Guild Wars 2

Its buggy.
Mesmer clones/thief npcs floating on the holes because of that whole NPC’s can’t take falling damage coding.

Cannon hits redonkulusly hard for being undodgeable.

Interesting map. The area inside the cannon is kittened though, can’t move for jack.
Also my professions lack of stability really showed itself here :o.

Its based on the last condition applied.
Generally Bleed is cleansed first because most condition builds for instance have bleed on an auto attack like vital shot, which means that bleed is frequently the last condition applied.

It also fills their endurance.

Word. Torment instead of burn kthx.
1 stack torment 10s duration, 1s icd, 100% on crit.

Switch the burning to a longer duration Torment reduce the ICD and lets move on.
Touch terror for what.
What did necros put out before? Stacks of bleeding mixed with poison,weakness, chill and fear. Now they have torment so bleed isn’t the only source of damage, then you throw burning on top of that? No sir.
Change Dhummfire to Dhuumwail or whatever and make it Torment 1 Stack.

Julius.1094:

ensoriki.5789:

@ C)
Does it not make sense to have condi removal in certain lines in order to make those lines appealing to begin with?

Yes it does, but that gets to the difference between “this line is the strongest against conditions” vs “this is the only line with condition counters”. With the first players make choices about how much they want to invest in condi counter. But on the second scenario players may feel like investing in that line is mandatory specially in a condi meta. Either that or they just accept condis will own them every time which just isn’t a good system either way. A lot of the condi removal traits also force players to use certain abilities, like with engies and elixirs, so if they don’t wan to run elixirs they have very few options.

Players shouldn’t be so restricted in their builds to be able to have some counter against conditions, but of course some builds will be stronger against it them others.

Well there are supposed to be meaningful choices, of which Utility skills are a part. My personal perspective has been that the condi-removal via Utility skills being underwhelming. Archer’s right that it’s a team game but even then support limitations can make this quite difficult to actually apply if it works in the first place. Generally due to pbaoe range limits. To counter aoe spam, you need aoe condi-removal. Doesn’t actually feel proportionate to the spam you’re up against.

Be nice to see the return of “+” damage and Protection changed into a straight toughness boost.

@ C)
Does it not make sense to have condi removal in certain lines in order to make those lines appealing to begin with?

Far as I can tell the main issue with condi removal is that in most cases if you take condi removal your counter pressure drops below what is necessary to beat the condition spam that you spec’d against in the first place. Or finally your output against anything not condition based is unsatisfactory for the trade-off. Full-stop.

Reintroduction of Deep Wound
Reintroduction of Disease
Sigil changes (Lower ICD on Nullification/Purity)
Weakness toned down
Change to Retaliation.
Elementalist to regain confusion as a condition. Something in earth to reduce attunement cd, maybe Signet mastery drops the cd by 2 whenever you use a signet.
Conjure skills outside of FGS to get recharge reductions. Deep freeze to have faster projectile speed.

Scorpion wire to stop obstructing.
Assassin Reward to give higher base health.
At least one Venom to have a lower CD time then current 45 even if its nerfed a bit.
Patience removed and replaced with some non-stealth related trait.
Power shots as an adept trait or buffed.
Base dmg increase on Tripwire & Needle.
Body shot duration to increase slightly. Faster movement speed while Unloading.
Assassin’s Retreat merged into Fleet of Foot/hard2catch or deleted.
Better pathing on shadowsteps.

Warrior Whirling axe to destroy projectiles.

Ranger Spirit range increased slightly.

Neither, though I’d take RA.
I want a ball in the center that you put into your opponents base.
Simple :o.

Mace/Axe warrior is so awesome.

Cantha, PvP and a profession named the Assassin that plays like the thief, but is full of spiky armor and gets blown up by exploding Afflicted and Plague carrier Risen.
That is where the money is going.

Meds suggestion works best on maps with secondary pt gain (as I picture it). Spirit watch, temple, Foefire and Forest. The secondaries have heightened value over time as soon as a node decays. Khylo not really.

