Guild Wars 2

Use an experience scroll or bang out 20 levels in the human area, do a few personal stories and craft the rest. The entire process is usually around 10-15 hours. Level 80 is where it is at and up levels are generally not welcome in skill groups which IMO are the only fun groups to run in.

I think few are really anti-zerg. I think many dislike the current design which heavily favors zerging for rewards. I also think there are way more zerg-ists that hate roamers and skirmish groups than the other way around.

Could just be our server but the duration of attendance seems really down. We still seem to have the same faces but they just don’t play as long and when they do they tend to ball up for better rewards and few seem to care about points or holding anything.

Might be players taking a wait and see approach to leagues (particularly since we are sitting in the magical 12 slot), recent PvE game changes (Living Story, ascended weapons material gathering) or maybe burn out.

Sarrs.4831:

This would actually be pretty cool, provided it had a unique model and was in one of the higher participation brackets- It shouldn’t just be ‘cap five camps and win a backpiece’.

It shouldn’t be hard and certainly not impossible, but I agree these “weeklies” or “matchlies” should encompass a wide array of WvW play including defense, offense and WvW leveling.

Your idea about it being a unique model would be a very nice touch. I would add that it should be unique and never given out again.

Thrumdi.9216:

The two months of League time is also an eternity in game years.

This is very true. A bigger negative is that when players go on hiatus from a significant game change they frequently don’t come back.

Their time window for this experiment is running WAY too long. I hope it is great and we get 7 weeks of fun, but I fear the gopher is going to see his shadow and we will be stuck with 7 weeks of “why did they do that?”

I propose as a reward for WvW league participation which includes completing seven weeks of worth of WvW “weeklies” every participating player should get an ascended backpiece. Not only would this soften the “why are we having leagues” issue but it would also bring in PvE players to the WvW experience, likely bring back WvW players on hiatus and finally give WvW players something PvE players have had for a long a time.

Note: The rewarded backpiece should have selectable stats.

This an idea mainly to encourage players to experience more play style variety. I think zergs should be an important part of WvW but not the main avenue of reward generation. With that in mind:

• Reduce target rewards (WvW points, Karma, etc) by percentage based on the number of players in an area. If 25 people cap a tower they all shouldn’t get 100% or the rewards. I would suggest an effect similar to outnumbered only a debuff instead of a buff.
• If we are decreasing large group rewards by a percentage, we should increase the base rewards for capture/kill.
• Defense rewards should be increased significantly.

Example: Lets say rewards are all 150% higher making a tower worth 450. A group with less than 20 would get the full amount – 300 old/450 new. Group of 21-40 would get say a 25% debuff – 300 old/340 new (still more). Group 41 or more would get a 50% debuff – 300 old/225 new. The numbers are just an example off the top of my head but basically rewards should be scaled based on the number of people contributing.

I also hope ANet broke out league rewards into contribution and vanity rewards. Contribution rewards (money, WxP, Karma, etc) would be given regardless of where a server places based on how much a player contributes. Vanity rewards such as skins, finishers, etc would be given out based on where a server placed. Think of it as a salary cap/revenue sharing to keep teams from being completely stacked and superbowl rings for servers who win.

Thoughs?

The thief is still the better roamer class but not the better dueling class.

Warrior:

• Excellent in solo, skirmish, zerg
• Desired and welcomed by commanders and guild leaders
• High in combat mobility
• Tons of control
• Excellent burst
• Base armor and HP allows full zerk without comprimising durability in a fight
• Decent diversity of builds (condi, banner, DPS, etc)

Thief:

• Best roamer class hands down
• Moderately good skirmish, poor in a zerg
• Can reset a fight or escape practically any situation
• Arguably the fastest class in the game in and out of combat
• Excellent burst

If you want to dominate solo matches, hard to beat a warrior. If you want to move behind enemy lines, the thief is a strong choice. Both have near absurd in combat mobility and excellent DPS.

IMO warrior. Way more flexibility, lots more armor and HP to buffer against conditions and their DPS is nearly on par possibly exceeding thief DPS.

Now if they could create a little space between SM and Overlook… keeps/castles should not be in treb range of each other IMO.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Meh, if you are willing to run 1h sword and get good with it, you can bring some serious dps to a dungeon group (easily on par with a warrior), add in spotter and frost spirit and enjoy.

I disagree… warriors come with more base armor and hitpoints. Warriors can go full zerk and have as much survivability as a PVT ranger while dishing out a significantly higher DPS. Even zerk against zerk my Ranger cannot compete DPS wise with either my thief or warrior.

