Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

zhi.3918:

Snip

I think there’s some confusion here – the PvP Team is an entirely separate entity from the Skills and Balance Team.

The PvP Team’s main focus is improving the infrastructure of PvP – meaning features, rewards, etc.

The teams do often consult each other on various ideas, but they have separate projects.

Perhaps the confusion is on ArenaNet’s side. Players view PvP as a singular experience, a combination of game modes, skills, balance, rewards and ladder/leaderboards.

If the resources are divided into PVP infrastructure and skills/balance, then what do you do when you need to really focus on skills/balance? Do you pull people from the other team? I"m guessing the answer is ‘no’.

Are you guys certain the development team structure is optimal?

Running a solo queue game today and we lose 500-40. The mesmer on my team shouts out, “I got number 1”.

This is a guy who spent the entire match playing off point and trying to kill players where it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

Please devs, get rid of these scoreboards. They are sending these players the wrong message. They think solo performance in a match somehow matters.

And please put something in the game to teach players about how to play this game properly, i.e. fight on point, dont be a solo hero, rez your teammates instead of running off.

Either that or just give players the ability to /kick people who aren’t playing correctly.

Hi Jonathan,

I agree 100% regarding CTF. Push is far superior than pull. Rift had a CTF map and I had repeated to them that they needed to change the format from capture the flag to push the flag.

The analogy I used is this: how much fun would it be if, in football, the ball was snapped to the quarterback and he ran away from the line of scrimmage to score?

JonathanSharp.7094:

@ 2on2/3on3: A lot of you guys really seem to like this idea. So do we. We’re looking at game types which encourage this style of play. Another thing we’re looking at it combining the size of fights with larger tactical/strategic implications, so that there is something fun going on the micro level (the actual fight) and the macro level (the map overall).

@ Moba: This plays into another idea you guys seem to be hitting on, which is a moba style game. We think the layout/flow of a moba style map could be really fun, especially when combined with something like killing enemy captains or guild lords. We’re also looking at testing something like that!

@ GvG/castle sieges: I think these can be combined in some pretty cool ways. You guys had some great points/ideas on these, so thanks for those.

@ Lords and protecting them/not protecting them: Players seem to be pretty split down the middle on this one. Some players want the “play” of protecting their Lord and keeping it alive, while other want it to be more like a MOBA nexxus – something you can’t actively heal/protect. We’ll have to try that one both ways to see what has better play to it. I suspect it’s the former.

@ Not having RPG elements in our game when compared to most MOBAS: Keep this in mind. It’s what gives the mobas their flow/pace. We need to build mechanics that change the pacing/feel of the map in a similar way, without hampering the fun players have. I think you get the same thing out of an RTS, but in a different way. Both sides start off with few resources and weak units. Over time they build up in both areas, and the middle/late game are very different than the early game.

I’ll keep looking for other things to respond to in this thread. Thanks for all the feedback/ideas guys.

Hi Jonathan,

I’ve seen a lot of talk about 2v2, 3v3 and I really think this game isn’t designed for that. Sometimes the customer really doesn’t know what they are asking for and you need to tell us when that’s the case.

2v2 and 3v3 will end up being a giant mess if the pvp isn’t completely overhauled.

I have never found interrupts to be particularly effective against thieves. It’s hard to see how they could, considering most thief attacks have casting times ranging between 0-0.5 seconds.

Britz.6187:

for WvW… the traits, stats of armor, weapon, etc..

There is no meta-game in WvW, at all.

It shuts out Mesmers.

SuperHaze.4210:

@Wintel

While I understand where Anet tried to go by eliminating dedicated healers, it still deprives a certain group of players who want to exclusively heal. Sure Anet can push those players towards support builds, but it’s not the same (or fun to some of those players) as being a dedicated healer. The problems I see now with support builds are boon juggling. Add boon, steal boon, boon stripping, applying conditions to negate boons, etc., has caused it own set of problems, especially to classes that don’t have much access to either boons or condition removal.

I can see dedicated healers being extremely OP in the conquest game type because of the extra bunkering power provided by dedicated healers, but it’s no different now where instead of a healer being a requirement, a bunker or two are required for a team. Hopefully in the near future, we will have other game types that won’t depend on bunkers so much.

