Guild Wars 2

Anything with Vitality as a major stat. There’s a serious lack of those stat types in the game right now.

I’ve been through my share of MMOs, and generally when a game comes out and says, “We’re making one big server for all of our players to occupy!” it translates to, “Our game’s population is dwindling and we’re consolidating servers to save costs and artificially improve the live of the game.”

I know for a fact that GW2’s population isn’t dwindling, but the idea of a megaserver and what it’s generally meant for most games who go that route is that it leaves a source taste in the eyes of those who are merely a passerby or are watching the game in hopes that it succeeds/fails. I get that it’s meant to improve the life of certain maps that are otherwise deserted due to a lack of content, but I’d like to hear the thought behind it and get a better sense of what’s going on technically. It doesn’t seem very well-communicated at the current moment.

1. Are servers being consolidated?
2. How will this affect maps that have multiple overflows all the time, and will server pride still be a thing?
3. What’s the general goal behind the Megaserver system and what, on a technical level, is it meant to achieve?

These are more questions directly involving the devs, but I’d also like to hear some community opinions on the matter. After seeing SWTOR do a “megaserver” (consolidate the population to save the game), it has me worried about the life of the game despite the seemingly booming population as of late.

caveman.5840:

i have !
and stopped using it because of it

mid evade get stopped because of stuns .

it is great for pvp never once had a problem with it in pvp …
but wvw it can get canceled out

shadow step is the safest choice and comes with a shorter cool down and condition clear

Why not both? :P

caveman.5840:

what ?…….

lol (Roll For Initiative) can be canceled out by mass stun lol .. and has a longer cool down

shadow step can’t … i wash RFI could not be canceled out by mass stun ..
but shadow step has no problem with it ..and a shorter cool down

shadow step is a LOT better than (Roll For Initiative)

R4I is a double evade, and can’t be interrupted. I’ve used it for well over a year and have never once had it fail due to “lol mass stunz”.

Dakota.4591:

Quick and easy solution to both Assassin’s Equilibrium and Last Refuge.

Take Last Refuge and completely scrap it.
Make Assassin’s Equilibrium the Shadow Arts adept Minor trait.

Kills two birds with one stone, getting rid of a broken minor trait, and putting AE in both the trait line and trait level (adept minor) it deserves.

Then all they have to do is make a new Acrobatics GM Major trait.

That would be an incredibly powerful 5-point adept trait, don’t you think?

So about those of us with our Dungeon Master title tracks completed—

Maugetarr.6823:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Maugetarr.6823:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

I’m serious, but thanks for assuming that I’m trolling (for some reason?).

I actually couldn’t be sure because the solution provided still relies on the poor nature of last refuge and will still likely get you killed as the whole reason you get revealed from last refuge is that you are trying to stealth, not trying to avoid CC.

Generally with S/D you aren’t constantly going into stealth and don’t suffer from mishappeningly gaining Revealed at 25% health. I don’t see it working well with a dagger build, but both S/D and S/P, and even P/P would actually find this useful.

Maugetarr.6823:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

I’m serious, but thanks for assuming that I’m trolling (for some reason?).

A lot of you have seemingly brushed off Assassin’s Equilibrium, deeming it too short or not “Grandmaster-worthy”, but it seems many of you haven’t looked into traiting 30 into Acrobatics for AE with at least 5 in Shadow Arts to essentially combine both traits into another, gaining stability at 25% health.

Another poster mentioned S/D suffering from the Lyssa rune nerf, but I think that some finnicking around may prove that S/D can once again be a viable format in PvP. Here’s a little build I can see coming out of this, which would do especially well with S/D’s non-reliance on stealth:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAsYVl0MpspdPx0J8PRRsfoncFSq/By29gryHAA-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINKY9x8DA

This is all hypothetical, obviously, but I do see this trait having much greater potential than anyone’s giving it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

The only place such a build would be useful is sPvP, because in WvW if you’re not killing the enemy, you’re only stalemating until their army gets there. Executioner is better than that unless you’re going for trolling the enemy, which is still done better by Signet of Malice + Stealth + Choking Gas + Caltrops, with a Dagger Storm thrown in there if you’re sure you can survive the zerg.