If you don’t increase pt gain elsewhere it really does slow down the pace.
The idea of decay is so those holding eventually see less benefit from it, but imo it wont work that well. If you are behind 200 pts, and their pts decayed, you can flip a node and start getting something off fresh nodes, but if you’re holding your node, then suddenly you’re now the one on decay and any comeback you would have is naturally slowed down. It changes how quickly a winning team gets ahead, but similarly how quickly a team can comeback.

If nodes decay based on time and not based on pt difference, then it’s not a great tool for come backs the moment a map has no pt gain (khylo) secondaries..

sorrow.2364:

Last tournament I saw, pretty much 70% of the teams had a thief in its comp.

What was the win-rate for those thief teams?

Well who has tested the 8 professions fighting each other with no traits?

People who played GW1 are well aware of classes going in and out of favor, all the time. Assassins used to drop off the face of the earth more or less and then pop back up 6 months later with a balance patch.
Honestly nothing really feels different from GW1, other than (excusing last patch) unexciting balance patches. Which is kind of disappointing given they have a smaller scope to worry about in terms of skill #.

Secondly its funny because there is a trend when something gets broke for people to adamantely defend it to the death. Probably 60% of the Necros trying to tell people to be quiet will be complaining as soon as another profession is shot upwards.

Who cares about the state of WoW. MMO PvP is generally crap, if GW2 wants to excel itself pass that stereotype it’s balance comparison isn’t going to be WoW which fits the stereotype.

I’ve seen on a few occasions suggestions to slow down point gain.
Doing this in increments is definitely an interesting way about it.
However I do think this is odd to visually represent. How do you see which stage any particular node is on? Do you have an estimate of when the node would change stage?
If I just capture a node it’s 1 point per 2, 10s later it’s 1 per 4. I think this is hard to visually see/represent as to when that happened and for anyone externally to suddenly take in that my node is not worth the same. Just thinking about watching a tourney it sounds a bit awkward atm.

I definitely am behind slowing down point gain.
I like the idea, but I don’t think it is as impactful for Khylo. On Spirit watch for example if those points decay, the orb actually becomes stronger because now the longer they hold a two cap, the more power the orb will have relative to that as points decay. So that secondary becomes very important. However Khylo doesn’t have any point gain so I don’t think it…improves as much. Bunkers will want to move more, but if you’re holding your two cap, the games just slowing down. The secondary assist you in capturing points but it doesn’t become a lot more important in an interesting way.

1. They don’t like that “viable builds” are not viable in tpvp. In other words they have a playstyle and tpvp balance has caused a significant disjoin.
eg. Daze build S/D thief in WvW/PvE but does not really exist in PvP due to Dec nerf + 4s reveal. So splits removing build diversity instead of managing it.

2. Lack of reward/incentive. Lots of PvE guys or hybrid guys do like the carrot on the stick at the end of the day. Something shiny to feel like their “work” pays off, or a sense of individual progression and PvP doesn’t do this very well. Leaderboards aren’t a reality for the majority of players so then what do they get for themselves? Very little in a long period of time.

3. Conquest focus on nodes, alienates some of the drive of what some players want in PvP. John brought up CTF where you Push instead of return like in games like S4 league which would probably have more “mainstream appeal”. At the end of the day Conquest has its depth, but it’s rather arguable if it has enough inherit appeal to draw people in. I think there is less “incentive” in the Call of duty, tekkens, street fighters and other e-games of the world relative to gw2 that demonstrate sometimes all you need is an appealing mode for people to play.

4. Class balance.
~ If you get a good vibe in WvW/PvE and not in PvP then you’re less likely to play it.
eg. Warriors.

5. PvP is something they just don’t do. Theres plenty of PvE players who just don’t engage in pvp games period. WvW maybe they stretch that far due to the PvE mix.

6. 5v5 makes you stand out more then being 1 in many. Especially when you often have to disband from that group of 5 to do individual tasks.

