Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

Enektric.4527:

I don’t really think that every class should have a “kryptonite” because that defeats the purpose of a skilled match <Snipped as to not have a huge quote>

I think the idea of a “kryptonite” should be based on the build rather than the profession. But, I do think it should exist. It’s what promotes Team play. If there are no distinct weaknesses then its’ just slap 5 people together and go. But when you create weaknesses and strengths then meshing them becomes important. /shrug, just my take on that.

You don’t need hard counters to promote team play. Look at an fps game or rts game.

Hard counters are barriers to action combat. If you want to have fun in a fight you’re going to have less fun the harder something counters you, because you’re less likely to be effective. When you don’t feel effective you feel less like you’re contributing anything.

D/D ele is on the same level as hambow for sure. Less crowd control for more team boons/Heals is the main difference.

Might stacking makes both hambow and D/D ele OP. Yes it’s OP, but it’s only because of how much might they can stack on top of their build. My suggestion would be to nerf might stacking somehow, developers choice because there’s lots of ways to do it.

I know people say nerf strength runes, but the reality is that there’s 2 or 3 other rune sets related to might that are close in in strength to strength runes.

I’m glad numerous posters also have an issue with the hard countering rock paper scissors existing.

I feel like action combat and rock paper scissors should be mutually exclusive as it undermines the fun factor in action combat.

maha.7902:

i like how literally this entire thread is a bunch of pvp heroes and theres like zero pve balance discussion

I like it too, it’s another indicator that people aren’t okay with the state of PVP. Give them enough indications that the players are seeing problems, then maybe they’ll look and find some valid things to address.

#seesthesarcasm
#spinsitconstructively

Tman.6349:

What about the daggerstorm burst inside a mesmer’s feedback? I’m not sure of the numbers but I know it does 40k+ in the first 1/4 second. It would have time to pulse twice given the above stipulations.

How does this work? Feedback and Dagger storm both reflect. Dagger storm lasts longer so the thief wouldn’t get hit.

Thank you for this topic and discussion first off.

I also would like to start higher level in the discussion than what profession strengths and weaknesses should be, as I feel there’s a couple high level things to address.

Thanks again for the topic but secondly, single target damage should be significant enough that cleave/AoE isn’t clearly superior in most situations. This issue is making it difficult for glass builds to be viable. Hambow, grenade kit, D/D ele, S/X thieves, etc all have AoE that is just as or more viable than single target weapon sets. Why should anyone run something that is more single target oriented with that being the case?

Thirdly, there should be a better balance between passive play/damage and active play/damage. And builds shouldn’t be able to stack so much might that they are awesome at both passive and active damage (condi and dd) . Passive is very forgiving compared to active in the game at the moment. Passive damage ’s strength forces players to take as much condi management as they can fit into their build/comp, because of how frequently is can be applied and how long it lasts.

Finally, this is completely my opinion, but no one likes a hard counter. In what other game do you literally not stand a chance in hell, because of the player build you’re matched up against? In any fps you are never hard countered vs a player for the whole match, in a moba you can at least somewhat adjust your build as you play to accommodate a match up disparity, in an rts players can’t hard countering each other for a match. It’s not fun, I want a chance to win fights vs similar skill level players when I outplay them and I’m glass and they’re not. Also as a thief I think the S/D vs Shatter Mesmer matchups are just plain wrong. I shouldn’t be able to counter someone that hard.

Ultimately what I’m getting at is your open ended questions don’t make sense to me because I don’t want hard counters. I don’t mind having a slight edges or slight handicaps, I want soft counters where player mechanics, skill, and reaction time are the main drivers for determining a fight. No profession should have a kryptonite. Each profession should have at least 1 all around build that is always viable, and from there you can make trade-offs for things you tend not use in order to make things you tend to use stronger.

I’ve got no clue how to do all that while still keeping professions balanced and using all their current mechanics, but that’s just my opinion on all this.

