Guild Wars 2

DanSH.6143:

Elementalists and Engineers can “abuse” swap sigils too, stop the warrior hatin’.

been explained several times that they cannot, because they can only equip 2 sigils total with 9 second cooldowns

The only other possibility is if they nerf swap sigils so that its not even worth it to have 4 of them

Orangensaft.7139:

Kanto.1659:

Orangensaft.7139:

1) you get full win rewards when moved to the other team
2) today when i did solo arena i waited between 1 and 50 seconds every time
(5x just 1 second wait time) and teamarena usually takes 3 to 6 min for me…
3) dont join the high rank players team and then wonder why enemy players leave and autobalance kicks in…. just join the low rank guys and you wont be transfered xD

How do we see the ranks of people before the game has ended and it is shown over the scoreboard?

you dont but after your first game of the day you see the ranks and from that point you always join the winner team…

you can see them from spectator before you join as well by viewing individual players.. often times it is BLATANTLY OBVIOUS which team is getting stacked cause they always have +1 player from ppl spamming the join button

Cynz.9437:

d/p 3 would bring you out of stealth, so you would have revealed debuff and won’t be able to execute bs

does not ^_~

Hotjoin is THE new player experience and it is totally infected with rampant team stacking and now the teamstackers are coming to the forums to complain because they have to appear to be on the losing team for a minute or two?

the hell

Chicago Jack.5647:

nyqwist.2360:

there’s really no way for us to know if this is was really intended.

It shouldn’t be intended. If you interrupt a blackpowder, it should always cost them 6 lost initiative.

Nobody is interrupting black powders. Even if people were trying to interrupt them, the cast time is far too short to do it on purpose (maybe if you live on top of the servers?)

Interrupts are only ever “planned” on heals. The rest of the time they are being used offensively for setups and interrupting essentially random skills. Losing initiative would basically allow classes to spam all their CC, a strategy that ALREADY dominates thieves, and drain a thief’s initiative with no counter play.

Teleports are always OP in every game that has them and thief has the most teleports therefore thief OP u welcome

Chill only affects skills that are on cooldown, initiative is the pool used by all thief skills. Generally chill only increases a few skills by a couple seconds.

I am much more scared of chill on my thief then any other class I play…

scabrous.7835:

No worries since hopefully, in this case, you’re all wrong
There will be no ICD on the same type of sigil e.g. Battle/Energy/Geomancy etc.. However, if you have e.g. Energy on Hammer and Energy on Greatsword the ICD from the first sigil of energy will put the second one on ICD as well.
On the other hand, if you have energy on Hammer and Battle on Greatsword – yeah, you get one of the procs every time you swap.

TLDR; No global cooldown for the same TYPE of proc; global cooldown for the same sigil.

This IS the problem—warriors can get twice the procs of anybody else by using 4 swap sigils and fast hands. This way they get to swap weapons halfway through their sigils cooldowns and get 2 procs every 5 seconds instead of having to wait 10.

They get the same effect from 1 sigil of energy that other professions require double for. (1/4 sigils instead of either 2/4 sigils or 1/2 for ele/engi)

Video well made. Unfortunately ppl are going to think you are trying to make some sort of statement about pistol whip.

That mesmer was totally running thief food.build

Travlane.5948:

PW kinda sux unless somebody roots/immobs your target or freezes them. i never lose against pw. i kind of prefer it to be honest…playing against it i mean.

This is it here. Pwhip is too strong when combined with hambow/guardian/etc because they constantly lock targets down for you, plus your spamming interrupts helps them land earthshakers and whatnot in return.

I’m not sure how they plan to redesign the skill. At the very least I imagine it will be split and either slowed down overall or have an initiative increase overall, with the justification that splitting the skill gives you added control over it, increasing its power.

This would certainly prevent spamming but I don’t know if it eliminates the issue of being able to invuln burst somebody in a teamfight. The 2nd half needs shortened or changed in some other way that would keep it useful, maybe a block into counter & evade.

They went over it before a long time ago in a post about shelter, using churning earth as an example.