7. Solo que sucks.

Conditions are supposed to go through defenses. You don’t need a boon against conditions because they’ve already given the ability to straight remove them and even reduce their duration. For a profession like the Ranger that lacks boon removal, conditions are a way through those boons and toughness.
Whats whack is that condi application, it gets spammed, it gets stacked. In some cases it is pretty much spiking without the down time of physical spikes.
The only thing that needs to be done with conditions is look at what is putting out excessive conditions.

Balance.
Lack of Shiro Tagachi
Lack of Cantha

P/D doesn’t have a defined role it fits in for pvp. If you want change from condi P/D to physical, and you’ll be able to do more with your S/D swap.

xantosnightwish.5438:

My competitive team is made up of a group of friends who’ve known each other for 10+ years on average. We played GW1 together and then started playing the GW2 beta and loved it and decided to try to be “decently competitive”.

We formed up a team with all five of us playing in the same room on that first night. We went over our builds for hours before starting and then jumped into our first free tournament with dreams of esports glory……. and LOST 24 GAMES IN A ROW.

I went on the forums and discovered a “pistol whip” thief build that finally propelled us to our first win. I still remember the cheers of joy from that room when the score hit 500.

Many months removed from that first win, we now play Mist League together and are having a blast. We still have some down moments (JESUS CHRIST GOON YOU ARE GOOD!) but have learned a TON about the game over the last few months and I actually have a respectable win/loss ratio now lol

TRDL: Keep at it my friend. Learn the maps. Read the forums. Watch the streams of the top tier players. Join Mist League and challenge some teams of similar skill level. And the wins will come

R.I.P

Change longbow 3 to daze and it’ll flow better with shortbow real talks.
Longbow is slow as hell and so a power build flops when it takes you a half hour for a skill to go off.

Spirit passive range increased to 1500. 2000 when traited. Serious.

More Spirit improvements, and im 100% serious.
Honestly one of the things I want to see rangers do but their range and survivalbility ruin it for me.

I have nothing against the axis there’s just zero balance down there, or even an idea of it.
Can’t stomp, constant healing from going into the surface, prof imbalance at an all time high. Trait discrepencies lack of skills. Make going down there really unappealing.

Lb1 applies vulnerability. Rapid fire applies swiftness.
3 now applies Daze the farther you are the longer daze based on distance. Call it Broad head arrow or savage shot. GG.

Kstrike.4906:

Terror hasn’t changed. Why is it all of a sudden a problem now after 10 months? Your problem is with burning, not terror.

Neither was inf strike. Which as an example means old abilities will be changed for the new vision.

Glad they brought up retal.
I think it be very interesting if they’re actually able to give skills “retal resistence” of sorts where maybe they take 5-10% less damage per hit from retal would really add up.
Skills like flame jet, pistol whip, BF, HB, nades, firestorm.

Interesting Sotg, feels like there wasn’t much insight gotten on what is coming up forward for classes but eh, guess I’ll find out when it happens.

Imo, playing thief. Current Necro isn’t really shocking, there was a point when thief had a stronger arsenal, and undoubtably this Necro would not be as shocking as it is now if we had some of that back. Though I can still play around it.

I don’t know why they need anything other than a range increase.
GW1 Spirit range was well known for being large, spirits themselves though were pretty much paper. They rarely got hit in pve because you positioned them out of the way, and if someone wanted to take a spirit out specifically in pvp they had to go out of there way to do so.
Can’t remember who but someone in Sotg mentioned Flagging them. Would be a huge benefit, but really all that is needed primarily because the range sucks and you need this thing able to take a hit because you can’t get good positioning with it.

10 months after release, I think thief build diversity has shrank instead of broadened.
10 months after release, I feel Warriors haven’t really moved anywhere relative to other classes.
10 months after release I see a spectator mode, CA and leaderboards but know players who came in from launch/beta who are feeling frustrated and neglected.

