I’m not sure if pistol whip is the hardest attack on thief, but I can tell you that for killing groups of mobs Staff does the best job with it’s high dps, cleave, aoe, mobility and evades, it’s perfect for killing brainless mobs even if you don’t manage to group them up perfectly.
PW has a 3.5 coefficient vs Vault at 2.25. PW hits are 33% stronger for the same init. More importantly Scout Blinding Power doesn’t mess up their attack like Vault. As I noted PW also has a stun which is great for stopping the Supervisor heal.
I have run both for a long period of time and S/P is a superior weapon set for camp clears and for fighting in general.
That build looks awful to me. I get the concept of stacking the damage but you focused too much precision over power. Anything near or over 3k armor (which is a lot of stuff these days) will hardly notice your big shots. My Thief, Mesmer, Warrior, Elementalist, Guardian, Engineer and Necro builds all run 3k or more armor and would tear this build apart without much effort.
Oh and D/D D/P? Why?
Skill groups did not need to be more powerful. Used to be that enough PUGs could bring down a small coordinated group and that was fun for both sides. Now good skirmish groups just roll through mass numbers of PUGs with hardly a challenge. Now most PUGs just learn to avoid those groups entirely which is not fun for either side really.
durability runes needs the sharing removed (it would still stay a top rune)…. and perplexity their confusion aplication reworked …
Plex took an arrow to the knee in the last patch. It is still useful to Mesmers but the days of dropping huge Plex confusion hits are gone.
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The score is a measure of dominance in a particular category. Changing the score will have zero effect on the meta or actual enjoyment for most players of this game.
As we say around our office, stop counting widgets instead value production. This means the metrics (score) is relatively meaningless compared to the performance (in this case enjoyment) of a system. They need to fix the fun factor not the score.
Remember when the game’s combat didn’t mostly revolve around passive effects and absurdly high defensive-ability uptime?
Hammer trains weren’t the best answer or even a particularly good one but it was significantly better than this meta. I have completely stopped GvG and roam pretty much all the time… even that is on a significant decline as most of the quality players seem to have left.
CD thinks they are going at it alone yet they have Kaineng, Eredon Terrace, and Borlis Pass players helping them. Sea of Sorrows is paired with Northern Shiverpeaks. And of course the mighty Yak’s Bend going it alone…
When most say “CD” they are implying CD and the related linked servers. Same for SoS. YB cannot help it that they fell apart and fell very far in the rankings. I suspect the next linking they will get a partner. I don’t think any server in T3 should be crowing about how awesome their fighting skill is.
Most of the really good players left long ago leaving a handful of exceptional players and a lot of newer less experienced players.
Medium armor classes in general are not very good for larger group play in WvW. The AOE damage is lacking, which is the biggest issue for me personally. They don’t provide things like group boons like stability, regen, protection, etc. Druid heals do not make them worth having around either.
Correction: "Medium armor classes are not good for large group play in WvW. "
I am sure you were just being kind, but in this case kindness kills. Oh and before someone links a medium armor build “that can zerg the balls off the enemy”, just don’t… please just don’t embarrass yourself <j/k> <well j/k sort of>.
CD focused? Sure, what about it? We all been focused hard before but not CD. CD can’t take it after 1 month of running over T4 solo roamers with a map blob I am right?
What started this line of topic was one guy saying CD is getting “rekt” in T3 and me pointing out that isn’t happening. I simply noted that CD would have been 2nd if not for a concentrated effort by SoS and YB at the end of the week. That isn’t QQ’ing, that is simply refuting the absurd “rekt” claim.
T3 is competitive even with some collusion. More to the point it doesn’t matter who they send down to T4 with these links as that server group will dominate it.
To answer your question, you are not right. Aside from jokes about how YB is servicing SoS for a dbl team, I have seen no QQing in map chat about it. Actually the server has been very positive except for some minor short lived commander map chat drama.
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A corrupt necro can eat a rev alive because of all of the boons as well. I’ve been seeing more and more condi corrupt necros in zerg fights because they’ve become very effective with how many boons are out there.
