Guild Wars 2

Hi Anet,

I need you to do one of two things. Factor team composition into your matchmaking or balance your game.

That is all.

Morwath.9817:

@Shockwave.1230, I would respond to each single sentance you’ve made, but I guess its waste of my time, you will defend your friends/heroes anyway.

morrolan.9608:

Terms of Service, replace it with Code of Conduct.

I’d suggest reading it (currently not loading, so I won’t quote it for you) : https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-conduct-breaches-outcomes/

So in short, gaining anything due to not intended use of in-game systems isn’t allowed, if you notice anything that can be abused, you should report it and not exploit it (read: you shouldn’t try to fool MM by picking low MMR to reduce total MMR of premade and to be matched against much weaker players than you), otherwise any exploits can be threaten by temporal or permanent account suspension.

If you can prove that teams are intentially lowering their group MMR for the purpose of going up against weaker teams then you have a case for banning them.

However, players have been taking low MMR players months, perhaps years lowering group MMR for the purpose of reducing queue times.

Additionally MMR is influenced by profession, you can have your own low profession MMR queue as that profession for quicker queue times then swap professions at the start of a match.

These are things that ANet has known about and never banned before the league system was implemented. So becuase of that there won’t be mass bannings of players unless there is direct evidence they have intent to play weaker teams and not reduce queue times.

This means the most likely players to be banned are players who would have normal queue times and middle percentile MMR. Top tier players have the standard of manipulating MMR for reduced queue times to fall back on, since it has always been known and not punished.

If you have evidence that any player’s intent is to manipulate MMR for the purpose (be it a top tier or low tier player) then report them and present that evidence. Otherwise there’s no reason to continue trying to burn players at the stake for reducing queue times.

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

They aren’t doing anything wrong by queuing with low tiers, they are just trying to play the game in the competitive queue. The system takes that completely away from some people as it currently exists if you don’t take low queue players.

So?
-> Is system flawed? Check: Yes.
-> Are they abusing flaws in system? Check: Yes.
-> Are they abusing for personal gains? Check: Yes.
-> Do other players are disadvantaged because of abusing? Check: Yes.
-> Is abusing/exploiting against Code of Conduct? Check: Yes.

Do we should really care about their motives? Nope.
You will ask why shouldn’t we care about their motives? Because we will never know their real motives, since we can’t enter their head and read their thoughts, they may say I just want to play, but it will it be true? We will never know.

Shockwave.1230:

You can yell and scream foul, but teams that are already pro league teams don’t impact placings for the guild challenger league. So nothing foul is afoot.

So only guild challengers are playing in Ranked?

A flaw in the already flawed system is what actually allows players in these unqueuable situations to get matches, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to participate in the competitive queue.

Personal gain doesn’t matter, everyone is playing the game selfishly for their own enjoyment.

Other players aren’t at a disadvantage by top players taking low tiers so they can actually join into matches. These other players are at a disadvantage when their skill isn’t comparable to the team they are against.

Also, I am unfamiliar with any Terms of Service that are being violated, if you would enlighten me I’d be grateful.

There’s really nothing else to say, but this witch hunt of top players is wasteful when the system’s current design is clearly against them. They just want to queue and get their league badges/rewards like everyone else. They have a workaround that allows them to participate in the system even though it’s flawwed. Even Helseth and Rom are doing a workaround, just a different one, because they are in a different situation tier-wise.

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

tl:dr

I’ve never said system is perfect and not flawed…
Yet, some people will push system to the limits and then try to push it even more exploiting flaws in flawed system to get even bigger part of cake than they were supposed to get. If you think I will symphatize with some cheap abusers, I won’t.

Some people are like thieves, if catch thier hand during act of thievery, they will scream its not mine hand, its not mine fault!!!, it’s exacly the same kind of mentality.

They aren’t doing anything wrong by queuing with low tiers, they are just trying to play the game in the competitive queue. The system takes that completely away from some people as it currently exists if you don’t take low queue players.

You can yell and scream foul, but teams that are already pro league teams don’t impact placings for the guild challenger league. So nothing foul is afoot.

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

Then why do you think it’s okay for the system to punish players who play well and play alot, by forcing them to not play after a certain point?

They aren’t punished. System gave them clear msg – Guys, you’re the champions, we can’t find anyone worth your time. You should wait until worthy opponents arive, in meantime you can practice in unranked.

So if there’s no one worth there time playing why would they play unranked, where the less competitive players are?

I’m pretty sure they don’t want to wait to hours for a queue reset that tells them “congrats you’re awesome”

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

Again why would anyone think it’s okay to restrict players from playing in the ladder, simply because they’re better?

It’s simple. Those matches wouldn’t be fair. It’s like pairing some random kids against world 1st Puglist when he can’t find any worthy opponents, so he won’t die due to boredom.

If unfair matches is what we’re trying to avoid why would they go to unranked, where the matches are likely to be even more onesided?

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

Pretty much the same question, why is it okay to prevent their league progression simply because they are good and play a lot?

