Guild Wars 2

Shiki.7148:

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

So which other gear do you want to be optimal? If you are saying Assassin, Zerker, Rampager and Sinister i’m with you. If you are saying anything else, give exemple. Which gear, in which situation would be optimal?

So because bad group that don’t know what they are doing and are stacking everywhere, we should make sure stacking don’t work anywhere to hurt those elistist jerk that almost never stack?

#puglogic

Windsagio.1340:

I remember!

The discussion seems to pretty consistently breaking down to “Attacking Zerk” and “Defending Zerk from attack”. There’s a very doctrinaire feel to the whole thing, and it gets in the way of discussion.

A lot of the posters end up reading like it’s "DON"T TOUCH OUR ZERK GEAR!" and everything circles back to that motivation. On the other side it’s “ZERK GEAR IS A POX DESTROY IT!” with some “YAY MAKE TRINITY” slipped in.

There are legitimate issues with the game balance in pve, but the defrensive/tribal tone of the discussion makes actually talking about it impossible, because people are more interested in attacking or defending these preset positions.

I try to don’t pay too much attention to those extreme. It’s fun to argue with them, but I don’t really count them as pertinent to the discussion.

If you only take rational point on both side, the situation as I see it is :

Both group want harder content and making condition damage good in PvE. The divergence of opinion come later. And I will generalize grossly.

One side want more diversity in PvE, with an emphasizes on gear diversity. They talk about different solution so that zerker won’t be the only optimized choice anymore.

The other side look at the ideas of the first group but think that either these solutions won’t change the situation (ppl will still play zerker in harder content) or that it will force specific gear (holy trinity). They think that there isn’t a gear diversity problem (outside of condition) and trying to force a ’’solution’’ will only break the game. They prefer that we focus on build diversity (trait, runes, weapons, utilities, etc), harder content and fixing condition in PvE.

I’m 100% bias in that description, but that’s how I view the current situation.

Windsagio.1340:

Thaddeus.4891:

I see your point Windsagio, but I don’t see your goal here? Why shift the discussion toward this aspect. Was it a problem in the last couple of posts?

Hah you got me there, let me look back and try to remember what I was thinking. I’m very much a ‘go with the flow’ kind of poster. Once I find out what got me no the track I’ll post again, sorry ><

It’s ok. Happen to me too

I see your point Windsagio, but I don’t see your goal here? Why shift the discussion toward this aspect. Was it a problem in the last couple of posts?

Windsagio.1340:

Really nothing else to say. This attitude is why this discussion is always an impossible wreck.

Ok so we should say : It’s black and white. PvE is easy in all situation and we can’t really defend any position because PvE = corner stack + pressing 1.

If we are saying otherwise WE are making the discussion impossible?

Yup. Progression in this game is not good. Still ppl love this game right? So there is other stuff in this game that keep ppl playing. I’m not arguing that there shouldn’t be any character progression in GW2, just that if you need character progression to keep the game interesting, then GW2 isn’t a game for you.

Windsagio.1340:

PvE in this game is so monstrously easy right now, it almost gives the giggles to see people trying to compare it to the other game modes (excepting people who blob WvW, but that if anything is comparable to PvE in it’s successful optimization of rewards/time)..

It’s not black or white. Yes PvE is easy, but we gonna defend ourself when someone is saying that PvE is corner stacking and pressing 1. That’s a stupid and false comment, and we gonna respond to it. PvE itself is easy. Doing a record run or soloing a dungeon, that’s not easy. It take practice and preparation that the vast majority of players can’t achieve. But that just show how PvE is easy. We have to push ourselves to the limit in term of speed or by giving ourself handicap (solo run) to get some challenge out of it.

Windsagio.1340:

I always hear people saying they’d like the content to be harder, but any move in that direction will inevitably be at the cost of the speedrun style as it currently stands, because that style being possible makes the runs too easy (and let’s not kid ourselves, most of these runs are absurdly easy no matter what you run).

Like I said, most ppl in the ‘’speed run’’ community force challenge on themselve now because normal PvE content is too easy. You just show a complete ignorance of the topic. We are now doing solo record of story mode, we don’t know where to find new challenge anymore.

Harder content won’t be at the cost of "speed run’’ style. We want it, we demand it for so long, we try to squeeze all the challenge we can out of the current content. We want to have a hard time figuring what is the best way to tackle new hard content. We want to wipe in zerker gear, over and over again as we learn every aspect and animation of a new hard boss. We want to use more and more support build. We want solo to be almost impossible, so that the first one doing it will be a celebration. We want to talk hours between us to figure out what would be the best strategy. Harder content won’t cost ‘’speed run’’ style. We CRAVE for it.