Sounds good until Resistance is immediately reapplied from the Corrupt Boon shot and about 10s later I am back running full boons. My Warrior in a boon composition group becomes disgustingly strong with 20k+ Eviscerates, immune to condi, 50% direct damage reduction, etc.
The ONLY answer to boon composition groups is to equal or better their boon capability. Mostly though player just learn to avoid groups running those setups (if they can).
I think the biggest aspect of PP that might have made it hard to deal with in a ricochet build was the SOM used in the build.
SoM sounds powerful but in reality it typically hit for 1k to 3k per Unload. Unload is often front loaded which meant the heals were often wasted. SoM also has no extra benefit like condi removal, stealth, endurance, etc. The biggest problem though is that blocks, evades, invulns, etc make its passive highly unreliable. It was marginal before all the defensive sustain and in the current meta would find itself quickly swapped out for a utility heal.
When used with Bound it has all the same survival abilities of the d/p set.
But it doesn’t. D/P has Shadow Shot and can stealth without giving up Unhindered Combatant. UC is easily one of the strongest traits in the game. Bound is one of those traits that reads far better than it works, landing Bound is needlessly difficult. UC is one of those traits that plays better than its already fantastic specs.
Might stacked you can swap out for the more devastating AA attacks of s/x d/x and staff. Bound to stealth with a sneak attack hits hard and the bleed ticks significant.
Might stacks don’t last long enough to do much without extra buffs. Besides I would happily give up the might to get Ricochet or Piercing. On a power build two unloads are going to be about a 10% to maybe 15% bump in damage for a few seconds.
P/P has never been OP and even with suggested changes will not be OP. Nobody to my knowledge ever complained about the weapon set being too strong especially with D/P sitting there and needing no extra traits to be that good.
It has the worst single target DPS of any weapon on the thief. It actually has one of the worst single target DPS attacks of any weapon in the game. Most attacks at this level apply a condition or swing faster. I cannot think of a single AA attack that is worse. It does get slightly better with multiple targets thanks to the bounce but the damage is so weak they never notice.
It basically has two uses… mobility and AoE poison field. Everything else about the weapon just sucks but that is sort of how the thief is built. Few weapons perform reasonably well or better on the thief.
S/P and Pistol Whip (PW) is the hardest hitting attack a thief has. PW also isn’t effected very much by the blinds scouts drop since it fires multiple attacks, it evades the entirety of attack and it has a built in stun to stop a supervisor healing.
Once you learn how to group each camp, S/P becomes one of if not the fastest camp clear attacks in the game. I can almost cap a camp solo before camp swords pop.
The meta is built around AoE, boon duration and bunker…. none of which the thief excels at. Doesn’t mean the class isn’t playable but it does mean you have to accept your role (high mobility and +1 on fights). Unless you are an exceptional player, standing in on anything is just going to get you killed.
What doesn’t help is that scores of players already know all your moves and those moves have been greatly watered down since launch.
Add current population stats into the scoring API and let 3rd party apps and websites compile and display those stats. Once those numbers are known the server communities will have a better idea of when to rally their troops and potentially helpful input on what servers should be linked together.
I am sure the side effect will be a bunch more quibbles about which server is best. There will also be players probably deciding to avoid getting smashed by numbers. However hiding these statistics hurt far more than it helps.
Oh and if I can tack one more feature on the end… Allow active WvW commanders to send global rally messages across linked servers. Feel free to put constraints on that feature but allowing it would make for better WvW.
The problem this time was stacking CD with extra servers in T4 and then leaving them stacked for weeks. They should have moved a couple servers off of CD into other matches after the first or second week.
T4 isn’t going to get any better regardless of who the third server is, judging by how CD ids getting rekt in T3 and SBI won T3, it’s only fitting/fair that they should be part of the delete.
CD is not getting “rekt” in T3. It took both servers double teaming for two straight days at the end of last week to barely put them in 3rd place. CD was battling for 1st place over that weekend and was in 2nd place all week until hours before the match ended.
Crystal Desert: 323,499
Yak’s Bend: 325,933
Sea of Sorrows: 355,111
SoS and YB have continued focusing CD this week and CD is still fighting through it making for one of the more competitive tiers.
Look
If you had One shot
Or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you Moa it
Or just let it slip?
