Guild Wars 2

Infiltrator’s Arrow is 900 range every 6 seconds, base initiative.
Heartseeker is 450 range every 3 seconds, base initiative.

Heartseeker is impacted by IMS (increased movement speed) buffs, so it with swiftness or signet of shadows moves you slightly faster than infiltrator’s arrow.

Basically every second as a thief you can move a bonus 150+ range per second with one skill.

With all of those skills together on the warrior you get a bonus 193+ range per second. With all the 20% bonuses that’s 232+ range per second.

This is what’s being talked about when sacrificing less for mobility.

If I wanted to build for it, I could get 20% more initiative regen, use hastened replenishment, roll for initiative, and withdraw and move 274+ range per second as a thief with heartseeker.

Conncept.7638:

Shockwave.1230:

If it did the 66 percent reduction to recharge all thieves would instantly lose when they have chill applied to them for 4 seconds or more.

You mean kind of like elementalists have suffered through since launch?

I main an ele, and can compensate chill impacting attunements because I have 20 weapon skills to work with plus plenty of condition removal. I happen to be an advocate for removing chill from impacting attunement swapping, due to it not impacting engineer kit swapping.

Even when I play on another class with only 10 weapon skills, I can swap weapons if chill is slowing me down on my current weapon set.

On thief I have only 1 universal pool of resources, so to be able to impact that pool so severely that it reduces my access by 66% is like introducing an anti-thief mechanic to the game.

Chill directly impacting thief initiative in the same way as skills with recharge are currently impacted can’t be introduce to the game without nearly eliminating the class from the meta.

Chorazin.4107:

Zacchary.6183:

This whole thread is about players getting an “I win” button against thieves.

If you cannot clear conditions then yes it would be an i win button, but who enters WvW without condi cleanses?

I kind of agree 66% is possibly too much and that some internal testing would be required on init regen. But there is 0 parity in allowing no imapct on all thief weapon skills whilst the condition punishes all other classes weapon skill use.

The extra reveal time is an interesting idea i must admit.

The other thing to remember is that a thief can’t just swap to another weapon set like other professions can in order to use other skills. If a thief has 2 initiative and they swap to their other weapon set they’ll only have naturally regained less than 1 initiative. Other professions have the luxury of swapping to another set to deal with chill impacting their recharges, the thief doesn’t.

Chorazin.4107:

Shockwave.1230:

People are so caught up on the weapon skills not being impacted by chill that they forget chill does affect the thief. In every other way.

The snare remains, as it does with every class? What is your point?

That’s not the only impact, it also impacts the recharge of all non weapon abilities including steal.

Chorazin.4107:

Having said that it would need internal testing, 66% is possibly too much. But not being impacted by the condi at all outside the snare has no parity with the effect on other classes and the anus reaming it gives Eles.

People are so caught up on the weapon skills not being impacted by chill that they forget chill does affect the thief. In every other way.

ATMAvatar.5749:

People should re-read the initiative page.

Initiative is the mechanic for thief weapon skill cool-downs. Chill affects weapon cool-downs. Ergo, it makes total sense that chill affects initiative regeneration.

It doesn’t make sense for chill to affect thieves in the exact same way because initiative is required for all skills. It’s not like only skills used recently would be affected by chill. A thief’s entire combat effectiveness would be reduced by 66%.

The easiest way to display this is with an example. A Thief with 6 initiative that uses black powder and is then chilled wouldn’t get 1 initiative per second, they would get 1 initiative every 3 seconds. So in the 4 seconds after having 0 initiative they might have 2 instead of 4 or 5 initiative.

Thieves already can use their 2 through 5 skills much more infrequently over time than other professions. Reducing this further via chill could largely remove the profession from the meta if chill became more prevalent. You’d see the thief in a place similar to where the ele has been.

balmung.6217:

Shockwave.1230:

Chill impacting initiative isn’t as easy as applying a reduction to initiative gain. If it did the 66 percent reduction to recharge all thieves would instantly lose when they have chill applied to them for 4 seconds or more.

They would use their initiative and not regen enough to stealth or escape. Meaning the only option they have is to run away vs professions that chill.