Numot.3965:

Combat is more decisive and intense now. Power builds gained many options in rune sets, making possible to make more bruiser builds as well as full on glass cannons. I see far more diversity in the builds people use compared to pre-patch where I could accurately guess what people were using and never be surprised.

Overall I think things are in a good spot, its not like release where burst damage was absurd, or how its been since power/burst builds were nerfed and everything was conditions/bunkers for like the past 6+ months.

Most builds are still bunker/sustain. The difference is that damage was buffed so much that it doesn’t seem like it anymore.

If you try to run old glass cannon builds you’re setting yourself up to have to play perfectly or lose.

Walker.3056:

If i am facing a thief and he spam HS i dont see myself losing in any possible way. unless i am facing a 1vX but then its wouldnt be a HS problem but a outnembered problem.

If i see a friend thief and he spam HS i feel sorry for him cause that will only kill (IF LUCKY) unexperienced people.

^ this

It’s done a lot, the power creep allowed nearly all professions to trait and slot defensive abilities while offense gets carried by equipment.

Everyone in PvE/WvW needs a full set of pirate runes, so that everyone is sharing 15+ stacks of might with a 70% uptime.

And all the birds. The swarms of birds, the birds that attack for nearly 2k damage, and that evade, and can eat AoE off your stack/zerg, and that respawn every 60 seconds.

Wow, dedication.

A lack of build diversity is the reason people view gw2 as unbalanced. How many weapon sets of each class are viable in a meta? How many trait lines of each class are viable in each meta?

You’ll see very few weapon set combos viable and very few trait spreads simultaneously viable in a meta.

Additionally, Two of the biggest most obvious balance faults of this game in conquest are 1) that AoE is so strong that single target focused builds often aren’t viable in team fights 2) passive play is so strong that it can neutralize perfectly played active builds.

The above exist in the meta to a significant degree. Battle sigils on ele’s and warriors for example, turrets on engineers, spammable condi skills. All not fun.

Since ANet wants passive play to be so strong and for there to be so much passive play, I would rather they take away my option to play active builds so that when I lose or win I feel like it’s only because the other person was on a heavily passive build.

Then at least players would be on a similar playing field with the viable plays available to them.

Chaith.8256:

Ghostwolf.9863:

a t s e.9614:

GG , you should be thankfull that the teef didint open with a backstab.

Dem backstabbs, no counturpaly no skil

Dem facestabs into protection

With no crit

Darnis.4056:

D/p and S/D is coming back in a big way..

Especially with the new steal buff; Why’d they buff it to not require LOS ? :/ feels like dumbing the game down even further while making balance non existant.

From my experience they buffed it to include LoS. I haven’t seen any results from that ‘fix’, and I still steal without teleporting while getting my stolen bundle.

TyPin.9860:

Samis.1750:

I would guess that 50% of roamers in wvw are thieves – so something must be wrong.

Other than that is irrelevant for the discussion, I think that this estimation is not even true. I see each of the other professions roaming in WvW as much as I see thieves.

But can you see thieves roaming?

They have perma stealth.!!! 1!1
Haxxxxxx

#notserious

The Mesmer was there because it’s what Helseth plays.

Why did Mesmer work? The tl:Dr is Because they burst hard, apply pressure, and have portal for team mobility.

Helseth would tell you it wasn’t the Mesmer that was viable, it was him, which is partly true bcs he has strong awareness and positioning.

Gokil.2543:

Shockwave.1230:

Icebow was in the meta a bit until ppl learned to play against it.

I don’t see 30 in air being the next meta just to deal with thief. You lose too much from team fights and personal sustain. That healing power lost, the condi removal, and the 2k health is big. You need sustain to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage. Also you don’t have protection on aura.

A thief can literally get around shocking aura by not using basi venom and using infiltrator’s signet instead of steal. Or they can basi venom you, then steal so you’re cc’ed just as long as the aura. Or they can use shadow step after they steal and shadow return to deal with the two stuns from shocking aura.

