Guild Wars 2

Ferever.7014:

Xae Isareth.1364:

McWolfy.5924:

Gw1 was dual professions. I miss that and the body block system.
Btw this game realy needs something realy new. No serious changes in the last 2 years.

ANet just seems to be afraid to do anything. Judging by how much effort they went into to make the LS (the results are arguable), adding more skills seems like a molehill of a task compared to that mountain.

So the only conclusion I can make is that they’re just too scared that it would screw up balance in the game.

That is actually the reason why new skills aren’t in yet they have to make sure the balance is equal across all 3 game modes basically and its no easy task.

It’s an impossible task. No MMO has ever reached perfect balance. Perfect balance is only attainable if you just stop updating the game altogether.

If you stop updating your MMO, then it’s dead.

Best:

-Art design and the best dress-up MMO I’ve played (I’m being serious, if I had to choose between gear that looked awesome and ugly gear with higher stats, I’d go for the awesome-looking gear).
-Dynamic events.
-A combat system with a lot of potential an innovation behind it.

Worst:

-The most shallow combat customization I’ve ever seen in an AAA MMO, a 180 contrast from it’s prequel, of which the opposite could be said.
-Terrible storytelling, plots which doesn’t grab your interest at all.
-Balancing updates which do not happen anywhere near frequently enough.
-Zero sense of character progression after 80.
-Lack of expansion on core content.
-Dungeons. I don’t need to throw an essay at why they’re terribad.

TurtleDragon.3108:

dace.8019:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Imagine trying to use Guardian hammer with that system lol.

Yeah, you might need to use #3 #5 more than once a day.

#$ has a 40s cd. #3 won’t hit every target unless they’re in a line.

The point is, it would be incredibly annoying to have to constantly chase enemies just because the AA has a light field on it. You’ll also lose a ton of symbol ticks from not being stationary. Like someone else said above, you shouldn’t need to bring extra utility skills just to make your weapon set work for 5-10 seconds.

I don’t really see a problem with that. No one complains about players having the ability to move in PvP.

To me, if enemies ran away when I throw my fields at them, all it means is that I need to learn to adapt an counter that.

Izamar.4260:

So does the warrior offer some long time fun and motivation to keep getting better and better?

It depends on what you do. If you solo dungeons or PvP, there’s always motivation to get better. That’s for any class.

For normal PvE, not really. Warrior is a very easy class to play by design and has very high survivability, and there isn’t really much decision making when you use a skill. That results in a class which never really pushes you to do better and is very easy to master.

If you play thief then try warrior, you’ll feel like you just turned godmode on.

McWolfy.5924:

Gw1 was dual professions. I miss that and the body block system.
Btw this game realy needs something realy new. No serious changes in the last 2 years.

ANet just seems to be afraid to do anything. Judging by how much effort they went into to make the LS (the results are arguable), adding more skills seems like a molehill of a task compared to that mountain.

So the only conclusion I can make is that they’re just too scared that it would screw up balance in the game.

Einlanzer.1627:

Sauzo.6821:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Staff does have the highest potential DPS against immobile targets, which is why it works in PvE where things don’t really care if you spam 2 on them all day.
The reason people don’t tend to run it too often in PvE is because your group wants you to stack, and you have exactly one defensive weapon skill in fire, which makes you stupidly squishy. LH is next in line, but brings stuns, mobility, blinds, and blast finishers making it a vastly better PvE weapon overall.

Really the only things I would have changed on staff would be slightly higher water damage (it should be low but not that low), a bit of air improvement (Gust is painful, the blind is okay but needs lower cast time to be effective), and less overlap between earth and air, which seem to both be control focused.

Hit the nail on the head with this one.

Yeah I agree here. I do also feel like Earth’s autoattack is similar to Water’s in that it gives up too much damage for the utility it has.

Stacking isn’t really a problem, the reason why people don’t run staff is because it doesn’t stack might, and to get the most out of it, you need to sacrifice Weak Spot.

But what’s special here is that the staff in this respect was designed to be one half of the key. It doesn’t have many accessible finishers, but it has every field at it’s disposal. The devs probably tried to encourage teamwork when they made it like that.

It’s also probably the most boring to use out of the metabuilds, I’d guess that somewhat contributes to it.

I think the design is fine in concept. If you look at staff vs other weapons, when it does what it does, it’s the best of it. Unlike the others, it just doesn’t do a bit of everything at once and instead having each element having an extreme focus on one aspect.

In other words, conceptually, you’d transform from full DPS to full healer to full support depending on what the fight needs. If we had content which played into that concept, it’d be ok. The problem like many things gone wrong in GW2, is that the content doesn’t play along with the design.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

Flamewall adds quite a bit of vuln because it’s multi-tick while Ring of Fire is just one hit. The might-stacking combo of /f is usually a bit more involved, too, so you in general have a lot more hits (and thus opportunities to apply vuln) on your target.

In long fights if you’re at 25 might, 25 vuln, staff is highest DPS, then scepter-hammer stuff, then D/F, assuming no wall/LF shenanigans. A lot of ele pairs have the potential to maintain that 25 might/vuln but scepter hammer eles would need to take conjurer and use some different rotations if the battle is going to be very long (> 40 sec).

Oh right. Forgot Ring of Fire was one hit. It’s been a long while since I used x/d.