Even more than that. All ppl that need progression to keep the game interesting won’t never be satisfy by the game, HoT or not.

A lot of ppl dislike the current progression that the game have right now. They had a good time leveling their first few character, but now level an alt is boring. The introduction of Ascended was and is still view as a big mistake by Anet (even if a lot of ppl including myself, just don’t care about it anymore). The trait progression was so badly received that Anet is backing up and announced that they will change it. A lot of ppl would like to get back to 20 levels only like in GW1.

All big aspect of character progession wasn’t well receive by the GW2 community. I’m not saying that Masteries won’t be well receive or that no character progression should be in the game. But that was never the main reason why ppl play the game. If someone don’t like the game because they think that it doesn’t have enough character progression, then the game isn’t for you.

pdavis.8031:

. I think that the speed clear meta has exaggerate the time difference and began to imply that a non-meta speed run is longer by a difference of 10 minutes or more.

It’s highly variable, its not 1 time for non speed run and 1 time for speed run. It also depend on the popularity of the path. For exemple, the difference between a pug run of CoF path 1 and a record run is not that high because everybody know CoF path 1, it’s easy. Now the difference between a pug run of Arah vs record run? That’s freaking huge. Huge enough that I prefer to duo Arah with my friend than to ask for pugs that will make the run so much longer. Something that you will never see in more popular path/dungeons.

Lets take for exemple Arah path 4. First time I ran it, it took us 3 hours. Helped some guldmate that were doing it for the first time, it took use about 1,5 hour. I’m pretty sure with my regular dungeon friends I could do it between 45min-1hr. We are pretty good in dungeon, soloing several of them, but Arah path 4, i did it only 5 times over the last 2 years. The record for Arah path 4 is less than 19min. That’s a freaking huge difference.

Most normal dungeon path take around 30min with bad pugs, 15min with good pugs, but can be done in 3-5min in a real speed run situation. Some can even be done in 2-3min.

thefantasticg.3984:

Here’s the problem: if the difficulty goes up too much, people would just stop doing the content. That happened in Orr before the mob nerf. I remember how much more difficult it was before the nerf.

It depend the reward balance.

Harder content that give more reward will be popular for a portion of the population
Easy content that give a correct reward will be popular for the majority of the population. Those are good balance.

Harder content that give less reward than easy content will be unpopular.
Easy content that give higher reward will ruin part of the game. Those are bad balance.

That why Aetherpath is not that popular, or that fractal once at 50 is less popular than other PvE stuff. And that’s why everybody is doing silverwaste these days.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

That said, it looks like HoT is going to address this issue. I like the idea of the Mastery system. This could actually work really well. It will give people like me the desired meaningful character progression while it saves people like you from having to grind for a whole new set of armor.

Well ppl like OP will be disappointed if they think that HoT will ’’fixe’’ GW2 and make them love the game. Masteries will give some progression for what one, two months? Depending on how much you play. The game won’t change with HoT. There will still be little character profession in term of stats/capabilities. That’s not the concept of the game.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

I think you’re making a mistake here. You and many others assume people who come to GW2 with previous experience from games like WoW are either lazy or stupid and need their goals pointed out to them. They’re not lazy and they’re definitely not stupid.

The reason why so many people complain about the lack of an end-game in GW2 is because nothing matters anymore once you’ve hit that lvl 80 cap, completed your world 100% and got the best gear in the game.

Sure, you COULD do the same dungeons over and over again, but for what?
Sure, you COULD do fractals over and over again, but for what?
Sure, you COULD do Silverwastes over and over again, but for what?

None of the content mentioned above progresses me or my character further in any meaningful way. The only meaningful end-game content that GW2 has is grinding for vanity items (skins) and PvP/WvW. If grinding for vanity items or playing WvW/PvP is your jam then great, GW2 is the game for you! If you don’t care about skins or WvW/PvP then there really isn’t much reason to keep playing GW2.

I never said he was stupid. A big part of GW2 players don’t like WoW (not all of them) because we hate to go after end gear, then an expansion hit and we have to go after end gear, then an expansion hit and we have to go after end gear. There is nothing wrong with loving that, but there is nothing wrong with hating it either.