In a team fight you chill the thief and they would be done.

The reason thieves would be so susceptible to chill is bcs the design is for initiative to support hit and run. Chill would reduce your resources by more than half meaning your only option is hit Or run, aka die or run.

You mean they would have to clear the chill away before doing anything which would stop them from bursting down alot of classes and play a bit more carefully?yeh that would be hard for them.

You’re right it would be hard. Especially vs necromancers, Rangers, and elementalists that have more access to chill.

Team fights involving those professions a thief potentially couldn’t be involved in unless they have withdraw or roll for initiative on cool down. Those two skills would potentially be mandatory on a thief bar too, since thief has limited condition removal.

Chill impacting initiative isn’t as easy as applying a reduction to initiative gain. If it did the 66 percent reduction to recharge all thieves would instantly lose when they have chill applied to them for 4 seconds or more.

They would use their initiative and not regen enough to stealth or escape. Meaning the only option they have is to run away vs professions that chill.

In a team fight you chill the thief and they would be done.

The reason thieves would be so susceptible to chill is bcs the design is for initiative to support hit and run. Chill would reduce your resources by more than half meaning your only option is hit Or run, aka die or run.

Malediktus.9250:

Why should alternates get rewards if they didnt play? Makes no sense @Shockwave.1230

They might play some matches in the tournament, just not all of them.

Allie Murdock.8152:

This is an equal opportunity tournament. Those that focus on PvE and WvW are absolutely welcome to sign up. This is not a PvE vs. PvP situation. What’s good for PvP is good for everyone.

And to clarify on a few things:

This tournament is being hosted by Mistpedia, similarly to the way PAX was done with Mist League. I have faith that Sireph, Blu, Shadowplasm, and their team will do a fantastic job, and we will be supporting them throughout the tournament. In hindsight, I should have emphasized that in the blog. Sorry about that!

There are going to be two tournaments. One for EU, and the following for NA. This means five Legendaries per region.

For those that don’t think they can compete in the tournament, you can also just tune in for a chance to win some shinies. No, we’ll not be giving viewers Legendaries, but it will definitely be worth watching.

Let’s hug it out!

The team alternates don’t get rewards?

T.T

The best builds I can think of post feature patch are…

PvP Glass
D/F Sigil of Air, Sigil of Fire
6/6/0/0/2
Fire V, VII, XIII
Air VI, VII, XII
Arcana II
Utility: Signet of Restoration, Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Armor of Earth, Fiery Greatsword
Rune: Unknown (not enough details released on all runes)
Amulet: Berserker’s
Jewel: Celestial? (not sure if the jewel is getting buff in addition to the amulet)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJAodhMM6ZW5wwBf0AS4hAwAAg4hFABcYpQOA-TQAg0CsMoYaB

PvP Bunker
S/F Sigil of Energy, Sigil of Intelligence
0/0/6/2/6
Earth III, VIII, XIII
Water III
Arcana II, VIII, XI
Utility: Ether Renewal, Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Armor of Earth, Fiery Greatsword
Rune: Unknown (not enough details released on all runes)
Amulet: Soldier’s
Jewel: Celestial? (not sure if the jewel is getting buff in addition to the amulet)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vEAQJArdhMM6ZW5wwBf0AApgLjHhMCAlH5MjNA-TQAA1CsM4Y+B

Legendaries mean you’ve put a lot of time or money into the game, no more no less. Should they mean something else?

Best case scenario, healing effectiveness is increased 47% on the elementalist. It’d be 22% on all other classes. Healing isn’t allowed frequently enough and in enough magnitude to allow for a healer role to exist. As much as people will try to play that role, it’ll be something that brings down the overall potential of a party.

These number changes don’t change that healing isn’t a viable role.

Vargamonth.2047:

Shockwave.1230:

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

No, it’s not. Not even close.

