivially kited by regular run speeds (moreso by increased runspeeds via signets/swiftness), removing a large portion of Ranger damage.
I was finding that enemy zergs abundance of immobilize/cripple/stun/daze were my issue.
On my Mesmer I have blink, decoy, etc. to not only get out of them but invis or get in a better position.
Are you guys taking the traits Shared Anguish or Hide in Plain Sight? I’d be dodging wonderfully with sword+dagger when suddenly I was immobilized, stunned, etc. and died. I also sometimes seem to still be taking damage when I’m doing sword #2 and #3 which confuses me since those are supposed to be evades.
Most condition removals are on 20 second, or longer, cooldowns.
You cannot completely negate condition damage just as you cannot completely negate direct damage.
Sneak attack does decent direct damage coupled with good condition damage. It is also quite cheap in cost to perform, particularly since stealthy is giving increased initiative regen.
The issue is that a P/D thief (and other stealthy thief builds) simply bounces between two states:
My problem with the Thief class is that P/D thieves use #1 and #5 and are devastating. What other class can use only 2/5 of their weapon skills and be that effective?
The biggest issue is the soft reset that Thieves are allowed to do due to 30 points in Shadow Arts. Thieves can remove conditions, regen initiative more quickly, and heal while stealth … on top of being stealthed, of course. This, coupled with a multitude of ways to stealth, allows thieves to constantly soft reset a fight for their self while their opponent is whittled down. If you combine this with the innate evasion built into various Thief attacks, you have an enemy who is stealthing or evading for a large majority of the fight.
Not true, thieves can’t be devastating with 1 and 5. 5th skill uses 6 initiative, and you only have to press dodge to get out of the blinding field, I don’t see how’s that devastating to you.
If a thief uses 30points in Shadow Arts, he’ll lose a lot of burst. Even though he can maintain fights longer, you can burst him easily without him hurting you as a burst thief would. Usually stealth focus thieves use CnD to get in stealth and heal a bit up, dodging CnD isn’t any hard at all.But yea I agree with you, culling is an issue that has to be fixed quickly.
P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative . All initiative is devoted to Cloak and Dagger and regenerated faster while stealthed so its “high” initiative cost isn’t that big of an issue.
They can dance in and out of stealth healing, removing conditions, and regenerating initiative faster each time they are stealthed and applying upwards of 5 bleeds each time they come out of stealth. You don’t need burst. You can wear someone down. Since Thief also has great mobility, it’s difficult to escape the fight for many classes so you’re stuck fighting “nightcrawler” as he bleeds you to death or whittles you down with constant backstabs.
With the abundance of random NPCs, etc. in WvW, cloak and dagger is quite easy for them to use as well.
Honestly, I think people should look at the multitude of videos thieves are putting out there of them “Zerg Surfing” and ask yourselves if that should be possible for any class in the game to do solo. Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths before more can be tried and they have at least 1 stunbreaker and plenty of condition removal and can keep re-stealthing to allow them to wait for any cooldowns they need.
ChillyChinaman just layed out for you the three sets of armor that are good if you want to be a tanky ranger.
Cleric’s is the most defensive having Healing + Power&Toughness, but only if you have multiple sources of healing (not just your #6).
I’d argue that Knight’s is better than Soldiers because I think Toughness is MUCH better than Vitality and Knight’s has the most Toughness you can get from any type of armor.
Soldier’s has more power than both Knight’s and Cleric’s, but it has none of the Precision that Knight’s has.
I love the Ranger, but on my Mesmer I can take on 4 people, down a few (or sometimes all) and survive. On my Ranger I can’t come close to this unless they suck.
My problem with the Thief class is that P/D thieves use #1 and #5 and are devastating. What other class can use only 2/5 of their weapon skills and be that effective?
D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.
D/P are similar to D/D.
The biggest issue is the soft reset that Thieves are allowed to do due to 30 points in Shadow Arts. Thieves can remove conditions, regen initiative more quickly, and heal while stealth … on top of being stealthed, of course. This, coupled with a multitude of ways to stealth, allows thieves to constantly soft reset a fight for their self while their opponent is whittled down. If you combine this with the innate evasion built into various Thief attacks, you have an enemy who is stealthing or evading for a large majority of the fight.