Saw TW streaming last Thursday. Amazing group of about 20 players <snip>
The days of great large skill groups is definitely over if the current TW is amazing. I suppose a group can only get as good as their competition allows but they would get destroyed by the old school GvG groups. Remember the days of Mag GvG or guilds like Agg? Oh the Golden era what a wonder it was.
Yes. I de-target then re-target the gate then use the knockback ram skill once when that happens which seems to fix the issue.
A substantially larger force that is determined will get in no stopping that. Servers can crowd sup ACs which will generally push off a less determined enemy.
Problem with being heavily out-gunned is that there often isn’t much left to take so the enemy just chips away.
Unlink and Relink. IMO the Linking system should be tied to ongoing imbalances in scoring. It isn’t perfect but would prevent weeks of servers just getting run over. When they do land on a rotation that is better balanced it would stay longer.
Could it possibly be linked to the mortar ranking (I think its r4) versus people who are unranked being the dmg change?
Yeah it is Napalm not the other one. We tested it again. If a player runs through they get 6 stacks most of the time with is 2500 per tick. If it takes 1s to notice, they get 12 which is 5k. Players that stand in for 3s will die very fast. It is a very strong attack if a player is spec’d.
Considering that a condi bunker can now trait for reflections on manip (Chaos trait line highly benefit from Dire/Trailblazer), I’m not sure if P+P would still hurt mesmers as much as they did back on the days of Unload+Ricochet.
Their Reflection doesn’t last long enough to make a huge difference now that Thieves have strong interrupt builds. They can kite a Mesmer until reflect, block, evade, etc is finished. The P/P “trick” was that the bounce hit stealthed players and Mesmers could not hide behind their clones. Even pierce on P/P would be a decent counter.
Sadly YB would have been a better (still not great) fit down there. The only way they displaced CD this week for 2nd place was teaming up with SoS the last couple days.
1 week of siege damage only, please. The salt will be glorious.
Funny enough that was the golem week more or less.
Stick with thief.
Don’t ask “what is good class/build that i can win with”, figure out what you can change in your own play first before completely garbage canning your time played on thief.
The only time a thief is good in a skirmish group is around other stealth classes. Otherwise the poor guy running with the thief ends up being a lightning rod for 3+ guys wailing on him. Best to run a class with overlap so that the builds they are running are elevated.
For example, two tRex running a Bunker Tempest/Guardian combo can easily handle a 2v5 scenario. They just have to stay on top of each other and will grind down most other groups fairly easily. Two thieves in that same fight are stealthing and/or running.
This one on exit:
Exception: c0000005
Memory at address ffffffff`ffffffff could not be read
App: Gw2-64.exe
Pid: 4236
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00007FF73B470000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 64926
When: 2016-08-06T07:14:04Z 2016-08-06T03:14:04-04:00
Uptime: 0 days 2:19:23
Flags: 0
TW moves quite often typically to bolster a non-dominant server and get into more fights. It isn’t like them to move to a stronger server.
Pretty much the only time this happens is when a squad is full and they are trying to make room for 5 man ability overlap. Any number of classes don’t fit when that happens. It isn’t personal… it is just that many classes are simply not efficient in a zerg. I am sure if they had room, it would have been fine.
As a note, I am also on BP, typically main a thief and have never been booted… I am far less useful than a Ranger in a zerg. Oh and I play a lot… like a lot a lot.
Saw the same thing on CD at Klovan a few minutes ago. Sadly non-hacker players took the portal and tried to flip it. Cannot do much about the hacking but don’t partake is the general rule. Sad to see YB these days.
Mesmer has pretty much always been a darling at ANet. At release they were crazy OP. PU went un-nerfed for far too long. Confusion is still too easy for them to apply. Blah… Blah… Blah. Just like the Guardian is in zergs, they will always be a strong 1v1 and skirmish class.
P/P thief used to be a counter to them but of course that got hammered into the ground.
They’ve tried gimmicks like these before, remember the golem event? Yeah what a mess it was, it literally broke WvW for a whole week and activities died down drastically after people tried it for a day or two.
