Guild Wars 2

Beldin.5498:

DiogoSilva.7089:

• General lack of QoL content changes/ additions that the playerbase usually expects from MMOs (attention, this does not makes GW2 a “different” game, just emptier on the eyes of many). Example: Dueling, Housing, etc;
  .

Dueling ? Then don’t forget other QoL stuff like
-the holy trinity
-Open world PvP
-mounts
-raids with new gear tier every 2 months
-new level cap every year

However i would call that WiP (why i play) stuff instead QoL. Minus the housing, thats the only thing i also want.

The trinity, open world PvP, raids and level cap are not QoL stuff…. they are core design philosophies. They massively change the way the game works, suddenly going ‘you need a guardian or a warrior for eveything now’ or ‘now you can be killed anywhere in the open world’ aren’t just ’we’ve added some extra stuff for fun’.

Dueling doesn’t.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Famps.7461:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Famps.7461:

Xae Isareth.1364:

babazhook.6805:

>>The problem is that the d/d skill set was designed to be a hybrid, with both condi and power thrown in, but it just doesn’t work.

It works if you play to its stengths and use a hybrid build.

What are the strengths of a hybrid d/d build then? Why should I choose it over a power d/d build?

i dont know about the strenght but i would say you choose the build you like and fun to play. if people wants to play melee condition and for them is fun to play that, then it is d/d some is the way. but if you take away that option. the melee thief is gonna be just power thief. For me Gw2 is a game that you have alot of option and every build has pros and cons, but other builds are not bad just because one specific build is “meta”. so if Anet take away death blossom, they alos take away option you can do with your thief and that is not the way to go.

Why can’t they just put DD as the p/d DW skill then? That’s a proper condi setup without most of your skills being power-based. IF you want to play ‘melee’ condi, all you’re gonna do is basically caltrops+evadetrops+3333333333 with some auto attacks mixed in. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like a fun build and I don’t think Anet went ‘yep, this is perfect, you just spam 3, so much fun’.

but if you take in DB in p/D you take away shadow strike and that skill is really good in p/d. should you take that in d/d. nope you cant, because you cant shoot one with just daggers. as i see it, you must take away DB completly if you dont wanna mess with other weapon setups..

But to spam Pistol whip is not fun either and not the thing Anet wants it.

To be honest, the best solution would just be to let us choose.

You don’t spam pistol whip on s/p. Why would you spam PW anyways? Its damage is not that different from your AA chain and that initiative is better used to blinds/IS/interrupts.

On condi d/d you spam DB because theres nothing better to do with your initiative. Every other skill will hit like wet noodles noodles because they’re all power based. As things stand, you either don’t use DB at all, or that’s the only skill you use.

No. You certainly use DB more with a condi build and less without one, but they aren’t mutually exclusive because all the skills have different specialties. The deciding factor is a combination of context and build, not build alone.

Also, you do know that Power improves both physical and condi damage right, and that the trait line that improves power improves your conditions, meaning that if you’re building for power your condition damage will not be as terrible as you keep implying? I’ll assume you meant crit based .

Let’s just take a PvE context for now.

The problem is, what would you use DB for in a power build? Its definitely not very good for single damage, its evade is very unreliable, even if you do use it as an evade, it seems awfully wasteful to use 4 initiative for just an evade, and finally, your condi damage won’t be high enough to support its bleed, so… what’s the point of it?

I’m quite sure power doesnt increase condition damage. If it does, we’ve been theorycrafting wrong all along then lol. Might increases condition damage though.

The trait line that increases power increases condition duration, not condition damage.

Famps.7461:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Famps.7461:

Xae Isareth.1364:

babazhook.6805:

>>The problem is that the d/d skill set was designed to be a hybrid, with both condi and power thrown in, but it just doesn’t work.

It works if you play to its stengths and use a hybrid build.

What are the strengths of a hybrid d/d build then? Why should I choose it over a power d/d build?

i dont know about the strenght but i would say you choose the build you like and fun to play. if people wants to play melee condition and for them is fun to play that, then it is d/d some is the way. but if you take away that option. the melee thief is gonna be just power thief. For me Gw2 is a game that you have alot of option and every build has pros and cons, but other builds are not bad just because one specific build is “meta”. so if Anet take away death blossom, they alos take away option you can do with your thief and that is not the way to go.

Why can’t they just put DD as the p/d DW skill then? That’s a proper condi setup without most of your skills being power-based. IF you want to play ‘melee’ condi, all you’re gonna do is basically caltrops+evadetrops+3333333333 with some auto attacks mixed in. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like a fun build and I don’t think Anet went ‘yep, this is perfect, you just spam 3, so much fun’.

but if you take in DB in p/D you take away shadow strike and that skill is really good in p/d. should you take that in d/d. nope you cant, because you cant shoot one with just daggers. as i see it, you must take away DB completly if you dont wanna mess with other weapon setups..

But to spam Pistol whip is not fun either and not the thing Anet wants it.

To be honest, the best solution would just be to let us choose.

You don’t spam pistol whip on s/p. Why would you spam PW anyways? Its damage is not that different from your AA chain and that initiative is better used to blinds/IS/interrupts.

On condi d/d you spam DB because theres nothing better to do with your initiative. Every other skill will hit like wet noodles noodles because they’re all power based. As things stand, you either don’t use DB at all, or that’s the only skill you use.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Iplaytokill.1674:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Flash.6912:

and then 1 month later China realize there is no end game in gw2…

Oh dear, that again. I feel sorry for you people, really i do. gw2 has barely began to expand its horizons and you keep harping about some imaginary end game. omg what’s happened to gamers these days, so brainwashed by these insidious games they cannot see the forest for the trees.

