Yes the lack of itemization benefits for pets is an issue, it was predictable, it will become more important with ascended armor/weapons. At the moment the endgame itemization is relatively flat though, with even legendaries having the same dps as exotics, so the status quo is acceptable. If a ranger isn’t getting the same benefits from stepping up from rare to exotics as other classes then it’s frankly being masked by every problem that rangers face.
Skill is better than gear. The players who are downed typically have little experience with that class in dungeons. The lack of gear just makes the dungeon more punishing.
Ok I get the Dream, sort of. That’s a shared spirituality/consciousness/empathy between the Sylvari and the Pale Tree. The Dream may have existed before the Pale Tree or come into existence with the Pale Tree. All Sylvari were born into the Dream and woke in the world. Without the Pale Tree the Sylvari will lose the Dream, presumably. Syvlari have empathy with the Dream but can’t use the Dream to pass information (telepathy) or do other magics. As with many oracular powers, there’s little point speculating how the dream has so much knowledge of the past, future, and present.
So Nightmare? Is it a separate shared empathy/consciousness to the Dream, simply the abandonment of the Dream, or another part of the Dream? Has Nightmare existed for as long as the Dream or as long as the Nightmare Court? Can Nightmare exist without the Pale Tree or is there another conduit that connects the court to the Nightmare? What happens when Sylvari turn to Nightmare? Why would Sylvari want to turn to Nightmare even if they abandon the Dream?
Perhaps someone could perhaps answer simpler questions such as what do the Nightmare Court want? If they could gain control of the Pale Tree just what would they do with it? What would they do afterwards?
I think the problems come from rangers having not having enough skills available to influence a melee while they are at range. Too many abilities are static and in the wrong place (traps, spirits). Activated pet abilities are often too weak/slow.
“The only problem is that it can be somewhat difficult integrating hardcore endgame progression type content for the people that play 7 hours a day”
Well yes! Designers can never keep up with the rate that players devour content, particularly those who play 7 hours each day. No other form of entertainment is expected to entertain for so long and so repeatedly as MMOs.
Shortbow is fine. It’s a well balanced weapon for dungeons: 3 target auto attacks, AOE blast finisher, backwards evade, cripple, poison field, shadow step. All good.
Two weapon sets have simple concepts. Sword/pistol lets you blind enemies with smoke while you hit them with a sword. Pistol/dagger lets you shoot things with a pistol from range after crippling them with a dagger. There’s more you can find out about these weapon sets as you level up too. Power is probably the best stat to pick and you don’t need much else until you have your own favorite play style.
Unfortunately Chopps I play a defensive ranger in dungeons as well and it seems fine until there are two rangers in a group. It’s then very difficult to contribute extra offensive skills to take control of a combat.
For example, I’ve seen the Ascalon fractal a few times now with two rangers in the group and it’s been a struggle to push into the courtyard. The rangers can lay traps in bottlenecks and put healing springs on the perimeter but there’s nothing to help an advance into the melee. Rangers going into the control area will probably get squished. The player groups inevitably get pushed out of courtyard and have to snipe the enemies from the perimeter making very slow progress.
This is a typical guild wars 2 fight where you can run with high aoe dps and minimal support, but if it’s the right support at the right time it makes it easy. In this case having players able to identify then kill/interrupt/blind the leaping gravelings makes a lot of difference.
I don’t think dungeons are so bad, when seen as a whole. Sure, the risk/reward across the paths needs fixing and the exploits. Standard runs should be 20 minutes to one hour. Fractals shouldn’t just have increasing numbers of mobs at higher levels. However this would all be hidden if we had new dungeons coming in patches. We’ve hit the point seen in many MMOs where players want nice new content to play and until it comes they will complain about the old content.
Yep. The evade presumably built into the weapon set so that it can be used as a strong alternative to a dodge roll. This clearly isn’t the case because of the evade duration but positioning/facing can be also hard to manage. Flanking strikes is a better evade but I’m guessing that gets put into the animation queue and loses precise timing. Death blossom might has the same problem but this could be hidden by the dagger attack speed.
