Guild Wars 2

I’ve played my new character for longer than a I’ve played my new free account?

Pretty sure the entire core game is available? Your restricted on how you can impact the game economy and communicate with others, but besides that, there’s really no content you can’t take part in.

Trickery is mandatory because initiative management without it is too weak. Your pool is 25% deeper and you get back 2 initiative everytime you successfully steal, which you can do more often because trickery reduces steal’s recharge.

Blinding Powder, Black Powder, and Shadow refuge. Steal and Throw Tuft vs other thieves.

^ For free accounts?

Basically PvP maps are all instanced, so no risk of allowing map chat there

Shadow refuge won’t be meta, the bounding dodge means you’ll get revealed in refuge, and with how rediculous Herald is looking it’ll be meta and it has an instant cast AoE reveal.

I’m not sure if it’s been accounted for yet. But logic will need to be introduced to the Improvisation trait to prevent it from triggering with Physical skills for Thief, and then include that skill type for Daredevil.

That is all.

Serious Thought.5394:

Aaaah. Well equal is equal…. I’d still want to find out though. Also thanks for the correction=). I still think no.

Equal is equal, which triggered something in my head. If there’s any aftercast at all on uppercut, then that combined with quickness and a 1 second Finishing blow means it would definitely land after the invuln wears off.

Serious Thought.5394:

Yes. As far as was stated and can be pulled from the stream, he basically said that downed players have a 1 second window of safety that damage cannot be applied- I can confirm as it has saved me from reveal issues when I stealth combo kill stomp someone.

Quickness increases skill speed by 50% (so 50% off skill cast time) and Takedown’s final combo move is 1.5 seconds, putting the hit at .75 seconds. I suggest using Takedown to take someone out of the fight then just stomp them normally? That’s my plan. Quickness and takedown combo on a target at 50% hp or lower is practically a guaranteed kill (unless weakness or protection or…you know, they run defensive before you combo) because knock ups put every skill (not trait cd) on cd. So the Focus 5 Earth Attunement Elementalist has will not be activatable as far as I know.

Just some thoughts. Basically yes, if you use the final strike of Takedown’s combo on a downed target while utilizing quickness it will fail and the hit will not process. If it does, it’s a bug and will be hotfixed.

Your number calculations are with old quickness. Quickness used to make skills activate 100% more quickly, meaning twice as fast, which would make your numbers true. 50% faster (current quickness) on a 1.5 second cast is 1.5 * (2/3) = 1 second. Another way to look at it is
1.5 * (1/(1 + 0.5)) = 1 or
1.5 * 1/1.5 = 1 or
1.5/1.5 = 1.

The cast time and invuln are equal, hence my question.

VocalThought.9835:

After watching POI and looking at the GW2 Wiki, it seems that the grandmaster traits for the elite should be in the F(#) slots.

I think the thief is getting cheated for not having this. I wouldn’t mind if they changed the steal mechanics back to what they used to be with the thief, for the daredevil, but to deny the thief with a lack of change to the prof. mech., I think is a bad idea.

I would call these mechanics “Stunts” They can still operate off of the endurance meter, still get an 50 point increase of endurance and have traits that improve the “stunts” so that player would have to pick which one of the three they could use more effectively.

I would have it-
Thief: F1(Steal) F2 (Stash Item)
Daredevil: F1 (Steal/Stash) F2 (Dash) F3 (Impaling Lotus) F4 (Bound)

I would change the skills to look like:

Dash-
Gain swiftness, then rush forward and evade attacks.
Swiftness (8s): 33% Movement Speed
Evade: ¾s
Distance Traveled: 130

Impaling Lotus-
Hurl damaging daggers at multiple targets
Damage: 50
Number of Targets: 3
Radius: 600
Distance Traveled: 300
Combo Finisher: Whirl

Bound-
Leap at a target and deliver a massive blow to enemy.
Damage: 465
Number of Targets: 1
Radius: 180
Distance Traveled: 150
Evade: ¾s
Combo Finisher: Leap

I would have the grandmaster traits:
Bounding Dodger-
Your Bound ability deals damage to the area after you evade. Double the distance traveled and increase the number of targets to 5.

Lotus Training-
When using Impaling Lotus, evade attacks and dealing multiple conditions to enemies.