That’s two different way of playing MMO and both have their playerbase. I don’t see any reason to keep playing WoW so i stopped playing it, didn’t posted anything in WoW forums and I continue to play GW2.

So why WoW player need to start playing GW2, and then complain on the forum how you don’t get the game. GW2 is more than 2 years olds and it’s different than WoW. Some ppl need to get over it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So does PvP/WvW. Notice that Courtyard, which literally has no goal but “kill things” still doesn’t have a Zerker meta.

True, but human are unpredictable. Both for their build, the skills they will use, the order in which they will use it, the frequency they will use it and how they will work as a team.

In 10-20 years, when we can reach that level of unpredictability and intelligence for AI we can talk about it again. (or we may be all slave of the machine by then ). But for now, we always know what skills mobs are able to do in each part of each dungeons. We can learn what are the animation of each of their skill and we can apply active defense to most of those attack. Limiting to role of passive defensive stats to a learning/casual role.

That’s also a design choice from Anet. They decided to make mobs do slow big attack that we can see coming and dodge/block, etc. They didn’t want them to make fast, medium dmg attack like player can do, but that can’t be dodge as easily. And it’s a choice that I prefer. I like fight like Lupi where you need to be alert, manage your endurance, don’t waste dodge, but still don’t miss one or you will be at 5% hp.

Wish there was more of those.

The end game of GW2 is vast, but they don’t point to you what to do. They give you option and you decide what you want to do. If you can see it, maybe it’s not the game for you. Some ppl prefer to have some clear well explained goal to follow, other don’t.

You limit yourself to the bows on your ranger, which isn’t a great idea, and you don’t like the two legendary. You can wait for the expansion for the new legendaries or there is other great looking bow.

Collection includes skins, miniatures, food, generic items, whine, utilities, quest items, tonics, etc. All from different source. Completing all dungeons, hunting items around the world, buying rare stuff of the TP, doing Dry Top or Silverwaste, etc. Miniature specifically come from the Gem store or you can buy them off the TP.

You probably didn’t get a full exotic armor/weapons/trinket for 3 gold. You still have ascended weapons/trinket that are pretty good to have.

If fractals is fun, maybe you should try to dig a bit more into the story behind them? The Mists is like a special magic place where everything can happen. Its like a place between worlds. The Fractals are disturbance in the mist that we are trying to understand. Anything can happen in the mist, but its not real. They are vision of the past like the invasion of ascalon by the chars , or the attack of the Thaumanova reactor by Scarlet. Its a melting pot of heterokittene ideas for dungeon.

If dungeon are fun, start by doing them. You don’t need to gring them. I learned them, then I started to do them with a group to speed clear, we learned new strategies to make them as fast as possible and finally started to solo them. Do what you prefer with them.

Your gear don’t matter in sPvP, you can be level 1 nude and you will have the same stats as anybody else. There is two main goal in WvW. The main is to win the match against the two other server. The secondary goal is to win fight. You can follow the pugs zerg, get into an organized raiding guild or do roaming (solo or small group). Try them and see what you prefer.

To be honest you seem a bit lazy. You don’t have a end goal jumping strait at your face and seriously saying stuff like ‘’i don’t see the point of WvW’’ really make it feel like you are not even trying. So yes maybe you should quit. GW2 isn’t for everyone after all.

thefantasticg.3984:

You can’t introduce build/gear diversity without changing the goal of PVE, which literally means changing the goal from killing things to not killing things…

Not true. The end goal in PvE is to finish the dungeon as fast as possible. How you can achieve that will depend on the encounter. Sometime it’s faster to have a thief to stealth you and skip mobs. Other time, its faster to have reflection to kill a boss. It can be faster to bring a guardian to keep your party alive just enough time to burst the boss down. It can be faster to bring a Mesmer to pull mobs together and make portal. Pure GS warrior is a better dps, but we bring Axe/Mace because it give more vulnerability. There is already a good diversity in build. (On my guardian and Elementalist I use about 6-7 different build in dungeon, on my thief there is 4 differents places where I put my last three pts depending on what I need). But it could be improve. The best example for that was Phalanx Strenght. They just added 1 trait and that created a new family of build for the warrior. What restraint them to do more of that?

But that build diversity (which could be improve) don’t translate into gear diversity because the gear don’t improve what is good in this game. Direct Damage is the only thing worth it right now from gear. Condition damage should be another one. But there is no boon duration that is worth taking (runes, food yes, but gear give you such a small amount). You can’t improve you endurance regen with armor/weapons, you can’t improve your support with stats (healing power yes, we it doesn’t scale well in PvE), you can’t improve your cc with stats, etc.

