Guild Wars 2

Lutharr.1035:

i got my token the other day (i didnt even know ya got one for completing the story). Since i already had exotic weapons I looked at the sweet looking skins instead. Those crying that it should be an exotic kinda need to stop with it.

The reward is what it is. Deal with it and stop acting like children.

I could handle it not being an exotic if it were a usable skin piece like the heritage gear instead of requiring a gem-store transmutation stone. It would still be kind of a crappy reward, but at least it would be usable.

Exotics aren’t meant to be handed to you on a silver platter.

And that, my friends, is the kind of thing that can make this game fail. They’re adopting the attitudes of WoW-style MMOs instead of keeping what worked in GW1. Just wait until expansions start coming out and lv 80 exotics are no longer the strongest weapons…

Draxius.7839:

bwillb.2165:

In fact, I never understand how these statements come out anyways – Every single MMO that has both PvE/PvP is balanced for both.

That’s simply not true. World of Warcraft was very much PvP focused with its balance. They even went so far as to make a certain rogue talent require resilience, a PvP-only stat, to get full benefit, because people were using the talent in PvP with glass cannon gear and becoming too invulnerable. This made it useless in PvE, and not a single kitten was given by blizzard.

Guild Wars had the same PvP focus on balance at least until they split the numbers, and so far Guild Wars 2 has had the same focus as well. I haven’t seen a single nerf or buff that was because of something being too strong or weak in dynamic events or dungeons.

If you’re attempting to say WoW wasn’t also focused on PvE, that is simply wrong.

They balance around both. I played WoW for 5 years from the vanilla days, doing both hard progressive endgame raiding and serious pvp, and they focused both equally hard. Part of the mentality of playing an MMO should be realizing that it isn’t just one or the other, that there are going to be tweaks that affect both, and part of being good at the game and continuing to enjoy it is adapting to the tweaks the developer puts into it.

I’ve played pretty much every MMO since the days of Ultima online, up into Rift, Aeon, and this – Both trees will get hit with changes, and no matter what, whinge posts like this will exist. You just get used to it after a while.

If you played WoW seriously and looked at the forums, the amount of needless complaints make the few whining threads on these forums look like so much chaff. The moderators keep this place pretty clean (Although I wish they would remove posts like this, like the person’s other posts) and keep valueless threads out of discussion for the most part.

This change was clearly meant to reduce a spike in PvP damage, but in doing it, they ALSO took into mind the effect it would have on PvE (Not that backstab builds are common, or even useful in PvE in the first place, but you know people are going to complain anyways) As such, they made a change that helped every other build’s effectiveness and kept the damage of BS’s rotation around the same. All people have to do is learn and adapt – something that won’t be done with posting rant posts in the forums.

Could you please point me to a change in WoW that was made for the sake of PvE that hurt PvP play? I’ve already pointed to one that was made for PvP that hurt PvE.

great idea, post it in suggestions.

In fact, I never understand how these statements come out anyways – Every single MMO that has both PvE/PvP is balanced for both.

That’s simply not true. World of Warcraft was very much PvP focused with its balance. They even went so far as to make a certain rogue talent require resilience, a PvP-only stat, to get full benefit, because people were using the talent in PvP with glass cannon gear and becoming too invulnerable. This made it useless in PvE, and not a single kitten was given by blizzard.

Guild Wars had the same PvP focus on balance at least until they split the numbers, and so far Guild Wars 2 has had the same focus as well. I haven’t seen a single nerf or buff that was because of something being too strong or weak in dynamic events or dungeons.

Blind doesn’t work at all well on dungeon bosses. Blast finishers are nice, though.

Hey what do you know, it was actually tonight. Miracles can happen.

I must be missing something though. Just rushed off to see this guy and he offers me level 80 rare items. Why rare and not exotic? Rare means it’s weaker than my current weapons, and being level 80 means I have to spend gems to use the skin?

dizzyd.5213:

FYI, here’s some math on the change:

You activate the signet: Your base damage for the first hit afterwards is h, and the sum of damage for the next four hits is H. In order for the change to nerf you, we need

1.5h + H > 1.15h + 1.15H
0.35h > 0.15H
2.33h > H

So it would have to be the case that the base damage from your first post-signet strike is 7/3 times the total of your next four strikes, or over 9 times the average damage of your next four strikes. Is that common? I’ve never played a burst build, so I don’t know…

Depends on who you ask. If you ask the people who were whining for a nerf to the build, then the single attack backstab does about 20x the damage of an individual other attack, or about 5x the next four total. Their numbers were complete lunacy, mind you, but hey, if this change makes them happy, who am I to disagree.