The reason why I was asking was because I’ve grown to like using d/f-LH. I pug a lot and s/f-LH isn’t very reliable there because things can go either/all horribly wrong, someone dies next to my hammer/places a banner over it, or even worse, they just steal my hammer.

Carighan.6758:

Wethospu.6437:

Try soloing a dungeon without paying attention to what bosses are doing. The biggest problem GW2 has that the game is really easy, not that we don’t have a trinity.

Exactly this. GW2 has tricky abilities everywhere.
Even open world bosses can cause 0 damage to you if you act right, and then staggering your dodges and skill uses becomes quite problematic. For example, try doing phase 1 claw in the middle of the lane without ever getting hit and without getting feared to the turrets behind you.

It’s quite possible, but not really easy.

Only, and this is crucial: None of this is required.
ANet added a host of complex combat options to the PvE, but made all of them entirely optional and a part of “perfecting it, for the sake of perfection”.

Whether that is smart (no one feels left out) or stupid (no one really notices the complexity) is debatable. I’m leaning towards the latter, but I can see the merit of the super low difficulty.

In MMOs, most players work off incentives. No one will bother with perfection if there’s little incentive to do so.

Conditions cleansing isn’t required in most cases, so people just ignore them. Consideration into survivability in your build is not required so people just ignore that in favor of more DPS. Boon stripping isn’t necessary so people just glance past it.

When you make it that nothing is required, you then in a MMO get a whole bunch of what’s perceived to be useless things. Then when you go as far as to balance classes and weapon sets around it, you get what’s perceived to be useless classes or weapon sets.

MMORPGs are built on requirements and incentives. Tanks and healers only exist in a trinity system because they are required, mechanics are only followed because they needed to be. It’s not only the old trinity MMOs either: you see how action-MMOs like Vindictus have fast paced and engaging combat? That’s not because players felt like doing that, but because the game made it so that if you don’t, you die.

It’s even human nature. We always seek for the route of lowest resistance. If you don’t need to work, you won’t turn up the next day. If you don’t need to study to pass the exam you’ll just slack off all year.

Stripping away requirements means you just get a mess.

maha.7902:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

maha.7902:

1. you don’t understand the combat in this game
2. you dislike the combat because you’re just mad your class doesn’t work so you call it bad and inefficient – the fact of the matter is however – you simply don’t likei t. it’s not bad, it’s not poorly designed, it’s not shallow – YOU DON’T LIKE IT

so stop hiding behind the veil of encounters supposedly being badly designed, you simply just don’t like it and are trying to come up with justifications in your head.

I don’t really understand this response, you’re not really countering any of my arguments. Nor are you addressing anything I said.

It’s pretty hard to deny that each class has strength’s and weaknesses. And it’s also hard to deny that each class’ strength is not equally important in encounters. Some “strengths” are even rendered completely useless. So obviously that means there’s not a level playing field in PVE.

Is it really that strange that certain classes are highly desired for dungeons (guardians, warriors, mesmers) when we know that their strengths are more important in dungeons than the strengths of other classes?

Cleave, DPS, stability, party wide boons, reflection. These are the “strengths” that people ask for a lot in groups, because it fits with the DPS centered approach of the game’s combat. And these are all mechanics spread unequally across specific classes, not equally among all classes. That is a problem.

It’s not a problem otherwise classes would just be a homogenous blob and we might as well just have one class called “fighter” which does everything.

It is a problem when those strengths have little use in a game mode and you balance that class in regard to having that strength in that game mode, which seems to be what’s happening in regards to classes like Necros in PvE.

^ that’s interesting. What’s making s/f generate more vulnerability than s/d though?

What about in a longer fight, where the DPS evens out?

Weirdly enough, I do actually craft legendaries for fun.

Made 2 and on my third one. I don’t really craft them because I want the weapon itself, but because I need an objective in MMOs.

Getting the precursor is a pain in the kitten that should be changed, but after you got past that abomination, looking at the mats stacking up is what drives me to do dungeons and play the game.

Yeah, weird, I know.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Every armor set does not have to be the best in every situation. Nor does every drop have to be a good one. That said, sometimes it seems to me that the odds are stacked against getting the stats one most desires on gear drops. A far greater problem, imo, with regard to the rare Ascended drops in GW2 is that if you get one that is not what you want, you cannot TP or salvage it.

I wouldn’t want to make it tradable, because there’s a good chance that by doing so, you’d make crafting a moot system.

Stooperdale.3560:

“The problem is the enemies that willfully stay in black powder or that willfully keep using projectiles on WoR.”

Thieves have only two off hand weapons and they can throw one of them away if AI mobs don’t stand in black powder, really! Combo finishers might as well not be there once enemies are not in the fields. There are also going to be other problems with players using aoe fields just to make enemies run around until they die. It isn’t a simple fix to mend the AI.

Immobilize, cripple, knockdown. You should need to make enemies stay in fields, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Heck, it’d actually make cripple and immob more useful in PvE, which is brilliant.

If enemies get trolled like that, then you could make the AI better. Add in conditions in the code like only moving from certain AoEs.

Errant.1942:

Xae Isareth.1364:

but if they choose say, Arah P4, then we might see something interesting.