Thief skills only deduct initiative once the skill has produced some “effect”. None of the thief skills defy this rule. Other professions getting a small CD on their skills also does not equate to a thief losing all the initiative required

Well done bringing this up, definitely needs adressed… Especially since 2 handers are getting double sigils as well… Hambow-P

Edit: I can’t think of an easy solution… Maybe give classes 2 universal “swap” cooldowns that get used any time you get a swap effect?

Spooko.5436:

i’m upset because they have redesigned lions arch like9 million times, and the last new pvp map was skyhammer

Yeah this is a very good point… It is quite obvious that anet has quite a lot of resources but is choosing not to use them for pvp. If we had new pvp maps coming all the time, even if they weren’t all totally groundbreaking, there would be a lot more interest.

Honestly it seems like too much of a corner case for it to matter much… The only devastating pure interrupts are on heals or potentially ele skills since they lose access once they swap attunement.

Truthfully I don’t see what you are trying to accomplish. Interrupts are very unskilled and this would often just make them “interrupt foe and drain their initiative” which is absurdly more powerful against thieves than any other class.

Thieves rely on being able to use single skills many times per fight and within that space they are already fairly balanced—I don’t think upsetting things by suddenly giving them random cooldowns is the answer. If a skill is too strong, bring down the skill not the entire class

This is working as intended. Skills only go on full cooldown if they are interrupted after an effect takes place. This is why most heals only go on a short cooldown while shelter/ether renewal etc go on full cooldown if interrupted. The same applies to churning earth—although the blast is delayed, it immediately applies a cripple field and thus gets a full cd if interrupted. The dragon tooth thing is a bug* (it only has a 6s cd anyway though)

Part of the effect of heartseeker is the movement ability. This is why initiative is subtracted immediately upon activation and not upon completion

Just wait a bit and use the pve versions in pvp

Well when you look at the number of patches and multiple hot fixes per day that pve gets and compare it to pvp (lol esport) it’s kinda obvious

Yea I just represent the good ones. You know, the ones who are ruining the balance? That like, this thread is about?

The stealth QQ baffles me. I generally stealth only once or twice a fight for <2 seconds and only bc it allows me to perform backstab. It’s almost always a byproduct of using black powder, usually against warriors/necros/rangers or using my heal and I GTFO of stealth ASAP.

I only stealth for stealth if attacking is impossible (ie. vs mesmer). Fights vs glass players is usually just a bunch of auto attack and teleport spamming; heartseeker if they are low. Just this is enough to shutdown 90% of them easily… It’s sad

Probably still the rarest since engies aren’t all stars in any game mode except maybe spvp a little

Cynz.9437:

please record it (pulls out popcorn)

side note: as far as i understand issue with pw isn’t 1v1 in particular but rather in team fights

Truth; if you spam pwhip enough eventually it will align with earthshaker/pin down for the epic Wombo Combo

100 power is usually <5% damage because these builds easily have >2000 power already (approaching 3000 in WvW or 3.5%).

Even if we were to be generous and use 5% the deadly arts build would still come out ahead—it gets 15% from traits while the shadow arts build has +10% from full might stacks. This only occurs for a short time after refuge or if they spend an inordinate amount of time setting up with black powder. Additionally they lose out on the +20% crit rate from fury on steal, or they lose out on 2k damage/poison from mug (which could easily account for 10% of the damage required to down a target).

Conclusion: the offensive power of deadly arts is still far ahead of shadow arts.

Warrior notwithstanding* since to be anything resembling glass they need zerker amulet and 0 points in toughness/vitality

Also I suppose guardian in 1on1 situation… But guardians are not really filling the role of “damage dealer” anyway

Thought this was going to be about signet

I am disappoint

Is thief bunker the bow/bow 0/0/0/30/30 evade spam garbage that suddenly popped up yesterday? I guess it could contest mid on foefire forever but it has trouble staying on small points and is even more selfish than warrior bunker lol.

Guardian = best support with stability/heal/cleanse
Engi = best pressure with CC/bomb spam
Warrior = survives longest alone (probably)
Ranger has some added utility and necro can just easily kill some standard roamers

When every profession can defend themselves adequately against every other profession EXCEPT thief, there is a problem.

This thread is not about who should be the best roamer or single target DPS. It is about how thieves, by leaps and bounds more than other professions, can totally ignore the defensive mechanics used by other professions for survival to the point where running a berserker build ceases to be an option.

