Guild Wars 2

Honestly i can’t see anything left of the GW1 mesmer but the color theme. It feels like the mesmer and the necromancer should swap mechanics entirely – currently while playing the mesmer i feel like a minion bomber with more burst, CC, team support and survivability. The necromancer, while their minions are useless in comparison to what the mesmer has access to, has a lot of skills that turns their enemies abilities against them (Corrupt Boons etc), and creates an actual mind game where the enemy has decide when to use his condition removals and boons and the necromancer has to decide when to use his condition bursts or epidemic.
They got rid of the GW1 mesmers mind games and replaced it with more chaos.
So one clone didn’t trick you? Then how about 3? Still not enough? Well how about if i just blow them up in your face!
If one would replace the mesmers exploding clones and phantasms with exploding necro minions and switched their color theme to green we’d have a better version of the minion necro right there.

Invision.1307:

Title: anyone here is not 80 yet?
OP’s post: hey i was wondering if there are people who don’t even bother to level and play only Spvp
__
He’s asking of there’s any RANK 80s yet (sPvP), not LEVEL 80s (PvE). I know his grammar was terrible, but please read before commenting?
The highest rank in-game is currently 68 (08.05.2013). I D L CLiK is the player who’s holding that title.

He isn’t asking if there is anyone at 80, he is asking if there is anyone who is not 80 yet, which only makes sense if he is asking about level.
He is wondering if there is anyone who haven’t cared enough about PvE/WvW to get to level 80, but instead spent that time in PvP, where you get rank instead of level. And the answer is yes, there are many players that haven’t leveled past 2 (or even 1), despite having played the game for hundreds of hours.

I’d say it’s a bit of a power creep. Many condition appliers deal quite overkill damage, which is balanced by the fact that most professions have some way to cleanse conditions ridiculously effectively. That does however result in that professions that lack this overkill condition damage has a hard time dealing with all the condi removal, while they can still destroy classes that don’t bring as much condi removal.

Depends entirely on the assassins build ofc. A knocklock spiker (as in 1-2-3-4-5-6-7) assassin would fail since the thief would just stun-break, dodge or blind his first knockdown, a flashing blade/critical defenses assassin (un-nerfed crit scyther?) would be slightly harder to counter. Or perhaps enchantments and stances would count as boons that the thief could steal with S/D?
The assassin could however not really win though, since he must have a target to be able to attack, which is impossible on a stealthed thief.

Karl McLain.5604:

The trait (Scope) actually does work, but it’s just not noticeable (+10% crit chance while standing still, where you have to be standing still when the attack hits) at all and doesn’t update the hero panel. We’d definitely like to make this trait more usable and visual in the future, as it’s pretty bad in its current state.

Just did (another) test in the mists. With a default crit chance of 4%, 3 out of 100 attacks critted. The expected result was at least four times as high.
Of course, with a crit chance below 100% i can never tell for sure. So i tested with 90% crit chance + 10 from the trait. It took 6 attacks to get a non crit. With supposedly 100% crit chance. No random bad luck can argue with that this trait does not work.

Yea, I’ve always found the boon stealing part of bountiful theft to be quite useless. The vigor and boon removal is nice, but especially if they are changing S/D they should change the trait too.

Travlane.5948:

all they have to do is make it so invis=unstompable. skill 2 should invis AND move you. wait isnt there another skill like that? oh yeah its mesmers downed skill they get invis…teleport AND a clone . we just move a lil :P fail!

