Guild Wars 2

The “Full” status should be relative to the most populated server not an artificial number or hard coded check. Happy to see the hard coded check removed but hopefully servers like BG will remain full to prevent further stacking.

Consider switching to axe/shield over hammer. Eviscerate is a true spike damager and the blocks coupled with the invulns will infuriate some attackers.

morrolan.9608:

The engine can’t handle it, GW2 is built on a modified GW1 engine. It looks pretty but is horribly inefficient. Anets technical expertise isn’t that good.

Actually for an MMO it is a pretty efficient server engine. To my knowledge no game out there has dynamic positional combat on this scale with this many AoE skills firing.

I still fundamentally believe their base problem was putting far too much AoE into the game.

babazhook.6805:

This can work but venoms have slow recharge times and eat up utility slots. Going this route means the opening salvo of condi needs to its job otherwise the thief has nearly a half minute of low DPS with no utility .

Impairing Daggers is a fantastic utility on a Condi build. Signet of Agility is a precision passive and active gives condi removal as well as two extra dodges which is also two extra Lotus Training applications. Then there is the pure defensive side with Bandits Defense (crazy good) and Shadow Step (also crazy good). Any of these also require no traits to perform well.

A thief could also go with a single Needle Trap and Deadly Trapper for 5 vuln, 5 might, immobilize, poison, weakness, 3 bleed, unblockable and on a 24s timer.

IMO, Venoms only perform well in a small group squad where the stacking makes them worth the utility and trait cost.

DeceiverX.8361:

Body Shot isn’t good because its damage coefficient is half of even Dancing Dagger’s existing one, so 1/4 of a bounce-hit, meaning it’s pretty much totally lacking the capacity to kill people, while Dancing Dagger on those bounces has a similar coefficient to CnD.

Body Shot is a utility skill built around immobility and stacking vulnerability. 5 stacks of vuln is nothing to sneer at. In team settings, the immobilize and 15+ stacks of spammed vuln can turn the tide on a fight.

Dancing Dagger should work in a similar matter since immobilizing an opponent sets up CnD which would work well in Dagger Dagger. Besides Dancing Dagger does far less damage than any single AA attack and should pretty much never be used for damage as that is a horrible waste of init. As it is now a cripple for 3 init is also a waste of init on Dagger Dagger.

Thieves struggle in PvP but the first thing to do is to divorce the Dare Devil from Unhindered Combatant. Both Bound and Lotus Training offer far better localized cast off damage for sustained pressure. Thieves are still coming into that fight with disadvantages but they will generally perform better with either.

Ario.8964:

Issue with taking p/p is now you are building to only counter one build out of the entire metagame. P/p thief more often than not is food to other profs/builds which have damage invuln, reflect, spike damage to instagib the thief, or all of the above. If you HAVE to 1v1 sure you can go p/p, but if you are doing a conquest match just outrotate and decap when they leave.

There is a Acro, Bound, Staff, P/P build which is a solid crit build that does well against a broad variety of opponents. Its biggest weakness is stealth crit based thieves but given the high evasion and stealth it does alright.

DeceiverX.8361:

CnD spam needs to be punishable. BV provides unblockable attacks, and as such, making CnD unblockable and redundant and punish the Guardian too heavily. If you whiff, you whiff.

The thief is a dueling class built around single target skills that basically cannot handle a decently played group based DH or Guardian even when running the self described OP D/P weaponset. It has no prayer with main D/D in its current state. It would only have a moderate chance with the proposed changes.

Thieves should be able to tear apart a group based Guardian and right now outside of some very specific builds (D/P not being one of them) cannot even get near one.

DeceiverX.8361:

Shadow Shot needs a nerf. There is no justification for its damage output for how much the skill itself does. D/P players are often carried by this skill alone, especially since it and a few AA’s often is enough to kill people.

Keep in mind D/P is a single target skill that damage wise isn’t even comparable to the AA rotation or Heart Seeker. Its main advantage is the teleport/blind. Anyone using Shadow Shot for spam damage on a non-blocking opponent needs to go back to L2P school.

DeceiverX.8361:

When comparing damage alone, the staff AA is still stronger than dagger AA. Staff AA is the best possible damage source per unit of time the thief has.

In a single rotation, Staff does more damage. However, the Staff rotation is roughly 20 percent slower. This makes them comparable on DPS on paper. However the dagger will spike more crits and applies poison while the Staff does a vuln and has a lightweight reflect for added damage.

