Guild Wars 2

I watched part 1, I’d say the level of play is lacking vs the opponents. But giving some benefit of the doubt that could just be unfamiliarity with Daredevil.

For the D/P matchup I didn’t see any good use of interrupts vs HiS or Vault, or even blind attempts vs Vault. D/P can beat staff easily between blinds, interrupts, sustain, and stealth.

The way that staff is designed, it’s more of a rushdown weapon. It’s basically go ham or die, the problem with that is oither builds like GS Warriors and DPS guardians do that way better than Daredevil, because of their survivability options.

You can’t use celestial, because you don’t have conditions or might stacking to go with staff. You could use soldier’s, but staff gives you nothing over other point holder builds on other profs.

Staff lacks the survivability that you see in other thief weapon sets like D/P and S/D. I haven’t seen anything over the weekend that has changed my mind about this. Unless staff is changed to somehow offer survival options on par with D/P or S/D, it will never have a chance at being used in a meta build.

Hi ANet,

Fair warning I play thief primarily, but this impacts Mesmers too. I’ve been playing Revenant and Daredevil (without stealth) for most of my playtime this weekend, in part because of what I’m about to explain.

This issue has always existed with the current implementation of reveal skills, but it hasn’t been prevelant in PvP because these abilities see so little use. I’ve been running into numerous Heralds and they have an instant cast stealth removal and reveal every 20 seconds and this is going to be on every Glint Herald.

Currently the way that reveal counters work is they inflict the reveal status in addition to removing stealth.

Here’s the issue this creates if it’s not obvious already. For Mesmer and Thief, there’s traits that put you in or make you benefit from stealth. You also have defensive skills that put you into stealth.

When you get revealed from a non-self inflicted reveal and the reveal duration is active, it severely limits your options, as in you might have none. Meta D/P thief uses stealth, shadowshot, shortbow 3/5, and shadow step as it’s primary defensive tools.

Revealed from outside sources causes you to lose control on some of your primary defenses. It removes your options to use 2 of your 3 utility skills, reduces the overall value of steal, prevents you from removing conditions and recovering from pressure you’ve taken during your burst.

Basically this 1 effect makes most of your defensive options you spec for useless during the moments you need them most. Again, this has always been the case, but revealed has never been a meta effect. On the Herald, as it is currently, revealed will be a meta effect and there will be changes in the meta like no stealth saving stomps (though part of that is due to unyielding anguish vs shadow refuge).

Maybe you want this? Idk, but just understand that because D/P thief relies so heavily on stealth for landing its backstabs and its defenses there’s the chance it’ll be better to just grab another revenant instead, since they can +1 quite effectively with just 1 use of Phase Traversal and permaswiftness (and they are more ready for a fight as they get their resource back immediately by swapping legends).

I don’t know what would keep a stealth heavy build semi-useful in team fights with revealed readily available.. revealed from outside sources simply removes stealth and doesn’t leave a revealed effect? Not sure, that’s for you to figure out if you still want stealth builds to be a thing, this is just one voice in the wind bringing awareness to you that a playstyle that has been around for a longtime is at risk.

Highlie.7641:

You should be posting this on the main thread. IF all the info is complied at one place it will be much quicker for the dev’s to read through it all.
.

Meh, I’m not posting this for the devs. It’s for the thief players out there. Posting it in that thread means less visibility for the players..

As long as you connect the first cahin hit on the daredevil elite, it works like any other chain skill.

Meaning you can can purposefully miss the 2nd and/or 3rd hits in the chain by not facing enemies then reactivate it before the chain resets. Basically the same thing rangers do on Greatsword.

However, what makes more sense in the case of the daredevil is continuing to face your enemy and stowing just before the hitbox comes out if you see or are expecting an evade/defensive cooldown that would get around your daze. You can then reactivate the current part of the chain you are on since it’s like any other chain skill.