Healers and tanks are a minority: a rarity even. The vast majority of players prefer DPS roles. WoW LFG taught you this. Wanted to run a dungeon? Pop the LFG tool. Wanted to wait 15-20 minutes? Queued as DPS. Wanted to wait 10-20 seconds? Queued as a healer or a tank.

Phadde.7362:

The reason why the PvP updates are rather far between is because it takes time to balance things and time for the new changes to settle with the player and the community….

I don’t believe this is the only reason. The developers posted weeks ago they know Warriors are overpowered. However, no fixes have been realized on live servers to date. Prior to their big tournament at PAX, they pushed a hotfix to Dhuumfire.

The examples provided indicate the developers are aware of the imbalances in the game and are fully capable of making smaller adjustments in a more timely fashion than what they do currently.

I voted “as soon as possible” because I know how these things go. You’ll come up with a “better” setup, but it really won’t be better, and we’ll all end up waiting 10+ minutes for a matchup that’s not much better than going to hot join.

No thanks. If you have a better approach, roll it out for a month and see how it goes. Then yank it if it isn’t any better.

Do you think it’s a good idea?

Josh Davis.6015:

Next Tuesday (Nov 12) we’ll be removing Trick or Treat Bags from PvP. At that point we’ll be awarding double tournament chests for wins. That should last for about a month or so.

Happy hunting!

And the ones that lose can go eat candy corn!

sPvP and Living Story development teams should swap their build cycles.

Currently the Living Story gets an update every 2 weeks, and many PVE’s feel the content is rushed, meaningless and buggy. This is because the content is, in fact, rushed, buggy and a bit grindy.

sPvP development, on the other hand, gets changes every two months. Sometimes the changes are significant, sometimes they are relatively minor.

I propose they Criss-Cross: sPvP push updates out every two weeks and Living Story push out content every 8 weeks or so.

I believe this would result in larger, more meaningful PVE content releases with fewer bugs.

For PvP, it would give the developers the ability to make more frequent, finer adjustments to the professions instead of lumping them all together. I believe it would result in a faster convergence upon class balance and, ultimately, more build/team composition diversity.

Your thoughts?

Divinity.8041:

Dimswitch.6381:

Easy.

Mimic:
3/4 sec cast, 30 second cooldown
Obtain (copy) all of your target’s boons.

This would be an exact copy, including stacks and duration. Obviously certain boss/npc boons could not be copied. This will effectively give Mesmers some “boon hate”. Cast and recharge would need to be monkeyed with to find proper balance, but this could be some real fun in pvp.

this is actually the best idea I have hard so far, and very easy to do

It definitely falls under “manipulation”, but I find that it is a lot like Arcane Thievery, but ‘suped up’ a bit.

I’d love to see Mimic replaced with a transposition skill that swaps your position with your opponent’s. Something like: 600m range, 40 second cooldown, requires line-of-sight, can be blocked or dodged, susceptible to stability, acts as an interrupt.

It’s definitely a manipulation skill, very “mesmer-y”, and I think everyone would find it useful in tPvP, PVE and WvW.

You could use it to catch runners, peel for your teammates, pull a bunker from a point, escape from a jam, drop opponents into ‘bad things’, etc.

My only fear would be that it would be too powerful. The developers would have to ensure that we couldn’t use it to get into keeps. Perhaps require the target to be within a cone-angle line-of-sight from the Mesmer.

Umut.5471:

Pendragon.8735:

Necros are going to be sorry when Dhuumfire / Terror gets nerfed at this point and the class is back at the bottom for likely months due to the constant whittling away they’ve done to all other trees and skills the last couple months to already account for this combo.

Considering how much more cleansing and condi counter has come into the game since that point, Necro cannot go back to pre-dhuumfire builds, because they’ve all been nerfed in addition to the above realities.

Bleeds as a primary source of damage aren’t going to cut it ever again.

There appears to be lots of developer confusion about not just how to get this class where it needs to be, but even about what it should be.

Necro has never successfully been attrition in this game (well since beta) and never will be as long as they stick to the complete hardline about our only defense being facetank, with rare stability, no invuln, block, etc. Calling for nerf of our burst is pointless without a simultaneous solution about how to gain real attrition.