As thief main I will say that s/p is generally inferior as a roaming spike build, HOWEVER it’s main feature is that it lets the thief pull off invulnerable bursts when combined with their own or others CC skills (like warrior hammer…)—and this is probably a big nono.

Against anybody with vigor or runspeed it is pretty subpar though. IMO increasing the initiative cost is not the answer, since it will still nearly 1 shot squishies. I would like to see the skill split (like flanking) and the flurry channel decreased in duration/swings dramatically. The emphasis should be on making the second half a “responsive” evade that tosses in a few swings for good measure instead of a skill that unleashes aoe hell if you can lock somebody down for the duration.

hotjoins are customs..

how is the farming even done? afaik there’s not really any way to speed up gain by any reasonable amount now that it is unlocked from score AND time gated

And yet terror necros get by just fine with durations that are even SHORTER than what elementalist have available with chills.

You can’t just judge conditions alone—they come attached to skills. Elementalists are unique in that they have to take a “time out” from doing anything useful just to apply a chill, and often the opportunity cost is just too high and they swap to another attunement without using them at all. Adding a tier 2 or 3 trait to give these skills some punch/burst on condi builds could be just what they need.

Should it be balanced around hydro sigils and glyph? Probably, I agree that eles only get a very limited number of chills on weapons—but so what if it is?

I play guardian, thief, warrior, plus a bit of engi and ele.

Necro is a mixed bag; either a great focus target or able to be pretty much ignored just by letting your support bunkers cleanses handle them. Many of their DPS specs (power, terror, condidump) feel like they can be easily shut down with blinds/blocks/CC while tankier necros like MM are better ignored or if they have to be fought 1on1, killed with non roaming professions like bomb engi.

1on1 I’m able to out pressure most necros easily—the glassier I am the better. For instance, ironically, my meditation guard has an easier time by using bane signet over contemplation of purity. Well played power necros with a lot of life force can be a problem, and MM of course.

As a warrior in particular necros are a breeze if alone with any kind of cleansing. If with a partner they are a nightmare because they can overload cleansing ire if not locked down. Worst case is if they are alongside somebody who can blind/block burst skills and I’m not using longbow. With longbow and an anti-condi ability (swapped in if you see a necro on the other team) you can sort of slog through though

MightyMicah.7451:

Icedragon.6407:

Seriously. It won’t be missed.

I love skyhammer. And I’m an Ele for gosh sakes.

I’ll never understand the hatred for this map. We ask for something new and unique, Anet gives it to us, and we complain. Typical…

I explained it. Most professions have builds that are very well suited to skyhammer and make it fun to play… but there’s no easy way to swap. People running meta builds get embarrassed by people running (abusing they say) skyham builds and come here mad. If anet wants to keep giving us unique mechanics like hammer and the orb (there are some very nice orb carrying builds) then they are going to continue to see backlash until there is a solution.

Sorry meant in spvp*

Any class can run condi with perplexity -_-

Elementalists don’t have sufficient ability to apply damaging conditions to make them viable as stated by anet themselves. Nobody even ATTEMPTS to run condi ele because any amount of cleansing renders them totally impotent. The idea that simply buffing their bleed burn application would help is highly suspect because of the attunement issue—outside of glyph you can only apply damage in fire/earth; air is almost totally worthless and water is even worse outside of the heals.

You invent the idea of “chill is meant to control” as some kind of justification but it doesn’t pan out. Ele chill skills do nothing besides apply minuscule chills—they don’t damage like engi nades or boon strip like spinal shivers or give your entire team 3+ seconds of chill with lifeleech. If hydromancy sigils are overpowered (which I doubt) that’s another matter entirely and has nothing to do with condi builds.

Whether people rage about terror necro or not it is still a unique build (with hard counters) that sees at least fringe play—which is exactly the kind of thing anet should be encouraging.

I was seriously sad panda’d when I started getting the norn shapeshifts. I used leopard a bit in WvW for ez escapes and knockdown trolls but they could do with some help

Aye go Dwayna and sigils of energy and roll like mad. The aoe is a bit small so it takes some practice to hit allies, but combined with staff and shield 5 you can really crank out the hps. Also make sure to spam some staff autos since you get vigor on crit

Less useful in spvp cause the roll heal is lower but still evades a lot

Elementalists cannot spam conditions in anyway, so I fail to see how this is an argument. Whether it should be as useful to power builds as burning would be a matter of scaling.