That’s the reason, there is no gear diversity. But that doesn’t mean that I view that as a problem (except for condition damage).

Bubi.7942:

And ppl used to complain that AC is too hard. People that are bad don’t care about what is optimized. When we talked about optimized build and gear we talk about good player that know their rotation and don’t just press 1.

Bubi.7942:

My point still remains: because PvE is too easy, zerker remains the only optimal choice. Make it harder, and you’ll see build diversity, maybe even roles (like in WvW skill group).

No it wouldn’t. Like I said, we would use protection, weakness, vigor, reflect, sigil of energy, aegis, blind, etc. But we would still use berserker gear. Those are far more efficient defensive choice than anything gear can bring. And as a plus side, it way more fun to play. Active defense > Passive defense.

Btw, we all want harder content.

Theugotzd.9843:

Thaddeus.4891:

They both have average DPS (5th-6th) and Warrior is higher.

Do you have a source/proof for this?
To my knowledge the dps rankings were:
1. Ele 2. Guardian 3. Thief 4 or 5: Ranger and Warrior 6: Engi 7. Necro 8. Mesmer

The best at publishing these kind of numbers are DNT, but unfortunately, they don’t do the math and make them public at each patch. (comprehensively).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bAcpwAdwB24CxK_Ziy8ygISUHCkQepLfRMh2_PtP52o/edit#gid=1883199869

That’s back in June 2014. The ranking was : Thief, Ele, Engineer, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Necro, Ranger. (Mesmer can be on top of Guardian, but its unreliable because he need to keep 3 phantasm up all the time for that).

Since, then Ranger got buff to number 4, while Warrior dropped to number 5. These numbers are single target and don’t use frostbow. So Thief is only on top for single target, Ele will be on TOP for quick Frostbow burst. Guardian can now be on top of the warrior, but it need a high uptime of UC for that and it doesn’t happen often in dungeon.

I didn’t put my numbers, because I’m sure you wouldn’t view me as a ’’source’’.

But we beat around the bush. Some ppl cleary want more gear diversity to be more optimal. But how do you think this will happen?

Power, Precision, Ferocity are optimal because they have a clear role and it’s one of the main role. DPS

The other two role are support and CC and none of those have stats to improve them.

Healing power could count, but anet deliberately balance it for sPvP and don’t plan on balancing it for PvE because it could bring back a trinity, which isn’t what neither Anet nor most of the players want.

Toughness, Vitality. How could they become optimal? Only if you have tank. Ppl think that hard content will force ppl to use them more, but that’s bullkitten. When we had fractal 81, ppl were doing it in zerker. When ppl are soloing Arah, we are doing it in zerker. If we face harder content, we gonna use more support : protection, weakness, blind, aegis, reflection, sigil of energy, vigor, etc. Not passive defensive stats.

Condition Damage. That’s the point about gear diversity that we can all agree. Don’t think that anybody would be against condition damage being good in PvE, if done right by Anet.

For me this conversation about gear diversity is only about condition damage. Once that problem is fixed, we can get back to what Nike talked about and worry more about real build diversity (trait, runes, weapons, utilities, etc). Stuff that alter how you play.

phys.7689:

yeah, maybe you are right, but thats actually a problem.
So one should look maybe and try to see why in other games, people feel less comfortable treating random pug players as disposable.

I don’t think that different in other game. I don’t really care about other player when I play CoD. When I play CSGO I only care about the ppl that I always play with in my favourite server.

Now, when I was playing SWTOR is was a little bit different. When I was doing operation or the equivalent of ’’dungeons’’, then ya ppl were not disposable. Well dps players were disposable, tank and healer were precious because you often had to wait for a long time to get them. You also had to organized an order of killing (with different targets). So once you setup your group, you don’t want to get back to square one. But if ppl were not disposable in this situation, it come at a cost. Creating group was long and when something was wrong in the group it could screw you up pretty badly.

But did it was worth it? I don’t think so. Maybe I was less liberal with the kicking in SWTOR, but I wasn’t adding friends all over the place either. I was still playing mostly with my guild and most social interaction back then was pretty much similar to right now in GW2.

Reavan.8753:

I was disgusted to say the least.

I like my thief and I change its build to make it work in all situations in which I play it.