Your effective power can be calculated like:
K * [ (1 – critchance) * 1 + critchance * ( 1.5 + critdamage) ]

For a 100% critchance and 150% critdamage, it would be 3K.
The ferocity changes brings the critdamage from 150% to about 100%, so the new effective power would be 2.5K

2.5K/3K = 0.833 —> 16.7% damage loss

And this is a quite extreme case. A 30 Air full ascended berseker / scholar ele using precision/critdamage food, affected by Banner of Discipline and Spotter, and wielding a Lightning Hammer with Arcane Lightning active is at 100%/149% (It’s possible to go higher with Ruby Orbs, but that would mean a damage loss).

That’s definitely good math there. Bad math is what I did, in that in my head I thought about the crit damage bonus in a vacuum. Always include the other variables people.

insanemaniac.2456:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I don’t like playing with my tag because it’s a beacon for targeting.

I’ve been in solo arenas, turned my tag on, and become the instant target for coordinated play. I’d play more with my tag on if this wasn’t the case.

play a high mobility spec and kite those fools, itll be free wins!

^ This, you’ll be in the top 100 before you know it!!!!

It’ll change it a bit, people with an eye for min maxing knew to get some soldier’s gear, some knights pieces, and to use ruby items in all upgrade slots.

You could get nearly the same results out of ascended gear choices too. By and large though it probably won’t change much at all.

Berengar.6951:

I main engie, and play ele plenty. I know that these changes are more punishing to those two classes.

However, bringing potential work arounds (such as water weapons) to the devs attention is just going to work against us. I highly doubt they’re going to revert this change.

Bringing it up after the fact is actually worse for us. If we don’t bring it up ahead of time in order for them to start thinking about how to resolve this situation for ele/engi, then they’ll implement this changes into production, find out about the work arounds later, at which point since it’s in production they’ll already be invested in not removing it, because that’s viewed as wasted development time. Since they’re invested in not removing changes, they’ll just make engi’s and ele’s deal with the changes even though it’s unfair to them.

I do realize this could all be futile in the first place, and my open analysis could be closing loopholes people might want to use, but I think fairness to 25% of the game’s professions is more important.

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

Berengar.6951:

Shhhhhh….

Don’t bring possible work arounds to the dev’s attention

It’s better to bring up all the work arounds and imbalances exposing all the problems created than to have an unfair change implemented in the first place.

Players that know how to not die, who have more gold can essentially buy an advantage from the TP by buying more sigils. Elementalists and Engineers are potentially SoL.

Aridia.3042:

Shockwave.1230:

1. Don’t implement the stacking sigil change that will remove stacks when you don’t have a stacking sigil equipped.

This is what they should’ve done in the first place and left it alone. I see it as no different than food. Everyone can use it, so the barrier to entry is low and it opens up more builds and play styles.

The other uncertainty is whether stacking on your water weapon would get around this. If water stacking is a work around, then this fix accomplishes nothing but further compounds the problem since borderland homes and EB blue don’t have easy access to water mobs like their opponents. So in a sense it’s creates further disparity that wasn’t there before.

This “fix” creates more problems than it solves.

I have faith their QA/Devs would have thought about the water weapon situation. I’m guessing the implemented behavior is that as long as a stacking sigil is equipped stacks won’t go away.

Though you do bring up an interesting point. Maybe we can put a stacking sigil on 1 of the two to four water weapon slots then when we unequip a land weapon with a stacking sigil then the stacks wont go away.

Dee Jay.2460:

With the December update ANet actually made Initiative Management easier and more seamless than ever which made skill-spam just that much easier.

They pretty much had to make this change, because the best way to play was with 1 trait setup that gave players even more iniative regen than what currently exists.

Remember that they nerfed all iniative gain traits by at least half and only increased base regen by 25%.

DakotaCoty.5721:

Hello all,
I am VERY curious to know what is shown in this image:
https://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2/photos/pb.114036714208.-2207520000.1395590308./10152098896164209/?type=3&theater
The chest is Kodan medium, with the TP shoulders and gloves but…
What are the legs and boots? I’m slightly lost. If anyone knows could you reply please, thank you

Scarlet’s Spaulders and Grasp

The OP has interesting thoughts, but the thing is people like the resource management system that is iniative.

Another class could be designed with these things in mind when another class is introduced.