“More needs to be done to address Simin. I’ve been struggling with Path 4 for too long, always getting hung up at her. After several different group combinations, we still couldn’t get her health below 45%. The regen is still too high. The part needs a good rework; there’s no way that part can be considered fun. Why even have that there?”
My guild went through that path for the first time just after the patch. I’d seen Simin before but wanted them to have a chance of working it out and they did so, without using any fancy tactics, and we got her down with 2 guardians, thief, warrior, necro. Getting the basics right was enough. They enjoyed the fight.
The corrosive traps trait does not always apply vulnerability on ambush traps. I ran some testing and it was working 80-90% of the time. I couldn’t pin the failures down to timing issues, nor multiple traps, nor the summoned thief being too far away, or anything else, but 10-20% of the time the vulnerability didn’t happen.
I’m guessing that the running puzzle puts people off. At the end of the run it’s easy for pugs to get themselves killed by some igniters and turrets. At the start of the run it’s easy for the pug to kill the group by standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Each time that caltrops inflicts bleeding over the duration it heals with signet of malice. This still works quite well though in the right fight (dregde) even if you’ve got no supporting traits at all.
I use a similar build now and it’s pretty solid and some versatility. Dagger/dagger is also well supported if you need it. I find it offers the least when the best tactics for an encounter are pistol/pistol or big aoe + signet of malice.
Gated dungeons have been a big problem in other MMOs. It restricts the game play options of groups of players just to suit an ethos of elitism.
Players are not entitled to finish every dungeon path that they start. Arah 4 always was the toughest path so needing at least 2 visits to learn and complete the dungeon isn’t unexpected.
I disagree entirely with the philosophy that everyone should use net resources to learn dungeons. Players should always be able to learn the game within the game.
This isn’t a player problem, or a guild problem, or a PuG problem. It’s a game design problem and it doesn’t matter how trivial or difficult it is to fix, it needs to be fixed. No questions, no hesitations, no delays, no excuses.
Spirits have an activated ability that generally affects enemies nearby. Unfortunately if there are enemies near the spirit then it quickly dies making any ability pointless. Seeing the spirts interrupted when they are activating their ability is unbelievably frustrating. You can trait to have spirits activate on death but that’s just making them traps, and we already have traps, or just traiting to compensate for the failure of the skills.
They also don’t have enough health. Traiting for extra health on the spirit is also just traiting to compensate for the failure of the skills. I’m guessing it would be impossible to set spirit health that is suitable for SPvP and dungeons so perhaps it’s just a bad concept.
So I’d (1) make the spirits non-corporeal so they don’t die (2) remove the activated effect and/or (3) always give the current activation effect when the spirit is first created. Rebalance the power of the spirits once the concept is workable.
Lotus poison is worth talking about some more. Serpent’s Touch and Lotus Poison is an instant combo. Add mug and you have damage + posion + weakness + shadowstep + bundle from stealing. Lotus poison makes skale venom somewhat redundant since you can always use a poison venom instead.
It’s a no brainer. They have to store the pet names eventually. The design is annoying every ranger every time they play until it’s done and yet it still hasn’t happened.
Am I right in thinking that before the patch stealing would apply a venom, but after the patch stealing does not apply a venom unless traited with mug?
I did some testing of this thief trait and sometimes when creatures set off an ambush trap and this trait doesn’t work. I tried a variety of things such as being outside 900m of the trap, setting off two traps at once, and so on but I couldn’t pin it down. The vulnerability was missing about 10-25% of the time.
It seems strange that they can’t get the reward level right for the world events. Giving a daily chest for them, wiggling at the side of the screen, is just bizarre and contrived.