Well, it’ll probably Oct 29th at the earliest.

Similar to what I said in another similar thread: While I agree that the thief nerfs have been ill-conceived and largely unwarranted, there is nothing to whine about in this latest patch. It’s a decent balance change, for once.

Btw: Any of you have played GW1? Remember when PvE started its nosedive down the gutter? Ironically it was the very same day ANet implemented the PvP/PvE split.

PvE started its nosedive when they started allowing 7-hero parties. It continued with the impending exodus to GW2 and the shift in focus away from story content and towards farming HoM achievements. The PvP balance split had nothing to do with it. Now, some of the PvE-only skills might have hastened the descent, I’ll give you that, but the splitting of numbers between PvE and PvP have helped the game, not hindered it. PvE and PvP are very different scenarios, and not taking that into account is asinine.

Players have a number of tools to break story sequences, intentionally or otherwise.

Here’s a thought: Let them. Add more story branches. If I work hard enough, I should be able to haul Tybalt’s kitten to the ship and continue adventuring with him. This is / was supposedly going to be a game with a lot of player choice, but almost none of the choices matter in the long run. Change that. Look to games like Mass Effect (barring the kitteny ending of the series) where choices you make can follow you and haunt you throughout the rest of the game.

mrsrachelm.7618:

Okamakiri.8746:

Sylosi.6503:

Lol, in most MMORPGs, when someone who does PvP complains about balance, the response they often get is “this is a PvE game, go play LoL”

Really? What are these “most MMORPGs” where that is the case? I’ve been dying to find an MMO that isn’t ruined by the whiniest demographic of gamers, i.e. PVPers. While I do enjoy occasional PVP, I have always said that tailoring to that demographic is spelling doom to your MMO. They generally carry no loyalty to any brand, demand minimal character investment requirement, scream the loudest over every little thing, and are the first to move on to the next new “shiny” (i.e. their next MMO victim), leaving behind a broken game for PVErs.

I would really like to hear that list of MMO’s as well. All the major and successful MMO’s have always catered to the PvP crowd when it comes to the near constant nerf bat and tweaks. If there are any successful MMO’s out there that don’t do that…I would be very interested in hearing what they are and if they are still online. I might have to go check them out if I haven’t already. The ONLY current game I am aware of which has remained -somewhat- balanced between the needs of PvP’rs and PvE’rs is Rift.

Everquest 2, maybe. I haven’t played it in a long time but when I did it didn’t even have PvP.

mrsrachelm.7618:

Unless you’re the type to run around with at least one or more play partners most of the time, the above scenario becomes more and more common. Due to my schedule I solo most of the time as do many PvE players who group up sporadically but don’t necessarily want to HAVE to do so for every little thing they do in game.

Even if you do run with a group, it’s not that effective. In a group normal mobs will go down quick enough that your burst is wasted, then the group is basically carrying you for 90 seconds. And bosses have enough health that a burst every 90 seconds isn’t much better than sustained damage during that period.

Now that we’ve got a lower cap can we unnerf descent of shadows? Only other falling talent that has a cooldown is the mesmer one, and it’s much stronger.

Have you “PvP changes break PvE”-guys have ever considered that if a specific skill, trait or a combination of them is so strong that it outshines all other options of the profession or even all profession and thus is nerfed may have been too strong in PvE, too?

Considered, and debunked. By the time the one-hit wonder burst builds are ready to go again, mobs have already respawned twice. Plus in the upper levels it’s pretty rare to be able to pull just 1 mob.

Ashanor.5319:

Stiv, I heard there was a “stealth nerf” to the stealth cap. It seems it went from 30 seconds to about 15 cap, or so I have heard.

one of the easiest things to do is kill a thief in his refuge.
inside = take damage
outside = get revealed
now it is a bit different, but i’m not sure if i’ll use it.