Barely began to expand its horizons? It has been almost two years now and PVP is crap, PVE is the same thing it was when it launched and WvW is still ZvZ.

WvW is not Z v Z -if you ACTAULLY played season 2, you would know. The end of season2 (Tier 1 servers) have shown that. The Guilds that worked and planned together win big, the servers that mindlessly zerg do not.

They have added things, they have been tweaking things and, do you know how long it takes to translate a game from English to Chinese, properly? Kudos to An.Net for being a small company but pushing on.

Anet is anything but small o.o

I mean, they aren’t Nintendo or Blizzard size, but having over 300 developers means you really aren’t a small company anymore.

Famps.7461:

Xae Isareth.1364:

babazhook.6805:

>>The problem is that the d/d skill set was designed to be a hybrid, with both condi and power thrown in, but it just doesn’t work.

It works if you play to its stengths and use a hybrid build.

What are the strengths of a hybrid d/d build then? Why should I choose it over a power d/d build?

i dont know about the strenght but i would say you choose the build you like and fun to play. if people wants to play melee condition and for them is fun to play that, then it is d/d some is the way. but if you take away that option. the melee thief is gonna be just power thief. For me Gw2 is a game that you have alot of option and every build has pros and cons, but other builds are not bad just because one specific build is “meta”. so if Anet take away death blossom, they alos take away option you can do with your thief and that is not the way to go.

Why can’t they just put DD as the p/d DW skill then? That’s a proper condi setup without most of your skills being power-based. IF you want to play ‘melee’ condi, all you’re gonna do is basically caltrops+evadetrops+3333333333 with some auto attacks mixed in. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like a fun build and I don’t think Anet went ‘yep, this is perfect, you just spam 3, so much fun’.

Thief:
(PvE only) Full Concentration
Whilst using 2 daggers, gain +25% damage whilst endurance is at full.
(Idea is that you dodge only using Death Blossom. High risk, high payout.)

^ except it’s quite touchy to mix Japanese and Chinese culture up. It’s less touchy than before, but still, China remembers what happened.

Superfast.5901:

People don’t hate on GW2 because they’re WoW fanboys,

People hate on GW2 (and categorize it alongside SWTOR, ESO, etc. as a pariah amongst MMOs) because in a world where you can play WILDSTAR, why settle for a lesser game?

Its quite funny because at the ESO reddit, its like the other way round.

babazhook.6805:

>>The problem is that the d/d skill set was designed to be a hybrid, with both condi and power thrown in, but it just doesn’t work.

It works if you play to its stengths and use a hybrid build.

What are the strengths of a hybrid d/d build then? Why should I choose it over a power d/d build?

ipan.4356:

GW2 has a leg up on quite a few MMO’s for combat, but in my mind, D3 (strictly in terms of combat) flows much nicer. It is more kinetic. It is faster paced. Skills fire off rapidly, and resources recharge quickly.

GW2 feels just a little too much like old style MMO combat – but I think they could easily ramp this up, and make it more actiony, if they tried to.

One thing would be to remove tab targeting completely – maybe replace it with a mouse auto-lock, kinda like in DDO (but more accurate and responsive than in that game). Of course, most skills would have to be rebalanced around a more FPS style of combat – but this would be a good thing.

Have you played a thief? If you haven’t you’d probably like that class.

Famps.7461:

frans.8092:

Famps.7461:

i agree that pistol whip do more damage then death blossom in some way. but death blossom is not usless and it is one of the important skills in condition builds, when you are in melee fights. (for example: you can stack bleeds fast).

The problem with it is that you need a build strong in condition
damage to make it good and while you do that, you make the #1, #2 and #5 of the weaponset a lot weaker.

they are weaker yes, but they are still usefull. for exampel in pve, you attack stuff that cant bleed, then the other attacks are more usefull.

The problem is that the d/d skill set was designed to be a hybrid, with both condi and power thrown in, but it just doesn’t work.

Lightsbane.9012:

while reading a review for TESO, i found this:
“you can switch between sets during battle, Guild Wars 2 style, but The Elder Scrolls Online’s combat is not nearly as snappy as Guild Wars 2’s, nor does it offer many reasons to switch sets in the middle of combat. "
isn’t that strange? a game like the elder scrolls online can’t hold a flame to GW2’s dynamic combat. i have a ton of trouble going back to other games(although i do when i get bored, or my morale in wvw is exhausted) i simply can’t get back into other games where i cannot cast while moving.

I’m not quite sure if that reviewer actually played enough of ESO, but there’s a huge incentive to switch mid-combat in some cases.

It’s not exactly GW2-style either, because you mostly weapon swap in GW2 for rotations, unless you’re a thief.

The combat in ESO uses zero cooldowns on anything apart from passive effects, so unlike GW2, you don’t switch weapons as part of a rotation. Like thieves, you switch weapons to either for access to a set of skills for a different situation. Or something like if you got your buffs on one bar and DPS skills on another.

So for example, you might stealth and ambush a player with your bow to shoot him off his horse, but then switch to melee to gap close and engage him.

Soon™

/15 Charrs sitting on a wall.

I havn’t seen a red post in months. and balancing updates themselves in fact comes very rarely. So the question is, does Anet actually read these forums or are we all just wasting our time?

ipan.4356:

I never played GW1, and am still hugely disappointed by GW2 – largely for not living up to the promises of the Manifesto.

The world should be open – instead of gated, and what’s with the weird rectangular design of the map? I want to be able to walk anywhere in the world without going through a loading door.

I don’t think you’d want the lag that comes with that though…

Azhure.1857:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The Chinese can stand the grind better than us, but they also care more about the loot than us. GW2 a loot doesn’t go well together.