UndeadKemea, you might have a build a bit like mine with a mix of venoms and stealth effects coming from the shadow arts lines. I’m doing ok after the patch but there will be a mark down in performance when you have to wait an extra second for the stealth benefits. Waiting for the blind on stealth is the worst, and the attack chains seem severely out of synch now, but we can adapt. Basilisk venom seems to be working at 95% if not 100% of what it was. I’m not excited by pure damage numbers so those may well be down. The build is down but not out and I’m certainly not rushing to bookseller.
PUGs seem bad for AC now. This is partly because you need group co-ordination rather than the players all just getting their stuff done. I’m also guessing that the people who know the dungeon and/or like the dungeon aren’t going back (think up your own reasons) so the PUG community is short of skills and knowledge. It’s also still the first dungeon that many players try so you are likely to see PUGs with poor gear and low skills when AC needs something better now.
My advice, find a decent group of players in guild or elsewhere and get runs done together. You can still kill everything and clear the dungeons in a reasonable time with a good group.
You will have a hard time persuading developers that a big aoe attack with cripple is not doing enough single target damage.
GW2 thieves always did have many classic ninja abilities: stealth, smoke, blinding, venoms, traps, elusive movement. Thieves were modernized a bit with pistols, given a stealing mechanic, and stylized for the GW2 environment but that’s about it.
This patch doesn’t change any of that. It’s the developers who put the ninja mechanics into the thief class so why troll the forums and blame players?
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
I’m in PvE using CnD and utility. It wasn’t overpowered ….
Am I right in thinking that Lupi gained immunity to cripple in the patch? He was immune today and he previously did accept a crippled icon and did seem to walk slower (in phase 3) when crippled.
“You’re throwing a fit over nothing. Unless you’re a 12K DPS 0/30/30/X Berker GC Backstab Thief, but that was pretty OP, and that’s coming from another thief.”
We’ve got two melee off handers for the thief and one of them has taken a proper downgrade here. Whether you are using stealth for triggering heals, blinds, might, condition cures, applying dazes, safe maneuvering, or just getting damage then this is bad. It delays a lot of utility that is needed for an offhand dagger build. Almost everything a thief does is set backwards for a shadow arts build and if you can’t see that then you’re not understanding that trait line. I ran Arah 4 with it today and it is still playable but it is strictly worse now in every sense.
I’d suggest that the gateway vendors offer a fractal design for a fractal skin, then a fractal skin for a fractal design plus 20 pristine tokens.
Actually, having played tonight I’ll say that this is annoying. Irritating. Playing the thief seems stop start now as you steal some feathers and wait to use them. You want to use hide in shadows but wait for stealth. You want to use cloak and dagger but wait for the stealth. You run your 3 auto-attacks and then wait to stealth. It’s just not as much fun. It’s like getting a car back from the garage and finding that it takes an extra half second to change gears. You just want skills available when you want to use them and the 4 second delay feels like an artificial restriction compared to the 3 second delay.
This is irrespective of min/max builds and class balance.
Ok I’ve just completed Arah path 4 for the first time tonight with four guildies who had never been on the path before ever. The world has not caved in. Thieves can still work. My 30 points in shadow arts were not wasted. What I did notice was …
- I lost the timing on cloak and dagger a lot, just because it’s different and also because …
- it’s annoying that the 4 seconds is out of step with 3 hits in the auto-attack chain.
- Traited blinds from cloak and dagger were coming through a bit too slowly, so the offhand pistol might have to come out more often.
- The 4 seconds just seems to put some stop/start into the thief play that shouldn’t be there. You steal some feathers then wait then use them. You need to heal with hide in shadows so you wait then you heal with stealth. It’s only that half a second wait each time but it breaks up the dynamic and isn’t as much fun, imho, watching that revealed icon.
- I was presumably losing performance from less frequent might, regen, etc. delayed but those marginal losses are hard to spot. Delayed blind was more important.
- I think basilisk venom was working ok apart from on the priest of balthazar. I don’t know if that was my error or the boss breaking free with skills.
Maybe it’s time to look to caltrops with signet and malice for extra healing instead? Or maybe not.
