Most are weak to condi. The more of them around the harder they are to kill and always watch for the CoR spam. That thing can spike some 5 digit damage if standing in the right spot when it hits. Oh and watch for the regen on hit. As soon as they pop that count to five before attacking them again.
Hesitate to use this skill at least in WvW. Thing hits like a truck. It hits so fast a player doesn’t even have time to see the license plate to report them to the authorities. Ouch!
I have seen a Bristleback hit me for over 12k damage in WvW on multiple occasions with Spike Barrage between the physical damage and the bleeding. The combat log looks like a death of a thousand cuts with damage ranging from 500-600 per hit times 15 and several bleed stacks mixed in. It is jarring how fast it spikes its damage.
I was not a fan of Alpine but this new map is a disaster. There is very little about it that generates more fighting except the center PvE event which might be fun if people wanted to be on the map and it didn’t lag the entire map when more than 20 people were in it.
Add in the horrible guild changes and taking away of previously earned content. Mix in a dash of supply/siege changes that make small teams less effective and you land where we are today.
This is highly annoying as it can tie a WP up for hours in EBG. For example, Low Lands has a Vet Scout on the east side that will endlessly fire at marsh drakes if any player passes through that area. This in turn keeps the WP continuously contested.
At the very least can we have non-player interactions not trip the WP. I would argue no guard activity should trip the WP. I would even go one step further and say as long as the keep lord isn’t being attacked a WP should be open.
Just talking EBG here:
Keeps are pretty fine although Red Keep should have access to their dome for siege placement.
Side keeps (Bravo, Langor, Jerri, Aldons, Veloka) are fine.
Non-side keeps (Ogre, Mendons, Anz, Klovan, WC, QL, Durios) should be beefed up with siege placement that cannot be easily AoE’d from walls since they all have very limited counter siege placement currently.
The lack of queues on EB is from guilds leaving YB to go to BG when BG opened up.. Not it " working itself out." lol. YB lost guilds to a competitor instead.. and JQ is refusing to PPT atm, not that YB is actually doing well.
Guilds that left YB for BG were mostly to get a better balance in T1. The TW/Indo thing I believe was some guild-to-guild bickering and general server style differences. It also brought DK out of semi-retirement. The TW transfer probably saved T1 for quite some time as it did improve the NA Prime balance. The fights with BG since have been fantastic and the rivalry has been a healthy one IMO. Who doesn’t want to kill that little mithril necro when they see him? Sort of a badge of honor and respect for how tough TW can be at times.
YB has solid numbers for much of the day and arguably is still the more populated server. I think YB just plays the PPT game more and has gone back to its old ways of defend, defend, defend. To me the numbers in T1 are pretty similar across the board but that certainly is opinion.
Transfer to BG, the server that has the most gank squads, that way you won’t have to deal with them chasing you for god knows how long. It probably is safest to roam on BG.
YB and JQ ganks as well. Our guild is in a constant battle with roamers from both sides and we have an open “blow them up” policy on zerglings. IMO pick any T1 server because finding small scale fights with or against other guilds such as QQ, BLNT, End, Caps, SFH, etc is REALLY easy and a lot of fun. Even zerg surfing is a blast and that is doable on any of the servers. Dueling is also really easy to setup regardless of server.
Even the rivalries are pretty fantastic in T1. I have seen QQ, BLNT, Caps, etc wade kitten deep into a mob to blow one of us up and we do the same. Most fun roaming we have seen in a long time and I am sure it is equally enjoyable no matter which server you pick.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Megaserver will happen one way or another I suspect. Eventually the remaining WvW population will move to T1 or T2 to find fights. Even now T1 runs most NA prime nights with no queue or very little queue at least on YB. Outside of NA Prime it is pretty common to only have a dozen people on a map throughout the day depending on which server a player is on.
Wondering what a player does once they max out the HP Vendor. I guess jam the extra proofs in the bank?
I hate the PvE system. Lets compare how long it takes to get Gift of Battle compared to doing the necessary PvE content. Suck it up camper.
On reset during NA Prime Yaks Bend had no queues on EB or at times a very small one. I know the EB fights are enjoyable in T1 so at this point I guess the system is working. The long term outlook might be a bit scary for WvW but I guess we should enjoy what is working while we can.