The math with 3k power against 2.5k armor (hopefully I am not off somewhere):

Damage done = (Skill coefficient * Weapon strength * Power) / Armor
Damage done = (Skill coefficient * Weapon strength * 3000) / 2500

Dagger: (0.8*1200) + (0.85*1200) + (1.1*1200) = 3300
Staff: (0.75*1320) + (0.75*1320) + (1.75*1320) = 4290
Sword: (0.8*1200) + (0.8*1200) + (1.3*1200) = 3480
Shortbow: (0.55*1200) = 660
Pistol: (0.5*1200) = 600

Now factor in the rotation speed with Dagger as the baseline:

Dagger: 3300 * 1 = 3300
Staff: 4290 * 0.785 = 3368
Sword: 3480 * 0.893 = 3108
Shortbow: 660 * 1.768 = 1167
Pistol: 600 * 2.47 = 1482

Even with the bleeds, Pistol looks absolutely anemic since it is the only single target AA here. Shortbow is also poor since it has no AA damage component and it doesn’t hit that many more targets than the other AAs.

DeceiverX.8361:

As a side note to the immob option, it does beg a pretty distinct question: How long would it last? I ask this because this is very important when considering matchups that aren’t strictly outnumbered situations but have more enemies, such as a mesmer or ranger.

If we are talking about making Dancing Dagger a theoretical immobilize, it should work like Body Shot. It would cost 4 instead of 3 and drop a 1s Immobilize. Body Shot isn’t “broken” or “OP” so no reason to think Dancing Dagger with an immobilize would be either.

Jana.6831:

See above (what Deceiver said) – a backstab isn’t just one skill it requires a lot more than just hitting 1. But stealth often is the only defense a thief has got, so CnD is crucial nonetheless and you don’t have time to watch every boon your opponent might get in that moment, you need to survive their skills which hit harder than your backstab despite them sitting on 25k HP and 3k armor.

Evasion and mobility are more powerful than stealth at least in the current meta. I have completely abandoned stealth and found that my builds are stronger for it.

Jana.6831:

Believe me: D/D doesn’t work anymore – I’m still running it and I’m still killing people with it – but mostly in a +1 scenario 1 vs 1 I have got no chance. It’s completely false and useless to claim otherwise as not even the devs seem to know this weaponset – and honestly: I want it back again. I want to be able to play this game again.

The role D/D finds itself today… not a primary weaponset but still works. To make D/D work, a player needs to leave behind Shadow Arts and think of stealth as more of a setup to a big shot.

I have seen first hand what a Staff, D/D acro build can do in a duel and it is pretty impressive in the right hands.

Dagger Storm needs to be reverted to pre-nerf so that it actually hits properly. Thieves Guild remains relatively useless so it needs a pretty dramatic buff.

BV is pretty solid but I wouldn’t mind see it cut through invuln.

babazhook.6805:

If you using conditions you can use LT to load venoms. One LT with Skale and Poison venom loaded can load a pile of conditions and enemies tend not to dodge your dodge.

This can work but venoms have slow recharge times and eat up utility slots. Going this route means the opening salvo of condi needs to its job otherwise the thief has nearly a half minute of low DPS with no utility .

CnD needs to be unblockable, cost less (4 or 5) and when it doesn’t stealth cost less init (2 or 3). Dancing Dagger needs to immobilize not cripple.

Nerfing D/P is not a solution as the thief already is a relatively weak class outside of roaming and +1. Removing player reveal options is also a bad idea since players need a counter play to stealth and there are so few already.

Lexander.4579:

staff thief destroys d/p thief any day of the year

Shadow Shot is crazy good, the dagger AA is stronger than staff and quasi perma-invis is far more utility than staff has. Staff’s strong point is multiple enemies but single target, D/P is clearly stronger. Course the D/P Staff combo is indeed stronger than D/P SB.

Bleyd.9470:

Btw what do you guys think about runes of the scraper? I just wasted money on scholar runes and though you somehow hit a lil bit more harder, you can get wrecked so hard if you screw up that I am thinking about getting a lil bit more durability

Exuberance on power builds with Marauder or Zerk/Valk combination. The DPS drop is minimal but the extra 1750 health is a great buffer for condi and power spikes.

I dislike Desert but I am also not a huge fan of Alpine either and Alpine did run for too long as well. That said variety is better in my opinion.

On the last day of GW2 beta, they had a game mode where players fought map champions run by devs. Those that died became “corrupted” and were directed to kill uncorrupted players. It was a lot of fun and an interesting twist on PvP. I am surprised they never refined and tried that event again just to mix things up.

Exciton.8942:

It is always numbers even before stab nerf. It is not just zerg play but also roaming.

