Kaizer: How exactly do you know you were the highest DPS?
I don’t think there are parsers available yet (due to the lack of a logfile?), but this isn’t that hard to determine just by eyeballing it. Things like seeing how fast stuff dies when certain people are downed can help, and you can generally eliminate 2/3 people from the race for “highest DPS” simply by how they’re built.
Competing seriously for highest DPS is not as beneficial to the group as it is in some other games though. Every group member should be bringing more to the fight than the most damage they can put out, even if they’ve decided to make that their primary role. In almost every group situation I could switch utilities around and increase damage output, but at the cost of having Shadow Refuge/Scorpion Wire/etc for utility.
tl;dr – He’s probably right, but it isn’t that important either way.
But seriously, moral of the story: complaining on forums is a more viable strategy than learning how to play. Why try outdoing your opponent when you can just cry for fundamental gameplay changes?
This doesn’t make any sense, considering that the commonly complained about builds were not the ones most drastically nerfed. If anything, it shows that ANet is doing their own thing and not just following community sentiment for balancing.
Which would be a good thing, if we received any information from them about what their sentiment is. Or at least some reasoning behind the changes.
This. We need a community Q/A to get inside the dev’s heads. Feedback is a two way street, and most MMOs have realized this via developer chat events and having player representatives (EVE’s CSM, many other game’s community councils). The more ANet shares with us their vision and intent for the game, the better feedback they’ll get from the playerbase.
But seriously, moral of the story: complaining on forums is a more viable strategy than learning how to play. Why try outdoing your opponent when you can just cry for fundamental gameplay changes?
This doesn’t make any sense, considering that the commonly complained about builds were not the ones most drastically nerfed. If anything, it shows that ANet is doing their own thing and not just following community sentiment for balancing.
When I say ‘travels in a line’ I mean ’doesn’t seek out enemies to bounce between’.
Dancing Dagger doesn’t seek either, nor do the bounced projectiles it generates on contact. They’re all rather slow straight-line projectiles.
Listen to what Sorrow said.
Sorrow is mistaken about the diminished effectiveness of the backstab combo though, it wasn’t severely weakened and is still the most potent at what it does. It was not the primary target of this round of nerfs, or at least not the primary thing affected.
For PvE? Death Blossom spam works great. Trickery will give you condition damage and dodge-caltrops as well as the initiative to support death blossom spam, Acrobatics will provide more dodges (thereby more caltrops) and might stacks to assist your condition damage further. Gather a bunch of mobs, lay down caltrops, and dodge/LDB across them until they’re dead.
If you were running a standard glass cannon backstab + shortbow build before, almost nothing will have changed for you, carry on. The nerfs were primarily to more conservative control-based thief setups.
evade+stun+more dps > autoattack
Damage is fine, it can still melt mobs’ hp bars. Obviously it won’t kill anyone with 2 casts of PW, but the evade, the stun and the faster attack rate makes that skill better than your autoattack.
It isn’t all about raw numbers guys, there are more factors that make a skill powerful.
You’re right in your last statement, that PW has more going for it than damage. However, it does do less DPS than auto attack.
Auto Attack:
Slightly more DPS
Can move
Can miss parts of the chain, lowering DPS
Cripples and weakens
No ini cost
PW:
Less DPS
Self-roots (allowing enemy to move out of the final strikes)
Evades for some of the duration
Interrupts
Costs initiative (potentially useful, with Assassin’s Reward)
No conditions
Higher hit volume (more on-hit and on-crit procs)
PW has some good stuff going for it, but with both Pistol Whip and Dancing Dagger nerfed, auto-attack is the single best DPS skill for any S/x combination. Personally, I’d like to see PW’s initial shot apply a short “burning” stack, it’d bring PW DPS above auto attack again, grant thieves access to burning, and allow PW to be slightly more effective in situations where the bulk of the strikes are dodged.
Bladetrail…
*is slow
*travels in a line
Something that people forget often when discussing Dancing Dagger is that it also shares these attributes. On paper the old DD looked like an amazing burst ability, but the slow straight projectile meant that amazing on-paper damage was rarely achieved except in PvE, and PvP situations like one opponent trying to revive a downed opponent. The former isn’t much of an issue and the latter gave thieves an excellent punishing technique for that particular situation.