Unhindered Combatant-
Increase range on your dash ability and removes inhibiting conditions.

This way if you want simply dodge like you usually do, you can. If you want to use a “stunt” instead, you can too. It doesn’t change much from what the current proposal is for the Daredevil, except you won’t be able to steal like a normal thief, but you will be able to use all stunts once you specialize in the elite, without the perks unless you have the grandmaster trait for them.

I like this idea.

I think changing Dodge is better, it’s different and more interesting than just giving different F skills. I’m more than happy with the choice to make Daredevils new mechanics be dodge mechanics. To each their own.

Fist Flurry requiring all hits isn’t viable for pvp, even in builds for fun. Try 3 hits or more into palm strike.

Also, staff range is surprisingly low. Given staff’s lack of damage and inability to trade effectively, I feel like it should at least outrange other weapons similar to Ranger Greatsword. If it had the range advantage you might be able to play a bit of a positioning game with Weakening Charge to maintain proper range, to support this kind of play I would also try Weakening Charge as a ground targeted skill for more fine tuned positioning.

Debilitating Arc, seems a bit too weak in my opinion. I don’t know what to do to it to save its current incarnation without a redesign. Maybe try giving it lingering dark fields that you can do leap finishers on to inflict blindness?

Regarding Vault, it feels incredibly vulnerable and especially so to projectile weapons. I don’t know what to do about that, it shouldn’t get evade frames, and projectile immunity might be too strong, but I’d play around with being able to avoid normal projectiles on vault, but still being vulnerable to unblockable projectiles just to see if that’s too strong.

Channeled Vigor is too vulnerable, I’d like to see its activation time reduced to 1.5 seconds and have each pulse trigger every half second. I’d also play with giving it 4 pulses over 1.5 seconds and triggering a pulse on activation while adjusting the numbers on the heal and return 19 endurance per pulse.

If uppercut downs someone and you have quickness, will the 1 second cast of finishing blow overlap with the downed invulnerability?

In order to detect macroing the macro device would have to give away that it is doing so. If a device that can macro doesn’t flag itself as macroing you won’t be able to tell unless the macro is very remedial.

By remedial macro I mean macros that have a consistent input pattern without a variance in milliseconds between each input. Even if a macro is remedial though, in order to detect it you would need to be logging player inputs over time and identify consistently a lack of variance of time between sequential inputs.

An example would be if you are doing the dodge jump inputs and the time variance between the dodge and the jump inputs is consistently say 35 milliseconds, then you can assume a macro is being used.

However, if someone’s macro has a time variance between the inputs and uses the full spectrum of the 50 milliseconds alloted so that a logging tool would capture variances of 35, 29, 19, 45, etc… then even if a macro is being used there’s no way to truly tell even if it’s being used (again unless the macro input/device flags itself).

All that said.. macro’s would only be detrimental in this game’s pvp, except potentially for dodge jumping, jump leaping skills, and quick inputs of using instant cast abilities together. Besides those three instances, I can’t think of anything worth even scanning for. There is also the Hidden Thief trait tech that’s exists too, but no self respecting Thief that PvP’s would use a macro for that or any reason. The timing on everything can be committed to muscle memory after a couple days of play after all.

That the third row specialization list that says Core and Elite Specializaitons is twice as big as the other two specialization lists?

A sign of ANet’s intentions regarding elite specialization options? Or just a side effect of too much text not wrapping? Only ANet knows.

Heartseeker is bugged. This can happen through any field if you land and continue sliding into the field.

apharma.3741:

Thing is shockwave, if we start accounting for every little difference we could actually be here all night.

Example, what if mesmer had an extra clone around? That’s a whole new modifier to use and we have to figure out where it’s coming from. What about factoring in time to travel to the target if clone isn’t in melee?

What about dazing first for 5 more vuln and 8 more on interrupt? What about the cast times too? Mirror blade has a long 3/4s cast time, the thieves stuff can be done almost in 1/2s.

There’s a lot of factors in mesmer burst which makes it 1. A pain to calculate and 2. A pain to actually get the most of.

I would also always assume a thief is practised enough to get the backstab just as the mesmer is practised enough to get the mirror blade in melee.