Mesmers use to be able to put 30 points in Inspiration to get “remove conditions on shatter” and “heal on shatter”, but those two traits were made 30 pts instead of 20 and 30. I presume this was done because it was seen as “too strong” … yet the thief has an even better synergy with their stealth.
Lastly, culling is ridiculously good for Thieves.
I love the Ranger as a class, but I keep going back to my Mesmer due to the fact that, as a Mesmer, I can encounter 3+ players, get a kill (or more), and escape alive.
On my Ranger, I can win 2vMe solidly, but 3+vMe doesn’t seem to work well. I’ve tried the Cleric’s gear tanky beastmaster spec and have converted over to Rabid as well, but the issue seems to be a lack of ways to mitigate being focused while counterattacking.
Furthermore, when I’m roaming on my Ranger, there doesn’t seem to be options for me when I’m roaming and encounter an enemy zerg heading my way while on my Mesmer I have so many tricks I feel fine.
What I’m looking for is advice on WvW to help me change this, assuming it’s possible, as, if I could roam just as well on my Ranger as on my Mesmer I’d switch to my Ranger as my main in a heartbeat. I’m just not sure if it’s because of what each class can/can’t do and/or if it’s my larger amount of experience with my Mesmer.
Much thanks ahead of time.
I’ve often wanted Fortifying Bond to work both ways as well … though I’d be happy just for Ranger talents to be of the same quality as others.
For example:
Ranger 20 pts in Marksmanship for Piercing Arrows – Longbow & Shortbow projectiles pierce.
Ranger 20 pts in Skirmishing for Quick Draw – Shortbow & Longbow recharge 20% faster
Warrior 20 pts in Arms for Crack Shot – Rife and Harpoon Gun recharge 20% faster and their projectiles pierce.
40 pts and 2 mid-tier traits consumed for the Ranger to get the same as a warrior pays 20 pts and 1 mid-tier trait for. Getting the same for half the expense doesn’t sit well with me and I’m curious how that math got overlooked, especially since the Warrior used to be in the same boat as the Ranger but got that patched early on in the game.
It’s very simply. The Ranger’s current incarnation requires use of/reliance on Ranger pets.
If you don’t like this, your options are:
(1) Stick with the Ranger and learn to live with it … maybe even learn to like it
(2) Stick with the Ranger in the hopes this will change … but don’t hold your breath
(3) Play a different class. There are plenty of classes out there to choose from; all with their own pros/cons
Yes, I wholeheartedly have been wanting this since I started playing in the beta weekend events.
It still aggravates me that my targeting, etc. is screwed up very easily by me using right-click to move the camera … it’s how I turn, etc.
Back before the game went live, during the era of beta weekend events, the ArenaNet listed a few things they wanted to change in the game. One of those things was allowing 2hand weapons to have 2 sigils. This made sense then and still does today as currently the only way to have 2 sigils with a weapon set is by using 2 1hand weapons, giving an advantage to these weapon sets over their 2hand counterparts.
What happened to ArenaNet implementing this?
Why are we still not allowed to place 2 sigils on 2hand weapons?
Yes, but not much. … I don’t remember posting a build in the Mists PvP Lobby.
Here’s some stupid amounts of high damage from Cloak and Dagger … 8,712 … 12,505 … 6,259 damage.
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/12148/gw150.jpg
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/12149/gw151.jpg
And plenty of examples of ridiculous damage from Backstab:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/3350/Backstabcrit.jpg
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/3418/gw005.jpg
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/3433/gw006.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_YwoDsIbfMI/UFRaus8DrpI/AAAAAAAAABw/YYmJUlg5OJM/s1280/gw001.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/mjo9wo.jpg
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/10313/BACKSTAB.jpg
And here we have showing a decent backstab and 2 heartseekers … just to highlight there’s multiple ways for a thief to kill someone in 3 hits.
http://i.imgur.com/xMxXc.jpg
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
I’d like to point out, using a guildmate’s screenshot and my math, an issue I see with the Thief class:
In this below image, you have his combat log from what is obviously sPvP (you can see the target player’s name).
