Low HP. In WvW this build will get blown up by anything half way decent or any thief just waiting for a soft target. One backstab and a full AA will drop this build.
I would definitely suggest Bandit’s Defense instead of that Signet. Far more survivability and its up time is much higher. SoA would also be a better choice since that drops condition(s), gives precision and is good for two extra dodges.
I would consider switching the armor from Zerk to Valk. Consider Orian Truffle and Meat stew food. Nearly twice as many dodges and might on each dodge. If you are in a pack of players, Venemous Aura is actually pretty powerful when running BV. I like Channeled Vigor but HiS is going to synergize better since you need a lot of escape with such low HP.
If you really want to up this up a notch, go with 3-3-3 acro as someone above recommended and switch dash for bound. Way more damage, some of the best condi removal in the game and more slippery than Shadow Arts in my opinion.
Finishing Blow uses the plain finisher regardless of the selected finisher. Given how frequently this attack is used when it is on the bar, it should proc the players selected finisher rather than the yawn inducing default stake.
Switch your armor to Valk. You lose a bit of precision but that attribute has big diminishing returns over 40% anyway. Valk armor and Zerk jewelry is essentially Marauder with less expense.
In addition to that change, I run Exuberance rather than Scholar. You lose that big shot up front but you have better damage through the fight and another 2k health to buffer shots and condi. Exuberance gets overlooked but with Valk armor it synergizes nicely for a big bump in power and precision.
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S/P is one of the hardest hitting attacks in the thief weapon sets and in the game for that matter. We have a couple in our guild that are flat lethal using the weaponset. It isn’t uncommon for us to run one condi with one S/P thief and gank for hours without dying.
The key to the weaponset is priming with Steal and using copious BV to setup opponents. About the only class that is lethal to the S/P variants are high mobility stealth D/P thieves.
This and more this.
I would also add if the post cast delay of a skill prevents the execution of travel, don’t execute the skill. For example, SB teleport then immediately Dash. The Dash doesn’t go anywhere. I am OK with the post cast delays but how about not allowing them to mess up other skills.
Smaller groups often find it very difficult to manage larger groups because it is exceedingly difficult to down players while fighting against greater numbers. The CC and AoE that lands on a downed player from a large group makes getting near them an instant death. Likewise when a player goes down in a smaller group, they get blasted almost instantly by the same focused fire. Don’t even get me started on less skilled players being near our group since they are often rallybots.
Can we get some adjustments to the system that balances this out a bit? Such as downed players take more damage, maybe faster stomps, players reviving other players take more damage, only one downed state every three minutes or some other adjustments to level the playing field.
Basically the downed system is often a second health bar for larger groups while being a big detriment for smaller ones.
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BG rolls on everything until it hits resistance and then it will open field until their population logs. Dragonbrand has long been an off-hour server. If you don’t have the coverage, DB will roll everything you own.
From the looks of it TC doesn’t have the coverage to handle DB and doesn’t have the population to handle BG. I am not sure if any other server is actually capable of handling that scenario. Now a middle tier server paired with YB or TC could at least be competitive.
Someone above nailed it… WvW is end game for a lot of players. Also the gear is something to work towards. Now with reward tracks and gold from dailies gearing up is much easier.
As mentioned even if they wanted to change it, backing out now would alienate the players that have spent near countless hours acquiring gear.
That said if EotM had sPvP amulets, I wouldn’t complain. I like having a playground to test builds. sPvP is close but some builds do not translate well into WvW.
The anchor should call target which isn’t necessarily the leader. Anchors are typically the most bunker and least mobile in the group. Anchors focus on the battle and the other players focus on being around the anchor.
Often the anchor and the leader are the same person. In our group I drive but another person on our team manages the battle since I run an high mobility evasion build that is difficult for others to stay tethered to.
You should also look into finding a way to have the 3-server-matchup system auto-balance itself.
In all these years, the 2 lesser servers never team up vs the winning one.
I have long believed that the server v server system is simply to unwieldy to balance. They need several smaller factions that get constantly readjusted to keep the fights fresh and the fights relatively balanced. I suggest using a player/guild friend/enemy list and rebalance the matches continually.