Yes this is what I’m driving at, simply posting numbers has little meaning by itself. Though I am grateful for being able to see the calculations, so thank you.

apharma.3741:

Shockwave.1230:

Where is the vulnerability and might calculations for mesmers?

I assumed no might as mesmers generally shatter as soon as the clone is made to land the MW which is with 3 vuln and 0 might. I could add that on too. I also just remembered I missed a stack off thief too.

I might run the numbers again adding 3 might to mesmer and 1 to thief.

I’m curious about the whole difference. There’s potentially 6 vuln from mirror blade and potentially 6 might from mirror blade.

You should also have noted that mesmer gets to burst twice as often as thief and can land it from any angle, but has less consistent mobility to land it.

Where is the vulnerability and might calculations for mesmers?

Air/Fire/Blood/Rage/Bloodlust are all fairly interchangable depending on what you’re looking for.

+1ing is a perfectly effective strategy. That’s why you see so many teams taking a thief, because the strategy gets results and Thief does it well.

The main role a thief plays currently is using it’s mobility to +1 or decap. It may not be the role everyone likes to play, but it’s what the meta build is good at.

Saying that what thief is good at is not a role, when it’s actually what thief does to get results is denial.

It’d be better to present constructive feedback on how to improve thief at other roles and ask for more role options than to complain in denial about what actually does work, since it’s better to have 1 meta build than 0.

The meta build is good. The bad thing about gw2 though is always build diversity. You’re lucky if your profession has more than 1 meta build.

ANet is probably trying to do elite specializations to fix this. Not that it gives “professions” more builds, but I think it’ll be easier to make more meta builds appear overall. The goal should be at least 1 meta build per profession and elite specialization, which results in 9 more meta builds each time a slate of elite specializations comes out.

Thief can’t 1v1 other meta builds well ever since everything power cropped up, which I think is what a lot of people don’t like. That said thief is still good at its role in conquest.

It’s not really a tank meta except for maybe necro. There’s just loads of weakness, protection, and passive invulns in the game, which results in rediculously high damage reduction. There’s also lots of AoE healing to deal with the damage that does get through.

I would put less weakness in the game personally, or add more condi removal to deal with it.

Removing Mesmer, Thief, and Engi stealth defenses every 20 seconds seems like a hard counter. This alone is an issue since these cool-downs for these professions is at least twice that. The instant cast means this is only avoidable with blinks, which means you always have to have a blink ready or you’ll be revealed. Ranger, engineer, and dragon hunter have tradeoffs of sacrificing more powerful choices for this hard counter.

Revenant having this baked in combined with the reality that teams may end up running two Heralds due to the versatility of stance options means this skill alone on a team with two Revenants could remove stealth from the meta entirely if Dragon stance and two other stances stack too well in a game mode.

In my opinion the balance team as a whole needs to look at this skill not just the individuals working on the Revenant, because if stealth is ever crippled the main defensive tools for two professions are hard countered. This would require giving different crutches to Mesmer and Thief lest risking their viability.

Also, a 20 second cool down stun break, no traits even necessary? Does anything have a stun break under 30 seconds base? And all that utility? Gaze of Darkness is the most powerful early iteration skill I’ve seen in a while.

Engineer has a trait to reveal stealth and a utility skill too, both use the same effect but the trait triggers more reliably

Here’s a screenshot displaying what I mean, you’ll notice the Skull Crack lands after the steal and I have just been stealthed with no revealed debuff since I timed the skill activations properly. If I had mistimed the skill activations I would have been punished with the reveal debuff.

Edit
Changed the screen shot, since the combat log didn’t get captured in the other one. The window actually might be closer to 150 milliseconds

In Guild Wars 2, like in other games, sometimes you can find happy coincidences, that while not intentional become part of standard play. Sheik needle cancelling in Smash 4 as an example from another game.

I’ve noticed ever since the specialization update the Hidden Thief trait allows you a brief window of opportunity to land a hit about a quarter second or less after you steal before the stealth triggers.

This allows options such as Steal into Mace Head Crack into Backstab and for reducing the damage window between landing a Heartseeker into Steal into Backstab.

I know the reason for the behavior implemented is to prevent steal from revealing you as this used to be a bug.

Therefore I have a very simple question, is this something that the Devs accept as tech or is this something that the devs view as needing fixed?