Yeah, 5 minutes of ranging Melandru sure sounds super interesting. Especially seeing how melee tactics involve quite a bit of risk, and people don’t really want to have people die in that path. 4 manning Grenth is easy, 3 manning becomes obnoxious and 2 manning is going to be a serious pain in the kitten . Not so much because it’s hard to do the Wraith (Wethospu solo’ed it, so technically it’s possible, but I think it’s safe to say not everyone is Wethospu) but because dodging the lifesteal is going to get harder and harder once you’ve got less people.

That’s the whole point. There’s a risk reward consideration there. You can choose to take risk, and have a chance to get ahead of the other team, or choose to play safe, and hope the other team screws up.

That doesn’t exist in say, AC3, because apart from maybe the first spider pull, there is just the one speedrun tactic, and zero risk of death.

Besides, there’s no excitement in watching AC3. You know how it’s gonna play out, no one’s gonna screw up, and it’s a dungeon you’ve played two billion times already. It’s about exciting to watch as watching your own back hand.

Reikou.7068:

Xae Isareth.1364:

nearlight.3064:

This is a very interesting discussion. As a non-thief related example, when I play ele in hotjoin spvp I typically run glassy S/D or S/F fresh air, which is not the current meta (celestial D/D or glassy staff). In fact I got in a long conversation with another ele who spent a while convincing how in every way S/D is inferior to D/D ele because the surivability and mobility are lower and that he thinks that D/D strength runes has better sustained damage, mobility, easier to use burst, and better cleave for trying to kitten up stealth. And he is probably right for most of those things, but I don’t really like to do the same thing in pvp as everyone else. I don’t care if scepter is an inferior weapon. I like the idea of being a glassy magical ninja bursting people down with complicated air burst combos, and even if I am hindered by survivability, mobility, crappy autoattacks, and long cooldowns, I don’t care about that meta because I feel really cool playing this way, and I generally do I great job as long as fights aren’t stacked ridiculously against me

That being said the pve meta is a more serious nature, because dungeons/fractals take time, and we don’t want them to take up more time than needed to get the rewards we want.

In your case, it’s kind of like you working as a doctor but being paid the wages of a secondary school teacher. You love being a doctor, you love saving lives, but most people cannot help but feel that they are just wasting more effort for less rewards.

Slight addendum.

Especially when the option to be work as a doctor and be paid as a doctor “should be” is out there.

Not this poster’s case. He admitted himself that his s/d requires more effort and is also at the same time worse than d/d.

Saint.5647:

@Xae, well, they’re in a tough spot. It has been explained over and over, but I will cover it quickly again.

Stacking in corners to LOS is often done when it isn’t needed. The main offenders are PuGs but the idea comes from watching successful speed clears and trying to imitate. It isn’t that you’re immune when stacked in a corner, like some players may think.

It’s that players now know enough to bring a certain team comp to trivialize most content. Even a mediocre party knows to spam blinds and reflects on mobs to keep them useless.

It’s a tough place for Anet to be. The only way forward is an AI buff. They keep trying to nerf the actual skills, which is a huge mistake. The problem is the enemies that willfully stay in black powder or that willfully keep using projectiles on WoR. Making reflects not work on random enemies isn’t the answer. Making enemies with perma-stability isn’t the answer.

It’s more than that really. If you look at CoF P1’s boss for example, no matter how great you make it’s AI, it’d still be a complete faceroll. The vanilla dungeons had a lot of mechanics that can just be brute-forced or fights which basically had no mechanics whatsoever.

Whoever made the earlier dungeons just screwed way too much up. Stacking itself isn’t that much of a problem, people stack on Lupi, people stack on Molten Berserker, they’re well-made, challenging fights.

Just like you can’t make a tank n spank hard in a trinity MMO, you can’t make a fight with no difficult mechanics hard in an action-MMO.

Elememtalist. D/F especially.

It really depends on how you want to play PvE. If you want to use optimised builds in most group content, I personally would not use the scepter or the staff, as the metabuilds for those are as exciting as a GS camp warrior with half your skills blanked out.

Purple Miku.7032:

Bingo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Forum-FAQ/first

---

Stacking is not an unintended tactic. There’s nowhere that you can find proof that Arenanet intended you to ONLY fight a mob out in the open. Making use of a mob’s line of sight is a very very very common tactic used on basically every mmorpg ever.

If you choose to fight away from your group and not share boons and not cleave enemy mobs, basically all you are saying is “I don’t want to deal damage and want to have as little success as possible so please keep your boons away from me.”

In most MMOs, there’s a lot of mechanics to counter it though. I mean, even pre-expansion WoW had stuff like iirc, C’thun’s bouncing eye beams that did 1.5x damage after each bounce and had infinite target cap (or was C’thun in TBC, can’t remember anymore).

It’s especially a weird occurence in GW2. The combat system is built on one of mobility and active movement, it just seems unlikely that ArenaNet then went ‘yeah. lets make fights where you don’t move at all’, especially when it turns into not only not moving, but there being no skill in it whatsoever and everyone just facerolling.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

maha.7902:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think most MMO gamers understand GW2 is pretty much a clusterkitten of spamming skills with as little coordination as possible and still be able to get the “job” in decent timing. This game is a boring DPS race no matter what, with a meta it’s just a boring fast DPS race. I don’t think many people care about this stupid tournament that proves nothing other than I have gud muscle memory.

I agree, you should get a team together and each bag yourselves 150g and 2000 gems since gw2 pve is just faceroll ^^

Yes, because winning the tournament proves that GW2 is a boring DPS race. Having the tournament in the first place is what proves GW2 is a boring DPS race. Keep thinking you’re pro for playing the meta, maybe some day it’ll be true.