Additionally, something else is that you can do is start the elite chain, begin activating another skill and cancel cast it before it completes so you don’t reset the elite chain then continue the elite chain. I’ve only found this useful thus far for mixing in evades via skills/dodges between the elite chain’s activation, but for mixing in evades you have to have a weapon swap available because the activation of any skill will reset the chain. Weapon swapping cancelling any current action means you never fully activate a skill and therefore the chain persists.

There is one exception, disabling shot will not reset the chain as long as your arrow doesn’t hit anyone.

Bounding Dodger and Impaling lotus dodges will both unfortunately reset the elite chain if mixed in between chain attacks. However Dash will not reset the chain. That said if you cancel the dodge via weapon swapping and you don’t land a dodge attack your elite chain will not reset.

In most cases though if you are trying to mix in evade frames between the elite attacks it’s my opinion that initiative is the better resource to gain evade frames from if it’s available.

tl;dr

• Daredevil physical elite chain has some skill cap play to it
• You can cancel/whiff the 2nd and 3rd chain attacks and have time to reactivate them again
• You can mix in evade frames between the elite chain attacks without resetting the chain by weapon swap cancelling evade skills and dodges. (Withdraw and roll for initiative can be fully activated without fear of resetting the chain, disabling shot can be used without resetting the chain as long your arrow doesn’t hit anyone)

Fyi, cancel cast staff 3 before it gets half way though the activation to make it a 5 second recharge.

assassin.7895:

Why would I dodge that attack? It doesn’t always do 3k. I have weakness, blind, invis, teleport, CC etc. etc.

Oh yeah, while I’m dodging I remove conditions if you try to hit me

Just an fyi, see title.

So, everytime someone dodges I should just dodge their dodge, because I do 3k out of dodge. So just dodge the dodges so that you force a dodge at which point you dodge and they can no longer dodge, but you can dodge again, because you have 3 dodges to get out of dodge.

The stats help you understand if you are fulfilling you’re role well.

They aren’t an indicator of your overall play in a match.

But It’s another tool to help you measure your own play.

If I could view the score, stats, and match comps of the last 5-10 matches, it would absolutely tell me valuable information. I’d get a idea of what kind of numbers I average and what kind of comps cause variance in those numbers.

For example as a thief it might show me I focused too much on fighting if my damage is high and my decaps are low. Or maybe I spent too much time full capping if my captures are high and damage is low. Or maybe I tanked too much if my incoming damage is too high.

Knowing those things give you an easy opportunity to mentally adjust between games.

“Fixed an issue that caused dodging to break the player out of daze.”

O.o
Wat?

As others have said, it’s 5,2,1. If you steal with the hidden thief trait during 5,2,1 you’ll reveal yourself when heartseeker hits because steal will stealth you and heartseeker will reveal you

I want vamp runes removed the same time they remove Defy Pain and Self Regulating Defenses.

As annoyed as others are with vamp runes I get just as annoyed with those traits AND vamp runes.

Nothing dies at 25 percent health once per minute because of these 3 things.

It’s possible, they just need to store the data and add a UI for this outside of PVP matches.

The real question we want answered is, when will it be implemented?

I’ll be starting out in this and tweaking it according to the meta.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVn0MBFOhlOBGmCkmiFfCzrJsEiCbBgXzZaeAmAfgA-TZBEABmXGAhTAQO7PAwhAggnAAA

Ascii Red.4029:

Ignoring the price of HoT and the fact that F2P accounts can now lvl to 80 and go anywhere (both of which I find insulting) I have a serious question with respect to the level cap.

lvl 80 is still “maximum” however it seems clear to me now that masteries are the new “maximum” and if your char does not have them (or cannot because you are F2P/have not bought HoT) then you are not done yet in terms of “getting your char to maximum”.

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

I think ANet are being sneeky and de-valuing existing chars/accounts in order to force people to buy HoT, masteries are being sold as new-content when infact they are the new level 80.

Thoughts? (keep comments on-topic or take your worthless troll-opinion elsewhere :p)

Masteries sound like the Guild Wars 1 implementation of Contextual Character Progression Titles. It’s something they’ve done since Factions, and I liked it in GW1.