WvW:

• Zergs: Healing Spring… that is about it. The pet is mostly useless here.
• Hardcore Skill Groups: They don’t want a ranger in their midst but may tolerate one (none that I know of will). They move too much to make Healing Spring useful, they plow through zergs making pets useless. This isn’t just a ranger thing though.
• Skirmish… not enough synergy or DPS IMO to really fit in here.
• Solo… If they have a place it is typically heavy bunker and camp capping.
• Siege… Gah, elementalists do it WAY better and that lip on towers frequently interfere with ranged attacks
• Underwater… one of the better classes but engi’s are more scary

Dungeons:

• No speed runs that I know of want a ranger. Pet again is pretty useless in these.

PvE:

• I think rangers excel here. They are pretty fast (assuming GS is in the mix), easy to play, the pet makes the player never feel “alone” even during low pop hours, the pet frequently tanks making kills pretty easy. There may be better classes but few as fun to play at least against trash mobs.
• They can do surprisingly well soloing champs. It is a slow process but doable.

sPvP:

• I know squat about it so no comment

My Ranger is basically my daily/monthly PvE kittenoon as I go into WvW, I grab a different class. I do sometimes run into a really good ranger but I suspect that player is more player skill than ranger ability.

Dagins.5163:

- ranged combat,
…
- only melee combat,

I agree with most of your recommendations but a decently played bunker condi or regen rangers with a sword is a rough fight for most thieves. They typically sit on 22k hp, 3k toughness, often constant regen, the sword/off hand give ridiculous number of evades and they stack a lot of different condition types. Hardest solo ranger fights I have are against these particularly since the regen variety has a pet with teeth and cannot be ignored.

When I see the bow come out I generally feel as though I have a big advantage since it requires targeting and has limited condition type application. This is especially true of the longbow which will get a very quick steal and melee reaction from me.

I agree on parts of this. My suggestions combined with some of yours would make pets work similar to a warriors banner crossed with a signet.

1. Pets take no damage ever
2. Pets have a passive group buff and an active skill
3. Pets have no inherent damage outside of the active skill
4. Ranger damage would be increased to offset the loss of direct pet damage
5. Spirits would work like pets

Beast Master would obviously be reworked. BTW, I speed read and that was still REALLY long post.

I agree with you that Rangers are lackluster. Pets are meant to be the fun mechanic but in big fights the pet is as much a hindrance as a help. I really like playing my Ranger in PvE but park the class for dungeons and WvW.

Compared to the other classes mentioned:

Warriors: High in combat speed, tons of control and banners rock. Probably my most fun class at the moment

Guardians: Alt Healing is ridiculously good making shouts phenomenal. Standing in the middle of a massive group of enemies and not dying is tremendously satisfying. Even retaliation has its funny moments.

Mesmers: Heavy group utility (portals, veil, null field) as well as the entire clone system

Engineer: Bomb and grenade kits along with recent rune changes have made them awesome… 1900 range on spammable AoE grenades is wicked fun.

Necros/Eles: Both fall into a similar category… nothing sexy put really effective when played well

Thieves: Stealth… this is my go to class for roaming.

There is far too much evasion and mobility in this thief build for you to keep up with using direct damage. They also boon steal so it is likely any protection that is coming up is being stolen and used against you. Condition pressure or control abilities are likely the best way to handle this particular thief build and honestly the best way to handle most thief builds. As always do whatever you must to keep your health above 50%.

In general, conditions force a thief out of the fight because virtually every condi removal ability a thief is likely running requires stealthing or teleporting. Thieves also have practically zero stability (unless they are stealing it from you) or popping an elite.

The good news is regardless of the skills potency, rangers still remain the go to class for the newer players which means on 90% of the rangers it won’t matter how good it is.

For the other 10%, Dire has already created some pretty potent condi bunker rangers so Sic’Em will be a minor irritant compared to constant condition application.

I am going to assume WvW here. Duels… see if your server has a GvG or dueling night and go. Contrary to popular forum belief the thief class is actually pretty hard to play against a somewhat skilled opponent on even footing. Cries about thief OP generally come from poor solo builds, lessor skilled players or players who have become frustrated with perma-stealth.

Sure there are vulture players who swoop in to finish off an already half dead walking carcass but in an open fight these players often fold quick.

Make sure your auto-attack is turned off.

Thief OP… there are at least 2-3 classes in WvW that are now far more dangerous in a solo fight than a thief. It used to be we ruled roamer fights, did OK in skirmish and were mostly useless in zergs. Now roaming is best done with condi bunker engis and speed warriors. Same can be said for skirmish.