You just become too squishy, and lose too much team support for a little bit of damage and an aura.

It’s good to see people thinking outside the box, but tempest defense would be best on a one-shot ele for the purposes being described, in my opinion.

Thief builds today entirely revolve around steal though. Maybe they will learn to deal with it in the end (that’s what meta is after all), but remember that they need steal for: fury, vigor, boonrip, damage, healing, daze. Not having any of those will set a thief back severely even if he manages to avoid using steal and basi on you altogether (which i highly doubt).

If you’ve played as a thief against shocking aura, you would know it’s not just something you brush off. You describe a lot of ways for a thief to deal with shocking aura which include using a lot of cooldowns just to keep the break-even (basi and steal? shadowstep and return?). Even if they do that, you’ve won since they had to blow a lot of stuff just to keep the break-even, and you still have a shocking aura up your sleeve.

Note that I added a sigil of leeching to get about half of the sustain healing ripple would provide, while also adding 1k damage every 9s.

If you want to run protection on aura you can. I find it an overrated trait since you don’t need protection as much when your auras are up anyway.

The main point I was trying to make is that is that you’re building specifically towards a thief, not the meta or what’s optimal for the class.

I was just listing ways I’d counter your build while I was thinking about D/P, but meta is current S/D. The build would struggle heavily against an S/D thief that opened with shortbow basi venom. Auras will slow down the damage a bit, but the main value of the current meta ele build is it’s sustain that allows it to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage.

Thieves can adapt to this build via game play alone, and the lack of sustain/team support also makes you weaker in team fights. I don’t think the tradeoff makes sense, given the context I have currently. If I’m missing something though and the build is better than I think for conquest then I’m sure we’ll see it be meta.

Toker and Caed’s streams have these situations. If you watch you’ll notice they’re winning the fights they’re in and rotating to +1. Easier said than done to win your fights, but they often do in solo q vs the general player base. You’ll have to look at past broadcasts though, last I saw Caed has lag when he streams so he doesn’t anymore, and Toker is exploring Wildstar.

Assuming similar skill levels though, you shouldn’t win.

Icebow was in the meta a bit until ppl learned to play against it.

I don’t see 30 in air being the next meta just to deal with thief. You lose too much from team fights and personal sustain. That healing power lost, the condi removal, and the 2k health is big. You need sustain to build up might stacks to deal heavy damage. Also you don’t have protection on aura.

A thief can literally get around shocking aura by not using basi venom and using infiltrator’s signet instead of steal. Or they can basi venom you, then steal so you’re cc’ed just as long as the aura. Or they can use shadow step after they steal and shadow return to deal with the two stuns from shocking aura.

You just become too squishy, and lose too much team support for a little bit of damage and an aura.

It’s good to see people thinking outside the box, but tempest defense would be best on a one-shot ele for the purposes being described, in my opinion.

Downstate is necessary to prevent pvp from becoming mostly all zerk builds or tanks builds with spike potential like eviscerate warriors.

Everyone would play Yolo min max sustain dps style. You’d see things like shadow arts max burst thieves, dps guards, and lame things like that. Support would be an afterthought bcs it wouldn’t matter.

The game is balanced around the down state existing. Traits and runes would have to be reworked too. It’d be all about connecting coordinated bursts and fight would domino more quickly than they already do.

I can go on and on about the foreseeable impacts, but It’s only a good idea if you want to remove depth from combat by reducing the importance of support, thereby scaling ANet’s idea of a trinity even further towards being dps heavy.

How easy would it be if you could just hide behind LoS never looking at your target while it dies to clones and phantasms?

As for blind? Idk the answer why beyond counterplay. But it seems fair to me.

Does that mean it’s game over every time there’s an auto attack that connects?

Don’t fight bunkers 1v1.

