That might work on EB, but would not even be suitable for the old alpine maps. The present Desert Borderland is too big and takes too long to navigate back. Your idea is kittened.
Lack of any death penalty is detrimental to the entire structure of MMO warfare. Removing it has nearly eliminated any consequence in a fight and has greatly restricted tactics and strategy when dealing with a larger force.
If players had to run back from spawn, smaller groups could actively engage larger groups and whittle them down. As it is now, large groups only need to survive long enough to fully reconstitute which perpetuates the zerg mechanic over strategic play.
It won’t. And it punishes those players who didn’t die with having to wait for guildmates to navigate all the way across a map or act like jerks and not wait for their friends. Do you even lead other players? WvW isn’t EOTM.
The current system “punishes” smaller groups defending their area. A large zerg can mow over a small group and replenish its force immediately. Due to this there is zero reason to engage a larger force which has basically made a larger zerg king in WvW and limited if not effectively killing strategic play.
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Hammer Train meta is more fun than Pirate Ship meta. I am not sure there is a middle ground but I do know the current meta is boring as hell. Revert Stability changes +1
This is my go to but mainly for power builds:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plate_of_Orrian_Steak_Frittes
700 extra HP and 100 extra power will not go to waste in most fights.
I checked out the spot… yeah it is very attacker friendly. The location has a similar advantage as Klovan and Wildcreek cata spots only better. Any enemy with a decent force will wall nuke any counter.
In theory it is an action oriented high risk/high reward class that requires precise timing to execute big burst. In reality it is a high risk class with exceptional mobility that allows players to enter and exit fights as needed in WvW.
I don’t know why anyone would want to play one in PvE or PvP since their combat mobility is partially useless and their overall group abilities are nearly nonexistent.
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This is how the thief is played. Burst then hide. If a thief is just spamming AAs then roast him. Thieves still cant take a decent hit. Learn to play.
If some of our best attacks are spam attacks not tied to initiative, that effectively kills the entire point of being a thief. The AA changes are not historically how the thief is played and is contrary to what makes it fun IMO. The latest patch moves the thief away from a mostly skill related damage class to pure spam attack like virtually every other class in the game.
I like the buffs overall but I am concerned they are leading this class down the same road all the other classes are on.
Lmao, sooo what you’re saying is Thief does damage now and since you are really terrible at the game you cant beat them?
I have mained a thief since pre-release and that is the only class I play now despite having all other classes at 80, all elites unlocked and all classes fully geared with ascended.
Tried this build last night and got destroyed by condi builds. I will play around with it a bit more but something like Sigil of Generosity is likely a must. It is also best as a dueling build since its damage output does not scale to multiple targets well.
The longer I play the more I realize upgrades aren’t a good idea. Everything should be a T3 and nothing ever repairs even between flips. Someone mentioned this a while ago and the more I play the more I realize this would be a much better system.
You should ask this question in each of the class forums. Lots more eyes there to help you out and gear choices generally revolve around the build itself. Meta Battle also has a handful of workable WvW builds.
If they could wind the clock back, it would be nice if they would just nuke 90% of the AoE in this game. AoE has ruined GW2. Sad that most of it is medium to long range to boot.
In general I like the buffs but since the patch thieves have started morphing from a skill class that required precise timing into a chainsaw. Virtually every thief I fight now opens with a Back Stab from stealth then just spams the dagger auto-attack. They don’t even bother with Heart Seeker, Black Powder, Cloak and Dagger, etc. If anything goes wrong they Shadow Step away and Shadow Refuge.
This technique certainly works against some builds but it has effectively turned the thief back a few years in its class progression.
A DH of equal skill on a decent build will generally wreck a thief at least in 1v1. The traps keep a thief off their melee game but the bow dishes out serious damage. We have to dodge the traps, but also dodge the pull and their big hitter on the bow. If you manage to do all that, you can probably expect at least one knockback when you get close, Aegis, at least one invuln and or course a big heal or two. Then they cycle all that over again.
Hard to imagine prior to a trap nerf they were even harder to beat. Course I would still rather square off against one of these than a bunker Tempest. They are unkillable at least with every build I have tried.
Sending them back to spawn is a better method regardless of whether this is working or not.
A wild Sneak Gyro appears! At least they addressed the cooldown, but you’re still talking 40s of stealth.
34s I think and that assumes nobody blows it up which is relatively easy. Prior to the patch it took 5s or so to kill the gyro, they had another 4s and then redeployed 10s or so later. Now there is 30s or so till they can redeploy.