Yes, it’s. Since if you let them play unfair matches, they players who got matched against them (soloQ mostly) will be punished by getting match they can’t win.

So it’s okay to punish people who play well and a lot by stopping their progression until other people catch up with them?

The system is as a whole flawed then, and it’s not a problem with the players. Here’s why, because at some point yes more people will reach ruby. However, because of the nature of reaching diamond, legendary, and each legendary tier after that, the best teams will further separate themselves.

In NA take the Abjured for example. When is the last time they lost a tournament set? I don’t even know, I don’t care, point is they have some rediculously high win rate percentage. Which means the more time they play the more pips they gain and the more legendary tiers they achieve.

If matchmaking is so flawed that it times out after 2 hours for a diamond solo player who could be matched up with Rubies and Saphhires, imagine Abjured being Legendary x10 trying to find a match with even diamonds? There are 10 tiers of separation there.

This means one of 2 things, at legendary x10 they would probably never find a match no matter how much time passed, or the more likely scenario, even if based on how much they played they would have deservedly reach legendary x10, they never could because as they reach legendary, then legendary x2, etc… they would have to wait and hope that more of the playerbase could reach closer to their tier.

This means that the league system in it’s current design, is designed to punish top players who play a lot.

So, who is really to blame? The players for being too good and playing too much? Or the system?

I think we all know the answer there.

Laraley.7695:

Shockwave.1230:

Can someone who is mad about people being diamond please calm down then logically explain to me why you think it’s okay for ANet’s matchmaking to allow for 2 hour queues that time out?

Then also please calmly explain, using logic (not spite), why you think it’s wrong for diamond players to play with others who are amber so they can actually get a match?

I think if you would just take off the rage goggles, you would realize there’s nothing logical in arguing that those queue times are okay or that it’s wrong to play with people so you can get a match in a reasonable time.

This is pretty easy to explain and I don’t think people think it’s ok to have such queues, they just have no sympathy for OP due to the fact this affects them, too.

You know, lots people queue solo or with a friend, probably even majority. And these soloqers get matched against teaams and they often have low chance of beating them, therefore they lose pips. Was there something they could have done? Not so much. If you run into these premades just because your MMR is quite high and get punished for it, it’s really not okay either.

Now, why don’t people like these players take lower rank members? That’s simple, too. They’re lowering their party MMR which means they will get a team with a lesser chance of beating them due to the fact the party MMR is not correct. We’ve also seen people going on other accounts to lower the queue times. Is the player on alt account worse? No. But they will get matched with enemy team as if he was worse. It also messes up pip loss/gain. Since the outccome of match if calculated from incorrect numbers, it can result in very frustrating losses for the enemy team.

Could anet do something to prevent both pugs getting farmed and people not being able to get a game? Yes, it’s called soloq.

I agree, the easiest way to relieve most of this tension is to simply add solo/duo queue, the problem is ANet needs to figure out how league progression would work for solo queue and team queue

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

Can someone who is mad about people being diamond please calm down then logically explain to me why you think it’s okay for ANet’s matchmaking to allow for 2 hour queues that time out?

Yes, it is. MM is supposed to find fair matches, if there are no fair matches, because someone decided to pugstomp all day… he can go play Unranked until people catch up, ranked season will last two months, not two weeks.

Then why do you think it’s okay for the system to punish players who play well and play alot, by forcing them to not play after a certain point?

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

Then also please calmly explain, using logic (not spite), why you think it’s wrong for diamond players to play with others who are amber so they can actually get a match?

Because as stated above, its simply not fair. They proved with their performace, that players in tiers below them, shouldn’t be matched against them no matter what.

Again why would anyone think it’s okay to restrict players from playing in the ladder, simply because they’re better?

Morwath.9817:

Shockwave.1230:

I think if you would just take off the rage goggles, you would realize there’s nothing logical in arguing that those queue times are okay or that it’s wrong to play with people so you can get a match in a reasonable time.

They can get matches in reasonable time, just not Ranked matches.
Farmboys just want to keep shameless pugstomp all day every day, so they can have different badge color, like it would matter.

Pretty much the same question, why is it okay to prevent their league progression simply because they are good and play a lot?

Can someone who is mad about people being diamond please calm down then logically explain to me why you think it’s okay for ANet’s matchmaking to allow for 2 hour queues that time out?

Then also please calmly explain, using logic (not spite), why you think it’s wrong for diamond players to play with others who are amber so they can actually get a match?

I think if you would just take off the rage goggles, you would realize there’s nothing logical in arguing that those queue times are okay or that it’s wrong to play with people so you can get a match in a reasonable time.

Can we get some help with the projectile hate on the shortbow kit?

Between Magnetic Aura, Swirling Winds, Feedback, and Druid Staff 5 I feel pretty useless when I’m stuck in this kit for 10 seconds.

In my opinion SB 2 being unblockable would be nice, but leave Detonate cluster blockable

I’m simply raising awareness for ways to deal with thieves, many of these things are useful beyond the context of thief, but I’m focusing specifically on how to counter thief. The purpose of raising awareness is twofold, newer PvPers could always use help, and the more obvious it becomes on how to deal with a thief the more likely it is to see nerfs to certain things.