As an ambush skill for unmoving unsuspecting targets, dancing dagger was very effective (just like most thief skills in that situation), but in dynamic high-speed combat it took a good amount of positioning and anticipation to use effectively. Abilities like DD that reward skill based play should be encouraged, not destroyed because they’re situationally rewarding.
First of all if you do your story late, etcs you are lvl 75 and do lvl 70 story rewards will be useless. Second of all, You can pick you reward every time, so it always usable in some sort.
have had all 3 options be a coat or boots that were unuseable, have been doing story level within 1 level of suggested, since thieves get a hood as a starter how come hoods are not useable? for example.
Because “hoods” is a skin, not an armor class. “Hood” doesn’t really mean anything.
Is thief the only profession that gets “not useable” 70-80% of the time from both mob drops and from quest/story completion.
Story no. Everything else, yes. Zone completion is just random stuff from a large table of level-appropriate gear, it doesn’t even look at your profession. Mob drops are the same way, since thieves can’t use a large percentage of the loot in the game, logically a large percentage of the random stuff that drops won’t be usable.
The fact is, Dancing Dagger was meant for a multi-target cripple. Not your main source of damage.
If this is the intent the situation remains unchanged, Dancing Dagger is as bad at that role as it is at damage now, it needs a balancing pass to bring its cost and weaknesses in-line with its strengths and role, regardless of what that role is.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
S/D is still great for WvW. In fact, we got a small damage buff.
If and only if C&D was not your primary method to execute Tactical Strike.
What do you mean by that? the reason I ask is because the CnD damage wasn’t lowered in WvW which is the only reason I can see to make that statement.
You’re not going to get nearly the volume of TS for the minor TS boost to make up for the massive dancing dagger nerf without lots of C&D use. I guess this situation would also apply if you previously did not use dancing dagger.
S/D is still great for WvW. In fact, we got a small damage buff.
If and only if C&D was not your primary method to execute Tactical Strike.
What is this obsession with S/D?
ANYTHING that uses Dagger Offhand got nerfed. Stop having tunnel vision.
It isn’t tunnel vision, different weapon sets utilize the same skills in different ways to fill different roles. D/P, for instance, isn’t just a mashup of dagger and pistol skills, it plays completely differently than D/D or S/P, even though it shares skills with those weapon sets. The fact of the matter is that the dagger offhand changes hit some weapon sets much much harder than others.
Dancing dagger is for cripple so you can get on your target, I could care less about the damage, i wish they would remove the damage and increase cripple time or lower to 3 int.
Which just demonstrates the gap in logic about how different mainhands use this ability differently. You use it primarily for the cripple with dagger mainhand, while it was used primarily for the burst damage with sword mainhand. You’d be having the same complaints if their balancing measure was to remove cripple, since it’d no longer serve in your capacity while still being useful to other weapon sets.
@Rottaran heartseeker gets you to the target but it can still be difficult to stay on them, DD cripple keeps they crawling, if traited its like 7 seconds of you tearing them apart while easily staying on them, your auto attack chain will kill just about everyone in that time. then finish them off with heartseeker for max damage
This gives a clue to your weapon set. The Dancing Dagger change was far more harmful to the other weapon sets than D/D.
Complaining about DD not doing massive damage anymore would be like complaing about your race car not being able to hill climb and compete with offroad jeeps . thats not its purpose
You don’t get to dictate purpose, the community as a whole dictates purpose via ANet’s design. The fact is that DD was a burst damage ability, that was its purpose because that is what it did. It is no longer a burst damage ability and is now unbalanced due to how weak it is for the investment. Initiative cost, travel time, and effectiveness vs. single targets need to be rebalanced if the role of this skill is to change. Additionally, S/D, S/P, and D/D need to be rebalanced individually based on the changes to the /D offhand. The changes were much more painful to some weapon sets than others, particularly weapon sets that were already fairly well balanced.
tl;dr – The intent may be for DD’s role to change, but there’s no “you were wrong about what it was for” in the previous function.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
Dancing Dagger always was a snare first.