With no toughness 18k health completely insulates a player from getting blown up from jump. Add in toughness, sustain, etc and getting blown up is mainly a problem for other glassy builds. It should go unsaid that a thief has to get up close and personal to even have a chance.
Because that’s why it’s programmed since beta days. ^^
At beta it was buggy and would reveal inappropriately. They patched it so a player could stand in SR and gain stealth proportionate to how long they stayed in the “hut”. Then they patched that to work the way it works today. For a brief time, SR was crazy good now it is just a giant target best used for distraction or protecting downed players.
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Some of this highlights the horrible meta ANet has created. For some reason AoE is king in this game. It requires the lowest skill and should not have the highest return. Even worse is that some of the biggest AoE damage is done at long range. AoE should be highly limited, on long cool downs and mostly short to medium range.
Then we get to melee which has to contend with ever increasing sustain (probably created to offset the AoE pervasiveness). Few melee attacks have greater damage than either ranged or AoE despite being the most difficult to apply. This has created the care bear opinion about GW2 that many hardcore players have.
Then we get to ranged damage. Typically ranged damage should have two qualifiers. The first being that there should be additional skill required to hit a target. Since the game has auto-targeting (a design mistake IMO), not much can be done here aside from creating something like the reflect capability. The second is range damage should scale based on proximity to the target. Rapid Fire is actually a good example of how this can work. Using say a long bow in close proximity should have a staggering drop in DPS. Problem is few ranged skills have this limitation and those that do are not toned down enough.
Had ANet stuck to the tenets developed by numerous games before them, GW2 would have more interesting fights in both PvP, WvW and PvE. As it is, there is only one class that personifies some sort of balance between melee, ranged and limited AoE. This is why IMO the Thief is the “best” class in the game hands down.
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The Capture Keep daily is nearly impossible for some servers especially since SM isn’t a Keep but a “Castle”. It is also impossible for some players that play during off hours on their server. Dailies are supposed to be something players can do relatively easily and a Keep flip generally isn’t one of those.
My vote would be to take it out of rotation and replace it with something else or at the very least let SM count towards its completion.
Oh and while we are at it, make the EBG veteran creatures count towards the “Kill a veteran creature”.
This was someone else’s idea but make all structures T3 from jump and nothing auto-repairs even between flips. Could solve all these woes… basically fix it or lose it.
And thusly did the short Reign of the Rev see it’s conclusion.
and the peasants rejoiced
The condi version is still strong in sPvP and the Hammer variant in WvW is still a solid choice.
I have not seen the ridiculous 10k plus hits from CoR since the patch but I have only fought a dozen or so hammer Revs. Hammer Bolt still hits like a truck though.
Either Dagger or Staff will work just by spamming autos if you’re lazy (easy 19k DPS), but you can go higher by using actual skills (Backstab or Vault).
Both pale in DPS compared to Pistol Whip.
No class has a skill with this level of sustain.
Not sure about scrapper…
Scrappers have more sustain but no single skill as good IMO. Shock Shield is close though.
Shelter comes close. Traited it’s a 2s block that cleanses two conditions and deals Aoe damage, lacks a stun break though.
Shelter is certainly solid but a DH will likely never take it. Shelter is also on twice the cooldown and without specific traits it doesn’t even come close IMO.
We got a number of nice bumps while most other classes got nerfs. I say good enough on the first 2016 balance patch. If it holds true, we should see more in three months or so.
Plus landing all attacks can be a pain. I still wanted better group support and sustainability.
They buffed the already nearly OP Bandits Defense into what is probably one of the best sustain skills in the game. A stun breaker and block on a 15s timer… seriously hard to ask for more sustain after that. Oh and it also comes with an optional knockdown. The prior mechanic made it sometimes dangerous. The new mechanic makes it awesome.
Group support is not our bag but Venom Share just got a notable bump thanks to the new BV changes.
Acro is more comparable to DareDevil at least to me. Acro works in a condi build since it gives a similar number of dodges thanks to the constant vigor and enhanced vigor effect. That said it still needs a killer grandmaster trait to make it more appealing.
pistol whip (crap skill, way too static, predictable and easy to counter, with all that stability this skill is just useless)
Agree to disagree. PW nukes players with practice. It is fairly spammable and with Basilisk Venom/Steal it is beastly. Keep in mind while dishing out the damage the thief is near invulnerable to attack. This is incredibly useful in the current AoE heavy play. Backstab does barely half the damage, offers zero protection and requires setup and position. Vault is easy to interrupt and hard to land. The key to PW is to pre-load it before a steal.