Just look a duels, thieves rarely excel in them. Most skill groups in WvW don’t want any thieves in their mix because of their overly squishy nature.

Even perma stealth isn’t OP because to get it the thief essentially hits like a wet noodle. Annoying sure, but OP nope.

Arkard.3970:

Intended? Probably not. Foreseeable? Definitely.

They die when the log back in… does rob players of a bag though.

Atherakhia.4086:

Most servers out there play with a queue.

Nope… that only happens on a very small minority of servers. Mid-pack and lower servers rarely queue a map and almost never queue all the maps.

I like SBI and there are a lot of fine warriors on that server. However some of the SBI forum warrior posts should be tempered until they beat an opponent better than a bored BP. I don’t think SBI has seen a real T2 opponent in months.

I am sure SBI will do well in T3 and I hope the upcoming weeks bring us all great fights.

Bugs happen… the time it takes to fix it is what matters.

Johje Holan.4607:

As long as the above things are true, it will be ok. I mean seven weeks is not that long. Many servers have spent 15 weeks in uneven matches – against the same opponents – getting stomped or doing the stomping for 15 weeks straight. Now that was bad. Seven weeks is nothing. And you’ll at least be facing different servers.

No mid pack server has seen a prolonged series of matches against servers in tiers well ahead of them. Our own server had 13 week stint where our score was nearly doubled every week… it sucked but at least that server was 1 rank above ours not 10.

Seven weeks (nearly two months) is more than 10% of this games total lifespan. Just looking at my average game time that is around 200 hours of WvW game play which is a lot.

I am hopeful they will put some changes in to mitigate the disparity between ranks, but I am pessimistic about the outcome given ANet’s recent track record of WvW content and fixes.

People headed to SBI will be in gold league and there is little chance of that not happening. I think some transferred because it is rumored (confirmed?) to be the home of Devon Carter. I would also speculate there is almost no chance SBI wins Gold League.

Ultimately transfers are going to happen league or not. I would also add transfers are a good thing as it keeps the tiers fresh.

I know it is too late but the next time you want to beta a system in production, might want to consider not doing it over nearly two months.

If it doesn’t work, a lot of people are probably just going to move onto other games rather than wait out a several week experiment.

Huh? Whu? Are you talking about the macro monkeys who spam F on a portal to be the first in?

Liete.5263:

In DAoC we had character progression with RvR ranks and points. Did it discourage players from creating alts? Probanbly not. Where people who sticked to one character favoured? Yes and thats how many people liked it. You could still compete with people who played a lot (and thus had more points to spend on stats/abilities) if you sticked to one character.

Yes, yes it did. Plenty of players complained about this mainly because class and build changes came and went. Players would pour a lot of time into their class/build only to see a patch a few months down the road make them want to play something else but be faced with the daunting task of starting completely over. Giving up R8+ would be tough.

Also, older MMOs are not a particularly good guide on how to do things well. Remember harsh death penalties? How about travel time sinks that practically every MMO thought was important so players didn’t level too fast?

Both sets have the same crit magnitude (5%) but celestial is a full 252 stat points while zerk is 161. Even if two of the stats are useless on celestial, say healing and condition damage, that is still a big stat differential. Course not all stats are created equal.

Tough choice since I flop between condition, healing and power builds.

Nikkinella.8254:

That’s why legendary weapons look so appealing now. the versatility.

With the price difference, I could easily afford 4 ascended items for the price of one legendary. The time sink to get an ascended is much less as well. I would love to have a legendary and it is future proof but spending most of my gold on a precursor (about 900g saved) to build one seems like a big stretch.

I know every class/build has its own optimal weapon build selection. However given how expensive and difficult it is to build an ascended does it make sense to anyone to roll a Celestial rather than say a Zerker for the build flexibility? Sure a specific stat weapon is more optimal but a Celestial covers a lot of ground for the ever changing build optimizations.

Thoughts?

GrandmaFunk.3052:

no one teams up with other servers, I wish ppl would stop dreaming up these conspiracies.

Back when the tiers were stagnant, BP and AR teamed up against EBay. Sure it took 11 weeks of BP being paired with a much stronger server at that time but it did happen.

Gudradain.3892:

They are facing BP (rank 11) and Yak (rank 12). Wanna bet SBI will win this matchup?

Beat BP a couple weeks ago so safe bet… doesn’t hurt that SBI has gotten a lot of transfers and about half of BP has checked out of WvW. I don’t think I have seen two queued maps in BP for weeks.

I would probably take a pretty large bet that if you lock 12 in the league… you will see several transfers off your sever the week before the league starts.

