Time gating isn’t the issue for a large number of players. Grinding out dragonite or empyreal can be a much bigger roadblock and same amount is required for either one or two handed weapons. It isn’t going to change so just make your double handers first.
The Karka Queen already does the “pick up eggs and throw them at her” thing. That grand vizier is really just quite stupid though. I guess it teaches people to take along a good stun breaker if they can’t dodge.
“While I understand the difficulties of implementing mechanics like this for an environment like the MKL, where there are huge groups of people there solely to farm”
Perhaps creating zerg content to farm is actually the problem? I found this the most tediously annoying content I’ve seen for a long time and I’ve just decided not to bother with 50 gates. As soon as the zerg collapses this place can be dangerous but death and victory both seem too cheap.
One type of person you shouldn’t be too kitten is the oldie (as opposed to newbie). Players who have returned after a 5 or 6 months break do not know the new skips, the new tactics, etc that are currently used. Boss mechanics may have changed too. If anyone bothers to tell them anything they might not perform too badly.
They will be building an underwater base for Scarlet because every evil group helps Scarlet because she’s just such a nemesis.
You will see a lot of argument on the forums because
- some people just troll the forums looking for arguments
- people always use worse language than they should and it aggravates things
- people keep making stupid class suggestions that really do deserve to be put down
- non-thieves keep making stupid thief class suggestions and they are even worse
- people who demand class buffs/nerfs will argue with anyone who disagrees
- people disagree on play styles and what should be considered exploiting and trolling
- it’s the internet and people behave badly on the internet
There are a lot of people selling Arah paths on the in-game LFG tool at the moment, saying they will skip Lupicus. That’s a pretty easy catch for the developers if they really want to crack down on exploits.
As usual, these suggestions seem to want to rewrite the entire thief class to prevent repeated finishers in a smoke field. Anet will eventually find a solution that is much more limited and they should have found one already.
“5. using a stealth skill will offset revealed time 1:1 e.g.(when you have 4 seconds revealed time, you use shadow refuge and gain 10 seconds stealth, 4 second offset revealed time,
and you get 6 seconds stealth)”
This would be abused using cloak and dagger with backstab.
I play thief and ranger. It baffles me when rangers go into paranoia that thieves who previous backstabbed them are now going to root and confuse as well to rule PvP. It just isn’t going to happen any more than rangers are going to use Sic ’em to eat every thief alive. Thieves got a downgrade this patch. Rangers got an upgrade. No need for petty class jealousy.
“Spamming should not be an option. If you want to be efficient with your class, then it should be neccessary to learn the mechanics and be genuinely good at it.”
Someone linked an article the other day by David Sirlin and, although I disagreed with the attitude, one part of the article is important here. If there is a core mechanic that is strong then use it. It doesn’t have to flashy, skilful, or complex. I’m not sure why you want to stop thieves using basic skills for simple and effective defense and force them to dodge every second. Other classes have equally simple mechanics that they use to flatten the trash mobs or can flatten trash mobs with no skills whatsoever. Also, unlike the thief, those classes can flatten boss mobs in the same way!
This looks like a straightforward case of “Make the good stuff worse and the bad stuff better”. In other words, lots of stuff that people like has got worse and lots of stuff that people don’t care for has got better.
Blinding powder – not sure, may work ok
Destroy shadow trap – one toy less, we have to use it as it was intended
Venemous aura – less broken but doesn’t fix venoms
Larcenous strike – just plain worse, the dredge are laughing at us
Body shot – situationally useful, better than it was before
Withdraw and Roll for Initiative – a fix presumably?
Basilisk Venom – Is this elite skill losing its eliteness bit by bit?
Shadow’s Embrace – forces thieves into/out of stealth more often
“What exactly do you disagree with? Where does it supposedly show that i have no idea
about the class? What do i need to learn to fully understand thief class mechanics?”
If you only use sword/pistol for pistol whip and only use dagger/pistol for heartseeker than you are severely underplaying your thief. The smoke field as an area blind for melee opponents is core to PvE melee for the x/pistol builds. Blind is the staple defense for thieves since we are without boon based defense. You are discarding that for a largely worthless poison field that would be used less than the existing body shot.