Depends on which path they choose really. If they choose AC3 or something, yeah, not much fun watching that because it’s a stack n spank where the only thing to consider is how fast can I pull the mobs as there’s pretty much 0 chance of failure, but if they choose say, Arah P4, then we might see something interesting.

wads.5730:

pls limit 1 per class, so not everyone runs literally the same meta comp

Then everyone would just run the next best comp…

Not exactly a sub-class, but I quite liked the ideas of being able to modify your skills. It’s been used in various games before, like TSW’s augment system or ESO’s morphs, something in GW2 would be like:

For Dancing Dagger (thief dagger #4), you can:

1. Keep its original form.
2. Remove the cripple, remove ability to bounce between targets, reduce damage coefficient to 0.3, but reduce initiative cost to 0.
2. Reduce damage down to 0.3, increase cripple to 6 seconds.
3. Increase cost to 4, grants self 3 seconds of Swiftness on cast.
4. Removes direct damage, bleeds foes instead.
5. Removes cripple effect, bleeds foes instead.

Altering the skill (including changing it back to its original form) costs 5 SP.

nearlight.3064:

This is a very interesting discussion. As a non-thief related example, when I play ele in hotjoin spvp I typically run glassy S/D or S/F fresh air, which is not the current meta (celestial D/D or glassy staff). In fact I got in a long conversation with another ele who spent a while convincing how in every way S/D is inferior to D/D ele because the surivability and mobility are lower and that he thinks that D/D strength runes has better sustained damage, mobility, easier to use burst, and better cleave for trying to kitten up stealth. And he is probably right for most of those things, but I don’t really like to do the same thing in pvp as everyone else. I don’t care if scepter is an inferior weapon. I like the idea of being a glassy magical ninja bursting people down with complicated air burst combos, and even if I am hindered by survivability, mobility, crappy autoattacks, and long cooldowns, I don’t care about that meta because I feel really cool playing this way, and I generally do I great job as long as fights aren’t stacked ridiculously against me

That being said the pve meta is a more serious nature, because dungeons/fractals take time, and we don’t want them to take up more time than needed to get the rewards we want.

In your case, it’s kind of like you working as a doctor but being paid the wages of a secondary school teacher. You love being a doctor, you love saving lives, but most people cannot help but feel that they are just wasting more effort for less rewards.

I use healer’s chests to unlock skins .__.

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Ropechef.6192:

Xae Isareth.1364:

haviz.1340:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their system

And you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.

The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.

and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???

Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day

Have you ever been a raid tank?

If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.

If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.

Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.

GW2 does not have raids. It never will.

If the trinity was implemented you could afk the all the dungeons with just the healer being forced to not go afk.

Can you imagine GW2’s content if you didn’t have to bother with positioning and keeping yourself alive? How engaging do you think that would be?

Have you ever actually played any game with the trinity in it?

To put things bluntly, if you think all you have to do as a tank or DPS in a game with the trinity in it is just afk and let the healer do it all, then you have no right to debate about it.

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

haviz.1340:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their system

And you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.

The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.

That’s false.

GW2’s combat is more realistic in its approach.
In a real world scenario everyone is “dps” – you don’t have tanks and healers. These roles were created and enforced artificially in a virtual environment where the AI cannot simply choose to bypass them.

They’re “made up” – the approach GW2 has is more realistic : Fight and kill while trying your best to keep yourself alive. That’s what an action oriented MMO should go for.

You keep saying we only have " dps " in GW2 but there are plenty of gear choices that are far from optimal DPS.

And if by doing damage we qualify as “dps” by your logic then applying the same logic we’re also all tanks. And all healers. Since players in GW2 sustain themselves via their own heals while actually having boss aggro for a while during a fight.

GW2 does not have " only DPS" it has done away with the Trinity altogether.

A “DPS” in a classic trinity encounter gears and specs in order to push out most damage possible since the tanking and healing are taken care of by others.
In GW2 players manage both their own tanking and their self-healing so by the game’s very design you can’t be a “DPS” from a classic MMO since you’re performing and taking on a role that’s much wider than the standard DPS role.

It is unfair to overlook this fact when presenting things like " GW2 has just dps, while tanks and healers were scrapped". It is false – GW2 has done away with the entire trinity.

And you’ll ask – how are you not DPS when going full zerker? The answer is simple:

1) I cannot make sure the boss doesn’t aggro me – for a while it will engage me and I’ll have to deal with that ( the tank’s job).

2)I can’t opt out of having a self-heal skill and add another damage or damage buffing skills ( healer’s job).

Note the word ‘often’. Look at the builds everyone uses for AC to CoE. Do they focus on anything but DPS? No, they do not.

In most of the content. You aren’t a tank or a healer, you aren’t a hybrid between them. You’re just DPS. Why? Do you think of other things than DPS when you make a build for CoE? No.

People aren’t complaining that the other two aspects don’t exist in GW2, but because for almost everything, you need to pay no heed to them. A DPS in a trinity has armor value as well, but that doesn’t mean they’re being offtanks now does it?