Jesiah.2457:

Quickhit.3620:

Jesiah.2457:

I love how condition thief will never be suggested as a viable choice.

You are right,because he is not.In competitive scene you don’t play a class spec that another class can do better.

Which is why I wonder why Arenanet pretends thief can pull it off by having weaponsets like Pistol Mainhand, D/D, and Shortbow, all which have conditions in them, then traits / utilities that also seem to follow that trend. But realistically, they’re quite sub-par. And it doesn’t matter how you spec into it, how well you play it … performance compared to burst is just sub-par and considered nothing but trolling trash.

So really my reason for saying this is don’t choose a thief for partner. =p

Engi I’ve heard is quite possibly the best combination, if not a nightmare, to run with. But as for hotjoin, mesmer is pretty good and generally facerolls a lot of newer players who don’t know how to chase after the dodge rolling “clone”. Also they can immobilize them in your wells, while shatter bursting them at the same time.

Tbh but I don’t feel you at all.
The only real condi’s D/D has is death blossom spam and a poison no different from D/P. As far as Condi’s go thats super shallow, physically? it’s not bad.
P/D? Good fun as a physical set though underwhelming, juvenile as a condi set. Thieves don’t have the tools for condi’s but all of our sets scale very well with physical damage.
The real thing being Anet never really stated wanting condi thieves, outside of a slight nod in the Sotg. We get poison but that helps us kill off targets by the debuff and bleed is just some side damage that doesn’t make Trickery’s bonus damage completely wasted.

Wasn’t that eons ago back when we still had haste….if something works for someone, then who cares what fits what.
moving on.
It’s a good vid, I do applaud the effort and would like to see more of these crop up for the various professions, roles and weapon sets.

Oh and since a Dev checked this out.
Bring back S/P Burst.

Looks like they’re getting better.
Hope this map is the best one yet.

Now introducing Belchers Bluff!

Still the most entertaining class.
But a fair amount of the appeal disappeared for me when they nerfed Tactical strike, and again when the quickness change ran through S/P Burst. While I feel these were done for a reason and agree that quickness needed a change, the playstyle losses are what is really felt. Slap on the shortbow not hitting anyone, and P/X’s problems thief is still enjoyable enough to play for shorter periods of time.

Zenith.7301:

They could, you know, instead place a 1 class limit to team build and change Epidemic. But that would make too much sense to ever be implemented.

Casual community would die off so fast. My heads already spinning.

Thiefz.3695:

Necromancers are the attrition class, that’s just how they are built.

Funny thing is of these current Necro builds, I really don’t see any attrition.
It’s straight nuking with enough conditions to rival physical burst and in some cases surpass it.

Kinda peculiar to see conditions “Burst” like this. Don’t recall Engi’s even doing it like this.
On an individual level there isn’t exactly a large difference in power. Hard to state anything on them when I’m fooling around atm. However as far as aoe is concerned? Fairly silly and tbh don’t think the game needed that aspect strengthened.

Sigil of paralyzation does nothing for your stuns and dazes as it does not multiply them enough to round to an additional second.

Living long enough to do your damage and be a threat without relying on hit & run dynamic of a thief.

I like them a lot but skill recharge on all but FGS needs to drop. I figure they’re this situational weapon you bring in and an ally can also take part in it, but the recharge is soo…soo long. If they need to remove the whole ally share thing and make them for only 1 person at a time thats fine for me but those recharges…

Mrbig.8019

What are your plans about the thief ?

I will +1 this to nominate you ask this question. Though I’d like to know what the plan is for july and august specifically.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

1. Classes are too independent. There is nearly no synergy between them.
Is there any plan to make teamwork actually reliable in this game?

2. They told in 2012, they would fix AoE and its impact on conquest. Till today, AoE is still the most effective form of damage. Are they still looking into this?

3. In February / March they talked about bringing incentive into this game. There is still no real incentive for casuals nor the competitive scene. How they gonna plan to create this incentive? (via titles, tournament-rewards, unique items, real soloQ ?)