I also think they should simply ditch the PPT system altogether. Creating player and guild reward tracks that progress across multiple objectives (kills, captures, defenses, escorts, etc) would resolve most of the scoring woes. These reward tracks could be used to generate a scoreboard across a match showing which players/guilds are “winning” in the various tracks. All players/guilds will get rewards as they progress through the tracks with winners getting bonuses at the end of the week.
In that system a single “side” could not dominate in every aspect. A less populated server could have guilds/players winning in a variety of categories such as best KDR, total kills, most captures, etc. Players would be encouraged to actually engage with other players rather than PvD.
In addition to the above, in the options we had to uncheck “AoE Loot on Interact” and as noted check “Autoloot: Autopickup” as well as “Autoloot: Quick Interact”
For some reason with “AoE Loot on Interact” checked it didn’t seem to work.
In skirmish, teams can easily build for heavy condi absorption. In pickup and solo play, condi builds particularly the chrono/mesmer is very strong bordering on OP. In zerg play, condi is mostly a nuisance.
So long as condi bypasses armor and is an all or nothing effect, they will never be able to properly balance it. They have the right formula with direct damage but completely missed on the entire Damage Over Time system.
I like that changes are rolling into WvW, but adjusting the PPT in this way isn’t going to make matches more fun. The PPT system both old and new encourages unbalanced play, PPT grinding and has little effect on a servers actual “fun”. PPT also doesn’t yield any substantial reward. To get those rewards players are encouraged to actively avoid conflict and flip empty objectives.
Score a server equally on its captures, kills, defenses, escorts, etc and tie those contributions to direct player rewards. IMO you already have the beginning of this system in the game in the form of reward tracks.
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Best buffs win. That is how it should have been all along.
Remove PPT and don’t replace it. In its place create weekly reward tracks for player kills, yak escorts, defending objectives, capturing objectives, etc. Then create a scoreboard that shows what rank each guild and player falls on during the match and across all matches. Rewards from these tracks would be guild items for guilds and unique WvW player trophies like skins.
Who will be the best Yak Slapper this week? Which guild will have the best KDR? What guild is taking the most structures? What player is dominating the camps? What player is the siege master this week? These questions and more could be answered on a weekly basis.
ANet created a system the rewards players mostly on capture and scores servers based on what they hold. The problem with PPT is that it rewards population imbalances and rewards the laziest of play. Lets score and reward players and guilds for being active in WvW. Let them show off just how good they are in a variety of metrics.
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The PPT system is a very poor design. Servers are rewarded by capping objectives but scored on holding them. It makes no logical sense to do it this way. Even worse PPT heavily favors population imbalances. Add in that PPT is mostly meaningless and we land on a treadmill that is both boring and harmful to the long term viability of WvW.
The fix in my opinion is to get rid of PPT and revert to player and guild objective rewards. Basically have reward tracks for all the common WvW activities such as killing players, escorting yaks, taking objectives, defending objectives, etc. I would then create a scoreboard that shows player/guild rankings on each of those reward tracks. Scores would be tracked by match and over all matches.
It won’t matter if a server is out gunned if players/guilds are scored and rewarded based on their effective play. They might not be able to advance some reward tracks quickly in some matches, but they will still be able to make progress and get rewarded for that play.
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Try this Dare Devil build.
It is probably the fastest build in the game, clears camps quickly with Staff AoE, has some stealth for escapes, several stun breaks so it isn’t caught easily, solid condition removal, decent hitpoint pool and hits like a truck.
I built it with exotics since I figured you are just starting out and probably don’t have ascended.
Tldr: The map is too big and the height differences of some areas are terrible. If Anet decreases the DBL size and makes the map more evenly elevated (this would be beneficial for roamers and zergs alike) and instead make small elevations that can quickly be covered, but break zergs, we would have an amazing WvW map IMO.
You basically described Alpine. Smaller, less drastic terrain height and elevation divisions that are fast to cover while still breaking up zergs.
