Guild Wars 2

Zawaka.5170:

The thief class is one of the squishiest in the game and to top it off we have only 1 move that removes conditions and it only removes 3. It will now take longer to kill enemy….alot longer. Some are barely possible to kill (if at all * cough* guardian cough). The Thief Class needs to be more durable.

1. The thief is already able to be stupidly survivable by stealth, dodges and the lolShortbow. See Shadow Arts if the default perks aren’t enough.
2. The thief has one of the most powerful passive condition removals in the game- Shadow’s Embrace. Other classes have their passive condition removals at 10 seconds via signets. If thieves struggle with a multiple condition-stacking foe, that is actually good for the game as a counter to them exists (thinking Well necros that deny restealths).

I’d then just forsake PvE completely and play WvW and sPvP/tPvP (which isn’t such a bad thing). A treadmill of any gradient is bad- I don’t expect to have consistent free time to grind and regrind repeatedly. I bought the game in the expectation that if deployed I could come back later, buy an expansion and hop into content with my guild on a competently geared character as was the case in the Guild Wars 1.

So many things getting “fixed” and bugging out in actual gameplay leaves elementalists wondering if the developers actually test them out against real live targets. Really, I’m wondering which magical builds of awesomesauce they are balancing the elementalist around.

Elementalist is at the point where ALL builds need specific traits in specific traitlines or else the build is inherently bad. The points being spent are very tight and there’s little flexibility as a result of this.

Now contrast this with Mesmer or Thief. The points are fairly loose, going deep in traitlines as a Mesmer is optional because for almost every build there’s only a very few deep traits that are specific to particular builds. Thief is so loose it’s possible to throw points out at random and build around that with appropriate gear, weapons and traits.

Wait, wasn’t elementalist damage balanced around stacking might? About how much does this change amount to in terms of the damage normally gained from might?

I’d love to see a tally of how far elementalist damage has been toned down in total since BWE 1.

Phy.2913:

80 is technically easy to reach, it’s just incredibly boring for a lot of people.

Is leveling to 100 going to be exciting then? I’ve done the level up “ding” across so many RPG’s that it’s lost it’s flavor.

Yay I got to 50!
Oh wait, expansion… trash the old elite gear and move to 60.
Another expansion? Oh ok, time to powerlevel to 70 and regrind it all.
80? You don’t say…
85? Not a chance in hell I’m chasing this carrot any longer.

Draeka.5941:

I can’t recall, but did anyone beat GW1 without getting infused armor? That was a pretty big chunk of the story, dealing with the Mursaat. So really, what we have here is do the dungeon for slightly better gear, or don’t and enjoy the current game with hardly any loss on your end….as opposed to not finishing a game.

I recall doing the first mission involving Mursaat without infused armor, think it was my ranger. Had to use a cheesy hero build and died several times when Spectral Agony wasn’t interrupted. Possible by the later campaigns, but probably not under the original Prophecies npc and party skillset.

The thing about the GW1 Infused armor though, was that once you had it, the grind was DONE. You could take it through the rest of the campaigns, play alts, take breaks and come back to a competently geared character. This new installment takes a step away from that tradition; by placing a tier above exotic without guarantees that in a year’s time there won’t be two or three more tiers that make a currently exotic geared character completely obsolete.

/quote
But the question is what are the rewards if it is not gear.
/quote

Same thing as GW1, titles to brag about and the (armor/weapon) skins to show you have been around long enough to know your kitten. A new tier of stats is a disincentive because I know it will only be temporarily the best and I will have to regrind it all later.

I’ve encountered more necros of late that have Corrupt Boon. In those specific situations Ether Renewal can be useful but it’s more risky as it’s easily interrupted.

I predict consecutive nerfs to backstab:

1st To take it down to a level they want.
2nd To take it down again to that level once they realize Ascended stats boosted the damage above the intended level.

Betrayal!

I liked the premise of a open world Guild Wars where I could take a break and not feel behind the gear and instance treadmill. Instances would be all equal in gear quality and crafting was worthwhile.

An 8% increase in stats is significant, especially if factoring the exponential relationship between critical damage and power. When they are balancing damage around this, they’d have to take this larger-than-eight-percent increase in stats into account. Conversely, people towards the back of the gear treadmill (rares) then hit substantially lower.