This log shows him hit:
Mug (Steal) for 6,125 damage
Cloak and Dagger for 5,629 damage
Backstab for 19,024 damage
Let’s look at the math behind this …
The backstab was for 19,024.
Assuming 30/30/0/0/10 build and taking anything that would up damage with daggers we have the following traits that matter:
Let’s also get the most damage we can out of our amulet … Berserkers has the most power and +15% crit damage
A full set of Divinity gives decent power and +12% crit damage
A crit normally does 150% damage but with 30 points in Critical Strikes and the above runes and amulet a crit will do 207% damage … so +107% damage.
So we have
+ 10% … from Exposed Weakness
+ 5% … from Dagger Training
+ 10% … from First Strikes
+ 20% … from Executioner
+ 5% … from Flanking Strikes
+107% … from crit
Total of +157% damage
19,024 / 2.57 = 7,402 damage non-crit without any + damage from traits, etc.
… to be generous, let’s say you had 25 stacks of might and the coefficient of power to damage is 1 … so 25*35 = 875 damage.
So 7,402 – 875 = 6,527
Let’s account for 5 stacks of vulnerability … that would have made it +162% damage total
19,024 / 2.62 = 7,261 damage non-crit without any + damage from traits, etc.
… and let’s be generous again saying there was somehow 25 stacks of might on the thief and the coefficient is ridiculous …
So 7,261 – 875 = 6,386
Hell, let’s try 10 stacks of vulnerability … that would have made it +167% damage total
19,024 / 2.67 = 7,125 damage non-crit without any + damage from traits, etc.
… and let’s be overly generous with the might again …
So 7,125 – 875 = 6,250
So what’s wrong here?
Most people have to invest quite a bit with their class in order to hit 6k damage … and that’s them critting for 6k.
Furthermore, the hits that do this amount of damage have a bloody animation that gives you a 1/2 second to evade them.
Despite this, Thief can hit you for 6k, non-crit without any sources of +damage, vulnerability, or might and you don’t even get to see it coming … or they can be in the real world and hit you for upwards of 19k and you still won’t see it coming.
Best of luck guessing when to dodge roll during their 3+ seconds of stealth.
Nice to at least see some feedback as to when we should expect a patch for this. Kudos.
Honestly, I’m not quite sure how bad the source code has to be for there to be a bug that messes up calculating how many tokens you get … the logic is simple and there really isn’t room for a race condition unless their machines are taking 10+ minutes to update a few bytes..
(1) Reset (dailies, dungeons, etc.) … start from clean slate for simplicity
(2) PlayerA runs Dungeon1, takes PathX.
(3) PlayerA finishes PathX in Dungeon1.
(4) System calculates how many tokens to give based on (PlayerA, Dungeon1, PathX) and gives it to PlayerA
(5) System updates how many times PlayerA has finished Dungeon1, PathX
Very simple. It’s one get() type function and one set() function each time a player finishes a dungeon path.
Hell, even if they are taking into account how fast a player is completing dungeons, it should only turn into 2 get() and 2 set() functions because now you have to also get_last_dungeon_clear_time(playerA) and set_last_dungeon_clear_time(playerB) … obviously incorporating the last dungeon clear time in the calculation for how many tokens to give to the player.
Very simple, but somehow it has been magically bugged.
Either bad programming or a lie and I’m a fan of neither of these options.
Bad programming lowers my confidence in things being “done right” … such as my Phantasms getting both retaliation and fury when I’m specced for them to have both (doesn’t work right now … like many other classes’ traits)
A lie is worse because it means that to compensate for people getting tokens faster than ArenaNet desired, they have created a “bug” that drastically reduces this in order to combat it.
What’s also aggravating is seeing other people who were able to get enough tokens in a week to get full sets of exotic weapons and gear … while the rest of us are now screwed … those people are running around happy.
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
Punishing skilled people for clearing dungeon fast? What the kitten are you thinking Arena Net?