The area is pretty large. I very rarely die in a Shadow Refuge, and if I do I am stealthed while dead and a lot of times can rez myself before I am revealed. Maybe you should try hanging out near the edge of it? The only thing that causes trouble for me is people knocking me out of it. Very rarely does a Ele or Ranger AoE my Refuge, maybe because there aren’t many of them running around.

There’s a ton of rangers, most of them just aren’t very bright. Unfortunately that class is closer to the WoW huntard than the GW1 ranger.

mrsrachelm.7618:

In essence, we lose all that ability to individualize our play style which was one of the big selling points of the game.

Eh you’re wrong there, at least on this particular change. It slightly nerfed the assassin backstab burst, but it made several builds more viable, such as P/P which felt fairly weak before but can now do some pretty decent burst with unload or sneak attack. Shortbow is also slightly stronger now, but it was already in a pretty good place. Pistol whip will also see a bit of a boost from this, but overall its still weaker than it was before the previous nerf. And as I said before even Dagger mainhand is going to be stronger in PvE. You don’t have the initial burst, but that was never a really strong point in PvE to begin with, as mobs have too much health. But now you can get off 5 buffed up heartseekers in quick succession for amazing finishers. Finally there’s S/D which is slightly better now, still not great but they’re getting there.

Someone needs to test if you can Basilisk Venom into a Flanking Strike and stun a blocking Warrior, thus interrupting his block.

I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to.

All flanking strike really needs to be decent is to just fix the pathing on the evade or turn it into a short-range shadowstep that always targets the back.

While I agree with you that PvE often gets kittened over for PvP balance (that’s part of why I left WoW, actually), this is really an odd time to bring it up. The latest wave of thief changes was actually a buff on the PvE front where a single 150% backstab isn’t going to kill most mobs but you can easily get 5 heartseekers in while a boss is under 25%.

Apophis.8561:

these “nerfs” to the thief didnt really do anything. the overall dmg in your combo is still the same.

Someone did the math last night and it showed about a 3-4k drop in total burst damage on the assassin backstab build. Not too horrible, but definitely did something. But it was a simultaneous buff to other builds and pve thieves, so I’m happy with that. I just wish thieves weren’t so reliant on having a specific utility skill such as either assassin’s signet or haste…

Iron Wolf.5973:

Im glad they did this to the signet. This is a fairly good fix to the ‘problem’ people complained about. The change means that there wont be anymore “18k” backstab crits that one shot people. Instead itll take you more than one hit to kill someone. Youll have to combo, which means longer time to kill someone which means that theyll have time to pop CDs or get away or whatever and survive.

In a nutshell, by splitting it instead of 1 massive attack to many strong attacks, it gives about the same damage, just takes longer to do it allowing the enemy to react.

of course maybe Im just bein short sighted. I never used assassins signet. So that change doesnt bother me in the slightest.

Backstab builds were already combos. Everything went into one major hit, but you had to set up combos with other skills to get extreme damage.

I’m happy with the change, though. It’s a PvE buff without a doubt, so I’ll take it.

It’s a decent change for sure. One-hit wonder builds will be less effective while other options such as dual pistol will be much more viable. I still don’t like how reliant thief builds are on a single utility skill though (this signet or haste)

Incurafy.6329:

ArchNemesis.4897:

I’m glad they addressed the problem instead of nerfing backstab. I have a bit of faith now. AS was the problem with Backstab gibbing kitten unable to dodge. Kudos to Anet.

Time to mess around and see how this new AS could be applied / added to create new builds.

ZLE.8293:

I am not sure this is a nerf overal…
If you precast it before Steal(especially with the trait Signets of Power),it will cover Mug,C&D and Backstab +2 more(HS comes in mind).I have macroed it with Steal,and it works like a charm.

I 100% agree with these two. This is a brilliant balance tweak that has restored my faith in Anet’s balancing abilities. Good job, Anet!

I’m not sure I’d say it’s brilliant, but it’s definitely more thought out than the thief changes in the previous patches. It gave me enough confidence in arenanet that I just logged in for the first time in over 2 weeks. I quickly logged back out a few minutes later because the FoV and camera issues still make me want to puke, but hey, it’s something.