Let the necro chain the fears then stun break. Or daze with SoH, or stealth to avoid being targeted, or blind, or use Los, or Dodge, or use evade skills, or some combination of these.

Pollution.8703:

I agree with many other people in the thread that the biggest balance problems right now are due to Runes of Strength and Air and Fire sigils and I don’t believe that thieves are too strong when compared to the top specs from other classes.

However I do think that thieves crowd out other zerker builds. It would be nice if thieves didn’t have such a massive advantage when fighting a zerker mesmer or something similar. How one would change thieves so that they are weaker against squishy specs while not nerfing them against hambow, nade engi, or the popular ele builds I have no clue.

Dps guard is a counter to thief.

Zerk warrior builds can counter thief too.

I’ve seen power necros do well too, but obviously they are lacking in viability for coordinated conquest.

Condi engineers do well against thieves, they’re glassy.

However zerk shatter Mesmer does struggle. As do most zerk ele builds.

Fluffball.8307:

There is no need for defiance in dungeons. It makes sense when you have 80 people all pounding on the same boss, but 5 people is more reasonable. It might need a little rebalancing with defiance gone, but it can go away if the devs want it to. Makes a lot more sense for people to be able to shut down a boss than for us to only be able to autoattack and taking all our skill-moves away from us.

I as ‘cool’ as it’d be to shutdown a boss completely. I think that would get old pretty quick. I feel like there’s a balance to achieve with making interrupting a boss viable while not a complete shutdown.

maha.7902:

Defiant is fine and does not need fixing. It promotes intelligent use of CC and not braindead spam.

I’ll need you to elaborate as it’s coming across as a troll post to me.

I am always curious why ppl complain about thieves in WvW. I’d appreciate if the complaints came with addition context such, as 1v1, 5v5, zergVzerg, and any additional environmental context that’s relevant.

In general I get the feeling people are upset about 1v1 situations where their build isn’t setup for a dual and a thief’s is, so additional context would be helpful.

Also stealth doesn’t allow contesting of points unless someone is somehow exploiting a bug.

Fay.2357:

Shockwave.1230:

Fay.2357:

Shockwave.1230:

Thought about this just now and figured it’d be interesting to get feedback on.

What if a trait existed that made portal entre and portal exeunt randomly teleport enemies within it upon initial cast. Maybe a distance of like 750 units, not something crazy far, but far enough to give you some breathing room.

I think portal would see more use in PvE and I think it’d be an interesting way to utilize portal entre in PvP. I wouldn’t want to use exeunt for that purpose in PvP because the mobility is more important IMO, but I’m interested to see ppls thoughts.

This would have to be a PvP only thing. Teleporting monsters can break ai/instances/whatever faster than you think.

Why do you think this is different than Banish, Windblast, into the void, scorpion wire, or any similar CC.

Ever tried to toss a mob off of a cliff with normal cc? It doesn’t work. Teleports ignore that limitation though, and if you can get a mob to glitch out of their normal area of operation, it can result in really odd effects.

Why can’t it just follow the same behavior as blinks? Blink doesn’t get you places you shouldn’t be able to go unless you’re on ground without pathing to void jump, npcs can’t get onto those anyways though, bcs they can’t path to it, and they can’t be teleport ed to them bcs they can’t path to it.

No issue if you use the kind of teleporting provided by blinks.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Personally, I think Defiance shouldn’t have the stacks trigger at all if you interrupt an attack.

This rewards proper use of the CC, while punishing CC spamming.

There’s definitely other ways to fix defiance. I’ve noticed that Anet tends to cling onto their ideas even if they’re bad, instead of redoing them from scratch. So I’m proposing something that they’d hopefully be more open to. No one likes to lose face, ANet as a whole seems particularly sensitive to this imo, so helping them refine their original ideas feels like a good approach to me.

Fay.2357:

Shockwave.1230:

Thought about this just now and figured it’d be interesting to get feedback on.