Tack on Escapists Absolution and it is a nice condi remover to boot. Nice bonus is the daze at the beginning which often sees a player blow a cooldown only to have it reapplied with a steal/PW combo almost immediately.
The weapon set also has an extra shadow step, condi removal, applies weakness, cripple, drops Black Powder (great for stomps) and Headshot to stop the big hits.
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Can’t speak for the current meta. But for the previous meta don’t your own words imply that staff is/was better than D/P?
Last meta was a teamfight/bunker on point fest where ability to drop AoE’s was more important than ability to 1v1. Esp as thief, you probably don’t want to have many solo fights, and the ability to stall on a point was much more valuable than actually winning it.
In most fights, D/P is going to be better choice due to its higher 2 target DPS and general utility. It is a much better group utility weapon. Staff has a DPS edge in fights of 3 players or more. Unlike D/P though, Staff has manageable counter play aside from the usual AoE bombs. Vault interrupts can get a player killed.
IMO if a player is going to max out their 3+ enemy DPS, go with S/P. It has Pistol Whip which is far more damage than Vault and that attack is an evade along with a daze. It also comes with an extra teleport, condi removal, weakness, cripple, Black Powder and Headshot daze. Basically nothing is wasted on S/P or D/P.
BP on the Staff is awesome because of the knockdown and target drop. BD was almost as good but with this change I think it surpasses BP even on the staff. Faster cooldown, long block, optional knockdown and a stun break. No class has a skill with this level of sustain.
While I can see buyers remorse given its cost… it looks pretty fantastic outside the animations. I know I would remember a thief coming at me with that thing. It might throw someone for a second thinking it is a Reaper coming at them.
The changes have been very positive in WvW. Don’t sPvP much so cannot say there. AoE spam and heavy bunker still remains but many builds are just a tad bit less bunkery and CoR hasn’t torn me a new one yet.
I sometimes wonder if we all play the same game. I am wrecking so much more in WvW now. Reapers are a bit tougher and Tempest are still bunkered all to hell but I am tearing up the DH builds which was near impossible before this patch. Scrappers don’t have infinite stealth any longer so at least there is a window to kill them and I see more running the Bulwark to compensate. Thank you Anet for the Chrono nerf. The tank is still in full effect but the clone, spam, reset build isn’t nearly as effective. Oh and I didn’t see a 5 digit CoR damage hit all night.
Course they buffed my build as it is a Staff build using Hidden Killer, Withdraw, Basilisk Venom and Bandits Defense. It was a minor buff overall but given the nerfs they handed out I certainly am killing a lot more. I got at least a dozen kills with just BV cutting through blocks.
Anyone that didn’t see that coming with ppk? :p
People have been doing this since release. They partially patched it so the Alt-F4 trick doesn’t work but didn’t lock down the menu option to exit WvW. This seems like an extremely easy fix as they can easily lock down the xfer menus while a player is in combat.
I could certainly see raising the amount of supply in camps to accommodate this. Sort of changes the mode of WvW a bit but at the very least it is an interesting concept. It would certainly make WvW feel more permanent and less manufactured.
Oddly the system might work well on the old Alpine maps but on the new maps responding takes far too long and reinforcements are too far away so few bother to defend.
Keep in mind these weapons have different AA secondary effects and the number of targets which influences the DPS substantially.
Sword has one of the better secondaries with Cripple and Weakness being applied. It also hits 3 targets instead of daggers 2.
Staff pops vulnerability, hits three targets, has a reflect component as well as a final Whirl finisher.
Lets also keep in mind both the Shortbow and Pistol AA are both abominations when it comes to DPS. Daggers might have higher single target AA DPS and give back a tiny bit of endurance as well as dropping a poison condi but on a DPS build I would rather have either staff or sword secondary effects. I would also prefer that extra target.
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S/P was very strong before the patch. S/D still needs some love but a 30% buff on AA is a decent buff.
P/P with Ricochet.
YES!
It doesn’t matter how the change is classified just be happy it got done even though it was slower than two Christmas seasons.
While gliders might be interesting IMO there are many more bigger fish to fry first.
The concept of a permanent (at least for the match) structure regardless of owner is an interesting one. Would be interesting if all structures started and stayed T3 with all damage staying in tact between occupiers. Upgrades could be limited to siege weaponry, WPs, etc.