Invis does already make you unstompable (by interrupting incomming stomps and not allowing players to start another stomp until stealth is over), but i might be just be misunderstanding your point.
Teleport + invis on downed skill 2 makes me think of the beta (3-4 sec stealth + random teleport on skill 2, 10 sec recharge, the enemy did barely have enough time to stomp you even if you appeared right next to him)… that was just hilarious…

Ehm… we do in fact have one of the best finish interrupts already, since it cannot be blinded, blocked, dodged, stabilitied, stealth stomped, obstructed by summons, it doesn’t require a target, it interrupts several targets, it can move us to a somewhat safer position and it’s instant cast. The only thing i know of that can counter it is instant teleports (such as steal) and being unlucky with the terrain. Aside from that we do often get skill 3 up, which is also a guaranteed interrupt and allows us to use our quite powerful stealth attack.
Ever tried an engineer downed bar (for example)? Skill 2 is a single target, long cast pull. Skill 3 is an AoE launch which won’t recharge in time unless the enemy attacks you several times, decides to finish you, gets interrupted, attacks you several times again and then decides to finish you again. Both of them are very easily countered by many of the things i mentioned above.
Sure, our downed bar is not as good as the elementalists, but that one is just plain broken.

I agree with others that the main issue is the lack of skill required to use it. The concept is generally very boring (just watch your enemies health pool and press 2 when it gets low).
How about increasing the cost to 5 initiative but return 2 initiative on hit? In that way you actually need to think before using it, D/P becomes harder to escape with while still keeping its offensive power, and you cant just spam 2 on a running low HP target to win if it uses its dodges, blinds and blocks well.
Changing the way the targeting works is also an interesting idea.

EDIT: I meant D/P, not P/D. Thanks for the reminder stof.

I though this was what we had the traits for. PvE side perhaps, WvW and PvP… no.

Are you sure that this only happens in GW2? I’ve had the same problem on my (not very hardcore) laptop, and it happens in GW2 as well as other games like minecraft etc when the computer is working too hard (overheating etc.) I think it’s related to that the key sends repeated signals while being held.
The easiest way fix i know would be to use a non-wireless mouse, since I don’t seem to have trouble with them. Otherwise I’d suggest you to google it since there are many people outside of the GW2 community having the same problem and they may have found the solution.

It’s meant to reflect the total amount of gold the character has at that certain level (just like armor repairs) so that it costs a similar percent instead of being awfully expensive at low level compared to high level. I do however find the way it scales with distance at higher levels to be quite weird when compared to lower levels.
After lvl 80 these gold sinks becomes very inaccurate because of the imbalance of gold between different players. The only gold sink that actually works and makes sense then is the trading post fee, since it gets more expensive by trading expensive items.

I think it would be Kahlin Johandsome. Not only does he know how to swing a sword, but also how to swing it again.

My main character is a lvl 80 thief, and while I don’t have much to compare him with in PvE (since my secondaries are lvl 10-30), I can honestly say that I do need a nerf (or rather change that adds more depth to the class) in PvP (where I have some of experience of every class, especially the thief). And when people actually confess that their own class is OP… then things have gone too far, because just as you say, people don’t usually want to confess that they are OP whether they think that they need a nerf or not.
The main issue I have with playing as a thief is simply that the thief hardly requires any skill to be efficient. For example we have the basilisk-cnd-steal-backstab chain that gibs a glass cannon while dealing quite a lot of damage to others. Every time a player complains about it we use to respond “Learn to play and use stun-breakers n00b!”. But does it require any skill to use? Not really. Meanwhile we have some of the best getaways in the game having access to stealth, so survivability isn’t really a problem.
Another example is the IMO ridiculously boring skill called Heartseeker. When you get a player below 25% health and have a dagger main-hand, you should use Heartseeker. Oh, it was blocked/missed/he didn’t die? Then use it again! Why even bother backstabbing them when the heartseeker takes less effort, costs less initiative and leaps you to your foe.
And about the suggestion itself, (You need to have a lvl 80 main character of that profession to have any rights to complain about it) no, it wouldn’t work for several reasons. First of, even the most hardcore sPvP:ers are not necessarily lvl 80 in PvE, since PvP and PvE are pretty much isolated from each other. Secondly, everyone doesn’t necessarily have a “main” character, especially in PvP. The majority of the community will just keep defending and want buffs for their class anyways.
Playing a fair bit of every class provides the best overview of how the balance actually works. If anything I’d say that they should have a look at if the player in question actually plays different classes or just the same one.