What if a trait existed that made portal entre and portal exeunt randomly teleport enemies within it upon initial cast. Maybe a distance of like 750 units, not something crazy far, but far enough to give you some breathing room.

I think portal would see more use in PvE and I think it’d be an interesting way to utilize portal entre in PvP. I wouldn’t want to use exeunt for that purpose in PvP because the mobility is more important IMO, but I’m interested to see ppls thoughts.

This would have to be a PvP only thing. Teleporting monsters can break ai/instances/whatever faster than you think.

Why do you think this is different than Banish, Windblast, into the void, scorpion wire, or any similar CC.

Thought about this just now and figured it’d be interesting to get feedback on.

What if a trait existed that made portal entre and portal exeunt randomly teleport enemies within it upon initial cast. Maybe a distance of like 750 units, not something crazy far, but far enough to give you some breathing room.

I think portal would see more use in PvE and I think it’d be an interesting way to utilize portal entre in PvP. I wouldn’t want to use exeunt for that purpose in PvP because the mobility is more important IMO, but I’m interested to see ppls thoughts.

Too many people are discussing mechanics in this thread as generalities with little to no context.

There’s a lack of value there.

An opinion about teleports being gimmicky or stealth being gimmicky is unimportant. Also there are 5 and 3 professions with those mechanics respectively, so gimmicky isn’t the phrasing I’d use. ‘My opinion is, I don’t like something about these mechanics’ is what’s really being communicated.

Few of these opinions are even tying back to S/D with examples or details.

Another QQ thief thread is just going to get an L2P response from people that have adapted. If you can’t see this cycle unfolding before you broaden your perspective. Otherwise these threads become largely a waste.

This fix centers completely around the idea of adding an ‘Easily Interruptable’ (EI) state. From there it Can implemented numerous ways

Basically there Would be a window of this EI state. In essence all this would be is hard Cc skills impacting defiance more during the EI state. The EI state would be implemented in a way that it’s active during strong boss attacks.

Since various encounters are designed around a minimum number of players the impact of an interrupt skill on defiance should be variable. But a good baseline to design around and implement quickly would be 5 man groups.

Now we’re getting to the point where we need to test specifics on numbers, and for a 5 man group this will depend on a few variables. 1 being the speed of the attack, because this would likely be tied to the duration of the EI window. Another variable to consider is how many players do you expect to be paying attention to these Windows and feasibly apply a Cc. Another variable to consider is how many Ccs do you want to connect during the EI window in order for an interrupt to occur.

I think there are 3 baselines to balance around slow, medium, andfast, attacks. For example balancing around 5 people maybe expect 4 CCs to connect during a medium speed attack. So each interrupt attempt would cause 25%of the defiance stacks to deplete. This could be variable per boss obviously, but I’m just talking baselines.

Finally, perhaps it makes sense change the display method of defiance. Maybe a % or make the El state a completely separate UI element with its own set of charges that only displays during an EI attack.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

oZii.2864:

Disappointing Ash! If you really know ele you know that strength isn’t why ele is viable. It’s might which could be done with hoelbrak.

Hoelbrak and strength give 6 arcana Eles 9 stacks of might permanent with a battle sigil. The 7% modifier is getting to much credit for what 7% mod actually does it’s an increase but the meta build is a bunker/brawler with 2 in earth.

Just flat no armor consideration. 1500 lightning whip = 1607 with 7% modifier big whoopty doo!

3000 burning speed = 3210 with 7% modifier big whoopty doo.

It’s the might that matters the 7% modifier isn’t as big as people make it out to be on a bunker build with only 2 modifiers.

They nerf strength Eles will use hoelbrak if it’s better, they nerf hoelbrak Eles will use water or pirate if it’s better. They would have to go through 4 rune sets to stop ele from stacking might like it can now or nerf ele.