I remember the Golem Event bringing in a lot of players and being fun for the weekend. The PvD did get a bit old as the week went along. Having events like these run a shorter course would make sense. So rather than a week, maybe a weekend.
The current mode of big development changes that take too long and often arrive DOA along with small incremental changes is grinding away at the population.
And blaming the thin red circle (being unnoticeable) is neglible, Unlike cannon fire, mortars light the whole bloody field on fire, and if you can’t see the fact you are standing in fire, and think ‘maybe I should move’ … then it’s time you dirt nap and rethink your strategy.
Actually they don’t. The portion on fire is less than one half the size of their actual field. It also lasts after the fiery area disappears. Not a problem prior to whatever overcharged them but now running through one without stopping will stack 6 to 9.
Warrior, Druid are both mobile and good in skirmish. Boon Duration Stance Warriors are flat out OP right now.
Scrapper, Tempest are great in skirmish but trade in the long range mobility. Bunker Tempests are insanely hard to kill and almost pure group support.
Mesmer is a great skirmish class with plenty of group synergy. They have solid in combat mobility and have decent long range escape but don’t move over the map very quickly.
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I’m against both ideas either way, gimmicks like this could only serve as an annoyance for one portion of the WvW playerbase. I’d much rather they spent their time fixing and updating the game mode and making an actual attempt at class and damage balances.
The concept is about mixing up the status quo… a change of pace that wouldn’t require a large developer effort. Something different for fun and to learn more about the actual effect of various systems on players enjoyment.
My point is they should try more radical changes even if it is in a Test environment. Turn off the downed system for a week, remove points for capping T1 structures, cut the range of all skills by a 3rd, etc.
or… we can keep seeing tiny incremental changes to the hardly ever changing environment like we have for years.
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Thanks to HoT changes any class can extend boons 2x without having to give up much. Boon Duration much like many stats should have diminishing returns.
Tournament… just say no. Every one has pretty much been a blow out in each tier for weeks on end. Far more stacked than typical games.
Ricochet was really odd to balance around. It worked with some projectiles, but not with others, and each skill had wildly different results based on how much they ricochet. Ricochet had a 50% chance to bounce to another target, up to 4 total hits. Each bounce had its own range and wouldn’t re-hit a previously hit target.
When most talk about bringing back Ricochet it isn’t about bringing back the exact mechanic but returning the bounce. I would be fine if it hit up to three targets and only effected Vital Shot and Unload while losing the might.
The functional problems with P/P: It has no escape, no defense, no mobility, its utility doesn’t synergize with much outside of Bound and its DPS is atrocious against multiple targets. P/P in its current form is at a huge disadvantage compared to weapons that cleave, bounce, pierce or AoE.
Ricochet doesn’t actually need to come back, but I wouldn’t complain about getting a piercing effect for linear aoe purposes.
Why should it be returned in some form? Because it was a fun weapon set that few felt was OP. That is sort of the point of playing, fun.
Only if for the next match power does no damage.
I would try it but I don’t think it is functionally possible to completely eliminate direct damage as that is a trigger. Would be an interesting match if everyone had a permanent 80% direct damage reduction though.
I am not advocating removing condi from the game, but I would be interested to play a week without damaging condi just to see what WvW would be like.
What do you think it would be like?
Would radically altering other elements of WvW for a match be a fun thing or too disruptive?
This is one of the most logical suggestions, people always cry for nerfs, then Anet being Anet over nerfs and completely guts the target nerfed item because it’s less work then the alternative. Durability doesn’t need to be nerfed, the vast majority of the other runes available need to be buffed.
This is generally a valid point but some gear is too powerful. Runes should be a minor enhancement not a centerpiece of a build or skirmish group composition.
This one is particularly problematic because of its passive nature and its ability to feed itself. The game should be centered around active play with passives being a minor element of fighting.
Get off your Zerker gear!!!
Toughness doesn’t matter against fire. You can sort of make a Vitality point but the difference between Zerk and Soldiers is one or two ticks of damage.
Yaks this low due to changes aproveitadoras guilds , how YAKS was winning T1 , was a wonder to everyone, after the changes in WVW when YAKS started losing began despair for some guilds, bunch of traitors to the same people from my own guild did it.