Rather tired at the racist comments.

How is that racist. It’s like saying westerners can’t stand grinding as much. Is that racist towards westerners?

Famps.7461:

Karolis.4261:

Right, lets go to calculations. No buffs, no stacks.
Single pistol whip does 12-13 k damage on lvl 80 mob. Auto attack chain does roughly the same, in almost same time frame (Pistol whip has 2.2s cast time according to wiki and auto attack chain takes pretty much the same for bare eye). So 12k/2.2 = 5454 dps. Honestly… reason to use pistolwhip is stun, higher number of cleaved targets, signet of malice proc and evade, not much higher dps.

Single bleed stack does 120 dps with around 1500 condition damage. 25 stacks of bleed would do 120*25=3000 dps. Single death blossom+auto attack chain (which cant cleave so in aoe situation it would drop dps, but lets assume it cleaves) in carrion gear would do 450(db) + 2500(aa including 3 seconds of poison from last aa chain) damage in roughly 3s time so( 2500 + 450)/3 = about 1000 dps and you can use death blossom every 3s at most (1ini regen every 1s, lets include any ini regen traits u might have, allthough every other deathblossom you would have to follow with 2 auto attack chains to regen initiative) for sustained dps. So we have 3000 dps from 25stacks of bleed and 1000 dps from physical damage and poison = 4000 dps. Now that would happen only if you could keep 25 stacks of bleed constantly which u can’t. In reality you can keep around 10 stacks of bleeds while bumping up to 18-20 very briefly with caltrops (25 maybe if you go balls deep in DB spam, but then u get initiative starved), so your 3k dps from bleeds is actually more like 1500 dps what drops total dps to 2500. You can pick any gear any build, be it full berserker, hybrid celestial or full condi carion, rabid, even rampager with all its precision and no crit power (not even mentioning dire, cause that would decrease physical part of damage even more), none of that would come even close to what aoe damage full berserker S/P can pump out.
If we would take into account grp damage where vulnerability comes into play, damage gap would be even wider.
Conclusion: Death blossom is kitten poor excuse of aoe skill, same as d/d is a kitten poor excuse of aoe weapon set. If you are running D/D and know that you will have to aoe (and you will have to aoe pretty much everywhere), bring real aoe weapon as secondary.

i agree that pistol whip do more damage then death blossom in some way. but death blossom is not usless and it is one of the important skills in condition builds, when you are in melee fights. (for example: you can stack bleeds fast). for me Pistol whip is boring in the same way that death blossom is boring for some people. so is comes to players preference. if you like power builds ok fine go for it, if you like condition builds ok fine go for it. but death blossom is the only melee weapon skill that apply bleeds (if you dont count one dagger i main hand and none weapon in off hand). i think Anet will support both and it would be weird if Anet just take death blossom away just because some power build users dont like it.

Because it just feels very silly to have 1 damaging condi skill randomly stuck in a set of complete power skills. Power build users won’t use DB, condi users won’t use HS/BS. So why have mutually exclusive skills in a set?

They should take it away and replace it with something more appropriate. I don’t see why it wouldn’t better fit in p/d.

PS: we wouldn’t have this problem if GW2, like most other MMOs, allowed you to customise your skillbar.

Karolis.4261:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Karolis.4261:

Xae Isareth.1364:

You know, after all this, I’ll probably still use the skill. Because like warrior axe #5, its just such a kitten skill.

In PvE, if you’re playing thief, you’re not ‘optimised’ anyways generally since you’re not an ele/warrior/guardian, so may as well unoptimise yourself in style.

Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in using death blossom if u like it in…open world pve, www, spvp. But when it comes to dungeons you are gimping your group by doing so in comparison of taking S/P for aoe that also provides wonderful group utility -black powder.
And thief is “Optimised” enough and does as much or even more dps then glorified warriors, that everyone and their grandmother plays with their googled builds and no actual insight to class, but requires much more from a player to survive because of pretty much 2x lower ehp.

Warrior is third at best on the DPS scale lol. Ele is king in DPS.

And that dps scale i based on what ? Dps meters? Oh w8 we don’t have any and thank god. According to same scale thief is second I believe. SO much from being “unoptimised”. And I dont think that ele is such a huge dps on its own, its more of what he brings to group and thats fury, 25 stacks of might in a blink of an eye (what increases all partys damage, not only its own) and fgs, which is broken as kitten and anet has no clue what to do with it w/o breaking it.

From highest damage rotations. We don’t have a DPS meter so what people do is do a 30 second perfect rotation on indes. golem in the mists, check the combat log, record totoal coefficients, and calculate maximum DPS from that.

Thief is behind ele for sure, and other than stealth, which some people/dungeons need, others don’t thieves contribute little to group DPS, so you may as well take an ele over it. Warriors aren’t wanted for their DPS in proper speedrun groups, they need 1 or 2 for banners and EA, thats it.

Karolis.4261:

Xae Isareth.1364:

You know, after all this, I’ll probably still use the skill. Because like warrior axe #5, its just such a kitten skill.

In PvE, if you’re playing thief, you’re not ‘optimised’ anyways generally since you’re not an ele/warrior/guardian, so may as well unoptimise yourself in style.

Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in using death blossom if u like it in…open world pve, www, spvp. But when it comes to dungeons you are gimping your group by doing so in comparison of taking S/P for aoe that also provides wonderful group utility -black powder.
And thief is “Optimised” enough and does as much or even more dps then glorified warriors, that everyone and their grandmother plays with their googled builds and no actual insight to class, but requires much more from a player to survive because of pretty much 2x lower ehp.