The thief’s iniative system is one of my biggest reasons for playing the thief. It’s got a higher level of resource management complexity, like the ele. These two professions have an entirely different way to look at skills. The thief’s system requires you to manage your resource and balance it’s use between offense and defense. The ele’s system requires you to keep track of offensive/defensive cool downs you have available and make sure you don’t lock yourself out of too many of them by attunement swapping improperly.

Outside of elementalist and thief I find the other classes to be a little boring, because thier design is such that you use dps combos on cooldown, and only use defensive skills when you see tells. There’s very little mangement of your resources required relatively speaking for the other 6 classes.

For me getting rid of iniative is getting rid of one of my favorite things about this game.

The new stacking sigil behavior isn’t balanced when it comes to ele’s and engi’s.

The other six professions have 4 sigil slots to work with. Meaning they can swap weapons to grow stacks. This hasn’t been confirmed, but they could potentially keep their dps/finisher sets with a stacking sigil then when they have 25 stacks put their defensive weapon set with a stacking sigil then swap their offensive set to something like sigil of fire and keep all their stacks, since at least 1 of their 4 weapons has a stacking sigil.

The ele and engi don’t have this option.

In order to make this fair for all professions, 2 things come to mind.

1. Don’t implement the stacking sigil change that will remove stacks when you don’t have a stacking sigil equipped.

2. Give conditional weapon swapping to the elementalist and engineer. This doesn’t have to be in combat, though it could potentially be balanced if everytime an ele/engi swaps attunements/uses a toolkit the weapon swap gets hard reset to 10 seconds. Even if this is not the case, at least out of combat they could swap and gather stacks with their other weapon set.

The game has a global marketplace. As such you shouldn’t try to keep ‘Gold’. You should try to keep investments like irl. Identify items that increase in value over time, place buy orders for these, then when you need gold do sell orders.

40 gold currently will only gear out 1 character in all exotics, it’s probably not enough for the best runes/best sigils to be included as well, but it should be enough for Weapons, Armor, and Trinkets.

This change if implemented would be completely unfair to elementalists and engineers who can only have 2 sigils at a time instead of 4.

The other six professions can swap to their on kill set as enemies die to build stacks then swap back to their primary set.

I would be disappointed if they nerf key farming.

It’s the only reason black lion ticket items are as affordable as they are now.

If they nerf the farm, it’s another money grab move trying to make people to buy keys from the gem store..

Grax.9204:

Just wanted to say thank you Justin for taking your time explaining the thought process behind this decision.

I actually really like the idea.
We can’t flame about PvP not being rewarding and then flame again once we see horizontal progression coming in. We should be thankfull.

Now, there will be 5 new traits for every class. Unlocking them in PvE didn’t sound to be a huuuge time consuming thing. So I doubt it will be much of a hassle in PvP as well.

What’s the issue with having something to do for an hour or two? It’s actually exactly what I wanted.

I’d like to echo the thank you. 11 posts from 1 dev in one thread on 1 page. You spoil us.

So this is pretty easy actually.

Most PW thieves have the Critical Haste trait, this means you want to avoid PW as much as possbile. Dodge it, block the stun, blind the stun, use other active defenses. What you want to do ideally is get critical haste to trigger from something other than Pistol Whip, then when you see Quickness on the thief create distance. After the quickness expires you have 28 seconds until the trait is off cooldown, which is plenty of time to down a thief.

Aside from dealing with the Critical Haste trait, you want to look out for PW wind-ups from range, because a thief can PW you still by teleporting.

If you do get hit by a non-quickness pistol whip, you can always immediately dodge out/walk out after the stun ends thereby reducing the damage by half.

The best positioning to use vs a PW thief as melee is max melee range, because it puts the thief in a position where they need to think hard about using their teleports to make pistol whip connect, because if they don’t they may miss a lot of damage or miss completely. PW is easy to side step at max melee range.

Sword thieves usually will build for evasion. That said you’ll want to keep up a constant stream of dps instead of a burst.

The burst openings you’ll want to look for are in both S/X 3 skills. For pistol whip it’s the wind-up, for S/D it’s Larcenous Strike which happens after flanking strike.