No complaints from me for bringing it into GW2.

Factions
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Allegiance_rank

Nightfall
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Sunspear_rank
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lightbringer_rank

Eye of the North
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Asura_rank
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Deldrimor_rank
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ebon_Vanguard_rank
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Norn_rank

Just do what I do and always expect things to not die once they hit 25% health only once per minute. Then you can’t be disappointed.

Honestly though I’m pretty sure, given how prevalent this is among all meta betweens, that this is one of ANet’s ways of attempting to make pure condition builds relevant, since conditions tick through these invuln’s and passives that trigger.

That’s my theory

It’s not a nerf, since Daredevil has never been around before Improv’s current incarnation.

Your chance of gaining a benefit is less on Daredevil than Thief. However, the skills on your bar will likely be diversified too. Meaning you’re more likely to gain a benefit.

I’d just deal with it, there’s really no reason to change the skill when it doesn’t impact Thief at all and doesn’t have a historical behavior with Daredevil to judge against (even if you feel like it’s nerfed because there’s now 1 more skill category for that subprofession).

How is this a F2P problem?

The problem being communicated is that the OP was bursted down by a build?

Pretty sure everything is unlocked regardless of hero points for us PvPer’s

aggelos r.5387:

does anet say that you cant soloQ in league system?

They haven’t said either way whether there will be a solo queue and a team queue or just a joint queue.

look up multiwars2

I think we all should boycot the ‘+’ key, maybe the ‘x’ since it’s just a lazy ‘+’.

Oh let’s also boycott a the ‘t’, because in certain fonts it looks like a ‘+’

I just want to throw this out there. I preordered the expansion and have owned the game since early launch. Probably 80% of my time with this game has been in PvP. I’ve played the same 7 maps vs 5 other people over 6000 times. I know people where IT’S OVER 9000!!! But I digress.

The point is, I feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth, which is why I have given ANet hundreds of dollars in gems.

If you aren’t sure that you’ll be able to get your money worth by buying the expansion full price, just wait. The price of everything devalues over time.

3 professions during match making, I wonder if that’s a record.

You can watch replays of sindrener
http://www.twitch.tv/sindrenerr/profile/past_broadcasts

Does healing to allies include rezing? If so, I’d remove that from the calculation.

As I thief I had 200,000+ healing, which only makes sense if rezing is included.

Edit
Context is the match summary menu that appears at the end of the match. It’s the third tab which only displays upon match end. Actually it should display all the time imo.

Solo/Duo for a queue? Yes please.

Luceid.3850:

Shiki.7148:

Endless Truth.3074:

Considering it does damage even if used in the right field you will be reveled afterwards, so it a great way to proc reveled training other than pointless in smoke fields. (unless u hit no target).

Daredevil i believe seems focused on giving thieves a more active defense rather than passive (stealth) which is in this case evasion.

Sword energizes with the evasion and mobility aspect

and both sword and pistol benefit from the interrupt trait if the trait has no cooldown even better. but the weaknesses are still going to be there for s/p (stands still to pistol whip) & p/p (single target R.I.P ricochet)

d/p & d/d are trendy not superior to s/p i assume you were mostly talking about pvp when you made your statement.

the final numbers on damage since damage is meta atm will determine the mass viability particualrly on Impacting Disruption & Driven Fortitude.

the damage on dodge also gives a way to deal damage while waiting or initiative to recover

Wrong, Karl confirmed the staff and dodge leaps work like heartseeker so you deal damage then stealth.

Can you link where this was confirmed? I’d love to see that. I watched the POI and it was not mentioned AFAIK.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-POI/first#post5427446

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

+10000. Who cares about all the stats in the world if I only have 10 seconds to view them.

^
This
x1000000000000000000 + 1

I soloed my free smurf account in EU (for a change in venue) up to Rank 20, because I was trying to figure out how long it would take to get into ranked queues for a new player.