Warrior is third at best on the DPS scale lol. Ele is king in DPS.

You know, after all this, I’ll probably still use the skill. Because like warrior axe #5, its just such a kitten skill.

In PvE, if you’re playing thief, you’re not ‘optimised’ anyways generally since you’re not an ele/warrior/guardian, so may as well unoptimise yourself in style.

Ves.8236:

This is not subterfuge hood :P Subterfuge hood is difrent :P

You do sort of see the outer border (the bit that can be dyed separately) on the first concept art though.

I think its possible that it was the first iteration of the privateer (formerly pirate) set. You kind of can see the styled messiness of the set in there.

Maybe at some point of the development cycle, they just decided to make every piece of medium armor a longcoat ._.

A Massive Headache.1879:

Xae Isareth.1364:

A Massive Headache.1879:

I’m going to go with innocent poster child for incompetent administration, though if she is removed from her position, evon better get to work on that abaddon fractal.
Also, she is very obviously a hero, she performed heroic actions, I don’t see her becoming an actual villian.

Wasn’t Mai Trin rather heroic as well?

^Kormir, Treehead, Ellen Kiel. I think there’s a pattern in Guild Wars.

not even close? where the heck did you get that idea from? She was an inquest spy who killed the late council man that kiel replaced.

That’s the point, you don’t know a good spy is a spy until its too late

A Massive Headache.1879:

I’m going to go with innocent poster child for incompetent administration, though if she is removed from her position, evon better get to work on that abaddon fractal.
Also, she is very obviously a hero, she performed heroic actions, I don’t see her becoming an actual villian.

Wasn’t Mai Trin rather heroic as well?

^Kormir, Treehead, Ellen Kiel. I think there’s a pattern in Guild Wars.

Celestina.2894:

Killface.1896:

Warriors need a buff guardians should not out dps them O.o

Get out.

New warrior Elite: Summon Akatosh.

Because warriors need to be so broken they break the very fabric of the multiverse.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Meglobob.8620:

I think GW2 will head up into the top 3 and possibly even hit no. 1 spot, especially if for Season 2 they do regular 2 weekly updates from July 1st. Got a feeling the Chinese will love that…

The Chinese can stand the grind better than us, but they also care more about the loot than us. GW2 a loot doesn’t go well together.

Well from all the QQ i have seen on these forums about loot, i’d say we like loot as much as the next man lol.

Personally, in my experience, GW2 loot is the best around. I don’t know of any games that give guaranteed loot chests for completing general stuff on daily basis. I’ve done tier 3 raids in some games over and over which are really long and hard and get zip at the end. But, I’m not really the type that plays purely for loot, ofc it’s nice to get it, but its not my primary reason for playing, so perhaps my view of this is somewhat skewed.

However, i hope this thread doesn’t turn into a debate about loot, we got enough of those all over forums already.

The loot’s fine until you get to the endgame.

The problem is that there’s no medium-termed goals and everything after the initial round of loot feels terribly unrewarding.

Take the Queen’s Gauntlet for example. The initial completion, its amazing. You move up through the ranks, you hear the announcer announce your entry differently, you get achievements and even a mini+title after you down Lladri. It felt good.

But that’s what, 3 hours at most? After that, there’s basically no in between rewards. Chances have a miniscue chance to drop LS rares or the coveted Lyssa’s Chaos recipe, but thats the very long term rewards that you jump over the moon when you do get it, there;s nothing to keep you going until then.

Take TSW’s raid for example. There’s the Subway Tokens which is the raid-exclusive BiS tank/DPS talisman which everyone wants and rarely drops: the long term goal. But until then, every complete of the raid gets you a guaranteed number of tokens to buy non-raid BiS stuff with (the raid BiS gear apart from the tokens are only situationally better) and you’ll probably get some less coveted raid drops if you run in a guild group as well: the medium term goal.

Hmmm, the hood is edfo the sub-something hood you get from character creation.

Karizee.8076:

Everything I’m reading says they are completely obsessed with the game. ArenaNet is going to have a very good year

I don’t know. As a culture, we Chinese are obsessed with everything, because our culture is all about self-improvement and being better than others (even if its just convincing yourself that you are…). So you got this period of obsession where everyone is trying to be the bestest ever in the bestest game ever.

But after that, what then?

^ I think the main problem is that GW2 is just getting stale. Every MMO in existence is slowly dying, even WoW. What happens to most games is that it slowly declines but gets some players back every time a big update or expansion comes out. GW2 doesn’t have that, even the ‘huge’ updates like destroying LA is hardly game changing.

The LS has massively hurt GW2. There’s no incentive for old players to return, because all the content is gone, and the game becomes more and more stale for us current players because the core game doesn’t change: outside of a few hours of LS events, all you do is the same stuff you did since launch, with very little variation because of the lack of build diversity or new skills to play around with.

GW2 lacks a lot of the fundamental things which makes a MMO tick: a growing world, deep character customization, and reasonable goals to hunt for (not skins that cost a small country/with a 0.00000001% drop rate or nothing), so as a result, all you see is just a decline.

Meglobob.8620:

I think GW2 will head up into the top 3 and possibly even hit no. 1 spot, especially if for Season 2 they do regular 2 weekly updates from July 1st. Got a feeling the Chinese will love that…

The Chinese can stand the grind better than us, but they also care more about the loot than us. GW2 a loot doesn’t go well together.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Caltrops will do exactly the same amount of damage as it would if you didn’t use DB, so there’s no compliment, no synergy because independently, they’ll perform the same. You can include it as a part of a rotation to justify a build, but you can’t claim synergy between them on a 1v1 comparison.