You unfortunately have no idea what you are suggesting. Please learn how the thief class works and then come back (or even better, don’t come back).
More modest solutions to heartseeker spam have already been suggested by the thief community and you could read them and learn.
To the OP, in one sense you are right that the credit does go to the players and nobody gives Trahearne any rewards (forgetting that players do actually find Cadalbolg in the Sylvari personal story and the Pale Tree gives it to Trahearne instead). However in terms of story advancement, the story that advances is Trahearne’s. The pact commander is pretty much the pact commander all the way through and that’s it. Do you make any friends and alliances in the personal story? No you tend to make friends with Trahearne’s friends and work with them. The story of Trahearne advances with the Pale Tree, Cadalbolg, creation of the Pact, establishing Fort Trinity, his Wyld Hunt, and the cleansing of Orr, etc. Trahearne is not in the Arah story dungeon but that is in a different story, the story of Destiny’s Edge.
Trahearne however isn’t the worst offender. In all the story dungeons, and all the way through the living story, the story of the player does not advance. The story of Kiel, Scarlet, Caithe, Rox, Destiny’s Edge, or anyone else advances and the story of the player does not. It is a feature of GW2 storytelling.
If you want a laugh, go over to the ranger forum and see that panic over devilish thieves immobilizing poor helpless rangers until they die from pistol wounds.
A 10 cooldown on Shadow’s Embrace would really make me want to give up the game for a month though.
“Thieves may be hit hard this patch.. when they moused over thief remove condition every 3 seconds while in stealth trait it said every 10 seconds… that is a hell of a nerf and thieves will die to condition builds easily.”
If that is true then there will probably be no thieves left to play against.
“People with money can still buy the timegated parts off the TP. They would have to farm the vision crystal components themselves, of course, but people that would have enough money to buy full ascended off the market are most likely farmers anyway, and can do it in the matter of days. So, it didn’t slow the hardcores that much at all.”
I think there are a lot of players in the middle ground who been playing a long time, have the money for ascended crafting, but are unhappy about farming for empyreal/dragonite. They can do it but it does slow them down and they don’t enjoy farming both of them. The game isn’t just about farmers, elites, and casuals, no matter how much chatter there is about them on the forums.
Thief pistol/pistol already has a repeatable daze and pistol/dagger a repeatable cripple. I’m guessing rangers are not too scared of those.
Many weapon skills are actually defensive rather than offensive. The timing of these skills is important and it is not best to just spam them. If you do spam them you tend to do less damage than auto-attacks. This concept is entirely missing from the opening post. Mobility is also missing.
If we take the the ranger greatsword you get auto-attacks that can roll onwards for dps or you can be clever and time the evade. Skill #2 is high dps and that does want to be repeated. Skill #3 is a leap finisher that should be timed. Skill #4 is a block that should be timed. Skill #5 is an interrupt that should be timed.
Lupi has had plenty of changes to his resets and leashing but I wouldn’t call that a nerf. He’s essentially been the same Lupi for quite a long time now.
Bloodstone dust is straightforward since it is a non-currency. Everyone has more of it than they need. It currently only exists to occupy bag slots as it needs extreme play to collect enough dragonite and empyreal without getting excessive bloodstone. So you can just delete the excess dust. If you are really worried that it will become rare in the next patch you can keep a couple of stacks in your bank.
Dragonite and empyreal are more useful and if you feel that you will eventually craft ascended items then you should probably keep some. It’s 500 of each for an ascended weapon so it is up to you whether you keep 500, 1000, 1500, or even more.
GW2 is essentially a 2 dimensional game with some 3 dimensional mechanics. Pets are just part of that. As soon as anything can fly you get a lot of problems that are fixed in 2D by ground targeting. So yes a good 3D combat system is needed but when Anet find one they should fix underwater combat before adding genuine flight!