Assumption: hit and run playstyle for thief

Defensive autoprocs:

• Tempest Defense (Air Magic)
• Eye for an Eye (Retribution)
• Mirror of Anguish (Chaos)
• Shared Anguish (Wilderness Survival)
• Nightmare Rune (Tier 6).
  These hard counter Basilisk Venom and Steal burst attempts, which is where most of the opportunity for thief to impact a fight comes from. **Note that Share Anguish doesn’t counter a burst attempt while using basilisk venom.

Phase Traversal:
This Revenant skill combined with how revenant works in general makes thief less useful in filling a spot on a team, but it also hard counters the “run” part of hit and run.

Unrelenting Assault:
This Revenant skill removes most of you defensive options, you can’t stealth, teleport, bandit’s defense, or blind. You have to perform 3 skills with evade frames to counter it completely or land an interupt during its activation. The result of being targeted by unrelenting assault is that you often have lost so many defensive tools you must retreat to your team. You usually can’t retreat to OOC by yourself because of Phase Traversal.

Surge of the Mist:
This is a great skill to counter thieves with, because you can use it as a no tell heavy damaging CC from melee. Simply swap from sword immediately into staff and activate, if you’re in melee it becomes humanly impossible to react to a swap into this skill, a thief would have to predict the use of this. The main benefit of this skill vs thief is that it does heavy damage combined with CC and it happens very fast, by the time they can stun break they have taken half the skills damage. If they use shadow step they get minimum value out of it, because they already take the damage.

Team Fighting (3v3+):
This is a weak point for thief, if using staff or stealth you get some staying power, but you lack ways to support your allies beyond trying to throw out weakness, blinds, and maybe endurance if you use signet of agility. The longer a fight goes on the more the disadvantage to your team, because you as a thief lack sustain/healing, and have to play hit an run when pressured. This means your team is more likely to be attritioned down by the enemy playing slightly safe. Also once, shadow step has been used a thief essentially becomes a burden on a team fight, because of the risk of being CC locked to death.

Sustain Area Control Builds utilizing a 2 point strat:
Builds which were meant to hold points 1v1 do very well vs a thief, they outsustain the damage. That said, thieves can easily outrotate them usually. Playing a 2 point strat though only gives 2 options to fight at. The effectiveness of this strat partly falls back to the thief’s weakness in team fights, but this strategy is effective enough that it warrants it’s own attention. Using portal will help this stratgey, and mitigate a thief’s overall impact even more.

Watch thief with a Revenant:
Because Revenant has Phase Traversal and so many damage immunity options via blocks, evades, invulns, you can give Revenant the job of Thief hunting. In 2v2+ play normally, and keep an eye out for when a thief is pressured to the point they have few defensive options remaining. Dive in with phase traversal and pressure until he goes down, even if you’d be out of position in a team fight to accomplish this that probably only matters if your only defensive options are blocks and the enemy has unblockable CC available, but if you have the glint heal available you should be fine regardless of the situation. If you can’t kill the thief, remember to work your way back to your team while using your invulns/evades/blocks.

Combo Break Thief:
Much of thief’s damage comes in bursts, because they have to play hit and run. Because of this CC is more effective vs thief than other professions. You interrupt their burst combos and you relieve yourself of lots of pressure. You can also break their combo’s with purely defensive skills, but even a 1 second daze is enough to throw off their damage drastically. This is why the defensive autoprocs are listed above.

tl;dr evolving items for unlocked stats/runes/sigils

The biggest disservice to players in this game, is build locking.

For many, as players we feel bound to the build we setup for multiple reasons.

• Having other builds takes up inventory space
• You don’t want to destroy the runes/sigils you already have just to tweak someting
• It’s expensive to get certain builds
• I don’t want to buy these couple pieces just have a little more of ‘X’ stat for this one part, when I’m going change right back
• I’d have to stop what I’m doing and go to the trading post

Now these problems don’t exist for those who have lots of money, but many of these problems have arisen because builds are so heavily tied to the economy in the form of stats/runes/sigils. This isn’t something that I’d say is bad in and of itself, but I’d like to loosen the ties.

So how you solve being build locking? By unlocking.

All you need to do is implement an unlock system for armor, runes, sigls. Perhaps per character, perhaps per account. That’s debatable, though I’d lean towards character atm.

The unlock solution in ANet’s situation could most easily be implemented in the form of introducing 6 new armor piece, 6 new trinkets, and 1 new weapon per type. These would be given to each character, and you infuse them with other items of the same type. For example if you have the new special sword and you have a sword with Berserker exotic stats and a superior air sigil, when you infuse this special sword with the other sword you can now select the Berseker stats whenever and the tier of berserker stats available on the sword is Ascended (not less not more unless you later infuse it with ascended) and you are able to select superior air sigil whenever.

If you later decide you want to infuse Viper’s you can swap between Viper’s and Berserker’s whenever. If you decided you superior sigil of fire and you infuse it with fire then you can swap between Air and Fire whenever.