If the #1 server (based on points… not trying to start anything) in T1 has a relatively low EB queue, it is likely that the declining population numbers are “fixing” WvW.
Time for some stupid math!
…
Meteor Shower ist better right?
But is has a 20 sek cd!Lets look on the dmg per cooldown second.
CoR = 43095 / 2 = 21547 dmg
MS =168984/20 = 8449 dmg
Icebow=51048 dmg/20 = 2552 dmgI think something is wrong here….
CoR is more spammable, not channeled, doesn’t root the caster for a prolonged period and has a very minimal pre-cast. MS is sloooooow and on a class/build with low armor/hp pool.
CoR as shown by your math is horribly busted.
Log on, go into Eternal Battle Grounds, find commander, run with the commander for a while. If there are no commanders on, try EotM for a while. The game play is pretty simple but it really helps to be around other players for a bit first. Feel free to ask for help on map chat as well. Despite a few rotten apples most players are exceptionally friendly and welcoming.
Unless you are an extremely patient and tolerant person, avoid getting into 1v1 fights and small skirmishes until you have a little experience under your belt. Seasoned WvW players are flat out deadly and have seen all your classes moves before. Some players will cut you a lot of slack because you likely don’t have a high WvW title but others will actively hunt you since you are likely an easy kill for a while.
If you want more burst on D/P, dump Dare Devil. This build is pure burst and most classes without a lot of sustain and fast on the counters won’t know what hit them:
Not group friendly and is a complete one trick pony.
Evade seems to be working fine in WvW. Our skirmish team runs one of these builds and generally, Basilisk is started, PW is primed then pop Steal so the daze/stun/stone land and a full whip ensues. Finish off or reset for another go in 20s. Any counter attacks from secondary sources are generally evaded. That first 1s is the dangerous spot since PW has a pretty big pre-cast.
That stealth knockdown off staff is very dangerous and while it does take a lot of sacrifice in order to make it usable more then “once in a while” has potential in a build with more sources of stealth.
We came to the same conclusion. The escape is significantly better. Survival goes way up from the drop target capability, the extra in stealth damage reduction, extra time in stealth and the highly underrated Cloaked in Shadow. The ability to Hook Strike and followup with a guaranteed Vault or Weakening Strike add up to some solid spike DPS. Pulmonary Impact or Staff Master also become more viable as the need for Escapists isn’t as great.
I use Steal and Blinding Powder to constantly come into and out of stealth. The other nice part of this build is that enemies tend to freak out when a thief stealths near them so it delivers some added intimidation.
JQ is clearly the strongest server in that time frame most of the time. They end up running a lot of PvD during that time though. YB has a medium to small group running then which keeps the PPT up. BG is very inconsistent these days but mostly they avoid JQ and hit YB whenever JQ and YB start going at it.
The server system really is horrible and has been since day 1. With the exception of good luck and some score fixing most matches are typically lopsided PvD fests with a small glimmer of good fights that most of us cling to like a crack addict looking for their next fix.
At this point in WvW most players are tired of the same meaningless system, redundant off hour PvD and unbalanced zerg fights. IMO an alliance system is worth a go if the devs are actually coding something like this. Without a significant change in the game mode, WvW will continue to die off and become a ghost town like so many games before it.
I don’t know when that tipping point will be reached but if nothing changes one day soon players will log in and there will be a dozen players during NA Prime on a T1 server and that will be considered a zerg.
But the question becomes are they doing more damage than good to the wvw player population while trying to work it out? Are the other aspects of the game enough to tide people over while we wait for wvw to be “fixed” (whatever that means)?
GW2 WvW has the massive advantage of virtually no decent competition out there right now so in this case something is better than nothing. If WvW went offline for a month or more, a serious amount of hardcore WvW players would not come back after the break as they move onto other options.
WvW is basically existing solely by being the only game in town. If and when that changes, GW2 WvW will be a ghost town. Until then, we play under duress.
As he said in the OP, he needs to transfer all his people to a place within his budget range lol. “we all are on different servers” are his words.
My advice would still be spend a few nights farming gold and unify in T1. I would avoid a Medium pop server like the plague right now.
WP changes were put in to favor less populated servers. The old system made strong serves significantly stronger. It certainly is a double edged sword though since WPs are what most servers fought over. I understand the reasoning of the change though as out numbered servers now have quick WP access and heavily populated servers no longer have easy access to an entire map.