No question powerful but is possible for all classes to achieve. Ultimately powerful but it doesn’t cause a significant balance issue. Bunkers do make better use of that pool but that is to be expected.

BBMouse.6510:

However, against 2 conditional thieves, Me and my 2 other experienced guard and ele friends are still very dead. So no nerf plz (consider they are so expansive ><) before anything can OP thieves.

I am going to give the benefit of the doubt here and say there were probably more than 2 and you only saw 2 at a time… otherwise your team needs to rethink the builds and practice more. With a guard/warrior/ele, this team should be fighting with 25 stacks of might, fire fields, a ton of AoE, ridiculous amounts of healing/condi removal, heaps of boons, plenty of control and tons of combo finishers. Two thieves should have problems getting close much less staying there with this team makeup.

I would expect this team would be most effective D/D ele, bunker guardian and speed or banner warrior.

Eihder.8961:

Anyone who can press 1 and use any range does just dandy in a zerg.

Scrub zerg maybe. Run into Agg or similar skill group with that mentality and they will corpse kitten that group.

Eihder.8961:

And I have yet to hear anyone who defends the stealth mechanics actually name a con. There is no con to stealth and its just that simple.

Thats like asking Aegis, Invuln, Retaliation, etc to name a con. Some abilities in the game simply do not have one. What is the con to constant regeneration? In the case of stealth, it puts the thief out of the fight and slows the pressure which is why practically every bunker class is virtually immune to D/P builds. The other counter is AoE and control. I kill thieves by using a knockdown trap… works about 80% of the time.

Eihder.8961:

That is why they had to change it slightly to keep thiefs from perma contesting points.

This has so little to do with a thief. The only reason they are preferred is because they move behind enemy lines better. Any class can contest a keep, they just have to hit the door for a few seconds.

Zephyrus.9680:

Fact is, when two very good players of thief and another class face off, the thief is not disproportionately the winner. This is the case in every fight club or impromptu duel session I’ve attended as well.

This is fact. Thieves do relatively poorly against hardened skilled players. This is particularly true in fight clubs… thieves rank pretty low in duels.

BlackBeard.2873:

This is true, but it is a start. Actual counterplay opportunities, while small, are appreciated.

Being able to put your pet on them before they go into stealth (i.e. activating it just before) and making them get revealed (maybe its longer than 4s) can really help rangers become a natural counter to thieves. Most thieves stealth when they start losing, not when they could still survive another kitten .

Would be nice if it ran for say 30s or until the pet finds any invis character in range. Lets hope its duration isn’t short and requires targeting. This would make Rangers THE go to class for sweeps and you are right a step in the right direction (maybe 2-3).

I have to ask, is the thief the most dangerous class in the game right now?

I know these days, I actually prefer seeing a thief over a necro, engi, warrior or guardian. If they D/P, I just ignore them because frankly they have little chance to kill me.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

It’s okay to be overpowered in WvW since it’s really not PvP (even though players fight each other). Problem? LOL grind or buy them.

It seems that doubling down may be the best solution to this problem. Roll a condi-bunker build and join the team. If enough players migrate to it, they will probably nerf it.

Blix.8021:

kingcragus.6810:

This horse is dead. Please stop flogging it.

This horse should be continually resurrected and beaten to death until they change it.

This is a thread Necros should keep raising until the devs give into it by attrition.

BlackBeard.2873:

FYI, they are adding the ability “Sick Em” to to be able to apply revealed to targets (as in pets sniffing out stealthed targets). Its a good start:

I hate to be a debbie downer when ANet is trying to fix a problem but the stealth problem lies in being able to activate it and achieve a near permanent stealth situation. They really need to make stealth an ability that happens occasionally in a fight much like block (i.e. the way many non D/P thieves fight). The unbalanced and annoying part of stealth is that some builds use it a frequency which is much greater than Sick’Em’s cool down.

Ragnar.4257:

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”.

I had always assumed that the most basic principle behind any game, from cards and dice to multi-million-dollar MMOs, was fair competition and balance; that it’s no fun if one side has a minimal to non-existant chance of winning. And I had always assumed that everyone agreed with this. But I see alot of people, including our lead developer, saying that WvW isn’t intended to be balanced. Which just leaves me completely confused.

So what’s your opinion on balance in WvW?

I think Devon misspoke a bit on this. WvW is fair which to me means equal access to skills, gear, buffs, etc. It is not meant to be balanced (and really cannot be) but the game should always strive to be fair to all players/classes.