Theoretically Legendary everything would solve my problem, but I don’t have time for that, and neither does the majority of the playerbase.

In my opinion being build locked is the biggest issue at the moment with Guild Wars 2 PvE and WvW. I am just offering one solution, but I would like SOMETHING to be done about it, because I find it very irritating to have to buy/salvage gear constantly to change my builds.

You can aim down without a target to reduce the displacement to almost nothing similar to how you reduce the movement of heartseeker, making it easier to land all three hits on an idle target. Rarely is someone idle though.

Skill 2 damage is good, and if you crit everything does almost as much as vault, but the problem of not being able to dodge out of it removes it as an option in too many situations. You get stuck in an animation that makes it too easy to be CC’ed, which is no bueno on thief/daredevil which play around avoiding damage/CC.

Kind of wish staff 2 had the same range as heartseeker in certain situaitons, the low displacement twirl sort of screams “Kill Me!”.

It is currently impossible to dodge out of staff 2.

This prevents the skill from being a viable option in PvP as you are unable to avoid being punished while using it.

I might like to see the weave improved, make it start at a set width and make the weave less and less wide as the dash happens.

If you’re looking for sources of boons outside of Shroud spec for Chilling Victory and Sigil of Strength.

Having those extra boons is useful for healing in Shroud too.

The weave during dash is a great touch <3 it

I can’t progress my personal story. I’m on 5. In Their Footsteps, I need to talk to Scout Acan.

I glided over to him, he got a green arrow over his head, but I can’t interact with him.

Hi ANet,

I have a gripe with my exploring, it’s that I spend time to go to these places, but it turns out when I get there I can’t do them.

If you could please put something like Group Event, or Masteries Required on the map UI elements for Mastery Points, Hero Points, etc. that would be great for someone like me who doesn’t want to spend time going to a place where they can’t do something.

Thanks

Hi ANet,

I’ve been playing HoT without any exp boosters, just wandering around exploring and doing events. I’ve put maybe 7-8 hours into the expansion at this point in time.

After getting some rest and having some time to think, I’d like to share my thoughts on HoT PvE.

Overall, my first impression is something to the effect of “GATES, GATES EVERYWHERE”.

I started playing the expansion on a necromancer, because I was excited about the reaper elite specialization. I quickly realized that I would not be enjoying reaper in the ways I had envisioned. I also realized the expansion was incredibly grindy due to multiple reasons:

• Base necro is the most painfully horrible map traversing experience I’ve had from any profession.
• I am choosing to not play with boosters, to see just how painful gaining mastery experience actually is
• Gaining mastery experience is actually quite painful if you just try unlocking map progress and doing events. In 7 hours I’ve only been able to unlock 2 mastery levels point on my account, even though I have 5 additional points stashed away.
• The personal story is gated behind masteries unlocks, which are themselves are gated behind mastery unlocks, and unlocking mastery points is also gated behind experience point grind.

The content itself is of the highest quality I’ve seen in the game. However, the content is gated artifically behind pacing mechanics of experience gain. It’s also legitimately gated behind mechanics availablity. However, in my opinion artifically drawing out the amount of time it takes for players to access content is the lowest of the low in a game, it’s time gating through repetition and that’s when you get grind.

I definitely have yet to experience everything in Verdant Brink, but what I’m getting at is this:
* The most common things I ever see in front of me are map completion points, which do very little for mastery progress gain (which seems to be the most important thing when accessing the expansion’s content).

• One other thing I see are random enemies, not worth the time to fight as the mechanics of these fights are simple and uninteresting in the scope of the game as a whole.
• Events are repetitive. At some point in my 7+ hours of play, I did arrive at some of the same events 3 times. I’m sure I can’t have done all the events yet in Verdant Brink though.

The most important thing I want to bring up though, is that I lose so much time running around maps seeing the same things I’ve seen before, because traveling to places you’ve been through is so time consuming.

If you replace “around” in “Waiting around to have fun” with “to arrive” in order to get “Waiting to arrive to have fun” I can’t descern the difference between these two statements, because they both feel like the same thing with the expansion. Maybe it’s just that I’m spoiled by the waypoint system, but I can honestly say if it weren’t for the waypoint system in Guild Wars 2 I’d never touch PvE.

I would challenge ANet to collect data on players that measures the time that players are actively participating in content they are doing for the first time, content they are repeating, time players are idle, and time players are just running around.

tl;dr
In summary, the expansion doesn’t feel good, because it’s content is behind gates behind gates behind gates, the worst gate being the artificial pacing of experience gain for masteries, which results in grinding for experience.

Time wasted due to “Waiting to arrive to have fun” is extremely painful. Finding new content to do, only to not be able to participate in the new content due to a gate, then having to way point way back somewhere then run a lot of the same areas you’ve just experienced in order to hopefully find some other new content that you can do hurts as a player.

*Added to tl;dr
Going in cold to PvE, 7ish hours resulting in 2 mastery points. That I know of, you need over 6 points to progress the personal story. That means it will take over 20 hours to unlock doing story for what I’ve identified up to this point.