How would you employ this pugs as mortar? If they are not guild aligned (and frankly not everyone wants to be in a guild), how do they ascertain who they play with week after week?
In a better system, players/guilds would have a friends/enemies list. The matching system would prioritize players sticking with their friends and fighting against their enemies.
The concept is to have player and guild alliances small enough to shuffle around for balance and fight diversity but large enough to encompass identity and consistency. In contrast the server system is too static causing coverage issues, population shortage, stagnation and boredom. In a sense it is a micro version of the server link system.
I’m telling you that the people who do the grunt work on your maps, the ones who call out for defense, the ones who scout, are NOT part of a big guild, if any guild at all. You lose those people because their network is broken up with your idea and randomly assigned, and you lose your maps.
Rather than scoring based on what a side holds and rewarding based on what a side takes, my suggestion is to reward based on individual guild/player metrics. Get rid of the PPT score. Instead Players/Guilds would be ranked based on their performance in a variety of categories. If a player is the best yak slapper they would be rewarded accordingly. If a guild is rocking the KDR, big rewards. All the important metrics would have a ranking both inside a match and across all the matches. Sort of like the new WvW reward tracks.
Sooo wait .. you’re saying guilds will fight for ppt? Oh wow. lol.
No. PPT is a horrible scoring system and exists only because the server system is ridiculously antiquated. PPT is nearly pointless and basically meaningless in a larger context.
This game mode has actually kept people playing WvW for three years without any significant upgrades or changes to the game. Why? Because communities sprung up from this antiquated system where people know each other and actually log in for the community.
The real reason is because nothing better has come along. If any of the upcoming Alliance MMOs pan out (Camelot, Crowfall), WvW is effectively dead. Almost every person on my friends list is gone from WvW. Very very few of the premier guilds that played in WvW are still around.
Yup and that was within the player community’s control to do this, but they chose not to and instead waited for Anet to step in and play parent — which they’ve done with the server linking (note this solution lets them destack player-rigged servers at will, and lets people retain their existing communities — at least Anet gets how important community is to the vitality of this game).
The server system is in many ways anti-community in its current form. If a new player logs into PvE, meets friends they enjoying playing with and joins their guild, there is no way for them to know if I will be able to play with those people in WvW. Many guilds are now spread across multiple “servers”. Even if a guild is centrally located there is a good chance the server they are on is Full or the transfer cost is prohibitively expensive.
Even the server link is anti-community. Any friends on a linked server a player likes to play with will be lost in a few weeks. They won’t even have the possibility of playing with those newly forged alliances for weeks possibly months, years or never. At least in an alliance system players will routinely play with their friends and always play with their guild mates.
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This is the build I am using in WvW. It uses two somewhat unconventional changes. The first is the Acro line which keeps the speed going, conditions in check, extra stun break and keeps regen/init gain/Vigor up. The second is Bound which synergizes extremely well with Black Powder and gives a nice melee damager as well as a flat damage boost. On medium armor targets I have seen upwards of 15k Unloads when the might engine is running full tilt.
This build is somewhat reliant on the food since that is more evasion, might and damage but I think it will still perform well for a P/P build without it. It certainly is very slippery and difficult for enemies to stay on top of.
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Exuberance are the do it all runes IMO. They bump precision and power as well as creating a huge hitpoint condi buffer.
P/P needs an AoE attack, a stealth component or a mobility component. Lacking any of those it will be a relatively niche weapon set. The thief is squishy in most builds so no survival or group pressure makes it a luxury weapon set that few can afford to run.
Compare it to the best weapon set D/P which has a stealth component, cleaves, an unblockable gap closer, mobility, strong AA and a big hitter. S/P has evasion, condi removal, cleave, solid AA, stun, massive DPS burst and a gap closer.
For my play style condi is the biggest danger since I can kite or outrun most builds. Cannot outrun applied condi though. For that reason I prioritize vitality over toughness.
Well., it appears that you have a particular tunnel vision that doesn’t even let you debate content — you don’t address a single issue I’ve raised. I get it. It’s the Internet after all.
You are the one not debating and instead simply being contrary. Exactly what do you think will keep WvW viable over the long term? I surely hope your answer isn’t the same system that we have been using for the last few years.