You claim that caltrops+DB is the most effective AoE a thief has. Does it outperform sword AoEs? If you can have the numbers to prove it, I bow my hat to you.

Yes you certainly can, because they deal damage simultaneously and because they function the exact same way, meaning that as one gets stronger the other one does too, providing a multiplicative impact. That’s the definition of synergy.

Never minding the benefits of having AoE and single target in the same set rather than having to switch back and forth, we really don’t have to look at much besides base damage values to see that it does:

Pistol Whip – 1,066 damage, 5 Initiative
Death Blossom – 201 physical damage, 1275 bleed damage, 4 Inititiative

So a single application of Death Blossom does almost 50% more damage than a single application of Pistol Whip for 1 less Initiative. Death Blossom does damage on a delayed timer, which is a bit of a negative, but can also be spammed while Pistol Whip is a channel, which is a negative for Pistol Whip.

It’s arguable that Pistol Whip has more reach than Death Blossom based on build due to the fact that it’s totally physical, but that was certainly more true a few months ago than it is now after the Zerker nerf. If anything, it’s very possibly the opposite now.

When you throw in the fact that Caltrops is buffed alongside Death Blossom but nerfed as you try to improve Pistol whip – it’s a no contest, unless you specifically need the stun and slightly better burstiness of Pistol Whip, which carries certain benefits.

You can’t use the tooltip damage on the wiki for proper calculations, that damage is calculated under some weird assumptions about power and weapon damage, with 2600 toughness or something.

You take the coefficient in the little brackets next to the number and add your own stats. You need to also take into account that the mob can die halfway through your 10 second bleed, making you lose damage, whereas PW’s damage is applied to full when it casts.

Caltrops does get nerfed as you buff up your power. But thats the argument of hybrid/condi vs power builds.

Synergy: the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

Using caltrops and DB together doesn’t give you more damage on each of them than if you used them separately. That’s just the same thing as fitting heartseeker and backstab together because they both benefit from power.

You’re being pedantic to distract from the weakness of your argument. Building condi gives you more damage for both DB and Caltrops, which is a significant point because Caltrops is a utility skill that layers extra damage potential on top of D/D’s already substantial damage potential. You use them back to back and their damage applies simultaneously while you’re still able to do other things. That is not the case with Heartseeker and Backstab.

The base values are more than adequate to judge general performance. Builds will obviously come into play, but there’s nothing that’s going to make S/P and Pistol Whip substantially stronger from a pure DPS perspective than DB and Caltrops. Even the point about the 10 second window required for full damage is only partially relevant on account of S/P being a channel skill that does not really outdamage the autoattack.

Look at any DPs calc thread or any DPS calc tool. They never use the tooltip numbers straight off without at least adjusting it somewhat. So unless everyone is being pedantic, I don’t think I am.

They aren’t actually even base numbers. The skill coefficient is the ‘base’ number for your skill, those numbers are basically that applies to some juju assumptions. The ones in game I think was your power, your current weapon damage with constant modifiers like force applied with a 2600 armor on the target, I don’t even know what those numbers in the wiki use.

Whilst your cal/DB numbers tack up, HS/BS and all other power based skills’ power goes down.

I don’t really know what the 10 second winder has to do with autoattack.

Not trying to be rude, but if you wanna prove my argument is weak, then run a rotation of your build and post its DPS, and compare it to a sword/pistol build. That’s the bottom line really.

Well, just to indicate something. ESO was on 2nd in the UK charts last time I checked and we can predict the fate of that game already…

I don’t trust first month ratings. The honeymoon period is on full effect and the hype train is on its max passenger limit. Wait for 6 months, if GW2 is still there, we might have a winner.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Caltrops will do exactly the same amount of damage as it would if you didn’t use DB, so there’s no compliment, no synergy because independently, they’ll perform the same. You can include it as a part of a rotation to justify a build, but you can’t claim synergy between them on a 1v1 comparison.

You claim that caltrops+DB is the most effective AoE a thief has. Does it outperform sword AoEs? If you can have the numbers to prove it, I bow my hat to you.

Yes you certainly can, because they deal damage simultaneously and because they function the exact same way, meaning that as one gets stronger the other one does too, providing a multiplicative impact. That’s the definition of synergy.

Never minding the benefits of having AoE and single target in the same set rather than having to switch back and forth, we really don’t have to look at much besides base damage values to see that it does:

Pistol Whip – 1,066 damage, 5 Initiative
Death Blossom – 201 physical damage, 1275 bleed damage, 4 Inititiative

So a single application of Death Blossom does almost 50% more damage than a single application of Pistol Whip for 1 less Initiative. Death Blossom does damage on a delayed timer, which is a bit of a negative, but can also be spammed while Pistol Whip is a channel, which is a negative for Pistol Whip.

It’s arguable that Pistol Whip has more reach than Death Blossom based on build due to the fact that it’s totally physical, but that was certainly more true a few months ago than it is now after the Zerker nerf. If anything, it’s very possibly the opposite now.

When you throw in the fact that Caltrops is buffed alongside Death Blossom but nerfed as you try to improve Pistol whip – it’s a no contest, unless you specifically need the stun and slightly better burstiness of Pistol Whip, which carries certain benefits.

You can’t use the tooltip damage on the wiki for proper calculations, that damage is calculated under some weird assumptions about power and weapon damage, with 2600 toughness or something.

You take the coefficient in the little brackets next to the number and add your own stats. You need to also take into account that the mob can die halfway through your 10 second bleed, making you lose damage, whereas PW’s damage is applied to full when it casts.

Caltrops does get nerfed as you buff up your power. But thats the argument of hybrid/condi vs power builds.