I ended up having several loses, and it took a total of ‘44’ games to get to Rank 20. Since I had 10 loses and you get half the rank points on those games, optimally I think it can be reached in 39 games, maybe 38 if you get enough top scorer bonuses? Idk, but unfortunately a few DC’s are likely to happen as they did with me, though I was on the beneficial end of them a few times too.

If it is possible to unlock ranked queue in 38 games, that probably means 80 is the most amount of games it would take.

Maybe I’ll challenge myself to try this again sometime and see if I can get it in 38 games, but it would probably be with a team, since I don’t want the stars to have to align. Hope some people find this useful.

TL;DR
Wanted to see how long it’d take a F2P account to get into ranked queue. Took me 44 games, best possible is 38/39? Wost case scenario is 80 games. Feel free to try it yourself if you like.

Sagat.3285:

Haha cheap bandaids are coming back and are staying for a really long time until boon hate becomes a real thing. I could say the same for PvE.

Boon hate? You mean Cele signet necro?

TL;DR below

Given that F2P is a thing now and given that there are new professions and elite specializations coming, and theoretically more elite specializations can be dropped in at any given time, I think a system is needed for the F2P players that involves unlocking things for PvP only that an F2P account doesn’t normally have access to.

Things F2P accounts currently won’t have access to once HoT launches include:

• Certain sigils
• Certain runes
• The revenant
• Elite specializations
• Stronghold heroes

So in my opinion a progression system revolving around time needs to exist so that F2P accounts can unlock these things. If people don’t want to spend time unlocking these things give them the option to buy things piecemeal from the gemstore so they can pick and choose the things they do want to pay for (i.e. elite specializations for PvP only)

Maybe this is an opportunity to redo how Sigils and Runes are unlocked in PvP, but that’s not really the intent, but the opportunity is there. The real intent is to provide a way for F2P accounts to have a way to access the professions/specializations via time spent that are going to be hidden behind a paywall.

As much as I would like to be believe in the balance teams ability to perfectly balance things, I can’t. Metas happen, and some tools have exclusivity. Elementalist for example is OP right now to the point that you can stack them and ESL felt the need to implement a rule so only 3 could be stacked, this could easily end up being an elite specialization. The Herald for example is the only profession with an instant cast AoE reveal skill, which will be very useful for clutch moments. Chronomancer looks to be incredibly strong as well, and this is an elite specialization.

In order to make it fair for F2P accounts some kind of unlock system for PvP should be available for these things. There’s plenty out there to model off of. It could be that profession has rank and account has rank, and at certain profession ranks you unlock elite specializations. You could have unlocks at the different 80 account ranks.

TL;DR
It doesn’t matter how, but somehow F2P accounts should be allowed to PvP with Elite Specializations and the Revenant, otherwise the game feels grimey especially when those things players are locked out of become meta.

So the Tempest Earth overload raises the character hitbox off the ground to avoid things like traps right?

It’d be super weird seeing this elementalist surfing some rocks only to suddenly get knocked off them because they roll over a ranger trap nest that doesn’t even touch them.

GrandHaven.1052:

Shockwave.1230:

F2P will only be good for PvP if elite specializations and Revenant are F2P in at least PvP or else you have a pay wall to be competitive.

Not at all.

Pay wall for MORE options, I doubt Revenant will be THAT good and if it is, it will need fixing.

Metas happen, metas happen because things shake out to be lower risk with higher reward. Elite specializations will end up being in meta team comps, meaning you’re restricting F2P players being competitive when that happens.

I don’t have faith that ANet will balance the game in a way that team comps of all F2P players can be on an equal playing field using their team comp against players who bought the game.

Looking at Herald by itself, it’s the only profession in the game with an AoE instant case reveal. That’s such a clutch ability to guarentee stomps. Are you really going to remove that tool from F2P players?