Zerg busting was a big deal prior to the stab nerf. Post stab nerf, it became nearly impossible to take on significantly larger numbers as pirate ship meta took over. Some may not like the hammer train meta but it was better than pirate ship and even what we have today. I am sure zerg busting guilds exist somewhere but I haven’t seen one in a long time.

Exciton.8942:

There were groups of larger than 5 all running roaming builds doing nothing but hunting down other solo/duo roamers. Ppl obviously found it fun to just win by numbers.

Gank squads have existed since jump and don’t substantially effect the PPK score. What they do in a hour is dwarfed by what a single zerg wipe does.

Taxidriver.2043:

well thx to those who voted 2 month and more to relink now u are stuck with crap matchup, its ur own fault.

At some point the CD/BP/ET/K server could move up into the next tier. Unfortunately they are still keeping with the base Rating meaning the move up likely won’t happen soon. ANet should reset the rankings during each link.

Josh XT.6053:

So the PvE mobs cause me to be unable to catch my opponents that are running from me unless I also have one of those teleport skills to use on my target which is my enemy lol.

Using ones environment to their advantage is good play IMO. If removing environmental variables is important, might as well eliminate the terrain advantage as well.

Population wins in GW2 ever since the stab nerf. A small group can try to discourage a map blob but ultimately once the inner goes down just run. Also the PPK system encourages avoiding larger groups altogether.

YB constantly broadcasts TS info on map chat at least while I was there. AR had a different style on the map chat than YB. I had three people on my block list from map chat before the merge and 12+ after.

The FA/BP pairing was fun but keep in mind FA/BP were playing against more populated servers almost the entire match. Not sure why anyone would “stack” to get 3rd place almost every week.

Boots.2849:

that’s because lower tier players don’t rely on siege as a crutch so we never know where to place them properly

Uhhh… ummm… so players on your server throw rocks at a wall rather than use a catapult? I guess siege is a crutch of sorts but being smart and going through a wall/gate quickly seems more important than being “macho” and headbutting a gate down.

jul.7602:

Just so you know, no matter how far you put that ram behind the gate, the door treb will always damage it.

The “trick” is to drop two rams far enough back so that they hit the door and far enough apart that a door treb has to choose which one to hit. If a commander drops them too close to the door or too close together, one treb can take out both rams. There is a spot on each door that allows one of two rams to stay unharmed. Another advantage is that placement also often prevents one disabler from taking out the rams.

Vova.2640:

How about no?

I cant imagine a game where all the abilities are just single target.. it would make the game unbearably boring…

Keep in mind that I am not talking about short range cleave or piercing just AoE spam particularly ranged AoE spam. Most MMOs do not have excessive AoE because it creates problems at every turn. GW2 has learned this lesson in spades. Lets face it, GW2 has become mostly a game of chucking grenades which has lowered skill and created immense lag.

Without the massive amount of AoE in the game, it is likley they could double the population per map and balance out melee ranged much better.

I don’t know about all but the skritt on Alpine can suck it.

As noted LT doesn’t stack so it is important to dodge evenly to maintain its up time. Keep in mind LT isn’t a good damager but a great ability for cover conditions.

Most underrated trait line on the thief IMO. It is now the cornerstone of both my condi and power build. Fortunately almost nobody runs this in WvW on thieves and they generally get torn up when they run into either of my builds.

Power P/P tears them up with a bit of patience. Condi builds also can tackle them. Outside of those builds, DH and Guardians are hard counters to most thief builds.

If you have to deal with a trapper DH, evading through their traps makes them ineffective but you are probably still going to be dealing with True Shot and Whirling Wrath.

If they are a pure bunker build, there is no counter that I know of. They cannot kill you but if they are next to another enemy they basically turn anything next to them near unkillable by a thief.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

The only problem I can see with this is that CnD has a damage component, whereas shadow shot damage can be blocked leaving just the blind and port. That said, D/D would need to trait for the blind on CnD and it’s still melee range, so maybe the damage is a fair tradeoff.

Shadow Shot and its damage is already unblockable and costs less than CnD which is why D/D simply has nothing that can compete with this skill. Players can and do spam Shadow Shot and clock with AA in between.

This is why I believe CnD should have the same unblockable ability and cost less particularly if it misses.

Vault certainly outshines the AA due to its utility (movement, leap finisher, evade). It also fires faster than a full AA rotation and hits more targets.

Aeolus.3615:

Anet should won the game token for worst game… “How to not make games”

GW1 is and was a fantastic vestibule game. GW2 is a fantastic MMO worthy of thousands of hours of play for sPvP or WvW. WvW has been stale and missteps have been made but there is a reason millions have bought and played the game.