“This game is for casuals and only casuals, so hardcore players will be punished” – right? I cannot see other explanation.
Lol, actually it punishes both hardcores and casuals.
Hardcores are getting punished for clearing dungeons too quickly.
Casuals are getting punished for any of the many number of reasons they may clear up to 99% of a dungeon but get 0 tokens because they didn’t complete 100% during the limited amount of time they had to play.
It truly is a knee jerk reaction to people farming the first few bosses for tokens and it resulted in a hack job of a patch that, assuming it was even working correctly, punishes people as stated above. It doesn’t even work correctly though so we not only have a crap scenario created by this hack job but also those who are getting tokens are being by bugs in the hack job.
The issue is that you can do 99% of a dungeon (only need to kill that last boss right in front of you) and then one of the following results in you getting 0 tokens:
That’s just off the top of my head.
The point is … life happens. You will not always have time to do a full run and sometimes even when you do, life happens and you suddenly don’t or that time you did finally have gets wasted. These things can be aggravating but now they are infuriating because when they happen the past hour or two of our time is now completely wasted because it’s an “all-or-nothing” type system.
My dungeon experience last night:
(1) Sit in Lion’s Arch saying in /map, “Level 80 LFG for any dungeon”
(2) Get a group for Sorrow’s Embrace
(3) We can’t get everyone into the same instance after several tries of logging out, remaking group, etc.
(4) Group disbands
(5) I return to Lion’s Arch, saying in /map, “Level 80 LFG for any dungeon”
(6) I get a group for Arah Exploration
(7) I spend over 2 hours in Arah Exploration in quite a good run and everyone is being polite, etc. and we get to near the end of Arah
(8) I get kicked so that a guildie of the other 4 people in the group (all in the same guild) can join in and get tokens
(9) All I see now is the loading screen as I’m immediately dropped out of Arah back into Cursed Shore
(10) My chat logs no longer show any /party chat, not even anything I had typed in /party … though it does show the various garbage said by the NPCs in Arah … so can’t even make a post with the exact names of the people and guild that screwed me over so that others can at least be warned that these guys will screw them over.
(11) I log off because I’m quite angry at ArenaNet for what I, as a programmer myself (in an actual professional capacity) see as a rushed hack job to fixed what was a “pseudo-exploit” as it wasn’t really an exploit but rather people gaining tokens too quickly, too easily in the eyes of ArenaNet (which I’m fine with … just don’t punish the rest of us with a hacked together fix)
I’m still sticking with the game because ultimately I do enjoy it and this was just one instance.
However, due to this experience, now the idea of doing any dungeon with any group that isn’t dominated by my own guildies/friends is just a non-option in my mind as I could have this same experience again. Heck, really any group that isn’t full of guildies/friends is a risk because any random player we pick up could ultimately leave whenever they want … putting us in a bad place where we are likely to get 0 tokens since we may then be unable to complete the dungeon.
This reduces the social aspect of the game … I will more than likely not be exposed to other people running dungeons now because I don’t want to risk wasting my time again and being simply angry at the game once I get screwed over by people being “bad” and the game catering to them being “bad”.
Did I deserve to get some tokens for the large number of bosses I helped take down in Arah exploration mode in a path I’d never done before? Heck yes. I did my part throughout the dungeon and had never done that path in Arah before so should have received the tokens without any diminishing returns … but I received zero tokens
Did those 4 guys’ guildie that they replaced me with deserve the tokens for path completion? Heck no. Most of the dungeon had been completed already. He/she should have received tokens in proportion to the number/difficulty of bosses defeated once he/she was in the group … but he/she received the full number of tokens for “completing” the dungeon path
Anything works at this point, I just hate the fact that people who completed the story mode and got bad rewards are getting “compensated” while I can almost guarantee all of us players finishing their “tough” content won’t see any of the lost tokens.
When did people get compensated for this? I finished my personal story line all the way through Arah storymode a while back and received a bunch of 40-ish to 50-ish level garbage for my efforts and haven’t seen any “compensation” since.
If we people are getting compensated for this shaft … I apparently got shafted again because I didn’t.
If you’re too good at this game, we’ll punish you.