That is like giving Heartseeker another 50 % nerf and saying “It was always a gap closer first”, or removing the damage from C&D and saying “It was always just a way to get into stealth”.
DD was what it was, a ranged burst + cripple ability that did optimal damage to 2 targets and was an excellent way to dump initiative. Now it is mostly a utility skill to apply cripple at range while still having the downsides of its former self: init cost, slow projectile speed, very weak unless you’re in a target rich environment.
If the intent is to heavily change the role of DD then the ability should be balanced as a simple ranged cripple utility with accordingly lower initiative cost, faster flight, and/or effectiveness against single targets.
slight nerfs to … S/D.
Bringing both high-damage S/D skills below auto attack and significantly weakening S/D’s control combo is anything but “slight”. The current S/D meta was developed to deal with the weaknesses of FS, with S/D’s viable play styles heavily diminished and FS still unchanged the weapon set is left in a bad spot.
Just have the Karka invade WvWvW too. Regular karka assaults in towers/keeps, and a big karka boss camping Stonemist. Problem solved.
Imho, the nerf was needed and it doesent feel weak, for me at least, i can live with the dmg it does atm
The question is: What are you using as main hand with the /D combo? Dancing Dagger was S/D’s primary (only) burst skill and P/D’s primary (only) AE skill, with much more situational use for D/D. The major nerf was not to D/D.
I have a feeling D/D was mostly what was looked at in regards to Dancing Dagger’s functionality. With D/D dancing dagger could be used primarily to slow enemies enough to get into melee range and use mainhand dagger’s potent attacks. The problem is that Dancing Dagger takes on an entirely different role in S/D. Sword #2 is an amazing gap closer and chasing skill so Dancing Dagger held the role of being the only thing on the skill bar that could be used for burst damage. So while post-nerf DD can still serve D/D as a ranged cripple with some AE capability, it no longer holds much of a role for S/D which doesn’t lack AE capability, chasing power, or even cripple application.
The same skill can mean vastly different things when applied to different weapon sets, skill balancing can’t be done just around a single weapon set. Perhaps a better solution would be to dynamically alter off-hand weapon skills depending on main-hand, sort of how dual skills work. If this could be done then #4/5 in S/D could mesh with S/D and #4/5 in D/D could mesh with D/D.
Thief
-Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%
This is a huge nerf for thieves who actually used Dancing Dagger, most of the other changes do not affect WvW (since they’re PvP only). However, this wasn’t generally a skill used by annoying permastealth thieves or instakill glass cannon thieves, so neither of the perceived “issues” with the profession were altered. If anything, there will be more of the bursty or stealth thieves of the type the WvW community dislikes due to the weakening of the more control-oriented builds.
guess what, im speccing back to my backstab build again since a.net completly ruined dmg on my S/D build.
im confused with today’s patch notes. like over 9000 level of confusion.
Also very confused. We all figured some heavy nerfs to the short-TTK backstab combos were in the works, but actual nerfs came to the thief’s major control skill sets. If anything, this encourages FotM thievery while quashing builds that dare to stray from the very ones being complained about.
go try pvp with ranger…or wvwvw. My thief actually is much more fun to play than is my shelved ranger.
Rangers are improving with every patch.
This single patch stomped on multiple thief builds, and worked towards shoehorning them all into either condition, or glass cannon backstab thieves.
they didnt get totally stomped on literally come on and aswell most people they are going full condition or full glass cannon anyway from the get go. honestly ive been on my thief for a while in WvW and spvp and i can hardly see a difference in damage. on the things that were. nerfed. its true that dancing dagger got hit hard. but if u go glass cannon spec. u still can hit pretty kitten high eithier way so u really dont notice it.
50 % damage reduction is 50 % damage reduction, regardless of what kind equipment you’re wearing. Being a “glass cannon” does not automagically mitigate the effects of a base damage decrease.