The largest problem ele has is that they cannot easily control and damage (or mitigate) enemies at the same time; and two knockdowns is simply not sufficient for their poor condi application compared to burst. They have enormous problems when they have to take a 15 second break from dealing any damage just to survive.

This would give condi eles some added damage in water attunement as well as making their chill skills do something besides delay the inevitable (when is the last time you worried about an ele chilling you, anyway?). It would also give them one powerful utility in glyph of elemental power, which despite having significant uptime is still not worth slotting.

I’m still of the opinion that if we could simply load saved build templates we have tailored for different maps there would not be such outrage about skyhammer (or future maps with unique mechanics).

Same as necro has for fear, and very fitting for THE elementalist. Would this be enough to create a condi ele?

how are they going to balance 1v1’s when nobody (besides custom arena players) is running 1v1 builds….?

There are viability tests for instance:

Does ele pass thief test? No
Does ele pass condi test? No
Does ele pass CC test? Not really

I’m not sure how many you can fail and still be considered viable… but ele is way off the chart

Cleansing ire sort of forces a lot of warriors to use bow since it is a guaranteed cleanse. GS, rifle, sword are all pretty bad burst skills and mace can be hard to land. Hammer is the 2nd easiest to land for cleanse but can still be blinded/blocked for a massive blowout.

I’ve been messing around with axe/shield again with spiked armor and air runes—it’s pretty effective, spiked armor is 50% uptime on retal and the runes can crit for 4k on zerkers

muscarine.5136:

A visual hint like changing the portion of your red bar (bubble) that will disappear to gray (or green or whatever), showing where you would stand at the end of the ticks would actually be a great feature imo.

I like the idea.

+1

Supposedly we are getting a counter to condi meta—new ele changes

OP is living in fantasyland where he gets to be the upstanding hero. Go to any of the countless threads from players asking for help and you will see tons of positivity. If you only choose to focus on threads that are being critical of the game, where everybody has an opinion of what is best yet are forced to try and convey their points in forum posts, then of course there will be frustration.

It is people that think there is any problem at all that are the problem

Did somebody actually put “rapidly evolving” and “thief meta” in the same sentence?

But again I say that the problem are the teleports. Opponent blinks? Step to them. Opponent knocks you away? Step to them. Opponents puts down a wall? Step to them. Opponent cripple/chills you? Step to them.

There is of course a slight nod to lyssa runes allowing you to ignore condi bursts while preparing stun. Interrupts and dodges at least have a factor of skill on both sides of the table and can be played around with clever timing.

Chaith.8256:

• #5: Ability for build templates to be added to the PvP hero interface, simultaneously, the ability to reset traits and change templates during the pre-game waiting period.

We have been screaming and crying for this for as long as I remember. They won’t do it because they want us to buy character slots for this….

I would gladly pay for the ability to use templates. This is probably the single largest thing holding the game back.

MatthiasL.5346:

6. It was a good feeling to play a setup, which was quite balanced compared to S/D and D/P.

Nailed it. Now that it’s buffed Pwhip isn’t any more powerful than these sets (probably less powerful). These threads are just symptomatic of the larger problem with the thief profession—their ability to completely negate other glass prof’s defensive mechanics.

Additional QQ is mainly due to peoples’ inexperience in facing pwhip causing panic and confusion

Nope. The only “rotation” is using basilisk or devourer venom, precast pistolwhip and teleport when the first sword slash hits. This eliminates the delay between warning and damage starting… but you can only do this a very limited number of times.

Basically OP vs other glass cannons… just like every other thief spec already is—which is the real reason this thread exists

found it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EehZhx_LZRk

Oh man these new kids complaining about pistolwhip.

I still remember when you could global anyone back when haste was real.

pwhip just too easy to avoid, sorry to say. Only hitting a couple slashes just doesnt cut it

I agree .5 is too long but it cannot be instant. They should shave a bit off strike too so it can be used for quicker cleanse