Unfortunately they traded one problem for another rather than fixing an issue and creating a new incentive for fights.
The “I’m going to take all my toys and go home” approach to fixing problems rarely works and is… well… childish. WvW needs work but no sense in killing the entire game mode while they work it out.
Worst part of this is realizing a couple people on the forums just screwed up a skill and inspired a nerf on a skill that the rest of us were happy with.
you guys QQ while caed winning 1v2 against top NA chronomancers in pro league with staff
How has he fared against DH, Scrappers or Druids? Chronos aren’t nearly as powerful as power-mesmers in skirmish IMO. Course one Chrono and Trap DH will likely obliterate most thieves.
I played the staff briefly. Vault’s damage is too oppressive as a DPS ability. Just need to expect what the opponent will be doing and it’s incredibly easy to land. Like using cloak and dagger on a stealthed enemy thief. Learn how to judge positioning and it makes matches easy. Built-in evades are icing and make it too safe.
I hate to say L2P but this is really a L2P at least with Vault. As soon as the Vault starts, dodge, block, etc. It will never land when a player does that. Even if they predict exactly where the player is going it will be evaded, blocked, etc. Oddly enough I find Weakening Charge more deadly since it doesn’t have the long cast time, is way more spammable and applies Weakness on hit. It does take a bit of trickery with the camera to be extremely effective but I get way more “WTF” in game messages from that than Vault.
All of these pail in comparison to Pistol Whip which deals far more damage…. PW is a 1062 with a 3.3 multiplier AND has a stun AND evades AND costs the same as Vault. The weapon set even has more utility with a teleport, condi removal, BP for easy stomps.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Because that Steal which has been working fine for 3 years REALLY needed a stealth nerf.
Bandits Defense (BD) is a solid skill since it is a stun breaker and great for ranged blocking on a short cooldown. The problem is the knockdown animation can get a player killed. If you use BD and then immediately dodge before the knockdown animation, it works pretty well. I just don’t find it as good as Shadow Step, Blinding Powder or Signet of Agility at least on a Dare Devil.
S/P is under appreciated. Pistol Whip is the biggest hitter a thief has and has a built in Interrupt which works well with Impacting Disruption. S/D just got nerfed via the Steal change. D/P has always been good.
Dare Devil staff is pretty solid. There are a couple condi builds for the thief that leverage Twisted Fangs. You can find those pretty easily by searching on the forums.
Shortbow is required on 90 plus percent of thief builds since the best class feature the thief has is mobility and this weapon comprises about half or more of that mobility.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
This is the whole Mesmer situation again, where they kept nerfing them patch after patch, even the dumbest things, for no absolute reason. It took 3 years of whining to get them to properly fix it.
So yeah, be patient follow thieves, in 3 years maybe we’ll have a decent profession.
I don’t want to go off on a tangent but WHATTTTTT? The Mesmer has for at least 90% of GW2’s life been close to the OP line and sometimes crossed it. There was this short time when condi got nuked but then they buffed it and brought in Perplexity. Mesmers are still probably the strongest of the non-Elites in duels, roaming and skirmish. They still possess as much or more utility than just about any other class.
If their is a comparison it would be to the Ranger which suffered patch after patch of nerfs until it was laughably easy to kill even skilled ones.
+1
If this was meant to be a Quality of Life fix, they failed. If this was meant to be a bug fix, they just whacked us with a nerf.
Backstab (BS) is working quite well. Sure a player has to line it up but it doesn’t cost any initiative to drop a pretty big shot. It doesn’t proc a reveal on miss so IMO working pretty well. D/P works very well with this skill and enemies immediately go on edge when they see a thief do a Heart Seeker (HS) through a Black Powder (BP).
D/D is a hot mess since Cloak and Dagger (CnD) is hard to land without priming it via Steal and costs a lot of init. It is also painful when it misses, is blocked, lands on an invuln, etc. IMO CnD needs to have a substantially reduced cost when it misses.
Thinking Vault is OP is ridiculous. The only way that a player could think that it is OP has to be a scrub that doesn’t know how to effectively evade, block, etc. The skill has a big precast and oddly enough the evade doesn’t last through the landing of damage so it can be interrupted just as it lands. Against another Dare Devil, Vault is laughably hard to land since a Dare Devil has way more dodges than a player can spam Vault. It isn’t even close to the biggest hitter which belongs to Pistol Whip and that has an interrupt built into it.