So when ppl like to play meta, it disgust you? You even said it yourself, your zerg made place for other profession, it just that nobody took the other and prefer to play a GWEN. Where is your moral authority over them?

Especially since Mesmer and Thief are a big part of good zerg bursting guild, they just have specialist role.

Shiyo.3578:

People are easily disposable and no one even tries to make friends or group up with the same people again, even if they’re good. Everyone might as well be NPC’s in dungeons and I doubt ANYONE would notice a difference or care at all.

PUGS are easily disposable. I have 400 ppl in my guild to make friends or group up with, that will take me a long time to become friend with even 1/10th of that. Why should we care about everybody in the game?

I guess that he mean Invigorating Precision

You are in luck Kubas. Engineer and Elementalist are the only two profession that are optimized in range weapon for PvE. All other profession should be melee only, or melee for most of the time. But still, it doesn’t mean that because you are range, you should stay at max distance. This game is all about cooperation and you need to stay relatively near the rest of your group to share boons and support each other.

Engineer most efficient weapon is grenade kit, while for Elementalist, its will be staff. Elementalist have other option, but these other option are not range.

Farming Flats.5370:

I think they will not work on template as long as the traits system is not perfect ….
they already says they will rework it .. ( see the NPE topic )

The day we will have the perfect traits system we will get Templates.

Yes, but they won’t work on trait as long as the daily is not perfect, because daily still need 2 or 3 revamp since it’s such an essential part of the game. After all it’s number 1 on the priority list.

Dub.1273:

One warrior makes sense, after that they become wasted party slots. Same for guardian.

Same with everysingle profession except 2. Elementalist because more is good and necro because none is better

Theugotzd.9843:

Both classes have high DPS, but I believe Guardian is higher.

They both have average DPS (5th-6th) and Warrior is higher.

I just don’t get it. Fixing condition in PvE and build template should be high in the priority list. And its not like build template would be hard to do. They don’t need to create a complicated, advanced system. Just give us the basic trait/utilities and we gonna be happy.

Charrbeque.8729:

He didn’t say they were never going to work on templates. He said they aren’t working on it now because the expansion comes first. He also mentioned it was an awesome system in GW1 and acknowledged there was a demand for it in GW2.

It’s possible they will work on bringing build templates to GW2 some time after the expansion releases. It takes time for them to bring us stuff based on player feedback due to their priorities on what they need to get done first.

So just be patient. Hopefully we’ll get build templates by the end of the year.

And I never said that they will never work on it either? I said exactly what you said.

The point is that the game will be out for almost 3 years after the expansion. I accept that stuff got prospone for the expansion. But if build template is not part of the expansion, this mean that we are still at least 1 year away from any build template.

At 8:44

This is the most disappointing news about the expansion for me so far.

Windsagio.1340:

If pure DPS survivability becomes much more difficult (lots of ideas floating around), the meta will shift and pure DPS will become less popular again.

Don’t think so. 2 years ago, ppl wanted defensive gear so party member don’t die like flies. Now, we know that there is way better tools than defensive gear to keep you alive in hard content.

Protection, Reflect, Blind, Aegis, Vigor, trait, weakness, etc. We will use more of that to tackle harder content, we won’t gonna go back to defensive gear like we used to when we didn’t really understood the game. A lot of ways to improve our survivability in this game and defensive gear/healing are the less efficient and the less fun (active defense is way more entertaining than passive defense).

The gear. Bezerker = Power, Precision, Ferocity

Margrave.2071:

full zerk?

Pardon my ignorance…

Zerk = Beserker, one of the two best stats distribution with assassin in PvE. If you don’t know what zerk is, then we may have the reason why you have some difficulty with thief

http://www.metabattle.com/

A good starting place for builds. I suggest you start by unlocking the trait that you need. The best weapons for warrior are GS and Axe/Mace. GS + Sw/Warhorn is the best set for mobility, but you should fight in GS only. You could also go pure Axe with Axe/Mace + Axe/Sw (for the block) or Axe/Mace + Axe/Warhorn (for boons). GS + Rifle is also a possible option if you think you need a range weapon as you learn the game.

You already have a good base with your armor so you have 2 choices for getting a salvageable gear. Either you collect the gold to buy it off the TP or you buy it with dungeon token. CoF, CoE and Arah are the three dungeons that allow you to buy beserker armor/weapons with their respective dungeon tokens. Dungeon is also a good source of gold, so if you like doing dungeon, then its probably the best way to get your gear.