A well traited shadow arts thief is going to get less regen, less blinds, less backstabs, less dazes, and be targeted more often due to this revealed extension. That’s pretty bad mark down for a PvE thief who wasn’t overpowered anyway.
So to be clear, in PvE we will see no difference since enemies do not use stun breakers?
I play a ranger and a thief. This patch looks awful for thieves, particularly PvE thieves. Rangers get some necessary improvements but rangers still complain and whinge. There are plenty of threads already stating ranger problems and they are still valid and can be taken forward. This should be a thread for happy rangers.
I really hope mobs aren’t going to wander around while under basilisk venom. It was actually quite fun to freeze them under a bucket of lava in the dredge fractal!
I’m guessing a simple solution for the fractal skin would be to have a barter golem in the gateway that offers you a fractal design for any fractal weapon, then also offers you a choice of fractal weapon for a fractal design and 20 pristine relics.
Fractals are playable but with glitches. That seems to be true for most of the game. It’s true for most if not all MMOs really. It’s worth remembering that the fractals are, in development terms, quite new, so in three months time a lot of the glitches might be gone. Three months time isn’t meaningful to someone playing today but there you go.
I think there’s also an attitude and entitlement problem in MMO gaming. “I’ve put all this time into this computer game and I demand more virtual rewards!”. Well if you’re not getting fun from playing your computer game then don’t do it. The fractal skin should come as a bonus for an activity that you enjoy doing.
Any skill like lightning reflexes will break the entangle as well. If you want to see them first hand you could try the TA path with the trees in the boss fight (path 2?). I think as long as the roots remain they can trap the same person if they (carelessly) walk into back range, or perhaps even trap other players.
Thieves have a few abilities that get significantly better with traits and stealth is one of them. You don’t have any traits when you start the game. I’d suggest learning about a few other core abilities first, such as blinding and the weapon skills. As you go up levels you can change your traits to explore stealth options such as blinding enemies by going into stealth from using a dagger attack skill.
I don’t find it a problem getting groups as a thief. You might be finding problems if your server has a bad culture but it’s more likely to be CoF. That place attracts all the most self interested players on the server who are willing to discard everyone and everything in order to get the most gold from their online time.
If you don’t like your build then go to the trainer, buy the book, and change it. Try out something entirely new that you think might be fun and give it a go. If it doesn’t work then change it again. A thief is not short of options.
I think this mainly happens in fractals since players without the AR and without the experience tend to join groups that are above their abilities. Others players then have to carry them. All you need to do is time your dodges and you become a lifesaving superstar compared to these interlopers who just shouldn’t be there.
Trahearne’s character unfortunately has to explain everything that happens in the story. This is a sign of poor writing since the plot should unfold through events.
For example, when you meet him at claw island he just happens to be there and he has to tell you who he is when you’re really not interested. If instead there had been a story chapter before claw island where you go to him because you need a scholar of Orr, and you persuade him to come to claw island, and he does proper scholarly things at claw island instead of tagging along as muscle, then Trahearne is properly introduced. His transformation into a general then becomes more interesting.
That devourer is fields of ruin is pretty annoying. He wanders outside the brand and into areas where players get their levels scaled down too low.
“Now, I realize that I am a total noob, so it is probably my fault, but it is still ticking me off.”
There are probably some things you can do better but essentially the fault is with the game design. Players are meant to avoid damage with well time active defense – blocks, evades, dodge, movement. Pets never dodge or block but they do walk around oblivious to red circles so they die. The harder the content, the more damage is dealt for missing a dodge, the faster the pets die. This is even without mentioning fractal agony which is again, through a failure of design, an absolute pet slayer.
In conclusion, don’t feel bad but do still look for ways to get value from your pets in dungeons.
“People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?”
I don’t love it but it is useful. A small boost to movement can mean the difference between life and death. It provides the 900m movement even when crippled. It can cross traps and red circles. I suspect it can also break the tracking of some enemy skill inductions, perhaps by going directly out of range, when a dodge roll leaves you vulnerable once the evade component elapses.