The fact is that the patch caused S/D to lose its only burst damage skill while heavily weakening its control factor. S/D now relies solely on auto attack for damage but is less able to wear down opponents even via auto attack due to C&D→Tactical Strike nerfs. That is definitely “getting totally stomped on”.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
But that is the thing. Suppose you fight someone, and a pve mob is tagged. You down your opponent and he goes down, you took a beating and you are down to 20% health aswell.
The PvE mob ends up dying, the guy you downed just gets back up with 50% health. He went from losing, to winning. Now you go down, no pve mob around BAM, youre stomped.If that PvE mob wasnt there, you wouldve won. And THAT is what pisses people off. Or ofcourse, you know, having to down someone 3x, by now you’re exhausted aswell, woop no more pve mobs. You go down, and you die. You just downed him 3x and he was alone, you had it in the pocket… three times.
The problem is your perception. You didn’t go from “losing, to winning”, and you never “had it in the pocket”. You got outplayed because you ignored combat variables. He brought environment to the fight, and won because he was better at it (or at least luckier) than you.
If you want to argue that people shouldn’t be able to win via luck you might have a viable point, but there’s large elements of chance involved with any combat, you might as well be complaining that a guy got off three critical hits in a row.
i think people need to get off mesmers portal and really get back on the theif bug right now(whitch relates to culling) its abused way more then any culling affect with portals.
The distinction is that culling is a problem for every profession, it isn’t a “thief bug”, while portals are specifically a mesmer ability.
@topic
You don’t just use P/P. Think about it like using pistol in main hand and pistol in off hand.
I actually follow the exact opposite philosophy. For instance, while the /D of S/D and P/D bring the same abilities to the table, the playstyles of each weapon set is very distinct. Even thought the weapon sets share some skills they’re heavily differentiated in synergy and playstyle to the point where you should consider each combination a distinct option, not merely a mashup of two skill sets. Dual skills further reinforce this by making each dual set come together in a different way.
I’d like to see Body Shot improved and P/P be given access to another combo field to fully exploit some 100 % projectile finishers. Some way to create a fire field would be particularly awesome and create a very interesting P/P + SB group utility mechanic by blast-finishing your fire field for might.
2. Make it destructible. It has a set amount of HP like a summoned pet etc.
Again. This. Even if it has 30K HP. You’re creating a tactical asset that can’t be removed by force once emplaced. Give it an HP bar and it is still viable and useful, but can be countered.
Stealth should break on damage. This will actually solve a lot of the problems people are having.
And create a whole new host of problems by destroying how stealth works. It is so easy to hit stealthed opponents as-is that making it simply drop on damage would make stealth trivial to mitigate.
The biggest problem I have with P/P in open-world PvE is that AE attacks are just so great in any situation where you’re hitting multiple targets (most of the time in open-world PvE, if you want it that way) and P/P has exactly zero. For dungeons I’d definitely consider it viable, but it really hurts out in the world to both have mediocre damage output as well as no AE capability.
it is taking advantage of that design and using it in way that’s unscrupulous (my opinion). See: Cheap Tactics.
Fair enough, but “cheap tactics” is entirely subjective. I can decide that someone using stealth is “cheap tactics”, someone shooting at me from higher ground I can’t easily reach could be “cheap tactics”, or even being killed 3v1 instead of fighting me 1v1. Large-scale warfare like WvW, is about pressing every advantage you have to win, not about “fair” duels. That doesn’t mean condoning hacks or cheating, but using the downed state as it is intended is very much within the realm of a skill-based mechanic you should be using to get ahead.
I’ve begun adapting my tactics in so that I always engage player(s) with animals around me that I’ve wounded, should I go down, I simply finish off the animal and stand right back up. I managed to do this twice today and kill my enemy opponents, despite them downing me first.
I figure if its a working as intended feature, might as do as much as possible.
This is a good example of realizing how the game works and integrating it with how you fight, instead of trying to ignore mechanics and getting punished for it.
They are not mutually exclusive set-ups. I have fought numerous thieves in wvw that had huge dmg and near perma-stealth.