You can however quite easily spot the skill-level of the poster just by reading it, so I don’t think any of this is necessary.

It’s part of the GW2 leveling concept and very much intended – after the first couple of levels it shouldn’t feel awfully slow to level and you should reach max level relatively fast compared to other MMO’s. After a certain point making it slower wouldn’t make the game last longer for you, it would just force you to repeat content over again just for the sake of leveling.

I’m in. You can’t say no to this!

Well, i did notice that their raw damage (at least the dagger thief) is way higher than mine with a quite high damage spec. Their attack speed is however very low due to the way the AI works. Blackpowder from the pistol thief ain’t bad either.

Darxio.5672:

Ambush trap is amazing. Use it, wait until it cools down. Trigger it, use it again on top of the enemy to trigger the second one, and then use thieves guild.

Bam, you have your own instant party of 5 thieves(4 summoned + yourself).

The spike damage of 4 of these guys together is amazing(when used in tandem with thieves guild).

Oh and don’t forget about bringing an ally to revive to trigger Merciful Ambush… although that’s where it gets a little complicated…

All humans, especially those with light skin color, looks unnaturally pale when standing in a dark environment because their skin isn’t affected by shadows.

In my personal opinion, D/D backstab isn’t very good while leveling because of the trouble you can have getting your crit chance up (might just be me). Also i prefer D/P (leap combo through smoke field to stealth) though it requires 2 initiative on stealth-trait to not get too expensive. D/D condition (death blossom) can however have a very high survivability if you make sure to manage your initiative well, since you evade while using DB. I leveled mostly spamming pistol whip from S/P, but that was before the damage nerf, and I’ve heard that it’s currently better to just use Black Powder and auto-attack (at least in PvE since the stun isn’t that useful there). I’ve been running a lot of S/D lately in both PvE, WvW and SPvP and I’d say it’s one of the most defensive sets since you have a stunbreaker, condition removal, a panic evade (if you’re immobilized or run out of endurance) a stealth (which can trigger various shadow art traits such as Blind nearby foes, Remove conditions and Gain regeneration) and a long dazing stealth skill.
I’d however say that the one weapon that always works for the thief is the shortbow. It has high AoE damage that works great both at long and short range and is good against both single and multiple targets. If you find a water field (or steal it from rangers) you can combo blast it with cluster shot for a ~1.3k AoE heal per 3 initiative (which is great). This is while it does also have one of the best mobility skills in the game – infiltrators arrow.

When it comes to traits I’ve always liked to have atleast 15 points in acrobatics (gain 15 endurance on dodge). When stacked with Vigorous Recovery (~10 sec vigor on heal), Withdraw (15 sec recharging heal) and Bountiful Theft (15 sec vigor on steal) you will have basically permanent vigor and almost unlimited endurance (a little overkill however).
By putting 15 points in trickery you’ll gain a minor trait that gives +3 max initiative, but while this doesn’t seem like much, it’s very much more forgiving if you for example miss a CnD.
Shadow Arts has a lot of useful traits for CnD-spammers – if you want really high survivability you can put a lot of points there to gain initiative, regeneration, remove conditions and blind nearby foes upon entering stealth.
With 15 points in Deadly Arts you will get a trait that makes you cause 3 sec weakness when you poison a foe, and this synergizes very well with Shocking Gas on the shortbow – maintaining AoE permanent weakness should not be underestimated in dungeons.
Critical Strikes… well, that’s pretty just for raw damage. It has (IMO) the most useful attributes (prec and crit dmg) and quite useful traits, but it’s also quite boring since you don’t really notice all that crit and damage increase the same way that you notice the endurance return and weakness on poison from other trait lines.
tl:dr: If you put at least 15 points in acrobatics and shadow arts, grab a shortbow and a set with a lot of stealth, and have some kind of stealth utilities you should honestly not have that much of a problem surviving even with glassy gear.
Oh kitten how did this post get so long…

I tested the same way you did and it doesn’t appear to be working. The daze duration should increase by almost 1/2 second, which should be quite noticeable.