People complain now imagine if Eles put on water runes.

on topic isn’t meta breaking mean unplayable? Or is there some other meaning to breaking I don’t know like almost OP, kind of OP, sort of OP, to OP.

You can easily have 6-9, maybe spiking upwards with just running Sigil of Battle. The runeset isn’t really needed for that. Of course the damage increase would be up 100% of the time using the Sigil and the runeset but 7% isn’t that great.

I think the biggest problem is just how easy you can Might stack with very little effort. Hoelbrak would be a cheaper version of Strength but at the expense of the damage increase though its not that huge.

So it is just a coincidence that when this runeset comes out that suddenly Ele are popping up into S/TPvP more and more? Rarely saw them before the recent update now they are coming out in numbers.

the question is, when this runset gets nerfed, how much of an impact will that have on the ele? I don’t think the actual update changes they got really helped them that much, some were decent but not really suddenly making us really strong or anything.

a 7% damage increase all the time, a long with all the other options they have for increased damage is still pretty good.

There’s also pirate runes, which in my opinion are better than hoelbrak, because the 14+ second 70%+ uptime of 3 party wide might stacks plus an Ad bird that evades as a trade for 10% less might duration is a no brainer. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more D/D eles and Hambow warriors using it honestly. The two of them together give out 6 stacks of might in team fights, plus two birds to deal with as well, which easily makes up for the 7% damage while they’re active.

Acro Trickery S/D works now because of the power creep from the April patch. Air/fire sigils and runes of strength are what give it enough damage to be strong. Also the meta is might stack heavy which favors larcenous strike.

Take away strength runes and double procs for critical sigils make air proc every 5 seconds like it used to and it’s just a mediocre damaging, mobile evade tank, like it was prior to the power creep.

#carriedbyequipmentmods

Give us the beta elite that let you not be revealed from stealth while attacking for 10 seconds! Lich is allowed why not this beta elite!

Quickness backstab spam!!!

#notserious

Hotjoin does not have the people that want a competitive match. Ppl that want a competitive match do solo and team queue.

Hot join is largely farmers going after their 2 tiers. Since they are farming what they care about is speed of rewards. Team stacking gets them wins faster. They ideally try to make every match last 7 minutes.

Go to solo or team queue of you have a team and want a competitive match

Chicago Jack.5647:

Timing an immobilize also works well as you can take advantage of them being immobed while stealthed.

Kind of, I get around this with teleports. But you can expect they will have used infiltrator’s signet, shadow step, or swapped weapons if you don’t get a shadow shot to the face.

Hotjoin is not the PvP community. It might be PvEers or wvwers grinding as quickly as possible for their 2 tiers per day, but it is not the pvp community.

Evan Lesh.3295:

locoman.1974:

Add a small indicator for gear that is used in a template (much like the rarity border).

Would be very helpful if templates used actual gear.

Darnis.4056:

I guess the problem really is how do you make an all encompassing system for PVP and PVE?

The answer is you can’t there will have to be two systems as long as you want an economy in this game.

Skill and trait templates could absolutely be shared. They would just be two compatible components in the larger template system with other non-compatible parts.

The problem is making the feature approachable and easy to use when there could be SO many potential parts.

Even though I think that a global solution between fame modes is the right solution reality is that it wouldn’t be worth the cost/time.

It’s better to just start with a trait and slot skills template for all game modes then from there start to diverge.

Ironically PvP is the easier template to implement in GW2, which wasn’t the case in GW1. So do PvP templates after the lightweight trait slot template is implemented.

For template loading in PvE/WvW maybe you could do a search for matching prefix items and if they aren’t found in the players inventory then create a free low rarity item that can’t be salvaged or destroyed or upgraded or forged.

For PvE/WvW I wouldn’t do too much about sigils/runes except for check inventory and prioritize equipping those as opposed to other prefix weapons that Match.

It has 1 clearly low risk high reward build in the form of S/D Acro Trickery.