In sPvP you don’t want to be in stealth anyway, and escapes are as easy as swapping to SB and using proper blinks to get out of harm’s way. There’s a reason nobody traits into shadow arts in sPvP.

So wait — if I promise cookies, anything is on the table?

Good luck against a hammer train, bud. :P

So will players who have their Dungeon Master titles unlocked need to run all story paths as well?

You players are awful people, I’ll just start there.

Allie — I’m glad you stood up for yourself under heavy assault, and I’m pretty up hauled over the state of the official forums after news of getting a massive update for free, and the amount of entitlement that goes on specifically in the PvP forums is a horrifying display of this game’s generally kind and helpful population.

Now, as for removing jewels, it’s not a massive hit to anyone’s build, but for example, in my turret death build I use a Barbarian’s Amulet and a Valkyrie jewel, which gives that ever-so-slight DPS boost that makes me an actual threat while still letting me take a hit or fifteen. I’m not going to whine over it, but I did want to show you that some builds are affected ever so slightly. I suppose gaining extra health and crit chance won’t be so bad, though, so I may need to adjust my build when the patch hits live (aside from the AR nerf).

It’s not a big nerf, but it will make me drop one of my turrets and bring Elixer C and drop AR for the new turret reflection trait, which will make me even more powerful now that enemies will be forced to melee my turrets to bring them down, and be again knocked off-point by APT. I’m not sure about traditional decap builds, but I was already working out dropping AR in favor of reflection bubbles everywhere.

simonerd.8672:

Anet have listen kids that cry as always ….. this is really pathetich spot for games developers!

I don’t see how they did bad by this. I was tired of playing the set correctly and getting called a “pistol whip spammer”, so they simply nerfed PW spammers and didn’t destroy the set for everyone else not abusing it.

Hey Karl,

I just want to thank you and the rest of the balance team for taking a very level-headed approach to nerfing Pistol Whip after some of the monstrosities of suggestions in Allie’s thread, which had me worried to say the least. Thanks for deciphering the QQ and not nerfing it to the ground as many non-thieves had so hoped. This change is definitely a healthy one for the set.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Missing the entire point of the thread here…

but balance, bug fixes, stop screwing pvpers with non retroactive rewards and maybe your population will go up enough so q times aren’t 20 minutes.

My queue times for tPvP have never gone over 5 minutes since the last PvP update, and I don’t play anywhere close to prime time.

What people don’t understand is that, in order to fight someone heavily invested in stealth uptime (PU mesmers, SA thieves), you have to swap to an extremely aggressive playstyle. Stealth is an offensive mechanic, meant to put your opponent on edge and keep the upper hand in order to control the fight. When facing an aggressive opponent however, they will use any and all channeled bursts, AoEs, and cleaves to make sure you go down. If I’m casually roaming on my no-stealth build and find a PU mesmer, I’ll let them blow their cooldowns, get some distance, and chain shadowsteps back in order to lock them down, swapping to SB when they stealth to shotgun cluster bomb. If you let a stealther control the fight rather than controlling them, you’re not going to win – plain and simple. People just don’t get that.

All that being said, I personally find Shadow’s Rejuvination too powerful for what trait line it’s in. I feel that swapping the healing power out for the condition damage in Trickery would be a much more balanced choice rather than straight nerfing it, because for what it does, the free 300 healing does it too much justice, and perhaps synergizes with the trait line too well in WvW 1v1 situations. When I’m running havoc with my group, however, the first thing we do is focus the thief. He generally goes down instantly when we drop the deeps on him.