Not sure if it is a better system but would like to try it… SM would sure be an interesting place. Supply would also become paramount to maintaining control of a structure.
If you get attacked and don’t want to “finish” the fight, fine — Alt+F4, Hit the Leave the Mist button, yank out your Ethernet cable… whatever. I really don’t care. But Anet should have Hot-fixed MONTHS ago the issue of GW2 not producing the loot bag (and also PPK now) universally, regardless of how a toon left the game.
Agreed. I would add that the exiting party should also log in to a corpse.
As noted the Stab changes changed the meta to defensive pirate ship fights. They doubled down with HoT and the bunker/AoE expansion of the various elites.
The hope by many is that stability comes back as it was before.
OK, but does it translates to a 30% dmg buff thanks to the fact that sword is hitting faster?
Ehh… sort of. Faster attacks mean higher DPS but not necessarily a similar increase to damage in a fight. Now if all a player does is spam the AA during a fight yes it is a straight damage buff. However AAs generally fill in between the big hitters of a weapon set.
Normally on another class that is limited by time, speeding up an AA would have a similar DPS effect. On a thief, we are limited by Initiative so it really comes down to an attack chain and how many more AAs can fit inside that chain. My guess is well less than 30% and probably like one more full AA chain every 30s or so. Still a nice buff but not a 30% damage buff.
D/P is flat out better most of the time. The only time Staff has an edge is when there are multiple opponents. In solo fights, D/P has no downside and no wasted attack. Staff on the other hand has several weaknesses including the easily exploited Vault interrupt.
I main staff since it is more fun to me but having played a lot of D/P it is obvious how efficient that weapon set is especially against other thieves.
S/P was already powerful at least in WvW. It is also a nice non-stealth build. S/D still needs some love but the general speed up of the AA on sword is nice.
Still waiting for Ricochet or similar ability on Pistol. Appreciate the staff buffs not sure they were needed though. The Hidden Thief buff is a nice shot in the arm for my build but relatively minor.
Bandits Defense just got miles better and it was already bordering on a must take. BV will move from decent option to pretty good. Withdraw was already the cats meow for evasion builds and that just got better as well.
Overall pretty happy. Still plenty of room for improvement but if this is what these quarterly-ish balance patches are going to look like I can see the various classes/builds coming more into line with one another.
Staff Dare Devil is ridiculously easy even fully upgraded ones. I will try and remember to record it next time I take one. I haven’t flipped one with my Chrono in a while but before the balance patch it was crazy easy. DH, Reaper and Scrapper has an easy time as well.
Guardians, Necros and Eles are still very strong. Revenant/Heralds backliners are ridiculous right now thanks to CoR and Hammer Bolt spam. Everything else is tier 2 IMO. Sure they work in a zerg but lack the group buffs and ranged AoE spam to compete with GREN.
Most of the elites like DH, Tempest, Chronomancer and Reaper hit the OP level in skirmish.
The reasons why WvW feels like a fail to many people is very numerous and quite obvious. Even the devs have started trying to unwind some of the issues including fixing some seriously OP HoT elite builds, banner adjustments, scribe fixes, elite leveling and they are even looked into gliding which is clearly an oversight.
Prattling on how its you and not me is what a crazy ex does when a person is breaking up with them.
I get the feel given the recent list of changes and statements made by ANet is they really are scrambling to make WvW better. My concern is that the damage is done and a lot of players have left for other pastures never to return.
So you were obviously not there then and there for don’t understand how this worked. Before the mega servers, you could look at the server list and see the server as full depending on what time during the day it was.
You are mis-remembering how this worked. In the first year, yes it worked this way. Players could xfer during off hours. Anet fixed this in the second year so that it was a rolling average. Servers again sort of figured this out and would take entire weeks off to get xfers the following week but T1 servers remained Full most of the time.
In 2014 Anet decided to lock some servers before the last tournament and kept them that way for quite a while. In mid 2015 Anet did change how population was counted to be based on WvW populations but seemingly kept the locks in place for some servers. So basically servers have been locked in one form or another until post HoT. At the release of HoT, the population in WvW dropped like a rock and has basically remained that way. People thought it might jump back when players got bored of the PvE content but it simply didn’t happen.
As for implying I have not been around very long, I was in the Beta, Pre-Release and have been playing WvW almost exclusively since launch. I have roughly 4k hours in WvW alone. Heck my Anet play dates back to GW and a few thousand hours there as well.
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