You’ll also want to keep track of when you’ve been immobilized and realize that means where the thief last was is where they can port back to. Keep this in mind and fight near that spot so they have one less skill to escape with.

Range dps is usually a low risk way of applying steady dps to a PW thief. Just be careful not to stay too far away otherwise they disengage fairly easily.

When you see basilisk venom be ready to evade/blind/block to kill the charge, because it will allow an entire PW to hit you.

If you keep all that in mind then the only way a PW thief will beat you is if they outplay you by evading your heavy damage and interrupting your heals w/ p4.

Justin ODell.9517:

Rubik.7192:

PvP gives us a tiny bit of coin. No matter how much you play pvp, you won’t be able to make as much as your average pveer. What’s the point in implementing “horizontal” progression when pveers can unlock the new traits multiple times faster than pvpers?

That is a valid concern, one worthy of its own thread. I should mention that this is only part of the rewards we have planned. We should have a blog post about that coming out soon™, but I’m not sure where it is in the schedule.

Did the company change their moto from “When it’s done™” to “coming out soon™”

The OP forgot one!!!

Power Block vs Withdrawal

Withdrawal wins

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the new traits once unlocked, will be unlocked for the account, not the character.

why the ruckus?

From a PvP perspective that might be true (confirmation required), but newly created characters in PvE won’t have thier traits unlocked from what I’ve gathered.

MRA.4758:

Shockwave.1230:

Since healing is not a role in this game, and since dps and active defenses are the best way to support people, I’m confused as to why this trait is going to exist.

You serious? I assume this trait will be awesome in WvW team fights.

How so? The difference is that the red bars of 5 players move up 25% more, all that means is that healing is marginally more effective. Given where healing effectiveness is at now, does 25% suddenly make healing a viable role?

Justin ODell.9517:

Olvendred.3027:

Then why make a distinction? If PvP can happily go along with players getting 12/13 traits per line, why add an extra layer of frustration and difficulty instead of giving them 13/13 traits per line? It’s obviously nothing to do with easing new players in.

If it were only an additional trait, you’d more of a have a point, but we’re introducing this system with the future in mind. I can’t speak for the Skills and Combat teams long turn plans, but I know I would be disappointed if we stopped with just these new traits.

Olvendred.3027:

Horizontal progression is a nice concept… but it’s one that I’ve never seen mentioned on the PvP forums, only the PvE ones. If you want to get more players in to PvP, somehow I don’t think keeping back build options is the way to go about it.

Horizontal progression is very common, even in PvP games. Personally, I think one of the reason’s PvP rewards seem somewhat hollow is that we have no real progression beyond looks. I think you would be hard pressed (outside one-off games like most FPS and RTSs) to find a successful game without progression. As a PvP player, I love this change (disclaimer: I had no design input) and can’t wait for the 15th.

Ideally someone should’ve pointed out that the horizontal progression can happen exclusively through PvP play.

PvP gives you coin. These new trait books can be purchased in the mists via coin.

Zenith.7301:

At this point only thieves who know how well off they are remain as the people who defend the class. Often by pointing at equally broken warriors.

Backstab and spammable/invisible burst skills should have never been in game.

If my ele misses a fire grab, that’s 36 seconds of not having any burst besides air 2 and the arcane utility.

Thief is basically the one class that can miss a burst and try again shortly after, and in that downtime he’s not even punished with receiving damage because he can promptly restealth or port out until he can try his burst rotation as well.

There is no punishment to the class. If my necro or ele miss key skills, they are dying. There’s no such thing as resets.

There’s punishment to the Thief.

1. If you waste iniative by spamming skills you have no burst and less escape options.

2. You have little sustain as a zerker thief. Vs bunkers 1v1 a bunker can always out sustain you. Other players roaming that avoid your burst will outsustain you.

These 2 things together mean you have to manage your resources carefully. When I play thief, I mostly play without stealth, and I simply use SB5 and Shadowstep to get away. That works for sword main hand, because S/X has evades, but doesn’t work for dagger main hand, so they have to use stealth.