To deal with any other Sword build fight a thief at its leash post (Sword 2’s Circle it leaves behind), anddodge/interrupt the 3 skill before they connect whether it’s larcenous or pistol whip. Keep the pressure up until they die, it will be fast if they run away to disengage.

S/D Acro sacrifices some damage for a lot of dodges so you can’t play it the same way. It’s almost like a sustain thief, but like any sustain build their weakness is spiking them down.

Think of S/D Acro more like a Warrior like build, just with high mobility.

Evan Lesh.3295:

We absolutely want to make build templates. They could work similar to GW1, but there are more components to a build now. Using the old string-code method may prove to be unwieldy.

Things that must be in a template:

• Weapons
• Sigils
• Rune
• Amulet
• Skills
• Traits

What could be in a template:

• Skins
• Dyes
• Outfit
• Finisher

Things to consider:

• Sharing (chat links? codes? urls?)
• Viewing (seeing some else’s vs. seeing your own)
• Saving (notepad vs. local vs. account vs. web)
• Building (one spot in UI vs. multiple spots)
• Websites (third-party sites should work with in-game)
• APIs (Could expose an API to third-parties)
• PvP vs PvE vs WvW (each mode requires different configuration options)

How would you like to see any/all of these work?

PvP templates from gw1 seem almost as complex as gw2 templates will be. Builds had to deal with potential 7 armor weapon items each with 2 modifiers. Then of course there were the 8 skills. Attribute point distribution and the primary secondary profession.

IMO, build templates need to have a universal base. With context swapping between the 3 game modes.

For weapons in pve/WvW check for an identical match, sigils and prefix. if it’s not there check for an identical weapon, if something is not there warn the player (in, missing sigils, missing weapon prefix, etc.) In PvP if the weapon isn’t there show a dialogue to request a coin fee to ‘buy’ the weapon on the fly.

Do something similar to the above for armor in each game mode.

The slot skills should be easy to solve, just warn if something is unavailable to the player.

Traits should also be easy, just warn if something isn’t available to the player.

Allow for sharing obviously, lots of ways to implement that.

As far as previewing, there’s two required previews. Chat preview and UI preview. For chat previewing Use the previewing you already have in game with evasive arcana for context swapping. Right click to change context, for example if your in PvP, show the pvp context, but have right click cycle through WvW and PvE.

For building templates UI preview, you could build off your pvp UI as the interface for players and give the option to equip from there and display the cost in terms of transmutation charges/weapon purchases if you wanted to do that.

Honestly though for templates if your taking about skins and dyes you do work on a wardrobe template sharing system and integrate that with a build template system at some point.

If a new account is created in the midst of or after a living story arc will the player have access to all prior living story episodes?

Since you can’t have a team of 5 zerk builds and expect to win vs balanced, sustain, or bunker teams I would say the game isn’t too reliant on zerk builds. I would say it’s too reliant in being sustainy/bunkery

I’ve never seen anything burst harder than a 6/6/0/0/2 revealed training Dagger thief.

You can land steal, backstab, dual strike, wild strike, sigil of air, and sigil of fire all in 1 second. If quickness pops early enough you might be able to get a third attack in from the auto attack chain.

This thread is two separate topics.

People have a problem with rng in general, because the outcome can be largely out of there control. In the case of high percentage ring people have less issue with that for beneficial effects.

The other topic is condi vs power. People have issues with condi, because it’s often AoE, Ranged, or both , reduces healing (poison), is passive once applied, ignores armor, ignores defensive abilities once applied ( like invulnerable) , and is therefore easy to play, low risk, and high reward.

The only thing that keeps it from being absurdly broken is that burning and Poison don’t stack in intensity when multiple ppl run condi, but all the other dots do, and it’s still broken (OP).