Synergy: the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

Using caltrops and DB together doesn’t give you more damage on each of them than if you used them separately. That’s just the same thing as fitting heartseeker and backstab together because they both benefit from power.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Famps.7461:

this my condition build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY6Yl0Mp5p1NxzJsPNRLBx50nh3vpNzRzHEAA-TRSAABaoEM6TCQO6Hgw0HAPBgrU6x0+DIp+zYKDAA-e

it is more or less pure condition but i have traits in Deadly arts. with this build Deadly Blossom is amazing. i use DB in melee combat and i use p/d when i need to go in range and kite the mob or something.

What’s the DPS on that build though?

The more pressing question is – why would you expect DPS on a build that’s equally good at single target and AoE to out-DPS a build that’s only good at single target?

Even with that said, I bet the DPS is very solid.

I’m going to compare it to power sword/pistol.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

^ give me a hybrid build that has higher DPS than a pure power build. I’ve been experimenting this morning, I can’t think one, not for solo, definitely not for group play.

The thing about thieves is that functionality isn’t actually nessecary most of the time. For example, if I’m running a a/m/s warrior, I need that weapon swap because of offhand CDs, so if say, axe 3 was a ranged AA instead, it might be handy.

However, thieves don’t have cooldowns, do if I need AoE, I’ll just switch to my sword. If I run a pure power build, the bleed on DB is useless, and the 1/4 evade with a pre-cast is far from reliable, so the skill doesn’t have much utility to compensate for its terrible damage.

If it added 5 sec weakness or 3 stacks of 10 sec vul, it might be useful. But as it is, I’m struggling to find any use for it outside of a condi build where you spam 3 over and over.

See my response above. Caltrops + Death Blossom on a hybrid or condi build gives you astonishingly good passive melee range AoE, something D/D is otherwise not capable of.

You people that myopically focus on DPS are just silly, especially in a game like GW2 where combat is very active and individually focused. I’d sacrifice a small amount of single target DPS on a training dummy for significantly greater AoE, passive damage, and general versatility in just about any situation.

The thing is, where would that passive damage be helpful?

If you go full power, the bleed damage is just negligible. If you go hybrid, I’m struggling to get the numbers to be favorable or for any justification of not going either way. If you go condi, first of all, as things stand, condi damage is pretty much useless in any grouped content, and second of all, we’re basically going back to 3 spam+ caltrops.

If I wanted AoE, I’ll just switch to a sword or shortbow until the trash/adds are down. They do a much better job of it, I don’t think I need to argue that. There’s no situation where I want to focus on target whilst doing low damage to its surrounding targets, it’s always either burn down the boss, or kill adds, because yoy always want to take out one threat or the other, not keep them both around for longer.

Even if we ignore all that, DB costs 4 initiative. Its just not a good use of that 4 initiative.

It’s not low damage. Death Blossom does more base damage than both Pistol Whip for less Initiative, significantly more damage than Cluster Bomb, and it synergizes extremely well with Caltrops, which is one of the Thief’s best melee range AoE tools.

You don’t kill mobs faster by damaging them one at a time than you do by dealing significant AoE damage while targeting one. Otherwise everyone wouldn’t switch to AoE when there are many targets, which is what always happens.

Sorry, you’re just not looking at it the right way. I don’t know what else to tell you.

See above for PW vs DB.

Where is the synergy with caltrops though? Caltrops does the same amount of damage with you using or not using DB.

Yes, I can justify it, and I do it all the time. 9 bleed stacks lasting 10 seconds is significant damage even in a power build, especially in conjunction with Caltrops, but it wouldn’t be a primary source of damage – you’d only use it when you needed AoE without weapon swapping.

In a hybrid or pure condi build, it’s just plain effective as hell. How do you not get the synergy with Death Blossom and Caltrops? Obviously if you are condi or hybrid both skills get stronger at the same rate. The two combined deal crazy amounts of bleed AoE damage in melee range. It’s probably the most effective source of AoE the Thief has access to.

If its significant damage, run the numbers by me. What assumptions are you using? What results did you get? If you wanna theorycraft DPS, I’m afraid you need the DPS to back your claims up :L.

Caltrops will do exactly the same amount of damage as it would if you didn’t use DB, so there’s no compliment, no synergy because independently, they’ll perform the same. You can include it as a part of a rotation to justify a build, but you can’t claim synergy between them on a 1v1 comparison.

You claim that caltrops+DB is the most effective AoE a thief has. Does it outperform sword AoEs? If you can have the numbers to prove it, I bow my hat to you.

First of all, are you chilled or have swiftness? Having either can screw up this skill badly.

Einlanzer.1627:

D/D with a hybrid build gives you a significantly strong Death Blossom for AoE needs, which also stacks well with Caltrops for major bleed damage in melee range. It’s probably slightly less optimal than just S/P tanking, but it’s still quite good. Don’t listen to the folks that act like you have to be min/maxed all the time. Hybrid D/D is a super versatile set.

The problem is, what are you getting out of hybrid D/D? 1/4 evade isn’t exactly stunning, whirl finishers are lacklustre, so if you’re not getting higher DPS than a sword power build, then what’s the point? You’re just gimping yourself.

You don’t have to be min-maxed. You can do whatever you want. You just have to know that you aren’t playing optimally, if that’s fine, then that’s great, you can use whatever you want.

Famps.7461:

this my condition build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY6Yl0Mp5p1NxzJsPNRLBx50nh3vpNzRzHEAA-TRSAABaoEM6TCQO6Hgw0HAPBgrU6x0+DIp+zYKDAA-e

it is more or less pure condition but i have traits in Deadly arts. with this build Deadly Blossom is amazing. i use DB in melee combat and i use p/d when i need to go in range and kite the mob or something.