Your idea would ruin WvW as we know it. I know you don’t think so, but it would.
Agree to disagree. I believe fair fights and player/guild based reward scoring is more important than arbitrary server identity and nebulous coverage scores.
Saying “greater good” in this case does not laud John Stuart Mill. It just means you don’t fully understand how WvW maps work and that you just fight without context. You only see one side of the gameplay — and that’s fights.
The server system currently has nothing to fight for. An empty score system devoid of rewards, a map with objectives that don’t do anything and stale lopsided matches have driven nearly every decent guild out of WvW. Context… holding onto an antiquated system choking the life out of the game mode makes no logical sense. At the very least the OP is putting forth an idea.
I can only tell you that if you lose your defensive team, you lose what keeps WvW active. WvW will never be equal, even with your suggestion. It’s not meant to be.
True equality can never effectively be achieved (nor should it) but what can be done is to create matches where victory conditions are always possible. Rewarding guilds and players that defend, flip, attack, etc and rank them on how well they did is key to revitalizing WvW. Make the different modes of WvW count and allow players/guilds to see how well they do.
I do believe if all they do is change how WvW is scored, the population of the WvW will be half what it is today in a few months with little chance of enticing former players to come back.
Proofs were introduced with HoT in rankup chests, any ranks acquired before are unaffected and dont get retrorewarded.
This. I would add that unused Proofs before the last WvW patch will still show as proofs until used at which point they will go into the player wallet. Also, no proofs will show up until rank up chests are open.
Yes, but you’re saying to use the pugs and smaller guilds to be the “mortar” .. meaning they randomly get assigned to a shifting “server”.
The most important goal of a matching system should be a fair fight. The server system has almost no way to make that happen over a period of time. In fact it creates matches so lopsided for such long periods it drives players out of the game mode. Most don’t like to log in and immediately find they have no chance at victory. Most don’t like to log in and find their opponent has stopped showing up.
WvW would have more players if most matches were close and the fights were fresh. Any system that moves WvW in that direction is a win. I also believe identity is important but that is why guilds exist in MMOs. Guilds are a players group identity.
Scoring should be related to a player and players guild performance with an alliance being the battleground where that scoring takes place. Tracking kills, KDR, objectives taken, objectives defended, etc by guild and player along with victory conditions delivering substantial rewards has tremendous untapped potential.
If you believe this works, then you have no clue about how your defense teams work. Most of them are the “pugs” who will “fill in the gaps” and as such are used to working with smaller groups to do the jobs the guild just plain won’t do. It takes time and proven teamwork to make that function. Randomly dispersing them will result in a non-cohesive group that will crumble with this model.
You NEED to have both groups on map in order for WvW to work.
Yes and I am advocating for a system that puts big guilds, small guilds and pugs on the same side against other similarly mated alliances. Each style of play is conducive to enjoyable WvW play and needed in each match by each side.
The problem in WvW arises when that mix is out of balance. When a server only blobs or lacks coverage during a certain time, WvW becomes far less fun to play by everyone. The “server” system actually enforces that inequality. Using my brick metaphor, having a wall of only bricks (large guilds) isn’t stable just as having only mortar lacks strength. An alliance needs both.
Can we not at least try something different that has a chance for a better outcome? Why hold onto what is effectively a poor design that is slowly failing?
For BG, ET has been a great help in bringing a lot of small team play which BG has lacked for a long time. We also had a lot of players return to the game like a lot of our SEA population to cover a very important timezone. And BG is also known for coming out strong when there is incentive to win, this is nothing new.
IMO this was the missing piece for BG over the last year or so. BG has always had strong open field large group play but lacked in off hours support and had few havoc squads running defense. Right now BG is running a population glut which leads to big scores but even without that big returning population I think BG/ET would still be winning.
Not that ET is a huge bump in population but they play like YB plays and defend well against it. It was immediately noticeable on the BLs when we started seeing small roaming squads back capping like YB does.