The solutions are not worth the effort to fix this problem really. You would be looking at
- vertical dungeons – not good for a skill system working on a horizontal plane
- small dungeons – not fun
- extremely wide open world – a waste of game resources
- dungeons to have as much world map space as cities – more unrealistic than before
Groups will generally accept you if you
(1) put a healing spring under their feet as they melee
(2) occasionally use a horn to give them buffs and a blast finisher in a useful field
(3) put spirits/traps etc down in sensible places at the right time
(4) help keep mobs in a nice group for aoe damage
(5) apply some decent damage while not getting yourself killed
So that’s not rocket science. Only the elites and the think-they-are-elites demand spotter and full zerker gear etc. Axe/horn isn’t a bad weapon pairing for pugs as people tend to stack in silly places where a ranger can get killed, but with an axe you can stand in a safer place and still apply dps and support.
“1.the only thing the Venoms need is a larger venom aura radius, because not everyone in the party is melee”
This answer suggests that venoms only work well if (1) you are in a group (2) you have a grandmaster trait and (3) the grandmaster trait is improved. That is not satisfactory for a line of utility skills.
I think you’ve got this all backwards by trying to pick utilities and then go into dungeons. Go into a dungeon and pick the best weapons and utilities for each fight. If you put down a useful spirit then use a spirit. If you can use a horn on a fire trap then do that. If you can cripple a bunch of advancing enemies with a longbow then do that. If you can melee with a greatsword in a healing spring then do that. As long as you know your skills you’ll see a play style develop as you go along. For now you might want to pick traits that have some choice and do not depend on utilities (such as piercing arrows or spotter).
Don’t take a condition build into dungeons. It’s far too easy for a group to hit the condition cap of 25 bleeds. Other conditions can stack duration beyond the end of a fight meaning their effect is also wasted.
Basilisk venom has a 1 second cast time? Assuming that the elite needs to be successfully cast to trigger the fear, you are using 1 second of your time to provide 1 second of fear. Even if the fear occurs when you start to cast the elite, it only covers the casting time.
It’s the same every time because it is a computer game. Most computer games have the same content if you repeat them again and again. Skyrim was a pretty good RPG computer game, it’s dungeons were pretty much the same when repeated, and I’ve got more hours out of play from GW2.
If you want unpredictability you need human intervention to create fresh challenges. A designer is not going to be sitting there creating a new dungeon for you by hand each time you want one, so go to PvP for human challenge with unpredictable opponents.
“shared weakness: incomming disabled: (stun, daze, float, knock down, launch, knock back, sink, or fear) also apply to the source. 45 secconds cooldown.”
The developers are not going to give us a mesmer trait, so better think up something new http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mirror_of_Anguish .
I’ve got a ranger and thief. I think the thief is stronger in 70% of the dungeons and the ranger in 30% (for PuG play, not elite play). I’ve made a decision to take any class into high fractals except the ranger. I’m guessing that the ranger is stronger in WvW zerg and the thief in WvW roaming. The SPvP balance will change by next week anyway and other people can comment when that happens.
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
The personal story is too segmented to have many characters developed. The story arcs are too short to feature trust and betrayal.
The living story is probably still building up characters and we may get to see them develop as time goes on. There is nothing to stop Rox getting turned into a branded charr next week.
Venoms have a classic design problem. They are balanced so that thieves with all the venom traits are not overpowered, however this means that venom skills themselves are poor. Instead the venom skills should be worth a slot without any traits and then given a reasonable boost by better designed traits.
This essentially means that the existing venom traits are too strong. Clearly though the venom skills have to be improved before making the venom traits weaker.
Withdraw is an ideal pairing with the acrobatics line but this trait doesn’t add enough with withdraw. On the other hand, this trait doesn’t cure enough movement conditions when paired with any different heal. This thief trait should have better purpose based on its pairing with thief heals.
Poison duration is just not relevant as a trait. If the designers feel it is relevant then it should definitely include torment duration and possibly include something else like weakness, fear, or burning duration as well (not having those on tap keeps it balanced).
Take the time to try all the weapons out. It’s better to learn them in PvE than in dungeons or WvW. I think the simplest way to start is longbow and greatsword. Shortbow is straightforward too, so is axe/horn. Try the main hand sword later as it is potentially the least responsive weapon of any class in the game.