When you run away in PvP, you lose, because that’s time wasted, which means points gained by the opposition and numbers advantages elsewhere.

When you play zerker thief, it’s a simple game of down quickly or escape to bide time otherwise get downed. There’s much less constant back and forth with a zerker thief than other zerker professions.

Since healing is not a role in this game, and since dps and active defenses are the best way to support people, I’m confused as to why this trait is going to exist.

Healing to allies being 25% more effective only makes healing 20% more effective in a group of 5 players. Since healing is so weak, why would this trait be used?

It would only be used by players that want to take on a healing role, but that role isn’t viable, and ANet doesn’t want the role to be viable, so why incentivize players to do something you don’t want them to do at cost of being less effective at things you do want them to do?

I feel like this trait is going to be another Diamond Skin scenario, where it’s in game, there’s excitment about it, but people will quickly realize it’s extremely ineffective in combat.

I’ve never thought of the mesmer as a roamer class. They have minimal swiftness access, no perma +25% access, and only 1 teleport. Portal is solid, but other than that, they roam about as well as a necro.

Ele, Warrior, and Ranger are the other classes that roaming would be suited for. Guardian and Engi can sort of pull it off too.

Regardless of how people want to play Mesmer, it’s not a profession that in it’s current design is roaming friendly. As such, I find the Mesmer comparison to a Thief largely impractical.

Drakent.9605:

chemiclord.3978:

Drakent.9605:

Shockwave.1230:

There are some enemies that zerker make die so quick you don’t have to avoid damage, but many Elites, Champions, and Legendaries you still have to avoid damage from, which is more punishing on zerkers if you don’t.

I would argue that zerker doesn’t make bad players, it makes better farmers.

Zerker will always be the optimal set as long as active defense trumps sustained defense.

You can watch videos on youtube where ppl stand on top of the boss and there HP never drops down or there dodge bar never goes down either

Luping whos is suppose to be the 1 of the strongest dungeon boss was kill in 40 sec with out any of the member’s getting hit with out the need of using dodge

Lupicus, ironically enough, gets downed in 40 seconds usually because a mesmer properly times and uses Feedback, which is by design a DEFENSIVE skill.

Berzerker gear is not nearly the problem people want it to be.

Feedback has only a 6 duration is not going to make you invulnerable for the 40 sec.
the reason it was possible to down him in 40 sec was b.c the zerker build

Feedback, Wall of Reflection, Dagger Storm, Phantasmal Warden, Distortion

Temporal Enchanter, Glamour Master, Warden’s Feedback, Masterful Reflection, Master of Consecrations

You can run multiple thieves, mesmers, guardians etc.

EpicBanHammer.7521:

You must make it Kodan or you will be infringing on my right as a citizen of the United States of America the right to BEAR ARMS. But seriously, if it’s Kodan, I will reroll all my toons as Kodan and give you all my money and my first 3 children. Okay maybe not first 3 children, as my future wife would be very mad. But all my money, yes.

Perma bear arms would be nice, but you have Norn Bear Form.

Drakent.9605:

The Lupi videos you’re talking about use FGS, Reflects, and Blocks to prevent damage, reflect Lupi’s damage onto himself, and deal high DPS with Fiery Rush. This strategy will work regardless of armor type, it would just take about 2 minutes instead of 40 seconds with a PVT set.

And you just prove my point on how zerker ruin the game system, 40 sec fight make a huge difference between a 2min , does 40 sec aloud them to ignore all damage but in a 2min fight they would had to be avoiding the damage

If you stand in 1 place for 40 seconds and don’t take damage, what’s the difference between those 40 seconds and 2 minutes? They just wouldn’t move for 2 minutes instead of 40 seconds.

Drakent.9605:

Shockwave.1230:

There are some enemies that zerker make die so quick you don’t have to avoid damage, but many Elites, Champions, and Legendaries you still have to avoid damage from, which is more punishing on zerkers if you don’t.

I would argue that zerker doesn’t make bad players, it makes better farmers.

Zerker will always be the optimal set as long as active defense trumps sustained defense.