BDO is a buggy grind-fest. The offline crafting system is clever but the PvP is fairly horrible. I played for about a month and I am fairly hardcore player but that game burned me out fast.

Yep people QQ about stealth, condi, etc but the real issue with WvW is the AoE spam. It nukes performance and lowers the skill bar. The cap while not an ideal solution is a barely workable one.

Without in game GMs, nothing will ever happen with trolls. I am not sure anything can be done about spies.

Even semi-abusive messages seems to be unchecked. The anti-gay map chat I read is sadly on a near daily basis. The abusive QQ I get from whispers is equally as hate filled with many derogatory references to race and religion. I am not PC but I would appreciate less hate speech and more general cussing.

I am solidly in the pro relink camp. New victims that haven’t seen my build or play style… yes please.

The enemy tears this weekend have been delicious. The whisper QQ, is simply delightful.

GW2 treated AoE like a standard skill. AoE should have been VERY limited and basically a single elite skill choice per class with some exceptions. Had most skills been single target, the skill lag present in the game now would be non existent at these population levels.

I doubt AoE will be as profilific if there is a GW3.

Commanders, please stop building siege right on top of each other in a way that makes it extremely easy for one disrupter to disable it all. While I am at it, rams do not need to be right next to each other and right up against the gate. Set them back a bit and they are effectively immune from door trebs.

I didn’t see it as much in T1 but T3/T4 servers apparently have not learned. I guess all that PvD in the lower tiers has created some bad habits. All weekend I have seen commanders dropping catas right on top of each other only to watch one player constantly disrupting attacks.

It was just too painful to watch after it happened at four different objectives one right after another with a single commander. On the third one the commander tripled down and built a third cata right next to the two that were disabled and under AC fire.

In small scale bunker and condis tend to rule with plus-1 power thieves filling in the mix. Yes durability is broke all to hell. We have a bunker Tempest in our guild can 2+v1 solid players with ease most of the time. He can sit in the middle of five average players with hardly a scratch.

In skirmish, bunkers with boon share decimate… absolutely roll everything around them even in 2v1 or 3v1 situations. There is no counter that I am aware of.

In zergs, same ole pirate ship meta on even sized zergs but now big zergs can effectively mow over a smaller one. The days of a small GvG zerg busting group have been over since the stab nerf. I am sure there are exceptions but they are rare these days.

The fundamental problems with D/D is that it has nothing that competes with Shadow Shot in D/P and CnD misses are often deadly particularly in the heavy block/invuln/evasion meta. It certainly doesn’t help that Dancing Dagger sucks.

CnD should cost 4 or 5 and be unblockable. Dancing Dagger should have an Immobilize component.

Trapper thieves tend to run low on init because of stealthing and most if not all their utilities are tied to offense which doesn’t leave a lot of room for escape when they get revealed. Dire isn’t much protection from anything with CC, heavy spike or condi (basically all the decent roamers these days).

Given the MANY ways I have been killed, I have never been dropped by this build. It is an incredibly weak build in dueling and its hybrid condi variants are far more dangerous.

Cerby.1069:

I mean that alone makes it a hard sell imo. Considering also 1 disabler is gonna be enough to screw ur entire operation…..ive gone up to the hill through the zerg and gotten a disabler on the shieldwall before and it got wrecked immediately by our previously failing counter siege.

A good commander will space the trebs fairly well apart so that only one treb can be countered at a time. A single or even three disablers won’t shut the operation down. This assumes they don’t have shield gens which shuts down any counter treb nor any necro marks/DH traps effectively blocking access to the hilltop.

Ballistas should be built on the bottom section first well before trebs are built preventing mortar fire and slowing attacking forces.

The biggest advantage is that hill trebs do not slow down an assault. They quickly dispatch the outer wall allowing troops to flow in and build siege to bring down inner faster. This tactic prevents shield gens from blocking long range shots as well. All an attacking group has to do is keep the wall clear of counter siege.

A defending forces only recourse other than more numbers is to build interior siege to hold the opening but that is also easier to manage than the other keeps since as noted earlier red keep has no dome to build hard to reach interior siege.

Red keep is the only keep in EBG that can be taken remotely from an open field location without securing interior towers. That hill top is also easily defensible since it only has one narrow corridor to the hilltop.

DeceiverX.8361:

Only to a degree. The better-designed a game is, the less ridiculous these edge cases can be.

True but in my experience GW2 actually has more variety in this regard than most MMOs that have a mode like this. In GW2, highly skilled players on non-meta builds can wreck meta builds. Other games in this genre typically revolve around rotation memorization which is very difficult to counter when they have a significant meta advantage.