Gudradain.3892:

BelleroPhone.4238:

Gudradain.3892:

Ever wondered if it was possible to reach the bottom of Rata Sum from inside? Well it is possible! It’s quite fun to go explore down there.

Note : You need a class with falling damage reduction with you.

Actually, you can go down there without falling damage reduction

Thx for the tip, updated my post!

You can actually survive a jump all the way down by re-logging in the middle of the jump.

Norn, no doubt.
The picture speaks for itself.

I can agree that Flanking Strike, even if it works on still-standing targets if you make sure to compensate/release your camera, is really clunky. Also, most of the targets you’d want to remove boons from are probably running, causing you to miss them most times. Still hits more than the engineers Flamethrower though.
What I’d like to see on Flanking Strike would be a faster total cast time (perhaps as when used with quickness currently) but making it evade during the whole cast. Could then perhaps get a slight damage decrease to not move into the heartseeker-zone.
If it’s Tactical Strike you referring to with “the daze duration is ridiculous” I couldn’t disagree more. It’s highly spammable, and IMO a S/D thief is one of the best shutdowns in the game. Before the nerf it dazed for 2 seconds (which it still does in WvW and PvE), which when stacked with rune of the mesmer became 2,66 seconds. It has now been nerfed down to 1.5 seconds, which with the rune becomes 1.995 seconds. If you stealth “on recharge” (as soon as Revealed expires) the target will even after the nerf be dazed for 2/3 of the time that you are not stealthed. It’s less awesome, but still not bad.
Apart from that we have Infiltrator’s Strike on sword, which i think is the most multi-situational and flexible weapon skill in the game. It’s a snare, a gap closer, a gap increaser, a stun-breaker and a condition removal in the same skill.

I do however agree that the range of Venomous Aura is ridiculous. It sounded awesome at first since it did in theory mean that you could make you venoms 5 times as effective, then you realized that the radius limited it to one or two allies instead. There’s also many things that consumes venom uses without actually applying them, which makes it disgustingly unreliable, and most of the venom uses that you manage to apply on allies are therefore wasted.

The characters skin color does not seem to be affected by shadows and dark nights nearly as much as the rest of the character. I’m not entirely sure whether this is a bug or intended (as it makes the characters faces easier to see in detail), but in that case I think it’s quite overdone since it becomes quite ugly and unrealistic in dungeons and during the night.
It does also seem to happen on all races.

Stop complaining about people complaining about thieves (and that goes for other classes too). I don’t like the fact that the whole thief section is covered in “Thief is OP!”-threads either, but you are definitely not making things better by starting all these “Thief is not OP!”-threads too. Keep it to “The thief and its gameplay – Your feedback”, there is no need to start another thread for it.
Whether the thief is OP or not it is far from balanced (just like all other professions out there), so there is always things to complain about and there are also things that could be buffed as a compensation.
Trying to silence other peoples opinions on the subject is not the solution for a reasonable discussion.

Don’t know whether it’s a bug or intended, but it’s kind of silly since the revealed effect already prevents too much stacking. They could at least make it refresh the duration.

Having an auto-attack that causes several stacks of bleed and poison at range might be a bit over the top, I’d say you should make the first 2 skills identical while causing poison on the third (the stealth attack from P/D would feel a little pointless if you can do the same thing by just auto-attack). If the pistols would have a faster firing rate I would perhaps also decrease the poison duration to 2 sec just like the daggers so that you can’t stack it up (meaning that spider venom would still have a point).
I like the concept of the new body shot although I have no idea of how those numbers will look in practice. The same goes with unload.
Headshot… I’d rather have the cost decreased by 1 while keeping the current functionality (although it’s quite useless in PvE). 3 stacks of confusion for 10 seconds is already quite kitten powerful and adding that to a 4 initiative skill?… Decrease it to 1 stack for 6 seconds or 2 stacks for 3 seconds and it could be balanced. This is how the confusion stacks and durations looks currently:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Confusion
So… you get my point…
And IMO blackpowder is already fine in both PvE and PvP. Engineers Smoke Bomb just got nerfed so I don’t think we can expect anything here.

