The effect sometimes gets culled but it is working.
How about a few less tomes in the current WvW reward tracks? I suggest substituting some of them with more WvW useful items such as siege.
Just a thought.
Druid, thief, mesmer are going to the most complimentary builds to run in small scale with a thief. We run two thieves, one power and one condi. We consistently take on 2-3 times our number usually downing 2+ before scurrying off for a reset.
Zergs want players that have strong overlapping skills/traits particularly boon centered builds. If they don’t have those, they go into a fight at a disadvantage.
If you are on a non-q’d map it typically isn’t an issue. If you aren’t facing another q’d map, it typically isn’t an issue. However when on a q’d map against other q’d maps, commanders want the strongest possible zerg. Rangers, thieves, etc are sub-optimal.
The odd part is that Druids are currently very strong in the small scale meta so complaining about being less effective and generally unwelcome in certain zergs is kinda silly.
What was the cause for it’s removal? Was it unbalanced? Outright broken? I didn’t have the impression at the time that ricochet was broken when it was still around.
According to the devs at the time it was difficult to balance because of the randomness of the bounce. They also made a comment about the purity of the weapon set. ANet screwed over a good number of players that believed (and still believe) P/P with Ricochet was one of the funnest builds to play in the game despite it under-performing compared to other thief weapons at the time.
IMO this is a prime example of ANet making unnecessary changes with no regard to their player base. The changes would have been understandable if they changed it due to an OP issue.
Not really a trick but something I see newbs not doing is priming a steal. So many thieves steal then attack rather than start an attack and steal. Doesn’t work on all weapon sets but most targeted attacks with a wind up are prime candidates. Pistol Whip or CnD (when steal doesn’t stealth) are probably the best examples.
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They barely seem to want to do any balancing every quarter, plus it would interfere with spvp seasons. Just saying.
WvW should be the test ground for long term skill changes not sPvP. Adjust skills/traits frequently in WvW and carry over the changes that work well into the rest of the game quarterly. WvW is simply a better place to rapidly test skill/trait changes.
The key to this is frequently. If they adjust a skill up or down too far and leave it for months, that could drive players out.
Sadly the population voted for scoring changes despite the warnings that changing how the game is scored would have virtually zero impact on the larger problems with the game: class balance, population and coverage issues, etc. So we end up with months of code changes that really has near zero impact on the long term success of WvW.
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If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.
Bound thief and any one that doesn’t have auto target on can easily skate past this “trick”. Going into the blind field against a decent thief allows them to get a free shot on a player.
people defending bound… there is no logical reason whny i can random dodge into people and hit them for 4-5k. so silly
Except it doesn’t unless everyone involved is pure glass. Damage against 2.5k armor with 3k power:
(690 * 3000 * 1.75) / 2500 = around 1450
Add in a crit with 180 ferocity:
1450 * 1.62 = around 2350
So to get a 5k crit a player has to be around 4000 power, 225 ferocity hitting a base toughness player with light armor…. and they have to have several damage modifiers (at least 20%):
((690 * 4000 * 1.75) / 1920) * 1.65 = around 4150
Typically Bound hits for well less than 1k on heavy armored players.
Channeled skills tracking in stealth was fine but then they went and added channeled skills that last a LONG time. Namely the Druid Staff AA and the DH chain. No AA or passive secondary skill should be tracking into stealth.
No ability should shut off damage and all game mechanics such as damage reduction should have a soft cap. Without these two principles it is nearly impossible to balance DPS.
They got it right with toughness and power. Invulns, resistance, stacking damage reduction and the entire condi system completely screwed it up. Invuln should have been a temp toughness buff, same for damage reduction and condi should be a DoT that could be diminished but not removed.
Everything should have routed through toughness. They should have created a resistance stat that condi routed through which worked exactly like power/toughness. The only exception would be block skills tied only to weapons and evasion.
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It is a fine trait as-is. Not good enough to be the only condi removal a thief has and enough to supplement other condi clears. Absolutely no reason to re-balance that trait.