Lol, somewhat.
You’re also missing the part where … “if you’re trying to experience/learn the dungeon content but any hiccups happen that prevent 100% completion, you get zero rewards … we don’t care if you killed 90% of the bosses”
Killing 90% of the bosses in Arah in a 2 hour run and then the group not finishing … something outside my control … should not leave me aggravated and thinking, “wow, I just wasted 2 hours in Arah exploration mode that I could have spent farming in Cursed Shore”.
Honestly I think your problem would be solved by them keeping the diminishing returns (to stop “exploiters”) but have it working such that the dungeon tokens drop per boss.
If done this way, the casual players have enough time to kill a few bosses to gain tokens. This would allow those casuals with enough skill to still eventually gain the dungeon skins; just at a much slower rate than those with the time to complete one or more paths per gaming session.
With the current system, if casual players do not have enough time to finish a full run they get 0 tokens. This time required can be reduced over time as they gain experience with the dungeon (as you noted), but the amount of time taken to reduce the overall is extended by quite a bit as casuals only have so much time per session to learn the parts of the dungeon, so they may only get so far each time until they have optimized their times in the parts the initially have time for … and this is assuming they don’t get aggravated with the lack of any real rewards and find something else to do … running a dungeon five times and killing 50, 60, 70, 80, 90% of the bosses and getting no rewards whatsoever out of those 5 different gaming sessions can be demoralizing and/or infuriating (depending on the person).
Also, to agree with the OP, casual does not indicate a lack of skill. Casual indicate’s a restriction of free-time to play. Some of us, often those with more money to pour into the game, work full-time jobs.
Neither group is “better” or “worse”, but it would be nice to have options. For those casuals with time restrictions on their selves and those they play with that prevent them from having 5 people long enough for full dungeon runs, the options for exotics are to farm gold to buy them on the AH, farm Karma to buy from merchants, or farm PvP Tokens to buy from merchants (though tokens only get you exotic weapons … not exotic armor).
As I posted in the thread I created in this same forum … the “no tokens till the end” is “bad” and could be made “better” by keeping the diminishing returns system to affect the tokens received (to stop the “exploiters”) but have players receive tokens from bosses again.
Not receiving any tokens from doing a dungeon run until you have completed the entire path creates several scenarios that while aggravating by themselves are made even more so due to the fact that they now result in a 100% denial of you receiving tokens you honestly deserve for the content you did do.
Furthermore, I don’t think giving tokens as random rare drops in the dungeons is a fix for this problem. The drop rate for rares (going by how often I see a yellow 80 item or tier 6 fine crafting drop) is not very high. Receiving 1 dungeon token with this drop rate drastically pales in comparison to simply giving players tokens per boss again but applying the diminishing returns system to the tokens dropped by the bosses.
Assuming decent coding conventions, the same code that calculates how many tokens to generate per player at the end of completing a path could just as easily be leveraged in calculating how many tokens to generate per player upon killing a boss on a given path.
They already decided on the solution to that problem, it is to (eventually) make badges a rare loot from the bosses.
Yeah, read my whole post, buddy.
I mentioned that I saw that but don’t believe it’s the answer because currently when I open a chest after killing a boss I only have a “meh” feeling … before seeing what’s in there
Also, you need numerous amounts of tokens in order to buy the armors and weapons. How rare are these “rare drops” going to be? Getting 1 token on a rare occasion is going to be pretty poor compared to simply moving the tokens back to a per-boss basis but keeping the diminishing returns … making it fine-grained would not be difficult.
Their current implementation feels like a rushed patch and their “next step” from it looks like another rushed patched trying to fix the initial rushed patch.
First, I understand why this was implemented. It is a possible “solution” to people killing the first boss(es) they can easily get to and then resetting and killing them again.
However, there are several issues with not getting Tokens till the end.
Scenario #1:
You get to the last boss and get kicked by the other four because they are in the same guild and a guildie wants in the dungeon with them.
This allows people to be deprived of the primary reward from them going into the dungeon due to some people being “less than good”. I can farm more loot/money per hour outside dungeons than I can in them. I’m there for the Tokens.