The boss aggroing you is only actually meaningful if you have to do something different whilst it’s engaging you. In most of the dungeons, I don’t care if the boss engages me, because either its mechanics affect everyone so it doesn’t change a thing, or I just continue facerolling. Do you do anything different when subject alpha aggros you? Do you go ‘oh crap’ when CoF P1’s end boss turns to you? No, you don’t. There’s no threat, there’s no adrenaline rush, there’s nothing.

You do have places like FotM and Arah where you might start thinking of other options, but they’re an exception instead of the norm, and they aren’t even played by most of the players because very few people can run Arah fast enough to make it worthwhile and FotM just isn’t worthwhile at all, so the majority of players just see everything they do as faceroll.

In WoW per say, the game doesn’t go ‘oh by the way, you need a tank now’ only when you go into raids. The trinity is always present throughout the game. In GW2, other factors than DPS are just moot for most of the game.

In conclusion. I don’t think I ever said I wanted the trinity back, that system itself is actually flawed in the same way as GW2’s is: focusing too much on one aspect. However, the trinity as an aspect of the 3-sided consideration of healing, power and defense should be in every game in some form or the other.

babazhook.6805:

>>DB for PvE only works in a DB spam build. I don’t think that’s a design decision. No sensible developer would intend you to go and spam one skill over and over.

You would be wrong. There a reason thieves use INI. That is so they can use a same skill several times over. Other classes have cool downs to prevent that.

A condition build that relies on bleeds for its damage needs to see the player apply bleeds over and over again.

The Thief has less sources of these bleeds then does the warrior or necro. Due to the nature of ini it is pointless to give more separate sources of bleeds on his weapon set.

Just take the warrior as example on his bleed set weapon the sword.

There are two bleeds on the AA chain of 8 seconds each. There is a bleed on the immobilize of the burst skill of 8! stacks. There is one on riposte that adds 4 stacks for 12 seconds.

All of those others will go on cool down.

The Thief is not limited by Cool Downs so the thief uses the same skill several times in a row to achieve the same effect. If it PD then it a spam of #1 to apply bleed. It is d/d then it a spam of #3 to apply bleed.

The INI limits both sources even though the P/d source costs no ini by using much lower bleed durations on the auto attack meaning INI has to be used to get a sneak attack off.

The INTENT of the ini system is to allow the choice to spa. It comes with risk but the choice is there. If we went to a cooldown system then in order for conditions to work at all on a thief MORE SOURCES would have to be added.

The reason there only one source on each condi weapon set of bleeds is not because “D?D was intended to be direct damage” it was because only one source is needed for bleeds.

You don’t have that choice with d/d. Your AA doesn’t use INI, your steal is a CD, and your other skills are all power-based. So the only thing which is worth spending INI on is DB in a pure condi build.

The only thing I can imagine where other skills would come into play and you would use a condi build would be if you had a fight where it’s necessary to take down a boss with conditions but there’s phases where you need burst direct damage. Anet doesn’t want to make anything necessary or design encounters which forces you to use a certain build, so that just seems moot.

If by design you’re just supposed to spam DB and that’s it on D/D… then I can’t imagine what were they thinking, because having 1 button gameplay is never a good idea.

What they could do to salvage this problem a bit is to give thieves a 10% damage bonus against bleeding targets. Then at least in a solo environment, DB would be perfect: just the right bleed duration where you would use DB regularly but not spam it to keep up bleed uptime.

Healers exist in GW2, it’s just not optimal in a good group to have them.

Darox.8069:

It’s really a matter of context.

In a record run you would have fights last no longer than 15 seconds, so the front-loaded damage and might generation of S+LH would be superior. D/F generates might continuously, so it takes time before it reaches its full buffing potential. Assuming your group is able to provide full buffs, there are some S+LH(FGS) specs that are designed to beat any other dps. You get the idea.

I would say that DF is the best general option. But you can specialise more with other builds.

Just thinking about this further (no maths sadly, not in the mood to look at too much GW2 numbers but the we already know the maths behind it anyways.)

If you got sub-15 fights with 2 eles, assuming no FGS, it would be better to use s/d for its very high front-loaded burst.

In a long-ish fight of 25~+ seconds, if you don’t use strength runes, I was toying with a possibility of both of you using s/f+LH and one of you go with filler for 5 seconds and then start mightstacking to fill the gap between rotations, but then it would be better for the first guy to go d/f anyways because then you’re on full rotations so the DPS evens out and d/f stacks more vul. It takes 3-5 seconds depending on how fast you can keyboard dance to blast 5 times (the less agile amongst us like me being more towards 5 seconds), so you won’t be able to take advantage of the extra blast on s/f anyways.

If you don’t need vul/fury but need might, then its still the same, because then you’d be just running a high DPS LH build, which still fits into both scenarios as I’m quite sure even if you just spam LW on dagger, its better DPS than what you can do with scepter alone.

If you don’t need vul, fury or might, and the fight isn’t too short then both of you should just go staff.

So Just thinking about it. Doesn’t that make s/f only optimal if you’re the only ele in the group?

Carries over to everything.

Einlanzer.1627:

Xae Isareth.1364:

What they could do to make it a more viable weapon for PvE (I think PvE content-wise is just beyond saving right now unless Anet pulls out the stops and makes some massive changes like an AI rework) is to tone down fire DPS, and buff the others.

@Curse wouldn’t that just be the same thing as giving you all your 20 skills at once?