I think we have to give up on condition at this point. But as I always say, we need direct-damage alternatives to staff/scepter-dagger. We need new weapon types asap.

My initial thoughts are in agreement with you. Right now it seems like condi engineer will be a better fit in the upcoming months.

Hi Jon!

Are you sure this isn’t a “double whammy” of changes?

The current warrior meta is CC-heavy.

The 12/10 changes, I believe, will not reduce the amount of CC. It appears as though it may increase the amount of CC (elementalists and mantra mesmers becoming more viable) in tPvP.

From what I can tell, the 12/10 changes will also introduce more condition reduction as well as more condition immunity (Diamond Skin) to the game.

It seems that these changes will have a strong, negative impact on Necromancer viability in tPvP, then you’re layering reduction in condition damage output on top of that.

I’d dump Reanimator. Here’s what I’d offer:

Necrotic Rigor: Decreases Damage taken while Life Force is below the threshold.
For example: Damage reduced by 5% while Life Force under 33%.

Decent little buff for an Adept minor. Not crazy. Synergizes inversely with Life Force generation so the buff doesn’t become abusive. Works for any build.

Dondagora.9645:

I don’t really care to copy skills, since it feels like it will be harder to use in builds reliably, but I think if they just buff the current effect it will be fine, like for the four seconds you channel you absorb all projectiles aimed at you and Echo will send all of those attacks at a single opponent.

I’m not particularly fond of a copy skill right now, as I think it would kind of feel like a variant of thief mug.

I like your idea for Echo. In fact, I’d rather see scepter #2 be changed to that behavior.

DanyK.3842:

You don’t take into account people who just queue up and when it pops they decide to log off because they didn’t get their desired map or whatever. What would you do about those? I’ve often been in a 4v5 or 3v5 because of people leaving the game but you can’t really tell if they disconnected or left on purpose.
You could argue that if one has a bad connection they shouldn’t queue up for a game where this can affect other people’s ratings and ranks.
The only solution I see is a 30 second timer on disconnects or afk-reports after which the game ends and everyone gets requeued except for the one who was offline or afk. This sounds fair as people wouldn’t lose ranks but it would still be annoying to get people queueing up and leaving. I’m not sure about a punishment though because as I said some people might just have a bad day with their connections or it could be a server-side as well.

If you’re in a 4v5 and losing, the game should end immediately and the game should be considered a draw.

Hi Jon!

Thanks for posting. I see where you guys are coming from. However, I’m still scratching my head on that Signet of Spite change.

Can you provide some insight?

Mimic is being redesigned. If so, why would it be limited to a ‘mimic’ skill? It could be totally different.

Here’s a few fun ideas:

1) Transposition: You and your target swap positions.

2) Arcane Collusion: All boons shared among your opponents within X meters are also shared with you. Lasts 10 seconds

3) Arcane Amalgamation: All boons to be shared among your opponents within X meters are instead directed to you. Lasts 6 seconds.

4) Arcane Malfeasance: All boons your opponent gains are instead given to you. Lasts 6 seconds.

4) Arcane Redirection: The next X damaging attacks intended for you are instead redirected to your nearest opponent.

Krafty.9758:

Thedenofsin.7340:

ensoriki.5789:

All you have to do is drop 10% of health, why are people tripping?

If Necromancers had a trait that made them immune to direct damage until you dealt condition damage equal to 10% of their hp, you wouldn’t complain?

Apples n Oranges….. Necros have a higher health pool than elementalists, so 10% damage needed against a necro is more of a big deal than an ele needing 10% damage done to itself. And lets not forget about DS for the necro.

Max ele health pool is ~20k. Max necro is around 28k. That’s only an 800hp difference. If you like, make the necro version threshold 93% of hp. Then it’s the same. Death Shroud does not regen hp. Elementalists get all kinds of heals and regen.

Hi Jon!

JonPeters.5630:

I think the mesmer discussion has been pretty positive overall and productive but I wanted to bring up some points that I am seeing and some new ones as well.

Scepter
Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

Scepter really only has 1 defense, and that is Scepter #2, and that only works against 1 attack. Players tend to prefer MH sword because Sword #2 is better defensively, and sword #3 is a good immobilize.

I had some thoughts on what would make scepter better, and I think they may be in line with what you are hinting at.