Very few abilities require a target. If the thief is stomping, he’s standing still. if he’s standing still for the whole stealth duration, you know where he is. if you know where he is, you can hit him with almost anything, including some knockdowns and interrupts.

Hopefully the chronic QQers will move on to a different class now instead of yet another thief spec. How about Warrior? They got some decent buffs this time around.

Shadow Refuge: This skill’s stealth removal tripwire has been updated to properly match the skill’s effects.

What exactly does that mean?

It’s a bug, not an exploit. The thief has no control over the rendering issue. The only way the thief could prevent it is to not use stealth at all, and that would be stupid.

Arenanet HQ is in the Pacific time zone. They work on the content during the workday and then start the process of pushing it out towards evening. That’s not going to change. It has nothing to do with any sort of superiority or catering to certain crowds, it’s just what’s convenient for the developers.

Tyops.5894:

Please stop catering to the pacific timezone. This is the worst possible time for the majority of your player base.

Majority of the playerbase? Yeah, I’d like to see some numbers on that one. They cater to pacific because THEY are in pacific. They get the kitten ready during the day and then push it out in the evening.

Exania.2546:

Guild Wars 2 ?@GuildWars2
ACT 1 of the “Shadow of the Mad King” update will go live late this afternoon (Pacific time), do not expect it until past midnight GMT. ^AT

It’s almost 6pm pacific… I think late this afternoon is pretty much over.

Redscope.6215:

bwillb.2165:

And still there are other classes which burst harder, some even from range, with less buttons pressed and with a ton of more defensive while doing so than a Thief.

Yup, for instance a properly specced Engineer can put out burst at least as high as backstab thief, from 1200 range, with only two buttons. The only reason people don’t whine about it is because the build hasn’t had the Streisand effect that backstab has garnered.

Or possibly because you’re not invisible while doing it and dodging something at 1200m is not hard.

Either one or the other.

dodging a massive burst from 1200 meters behind you is a hell of a lot harder than dodging a backstab in melee range from something that’s already hit you once.

And still there are other classes which burst harder, some even from range, with less buttons pressed and with a ton of more defensive while doing so than a Thief.

Yup, for instance a properly specced Engineer can put out burst at least as high as backstab thief, from 1200 range, with only two buttons. The only reason people don’t whine about it is because the build hasn’t had the Streisand effect that backstab has garnered.

I haven’t bothered to play in about two weeks, but I recall having most of those issues back before I quit.

Ichishi.9613:

how stupid of me was it to think that everyone will find a use for this
should I rename this topic to “i wasted 10 minutes trying not to come out of stealth and succeeded”?

You just came in at a bad time. Look at the state of the forum, almost all of the threads are people trying to get thieves nerfed. The thief forum is a bit on edge from all of the trolls.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Kephos.9675:

Ravnodaus.5130:

I hit a heavy target dummy for 18-19k with 100 blades on my warrior in sPvP. That is about 1.5 seconds or less because of quickness. It’d be even worse in WvW because of higher power/crit damage…. and lower toughness targets… mmm.

It isn’t just thief that can burst for really big numbers…

100 blades is very easy to evade and are 8 hit dont have any point of comparation with 1 unnespected hit impossible to evade

backstab…impossible to invade?

wat?

We are thief. We make you quake with such fear that you cannot react.

Ravnodaus.5130:

You don’t get revealed if you don’t attack from stealth. So.. you know, no re-entry cd at all.

You do, however, get revealed if you use shadow refuge and exit its radius.

Tulisin.6945:

Your opinion of the thief’s downed state may be skewed by how effective the warrior’s is in PvE. A decent multi-target #1, and a #2/3 combo which can allow you to de-aggro and leash a mob is more than most professions get in the way of options for surviving a downed state in PvE.