The obvious responses from the community are that players who view this is too strong will call it a bug, while players who think the options aren’t too strong will say it’s not a bug.

I’m just looking for the dev answer since I’ve become used to this and have been integrating it into my play more.

Short bow zenith skin all the way

If you make it MMR based then people’s tiers can change without them playing, since MMR deteriorates over time and other people can build MMR while you aren’t playing.

If you are worried about players gaming the tiers via MMR drops just knock them down tiers if they lose too much.

That all said ANet hasn’t released the details of their system. In the past they put the details on the wiki for the community to find the weak points. I’d wait for that before judging things given minimal information.

arenta.2953:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbrXuZGIts

0:57

“until we announce it, like on our website or to you guys directly, its all up in flux”

so yes you datamined a thief with a staff
but that doesnt mean it gets a staff.

rifle theif isn’t dead yet. not until they announce what it will be.

why did i post this? cause i’m tired of people saying “its definitely staff”
no proof till they announce it.

It’s definitely staff Kappa

D/D isn’t a thing in PvP, and hasn’t been. It’s not because D/P is OP. It’s because D/D is underpowered.

D/P beats D/D, which it looks like is what the complaint is in this thread.

If you look cross class, D/P doesn’t deal enough damage to 1v1 any meta build in any reasonable amount of time.

The thread is pointing out something unfair between D/D and D/P, but it calls for nerfs to the meta D/P build. It’d be better to buff D/D than to weaken thief more in the current meta.

Stealth definitely provides an advantage over those who aren’t stealthed, but many builds have more than enough compensation for not having stealth. D/D thief simply lacks that tradeoff, but a build like D/D ele have lots of healing and damage mitigation, or a build like warrior has multiple invulns and condi immunities and high mobility, and so on with other professions.

Narcarsis.5739:

www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/c/6944089

This is accurate

Hi ANet,

You’ve had this skill bugged forever, which is why I avoid using it at all.

You can’t dodge properly out of this skill.

It’s very annoying, results in wasted endurance, and get’s thief killed anytime you activate vs someone who knows how to abuse the bug.

The expected behavior of dodge is pretty simple. When I’m using an ability, it cancels the ability and puts me into evade frames and the dodge animation.

The evade frames sometimes don’t appear to happen at all. And the animation for dodge often doesn’t appear to happen either. If they do trigger they trigger delayed, meaning anywhere from 1/2 – 1 full second after you choose to dodge, which in PvP means death on thief.

Please fix this, it causes me to rage, is a strain on mental health, and I don’t think anyone likes fights completely swaying because of thief dying so easily when any kind of bug prevents defenses from being effective.

I do wish Scorpion Wire was more reliable, it’d be awesome to have an isolation tool that could be used competitively

ANet shouldn’t add a resign button. The real problem is that people feel a match is over, which is true currently.

Conquest lacks comeback systems for unbalanced matches. Legacy has Lord, but is too snowbally. Temple has the most comeback mechanics in the forms of Tranquility and Stillness, which spawn multiple times.

In my opinion comeback mechanics not feeling impactful in matches that feel out of reach is the real issue, combined with matchmaking.

Simply put, not one wants to be put in matches where they feel dominated. I think this may even be relevant at the peak of the NA and EU competitive scenes, which could be part of why we only think of 3 teams potentially being the best in the world.

OP, the game balance is not focus on balancing 1v1s, much less WvW 1v1s.

But since 1v1 seems to be the topic if you look in PvP the thief shadow arts meta build struggles to land enough damage in duels to cause a down in any reasonable amount of time if at all (between competent players).

stacking ele at the moment is pretty impressive

Was messing around with Coalescence of Ruin while running berserker amulet. The skill itself has a sweetspot where you can hit twice at the joining point of the third and second waves of the attack.

If you hit and crit with both on zerker amulet against low armor targets, you’re looking at 8-9k damage.

I’ve been attempting to play thief without trickery. The jist is that you don’t have access to steal enough and unreliable mobility.

The extra initiative pool is so important it feels like it should be core on thief. Bugs with infiltrator’s arrow failing and pathing of heartseeker (doesn’t reliably connect, similar to old warrior rush) result in severe punishment without the extra pool size.