IMO four main condi builds:
1. D/P Poison stacking stealth low-evade.
2. D/D Death Blossum “perma” evade
3. Ghost Thief
4. Lotus Training Interrupt
Each has significant weaknesses. One and Four are the two most dangerous IMO. Four requires the most skill as timing Interrupts in bunker meta is an art. One outplays them all in 1v1. Three is only useful in group play.
Death Blossom builds have a hitch between attacks making them open to easy counters by a decent player.
Another thief is your best shot to kill a thief. Keep in mind that rolling a power thief will typically cause a player to die a lot more frequently. Most people that complain about thieves have no idea just how difficult they are to play in an evenly matched fight.
If you don’t want to die to a thief, just roll a meta bunker. You might die in an outnumbered situation but most bunker builds are pretty much immune from 1v1 play outside of a massive skill differential between players.
Anet should take the top 5 skills/traits for each class and adjust them down a bit each month. Do the same for the bottom ones only adjust them to be more powerful. Keep going on each class until all skills/traits are close to the median average in usage.
Skilled roaming is effectively dead. The only thing we are running into are empty camps, scrub players and when a decent fight does break out it is almost always a bunch of bunker Druids.
I don’t like calling WvW dead since there are clearly still a good number of us but for the first time I believe I can see the end of my time playing the game.
Hmmm… figured some might want to try something different after 200+ weeks of the same ole thing especially with some WvW populations getting close to a collapse.
I guess those scoring changes the base voted for were a better use of developer time.
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Better would be to take a handful over used traits/skills on each class and tone them down a tiny bit and take a handful unused traits/skills and buff them each quarter.
The meta should be telling ANet what needs balancing simply by looking at the top players and what they are and are not using.
What if for one week all players logging into WvW couldn’t bring any gear, inventories emptied, only one 20 slot bag, all forms of trade in WvW were turned off, banks would be inaccessible, all external buffs switched off including WvW levels and our characters in WvW were temporarily reset to say level 50?
Basically we all start on an even playing field and have to scrounge for weapons, siege, etc.
None of these changes would be permanent and the game mode would only last a week. Magic Find would be capped at 300% for all players and Veteran Guards would have a high siege drop rate. When players die, a piece of their equipment breaks, becomes useless and it cannot be repaired.
At the end of the week, anything in the players direct inventory would carry over and all WxP, money, etc gained would be added into their characters permanent pool.
What if?
I know it only uses 1 trap however it is the function of that 1 trap that you have to look at. The trap is used to keep someone in the caltrops to stack up all the bleeds which is mostly the condition that kills them. Without either trip wire or needle trap to keep people in the caltrops most people can simply run or cripple walk out of it without too much trouble.
Confusion and Poison croak most players. Dropping 11 stacks of Confusion before a player even knows they are in a fight is what often does the deed. Just getting those stacks off will often take a huge chunk of their life.
No bound needs to be toned down actually. 1st It’s ability to crit should be removed. 2nd It should lose it leaps finisher.
So basically gut the trait so the few that do use it stop… hmmmm.
Non crit with 3k power against an NPC creature does 1.5k damage or less. Vault does around 4.5k. If it couldn’t crit, the best a player would see against an armored opponent would be less than 1k.
Remove its finisher… then it would be completely pointless as most take it as a utility with bonus damage. Why would you want to remove the leap finisher?
If they made your suggested changes it would basically be a GM trait that isn’t as good as a minor trait like Lead Attacks.
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I do not agree damage on bound anemic. I can easily generate 6 k bounds on crit. Mug can not Crit. Added to that the bound damage is AOE hitting to 5 targets, is coupled with a nice evade and generates 10 percent more damage in followup attacks. Unlike a mug I do not have to wait 21 seconds for the next bound. It also a leap finisher which is significant.