If scepter #2 blocked all attacks for the entire 2 second duration it would greatly help its viability. To this end, I’ve thought of some variants:

a) Scepter #2 blocks all attacks for the entire 2 second duration. The counter attack becomes an unblockable attack at the end of the block. The damage of the counter increases with the number of attacks blocked. 5 stacks of torment applied.

b) Scepter #2 blocks all attacks for the entire 2 second duration. The counter attack strikes your opponent and an additional adjacent opponent for each attack blocked. Affects up to 5 opponents. 5 stacks of torment applied to each target.

JonPeters.5630:

Confounding Suggestions
We were hoping this change would improve this. I’m mostly seeing people saying they liked the old one. That will certainly be a topic of discussion early next week so I would love to hear some opinions either way in case there is a split.

I originally said I preferred the old way better. I’ve looked at it some more in the context of group fight support and I can see the new approach has far better group support. I think your change is good for mesmer viability in tPvP.

JonPeters.5630:

Mimic
Last thought. This skill is for almost all intents and purposes just not working, but is causing some broken behavior with certain bosses. I would like to replace it with a complete redesign and am open to discussion on that as well.

It was a cool idea! Too bad it really didn’t pan out. There’s all kinds of wild things you could do that fall in the category of a manipulation-style utility.
– targeted boon conversion (i.e. stability strips to help with down-state support)
– positional transferrence – swap positions with your opponent
– positional distortion – reverse your opponents cardinal directions for a period of time (up=down, left=right, back=forward)
– manipulation of range – your next 3 melee attacks can be performed from range
– redirection – The next damaging attack/condition/stun you receive is redirected to your closest opponent
– misapplication – Boons shared between your opponents are shared with you as well

JonPeters.5630:

Overall I think this a good small step for a profession that has a lot of roles it can fill fairly uniquely. I think this might give us 3 strong mesmer build archetypes.

1) Shatter
2) Phantasm
3) Mantra

I think right behind those are the interrupt shutdown mesmer and the signet mesmer, so future suggestions towards those are appreciated as well.

Thanks,

Jon

I think interrupt shutdown mesmer is one of the more challenging types to play and could really pan out in tPvP. It’s basically “big clutch” type of build. I’ve been playing it in solo queue (not really well yet), and it’s exciting. Pulling off the key stop/stun/interrupt at the right moment pays huge dividends and can turn the tide of a fight.

One last comment of mine
Torch 5, the illusionary Mage (iMage), is in a bad place. His rate of attack is very low, and, with the nerfs a while back to confusion and retaliation, he doesn’t really do anything special.
I have a suggestion for Torch 5: increase his attack rate, remove confusion and retaliation. Instead have him apply revealed to the target and a randomly chosen condition (e.g. 5 second attack rate which applies 3 seconds of revealed, and 2 seconds of either burning, weakness or blind).

Reasoning: Adding revealed to Torch 5 would give a Mesmer roamer the potential to be a counter to a team with a thief roamer.
Additionally, condition Mesmers only have confusion as their ‘BFG’ condition. The other conditions they apply last very briefly (a second or 2). This change would help give condition Mesmers some condition protection for confusion.

I"m still having a hard time trying to see the niche a mesmer will fill in tPvP. Thieves still are far superior roamers with a self-portal on a short cooldown and group stealth on a shorter cooldown.
Warriors bring better survivability and better stuns.
Rangers bring better group buffs and battle rez.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

From the other thread:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

Anet, please, why does this need to be condi immunity?

Why not make it -75% condi duration, so condis will still be applied and just last a very very short time within the conditional frame. Same with automated response and zerker stance – Jonathan I remember discussing this with you in the past but your notes don’t indicate any change to this.

Why is a passive trait designed to hard counter builds? Don’t you think there is something slightly wrong with balancing in this way?

Agree 100%. There is no skill in passive immunity to things.

ensoriki.5789:

All you have to do is drop 10% of health, why are people tripping?

If Necromancers had a trait that made them immune to direct damage until you dealt condition damage equal to 10% of their hp, you wouldn’t complain?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

vangedas.7358:

Diamond Skin

- this can be absurdly broken. Please, please, do not go with this. Not only pure passive immunity to conditions is very powerful, cheesy and and cannot be counter-played, but this new trait would literally kill specs like trap ranger, not to mention it would hurt necromancers.
Once again, do not go with this trait, it would be a huge mistake.