Ohhhh, okay. I’m an idiot. ;-;

Any word on the price of the Wooden Sword? That was my favorite sword skin up until now .-.

Kain Francois.4328:

Mortar exists to create constant Ice fields, and nothing more.

To be fair, if everyone took turns casting the Elixir Mortar shot, then you would have aoe heal 2k/second, but it’s probably more of a pain than it’s worth.

The worst part about Mortar, is the fact you need a minimum distance to cast it. I thought the sole purpose of it was to make Ice Fields and healing circles? So why do I have to be at a distance from my team?

Because the frost aura meta is OP!

#Meta2014

Will transmutation charges cost $10 USD for 75 post-patch, or should I wait to hoard them and risk getting screwed over when they actually cost $10 for 100 or something to the effect?

I see us recieving a lot of QQ over Team Deathmatch more than anything. No class can outmatch a thief’s ability to kill and disengage in a heartbeat.

Adamantium.3682:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Justin ODell.9517:

As an altoholic, I feel your pain. I’ll need to take a look at the data tomorrow, find out just how common re-rolling is for PvPers.

I have 12 alts for PvP if it tells you anything. :/

I’m just curious and pardon me if I don’t understand something, but why do you need so many alts just for PvP? If the premise was to be able to try out the different professions and skills to better yourself as a player, why would you need more than 1 of any particular profession?

Multiple builds across classes so that I can hotswap depending on my enemies prior to a tPvP match.

Justin ODell.9517:

As an altoholic, I feel your pain. I’ll need to take a look at the data tomorrow, find out just how common re-rolling is for PvPers.

I have 12 alts for PvP if it tells you anything. :/

Truth is, anything is viable if you can make it work. I’m in the Team Queue top 500 with my turret engineer if that tells you anything, and two thieves in the top 500 run P/P successfully.

Just make sure you leave my Quaggington Turret Decap alone, Josh! I made a turret decap specifically to avoid nerfs, and can’t imagine how the community would react to turret nerfs. Why have 3 knockbacks when you can have 7 on shorter cooldowns?

For reference: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/PvP-Quaggington-s-Turret-Death-Decap/first#post3787989

I love those of you saying, “If X doesn’t happen, I’ll quit!” as if ArenaNet cares, and as if you’ve been a part of this forum for more than a couple of months. Look at those of is who’ve been here for more than a year and measure your patience against that.

Karolis.4261:

+Swords gotta be on the back not on the sides.

You have to have the fastest reflexes in the game to be granted dual wielding.

style.6173:

Turrets = passive game play. I’d rather see ANET focus on other areas of the class

People seem to think that turrets are passive, and while Supply Crate makes them passive (can’t detonate), a build encorporating Accelerant Packed Turrets and Fortified Turrets would be extremely active, especially if you plan on getting the most out of Fortified Turrets.

Take Banner of Discipline. It might sound weird, but it boosts your crit damage by 15% and crit chance by nearly 10%. Also it makes you feel like a real sniper, having to set up your banner nearby, scope out a target, and take aim.

C) Don’t offer your sister as payment. Many of us actually have standards despite the stereotype of the average online gamer.

KDXX.9520:

Oh, you dropped a Supply Crate with 3 bubbled turrets? Ok. Switches to flamethrower And we’re done here. Turrets might be useful in PvE, if you get lucky and the mob doesn’t bash it in. But in WvW, and sPvP, gg turrets. Look you can love the concept of turrets, I do. But you can’t play these denial games.

“Oh! This might be really useful in this ONE fight, or ONE tactical move.” If you have a skill/trait that is useful in only one specific situation, then it is a failure. This is especially so on an Engie. We are supposed to be masters of versatility. Yes, we pay a price in direct firepower for that, and that’s ok.

What they do to turrets though? Not ok. Not ok at all. When I saw “Fortified Turrets” before reading it, I said “Finally, finally they’re providing an overall defensive boost for turrets.”