As for runes they can be a bit hard to understand at first for a new player. You could take some popular choice like scholar of strenght, but I think the best would be cheap option like Ruby orb for now. As you learn more about the game and runes you will be able to make your how decision about it depending on your build.

Ardid.7203:

So basically the only way to stop a Thief’s backstab is knowing beforehand there is a Thief and being able to anticipate his moves with divination or telepathy. Or you can accept him backstabing you in the first place and then hope to get lucky with his second try. Maybe he will not chase you! Good to know!

Thief backstab is easy to predict depending on which profession you are up against. D/P have a 3 second stealth and HS is about 1sec cast time, so you have a 2sec windows there. Usually I dodge between 1 and 2 second after he become invisible depending if he was close or not. It’s 3 second for Hide in Shadows. Blinding powder and Shadow refuge are a bit trickier. BP is instant so its a real 3 seconds of stealth and SR last a lot longer. In that situation I try to move as much as possible my back and run to make him miss. You also want to lay down aoe around you so he can’t approach you without losing some of his hp.

Another trick is to push the thief to backstab you as fast as possible. Give him a good target so he want to seize the opportunity and pop a defensive ability. You do that by rushing toward where he stealth, getting as near as possible to him and don’t move too much. I like to do that with my ranger, with my GS block or signet of stone, he will do a backstab without hurting me, revealing himself, while I’m waiting for him. You can also do that with a lot of profession, but not all of them.

Margrave.2071:

I love the rogue class in most mmorpgs. My first max level character in WoW was a rogue. It pains me to say that the GW2 Thief is very much NOT a rogue.

Thief isn’t a rogue, was never intended to play as a rogue and will never be a rogue.

Margrave.2071:

I
All the other classes feel like they a bunch of options to pick from. This one does not.

What do you mean by options? damage, blind, reflect, stealth, mobility. This profession have a lot of option in fight, so I’m not sure if I get what you mean.

Margrave.2071:

It made sense for the elementalist to be squishy, but the thief doesn’t feel like he has the damage to back up his level of squishy. He also feels rather limited in weapon selection.

Am I doing something wrong? Can anyone tell me how to make this class as fun as a traditional rogue?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the class. I hated leveling the engineer, but the thief is just ‘meh’. It feels unfinished, and like an afterthought. It feels to me as if little to no work went into the class design at all.

Margrave.2071:

It made sense for the elementalist to be squishy, but the thief doesn’t feel like he has the damage to back up his level of squishy.

Well the thief is the highest single target dps in the game so…. What level of damage would the thief need to back up his level of squishy??

Margrave.2071:

He also feels rather limited in weapon selection.

It only have 9 different weapons combination. That more than engie and ele, but that’s less than the usually 12 that most other profession got so you are partially right. But Thief have dual skills that give them about the same amount of weapons skills as the other profession. Thief is pretty much in the middle in that category.

Margrave.2071:

Am I doing something wrong? Can anyone tell me how to make this class as fun as a traditional rogue?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the class. I hated leveling the engineer, but the thief is just ‘meh’. It feels unfinished, and like an afterthought. It feels to me as if little to no work went into the class design at all.

Yes you are doing something wrong. You have two options here. Try to understand and appreciate the profession because I assure you that it isn’t an unfinished one. Or figure out that the thief isn’t a profession you enjoy and play on of the other 7.

PvE : They have the highest single target dps and their stealth capability make them extremely valuable for team to skip in dungeon. They are squishy so they can be hard to play. Not as hard as elementalist, but harder than most other profession.

WvW roaming : Different build are good here, from the squishy D/P build around their backstab burst to the Dire Condi bunker thief that win battle of attrition. They are on top of the food chain here.

sPvP : They use their mobility, stealth and burst to their advantage here. Stealing beast, finishing low hp foes, stomping/rezzing, decapping far, … They are not that usefull in big brawl, but they gonna complete all these little task that other profession don’t do as well to help the team win. A great addition to any team.

WvW Zerg : That’s their weakness. In organized team, they have their place as they pick up the casters of the enemies. But in pug zerg, it can be harder to do a job as meaningful.

Well 6/6/0/2/0 GS vs 6/5/0/0/3 GS+ Ax/M is very similar is dps indeed. But when you talk about
- 6/6/0/2/0 Pure axe there is around a 700 dps difference.
- 6/4/0/4/0 Pure GS, its around 1500-2000 less dps
- 0/6/0/6/2 PS Warrior, its around 3 000 less dps

So ya, you are right for some build, but the dps drop can drastically drop for other build. For example, the build the OP is proposing will be a loss of around 1 000-800 dps.