The primary problem is that this allows bad player interactions to be even worse for the “victim(s)” … and this happened to me last night after being patient with a very slow Arah exploration mode run … I was rather aggravated.
Scenario #2:
Get through most of the exploration mode to only have it bug out on you. Boss/NPC is stuck or something crashes.
Again, the primary reason for being in the dungeon is deprived from you. This makes a “technical difficulty” worse than it normally would be.
Scenario #3:
You get through a good bit of the dungeon and 1+ player(s) needs to go, thinks it’s too hard, etc. They leave for some reason(s). This hinders the group, makes the content much harder, and can often result in the group disbanding as it can cascade into 1+ other players leaving the group … no tokens again for the work you’ve done.
The current “no tokens till the end” makes bad situations worse. It degrades the player experience.
I do not believe the mentioned “tokens as rare drops” is the correct solution to this either.
Opening a chest after killing a boss with the current system gives me only a “meh” feeling.
Possible Alternate Solution to People Farming First Boss(es)
Rather than saying “no tokens till the end”, why not make the token system more fine-grained?
ArenaNet is obviously already tracking how many times a player has gone down each individual path, why not factor that into the tokens received per boss rather than the tokens received per full path completion? (or both).
If I keep going down Path_A and killing Boss_X, each time I go down Path_A could just as easily be recorded and used in calculating how many tokens I get for killing Boss_X. I understand that this could require a few more bits per player to track, but it could potentially not as the same bits used to track “dungeon_path_traversals(,dungeonId, pathId, playerid)” could simply be leveraged when calculating “boss_kill_tokens(Boss_X, playerid)”
Just for the sake of example, if I go into a dungeon and repeatedly kill one boss, I could get 5, 3, 1, 0 tokens. Now, while I chose arbitrary number values, I did select them with some thought in mind. Notice that by killing Boss_X three times (5+3+1 = 9), I’d get less tokens than if I killed Boss_X and then killed Boss_Y (5+5 = 10). I’d also likely have more fun and experience more of the dungeon.
The fighting this week has already surpassed the fighting last week vs Fergussion’s and Borlis (as Slamz already stated). Because of this, I’m happy.
Do I want to win and be 1st place? Sure, that’d be nice.
Do I want to have actual battles to fight instead of hunting down stragglers from a server with little, if any, wPvP population? Yes … battles are fun … the other crap isn’t.
Which do I care more about? Having good battles. In the end, the score doesn’t mean much of anything if I didn’t have fun … I honestly don’t understand the people who prefer to sit in 3 hours queues but have their server win … way to sit in the queue while “you” won. Take ArenaNet’s hints and pack up your friends/guildies and move to Kaineng or one of the other servers in need of a wPvP population.
As for this thread … stop whining, trolling, or whatever garbage you kids do these days and play. If you don’t have a picture or video to back up what you’re saying, then what you’re saying has no merit. Anyone can say anything they like on here (as long as a mod doesn’t jump on it). Heck, I could say I’m the queen of England. No one here has any way to argue that one way or another.
So, put up or shut up … and play.
Honestly, my only concern pertaining to the scores for this week is that if Ehmry gets 3rd place we could be placed back with the lowest servers and have another boring week of no competition. I would not enjoy that … though the server perks did help me farm for my exotics, lol … so it’d not be a total loss (well-designed, ArenaNet. Kudos!)
When it comes to crafting unique looking items, there are recipes strewn throughout the game from various merchants that allow you to craft such items.
Crafting has the recipes just given to you at X levels, the recipes you get through the discovery system, Mystic Forge recipes, and then recipes you have to buy from these special merchants.
An example of what I’m talking about is the Grawl weapon recipe you can get from the Grawl merchant in the Norn starting zone.
They are all worthless to create because they sell for like 1/10 of what the mats are worth.
99.9% of crafting in a nutshell ^^
Unless you want legendaries. Every legendary requires 2 crafted items that require 400 in two different crafting professions and are bind on account.
There are also some ways to make money off crafting … just not advertised because then those could be potentially flooded and we don’t want that.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.