Wrong. They’re providing a gimick. I don’t need another gimick if I’m running turrets. I need them to kittening live long enough to SHOOT SOMETHING!

Have you seen my turret death build for on-point decap? This argument is very old, as many top PvPers are making turrets work.

I don’t get all of the whining. This is a 10% damage boost for dual-wielders, and was much needed for offhand axe to gain at least some viability.

They’re not forcing rangers to do anything. You still have a choice NOT to use this trait, and frankly it was made to boost the damage and tagging capabilities of zerglings using 1500 range, and nothing more.

Warkupo.1025:

“Please change this thing that counters my meta-build so that I can be all of the meta, all of the time”

“gladly, but only after we nerf your meta build”

I feel like my signature applies here.

Legno.6548:

This sound pretty interesting, but with the lack of an escape mechanism like, elixir s, and in ideal case with swiftness given at the start of a match, wont be better to move the points from power shoes to inertial converter, for a better use of toolbelt at 25% and a slight decrease on their recharge?

It’s not as simple as that. The start of the match isn’t he only time you’ll be running from your spawn to far. As a decap Engie, if you can hold their decap for 30 seconds you’ve done your job in denying them points. You’ll die most matches, that’s almost guaranteed, so having that extra boost to get you back to far ASAP while the rest of your team focuses mid and home just makes you that much more effective. That being said, Power Shoes are one of the only traits not set in stone, and you can easily swap out Runes of the Grove (I like the extra protection and root) for Runes of Speed and gain 20 trait points back if need be. Looking to the future, though, it would be more beneficial to take a tier from elsewhere (probably AR), drop a turret in favor of Condi removal, and pick up the new Inventions grandmaster for defense against ranged off-point assaulters.

Hey all,

Many of you may know me as Quaggington from Team Queue, and recently I’ve been receiving a lot of mail, forum messages and whispers asking for my non-Condi turret decap build, so without further ado, here it goes:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmq1VxyKseRSMqApDpw+3X0jLrfH/pAdB-TkAA2CvIASBkDIDQSgsANIB

Let’s start with the breakdown of traits:

• Accelerant-Packed Turrets are the very core of this build. It’s said a lot that turrets lack the HP to be viable in any format, and I capitalize on that system to its fullest. With 4 turrets you have access to 6 CC skills at your finger tips including Thump, Electrified Net, and your 4 destroys. This is all on top of Rifle’s launch for a grand total of 7 CC skills, with Supply Crate as your creme de la creme against any and all cleave damage on-point, often allowing you to fight multiple opponents while keeping the decap and getting a cap off.

• Power Shoes also act as an integral part of this build. It’s meant for decap, meaning the faster you can get to the enemy’s point the more effective you’ll be as a player.

• Acidic Coating is a fantastic and often under appreciated trait. This allows you to stand toe-to-toe against a class plus a thief due to their tendency to heartseeker into you before going into a backstab, giving you time to throw down a turret and prevent the stab which is often the bane of any decap engineer.

• Protection Injection for obvious reasons, protection is pretty much essential in nullifying burst damage, especially from warriors who have plenty of AoE CC and cleave.

• Automated Response is hard to get used to at first, but the reason I run a Barbarian amulet is so that I have a large enough health pool as to not go above the threshold when using my healing turret blast combo when facing condition-heavy opponents. The key here, since it would appear to be this build’s weakness, is to get used to playing in that low-health range. Don’t worry: you’ve still got 6.8k health to manage with and combined with protection injection and Runes of the Grove you should have no issues staying alive in this range. In fact, when you see yourself getting bursted down by conditions and burst alike, for me anyway (having played every other class as well) it seems quite frightening at first because you say, “oh dang, I’m going down!” However it’s not uncommon now for me to survive and keep the decap for a solid half minute to a full minute, and most of the time I’m able to heal back up and continue the fight if I’m unable to be killed while my turrets are on cooldown.