What’s the DPS on that build though?

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

^ give me a hybrid build that has higher DPS than a pure power build. I’ve been experimenting this morning, I can’t think one, not for solo, definitely not for group play.

The thing about thieves is that functionality isn’t actually nessecary most of the time. For example, if I’m running a a/m/s warrior, I need that weapon swap because of offhand CDs, so if say, axe 3 was a ranged AA instead, it might be handy.

However, thieves don’t have cooldowns, do if I need AoE, I’ll just switch to my sword. If I run a pure power build, the bleed on DB is useless, and the 1/4 evade with a pre-cast is far from reliable, so the skill doesn’t have much utility to compensate for its terrible damage.

If it added 5 sec weakness or 3 stacks of 10 sec vul, it might be useful. But as it is, I’m struggling to find any use for it outside of a condi build where you spam 3 over and over.

See my response above. Caltrops + Death Blossom on a hybrid or condi build gives you astonishingly good passive melee range AoE, something D/D is otherwise not capable of.

You people that myopically focus on DPS are just silly, especially in a game like GW2 where combat is very active and individually focused. I’d sacrifice a small amount of single target DPS on a training dummy for significantly greater AoE, passive damage, and general versatility in just about any situation.

The thing is, where would that passive damage be helpful?

If you go full power, the bleed damage is just negligible. If you go hybrid, I’m struggling to get the numbers to be favorable or for any justification of not going either way. If you go condi, first of all, as things stand, condi damage is pretty much useless in any grouped content, and second of all, we’re basically going back to 3 spam+ caltrops.

If I wanted AoE, I’ll just switch to a sword or shortbow until the trash/adds are down. They do a much better job of it, I don’t think I need to argue that. There’s no situation where I want to focus on target whilst doing low damage to its surrounding targets, it’s always either burn down the boss, or kill adds, because yoy always want to take out one threat or the other, not keep them both around for longer.

Even if we ignore all that, DB costs 4 initiative. Its just not a good use of that 4 initiative.

It’s not low damage. Death Blossom does more base damage than both Pistol Whip for less Initiative, significantly more damage than Cluster Bomb, and it synergizes extremely well with Caltrops, which is one of the Thief’s best melee range AoE tools.

You don’t kill mobs faster by damaging them one at a time than you do by dealing significant AoE damage while targeting one. Otherwise everyone wouldn’t switch to AoE when there are many targets, which is what always happens.

Sorry, you’re just not looking at it the right way. I don’t know what else to tell you.

See above for PW vs DB.

Where is the synergy with caltrops though? Caltrops does the same amount of damage with you using or not using DB.

Einlanzer.1627:

Karolis.4261:

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

What setup would you use for a hybrid build though. I’ve yet to see a working hybrid build that is competitive to a pure power or condi build.

However, you might have a point on the condi build. I went and tried stacking bleeds with DB and cantrops, it does stack very well. I’m not sure how the numbers compare to say, a warrior s/s build however. It’s also an extremely boring build that consists of spamming 1 skill over and over.

Again, it’s not about the raw DPS, it’s about the versatility. Damage coming from both physical and condition sources, and the ability to drop a significant amount of passive AoE damage while you focus fire one target are huge boons that going hybrid with D/D gives you the ability to do. You also get the smaller bonus of increased Poison efficacy, improved Caltrops (they stack super well), cripple, steal items, and whatever else you may have in your utility kitten nal.

Now, the kicker here, and something I’m sure some people aren’t getting, is that it’s largely a PvE vs PvP thing. The above versatility does tend to be more useful in PvE than it is in PvP. I’d bet a lot of people who complain about Death Blossom are primarily PvPers. As someone who primarily does PvE, I absolutely don’t want my Death Blossom going anywhere.

I’m primary doing pve now. If I want melee Aoe with evade frame I use S/P. From PvP perspective… I want Death blossom to get lost in the jungle and die from malaria, so it would get replaced by something actually useful like shadowshot on D/P.

Caltrops and Death Blossom does way more damage than a single Pistol Whip, it does it passively, you don’t always have the luxury of swapping sets in an instant, and you shouldn’t be required to run S/P secondary (another melee set) just to have access to basic AoE. Without Death Blossom, D/D would be just about the only set in the game with zero ability to deal damage to multiple targets.

The fact that you can’t see how it’s useful doesn’t make it not useful. You aren’t analyzing properly. Neither is anyone else complaining about the skill.

DB has a cast time of 1/2+1/4 aftercast= 0.75 second full cast. 0.6 skill coefficient.
PW cast a cast time of around 2.2. 3.3 skill coefficient.

This means even if we forget initiative and just assume you don’t ever run out, you can cast little less than 3 casts of DB in the time you full cast PW, giving DB a total comparable coefficient of 1.76. That’s 1.54 short.

Can you justify losing 1.54 coefficient in exchange for 9 stacks of 10s bleed in a power build, or justify going hybrid? This is ignoring that spamming DB 3 times costs 12 initiative vs PW’s 5.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

^ give me a hybrid build that has higher DPS than a pure power build. I’ve been experimenting this morning, I can’t think one, not for solo, definitely not for group play.

The thing about thieves is that functionality isn’t actually nessecary most of the time. For example, if I’m running a a/m/s warrior, I need that weapon swap because of offhand CDs, so if say, axe 3 was a ranged AA instead, it might be handy.

However, thieves don’t have cooldowns, do if I need AoE, I’ll just switch to my sword. If I run a pure power build, the bleed on DB is useless, and the 1/4 evade with a pre-cast is far from reliable, so the skill doesn’t have much utility to compensate for its terrible damage.