The thief’s downed state 1 skill is pathetically weak. It barely does any damage. And the 2 and 3 skills have to be used together to have any effect, leaving the thief with no other options while downed except spamming one of the weakest damage abilities in the game while waiting for the smoke bomb to be available. And then when it is available, there’s an extremely good chance it still won’t drop aggro. Warrior is actually one of the weaker ones as well for actually getting up, but their 3 skill is great if you need to quickly finish off a mob for a skill challenge or something. But then there’s the damage and utility on mesmer (spam skill causes confusion, 2 skill is the thief 2 and 3 together plus a clone, 3 skill is an illusion that backstabs), the survival on ranger (2 skill is an AoE daze, lick wounds can get you up with mobs smacking you), etc…

So I just witnessed a single thief stealthing for 3 straight minutes while blocking a supply cap with 30+ people on it. And that was just one incident. I’d like to know how they are constantly stealthing, if it’s some stupid bug, and if it’s already been reported

How do you witness someone in stealth? That’s kind of a paradox.

It is possible that Mug is dealing too much damage as well, though I don’t have good numbers on it.

I have a feeling the mug damage people are seeing is a display bug more than anything. When I had that trait it usually crit for well under 1k. I used it more for applying a venom than any actual damage.

Only thing you can really do is save your teleport and hope you survive long enough for the smoke bomb to come off cooldown. If you can combo the two of them together you might have a tiny chance of dropping aggro, but it’s still pretty bad. By far the worst downed state in PvE out of everything I’ve played so far (which is all but necro)

Well said, Asum. There are a few problems here and there that need toned down (like QUICKNESS), but the major issue is covered pretty well in your post.

As far as more weapon choices, i propose an offhand sword with defensive skills and a melee staff with support/control skills.

shh don’t tell people about that hotkey, that’ll completely destroy thieves.

Division.9618:

bwillb.2165:

Even then the thief has to suddenly go braindead and stand still instead of dodging away

I’m just going to quote this for emphasis, because that is exactly the situation that gets people in trouble against thieves in the first place.

Or you know being surprised by a random thief jumping out of ambush and mugging you with basalisk venom or devourer venom, and then finishing you off instantly.

When did thieves become the only class with stun and immobilize?

Even then the thief has to suddenly go braindead and stand still instead of dodging away

I’m just going to quote this for emphasis, because that is exactly the situation that gets people in trouble against thieves in the first place.

1) They can do tons of damage in a single, very hard to mitigate shot
2) Thieves’ initiative mechanic combined with low cooldowns allows them to rapidly retry spikes
3) Stealth, when executed properly and combined with some of the best mobility in the game, allows for a reset on the fight to give a failed spike attempt a second shot

1) They can do significant damage in a single shot, yes. Thief damage is very front-loaded. However, it is not hard to mitigate at all. anything which blocks a single attack will be far more devastating against a thief than it would be against other classes.
2) In order to get anywhere near insta-kill level damage, the thief has to use several cooldowns. Thief cooldowns are generally at least 20 seconds. If the thief misses their burst, they are going to be vulnerable for at least 20 seconds. And since all of their utility skills went into making that perfect burst, they don’t have any utility for survival.
3) Stealth and mobility mean nothing if you hit the thief with an immobilize or daze or stun before they get a chance to stealth. Something that works really great is trapping them in a guardian bubble. There is a 3 second window after the thief backstabs where they cannot stealth again. That’s more than enough time to kill a glass cannon thief.

The solution is fixing the issues, not redesigning the entire mechanic to work around the issues.

“Thieves are OP.”
“Not really, care to show any proof?”
“I took 152952862936201 damage from backstab.”
“Oh really? Here’s the math of exactly how that skill is calculated in multiple situations.”
“Math doesn’t matter!”

Who is coming off as a bunch of teenage trolls here?

I have no idea what you’re saying with “stealing savings”. Nothing you’re saying makes much sense. It isn’t “stealing” anything. It’s just being observant and calculating prices that fit the demand. And i’m not sure how you figure it’s detrimental to the economy. Flooding the market with under-valued items hurts the economy just as much if not more than inflating prices. Look at all the items that are priced at vendor value. If someone buys all of those up and resells them for a more realistic price, that stimulates economic growth, with people being more likely to put items up on the TP instead of just vendoring them.

I’d be fine with that as long as you don’t block friendly players. Could give shadowsteps and leaps a bit more tactical usage.