It’s fine to have

Divinity frontloads it’s an option, but the benefit of 2 Water, 2 Monk gives a huge boost to boon duration meaning that you’re tougher, have more energy for dodges and are able to maintain more stacks of might longer. Other runesets do give duration benefits to specific boons but Monk/Water covers the bases on all of them.

Stuck as well. Given the size of the playerbase compared to the number of vocal people who post on the forums, this is a pretty huge problem.

The Skritt questline is one of five possible choices (ignoring the race filter) which must be taken to advance the Epic. Not getting it fixed is a serious turnoff to playing my thief which instead of leveling up, I let sit idle for fear of outleveling the rewards.

ehtom.5047:

Nope. Ping makes this next to impossible, and reaction time is the time for the human brain to recognise a stimulus, not recognise the stimulus AND choose an appropriate course of action.

Actually it is within the realm of possibility. I interrupted .25s casts in GW1 with a good ping and countering thieves here is not too different (anticipation/foreknowledge of monks helped). There’s a good BBC flash game that helps with reaction time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf

Brynhildn of Landroval here (warden). I’d say the closest thing to warden in terms of complexity would be Elementalist in that you have to know how all 16 of your weapon skills (and have out of combat weapon swaps for 16 more per weaponset) and how they interact with each other. There’s a ton of interaction with combo fields that is essential to learn and the ability to plan ahead to anticipate and adapt to your opponent is necessary. Difficult to master but, like warden, if you succeed you can honestly say you outplay your opponents.

It’s far more cooldown dependent than Warden in LoTRO but there isn’t a rough equivalent to gambits here.

Two major ways to play thief:

1. Burst them down
2. Outlast them (bleed/condition)

The former you’ve found although I disagree in the strength of all the skills you did not mention. They all have a place. Dancing dagger, cloak and dagger, Choking Gas, Disabling shot all have situational uses. Using them appropriately allows engagement, disengagement, and weakening/control over your opponent.

These skills become more important in as your oppenents are more able to withstand straight up damage and truly come into their own in a more bunker type build.

See the above for Shortbow usage, might also want to watch Wild Bill P/D below to see a pretty nifty stealth-bleed spamming build.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnqE7xnqsyI

I always think of Time Warp as Time Stop from Baldur’s Gate/DnD. In terms of function in lore they’re similar but Time Warp could be much more powerful. The devs did not include a 10s unbreakable AoE stun in GW2’s version and attached a fairly long cooldown and a freaking giant purple dome of doom to it.

(next step for the Mesmer proletariat should be to lobby for Nahal’s Reckless Dwemer, and Wish as utilities)

Best write-up I’ve seen of the standard glass-cannon mantra build. The problem running this in sPvP/WvW is that it sacrifices survivability and mobility for raw damage. It’s fun pubstomping as a turret but it doesn’t necessarily win games. Thus 2 suggestions:

1. Drop a mantra for Blink (mobility), Decoy (survival) or Mirror Images (more raw power for Shatters). If using Blink, the 10 pt Dueling talent Far Reaching Manipulations gives 1200 range that’ll help with moving/survivability.
2. Drop Moa and pick up either Mass Invisibility for survival or Time Warp to kitten those kittens down as you kitten their kittens. Either you’re skirmishing where Mass Invisibility allows a disengagement to reapply mantras or you’re turreting with a zerg where Time Warp becomes godly.
3. (Personal Preference) I run Sword/Sword with my Mantra cannon right now- it seems to fill the defensive gap versus melee fairly well, needs a bit more testing still.

Right after they Death Blossom or dodge hit the thief with a chill, cripple, immobilize or knockdown and stay at range if possible. For engineer I’m thinking grenade spam as a counter-area denial might work but I have a limited understanding of engineer’s kits.

I believe that facial hair is in need of a balance, not a nerf. I sport a mustache and the constant grooming needed to maintain the bar handles is rather tedious; I might make a mistake or some of the hair may fall out by combing/waxing it. As such I would rather have them slow down the rate of facial hair growth instead of eliminating it completely.