Also +1 to this post.

Also from a personal point.
Im curious about Maps again. Are they doing any revisions to these older maps and what the feel of Sky hammer is going to be and if they’re working on having another map past sky hammer out this year?

Not going to lie I find body shot interesting, if the duration was only a second or two longer. I’d like the skill.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Retaliation is working as intended. There are classes in the game that remove boons. This is a team game, so if you attack 5 people alone and they are smart enough to just sit in the AoE and kill you with retal its your fault only. Take some class in your team that remove boons and see if they stand in your aoes without retaliation.

Addressed brah.
Out of 8, there are 2 who remove boons in aoe. Out of the two if I recall off the top of my head, Necro has 1 skill. We’re talking about approx 4 skills in the game to deal with this. If I say remove a boon myself then its two ticks of retal. Note if your prof does not have this capability (and since only really 4 profs can and engi’s certainly aren’t adept at it), gl with retal.
With a 5 party limit, this is a fairly “why bother” suggestion, when you can simply not take professions or weapon sets that are smothered by retal, that don’t put out enough damage to justify the threat of self-destruction or the relative down-time while they wait for retal to disperse.
But again this is exactly what happens opponents are mis-positioned, there isn’t enough aoe boon removal (which is fine by me), especially if cover boons like swiftness/aegis/might/fury are thrown into the mix over top of it.So you end up resorting to other measures, that frankly garner the question “why did you bring this in the first place?”

With Patience deleted and a new grandmaster created.
If they wanted to create diversity for that spec, dropping VS to master would make it a lot more interesting. Could do 30/20/20 and get some damage in, or other more unseen combos like 20 trickery to bring and bring bountiful too and other combos. While still able to do 30 SA if you want to take Leeching or whatever the new GM would be.

/spurofthemoment.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

A-Net better reduces the amount of AoE-Skillz, instead of nerfing retaliation due to AoE-spammers complaining about it.

Reducing the amount of aoe skills doesn’t change what’s actually there, that retal scales outrageously with multi-hits.

Anet said awhile ago they were going to change aoe and frankly I wonder if they’re ever going to, but lettuce be serious.
Retal does 1) little for single target single hits, not a real problem
2) significantly more for single targets multi hits, fine we cancel the channel.
3) More or less the same as a single target multi hit for multi-target single hit aoe.
4) Outrageous damage for multi-hit single-target when generally the damage output does not justify the retal they take and the idea of “don’t clump” generally implies they’re the ones who shouldn’t be clumping.

Confusion is a similar threat but condition cleanse is such a reasonable response it’s fine. Group Retal is discouraging the entire reason of bringing these skills, when the group fight is when they should be at their most relevant, not the 1v1’s on back point.
Though passive offense is boring, retal itself is fine on an individual level, the simple x3 to x5 scaling it does is nuts.

Fast Asleep.8475:

Skill wise there is only two relyable AoE sources of retaliation and only one skill that gives more than 5 seconds. Also i have yet to witness a tpvp where my enemy bothered to stack retaliation via combos.
So the only thing i m reading here is that there is people that don’t even bother to see what their enemy does, they just want to keep spamming attacks till the fights won.

What i want to say is: If you keep spamming AoE while retaliation is applied on your enemies its your own mistake

If you’re standing in aoes/cleaves that are multi-hit attacks and such give you numerous time to move out of the effect instead of taking full damage, and you stay inside. You’re making a mistake. If 3+ members of your team is doing this? This should be a costly mistake. It can often be not because the attacker is getting ripped apart for a teams poor positioning. Poor positioning is literally the kind of situation where you should be rewarded the most and yet retal disproportionately discriminates multi-hit attacks.