It’s actually pretty annoying for a thief now without the smokescreen. Hide behind your guardian.
“Hey guys, why did we fail his event?”
“Um, sorry about that. While you were fighting those risen we were collecting spider glands and wraith essence from the pile of corpses over here. The abomination toenails sell for 42 copper each you know!”
Looting takes 1 button press to loot an entire pile of corpses.
Actually the OP talked about skinning hides and such and when I’ve seen that in other games it took time for each individual corpse to be skinned one by one. Another draw back is that all the corpses stay on the screen just in case you do want to skin them one by one for crafting junk.
Yes. The introduction for Marjory was great. The detective work with an Asura box was awful.
The problem with penalizing players when an event fails is that you penalize the wrong targets. There’s no point preventing a level 20 from adventuring in a zone where the level 80s messed up. There’s no point penalizing people who log on immediately after an event fails. There’s no point penalizing people who tried to fight an event instead of those who were snoozing in Lion’s Arch. There’s no point point penalizing people at 3am who haven’t got the server numbers to ever complete the event.
Any penalties need to be really well thought through. Giving players good rewards for completing an event still seems a lot simpler.
Flying combat is never going to be well represented in MMOs. One of the potential devastating flying attacks would just be to pick something up, fly into the air, and drop it from a great height. That doesn’t play very well though, not even when the thing that is picked up and dropped is a person.
Plenty of classes play the way they want. It’s just more obvious on the ranger when it is wrong. There’s no point telling some guys that you’re an expert because you’ve seen a video where an elite ranger does this, that and the other. If you’ve actually worked out the best builds by playing bad ones yourself and testing things out, then let other people go through the same process too.
Hard to Catch is the trait that needs fixing the most. I’ve no idea what a good solution would be. The thief doesn’t need yet more stealth and blind defense. There are similar response traits across all the classes, they are nowhere near balanced, and a number of them need a major upgrade to reach a par with the others classes.
Ranger gets knocked down – pet takes the knockdown
Warrior gets knocked down – ignore the knockdown with 5 seconds of stability
Thief gets knocked down – gain swiftness (you’re kidding me, right?)
It’s just the condition cap in PvE. Conditions are balanced for PvP where players have condition cures, so when we look at PvE enemies that cannot cleanse conditions the conditions should be even better, except for condition cap. Defiant and the condition cap define PvE play so players now use zerker damage that is not affected by either of those restrictions.
Remember the transformation stones for 6 pieces of ascended armor as well. You don’t want your nice new armor piece to look totally mismatched with the rest of your gear.
“Hey guys, why did we fail his event?”
“Um, sorry about that. While you were fighting those risen we were collecting spider glands and wraith essence from the pile of corpses over here. The abomination toenails sell for 42 copper each you know!”
It’s like any action story series. Your hero fights against the villains every week and in each episode the boss villain survives, ready to start new trouble next week. There’s no point getting annoyed about it. This is the way serialized stories have been written even going back to the 19th century and probably even earlier.
Is that serious? Players are organizing together to trivially kill group content in large numbers for the highest gold reward possible in the game, and it’s not enough?
They will announce the problem when they announce a solution. It is bad business to highlight permanent flaws in your service. It is good business to highlight the improvements to your service.
“For further reading on scrubonomics, check out:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html”
I really hope people don’t take that too seriously (unless they are trying to get to the top of PvP). It’s about the journey, not the destination.
Unfortunately if this Asura device was only a sensory deprivation tank it makes the Scarlet story even less credible. This immature Sylvari madwoman becomes an inexplicably brilliant scientist who goes on to become an inexplicably well resourced weapons manufacturer who goes on to become an inexplicably successful recruiter and commander.
In Twilight Assault, Caithe talks about finding out the source of Scarlet’s secrets. I’m guessing that some Asura gadgets from ‘What Scarlet saw’ will turn up again as the reason for Scarlet’s knowledge. The story may have far less breadth than we are inventing on the forums.