That’s pretty much exactly what I was suggesting, because the problem in PvE is that you rarely benefit from staying in anything but Fire for any length of time because DPS is king 90% of the time. I didn’t suggest nerfing Fire’s DPS, though, because on the surface it doesn’t appear warranted. If it does more DPS than Dagger or Scepter can then that is kind of silly and I agree with you – I’ve never very thoroughly tested it.

It does more damage than dagger, and a buttload more than scepter. In fact, staff ele has the highest possible personal DPS in the game besides perhaps mesmers, and we know why mesmer isn’t really a contender for viable highest DPS.

The only thing holding staff back is that you need to pretty much completely trade away utility to have that damage, so if you get rid of that restriction whilst letting it keep the damage high, you got a ridiculously overpowered weapon without any weaknesses: it would be highest DPS, great utility, and also ranged.

It’s damage goes down a lot if your target moves, which is why staff is a terrible 1v1 weapon but in group PvE, that’s not a problem.

They can fix it as it is, but it’d require doing stuff they really don’t want to do because either it’ll require a lot of work (redesigning AI and encounters), or make content in a way they don’t want to make them (e.g. requiring healers).

One of the more interesting concepts ESO had in its raid content was an enemy who corrupts your beneficial AoEs and used them against you.

So in GW2’s case, it’d make your water fields damage you, your fire fields weaken you, etc.

scerevisiae.1972:

While pretty, this game doesn’t hold a candle to the first game for skill&mechanics design and overall coolness. All the stuff that made GW1 a unique, cerebral game got left out.

The thing is, they left out all the good stuff, then replaced them with new good stuff. Classes in this game for example, apart from mesmer, guardian and warrior mechanics (which are kind of just extra skills) really makes the classes unique.

I tend to think GW2 has ‘cooler’ skills in terms of being fun to use in a console-esque wow, that’s so kitten-looking, kind of sense. Not in the MMO ‘wow this is an interesting skill’ sense.

they basically made a completely different game. I don;t really understand why they got this great foundation but then laid a whole new one instead of building on it.

Gilburt.9146:

Invictus.1503:

“While Scarlet may be out of the picture for now, in her final moments she made it clear that the heroes of Tyria need to prepare for a new master”

Honestly, I think it just means she’s out of the picture in that the full consequences of her actions have not come into effect yet (i.e. Mordremoth hasn’t fully awakened or conspicuously attacked the denizens of Tyria yet).

I could be wrong though. There very well could be an undead Scarlet riding atop Mordremoth in season 2. Get excited everyone! =D

I think that quote probably refers to that you’ll find out why she did what she did in season 2. We never fully understood her actions…

…well, at least I hope we didn’t. She saw a dragon, it went boo and she went nuts just doesn;t sound like a good plot device to me.

Foosnark.1784:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The truth is that if you want to optimise, which is what the ‘useless’ in the title refers to, your preference has no role in it.

In other words, ‘useless’ does not actually mean ‘useless’.

If someone who was a fan of a DB spam build started a thread titles “Cloak & Dagger: Useless?” don’t you think people would be all over it claiming that, in their builds, it is absolutely not useless?

And how would that be any different?

Xae Isareth.1364:

You’re using DB to inflict bleeds. Great. then what do you use the other skills for?

As you no doubt already know, you don’t need any other weapon skills with a DB spam build, except for the occasional autoattack. That doesn’t mean the build is broken or the skills are broken. It means that it’s a build that doesn’t require 5 weapon skills.

A power D/D backstab build also only requires 2 weapon skills at its core.

You don’t have to use every skill on your bar if you don’t actually need them.

It is useless in an optimized build. When you go into PHIW land, there is no debate to start with. Heck staff guardian #1 is useful in a single target fight because Gandalf is awesome.

A fixed weapon set should never have contradictory skills which don’t work together.

DB for PvE only works in a DB spam build. I don’t think that’s a design decision. No sensible developer would intend you to go and spam one skill over and over.

dlonie.6547:

shrugs

It’s your choice. No one is forcing anyone to run meta or PHIW. Why does this thread exist?

Well. In terms of good game design, you will have a lot of people who can’t enjoy themselves unless they run optimised builds, so you make the meta enjoyable and interesting as possible, and correct it when the meta becomes something like spamming 2 skills over and over.

Darox.8069:

You can theory craft for every context, although my favourite is definitely the fractals, and that’s why I designed the DF build for in the first place

I don’t do much “casual” speedrunning. I find it quite boring. I like record attempts because they make you think out of the box. Otherwise PHYW fractals is the way to go!

It is boring but that’s where the money is .__.

Regarding front-loaded might (not burst, that makes a difference, depending on how long the fight is). Would that really make a difference? In your faceroll dungeons, you’d just rinse all your blasts on d/f straight off anyways, so…

1. In situation 1, you’d load 18 stacks, staff man loads 9. 25 stacks of might straight off.
2. In situation 2, you both load 15. 25 stacks straight off.

So either way, you get 25 stacks at the start, then you just maintain it from there.

The thing is, isn’t that what balances the staff? Fire has the highest potential DPs an ele can do, water has some of the most powerful heals, whilst earth and air provides very strong control. But the catch is that unlike other weapons, you have to choose one at a time.

If you remove that limitation, wouldn’t it just make staff downright the strongest weapon for everything?

It’s already arguably overpowered as it does the highest potential DPS, whilst being ranged, which is against the one consistent rule used for balancing throughout the game: melee DPS is higher than ranged in any circumstance.