There actually is counter play to this trait unlike some other similar mechanics. The goal of the elementalist with this trait is to stay above 90% hit points while the counter play is to do a bit of physical damage to the elementalist to drop them below this threshold in order to get the conditions rolling on them, which will in turn help keep them below that threshold.

In SPvP an elementalist can reach a maximum of around 20,000-21,000 hit points. This means that 2100 would be the most damage you would need to do to an elementalist to break through this trait and in most cases it would be a lower amount than that. That is not very much damage needed to do in order to start applying conditions. This still leaves room for the elementalist using healing traits/skills and kiting to try to stay above that threshold to increase their survivability vs conditions.

We have been doing internal testing and it feels like it in a good place for a tier 3 trait. That being said though and as a reminder, none of these changes are set in stone yet and are subject to change.

Wouldn’t the corollary to this be some kind of trait that would give condition classes immunity to direct damage until their health drops below, say 90%? The counterplay argument made would still hold: all someone has to do is deal 01% condition damage to the necromancer before he becomes susceptible to direct damage.

I’m 100% against this as well. Any ability, any trait that completely nullifies an entire type of damage passively is not good for the game.

These types of traits aren’t going to make things more interesting – they’ll just kitten people off.

I’m sure you guys can come up with a trait better than this.

Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.

Wait, what? Condition immunity when you are > 90% health? No internal cooldown, no nothing?

Doesn’t that seem really extreme, giving a class complete immunity from conditions when their health is high?

I certainly don’t see any traits around which state, “Immune to all non-condition damage while health is > 90%”…

I’m still scratching my head on the Signet of Spite Change. Lots of people don’t take it, but it gets 1 bleed removed…

Weird. I used it all the time in WvW for camps or to finish someone off.

However, I didn’t use it for the damage it did; I used it either to combine with Epidemic for AoE blind + weakness against NPC’s, or I used it as condition insurance so I could finish someone off.

Taking 1 bleed off doesn’t make any sense to me.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

/grumble

Confounding Suggestions.. Ugh. I’d rather the stun. The daze duration synergizes beautifully with Runes of the Mesmer (which also needs a buff)

All of the changes are kind of awesome, but Confounding Suggestions barely merited Grandmaster as it is. What makes it so good is that the 50% stun chance makes it MUCH easier to chance down fleeing opponents as well as escape crappy situations. Increasing daze duration takes that away, but gives us the potential (w/Mesmer runes) for a near 2-second daze, making the DazeMantra -> OH SwordDaze -> DazeMantra combo into a beastly 6-second daze… assuming they don’t just run away from you.

I’d much rather them make the 25-point in Domination grant a 20% daze duration increase. The Confounding change is still barely grandmaster-worthy IMO, if its an addition to the stun chance, then it becomes freakin’ glorious and totally worth the 30 points.

I misread that on the first pass. I agree that I’d rather have the stun. Honestly I’d prefer it to give a 1.5 second stun on a 10 second ICD.

Necromancer Comment:

1) 1 bleed from Signet of Spite removed. I’m scratching my head on this. As I understand it, the (now dead) Necro condition meta build didn’t typically take this anyway. The nerf is small, but it seems really unnecessary. If you wanted to affect SoS, I would have removed the 5 stacks of vulnerability altogether, and perhaps added a bleed.

2) /The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act./

This makes good sense for condition mesmers and Minion Masters (still haven’t fixed the Moa-kills-MM bug yet???), but power necros that use a main-hand dagger don’t have the tools to survive in melee range for long. They get focused down just as quickly as a condi-mancer except they’re up close and personal.

Warrior comment:

I’m surprised to not see any change to Healing Signet. It’s an incredible amount of self-healing at the moment and requires a lot of damage to overcome the self-healing.

The Signet needs some toning down and possibly needs a change to the healing coefficient as well.

Earthshaker: The problem wasn’t the damage. The problem stems from the massive stun, and an AoE one at that. Two warriors dropping Earthshakers == 4 seconds of AoE stun, which is insane. (and I’m speaking from experience on this!).