Unmodified Bound does around 35% of a Vault which means if you can get Bound to 6k you can get Vault to 18k on a hit. I am not saying it cannot be done but the stars have to align for that kind of damage. Mug is a first tier trait that also has a healing component and triggers sigils. Bound is a GM trait that can barely stack up to Mug and certainly pales in comparison to Dash. No reason Bound shouldn’t use the attack weapon and all that it entails. If it is too strong, drop the coefficient but don’t effectively hide the attack type.
I am still unclear on the issues with the direction of evade. If V default used to dodge on any of the three you will dodge “backwards”. I tend to use LR button depressed to move forward with a third mouse button bound to my dodge and this always gets bound going forward to the enemy.
Bound should move forward by default just as Dash should. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Bound or Dash to naturally move backward. Currently both skills need two keys to operate in their typical usage (press forward, then Bound rather than just Bound). Doesn’t sound like much, but it feels awkward when first using the skill and wastes keystrokes.
A target circle for Bound would be nice as well. Right now Bound is clunky and requires considerable practice compared to traditional skills.
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Honestly, this thief build has so many hard counters, they’re almost a non-issue (aside from near perma-stealthing.)
There are no hard counters to the updated Ghost Thief builds. At best there are a handful of soft counters none of which prevents the build from hitting the reset button.
As noted this build running in a pack is very strong. Two of these will off even strong condi cleanse builds.
Improvements:
1. Bound naturally goes backwards when it should naturally move forward (Dash should work similarly). Players could still directional it where they want. Currently it feels awkward at least for a while.
2. Bound’s coefficient is listed as 1.75. Unfortunately Bound doesn’t use the players weapon to calculate its damage. Instead it hits like a player has no weapon equipped. This makes its damage fairly anemic even with a crit. Bound should hit with full weapon strength. Currently it does less damage than Mug.
Bug(?): The AoE is listed as being the same effective AoE range as Vault but it is much more difficult to land. Something is off I think.
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It is broke and it isn’t OP unless it is a 2+ of them.
Something to keep in mind: the most effective version of this build does not use Trapper runes and really only uses one trap. Typically plex or torment runes. It is also a bunker build that typically uses Bound, Heart Seeker and Black Powder to stay perma-stealthed.
The Trapper Condi build is junk… the Ghost Thief minimal trap variant is dangerous particularly in numbers or as support.
4-2-1. Two second places shouldn’t be better than one first place.
Our guild tends to run solo players but excessive celebration over an outnumbered win will often have us create a gank squad where we spend a week or so ganking everyone in their guild (including blowing them up in the middle of zergs). We are certainly not the only roamer/gank squad that does this either so corpse jump at your guilds peril.
Funny enough, we hunt for fun since killing randoms got boring three years ago. Most of our guild doesn’t even play anymore unless we pull them out of another game to guild hunt. Without these faux made up mini-games, I don’t think we would keep playing.
Wait, what? Glassier druid builds are extremely powerful in the hands of a skilled player. To the point that I’ve pretty much resigned myself to accepting I have no counter for them as a vanilla warrior in small scale wvw (and I’m ok with that, I don’t think they should be nerfed).
Seriously, if you play druid and assumed going glassy is weak, you should have a second look at that. Staff/gs and staff/lb can be extremely effective if played right.
This. Pure Bunker Druid is a beginner face roll build that is pure effective cheese (what most of us fight). However, good players take those same bunker capabilities and wrap it in a power crit quickness build. They don’t bunker nearly as well but plenty for a good player. They can do very heavy spike with quickness (20k ish to medium armor in a few seconds). Get close and they just stealth/distance. Tough fight, lead enemies to a fight spot near water where they are basically unkillable.
Ice is the worst hands down. Gunk is fantastic on a condi build for the reasons above. Shoot Rifle is pretty weak but everything else seems pretty solid.
Withdraw consistently works as one of the few instant heal skills and once mastered its mobility in a fight is a huge asset. Withdraws instant cast mobility is a big reason it is so good. Removing or separating its mobility would effectively gut the skill for many players particularly in sPvP and WvW.