Only an engineer would have to repair his armor because he failed to blow himself up in time.

Let’s see here…
Signet of Agility refills endurance and removes a condition for yourself and nearby allies.
Sword skill 2 is a shadow step, immobilize, stun breaker and condition removal.
Hide in Shadows, which is already a powerful heal and an unconditional stealth, removes all DoT conditions.
Withdraw, which has very short recharge and can be a quite handy mobility tool used properly, cures any movement related conditions (the same goes with Roll for Initiative although it has a longer cooldown).
Shadow Step, which is already our (in most cases) best Stun Breaker utility, removes 3 conditions on return (which most thieves I’ve seen haven’t utilized).
And lastly we have Shadow’s Embrace, which essentially makes any thief with off-hand dagger immune to conditions. It removes one condition upon entering stealth and will remove at least one more if you don’t break stealth. Apart from Cloak and Dagger it also makes all of your stealth utilities, heals and traits remove conditions.
And if you’ve still got problems with conditions or can’t use the trait for whatever reason, you can equip a full set of Runes of Lyssa to turn your Basilisk Venom into a 50 seconds recharging full condition cleanse, as well as giving you all boons.

“REMEMBER PYRESCALON CUZ CHARR NEED NO- GUNS AND IRONVENGE THE FOEFIRE!”
—WvW Zerg Januari 21st 2013.

1. Remove the armor repairs from WvW (and preferably PvE too). It doesn’t solve any economical problems (only makes it even worse by increasing the gap between “rich” and “poor” players) and it does certainly not have a place in any PvP format.
2. Auto-revive players that reconnect to PvE after crashing in WvW. There’s no waypoint cost in WvW and if you died in WvW you should have same defeat penalty as in WvW.
3. Fix culling. (although I don’t think I need to say that).

Point 1 and 3 would completely alter the way people would play WvW. And honestly, if you think that players will rampage without a second though if you removed armor repair, I’d like to remind you that it is already fully possible, but it happens to hurt your wallet to do it (unless you take of your armor).

For sPvP I have no idea why they haven’t implemented build and equipment templates yet (like in GW1).
For PvE I’d just like to see free trait re-specs. No matter how little it might cost it will always demotivate me from trying out a new build. And honestly… have a look at the GW2 economy… do you really think that these small gold sinks (such as armor repair, waypoint cost and trait fee) have any noticeable effect on the economy? If anything it affects it negatively.

I’ve run a thief with my engineer brother since beta, and if there is anything i enjoy as a thief it’s not the 15k insta-kill-backstabs. It’s actually to rescue friends and strangers from insta-kill backstabbers or hs-spammers, using allied stealth.
Another fun thing to do in WvW is for example to stealth the engineer with Shadow Refuge, let him drop a Big Ol’ Bomb in an enemy zerg, and stealth him with Blinding Powder on the way back.
If you plan to play sPvP I suppose you friend would bring most to the team by playing a bunker engie, and in maps where it’s not bugged/out of range it’s quite fun to have the thief to place a Shadow Trap on the bunkers control point and then pop in unannounced whenever an enemy triggers it.
To sum it up, thieves are great bodyguards and therefore very fun in duos.

Rainu.6871:

Would the same thing be possible to achieve with two mesmers and of them using Feedback and traited focus skills? :p

Getting this many clones can not be done by a mesmer since they are the only profession with a clone limit. Miriforst, being an engineer, could spawn them endlessly. It took a while to get this many clones however, so I don’t think it has much of a practical use.

Nope. I think there is a cap of movement speed out of combat, but it does definitely work in combat.