Might stacking and Celestial Amulet has created even more ridiculously broken scenarios where there are power condi hybrids hitting about as hard as power builds and condi builds together if not harder while having toughness, vitality, and healing power bonuses.

gesho.9468:

let me try, though i frankly am newbie. somewhat random thoughts.

Shockwave.1230:

I don’t understand what your (ANet) view on balance is.

• balance is per build.
• some builds can be strong 1v1, some in team fight. it is possible to have hard counter 1v1.
• no build should counter everything 1v1, without having counter itself.
• power and condi, bunker and damage, each should be able to kill the other in 1v1.
• given meta, every build should have at least one viable build, fitting at least one role.

I don’t understand at what tier of play you are trying to balance.

tpvp and soloQ should be balanced in high and mid skill level.

I don’t understand what your goals are for each class.

given high customizability of gw2, there is no goal for prof identity. prof identity is in RP such as: “this is in and out, hard to catch, pita damage, but once caught – squishy. stealth is his mark”. this RP is then overall implemented in weapon and util skills, traits.

I don’t understand what your view on build diversity per class is.

in general – the more the better. given meta there should be at least one viable per meta.

I don’t understand what you’re doing or where you’re going with your PvP.

question is rhetorical. if you mean esports, would be nice, but mmo overall doesnt seem to be a good choice for esports but to the extent available, we’ll support it. but there will be no big resources invested in this. there is no particular emphasis to cater to high tier players necessarily.

I do this because you have what could be the best action combat system of any RPG I have every played, and I have fun playing it.

yeah, we know

I don’t see a direction though.

the direction is making good better. we dont expect any fundamental changes.

I don’t see your initiative, I don’t see your passion, I’ve felt it missing for too long.

allie murdock, who got so much hate before getting all the love (after announcing resignation) used to work 17 hours, then would go home, get in bad and watch twitch on her plasma. that’s not no passion.

Thanks for posting some of your observations.

Allie indeed seemed very passionate at ANet. Unfortunately the company itself doesn’t seem to echo that passion from what we’ve seen up to this point. 1 person can make a significant difference when they have a proper position of influence, Allie had passion but not the position.

In my opinion, It’s the upper management that lacks the same fire for PvP that some of the lower level employees have/had.

Bleenko.2763:

anyone know which abilities are very very important to avoid if possible
per class would help alot thanks

Elementalist

• Burning Speed
• Meteor Shower (under maybe the last couple of seconds)
• Phoenix
• Dragon’s tooth
• Flame Touch
• Lava Font (exept maybe 1 DoT tick)

• Earthquake (Sometimes follows Magnetic Leap/Ride the Lightning)
• Magnetic Grasp
• Churning Earth
• Unsteady Ground
• Me (Shockwave)
• Eruption

• Lightning Whip
• Lightning Touch
• Updraft (often follows Ride the Lightning)
• Static Field

Obviously this list isn’t very helpful without context. Basically avoid the CC skills via positioning, or dodges if you need. They will often be followed by the heavy hitter skills. If you can’t avoid the CC, then use you’re teleports or SoH interrupt to avoid the damage.

you always find time for what you’re passionate about

Evan Lesh.3295:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Could definitely happen that way. Do you think that’s more of a problem stemming from players not being able to easily switch builds on a per-map basis? It goes both ways: If someone is built for one map, there is no guarantee they get the map. They may do poorly on a map they didn’t vote for, or need to switch builds to adapt.

You can think about whether a certain implementation of a map vote feature would be a good one if you imagine how it works given any subset of maps. What if we had 2 maps, 20 maps, or 20 game modes?

I would prefer a map vote feature to be an improvement over the total RNG we have now rather than a solution to an atypical conquest map.

Builds per map can be solved at a later time potentially. When templates are implemented that solves that problem. No need to come up with another solution, when it will be solved.

For people that like lower popularity maps, occassionally put the low popularity maps together so that one they are more likely to be chosen. Currently an example would be to put Shyhammer and Spirit Watch together as map choices.