So with PvP reward track + log-in rewards we got a lot of those. Right now, i’m using them to level up characters to level 10 for key farming and for the skills points. But with the expansion, we won’t gain skills point by leveling, we will fill our mastery bar.

What will happen with tome of knowledge then? If these tome can still be used past level 80 like right now, then we could stockpile them and unlock masteries very quickly right when the expansion is available.

If they no longer do anything once you past level 80 then most ppl will truly have no use for those tome anymore after they have all their alt at 80. Ppl would need an additional empty charater slot, create a character, use tome to level up to 80, then use the skills points and delete the character, rinse and repeat. Or just trash the tomes all together.

The little spiders spit poison, they are range, not melee. Like I said, ppl can all bring them in one shot, but it’s not the best strategy. I don’t like care what bad pugs are doing, some of them are taking a tank and an healer, other are not able to complete a path under 45min. You can use reflect to protect yourself from the little spider while fighting the boss and its far more efficient strategy.

As far as condition vs direct dmg, here what should be the ideal situation. Direct Damage is fast but have ultimately less dps potential than condition. It’s best against trash and veteran. Condition damage have a ramp up time, but at their peck they have a better dps than direct damage. They would be ideal against legendary bosses and some champion. That would be an ideal, but a lot of things need to be fixed for that, and I don’t know if anet will do it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So perhaps my suggestions don’t benefit someone as one-track-minded as you. You know, if you’re bored with dungeons, you could do something else. Many other players will welcome the change because their setup is now optimal for a small portion of content. Besides, perhaps in those mixed-paths, you play a Zerker setup that will still likely be vital to speedruns. Hey look! Now variety is encouraged and you still get to play what you’ve been playing for the last 2 years.

I don’t consider myself one-track-minded, but I still see a lot of problem with your suggestions. I agree that a couple of stuff could be changed to improve the game, but that doesn’t mean that your suggestion is good.

1) ‘’Boss with high armor to make condition viable’’. That will make direct dmg bad in some situation, while condition damage will only be good in specific situation. There is whole tread on fixing condition and these discussion are far better to improve the viability of condition than forcing their use in some specific situation. Condition and Direct damage should have their strength and weakness in all fight, not pigeon-holing condition into a very specific role against very specific enemies, while leaving it not so good in all the other situation. I agree with the goal to make condition a good choice, but not your method.

2) ‘’NPC escort where healing and cc is viable’‘. Replace healing by support and i’m on board, but it wouldn’t change anything to the situation in general. Making content that need more support and cc is alway great. But I will still prefer to give protection, reflect to the npc, while killing the stuff as fast as possible. As a side note : NPC are a source of frustration and bugs in dungeon, the less NPC are involve the better I feel. (Especially since Anet have a hard time fixing some of them)

3) ‘’Spread ranged enemies so you can’t stack them’’. We’ll use reflect, stack a portion of them with cc and dps them, go to the next group, use reflect, regroup them and kill them. It would be an interesting challenge, but good player will adapt by using the best tools they already know they are good.

You just propose 3 mechanics that they could and are even already in use, but in really small quantity. Number 1 is use in Triple Trouble, its nice when you have 100 ppl and you get 10-20 to do a specific task while the other are doing something else, in a dungeon with only 5 ppl, that could be a bit trickier to apply. Number 2, we have Hodgin for exemple that you need to keep alive. We use to have a support player to keep in alive, but now we just kill all of the burrow quickly (even in solo run). Number 3 we have the little spider in AC. Yes you can stack them, but most good group rush the boss, put reflect and kill the Queen, protecting themselves from the spiders. They could improve upon those idea, but that would change that good player will still use the build they use now, they will just bring 1-2 condition build where they would have decided to put high armor boss.

1) Stacking is the norm in dungeon. It allow your team to cleave all mobs, stay in support range (boons, etc) and help to rez if needed.

2) Corner stacking is another thing. It’s a good strategy to regroup mobs together. But because of FGS is was the best strategy everytime. Now that FGS was nerf, corner stacking should only be use in specific situation, but pugs have a hard time adapting and corner stack even when this hurt your team.

3) Elementalist have the best AoE dmg of all profession and its the main profession in dungeon. It can also be an offensive support profession by stacking migh and fury for the whole team.