I explicity created a thread on this a while ago asking whether this was unintended behavior or not.

I’ve seen other people ask about it since myself as well. We’ve had no official feedback from ANet that I’m aware of.

I spelled it out previously as to why I though this is a thing, and ultimately I determined it was due to the way they had to deal with latency issues.

Previously steal would bug with hidden thief quite often due to latency resulting in you revealing yourself for 4 seconds if you would steal, though you weren’t stealthed initially.

I think the fix they implemented for that creates a delayed application of stealth that allows for the F2 to be used in between steal and hidden thief triggering.

Given the current state of thief’s capabilities in conquest, and the numerous times this has been asked about without feedback being provided, I can only assume it’s technique they’re allowing and okay with. That might change if thief ever is buffed. It’ll probably only ever be viable on Thief. It’s unlikely you’ll ever see this be a problem with elite specializations, since Trickery and the Elite Spec would be mandatory and Deadly Arts/Critical Strikes are preferable over Shadow Arts.

I went with the Wraith theme. Something I like about some brightness contrasting against the darkness.

Reaper with Dhuumfire looked like a really cool, fun to play concept. I’m not sure what HoT will hold in store for us, so I wanted to play a build that would be very strong overall in most situaitons. Condi/Power DPS, with a dash of extra survivabilty, is what I’m going for.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJAWRnMbCtbidbCW2A0bilfBL+IGFviUZhvwwCKpFA+AA-TBTBABlquSzaCoZ/BX0B8whAgZzfdcBAmW53EKBjWliFeAAAcEAIEgitA-e

I already have everything in the build. The jist of it is to get into Reaper Shroud while inflicting Vulnerability to gain up to 50% extra crit chance and assuming external fury sources always have 100% crits.

The Cavalier stuff is just for a little extra bit of durability, especially for shroud. There wasn’t any stat combo’s that did Toughness, Power, Condition Damage, so I figure swapping in Ferocity for Condition Damage was the next best thing.
Nothing is ascended, because I don’t want to spend time on low margin gains. I probably will upgrade though, once legendary armor is a thing, since it seems worth spending the time for stat flexibility.

There were a couple of things I was looking for feedback on though.

I was wondering if there would be better rune/sigil choices given what we know so far. Strength Runes seem too good to pass up though since Might buffs condi and power, and the extra power modifier seems nice. I’m not exactly sure about the Sigils though, especially Battle on the staff.

Also, I wasn’t sure what the best way to put in some condi management would be. I was thinking I’d often be able to use the Heal shout as a life force battery, since it will have a 13 second cooldown if hits 5 foes. Therefore I didn’t want to use Consume Conditions, so I was thinking maybe using Plague Signet in place of “You are all Weaklings!”, since I’d still have the elite as a stun break and stability source. Maybe I could swap out “Rise!” if I do not need the extra durability it offers, but I’m not sure which to swap (it’s probably situational).

I didn’t want to get rid of Locust Signet, because it’s my movement speed (outside of shroud), and if I need some extra healing it’s nice to be able to grab up to an extra 5k health.

Added
Ball park price for all the things is 150ish gold. Plus 3-4 hours of time in the Silverwaste getting bandit crests and another 1 hour or so putting everything together.

In my opinion Shrio/Glint Heralds will be favored over Thieves/Daredevils.

There’s an amusing dynamic to me. For thieves to be mobile, they must expend their resources leaving them low on options during the initial engage, whereas a Herald will just Legend swap and be back up to normal resource levels.

That said thief does have better decap potential, because its mobility is free roaming instead of targeted. However, if the game is in a state where it’s more favorable to be on the offensive that aspect of thief isn’t valuable since decaping empty nodes takes you out of fights.

Thief/Daredevil seems to be at risk of being pushed out of the meta, but we’ll see.

Spurrlock.3219:

Shockwave.1230:

You can guard a point by not being at it. You simply return to the point if there is a risk of it being decaped.

The argument being presented is that it is impossible to catch up to a thief in a scenario to prevent a decap, which is not true.

That’s just not true for every profession. Unless you have a mesmer port or a FGS, you’re not making it from the team fight at node B to the thief decapping at node A.

If what you said was true, then thieves would have no place in the meta.

I agree up to a point. However, I disagree that it’s not true for every profession in all situations. That said it’s unlikely for a Necro (few mobility options) to save a cap vs a thief, though not impossible in every situation, just most.

Positioning and not wasting your mobility skills can allow most anyone to defend a node while not being at it.
As a most basic example this is suited well to ranged damage builds of course, but can apply to other builds as well.

Fortus.6175:

T raw.4658:

Fortus.6175:

Throughout all of gw2’s history, thieves have been a very integral [mandatory] element due to their mobility, however , I think it is time to address some aspects of the class, namely the way their mobility and stealth come into play in Conquest.