Perma-stealth and “near perma-stealth” are two very different things. Anyone can pull stealth often by alternating C&D, Shadow Refuge, and heal stealth while giving up very little offense. The builds required to consistently contest points for >5 minutes rely heavily on Shadow Arts traits and defensive stats in combination with the initiative regen required to maintain Heartseekers through Black Powder fields. This is too utility, gear, and trait heavy to be able to effectively pull off while still having “huge damage”.
It’s so frustrating to beat someone not once but twice only to be denied because of low health animals in the area. I’m not sure what can be done, if anything, but it’s a really cheap tactic.
This is the problem here. You didn’t beat them. In the context of GW2, you got outplayed (or at least stalemated, if they escaped), because GW2’s combat system is not strictly confined to the perceptions you’re bringing from other games. You’re ignoring an entire subset of combat mechanics and then proclaiming victory on the basis of “those mechanics are dumb anyways”.
It’d be like refusing to use siege, losing a fight, and asking for siege to be removed because you can win when siege isn’t around. It isn’t “a cheap tactic” it is how the game is intentionally designed.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
I just came back from another 1 hour Siege that just kept going and going because neither side was able to significantly weaken the other side.
Rezzing mechanics just make Sieges so entirely pointless it’s mind-boggling. People die constantly but they never stay dead. They are constantly being rezzed by their mates and stuff just goes on and on an on.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying to kill people in the first place. For Badges I guess…because it certainly doesn’t make any difference for the outcome of a Siege.
ANet, you must seriously review the resurrection mechanics for WvW. They make the game so incredibly pointless.
Attrition in this case comes via supply, not manpower. If neither side is able to force the other off the field via kills, focus should then be shifting to expending enemy supply by destroying siege/structures.
The problem with how many view the downed state is that they just compartmentalize it as separate from how the game “should” work. They say the “downed state caused X, which wouldn’t normally happen if GW2 was any other respectable game.”
In reality, you have to integrate the presence of the downed state with your entire view on how GW2 works. It is a part of GW2 and the game is built around it.
The issue is, then, not “Is it wrong for downed enemies to rally on NPCs and thereby disrupt how PvP should work if the downed state didn’t exist” but instead “The downed state exists, rallying off of NPCs is an attribute of this mechanic, how can I mitigate that risk?”
The answer is that you either need to be more careful around low-health NPCs when trying to finish a downed player or you need to kill the NPCs before you down your opponent. I’ve both taken advantage of this mechanic (aggroing some NPCs when it becomes apparent I’ll be downed, aiming for NPCs when downed instead of players), and worked to mitigate the negative effects it can have (going out of my way to disengage my weakened target, kill the 25 % HP deer, and then re-engage). GW2’s win-state for PvP involves downing your opponent, ensuring your opponent doesn’t rally, and finishing your opponent (via spike or raw damage) in that order. You don’t get to suddenly skip step 2 because other games don’t have it so you shouldn’t have to worry about it.
As soon as you stop viewing GW2 through the mechanics of most other games, GW2’s mechanics are just GW2’s mechanics, not intrusions on how things “should work”.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
I redid it a bit, I got Daze mixed with Confusion.. lol…
Evaluating the revamped version in the OP:
>Take Venom CD reduction
>Take +boon duration
>Tons of permaswiftness/vigor/fury
>Pop condition removal every once in a while or sword 2-spam
The upsides would be sustainable without much effort, and the downsides would be easy to remove.
Here’s another one to add to “bad play” being called.
If I can’t burst someone down before their CD is up for their heal, guess what, I can’t ever kill them. Since every player has a heal, that timeline is something like 20 seconds. I’ve been thinking about this, basically, if you can’t burst down 20k health or so in 20 seconds, you can’t kill anyone without any other sort of intercession, trickery with profession specific utility skills.
This is only the case if every heal functions as a complete heal. Unless you’re running a very low HP profession geared away from vitality and towards healing power, this is not going to be the case.
Just remove downed state from Wv3, its fine for PvE. Its lame in Wv3 as a large group vs smaller has almost no chance of losing if the larger group pays attention and gets on downed folks right away.
In conclusion: If both sides are on the ball, the larger group should win. Not seeing a problem with this.