Each week, change up which guilds are put in an alliance with an emphasis on balancing time zones and keeping matches fresh. Large guilds would anchor a match and small guilds/PUGs would fill in the gaps. In this system they could have as many or few matches as they need to keep the queues down and participation in each match brisk.
In a sense, large guilds are the bricks of a match and small guilds/PUGs are the mortar. As for “servers”, this is an antiquated design held over from decades old MMOs that couldn’t keep one population on one server. This system didn’t exist in GW1 and should never have been created in GW2.
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Thank you for the total wreckage. I am still feeling the tire marks left over my corpse after those numerous fights. Major props as it has been a LONG time since our guild lost 2v3. Even though we won some they were by the skin of our teeth and with the +1.
I do have a question… what was that Revenant/Herald build? That build is awesome and the play clearly impressive.
Reduce the number of cleave skills and AOE, and then iterate some aoe skills to be in creased in more than 5 cap.
Less spam more clever skill usage.
The genie has already left the bottle on this one. ANet’s biggest combat mistake was the proliferation of AoE into too many skills. AoE especially in an MMO should be very limited and on big cool downs. The fact that some AoE skills in the game are the biggest hitters certainly doesn’t help.
I am not an advocate of macroing, but setting up a /dance key which fixes the stuck problem feels necessary on some builds. This is particularly true on the BLs where terrain height exacerbates the issue.
The cooldown made counter play to the skill VERY difficult. It still does actually. True Shot pops up faster than players gain dodges. Add in traps that must be dodged, high sustain from the DH and basically any player without heavy sustain just eats this shot often multiple times at some point during a fight.
If the thief got this skill on the SB, the tears in this forum alone would flood Lions Arch.
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If we are going to keep this outdated server architecture, time zones shouldn’t effect points but population should. Given the basketball analogy above… 10 players should not have the same scoring system when playing against 5 players no matter what time of day. This includes NA Prime as well as well as SEA/OCX.
The culture shock of q’ing is a difficult issue especially when a large portion of a population left higher tiers a while back to avoid that style of play. For most servers, the mergers seem to be working well since few links can q all the maps but BG is stacked. This is mostly due to their large dormant population that wakes up when things get good but they are clearly the dominant population of any server at the moment.
ANet simply didn’t not anticipate BG population levels for better or worse. Unfortunately both BG and ET players have to deal with this unfortunate design limitation. IMO they should have planned on re-linking servers quickly to even out the matches the best they could. I think as players we all want equal populations that duke it out for every last point or kill.
BG as a whole is deserving of respect and I certainly enjoyed fighting against their many players and guilds. They earned their place in T1 and have done so for years. This statement in part applies to pretty much every server though. All servers have great fighters, suffer losses and have at some point earned their wins.
The annoying part of BG is that a few vocal players constantly moan and groan about whatever server is in their tier they don’t like. They do this even when they are winning and they have been doing this a LONG time. BG wins with numbers like every other server that dominates in a tier at any given time. They lose when they don’t have numbers like every other server in the same position. No magic in the way the game is played.
All offensive siege tactics need to go. The defensive minded ones like supply and radar are great additions that in some cases encourage fights. The offensive ones that basically OPs an entire maps fighting force needs to be eliminated.
IMO if they plan on nerfing “night caps” they should basically make all timezone suffer accordingly. If a server has a strong population at a certain time over another server their tick should be reduced. That way if a server’s off hours happen to be NA Prime they aren’t punished or at least they are equally punished.
The competitive talk is great and all. And i know i can’t do anything but ask, but lets shift this conversation away from pvf. Thats not what this post is about. Its about having an open dialogue for the ET and BG community to discuss.
The problem with this idea is that community talk for BG seems to revolve around running down their opponents and talking about how great they are. Hopefully the in-game chat on their server isn’t like their forum representatives because that would be a sad place at least to me.
Historically? I’m pretty sure BG won the first 2 seasons. In the 3rd season 2 servers had to trade wins to beat BG. I was playing another MMO as well as GW2 back then and was going back and fourth so I may be off, but I don’t think so.