Swiftness being unavailable except on dodge or pack runes makes it difficult to keep up with or kite targets and pushes for more initiative use to maintain the chase/distance further compounding the available initiative issue. Not having extra initiative gain on steal is one other thing that adds to the problem. Using dodge for swiftness can be heavily punish easily.

Nothing in any specialization makes up for the initiative strain that exists when not running Trickery. This is in my opinion the biggest reason that Trickery is mandatory on thief currently. Besides giving more initiative to another traitline, I’m not sure what would allow for the trickery specialization to be less necessary. If giving more initiative to other specializations though, the trick would be to make the intiative gain not compound with trickery or risk too much being available.

I have the same issue on thief, I prefer to press buttons once in certain situations so as not to risk extra inputs being queued. However often times my inputs aren’t executed.

This usually happens to me when I am attempting to use a skill when the animation of another is ending.

It’s very frustrating when I know I pushed a button and notice it doesn’t activate a half second after it should have. I end up losing so much time and missing opportunities due to some kind of input issue.

I wish I could say it’s hardware, but I never have this problem in other games I play with my same mouse and keyboard.

It never fails that a couple times per match an effect triggers that I miss.

There’s a lot of ways to help with this, but one thing that I feel would be relativley simple to implement is allowing customization of the the size of the UI.

This is already possible for the UI as a whole. However, I don’t need the whole UI to be large, in fact I don’t want it to be. I just want to be able to make the combat effect Icons larger.

I’d also like to be able to move things around, but let’s be careful not to ask the for world here.

Basically, I think it’d be beneficial to allow for custom sizing of each group of UI elements, specifically for combat effects like boons, conditions, stances, revealed, etc.

Burn Guard is hilarious. Don’t fight them if you have only 1 condi clear on a medium to high cooldown.

I’m hoping there will be a rise in interest in GW2 PvP with the big balance changes we’ve had. Rampager for example is extremely noticeable and very interesting to watch. Watching moas, stealth engages, CC walls, etc are always interesting as well.

I think for spectator’s it’d be interesting to see who teams have targeted. Maybe show either a blue or red target above players heads so that viewers know who a team is currently focusing.

I’ll also resuggest adding transparency for spectators on the Henge and Clocktower nodes, and it’d be nice to see more use of static camera positions (this is on the casters) and better camera angles.

I do like the increase of damage and sustain in the game, weird to say that both exist at the same time. I like seeing that defensive tool use is effective, and I also enjoy seeing defenses exploited.

One other thing I’ll say is that I like how it currently feels like Guild Wars 2 has multiple valid build choices from a trait perspective. It’s fun to watch different builds playout in matches (also fun to play them)

This weekends tournaments was really interesting. I would love some better camera angles, it’d be nice if we could get some transparency when spectating points like henge on forest or tower on Khylo.

That’s not default backstab damage, 7k-8k is what you’ll see with the old meta slot skill kit. To get those numbers a thief will have to might stack or possibly take Assassin’s Signet with might on signet use. Or it’s possible you had vulnerability from the mesmer that was also in combat (based on the log).

A thief sacrificing survivability for 3-4k extra damage on backstab isn’t unheard of. The old signet burst build having no survivability skills from before the update still hit harder than that 11k.

The simple issue I see with taunt, is that because you can’t choose your target, you can’t use instant cast abilities properly. If you’re a Thief or Guardian, you can’t use Infiltrator’s Signet or Judge’s Intervention on your desired target as a stun break, you also can’t use them on no target to stun break without teleporting. On other professions you’ll want to use your instant cast skills on proper targets too. For example as a necro while taunted, you can’t death shroud and Doom a proper target. A ranger couldn’t cast sick’em on a thief properly. A Fresh Air elementalist couldn’t Air spike a proper target.

There’s various problems created for instant cast skills, but I think the biggest issue is not being able to use enemy targeted stun breaks properly (like Judge’s Intervention). Your stun break should save you from CC, not force you into a bad position, and I can guarentee that teams would abuse this behavior to put players using these kinds of stun breaks in situations where they have no good options to use.

Damage is quite high, you’ll need to build somewhat defensively in PvP. Though I do feel like you don’t have to build quite as defensively anymore as before the patch, which is refreshing. It’s nice to be able to pick more offensive traits too.