Thief comments:

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.

I think this should have a 60 second cooldown.

Reason: Moved to Master tier and share the same cooldown as all other professions.

Mantra of Resolve (AoE Cleanse) and Mantra of Concentration (AoE Stability) only have a 240m radius.

Considering Mesmers tend to play the back field, as they are squishy as heck, has any consideration been given to increasing the radius from 240 to 360-400 meters? I’ve seen many forum posts where Mesmers complain the AoE effect is an awesome team buff, but the radius is simply too small for the team to really benefit from it.

I’ve been playing with Mantras quite a bit. I think they are good and have some cool gameplay. HOWEVER:

The problem with Mantra Mastery is that Deceptive Evasion is just so much better than it that, in my opinion, players would be hard-pressed to choose Mantra Mastery over it.

Deceptive Evasion is also just so Mesmer-y, I wouldn’t want to do without it just on principle. :-)

If you combined Mantra Mastery and Protected Mantras (with the +400 toughness) into a single ability in the Master Tier, I think that would make it tempting enough for players to consider choosing it over Deceptive Evasion.

Mesmer comments:

1) Mesmer block/counter attacks, achieved successfully blocking with Scepter #2 or Sword #4, have a cast time and appear to be blockable and dodge-able, rendering the ‘punishment’ part of this attack null in some cases. These are fairly underutilized weapons. I think it would really help if the counterattack was made either instant or unblockable.

2) Many mesmers still choose main-hand sword over scepter, even when building hybrid condition/physical builds. Primarily they do this because Blurred Frenzy (sword #2) provides greater protection than Illusionary Counter (Scepter #2). I think scepter, given how it is primarily a condition-based weapon, gave a more protection to the mesmer. If Scepter #2 continued to block for the full duration (unless activated) of 2 seconds, it would greatly help mesmer survivability, or perhaps giving the mesmer 1-2 seconds of protection after finishing the use of scepter #2.

3) Vengeful Images (Inspiration 5 point minor) gives retaliation to Phantasms, but only lasts 5 seconds. In practice, most Phantasms are not even targeted until they’ve been out for 4+ seconds, rendering this all but useless.
Vengeful Images used to give phantasms perma-retaliation, which was too powerful. Now it only punishes players who are quick to react to phantasms, which almost seems unfair. I’d think you’d want to reward players for reacting to Phantasms. I’d prefer to see Phantasms gain Retaliation after they have been out for some time. Perhaps something like 10 seconds of retaliation 7 seconds after they have been spawned. This would make Vengeful Images useful, but would be defeated by a player that is quick to react to the Phantasm.

On the WvW and PVE side of things, Phantasms often die nearly instantly due to AoE. This is especially true in WvW, where they are recognized to be of 0 use in large groups as they are killed from AoE the moment the spawn. For PvE and WvW it would be really good if Phantasms spawned with ~1.5 seconds of invulnerability.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I think its funny how people still think this skill is broken. From when it was nerfed on Oct. 15, effectively the only thing changed now from April 30th, is the new ability Larcenous Strike, that did equal damage to the old Flanking Strike, as well they cleaned up the animation a bit.

What the OP is saying is that a skill that is hardly different from when it was underpowered and needed buffs is overpowered and grants perma evades. This is not true because of the chain of FS/LS. The perma evade comes from the Acro trait line.

Please for the almighty based god play the class before complaining about it, or at the very least have some semblance of knowledge of the class.

Doesn’t change the fact it is imbalanced – it’s just a different knob to adjust.

The solo queue will always be imbalanced as long as there are OP professions that persist for months on end.

What the developers are doing is increasing build diversity. However, it’s happening so slowly that it’s hard to notice. It started with the Necro buff. They created the condi meta to counter the power meta. Then they created the currently-OP warrior to counter that meta (somewhat). Hopefully the next set of changes will shift the meta in a different way.
If you do this 4 or 5 times what starts to happen is we start to get a meta-“rock-paper-scissors” game:
comp2 beats comp1
comp 3 beats comp2
comp4 beats comp3
comp1 beats comp4

etc.

The problem is adjusting the OP professions to still be viable, depending on the composition.

Given that ANet is thinking about different game modes, will they be reworking how many of the existing mechanics work in order to support both capture point and ‘game mode X’?