This is a logistical advantage of bringing more people to the fight. It is like complaining that the larger group has decided to all shoot at once instead of coming at you one at a time like a kung fu movie. WvW is large-scale warfare dependent on strategy and resource management, not your opportunity to heroically cleave through packs of goons.
There are legitimate complaints against the downed system, but this is not one of them.
As a thief that enjoys stacking lots of might and granting buffs to my group via Thrill of the Crime, Pack runes, and Battle Roar I definitely get my money’s worth out of +boon duration. Boon duration isn’t the only stat that is nearly useless if you leave it un-utilized though. +Condition damage, for instance, does nothing for many S/P or S/D setups. The fact is that there is good potential for synergy (only 5 points in Acrobatics will give you a free boon), even if not every thief chooses to utilize it.
Not that I’d mind seeing more boons on thief weapon skills. A might, fury, or vigor-granting weapon skill would be most welcome.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
Simple solution: Tie the portal to an NPC entity like summoned pets/clones. Give the entity an HP bar. It can even be a big HP bar (30-40K), the point is to allow the portal in place to be disrupted.
The problem isn’t the portal as much as it is being able to deploy a tactical asset which offers advantage but cannot be destroyed or disrupted. It would be akin to engineers being allowed to drop invulnerable turrets.
I cast it while running away before CnD > Steal. It guarantees a Backstab or a Sneak Attack, stops them from using any abilities (aside from stun breaks) and interrupts abilities. As 0/0/30/20/20 it shares to any ally including NPC’s. Sharing spider, basilisk and skale venom with your team when attacking a node is huge. On a 45 sec cool down. As 20/0/30/20/0 it’s 36 sec. The only change I could see is to make it a 1/2 sec longer and instant but I think the premise when used correctly is fine. It’s people who cast it then attack when the target is obstructed or when they have a defensive cool down up so they waste it that have the most issue with it.
The problem is that Basilisk venom is balanced around setups like yours where pushing a bunch of trait synergy can make it worthwhile. This means that in every other situation it is incredibly mediocre. The fact that it is the only underwater elite available makes this situation doubly frustrating.
It isn’t a bad skill, but it doesn’t deserve to be an elite. The best “fix” for basilisk venom is just to make it a regular utility skill and develop a new elite.
Add WvW specific bonuses to gear acquired via PvE
Only really works if you can get ascended armor in WvW, which there’s no indication of.
Downed state is exactly what makes things like <2 second kill thieves not broken. Downed state puts a hard floor on TTK at time it takes to down opponent + time to finish the opponent, which allows team-mates to react to defend.
Quite frankly this is a ridiculous justification. First, because thieves can easily stealth-stomp (itself ridiculous); second, PVP games should not have insta-gibbing at all, it’s the opposite of skill; third, it completely unbalances the 1v1 situation (lolol 100% to 0% in < 2secs then stealth-stomp).
Stealth stomp is easy to counter in anything but 1v1, and it doesn’t take 2 seconds unless the thief is also burning Haste.
The downed state creates an interesting meta that makes PvP more enriching, and more importantly the game is built and balanced around it, taking it out would have serious consequences.
What the downed state does not do is make 1v1 particularly different.
I’m a fan of the Charr racials, personally, but you’re probably not going to use them that often regardless of race.
As a regular soloer/duoer who frequently does 1vX, downed state is about as stupid a mechanic you could create.
Downed state is exactly what makes things like <2 second kill thieves not broken. Downed state puts a hard floor on TTK at time it takes to down opponent + time to finish the opponent, which allows team-mates to react to defend.
Actually here’s an idea to accomplish the ladder idea without making essentially a mesmer portal: Grappling Hooks.
the hook is a one time use item to get only one person up, and that person takes 10 seconds to scale the wall. Any damage knocks them off the rope and the grapple is destroyed in the process. Price it about 20s and there ya go.
The problem isn’t that ladders would function as mesmer portals, the problem is that you only need a single enemy to get over the wall to let an unlimited number of enemies in, thanks to mesmer portals. Grappling hooks don’t do anything to solve that problem. One mesmer grapples up, portals out, lets everyone else in.