Zel is right. Staff seems to be balanced around the idea that in PvE, you will need everything, so you would have to decide what you want to focus on with a staff. However, in reality, almost always, you go for DPS above all because nothing else is worth sacrificing it that much for, and we got our current problem of staff being even more boring that camping GS on a warrior.

What they could do to make it a more viable weapon for PvE (I think PvE content-wise is just beyond saving right now unless Anet pulls out the stops and makes some massive changes like an AI rework) is to tone down fire DPS, and buff the others.

@Curse wouldn’t that just be the same thing as giving you all your 20 skills at once?

^ Haha, true.

Should be interesting to see what people do in the upcoming tournament.

That’s true. However, I tend to think that theorycrafting starts losing its purpose a bit when fights are <15 seconds, because the difference it would make becomes a bit trivial. Even if you lose 20% DPS, which is huge, it’s only making a difference of a few seconds, which is rather of little consequence.

It’s great if you want to chase records, but then for your average dungeon run, most players don’t do that so its good to focus on a general position.

This got me thinking. If we can assume s-LH and d/f have very similar DPS, doesn’t that mean in a situation where theres 2 eles in the same party, and you need might/vul/fury, if you both run strength runes, shouldn’t at least one ele go d/f?

First of all, with 2 eles in strength runes, if you aren’t getting 25 might, one of you is screwing up. So then you have 2 possible situations:

1. One is on staff, the other using LH to blast LF. In this case, it doesn’t really matter what you use in your actual weapon set, because LH+LF with d/f or s will get you 25 might. Given that d/f has the insurance that your DPS doesn’t flop to the floor if you lose LH, d/f is the better choice.

2. Both of you are blasting independently. You both will generate 15+ stacks of might, so again, in terms if might/fury, there’s no difference between s/LH and d/f, but d/f pumps out more vul and has better survivability. So again, you should run d/f.

Am I missing something?

Ropechef.6192:

Xae Isareth.1364:

haviz.1340:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their system

And you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.

The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.

and sitting there AFK with Macro for Aggro management and healing is???

Guild Wars 2 “trinity” being Damage, control and support is VERY much in use. Myself and many people that I know use it every single day

Have you ever been a raid tank?

If a developer makes a raid where all you do is just tank and spank, they screwed it up. Just screwed it up. I can never understand why people think the trinity is just automatically tank and spank.

If it was that easy being a tank or a healer, why do raids fail so much and why are good tanks and healers in such shortage? By your logic, everyone could just pop their macros and the raid’s good as done. In every MMO Ive played, it takes weeks if not months to down a raid smoothly.

Im not saying I like the trinity, but being a tank or a healer isn’t exactly faceroll.

Is…he seriously trying to evade with DB? Now I’ve seen it all.

They really need to make fractal relics more useful. Add in t6 bags, knowledge tomes, more unique skins, ascended boxes, yu gi oh cards, the whole lot. This is the ‘end’ dungeon in GW2, and the rewards need to show that it is.

babazhook.6805:

>>Preferences doesn’t exactly matter in build optimization. The matter of fact is that clusterbomb does higher DPS when you blast at your feet.

I do not play the game based upon what YOU and others think as the “optimal skill set”. Do not presume that everyone is led around by the nose playing “the current meta”.

If one wants to claim there no role for “preferences” then we might as well just have one profession in this game, that being the most “optimal” at inflicting damage.

Even inside the thief profession itself some PREFER direct damage, some prefer condition damage, some prefer stealth some prefer evasion. Are you really suggesting that these preferences have no role and we should all just take the most optimal build?

I use DB to greater effect in a given build then a SB can do.

I am using DB to inflict bleeds . It works better then the SB in this regard. If I was using a power build I would use other tactics. It is very efficient and very effective at inflicting bleeds. I know it because I used it.

You prefer using short bow then use it. .

The truth is that if you want to optimise, which is what the ‘useless’ in the title refers to, your preference has no role in it. Having a build which has low damage and high stealth uptime is not optimised in in say, CoE because that stealth has no use. That is a fact.

I’m not saying you should take the most optimal build. Whether to optimise or play as you want is up to you, but if you want to optimise your character, which is what balancing addresses, it goes without saying that you use an optimised build.

You’re using DB to inflict bleeds. Great. then what do you use the other skills for?

DB is very efficient at inflicting bleeds. Great. DB spam is a nice condition build. Then in your PvE build, what are the other skills used for?

Iris Ng.9845:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Iris Ng.9845:

Sauzo.6821:

Iris Ng.9845:

Look at it this way. If you play staff when solo AC or low-manning Arah, it is pretty challenging.

I agree that in a full 5 man team, playing staff ele is a bit monotonous and boring. However, many great eles I know swap weapons in between fights to fix the shortcomings of their group comp, and staff have the most useful utilities for group skipping.

The most boring playstyle for ele, imo, is scepter/dagger ele trying to burst the boss down with scepter air attack and churning earth. Bonus with ‘rolling in Earth for damage’. Pretty facepalm worthy.

If you actually are using churning earth for anything other than prestacking might, then you need to just reroll. And scepter air attacks are meh too. That is why you got 2 LHs and 2 FGS. Try dropping DT while running in and drop rof, phoenix, arcane brilliance, earthquake, arcane blast, summon LH and go crazy on the boss. I guarantee you will be the one the boss will turn to instantly.