I keep hearing that thieves are in a bad spot (mostly by thieves players) but they dont seem to realize the strength of basically forcing a 4v5 everywhere by constant decapping threat, or their ability to get out of vitually anything and anyone if so they wish with Sb 5 and stealth.

Are we honestly ok with this? Is it ok for a class to single handily dictate the pace of a match with only 2 abilities? I honestly dont think this translate to much fun to both the opponent or the thief himself, since there is no fighting involved at all, jsut running around all the match, “chasing” after the incapturable ….

If you leave a point unguarded for a thief to decap you that’s on you.

The simple fact that a theif can’t 1v1 any other meta class in this game means all you have to do is get to the point before its decapped.

Hell even some of the worst players in the game can hold a thief off long enough until help arrives.

Complaining about thieves at this point in time is just a sign of a player who needs to improve his game.

Lets not get into “a good/bad player can do X/Y vs Z class” because we will get anywhere, cuz likewise I can say a good thief will 1v1 and win and there is no way of proving/disproving that. I could also say a sign of bad players is not recognizing the strenght of thieves, and again, that will take us nowhere.

Lets analyze this from a holistic, unbiase point of view. You made a point of saying “a thief cant uncap an unguarded point” so lets take it from there; if a poit is guarded, that means an enemy is there, so the thief will not go, that means that on other sides of the map, it is a 4v5 fight, since the person guarding the point cant leave or else the point gets uncapped.

I cant think of a class faster than thief outside combat, which means that by the time you get to the base the thief is uncapping, he will be gone, and capping time takes longer than uncapping, therefore that person either sits on point, or remains forever going back and forth, chasing a ghost.

Lets take the supposedly strongest team that won the last Pro competition; 4 D/D eles and 1 decap thief. Even there, the strength of a thief surpasses that which another D/D ele would’ve offered. If you go back to all competitions, there can be a very vaiated team, but NEVER missing a thief for the for aforementioned reasons.

if you honestly think thats ok, then perhaps your sense of what’s balanced or not needs some reviewing.

You can guard a point by not being at it. You simply return to the point if there is a risk of it being decaped.

The argument being presented is that it is impossible to catch up to a thief in a scenario to prevent a decap, which is not true.

Will snap targetting follow through stealth in any situation? Such as putting a target on a profession that is likely to use stealth a lot?

ZOMG

1000.times {+1}

I felt like the elite is impossible to land the second hit when people run directly away from you. I hope I’m wrong and was just frequently unlucky

You don’t get to use an elite in combat if you go for this as a stomp. Sounds fair in the complete scope of a fight.

I recommend corrosive poison cloud with reaper skill 4, because 30+ poison stacks is totally a thing.

If you dare…
devil

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAqa4an8lClPhlOBGmCkmiFYCzLNcGaDzhwSYLULBEAyAA-TJBFABiXGYhnAgO7PAwJBAA

Refuge is 15 seconds total stealth without shadow arts and 20 seconds with shadow arts as of before the beta, yes that is a nerf if it’s the case.

I was hoping we’d get one of those ghostbuster vacuum traps for when they enter their mist evade frames.

Hey Karl,

I’ve taken a liking to a Pistol/Pistol Daredevil. It’s definitely viable in soloq play, but unproven in coordinated groups, and may not work well in such a situation when you have to deal with coordinated quick/instant bursts.

It’s been fun to play and revolves completely around the spacing created by dash to allow for safe unloads. I’ve never really felt good about not running shortbow, but it feels alright with this. Please don’t let it die.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAqa4an8lClPhlOBGmCkmiFYCzLNcGaDzhwSYLULBEAyAA-TJBFABiXGYhnAgO7PAwJBAA

There’s so much damage on points currently I don’t feel like you can go in very well with any weapon set, in team fights with cele builds.

But in 2v2’s or smaller you have some room to breathe.

It’s surprisingly entertaining to dash a map on daredevil.

I feel less inclined to take shortbow because of the solid mobility you get from dash.

I’m not sure what offsite I like most when not taking shortbow, but the midrange distance dash creates is perfect for the new pistol buffs

Water fields appear to cause AF gain but does not trigger for players at max health.

As an added note, signet of the wild, dolyak rune, and regeneration boon do not cause AF gain.

Also Water spirit totem heals do not cause AF gain, though the ground pound heal on water spirit does.

Spirit of nature does not trigger AF gain either.

So staff appears to be bugged, just by healing my pet I’m getting maybe 2 times as much AF as I would expect?

Also another bug with staff is that I can run around spamming 1 and frequently but not all the time I’ll get credit for heals.

• More about this one of the things I figured out is that if you are near/on certain game objects this will trigger. For example if you are standing in a patch of grass that can blow around and spam staff 1 (but not every patch of grass that can blow around for some reason), you’ll gain AF
• I think this actually might be no scoping healable allies, in my case pet. Because it seems that is a thing, even though no beam comes out.
• Jk, thowing hands up in the air on the random untargeted staff auto charging AF. It seemed like it had something to do with those things, but it’s so randomly inconsistent idk.

Also if you double tap celestial form, often your character skin gets stuck in celestial form even if you aren’t in it, but it’ll eventually wear off.