I hate saying L2P but Withdraw in this case really is L2P. This is particularly true since healing is easy to swap out for one works in a specific situation better. The thief already has plenty of solid heals to choose from.
The pull didn’t work from day one. You just just assumed the unevadable behavior was an intentional buff.
I am not even talking about the evade portion. The DH pull has been reasonably reliable since launch. SW is laughably unreliable in comparison and has been for 4 years. They work in nearly the same manner so why has SW sat broken for all these years?
Replace druid in that paragraph with any other bunker and you get pretty much the same result.
Except the Bunker Druid also has solid stealth up time, higher mobility and excellent range. Outside of a Dash/SB Thief they are the fastest thing in the game. If they were ONLY a Bunker, I doubt many would complain.
As bunker as a Guardian, stealths like a Mesmer, travels like a thief and hits well like a Ranger. They have very little counter play when driven by a decent or better player. Good players make them near indestructible outside of a heavily outmatched fight.
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The best trapper thief builds do not use Trapper runes. D/P with Bound allows for perma-stealth and opens up Plex runes which apply confusion without triggering reveal. More interesting is that these builds are centered around one trap so its hard to even call them trapper thieves.
Two of these builds together can wipe a small group and the build has high mobility so any reveals often fail to work.
It is a broke build as no build should be able to kill a player without leaving stealth.
shortbow is quite strong weapon set it quite like s/d it had quite learning curve but once you get it you can do some very interesting results with it
“I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Why do Dragon Hunters have a pull that works from day one and thieves have been stuck with a buggy beyond belief Scorpion Wire since launch?
Simple, because ANet hates Thief people.
Very funny. Most of this applies to several large guilds.
As far as I understand, since the sPvP and balance teams are two different teams, the only thing the sPvP team has control over is which sigils/runes/amulets are available. Removing that rune from sPvP wasn’t done by the balance team. I wouldn’t call the sPvP team lazy, but responsive.
This is probably true but doesn’t change the overall consideration. The WvW team can learn from sPvP changes. If anything WvW amplifies sPvP meta so changes made in sPvP that are well received should be adopted in some fashion in WvW.
Most of his points are valid and his solutions workable.
My guess is the players that voted for scoring changes will finally learn that changing the scoring won’t effect coverage and general population issues. PvD and mowing down out manned players will still be dominant issues in WvW.
On the plus side, winning will be… oh wait… still utterly pointless since we aren’t rewarded for winning with anything meaningful.
Seriously, there isn’t any OP class atm. You might run into a build that counters yours but anything can be beaten 1v1.
Overpowered isn’t defined as any class/build that has no weakness to another build or builds in a cage match. Overpowered in this context means a significant advantage against most other players of similar skill using other builds.
In this case, the current Bunker Druid builds when played by a decent player are extremely difficult to beat. They are dangerous to non-bunker builds, can stalemate most bunker builds and can typically make it to any door on a map simply by running and stealthing even with multiple players trying to kill them. They also have a fairly shallow degree of difficulty to play.
I define cheese as effective builds with few direct counters and lower skill levels required to play compared to their effectiveness. My ranked list in cheesiness high to low:
Druid: Stealth Bunker or Stealth Bunker hybrid
Thief: Perma-stealth trapper
Mesmer: Pretty much any Dire condi variant
Warrior: Shield/GS Stance Boon builds
Guardian: DH Trapper builds
Scrapper: Not much cheese but the Bunker Gyro builds come somewhat close
Necro: No cheese in small scale
Revenant: No cheese in small scale
Elementalist: No cheese in small scale
Typical condi builds such as low stealth condi thief, necro condi builds, etc have strong counter play and are often not easy to play. Those that lump all condi builds into the same pile are typically lower skilled or less experienced players. Only a small handful of condi builds do well in duels and those often have roaming drawbacks. Passive Bunkering centered around Boons in this game is the “real” cheese on most classes currently.