ESO RvR failed for a variety of reasons most of which (all to my knowledge) have nothing to do with the Alliance system. Lag, crazy stupid grind wall for leveling (makes GW2 elite grinds look ridiculously easy), bugs (lots of bugs), huge balance issues between classes, seriously OP skills and a dozen other minor irritants. The system itself was fine.
That said the big elephant in this room is that this is just a rumor. It MIGHT have some credibility behind it but it is still just a rumor. Lets not loose our collective crap over a rumor. Lets certainly not ascribe it to a failed system that failed for reasons that had nothing to do with that design.
The “stealthed” Steal nerf is a dagger to the back of many thieves and dare devils. Course it probably shouldn’t be mentioned here since it wasn’t in the patch notes.
This change gutted Hidden Thief and on some level did in the entire Shadow Arts line. Either ANet are morons that don’t know how their own classes work or they are sadistic kittens that like to torture players.
Only two things I have found work against DH and only if played very well. The first is P/P which allows you to range pressure them without engaging their traps. If they run JI and preload the trap before teleport, you are probably screwed with this approach. The second and it is also pretty dicey is to Vault into their trap and immediately (as in before you land) start slamming the dodge key. You should be able to do this three times without getting hit by their trap. If they are a solid player, that probably won’t finish them.
Scrapper, Druid… you have to hope they suck because their sustain is mightier than your damage output.
Tempest… this is probably the easiest if you are patient. They tend to spam skills so evade early and let them burn themselves out. After about 30s you will have a 10s window to hammer them. If you don’t do enough damage they will cycle again. If you wound them enough they are playing your game and victory is just chipping away at them.
Basically if you screw up, you are baked against any of these classes.
Anyone else notice the skill failing to work when targets are in range and auto-targeting turned on? It also seems to fail sometimes when selected targets are clearly within range. I am sometimes having to slam the key 4-5 times to get steal to launch.
So they nerfed it, sort of broke it and someone on here is calling it a buff… wow… just wow.
ANet is really trying to get me to quit this game… they are trying REALLY hard apparently.
+1… WTF ANet… WTF.
Yeah this is kind of what I think, the mode is dying. But I do think they have to find a solution which maintains the communities players that are left have built up and also encourages the different play styles of the players (and there are several different styles). The thread from Fozzik is really good IMO in terms of articulating the issues.
It may be myopic on my part but I think server community is vastly overrated. When a server is doing well in a match, players show up and contribute. When it is getting run over, players leave.
The exception to this is when a popular guild comes onto a losing map. This can breath life into a fight but we are back to a “server” deriving its identity from guilds.
I know what I like and that is fun fights. Fights that aren’t so lopsided the other side can just roll over their enemies with impunity. Any system that can create additional balanced fights, will easily have me and most players logging in for more.
There is some validity in this decision now that taking down a keep lord can take a while. When keeps flipped in seconds, it kinda made sense but now servers (at least on EBG) have a chance to respond.
I have advocated that a keep’s WP should remain uncontested until the lord is in combat. It should remain contested until the lord is out of combat one way or another. The entire tap a keep to lock a WP thing is fight unfriendly and should be removed.
As someone who has been on the same server since launch (Yak’s Bend much like NiloyBardhan , was on Desolation EU at one point before launch) , I detest the server jumpers.
Why should a player be locked into some arbitrary choice they made when they created their character? Why should a player be forced to play with the same people for years? The point of a video game is to have fun.
If you are going to “detest” someone how about self righteous players that make a moral stand on something as silly as a server choice they arbitrarily made when they created their account. Please save the moral outrage for something other than players trying to have fun.
Totally unrelated to the topic at hand but I just have to point out that SEA teams generally do not move servers the way others might and especially not to their competitors so good luck with that proposition. Honor and pride hold a different level of importance in different cultures.
If honor and pride is a priority, a fair fight would be the most important. Seems like SEA heavy guilds on servers must enjoy PvD and value zerging over out manned servers. There is nothing wrong with that style game-play but lets not wrap it in some fantastical cultural superiority argument.
This does vary by server. I used to play on top tier servers with 90+ blobs and if they get into a fight (especially 3 blobs at SM) it becomes a lagfest. I can live with 1% of my playtime being a lagfest but in toptier servers any clash between blobs become lagfest, it amounts to nearly half my playing time. I cannot live with this, so i`d like some feedback on this particular area.