I find it really strange from a design perspective. Playable races should all have either advantages and disadvantages (take the general Norns brawn over brains for example) or simply different personalities.
The Asura have the intelligent (and/or mad) doctor/egoistic Mr Iknoweverything niche (Often used by gnomes or dwarfs in other games)
The Norn have the brave berserk niche (Often used by dwarfs and orcs in other games)
The Sylvari have the noble nature lover niche (Often used by elves or humans in other games)
The Charr have the beast niche (Tauren, orcs and the wolfy thing in WoW for example)
They do also have three different niches depending on their legion; The commander, the ninja and the inventor. Although the Charr are usually specialized in one of these branches, they still become something of a Mary Sue. They are the strongest race, the are the most agile race and they are the most intelligent race.
Now let’s compare this to the humans…
From what we have seen of the humans they are as dumb and clumsy as the Norn, if not worse, and without the advantage of strength. They took the interesting Guild Wars 1 human removed all their depth and advantages.
It’s always the humans that ask the dumb questions in the cities and it’s always the humans that needs rescue. They are meant to be noble, but they come nowhere near the Sylvari when it comes to good intentions. Even when it comes to the humans own history they need a Sylvari to tell them about it. They are the weakest race, the clumsiest race (If you take a look at the Asuras animations I doubt they are weak or clumsy, which was supposed to be their disadvantage) and they are the dumbest race.
Couldn’t they at least have taken ONE of the Charrs four niches and given it to the humans to make them unique for once? I don’t really see the reason why the Charr should be stronger, more agile and smarter than the humans (or any of the other races for that matter).

I’m very sorry for this confusing and messy post…

Yeah, I think it’s a nice idea. I agree that it is quite boring that playing the thief is like being in a permanent necromancer plague form – spam one button to snare your target, spam one button to damage your target, spam one button to evade stuff.
Oh, the target is below 25% health – 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 yatatatatatata.
Alternatively you could add a very short cooldown (~2-3 sec?) to all initiative skills.

Well, at least 80% of all the guardians I’ve seen in PvP have been norn.

Actually I’d say the current turrets and backpacks are have more of a human style than Charr. And it’s pretty much the only instance where they haven’t put a Charr stamp on anything that has to do with non-asura technology.

Completely agree, and the same goes for Infiltrators Arrow and Shadowstep. I will more often than not want to teleport the maximum distance.

I’ve noticed this too and it’s beginning to get really annoying. Especially when your using more expensive/long recharging skills. Happens all the time with Dancing Dagger and Net Shot, and I don’t know how many Basilisk Venom’s I’ve wasted on getting the projectile randomly “Obstructed!”.

“Progression” is just another word for terrible grind. To escape the grind from other MMO’s was one of the major reasons for us to play GW2.
With other words, no, I hate the thought of adding additional “slightly better” items to grind for, just to have them replaced by another set of “slightly better” items to grind for in the next expansion.
I’m coming from a game called “Guild Wars”, which I loved because everyone at max level had max stats. You could grind for optional prestige skins if you wanted too, but you did always have the same stats as anyone else at your level and therefore gear grind was never a problem.

Sword/Dagger – The combo-skill has gotten several buffs already, like removing boons etc, but I think it what it actually needs work on is that you still hardly can hit moving targets with it.
Also, the second attack in the skill feels like it synergizes with the rest of the skill since it isn’t part of the evade, making D/D’s Death Blossom a better evade-spam skill. I do however think that the stealth skill on sword could be tuned down a little (It can keep 2/3 uptime daze when timed right).

Traps – Tripwire works quite good and Shadow Trap is an awesome escape/ambush skill, but personally i feel that Needle Trap and Tripwire are a bit too similar. With my current basilisk-steal-backstab-free-kill-build I don’t really feel that the traps have any role, although i found them more useful for condition builds.

Pistol – The bleeding auto-attack on pistol doesn’t synergize very well with Body Shot or Unload which are both power based. Also I don’t think that Body Shot is worth using since i rather use unload than add 5% damage to the next unload.