And to me s/d or pretty much anything with LH is more fun since you will be in there meleeing. Boring to me is standing 600 yards away and spamming 251112115 through the dungeon. But then again, I prefer melee.

I would be surprised if one just camps one attunement during the whole dungeon.

Again, my point is staff is pretty interesting to play when you do man-mode in dungeons and high level fractals. Cued from the cool kids such as Dub and Emanuel.

In a normal dungeon run, you do just camp one atonement on staff though :L

Don’t you stack might or swiftness? Or use cleanse once in a while? Or killing the Orrian Turrets with your reflect? :s

If you’re a staff ele, you’ll have the highest DPS in the party, so a meagre 3 stacks of might isn’t worth switching to earth mid-fight and losing that much DPS.

Out of combat, I guess you could go air and stack swiftness, but thats a boon which people can throw around like candy, especially warriors with their warhorns now that GS camping is the new meta.

Again, unless its absolute necessary, switching to water for a cleanse is just not worth it due to the DPS loss.

You got me with the orrian turret part though. That and mobskipping you would switch attunements for.

The problem with staff is that it can be great at everything, but it can only be used for one thing at a time. Water has amazing healing, fire has the highest DPS in the game, and air and earth are loaded with control effects, but they do what they do, and that one thing only.

Which means as the way PvE and gearing works out now, you just stay in fire in combat.

They should exclude the limited time minis as well then. You can’t get them.

Iris Ng.9845:

Sauzo.6821:

Iris Ng.9845:

Look at it this way. If you play staff when solo AC or low-manning Arah, it is pretty challenging.

I agree that in a full 5 man team, playing staff ele is a bit monotonous and boring. However, many great eles I know swap weapons in between fights to fix the shortcomings of their group comp, and staff have the most useful utilities for group skipping.

The most boring playstyle for ele, imo, is scepter/dagger ele trying to burst the boss down with scepter air attack and churning earth. Bonus with ‘rolling in Earth for damage’. Pretty facepalm worthy.

If you actually are using churning earth for anything other than prestacking might, then you need to just reroll. And scepter air attacks are meh too. That is why you got 2 LHs and 2 FGS. Try dropping DT while running in and drop rof, phoenix, arcane brilliance, earthquake, arcane blast, summon LH and go crazy on the boss. I guarantee you will be the one the boss will turn to instantly.

And to me s/d or pretty much anything with LH is more fun since you will be in there meleeing. Boring to me is standing 600 yards away and spamming 251112115 through the dungeon. But then again, I prefer melee.

I would be surprised if one just camps one attunement during the whole dungeon.

Again, my point is staff is pretty interesting to play when you do man-mode in dungeons and high level fractals. Cued from the cool kids such as Dub and Emanuel.

In a normal dungeon run, you do just camp one atonement on staff though :L

babazhook.6805:

>>If I wanted to AoE, I’ll switch to a bow or sword. Thieves don’t have CDs on their skills so the second weapon is there for it, not for rotation’s sake.

This is YOUR choice. You started this thread claiming DB Useless. It is most assuredly not. That I choose to use it over a SB or over a sword in a given build does not mean I think the sword or the shortbow are useless. I have used both of those in various iterations of builds. My personal opinion on the shortbow is that it just feels too slow. It interrupts the flow of how I like to use my thief. That does not mean I think it useless because others can use it to greater effect.

Preferences doesn’t exactly matter in build optimization. The matter of fact is that clusterbomb does higher DPS when you blast at your feet.

‘I don’t like it because it interrupts my flow’ isn’t a valid argument when you buildcraft, just like ‘I put Powerful Banners into this warrior build because its awesome.’

Balancing is about efficiency and results, not about it feeling good or looking cool.

haviz.1340:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

i guess nobody wants boring tank’n’spank boss mechanics.
but i assume that with the trinity you can actually create fun, challenging and balanced content with way less work compered to the time anet have to spent in order to make the same content fitting for their system

And you can’t without trinity? I’m thinking it’s more to do with anet designers than lack of trinity. Games like dark souls (active gameplay) are popular, challenging and fun to play.

The problem is that often GW2 just took the trinity, gutted out tanks and healers and just left DPSs in, in a tank and spank scenario. So you just end up with everyone spanking, which isn’t exactly fun.

Anierna.6918:

Xae Isareth.1364:

You see, the meta is fine until it makes people close their minds towards new ideas. It’s all good running an optimal build, but when the meta becomes twisted to promote a mindset of ‘this is the best and if you got any new ideas, you’re wrong.’ it becomes a problem.

The meta is found by theorycrafting to maximize damage. Theorycrafters do not close their minds to any ideas – they consider every method of optimizing dmg. And if a particular theorycrafter does not consider every option, there are plenty of other theorycrafters who analyze the data of their peers and will correct errors.

If you’d done any serious theorycrafting, you would know this. You would also know that the meta changes frequently, usually in response to game updates. The fact that the meta changes in response to new information, game updates, and better strategies proves that the meta does not ignore or suppress new ideas – it incorporates them.

I wasn’t talking about the theorycrafters themselves. I was talking about the general public.

Your second paragraph is one of the weaknesses of GW2. When a game constantly balances and patches, it keeps the meta fluid, and constantly reminds people that what’s best is a moving goal-post, and to keep their minds open.

GW2’s balancing is done on a snail’s pace, and the lack of new skills contribute to that.