What I want to say is: If you’re a sensible player, position yourself well whether in a team or your solo que, you generally dismiss the idea of making the heinous mistake to be caught up in multi-hit aoe/cleaves for their full duration. You’re to smart for that, I would think, but somehow if it happens you feel that the inability to punish because of group retal is fine because you personally do not encounter retaliation on multiple targets. The reality is, if you’re afraid of multi-hit aoe damage the attacks happen over a period of time destroying your team don’t cling side by side. Move.

I find it odd though this idea that I haven’t watched the field. Retal hasn’t caused a death in quite a long, long time. All it’s done is ceased an assault, where they’re poorly positioned and you have to let them go scot free, because you’ll cause 27-28 hits for about 15-30k dmg divided amongst the 3 after 2 seconds. How someone taking 27 strikes of retaliation because you cannot position seems proportionate to you, I have literally no clue. I’d think to most players taking 27 strikes of retal damage in about 2 seconds is crazy and they simple won’t do it. They’ll stop the attack, or just not even take the weapon or utility skill in the first place. Taking 8 on an individual? No problem, got a heal skill, got some vitality and I’ll just dodge they’re skills so it’s primarily retal I eat. Hit 5 people? huge problem. Especially if you have an aoe that ticks for multiple attacks but you cannot cancel it once laid. Brb they sitting in your attack and you’re dying because they don’t feel like moving out of it. Wut?
Retal puts out relatively insignificant damage numbers where it should put something that is felt, and outrageous output where it should not.
There’s only 3 ways to look at it
1) Retal itself is not in proportion
2) We need more aoe boon removal then Mindstab, null field, Mind slash, Well of corruption. So that group defense tactics are matched well by group utility of that nature.
3) Multi-hit attacks have to have their damage pumped up significantly so you “really” cannot sit in it, and retals damage is counterbalanced by people never sitting in these attacks to make it tick in the first place.

Personally I think Retal just ticks too much in multi-hit situations. When the situations when multi-hit shines (hitting 3-5 targets) means those targets made a positioning mistake.

Sure hit 5 targets take 5 ticks of retal.
Hit 5 targets, 3x each in 1 second? Should take 1 freaking tick. They should’ve moved if they didn’t want to eat the Flurry.

Honestly retal damage output on multi-hit attacks isn’t right. Not really because of any issue on an individual level, but as far as my MMO experience and gaming experience in general has shown me, sitting in aoe’s is your fault and you shouldn’t do it.
There is a concept of zoning, there is an idea that people should not sit in aoes, and especially not if that aoe ticks multiple times.
Don’t know why but ,if you’re dropping out good aoe/cleave damage and the opponents are not sensible enough to….move, you’re the one who’s really getting slapped and frankly It doesn’t make sense for poor positioning to be as rewarding as it currently can be to multi-hit attacks.

Eg. A firestorm if I recall surpasses the aoe limit hits 9 times. Assume just 5 people are hit, if these people dont move they’ve allowed an ele to have 45 ticks of firestorm occur on them. If they’re under retal this elementalist is getting butchered because they can’t position. Honestly if an elementalist gets 45 ticks of firestorm on your entire party, the game should just stop. Shouldn’t even continue, ele and his team wins, no questions asked.
Pistol whips? 3 people? 8 cleave hits + 1 pistol hit? lets say 5 sword hits thats 15 ticks of retals not counting the pistol hit, because these people cannot position themself,
Are.You.Serious?
Against 1 person? Retal is fine, annoying damage that adds up, but nothing silly. If I hit 3 or 5 people 1 time? Annoying, hurts but whatever it’s one time. I hit them multiple times because they’re dense and Anets punching me in the face.
Why I don’t even know. Flanking strike isn’t cleave boon removal anymore, Bountiful theft isn’t aoe. Sigil of null isn’t aoe. Spinal shivers isn’t. There is what 3 skills in this game that aoe remove boons for a team on 2 professions?

Reality check regardless of whether aoe is too strong, retal shouldn’t tick frequently for opponents who can’t space themself. Shoot something like “You can’t take more than 10 ticks of retal every 2s,” like Soul reaping only proccing thrice every 15s.
/rant.