You can watch videos on youtube where ppl stand on top of the boss and there HP never drops down or there dodge bar never goes down either

Luping whos is suppose to be the 1 of the strongest dungeon boss was kill in 40 sec with out any of the member’s getting hit with out the need of using dodge

The Lupi videos you’re talking about use FGS, Reflects, and Blocks to prevent damage, reflect Lupi’s damage onto himself, and deal high DPS with Fiery Rush. This strategy will work regardless of armor type, it would just take about 2 minutes instead of 40 seconds with a PVT set.

There are some enemies that zerker make die so quick you don’t have to avoid damage, but many Elites, Champions, and Legendaries you still have to avoid damage from, which is more punishing on zerkers if you don’t.

I would argue that zerker doesn’t make bad players, it makes better farmers.

Zerker will always be the optimal set as long as active defense trumps sustained defense.

ANet’s strategy when it comes to giving out information has been to set general expectations without a timeline. What this does, quite simply, is allow people to speculate, which helps fuel interest. They don’t give a timeline, because there will be less speculation and because there will be people who hearthe timeline and just not play until it happens, they’ll likely fade eventually anyways after a while until timelines are announced.

Astralporing.1957:

Lostwingman.5034:

“Dye unlocks in the CN version are account unlock instead of character unlocks.”

BRING THAT HERE!

Haven’t you read the article? They intend to bring it here. But when they do, they will remove dyes from drop tables. You’d have to hit gemshop for them.
If that were to happen, i’d likely forget about getting any dyes ever again. And with only basic dyes (no, we don’t know what would happen to dyes we already have), i might as well forget about worrying about skins for my characters as well. They wouldn’t look good in them anyway, after all.

It says they plan on reducing drops. Unidentified Dyes are required for some legendaries, so legendary value will go up.

I honestly don’t like the price of the a-la-carte thing ANet has going on with thier gem shop.

It seems far more expensive than doing a sub fee. It’d be cheaper for players to actually play a game with a sub fee assuming these convenience/time-saving/cosmetic features are offered.

I don’t understand why every change ANet makes to their existing systems have to result more revenue through the gem shop.

Since launch I’ve been concerned about the game being focused on the money grab. It’s getting to a very uncomfortable point for me.

Dosvidaniya.3260:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Countless,

Yes, I did say that. I also said in that post that we are investigating ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the playerbase. If you knew the amount of players that actually played PvP in our game, then you would understand why a strawpoll with 300 votes is not sufficient.

That’s not to say that we don’t talk about it internally. We talk about it quite a lot.

If the issue was as simple as me making a strawpoll, I’d do it; but it’s not. A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.

That is not how statistics work. I really am starting to wonder if actual mathematics is used at all in design decisions. No offense to you Allie; it’s not your job to know the math. I just dislike the perpetuation of the misconception of sample size and population. I also dislike how some of the “math” (in regards to loot and luck) in this game doesn’t make any sense.

Yes, there are reasons why the strawpoll can be called into question. Population size is not one of them.

The mathematics of probability proves the size of the population is irrelevant unless the size of the sample exceeds a few percent of the total population you are examining. This means that a sample of 500 people is equally useful in examining the opinions of a state of 15,000,000 as it would a city of 100,000.

• http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

There’s oversights here, but the perspective offered is strictly academic so it’s understandable. In reality you have to identify a proper sample group to gather opinions from, and even then polls of opinions can only provide so much value.

Your sample group could easily be like minded individuals. Or they could not be like minded, wanting all different things, but what they want is actually in the minority of the playerbase.

Additionally as much as people think they know what they want, they often don’t think everything through and understand the scope of potential feature implementations.

If statistics on opinion polls were currently a silver bullet solution to feedback, they’d be done non-stop. They’re not a silver bullet unfortunately, but they can be helpful (they can also be harmful).

Allie Murdock.8152:

Countless,

Yes, I did say that. I also said in that post that we are investigating ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the playerbase. If you knew the amount of players that actually played PvP in our game, then you would understand why a strawpoll with 300 votes is not sufficient.

That’s not to say that we don’t talk about it internally. We talk about it quite a lot.

If the issue was as simple as me making a strawpoll, I’d do it; but it’s not. A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.