Kageseigi.2150:

Shockwave.1230:

After rereading I thought the situation was for mesmer, if it’s for thief there’s a chance aftercast on BlackPowder will allow you to start a double strike after the daze wears of and before to clear the blind so you an steal before the heartseeker finishes (this only happens if steal is cast too early during black powder activation). If that doesn’t look like its going to be the case you can clear the blind with Blinding Powder then steal, or if you have Infiltrator’s Signet you can use that to stun break then double strike and then steal. You’ll also want to get out of the black powder, because you might need to land a headshot once the daze you put on the enemy thief is over.

It was for any profession, thank you. And that is quite interesting. So if another thief does this to me, and I were to Black Powder right as he is using Heartseeker, would the Heartseeker in progress miss because of the blind, or would the following Backstab miss?

If you use blackpowder and the enemy thief is in it, your blackpowder pulses will clear your blind, but the timing on that is not reliable because of the two second pulses.
However, I was referring to using the utility skill Blinding Powder (a meta build skill swappable with infiltrator’s signet) to clear the blind, which is an instnat cast skill that blinds enemies around you. Your blind will miss because you are blind yourself, but you attempting to blind will clear your blind so you can steal.

Basically the general rule for the situation you’re describing, “Being CC’ed and blind simultaneously while needing to interrupt” can be executed by either stun breaking and using a quick succession of skills to clear blind and interrupt or more reliably be executed by using two connecting instant cast skills one after the other with the second skill being the interrupt of course.

Kageseigi.2150:

So, basically, the only way to counter this combo is by avoiding the Steal, correct? Unless someone manages to interrupt the BP pre-cast before Steal? Especially if Sleight of Hand is traited.

Pre-Cast BP+Steal+HS
https://youtu.be/EBoDa3m0uws?t=284

If the Steal does connect, is there anyway to avoid the initial blinding?

By the way, when does the interrupt from Headshot take place? Is it instant, or does the projectile have to connect first?

I mentioned this for Mesmer

You can just trash Cry of Frustration to clear a blind or Aegis then use Diversion simulatenously/immediately after to interrupt heartseeker. If you have greatword out, the autoattack can clear the blind before the steal easily.

As a mesmer if you want to perform an interrupt to your melee range target while you are CC’ed and blind, use cry of frustration to clear the blind, then use diversion.

Edit:
After rereading I thought the situation was for mesmer, if it’s for thief there’s a chance aftercast on BlackPowder will allow you to start a double strike after the daze wears of and before to clear the blind so you an steal before the heartseeker finishes (this only happens if steal is cast too early during black powder activation). If that doesn’t look like its going to be the case you can clear the blind with Blinding Powder then steal, or if you have Infiltrator’s Signet you can use that to stun break then double strike and then steal. You’ll also want to get out of the black powder, because you might need to land a headshot once the daze you put on the enemy thief is over.

I think anyone who looks at this trait pre and post patch will wonder what ANet was thinking moving this one to Grand Master. While they technically did give it the fall damage trait, it’s not something that pushes this beyond master tier imo.

There are numerous trait tier choices that are “confusing” (to put is nicely) across all professions.

You can just trash Cry of Frustration to clear a blind or Aegis then use Diversion simulatenously/immediately after to interrupt heartseeker. If you have greatword out, the autoattack can clear the blind before the steal easily.

The thing about steal though, is that you need to predict when a thief will use it.

If you see a thief standing in black powder a distance away from you, then you probably want to either stealth, dodge, or distort as a mesmer, when you see the thief is activating heartseeker. If you do this and the thief planned on using steal, they might blow it on nothing. At the very least though, if you stealthed, you bought yourself time to reposition.

The other option you might have as a mesmer is to be aggressive, you can blink to just outside the blackpowder and daze or greatsword 5 from there. If you were blinded, you’re in range to reliably clear it with any auto attack even if you don’t have greatsword out and then you can land you’re daze.

What you do depends a lot on the conditions and boons that are on each of you. The main point though is that, vs steal you want to be proactive in delaying/denying it’s use through well placed/chained invuln’s, evades, stealths, and positioning. The other point is that vs blackpowder heartseeker, you want to interrupts it’s combo during the heart seeker. Mesmer has the tools to do both of these, even when BP+HS+Steal are used as a combo.