Leaving only the guilds with honor to help reorganize the YAKS .
Yaks was winning T1 thanks to DK and Chris commanding near non-stop coupled with HIbergate being very Hiber. They also had “The Alliance” for a while. Once the Alliance left and Hibergate once again became BlackGate, the beatdown commenced.
A lot of guilds including mine left because we had new and returning players on other servers while YB was locked down. We had no other choice but to move. Besides there is nothing dishonorable about moving servers… now calling some dishonorable that plays without cheating and doesn’t insult others falls into that category.
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If some one was on a cannon blasting same spot over and over would you stand in it?
Cannons do about 5k depending on armor and have a nice circle. Mortar Napalm are not as clear and sometimes not visible until a player has the stacks on them. It isn’t common to see 5k+ ticks that will down a player in few seconds.
Again, I think there is something wrong with the tick and it certainly should have a big red circle around the damage area the entire time it is pulsing.
Reason it’s not used widely is because if you bring resistance & cleanse, the heavy condi comps end up getting screwed. It’s how it works in ZvZ. Problem with WvW roaming is everybody thinks they don’t need to bring resistance & cleanse, and that they could just cheese condi dump. That’s why we see so many min/max cheese builds roaming. So it ends up being whoever condi dumps first wins, which is lame as hell.
Yeah, I don’t think you have fought these guys before. They have a ton of overlap taking significant fire power to bring them down and when that condi nuke hits, game over man… game over.
I run Shadow Step, Signet of Agility, Escapists, Trickster, Pain Response and Withdraw. It hits, try and take one step, try and activate anything… dead. I won’t call it OP since it is a constructed party that requires skill to consistently make that “trick” work but it sure feels like it when it hits. Players just fall over.
“GET GUD”- RICKY BOBBY
Of all the dumb thing to complain about…
What does being GUD have to do with this? I believe it is a bug or not working as intended.
Why hasn’t YB had a server with it for wvw since week 2? ANET don’t like YB?
They are paired with SoS this week. I am pretty sure YB is the bottom in the relationship.
Yeah Straegen, I can’t burst good ones in a matter of a few seconds but the build I use is able to keep the condi pressure off of me long enough for me to either down them or to escape, still the fights don’t last more than 30 seconds either way.
Not sure what server you are on but any time you want to duel and test that theory I am game. On BP right now.
The thief currently is the worst dueling class in the game hands down. Any Dire/Plex Chrono Mesmer that dies in 30s to anything straight up is a horrible player.
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Watching Sizer play S/D in unranked is like watching a cat hunting mice… with really dull claws.
I think it is more like the mouse hunting a cat.
All condis are removed when the target goes down. An ele expecting to be downed will be spamming 2 to turn to mistform as soon he dies. Sure, there is a counterplay, but it’s pretty bad and only someone dumb will sit downed instead of mist form right away if he’s close to a tower
Mist Form is a cantrip. Vapor Form is a downed skill. Mist Form does not remove conditions.
Vapor Form does have counter play.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Vapor-form-downed-state
“A key difference is that Vapor Form does not prevent control effects. Visuals were updated in the September 2014 Feature Pack to distance the two skills.”
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Comming from the person who made the thread about permastealth thief, I’m pretty sure you know that bound with blind powder isn’t a easy catch. Honestly, I run P/P + D/P with 0 problems. Sure I cannot cross the map in 30s like I would with SB, but I’m not a sitting duck like you are implying.
Wow what a rabbit hole this has gone down into. My reply was about how Unload is broken damage wise and my point is there are skills that are more damaging flat out. Unload when it had Ricochet wasn’t OP then and isn’t now. Unload doesn’t even hit as hard or as fast as a Dagger AA rotation.
P/P with D/P seems like an odd combo to me. The Dagger AA does more damage than Unload. Vital Shot is weak and D/P gets the two utility skills already. Unload is fine against “trap sitters” but Shadow Shot/Dodge does the same thing and springs the trap. Unload Might doesn’t last long enough to be particularly useful.
Most thieves run with SB offhand because it amplifies their best capability which is mobility. Thieves can run without it but in some sense kitten themselves when they do.
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