There’s approximately 17,000 that do Solo Q it seems, getting up to the 94th percentile puts you into the top 1000

I’m wondering why they changed it from Prowess in the first place

DiogoSilva.7089:

In-game VOIP is not a magical solution. Not everyone will want to talk with strangers. Not everyone will understand the same language. And ultimately, even when VOIP is being fully used, pugs will have no chance against well-organized premades.

No matter what, a competitive solo queue arena must exist. A competitive solo queue arena IS and WILL be the pvp’s endgame for many people. So it should exist alongside team queue.

One way to add more people to team queue is by adding guild incentives to this game’s pvp. Currently, team queue attracts those who want to form a competitive team (and in turn, they usually do create a guild to give a name to their team), but it doesn’t do the opposite: it doesn’t attracts already existing guilds to create serious pvp teams for the sake of the guild’s privilege.

As I’ve mentioned in my last post, an “unrated” (with hidden MMR) queue arena is also needed to bridge players between hotjoin and solo/ team arenas. And if anet is too worried about creating way too many arenas, they can simply replace unrated queues with hotjoin. Afterall, the hotjoin experience can already be replicated with custom arenas.

This would keep the game at a minimum of four types of arenas:
1. Custom Arenas (now also for hotjoin experience);
2. (Hidden MMR) Unranked Arenas (for new players to start and learn the game, or for experienced players to test new builds or professions, without the stress of leaderboard ranking).
3. Solo Arenas (for competitive solo players).
4. Team Arenas + Guild incentives (for competitive team and guild matches).

Also, I do like the idea of adding Random Arena features into solo arena. Especially the option (but only as an option) of staying with the same players for the following matches. This might also tighten up the sense of community and team playing in solo because, from the second match and on, you start to get an idea on how your team mates play, and learn how to better coordinate with them. Random Arenas was pretty great at that. Teams almost always played better together after the first match.

In game voip is a magical solution. It adds an enormous amount of value, definitely adds potential for bad experiences, but is the single most important feature in online console gaming. That’s how magical it is, remove Voip from console gaming and it will end up crashing hard. Voip and friend hub features carry console gaming popularity.

There’s no reason to deny having in game Voip would be an overall better experience from a user perspective, assuming reporting features and mute features exist.

The only challenge is whether it’s feasible from the business side.

Jivetrky.4697:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

i want to press a button and talk to my team mates like any other game in 2014

PLEASE Do not do this. Though it would be nice to be able to speak with team-mates -I am myself a big fan of chatting with guild members thanks to Teamspeak/Raidcall- and though it is now a feature in most games, consequences of adding such a feature would be disastrous: being a member of a Dungeon speed-clearing guild, I know for a fact that we would require players to use this feature for greater coordination during the runs, whether they be in the guild or not.
Point is, many players do not have the equipment needed or just do not want to use such a feature, for they are shy or for whatever else be their reasons. This would split our community and that is not -as I believe- what you guys at Anet want, for we have obviously been led to playing with all the other players in open maps and not just in closed communities requiring applications, the use of a microphone or else.

tl;dr: In-game voice-chat feature would split the community and is not needed, for our Teamspeak network is vast.

Why not just do voip for pvp only?

Or pick a few areas to use it, like only usable in Dungeons, Fractals, and PvP

style.6173:

Shockwave.1230:

• The existing SoloQ and TeamQ split will always need to exist as long as there is no in game pvp voip
• When in game voip exists competitive casuals (and all players frankly) will be able to more seamlessly progress into higher tiers of pvp via the ranking system, and because there won’t be the environment shock of the skill level disparity between Solo Q and Team Q, because they should be merged after voip exists.

I disagree with this. The difference between high performance teams and regular teams is not just voice comms. A team that is together knows how the others play. Each has an assigned role and they perform it. They know how to do rotations. They know how to use combo fields effectively.

Voice chat with a bunch of randoms will not help. Actually it will probably make things worse since people would just be yelling at each other.

Xbox Live, Playstation Network.

You should experience these. Points you’ve mentioned are true, but so are the points I’ve mentioned.