IMO the failure here isn’t fairness or balance… it is in the fun department. We players like a challenge but the game should be fun even when losing. Currently getting steam rolled in points AND battles is just not fun. Even the duration sucks as players often check out for an entire week when an overly difficult matchup is rolled.

Necros… the hot new forum build?

naphack.9346:

If you want a fair match, play spvp. WvW was never fair, will never be fair and was never supposed to be fair.

I think WvW is meant to be fair but fair does not mean balance in every situation. Every player has the same access to ascended, WXP buffs and sigil buffs which makes them all fair. The more hard core a player is the more an imbalance comes into play but still fair since everyone has access to that same progression.

I don’t like how ascended was implemented but that is an entirely different topic.

I would be good if these were cheaper. Traps for badges have a lot of potential beyond stealing supply and trapping stealthers but they have to be more accessible.

Too many holes with this. IMO the fix is to unlock the zoom for everyone (if you can’t beat the cheaters join them). The second change should be to make siege observe overhead environments so ACs and the like cannot hit sheltered targets.

DavyMcB.1603:

Two words.

EASY MODE

I can gear up full berserk and put ALL my trait points into everything that caters stealth.

Result => Constant 3k++ backstab, constant condi cure, 10+ might stack, 50% running speed 60-70% of the time, almost immortal against other melee classes (blind spam), unshakable pursuit with d/p 3, cooldown-less interrupt, on-demand stealth, and the list goes on… and that’s just pvp without food and gear tweak.

Video or it didn’t happen.

Constant backstabs? Yeah no… initiative regen prevents that if you are going to be stealthing frequently.

High run speed during stealth… 33% faster in combat and it does not stack with speed buff so no way a player gets +50% or more on their speed.

I assume you HS (number 2 not 3) for pursuit which is good but right after you catch that warrior tell me how low initiative works.

Blind spam… you do realize blind is a condition and with the current anti-condi build necessity lasts about .05 seconds.

The vaunted condition removal… you mean the kind that only works when a thief disengages from the fight? We get 1 stack removed on stealth, one 3 seconds later. If we use Shadow Return we get 3 stacks removed (every 50s). Sword adds one more. All of these make the thief leave combat to remove and any condi build these days can stack more than 1.05 conditions every 3 seconds. I have to use food and runes to manage conditions now like many other melee classes.

There is no easy mode on a thief outside of up levels or against total glass builds. Anything with any kind of bunker or heavy condi is a serious threat. Every class can be dangerous to a thief… all of them. If you don’t know that, you haven’t played long enough (or at all).

tom.7468:

This or faster points do it anet.

Mostly agreed. I think WvW titles should work just like regular titles which would allow the player to select what server-mates see.

Vena.8436:

Far too much offensive power in WvW to completely remove the downed state mechanic. People would drop like flies in less time than they can humanly react.

??? Rally and downed state are two different things. Currently a group can bring down half of an enemy group but that doesn’t matter because if the enemy team does more damage they just rally back. Rally rewards heavy AoE and heavy offense. I have zero problem with a team stopping and bringing back downed state players via healing.

Zombie groups that run ridiculous amounts of banner warriors and rely on rallies to constantly reform can border on the ridiculous.

A step in the right direction, but IMO in WvW they should just remove it. Probably would be a minor improvement to skill lag as well.

D/P thieves suck… as a player who mains a thief… they suck. Course condi-bunkers suck every bit as much. Stun lock warriors… yep serious pain. Rarely-dead zerg bunker guardians should be added to the suck it pile as well. We should probably add hammer/banner zerg warriors to that suck pile.

OP… how many decent players with decent builds die unfairly to thieves these days? I am usually too busy trying to remove the 7 conditions stacked up, trying to find that magical 3rd stun breaker or trying to get damage through a trojan mans bunker’d kitten . Thieves… seriously… way down the list of stuff that is super dangerous.

Every class when played decently can counter a thief solo… every single one (and that includes a ranger). If a player cannot, it is because either that player’s build isn’t solo friendly or they need more practice.

If a player uses a roamer build and gets routinely owned by thieves, they should adjust the build and practice more. If that player uses a compromised build for skirmish/zerg play, don’t expect to got toe to toe with any decent roamer build played by an equally skilled player and win.

CrassBippy.4619:

i have a screenshot of a 5k CnD and a 8.1K backstab on my warrior who has 3300+ armor…. so ya

I would like to see that screenshot. That is a hell of hit without any significant conditions in the mix.

((806 * 2.4 * 3500) * 4.00) / 3300

Possible but that thief was balls out on power and modifiers. A hit that big should be REALLY rare and they were complete glass.