You can say, that “in this ideal world” it’s just different options. In reality given their balance history and in what they’ve shown thus far with the Elite Specializations and the Revenant profession, that is simply not the case. It is competitive advantage, especially if you want to counter comp between sets.

F2P will only be good for PvP if elite specializations and Revenant are F2P in at least PvP or else you have a pay wall to be competitive.

Necromonger.4970:

I am sorry for hijacking, but will it be possible to use the elite specs without purchasing hot ?

Hmm this is a really good point. With all the power creep happening due to elite specializations these should be F2P too or else being competitive in PvP will require going through aa pay wall. That would be super lame.

Aeroxe.8140:

I don’t think not being able to dodge in shadow refuge should restrict people from using refuge….it’s possible to swap weapons in the middle of a dodge to avoid triggering the bound trait, and then use shortbow 3.

I think s/d will be the likely contender, but d/p might see use with the trait impactful disruption. As long as you think where you’re bounding,, daredevil d/p is possible.

With the concern on lack of shadow arts traits, d/p can still have enough sustain by smart positioning and vampirism. It might be more of a glass cannon, similar to crit strikes.

Condi clear is a big issue for D/P thief without shadow arts. Especially since you are trying to run with the Pulmonary Strike trait over the condi clear trait.

Assuming a power build, keep track of the weapon set that they are in and mind wrack. Mind Wrack is the big damage shatter that has a 10 second cooldown, but it’s really only effective when you have multiple clones/the mesmer around you, so it’s almost like a melee abilty.

If a mesmer has mind wrack up he can spike you.

If they have staff out, you want to almost be recklessly aggressive. Watch out for the Warlock phantasm and chaos storm. If you notice you’re surrounded by clones change your position because you can get mind wracked.

If they have sword out, you want to watch out for illusionary leap into blurred frenzy into mind wrack. That’s basically it.

If they have greatsword you want to be agressive, you need to avoid Berserker phantasm, and mirror blade. Mirror blade and Mind Wrack is their biggest hitting combo.

The thing that will usually get people is a stealth burst of Mirror Blade and Mind Wrack. To avoid this, note where you last saw the mesmer before they stealthed and first look to use LoS to avoid mirror blade.

If you can’t LoS then you’ll want to simply run directly away from where the mesmer stealthed because that causes you to maintain distance allowing you to see mirror blade coming giving you time to dodge. This is what you’ll be using most of the time since PU gives so much stealth uptime.

If you are expecting them to blink in order to land their burst you have to dodge or use a defensive cooldown, Stealth blink burst has no tell but it can only be used every 30 seconds. Though be aware they can do something similar with illusionary leap, but there’s the huge tell of you being immobilized and you have enough time to activate a defensive cooldown.

I may have missed some things, but that should be all the important stuff.

Doomdesire.9365:

It’s not like CSGO where you can carry your entire team if they’re bad. If your team has no clue what to and the enemy does, you still lose, and 75% of the time your teammates are utterly clueless as to what to do. Playing low MMR ranked is like playing hotjoin. It makes me want to alt f4 and log into my other account.

You depend on your teammates way too much in this game to be able to single handedly carry them to victory.

I disagree, my win percent is at 75 solo on my F2P account when it’s normally pretty evenly 50/50 while I solo on this account. Granted I only have 30 matches on my F2P account, but I think you can carry in this game.

I wonder if Basi and Devourer venom sharing would be good ways to slice through a break bar.

Readymade.1672:

Shockwave.1230:

masskillerxploit.2165:

New update to ESL: You can only use one class in each composition of 5 players. Choose wisely.

Lol, not quite, but there is a rule preventing the 4 ele team comp now

“3.11. League Specific Rules
Each team needs to consist of at least 3 different professions”

Is this just for EU? /15chars

I was looking at the rules for the NA cup when I copied that. I’d imagine they’d be consistent regardless.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Shockwave.1230:

o/ Smurfer here

Already made an account for EU.

I actually think making a smurf account is a good idea if you plan on playing something you are unfamiliar with. That way your MMR doesn’t bleed over to something you suck at, like me on everything other than thief.