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If they are higher than Mithril they are primarily zerglings or EotM Karma farmers from way back. It is nearly impossible to get a very high rank and fight primarily small scale even with a BDay gift.
Typically if I see something over Mithril, it is typically a soft target in the open.
Dueling allows players to hone their small fighting skills, method to quickly sample new classes/builds and a way to test small scale build changes.
Two caveats though:
1. When there is a map q, it is open season on duelers as far as I am concerned.
2. If its red its dead applies in all situations. Course interrupting a duel will often get the interrupter dead quick.
Druid is the second best roamer. Chrono is a superior 1v1 fighter if you want to win a fight and not stalemate one but isn’t as fast and is less slippery (by a smidge). Warrior is tough to kill, hits like a truck and moves across a map pretty fast but it isn’t very slippery.
Scrapper would round out the list with a bit of everything. They are the kitchen sinks of roamers but like the Druid they tend to play towards a stalemate with a good opponent.
2 months ago I built a new machine with an I7-5930 (6 cores). I watercooled the machine and it’s overclocked to 4.2 GHz (Prime95 stable). I also have two GTX-980Ti’s (also watercooled, and overclocked). I have 32 Gb of DDR4 memory. My internet is Comcast Blast, and I have 90 Mbps speed.
The game seems to be bound by GW2 server responses and it isn’t particularly good at multi-threading. I suspect this is because it relies heavily on the server to process client commands for security reasons. I also think they decided investing in a heavy multi-threaded client would increase development time and sophistication with little payback.
Basically once a rig gets to where it can run maximum graphics settings with low latency, there really isn’t a way to speed the game up significantly. Throwing more juice simply processes commands coming back from the server faster which is a millisecond or two here and there. A slight performance improvement but not enough to matter in a game like this.
I have run the game on some murderous hardware (I have access to some scary fast processing on tier one internet servers)… didn’t speed the game up much.
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a fixed amount of time. regardless of what you do. if you got track credit from capturing camps or killing enemies, that would be better.
heck, it’d even be better if wvw were required for gift of exploration again, so you’d be able to work on both at the same time.
It does get faster when a player does WvW dailies as well as maintaining their contribution level. These items are called Legendaries and were meant to take a significant amount of effort to complete.
Those that are saying “you just XYZ” to kill a Druid, aren’t fighting the bunker variations. A decent player in a bunker Druid can easily face tank two players and it takes 3+ to bring them down if they are trying to run.
Maybe. Thief is still the most fluid combat class in the game and because of this can feel the most rewarding. However, it can also be a very frustrating class.
Power builds are brittle and do not forgive mistakes yet provide the most exhilaration of any class in WvW IMO. Thieves are cannibals to their own kind and in some sense we are weakest against our own since other thieves are typically the easiest to blow up. If you don’t mind porting frequently and a steep learning curve against bunker builds, this is where you belong.
Condi builds play like other condi builds… they dish out the condi and then survive often via dodges long enough to see your opponent to go on full cooldown. Lower risk, less frustrating but not as fun.
If you want to run in a non-stealth skirmish team, look to another class. A pack of stealthy thieves is murderous running full gank and will often get your guild the full attention of zergs in some cases…. if that appeals to you. What a single thief lacks in burst 2+ make up for against most opponents even if they have to be patient while Invulns run off.
stealth doesnt break when you take damage, you probably get revealed by some ability that focuses on removing stealth
This.
Staff is a fairly crappy weapon against a skilled player. All decent players know the hitch in Vault and it is so telegraphed players have ample time to dodge or counter the big hit.
I agree D/P comes into a DH fight at a disadvantage. However, Headshot can be devastating and the fact that Shadow Shot cuts through blocks and blinds makes D/P a superior weapon compared to Staff outside of the previously stated Vault weakness.
I also agree with SV3 above, constant pressure is pretty much mandatory against DH since blowing them up just isn’t going to happen outside of poor builds and bad play.
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How about everyone has to port when they die. Works great in sPvP and would stop zergs from reconstituting instantly after every fight.
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