I was referring to BG activity over the last year or so. BG’s population has sat mostly dormant until the recent WvW patch. If their population returns to pre-WvW patch levels they could easily be dominated once again. If they maintain this level of activity, I don’t think any single server without a healthy linked server can dethrone them.
BG is the werewolf of WvW. They are strong during a full moon but almost docile outside of an event.
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Buy them off the TP. I have a few thousand for sale there so I might be a bit biased.
Instead of being bitter because your server YB actually believed its own hype and thought pvdooring empty maps and running away from everyone all day somehow made you good players, and now that you actually have competition and cant handle it.
So many guys over at BG are just completely kitten-sore about losing for so long and seemingly more bitter when winning. It has been months of listening to complaints about YB defending and PPTing at every turn. When BG is finally winning, rather than just letting the win speak for itself some still cannot get over it. BG must be one acrimonious place.
We all play the same game. Most of us have shared the same win and loss streaks. You don’t need to kick sand in a servers face when they lose and you don’t need to beat your chest when you win. Enjoy the game, enjoy the competition and just a suggestion: belittling an opponent cheapens the victory.
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Agreed I’m tired of losing wars because YB can’t fight but nobody has jobs there so they K train all night. If changing the scoring system is gonna give me opponents who can fight I’m all for it.
If BG were a sports team they would be droning on about how great they are at football while losing playing a basketball game.
Hopefully BG finally has a full time 2 to 1 player ratio so they can win some matches and stop the complaining.
JQ has been in a larger decline the last few weeks than either YB or BG. That is all it is/was. Everything has changed now and I don’t think anyone really knows the result until the dust will settles.
Prior to the WvW patch everybody knew the pattern. BG blobbed on the weekends and for a couple hours on EBG during NA prime weekdays. JQ blobbed in off hours and sometimes had a decent NA blob. YB had a relatively consistent population most of the day focused on capture and defended during the enemy blobbing hours. It has been this way for weeks/months.
Lol is the word on YB really that BG is winning because of ET? I mean we like those guys, but come on lol.
My point is that it has been a week. String a couple dozen of those together and then feel free to crow. Listening to several BG players gripe and moan about losing (yet somehow still winning) for the last few months is only slightly less annoying than the self congratulation they like to get when they win a week.
As for ET, they are not the sole reason but they are a contributing factor just like BG getting an influx of guilds before the lock down and BG having a large returning population.
Ok, so OnS, WHOA, kitten, EK, TW, GS, eN etc. moving to YB didn’t count. Gotcha.
They certainly did help lift YB into T1 but most of those guilds haven’t been on YB for a while. Several switched to BG and JQ weeks ago. Some stayed on but mostly YB has been winning recently on the backs of PUGs running behind DK and Chris.
When TW and GS left a bunch of players started spouting off about how YB was going to fail… well it went on to win for weeks afterwards. IMO without BG getting TW they had a good chance of slipping into T2.
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BG finally wins a week with the help of the strongest T8 server after months of losing and proceeds to declare victory. Good to know.
Most of that alliance hasn’t been on YB for weeks (months) as they moved to BG and JQ a while ago. YB earned their way into T1, dominated it for weeks without any “elite” guilds and then had to listen to a handful of opponents drone on about how they weren’t really winning.
Face it, YB is Rebel Alliance and BG is the Empire.
Few things. ET has a larger pop than AR. A lot of BG players came back to try the new content. BG got some guild transfers before the servers became locked.
Basically if BG blobs don’t log out at midnight EST during the weekdays, YB cannot close the weekend gap in points.
Another smaller factor is that several players routinely built and refreshed siege are not there any longer. I know I was burning through 20 or so Superior ACs and trebs daily as well as refreshing for 3-4 hours per day in EBG. YB generates significant PPT from generally holding objectives longer than other servers when they have a smaller population logged in.
Most of their best fighting guilds went to TC.
Most of those new TC guilds haven’t been on YB in weeks (months). They were on for a while but moved onto other T1 servers before finally moving back down to T2.
I run heavy condi removal and got blown up by a Skull Crack build twice last night. In part because I haven’t seen the build before but the speed it dropped me was shocking. Definitely going to try it out for myself.
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