I find bleeding my MMR is an effective way to keep queue times down. Also I believe part of your mmr is determined by your class (ie my thief mmr is much lower than my ele) This also allows me to get short queue times by queuing thief and swapping ele (yeah I’m kittened up)

There is profession specific MMR, though I’m not sure how that will play out with elite specializations. Maybe elite specializaitons will have their own MMR too.

From my experience though, my MMR doesn’t drop enough when I’ve played other professions I normally don’t play.

Please?

Hi ANet, in light of my recent discovery that smurf accounts will be a useful thing when learning a new profession you’re completely unfamiliar with playing. I was wondering if you could make the Revenant F2P in PvP come the HoT release?

That is all

I made a smurf account, and played 22 games from scratch playing the meta thief build. Resulted in 16 wins. It’s interesting from this perspective. Player quality was very low for the first 8 games or so, then it got a bit better. After 22 games it’s still not what I’m used to seeing on this account.

I would imagine if you are a high tier player you probably aren’t noticing much of anything would be my guess?

I’d prefer the Assassin run animation from GW1 while wielding Staff, but Monkey King is definitely better than holding it like a hammer.

o/ Smurfer here

Already made an account for EU.

I actually think making a smurf account is a good idea if you plan on playing something you are unfamiliar with. That way your MMR doesn’t bleed over to something you suck at, like me on everything other than thief.

Eloid.4569:

nobody remember staff mastery trait?
2 endurance for each point of initiative you spend is a lot of dodge

If you do the math on that, it becomes at most gain 2 more endurance per second over time and at best you can spike yourself up 30 endurance in a 2-3 seconds, but with staff only. So essentially, the trait is saying you get one more dodge every time you spend 25 initiative in staff.

Seems like a rather weak trait in my opinion, especially when comparing it to rune of the adventurer or energy sigil.

masskillerxploit.2165:

New update to ESL: You can only use one class in each composition of 5 players. Choose wisely.

Lol, not quite, but there is a rule preventing the 4 ele team comp now

“3.11. League Specific Rules
Each team needs to consist of at least 3 different professions”

Fistandanthilus.6824:

Shockwave.1230:

I can’t see shadow refuge being used on Daredevil unless you take the dash dodge.

DASH will also reveal you because it travels a distance bigger than the diameter of Shadow Refuge.

Considering thief needs Shadow Refuge and Shadow Step as utilities, if a thief decides to use new elite spec, it is very probably that the third utility is the stunbreak-block because of its low CD (15 sec non traited).

And yes, I also think the early builds will be s/d + sb

Shadow refuge’s diameter is 480, the tooltip’s got the radius on it (240). You can still Dash within the refuge, but you have a bigger margin of error with it.

EDIT
I actually completely forgot about weapon swapping stopping dodge. This is also an option available for the bounding dodger trait, but it’s still not ideal because you may end up in a weapon set you don’t want to be in.

I can’t see shadow refuge being used on Daredevil unless you take the dash dodge. The other two dodges will reveal you. Then there’s the Herald with it’s easily accessible AoE reveal.

I think Daredevil will start out as Bouding Dodgers using S/D+SB with Trickery and Crit Strikes, having the utilities Shadow Step, Signet of Agility, and Bandit’s defense until the meta settles. Depending on how much stealth denial there is you could take refuge though, if in it taking pressure you need need to use your dodges while you are blind or while the enemy is invuln/blocking.

I also think Improv will lose too much value on an S/D Daredevil, so I wouldn’t take it. You don’t need the extra steal item since you can disengage so easily. Also because Daredevil will have an extra skill type, the recharge potential loses value. Though having a signet, trick, deception, and physical skill in your bar means you are more likely to get a skill back, it’s only one skill and since you’re job is to poke and decap I don’t feel like you get enough value, which is why I think crit strikes will be better as it currently stands, though I could be wrong because Mug and Panic strike have a lot of value.