• Finally, Static Discharge is at the heart of what makes this build a threat. While your damage may not be as bursty as many like, static discharge combined with near constant turret destructions via your tool belt as well as off-point immobilizes let you deal quite extreme damage when combo’d correctly and off cooldown. I’ve seen my own combat log add up to 7k damage with static discharge and tool belt skills combined in under 3 seconds. This is a very powerful adept trait when combined with the shear amount of toolbelt skills you have flying around, and due to it’s bouncing nature rangers often don’t stand a chance.

Last but not least, I take Sigil of Nullification due to Boon Removal’s inherent tendency to prioritize stability. This makes the build extremely effective against even the heartiest of regen bunkers.

Let me know if you have any questions! I was quite hesitant to share this build until now, but the number of requests for what my traits and gear look like have persuaded me to come out and finally share it.

~Quaggington, Team Queue top 500 — Pugging it all day long.

MIrra.3604:

Viking Jorun.5413:

2500 hours and rank 37 isn’t much to brag about. Farming Skyhammer you could have gotten there in mere days, and even without it and playing semi-casually it would only take a couple of months. Rank does not ensue authority on balance. Sorry to be “that guy”, but you’re obviously out of touch with PvP if you don’t realize that blind outlasts stealth, shield stance and endure pain outlast stealth, there are mass AoE blinds everywhere on point, and thief is the only one who can quickly take down a spirit ranger who does have AoE blind access on sun spirit.

The fact is that there’s too much going on for this to make any effective balance at all, because players would simly start taking plenty of aegis/blinds/evade spam and thief would immediately be shut out of PvP. Until they fix the rest of the game, make backstab/sneak attack/tactical strike unblockable and thief immune to blind while in stealth, I don’t see this ever being a viable option to “balance” the thief. ArenaNet simply isn’t this misguided as to destroy a profession with one adjustment to a skill/stealth.

I also see that you’re swapped to shortbow for this screenshot, and I highly doubt that you run anything but S/P with little access to stealth (utilities) due to your simple demands to change a function without seeking the repercussions and consequences. On the off-chance that you do run D/P, think about these things before you go and post them on the forums, and at least explain to people (and more importantly the devs) how this could impact the game and class, because it would break the thief on all but S/P.

Sorry to be “that guy” but you’re out of touch with how balancing should work. If an enemy stealth and you use a defensive ability such as endure pain or shield block, why should the thief get a free hit? What you don’t understand is risk vs reward.

FYI – I see nothing wrong with his utilities and heal. Withdraw is one of the best heals the thief has. He is also stealth heavy since he has BP and SR. S/P thiefs usually take IS for the extra port. Regarding D/P, this ends stealth stacking as the second HS will reveal you. If you want to stack stealth, you have to time it right before stealth ends to HS again. I like it!

Regarding the OP suggestion, I see nothing wrong with it. It punish thief that just spam stealth attack over and over again until it hit instead of timing your attack. I do agree with others that the hit should be more reliable. If you can’t survive 2 secs outside of stealth, holy kitten l2p.

Please humor me more.

One defensive capability is fine, and tactical. You’re the one out of touch, my friend, because you should know very well as I do that when something is 100% effective in shutting something out, it becomes the focus of the meta. When a meta develops to have near constant aegis and blinds, that’s where the problem arises (hello PU Mes, Well of Darkness necro, and focus guardian). The suggestions you’re rebutting against weren’t meant for serious consideration. They are there to suggest one of the only ways you could balance the thief through the OP’s suggestion, however you’ve fixated on that to attempt to tell the world that I don’t know what I’m talking about, despite the rest of the post being well-thought and a constructive counterargument.

Raiff.6742:

This class is awesome. It is my 4th level 80. Necro, Engi, and Guard are all my others. Ranger has more DPS potential than any other class, save Thief. The utility is all sorts of amazing, and both our crit values (Chance and Damage) are in the same tree! This class is just like any other, in that it is only as good as you make it.