I am in NA T1 and play during NA as well as Sea and Oceanic. I cannot speak for T3 but do have direct experience with the largest scale fights in NA.
Update the list with new items and removed some that were fixed in the latest patch.
The only want ppl get full elite spec on the pve maps is to have some one port them to the hp places. Beyond that you got to have mastery point a lot of them that takes days of work.
It this and nothing else WvW before HoT had no real HP and a small reward for rank up. After HoT WvW reward players with items that give you HP and map completion for rank up much higher but with a bug. That bug is fixed AND you get even more rewards for rank up.
The first elite is typically the longest in PvE since players need to unlock masteries to get everywhere. Masteries are account bound so followup elite specs fall quickly. Do a couple PvE raids in the area where the mesmers are porting everyone around it is goes crazy quick.
A friend unlocked his elites doing one each night. It is VERY possible to PvE the elites extremely quickly.
I did mine via WvW and can tell you that earning roughly 750 WvW levels at around 4 per hour takes nearly 200 hours of typical WvW game play (assuming B-Day Gift and XP Booster). If they have doubled the Proof output players are still looking at 100 hours of game play stretched across multiple characters and that assumes they have enough B-Day gifts to shorten it since B-Day gift bonuses are soul bound once used.
You realy should rename this threat.
7-9 per chest it seems its now easier to get hp in wvw then pve.
Players can get a full Elite spec in PvE map raids in a few hours. With boosters players are looking at around ten or more game play hours to unlock an Elite in WvW. Problem is they now have to do it on each character they want to unlock rather than just play WvW and slowly unlock all the Elites.
Not saying it is unreasonable but for those of us that run fixed team builds it is more constrictive.
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People can re-engineer a map or call for alliances all they want, it isn’t going to change the state of WvW much. An alliance of 300 fights players going to perform a long siege and run yaks? Yea… LOL.
I think it depends very much on how the scoring changes, the implementation of tournaments and the changes in the reward structures. If holding assets determines guild status and perks, then guilds will form around holding and defending structures. If the rewards remain around flipping structures, guilds will continue to do that.
Right now there are no compelling reasons to fight for anything so most of WvW has devolved into players fighting arbitrarily. Prior to HoT almost all organized WvW fights were either the ever-dying GvG scene or over a WP. Even repping in WvW is now pointless. Almost any change in WvW at this point would be a step forward IMO.
Hate to say “I called it” but the entire account bound chest thing looked like an Anet oversight and one that they would prioritize as a fix. Hopefully players abused the Proofs while they could.
Good news, now players can stack XP and Proofs that have zero use on their WvW characters.
With the new shield generator, you can block projectiles at the gate and pulse stability, which makes repairing the gates a bit safer.
Problem is the shield blocks projectiles hitting it but not splash damage. Just shoot the cata/treb projectile short and full damage lands even with the wall in a full bubble.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Oh, totally missed your post, yeah… that sounds bad, not what server vs server battles should look like … I thought they called kt to those random spontaneously groups that formed to cap random keeps one after another until some resistance was found (trains clashing?)
My opinion is that K-Training can be a healthy aspect of WvW. K-Trains bring new players into WvW and teach them the basics in a low stress manner. K-Trains help fund WvW play which can be costly if all a player does is fight other players. K-Trains are pallet cleansers after particularly long sieges. K-Trains often call out other servers and start big fights.
K-Trains to me are only problematic when that is all there is to do. If they squeeze in between great fights, inspire PvE players to join WvW, put some coin in hard-core WvW player pockets and are spur good fights between large groups of players they are most certainly a good thing.
“True” GvG came out of the desire for large scale sPvP and IMO is a constructive part of WvW as GvG groups often create the tactics and builds later replicated by zergs albiet in a much sloppier implementaion.
Before HoT, even hard-core GvG groups would go out of their way to defend a WP since it meant easier map traversal and a good fight most of the time. Sure that got nuked with the WP changes in HoT but it does show that so long as there is an area worth holding players will fight over it no matter their fighting style preference.
Alliances (depending on their form) are just like servers only more manageable. It isn’t a silver bullet but it can be a big leap forward in improving the current WvW situation which is typically too much PvD and enormous population imbalance issues.
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