For example, in capture point, the entire stealth mechanic is balanced upon the concept that a node cannot be captured while a player is stealthed. As we know from WvW, when you remove the capture points, stealth becomes an overwhelmingly imbalanced game mechanic. I believe Jonathan Sharp used the term ‘Apex Predator’. In something other than capture point, stealth is an Apex Predator mechanic.

Will developers be re-evaluating some of the game mechanics when they consider implementing a new game mode?

evilapprentice.6379:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

Thieves rely on evasion and mobility to survive by design
-Lowest base HP pool
-No protection, aegis, or stability (No, daggerstorm does not count as a method to gain stability)
-Middle tier armor
-No blocks, no immunities, no psuedo-immunites (think zerkers stand/endure pain)
-Sub-par condition removal
- Our toughness traitline is entirely stealth reliant – there’s no point in trying to increase our survivability via points in this tree for specs that don’t use stealth constantly.

Boon stealing, lots of blinds, lots of stealth, lots of teleports, condition removal every time you shadowstep, every 3 seconds in stealth, low cooldown on heals, regen while stealthed, abundant access to vigor.

Thieves have tons of survivability. This ability is just broken.

Ashanor.5319:

It’s fine. Watch the animatons.

#1)It’s got a 0.5 second cast time.

1. Watching the animations on an Asura thief…. yeah, not happening.

If you have 200ms of lag that means you have 300ms to react.
That’s pushing the limit of what the average person can visually react to.
Assuming the lag is proportional up and downstream, it takes 100ms for your reaction to register at the server. That leaves you 200ms of time to register an actionable reaction. That’s pushing the limit of what most humans can visually react to.

Hey guys – I know you’re considering a lot of cool stuff for PvP incentives.

I’ve been playing a lot recently (and joining in solo queue a bit as well), and would like to give the following feedback:

Hot Join has become noticeably better in terms of gameplay. It’s gone from each team forming 1 mindless zerg to each team forming 2, sometimes 3, mindless zergs. It’s a step in the right direction.

Not awarding points until the end of a hot join match hurts players who HJ while waiting for sPvP queues to pop. I believe this was done to discourage people from leaving when the match is imbalanced. This has not worked, based upon my experience. Instead players just leave earlier in the match.

I feel like it just kind of hurts players who want to PvP while they are waiting to. sPvP.

How about this idea: hot join matches award players points every 30 seconds based upon how many points their team has scored so far in the match. If the losing teams in HJ get 150 points for a full game, then award the players 1 point for every 4 points their team scores. When the match is over, the players are awarded the remainder.

Those abilities aren’t tied to an unblockable boonsteal and also not on the same weapon as a 0 second cooldown shadowstep.

It needs to be nerfed. The game is getting bad enough with all these abilities requiring 0 skill to use. This needs to go.

the boonsteal isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s spammable evade, which is completely broken.

…and has been for some time now. Is AreneNet going to fix this, or will we continue to see a mass of thieves being effectively perma-evade, and giving them unblockable boon steal.

It’s like combining Mesmer Arcane Thievery and Blurred Frenzy and putting it on a 3 second cooldown.

Raigai.4218:

Guild Wars 2 sPvP has been the worst PvP experience I’ve had thus far in gaming. I had more fun PvP:ing even in Rift. Guess I’ll have to abandon my favorite aspect of the game completely. You guys keep the zerging. I’ll rather keep my strategy elements. . As GW is now, it will not get to be the “number one PvP MMO” as they claim. It will never get to that level like this.

I call bunk. Rift PvP is a lumpy pile of horse turds compared to PvP in GW2. Rift has, by far, the worst PvP in the history of MMO’s.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Until we get a report option for being AFK, I suggest just report them for botting.

Should this be the m.o. for reporting hacking as well?

Maze.1902:

More disturbing than particle effects are the numbers, especially the crits. I´d appreciate it if these could be turned off.

Yes, this^^. This is especially hurtful in PvP, when you’re trying to figure out what your pint-sized opponent is actually doing.

I’ve been playing HJ since the change. I predicted the point awards would have no impact on leaving, and, based upon my experience, it has not. People still leave just as before.

The only real impact is that people who play sPvP dont get points when they play hj in between matches.