Troll Unguent gives ~80% of your AF bar

If this is intential, I see no reason to run any other heal.

Also AF gain appears to work even if healed allies or yourself are at max health.

This combination of effects means you may precast Troll Unguent and you have 80% bar and your heal is ready again at the start of a match.

You probably don’t even need to run staff as druid. You could spec entirely power ranger, minus swapping 1 trait line then with troll unguent and a bit of combat you can enter Celestial form, which is really cool because it’s suddenly a way to heal yourself or allies up, but that said Power Ranger + Celestial form every 30ish seconds. Idk feels like it could be too strong. It all hinges on Troll and OOC AF gain though.

I’m listing basic tactics I can think of for building AF (astral force) on the Druid.

I think Solar Beam, is going to be the main battery for building it up.
It hits three targets. This means you and 2 allies can maximize the effectiveness. You send your pet forward, and your allies run in a line. If you stay out of damage range you should be able to get all 3 hit procs to be heals. This means every beam will give you 22.5% when optimized.

Astral Wisp will be another good battery for building AF. Your pet should be able to grab 3 heals off it. Then you and any ally should circle around enemies in the opposite direction of the wisp in order to get 1-2 more heals. Basically your pet should net you 7.5% and any allies will hopefully net you 10% – 12.5%. If there ends up being enough beefy AI around you could potentially fill up your whole AR bar from 1 wisp.

Sublime Conversion could be a solid option depending upon the situation. Rapid Fire sticks out, that would be 25%.

Troll Unguent sticks ou to me as the go to heal. It triggers on both you and your pet, so over 10 seconds you’ll end up netting 50% AF. Plus it may trigger Natural Mender.

I doubt this is the case, but if Live Vicariously triggers AF gain, you can effectively double your AF gain from every percentage above.

If it so happens that Water spirit’s effect causes AF gain, this could be the best way to gain AF in PvE, and would be situationally strong in specific positions on certain nodes in PvP (Waterfall, Mine, potentially any Forest node, Gate and Temple [Please raise spirit range to 1500 ]).

I doubt this would be the case too, but if Regen somehow triggers AF gain, then you may as well take Fern Hound, Guard and Resounding Timbre.

Dolyak Runes would be interesting to try, if they cause AF gain, it’s as rediculous as Regen would be.

A big quesiton will be if you can gain AF from heals used on players with full HP. If not teaming up with a necro using BiP could be a thing. Also purposefully taking fall damage could be a thing too.

Vs people using Defiance Stance or Infuse light you might actually want to sick your pet on them and focus them with Solar Beam if that healing counts towards generating AF.

If Celestial Avatar behaves similarly to Elementalist attunements in that you can cast a skill then keep using the skill when changing your skillbar, then you’d want to Tidal Surge then immediately leave CA form.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. There’s lots of things to try.

…will be Revenant and Mesmer. Most likely Herald and Chronomancer.

The reasons are simple, Portal and Phase Traversal.

Phase Traversal is the perfect backcap watch skill. There’s no way anyone can outrun you when you have the option to travel 1200-3600 range then swap legends to recover all that energy.

We already know how strong portal is, and with Revenant being able to cover backcaps it’ll often see use between the enemy’s side point, but of course portal’s will be placed to counter each other too.

When teams of similar ability are pitted against each other, in my opinion we’ll see a conquest metagame dominated primarily by the team that uses these two skills most effectively to move between points.

I think these two skills combined with the current numbers Revenant and Chronomancer are able to achieve in terms of durability/offense and burst respectively will make having these mandatory, as combining being able to hold your existing points with outnumbering outclasses any other strategic approach to conquest, and this is what those two skills will make teams excel at.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shockwave.1230:

Kocoff.7582:

^^^

I think every traits favors a specific playstyle or weaponset. That’s the main purpose of a trait, it makes us choose. In our situation however, you make a point that condition management is real problem but EA isn’t really the solution if you want something for all playstyle.

I think 3 conditions every 7 seconds is a lot more OP than the current EA, and what you proposed still favors swords.

I think every time a trait mentions “on evade”, you know it favors Sword.
A piece of advice: if you want something to favor most playstyles, avoid the “on evade” mechanic.

It’s difficult to find a condi cleanse mechanic that fits every playstyle… the only one that i have in mind is the aggressive one:

Optimistic killer : “remove a condition when landing 5-10 hits” or
Poisoned Gift : " transfert 2 conditions upon successful stealing."

The point of my suggestion was to make the trait more favorable to builds that Live in evade frames less than Sword thieves.

Not to redesign it completely.

You get more value out of less evades this way.

It would take 3 evades for a Dagger or Pistol build to remove 3 conditions With the current iteration of the trait. That means 3 dodgesdodges, then you have to wait 30 seconds to remove 3 more conditions. 3 evades for a sword thief means 1 dodge and 10-12 initiative. Which is 10 seconds to recover from.