If it added 5 sec weakness or 3 stacks of 10 sec vul, it might be useful. But as it is, I’m struggling to find any use for it outside of a condi build where you spam 3 over and over.

See my response above. Caltrops + Death Blossom on a hybrid or condi build gives you astonishingly good passive melee range AoE, something D/D is otherwise not capable of.

You people that myopically focus on DPS are just silly, especially in a game like GW2 where combat is very active and individually focused. I’d sacrifice a small amount of single target DPS on a training dummy for significantly greater AoE, passive damage, and general versatility in just about any situation.

The thing is, where would that passive damage be helpful?

If you go full power, the bleed damage is just negligible. If you go hybrid, I’m struggling to get the numbers to be favorable or for any justification of not going either way. If you go condi, first of all, as things stand, condi damage is pretty much useless in any grouped content, and second of all, we’re basically going back to 3 spam+ caltrops.

If I wanted AoE, I’ll just switch to a sword or shortbow until the trash/adds are down. They do a much better job of it, I don’t think I need to argue that. There’s no situation where I want to focus on target whilst doing low damage to its surrounding targets, it’s always either burn down the boss, or kill adds, because yoy always want to take out one threat or the other, not keep them both around for longer.

Even if we ignore all that, DB costs 4 initiative. Its just not a good use of that 4 initiative.

^ give me a hybrid build that has higher DPS than a pure power build. I’ve been experimenting this morning, I can’t think one, not for solo, definitely not for group play.

The thing about thieves is that functionality isn’t actually nessecary most of the time. For example, if I’m running a a/m/s warrior, I need that weapon swap because of offhand CDs, so if say, axe 3 was a ranged AA instead, it might be handy.

However, thieves don’t have cooldowns, do if I need AoE, I’ll just switch to my sword. If I run a pure power build, the bleed on DB is useless, and the 1/4 evade with a pre-cast is far from reliable, so the skill doesn’t have much utility to compensate for its terrible damage.

If it added 5 sec weakness or 3 stacks of 10 sec vul, it might be useful. But as it is, I’m struggling to find any use for it outside of a condi build where you spam 3 over and over.

@above: meant for poster above you.

A lot of the complaints are more like disappointment than hate.

Anet just really seems to lack direction. The fact that the game us balanced around PvP but updates around PvE just says it all. Stuff like the 50% Dancing Dagger a while back just screams that they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing.

The core game is a mess, with broken skills since launch, horrible class balance, with a lot of abilities and traits where you really are strained to find any actual use for, and yet that’s all on the back burner.

Then you got stuff like the hilarious Chaos of Lyssa drop rate to add insult to injury, and you got a recipe for people to be annoyed about.

I’m also thinking of what if d/d thieves gained a huge DPS buff for being in 100% endurance and buffed DB’s evade to 1/2? Then you might have an elite meta where the optimal play is to use DB’s 1/2 second evade to dodge stuff.

^ does it compare well to a pure power or condi build though? By that I mean, what’s its DPS?

I really can’t see it comparing well, just because on D/D, you can choose to specialise on either. It has the potential to work well on warrior s/s, because your damage is forcefully split into the two halves.

With d/d, you can completely ignore either half, and since thief skills have no CD, there’s no rotations which could benefit from having both halves.

In other words, if you decide on going hybrid, just thinking of it theoretically, you’re basically gimping yourself.

Another point I would like to make (at Anet) is that if you’re gonna make a system where you can’t swap out weapon skills at all, you need to make every skill have some sort of a use in every setup it can go on. It was fine putting skills with a 1% situational use in GW1, because you can slot it in in that 1%, and slot it out in the 99%. But when you got a skill hogging your skillbar which has 0 use whatsoever in your setup and there’s nuts all you can do about it, it’s just annoying.

Until they fix all the particle effects, I’m not touching WvW for ‘fun’. It’s not very fun when you’re playing with a massive headache.

Devata.6589:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’d rather a min in the cash shop (no impact on game play) vs having something like ascended stats in the gem shop (impacts game play).

They have to put something in the shop to generate income. GW2 isn’t build to work like GW1. I’m perfectly content with cosmetic, trivial items being there.

It does not effect YOUR game-play. In fact if they put ascended stats in the cash-shop it would not effect my game-play. However I would still be against it as it does effect the game-play for other people.

You might be fine with those items because they don’t effect your game-play. I’m not because overall it still effects the game-play just not your game-play. There are only trivial for your gameplay not for game-play in general.

And what I am saying is not that they have to do anything for free. Simply that they make there money with expansions in stead of with the cash-shop so they don’t have to put any of those things in the cash-shop.

How do you know they can make enough money with expansions alone?

The question is though, why would you let them sit in SR for 19 seconds?

Astralporing.1957:

miriforst.1290:

Obviously you survived because you stood near the healing turret.

Shhhh, don’t mention that, we don’t want them to know about this. Everybody would start using healing turrets and what then? Even rangers might have trouble with that.

‘Engi op, pls nerf’

This thread still exists basically means ANet doesn’t read the profession balance forums anymore lol.

What setup would you use for a hybrid build though. I’ve yet to see a working hybrid build that is competitive to a pure power or condi build.

However, you might have a point on the condi build. I went and tried stacking bleeds with DB and cantrops, it does stack very well. I’m not sure how the numbers compare to say, a warrior s/s build however. It’s also an extremely boring build that consists of spamming 1 skill over and over.

^ Defiance just throws that out of the window though. Against any boss, your stealth on sword, and pistol 4/5 are basically useless. I don’t really see much sense in using sword number 2 either because it’ll screw up positioning. So all you’re left with is pistol whip and the AA really.