Other games: ESO with the Vampires utterly dominated for a long time. Warhammer… Bright Wizards were beastly. Even the vaunted DAoC had their share with healer builds, Bonedancers and a variety of stealthers that make GW2 gank squads pale in comparison.

Overlook is actually an easy keep to take just takes some patience. The easiest (and longest) way is trebs on the hill. They can take both inner and outer and counter trebbing that spot is difficult against a decent commander. All the keeps are vulnerable if they lose their key towers (Veloka, Jerri, Langor). I have also seen trebs from SM beat down the outer with catas and ballistas from OW taking down inner.

The particular weakness of the keep is that it lacks a dome. Fortunately not many servers know how to “dome defend” but the other two keeps with coordinated defense can be nearly impossible to take with “dome support”.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Hexinx.1872:

YB + JQ

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

That is what I was thinking… DB might be a better fit in this case. JQ and YB fought too long too recently for that pairing IMO.

Letting players on a server know that a WP’d keep has been breached and a lucrative award is offered for attack/defense could revitalize some of WvW. The broadcast message would need to be accessible and unobtrusive. There would need to be some rules as to the frequency of these rewards but it could be a great system.

Korgov.7645:

1. If WvW offered the best gold/hour ratio, all those farmer-gathering type players would abandon PvE. WvW would turn into EotM or worse.

Not if those lucrative rewards were centered around fighting other players. The problem with EotM and even WvW is that flipping generates the most reward.

Johje Holan.4607:

Population and reward are definitely a problem. But so is the scoring system.

The score in WvW means almost nothing. Players are not rewarded based on the score and “winning” or “losing” doesn’t even mean much thanks to Glicko.

What does matter is numbers (to win fights) and flipping objectives (to get rewards). So a server that is stacked wins more fights and gets more rewards. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that a paper objective rewards the same amount as a T3. Players in WvW are incentivized to blob and PvD for loot.

The score… that is a symptom… a visible result of blobbing and PvD. Changing it, as I said before they adjusted it, will do nothing because it is effectively nothing. Sure enough the score changes did squat to fix the underlying problems with WvW.

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that.

HoD was a product of guaranteed better rewards and a lot of players not wanting to get locked into a cage match with an 800lb gorilla for weeks like every other season. Better to be the gorilla getting more rewards than the other fellows.

Getting pummeled by numbers simply isn’t fun. Until ANet figures out a much better way to level that playing field, WvW will always be a game mode for RvR players hoping for another game to do it better.

Jana.6831:

Don’t know if you mean “they used CnD when they knew they’d have a guaranteed stealth” – no CnD is guaranteed since June last year (and even before) thanks to all the blocks and passives – one of the reasons D/D is dead. The guy you saw got lucky against whoever he was fighting.

You can see blocks and invulns before attacking just takes some practice. Players can also cloak off of pets, clones, etc. Then there are NPCs and of course walls/doors still allow cloaking.

Basically using D/D as a spike/utility weaponset can work just not as effect as D/P as a primary weapon thanks to Shadow Shot. I do believe when CnD should be unblockable. It should use less initiative or use less when it doesn’t stealth.

I will say if they simply rolled back Cluster Bomb to how it was at release, that would go a long ways towards making the SB more usable as a combat weapon. That used to be the most efficient way for a thief to clear a camp before the slowed the projectile down so much it borders on mostly useless now.

Josa.5067:

A build that has pretty much no other viable “counters” other than running away, or using a consumable that costs money and 10 supply, or randomly throwing skills around (which in the end achieves nothing because of the dire gear), is pretty broken and unfair.

Well except for Engis, Scrappers and Heralds which own this build… and to a lessor degree DH. Rangers and other Thieves running knockdown traps park this build. Oh and any face roll Bunker Tempest can basically spam the build to death.

Every build isn’t meant to be effective against every other build. Rock, paper, scissors is in full effect here. There are a dozen plus builds that dispatch this build with ease. Either be the rock to their scissor or don’t engage. Just a thought but you shouldn’t hang in against a build designed to troll then come to the forums when you allow it to troll you.

Sarrs.4831:

Usually if you give a /bow that gets the message across.

or teabag them… that works too.

briggah.7910:

yea roaming is pretty bad nowadays. any fight i win it is because my build is cheese and any fight i lose is because my enemies build is cheesier than mine.

I think that is how it works in most if not all competitive modes in games where players craft their builds. Call it “Build of the Month”, “Munchkin Build”, etc it applies in almost every case for games like GW2.

I remember Munchkin Builds all the way back to the 70s playing DnD with a dart throwing Ranger that was basically unhittable and dished ridiculous damage which is not so different than several GW2 builds.