So really to make the trait more fair the numbers being at 3 conditions over 10 seconds makes more sense than 7 seconds. Sword is of course still favored because it has more evade uptime, but it is worth taking on Dagger or pistol as well with the suggestion (because 1 condition 3 times over 30 seconds just isn’t worth it) .

What about a weaponset with no access to evade? What would you have P/P do?

This is why the EA needs to be baseline instead of a choice and by extension changed to “on dodge” instead of “on evade”.

The problem with “on evade” is that, if you are facing an opponent who simply applies conditions and watch you deteriorate, this “on evade” requirement to remove conditions is not well thought of. While you wait for an attack to evade from, you’re dying in the mean time, thus the value of the current iteration of EA is useless.

What I don’t understand is that, why do the Dev require that Thief has to rely from outside source to remove a condition? It just doesn’t make sense.

I know they wanted evade to be more rewarding, but this is not the right way of doing this. Same goes with the trait the heals on evade.

Please reread, you’ve completely missed the point that my suggestion makes the trait viable for dagger and pistol mainhand while keeping it’s current flavor.

Kocoff.7582:

^^^

I think every traits favors a specific playstyle or weaponset. That’s the main purpose of a trait, it makes us choose. In our situation however, you make a point that condition management is real problem but EA isn’t really the solution if you want something for all playstyle.

I think 3 conditions every 7 seconds is a lot more OP than the current EA, and what you proposed still favors swords.

I think every time a trait mentions “on evade”, you know it favors Sword.
A piece of advice: if you want something to favor most playstyles, avoid the “on evade” mechanic.

It’s difficult to find a condi cleanse mechanic that fits every playstyle… the only one that i have in mind is the aggressive one:

Optimistic killer : “remove a condition when landing 5-10 hits” or
Poisoned Gift : " transfert 2 conditions upon successful stealing."

The point of my suggestion was to make the trait more favorable to builds that Live in evade frames less than Sword thieves.

Not to redesign it completely.

You get more value out of less evades this way.

It would take 3 evades for a Dagger or Pistol build to remove 3 conditions With the current iteration of the trait. That means 3 dodgesdodges, then you have to wait 30 seconds to remove 3 more conditions. 3 evades for a sword thief means 1 dodge and 10-12 initiative. Which is 10 seconds to recover from.

So really to make the trait more fair the numbers being at 3 conditions over 10 seconds makes more sense than 7 seconds. Sword is of course still favored because it has more evade uptime, but it is worth taking on Dagger or pistol as well with the suggestion (because 1 condition 3 times over 30 seconds just isn’t worth it) .

I have an opinion on what weapon escapist’s absolution favors. I think it favor’s sword clearly, because of the extra evade frames you get from it.

Because it favor’s sword so much it’s BWE2 iteration just wasn’t very good on any other weapon set imo. Because condition management is so important in builds, I think this trait needs to be balanced in a way that it’s good on all weaponsets.

To me that means allowing for more condition removal in smaller increments of time, but not necessary more condition removal overall.

Something like “remove a condition everytime you evade for up to 3 conditions. Recharges every 7 seconds”

Karl McLain.5604:

Re: Dash update!
The original reason we had removed the extra distance on Dash was that we lacked the tech. Since that post, it’s been resolved. Thus, the distance of Dash is back, with a fervor. Now you’ll travel a full 450, up from the 360 previous (~300 base dodge), while moving at a faster-than-running speed. Swiftness duration increased to 10 seconds, up from the 8 we talked about originally.
This thing’s about solid movement, so we’re going to push it in that direction for this BWE. Please check it out and let us know how you feel about it. The animation’s going to remain as your character’s run for now.
We are aware that this new distance will cause some de-sync in synergy with Shadow Refuge, but feel that the open-field movement capability for daredevil needs to take precedence over this abliity. note: You can still dodge from edge-to-edge and remain inside the field, but it’s pretty tricky.

Hey Karl,

Out of curiosity have you guys played around with superspeed on dash?

Something like “Dash applies swiftness for X seconds, if you successfully evade while dashing gain superspeed for Y seconds”

I have no desire to use Dagger main hand once HoT comes out. There’s too much stealth counterplay that’s going to exist. When your defense and part of your offense is hard countered, it’s time to drop that concept.

The Shadow Arts trait line, blinding powder, smoke fields, and shadow refuge are all going to be wasted resources because of reveal and taunt being meta.

Dagger relying heavily on backstab damage and avoiding or recovering from damage with stealth means it’s just going to be a bad weapon. The only option that makes sense to me is Sword.

If you’re going to play a sword style thief though, you may as well play Revenant, because it can +1 just as well, free roam almost as well, is more durable, and has more support in a team fight. The only thing you miss out on is the stab stealing interrupt.

Regarding the recent blog post about the Mordrem Guard, is there an explanation as to why Scarlet Briar’s appeance didn’t change to be that of a Mordrem Guard?

Is it that she, had some end game besides having Mordremoth as a master? If so, is this something that will be answered in the HoT story?

I’d rather see a cool down implementation of “remove a condition for each attack evaded up to 3 times. This trait recharges every 3 seconds.”