4) Rezzing in mid fight depend on the situation. If there is lot of mobs, you are better to hit a mobs while your team AoE so you rally on them. If you fight a single boss, alts have high hp or they are too far away, then rezzing will be a better option.

Yup the majority of the collection are well done, with a good reward. Only some specific collection have stupid reward compare to the work needed.

And what do you mean by class distribution? Do you mean how many ppl play each profession?

OMG they force you to play with ppl in a Massively MULTIPLAYER RPG. HOW DARE THEY. Thanks obama.

Lizenz.6358:

could someone give me the math?Thanks!

Vukorep.3081:

i dont rly bother with 0.xyz coefficients when it comes to weapons and their skills…

I’ll talk in dmg coefficient per second.

Cleansing Flames is not worth using. It have a coefficient of 0.7/sec compare to sword auto-attack which is 1.24/sec

Zealot’s Flame is actually a good skill with about 1.8/sec + burning, but the direct dmg is single target only.

For the Focus, the Ray of Judgment bounce between target. It can hit 4 foe or only 1 depending the situation so the dmg will be between 0.4/sec and 1.6/sec. So overall, it’s not worth using for the damage alone. But the regen on friends and blind/vulnerability is.

Shield of Wrath have a 2.5 coefficient and it’s an instant cast.

Overall, Focus will have a better dps than torch, but its very situational. If your shield of wrath don’t explode and your ray of judgement don’t bounce more on friends than foes, then Torch will have a better dps. Especially against a single target.

On the other ends, what is not variable on the Focus is the defensive capabilities of the blind and block.

Both weapon are ok. Torch will have a more regular dps, but can’t keep up with the focus in some situation, while bringing no really defensive capabilities. Torch is also a good weapon in solo situation when the extra burning to gain more Fiery Wrath uptime.

Ya don’t put too much pressure on you. The vast majority of players have only one build and change nothing from one instance to the other one. If you like to adapt to all situation then it’s great, but only if you feel like it. As long as you use a different build in different game mode. WvW zerg, Roaming and PvE is very different and you should use a build for each.

I get what you are saying when you say ‘’tunnel vision’‘, but let’s face it. There is not much place other than dungeon when you want to reach 100% critical chance. Most of the time, trying to reach 100% without any of those fury/banners/spotter will hurt you overall because you put too much into precision and not enough in power.

Arkinos.7245:

These numbers are not possible unless all numbers on the wiki are wrong.

Which would be very annoying since the ingame numbers are wrong as well most of the time.

These numbers are possible and the numbers on the wiki are not wrong. Let’s take the easiest example with the hammer. Here is the build I will use.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASRlsApUo9CxQI8DNR8gY7nX1GoBmP3C-ThRBABXt/o8DPdB5dBAA4BAQp6PmpEMAwBwv/GAO/8zP/8z78zP/8zPfMA6B-e

First we need to see what are our coefficient for the hammer auto-attack. We gonna have 2 coefficient. One normal for the first 2 swing of the hammer and the second for the 3 swing and the symbol (because they won’t have the same amount of damage modifiers). The 3rd swing count as a symbol even if it shouldn’t. That’s 0.8+0.9= 1.7 coefficient for the first 2 swing. The 3rd is 1.0 and with writ of persistance the symbol will have a coefficient of 2.5 over the normal 1.5 coefficient. So that’s 1.0 + 2.5 =3.5.

Power : the build give you 2788 power and you add 170 from the banner of a warrior and 750 from 25 stack of might for a 3708 power.
Weapons damage : 1100 on average.
Crit chance : 55% + 8% (banners) + 20% (fury) = 83%
Crit dmg : 206%
Armor : 2600 (standard use on your tooltip)

If you do the math, you will see 5k dmg fro the 2 first swing and 10k dmg from the last. Now we add the dmg modifiers : (Sigil of Force, Sigil of Night, Scholar Rune, Radiant Power, Fiery Wrath, Slaying Potion, Vulnerability and Symolic Power (but only for the second number). That give use a total of 34 596dmg and the full chain last 3.7sec for a dps of 9 350. After you need to add up the buring which is around 200-300 additional dps. Now, this is the normal maximal dps from that build. You could for exemple have a sigil of slaying for a additional 5% dmg, or have a ranger for frost spirit and spotter. But you could also not activate all your dmg modifier all the time, not having all buff all the time and that will decrease your actual dps.

It will depend on your composition and the skills of your party members.