While people say this, thief only has the 3rd highest damage potential. Staff and S/D eles have arguably the highest damage, while GS+S/P Burst Mesmer has the second highest. Only then does Backstab thief have the 3rd highest burst potential (notice I didn’t use DPS, which is much harder to calculate).

2500 hours and rank 37 isn’t much to brag about. Farming Skyhammer you could have gotten there in mere days, and even without it and playing semi-casually it would only take a couple of months. Rank does not ensue authority on balance. Sorry to be “that guy”, but you’re obviously out of touch with PvP if you don’t realize that blind outlasts stealth, shield stance and endure pain outlast stealth, there are mass AoE blinds everywhere on point, and thief is the only one who can quickly take down a spirit ranger who does have AoE blind access on sun spirit.

The fact is that there’s too much going on for this to make any effective balance at all, because players would simly start taking plenty of aegis/blinds/evade spam and thief would immediately be shut out of PvP. Until they fix the rest of the game, make backstab/sneak attack/tactical strike unblockable and thief immune to blind while in stealth, I don’t see this ever being a viable option to “balance” the thief. ArenaNet simply isn’t this misguided as to destroy a profession with one adjustment to a skill/stealth.

I also see that you’re swapped to shortbow for this screenshot, and I highly doubt that you run anything but S/P with little access to stealth (utilities) due to your simple demands to change a function without seeking the repercussions and consequences. On the off-chance that you do run D/P, think about these things before you go and post them on the forums, and at least explain to people (and more importantly the devs) how this could impact the game and class, because it would break the thief on all but S/P.

OIIIIIO.7825:

I imagine getting a skill similar to black powder but that has a large enough radius to cover a cap point. (lol only in dreams)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Darkness

Oulov.7913:

……but it is! (to some extend) What a suprise! And the next great patch like this will be…. soon!

I think you mean Soon™

Says it all in the title. Let us just get glory to finish spending upon using the current glory boosters leftover after patch. I can’t buy anything from the vendors since I spent the rest of my glory in preparation for the patch with no way of earning it to buy skill tomes, armor, or most importantly, PvP salvage kits.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

If thief isn’t OP, then how me, a dog, learn English?
Checkmate atheists.

If you truly learned English you would have said, “If thief isn’t OP, then how does myself, a member of the canine genus, learn English?”

Game. Set. Match.

Liewec.2896:

would love to find a build with retaliation and confusion lol

• Roll an Asura, use Pain Inverter.
• Roll a guardian, use Perplexity runes
• Roll a warrior, use Distracting Strikes and Spiked Armor

The list could go on.

Evan Lesh.3295:

soon™

So ArenaNet employees are required to use the trademark. What about When It’s Ready™?

Honestly, because of Zojja being bald, it’s made me see baldness in Asura as a more feminine trait while hair suggests masculinity.

I don’t feel like the class sucks at all, despite what a lot of people say. I have an 80 of every class and have played them all very thoroughly in tPvP. The one thing I can say about the ranger is that, while other classes have nearly infinite combinations of skills and traits to tweak and perfect depending on your playstyle, the ranger class is extremely one-dimensional and grandmaster traits force us into playstyles rather than what we would do with other classes and build a playstyle around a grandmaster or two. For example: Bark Skin is for added survivability, Empathetic Bond is Condi removal (this is about as in-depth as you can get when combining it with different pets, but in the end it doesn’t make much of a difference), Signet of the Beastmaster is a heavy investment in order to gain stability that isn’t on a 120s CD, and while I’d love to have a shout build for regen and swiftness to support my allies outside of spirits, but unfortunately our shouts are more commands and not instantaneous like every other class, and more often than not you need that condi removed with Soldier’s Runes right then and there, but rather have to anticipate having a condition on you in the first place.

Please though, I feel like there’s much more to the ranger that I’m not seeing. Enlighten me if I’m wrong.