Guild Wars 2

Darnis.4056:

how come no one says these mean things to me in soloQ? :/
I play mesmer full time…

U EZ

Who is Hugh Norfolk? He has no Title tag…

Mrbig.8019:

We have NEVER really had a fully functional set with the sword MH.

That is completely false.
S/P Had been the only Melee kit that was firing on all cylinders until D/P’s Shadow shot lost the root in the January update and became “complete”. If you want a kit that’s been off from Launch look at D/D and P/P.

Pre-november nerf, thieves were using sword simply for Tactical strike Dazelock, otherwise Dagger MH was superior in every aspect.

I played S/D heavily through Frees from launch until Jan before I switched to S/P when I finally bite the bullet that they wrecked it. It wasn’t just Tactical spam. Everything was getting used, including FS albeit it got used less than others, was far more “complete” then D/D was however, D/x was just outrageous.

Pistol whip was already overrated thanks to quickness and easily countered by reta ( something easily spammed in the old meta build ) so dagger burst was way better.

Reta doesn’t hard counter pistol-whip. It puts heavy pressure on it in a teamfight (a tad more than it should). PW is about as countered by Retal as blurred frenzy and Whirling strike. Not that it’s any fault in PW, what a shame that a skill has multiple ways to play around it, should make it an instant 5k damage.

Inf strike has been broken from the start, the only issue was that the thief was not able to sustain himself in the fight, reason why nobody cared about Inf strike Opness.

S/ thieves always had higher visible sustain than D/ thieves. Half of these SOTG’s where they were talking about Thiefs inability to be in the fight were spoken at when D/ was the mainstay. A Daggers answer to not being focused in a fight is to throw Stealth or a lol worthy death blossom. It doesn’t work. If they don’t stop you during the initial waves, PW’s i-frames protect you, and FS used to be cancellable so you could whenever at the cost of your damage.

*FS -> LS chain is nothing more than a functional skill: a good evade, good damage.

Just by splitting the skill itself, forget boon steal, forget the switch of unblockable, forgot even the tracking, they made the ability to do damage on S/D increase because of the practicality. Previously , FS comes they may or may not dodge it, the wind up for the flanking stab happens, easy to dodge, most players did it as a reaction to flanking strike and conveniently ended up dodging the stab from their delayed reaction. Just splitting the skill they increased the usability. They then shifted the skills focus, improved tracking (understandably), and increased utility, and even decreased the cost of the evade itself which makes it taxing on your initiative. You dun goofed if you think S/D prominence came out of Inf-strike.

If you remove the evade and rise up the damage, nobody will care, S/D will still be used because it has a way to deal damage RELIABLY.

So does S/P wtf are you talking about. When is the last time you played S/P,in the alpha? In April?

It should fail if you’re out of range, setting shadow return on your feet.* ( so that thieves will learn to position properly instead of spamming the skill whenver they want to change target).

In January Rangers were blowing up the spot with traps. Positioning was knowing to use Inf strike outside of trap range, instead of blowing yourself nilly willy right into them and giving a ranger free pressure on you. Not throwing your inf strike so far back that if they CC and force you out, you aren’t trying to run back. Well technically they made it easier to get away with overextending your Inf strike by limiting your range, now you don’t have to worry about getting too far removed from the fight and losing time.

it shouldn’t travel in z-axis ( cough cough TREB coigh cough)

Cough what? If you want to troll the treb you’ll always be able to do that with Shadowstep, and stealth. Theres so many ways to blow that thing up, on any prof.

Med.6150:

How seriously can one take player feedback given this little fact?

Funny thing is for the flack we give them, Sharp seems to think along similar lines. He pointed out how slow player response to Warriors was. Reality is 1) Ele situation isn’t as black as some would paint it and 2) Many would still cry how weak Ele is even if it was blatantly wrecking the game for weeks due to the response time.
Look at it, none of our evade options are new, inf strike isn’t new. You can roll Acro S/P and contribute to a team, but you know what? When it’s time to deal damage, you’ve got to put yourself at risk for a reasonable period of time and that can be shutdown.

S/P has seen use at all times except for the 3 months after haste need. The delay didn’t matter when players were dead regardless. Still wasn’t commented on. Cruuk running that stealth heavy build coupled with inf strike having disengage for days, still not given attention to. Its not short term its reality for more then half this games lifespan inf strike was not in question even when the sets it is one were in arguably stronger states then they are now. PWs evade frames still take long to come out you can still be interrupted after stunning it has weaker burst then before still isn’t a reliable evade and its disengage is in question now that Inf strike doesn’t remove the stun? Lmao.

Yes as kits change it has effect on the skills around them. S/D used to have to put itself at risk for a counter attack after FS regardless of inf strike. Making FS super forgiving is just that. FS is really forgiving. Before if you cancelled your Flanking strike you lost your flanking stab. So your damage suffered if you wanted to play cat & mouse to this extent that and the utility was weaker and the damage not unlockable to make your life easier.

The delay change in PW is overrated, the change to FS practically changed several aspects of it and reduced the play around it. That’s not inf strikes fault however. If I make hundred blades mobile and immobilize on first hit so its easier to use that won’t mean rush is now broke because you can disengage with it. Means I made HB baby mode.
Inf strikes only gotten harder on its own merit to cover you defensively due to needs that is what it is. Undoubtedly the thief will always be complained about but FS going from a difficult to hit underpowered skill that’s hard to reap the full advantage of due to telegraphs to an easy to land skill with 2x utility easy to get advantage of and unblockable medium damage is probably more significant…

Lol @ this thread and everyone who whines about inf strike. Skill was here from beta problem free in stronger form. Went from OP S/P and “OP” S/D went without being talked about. S/P remained in use as “the third” melee set and still no complaints when it had quickness support. Off hand dagger remained unbuffed. One S/D change later inf strike is the most OP skill in the game even after needs.

Straight up if inf strike is OP then players of this forum are so slow to find OP skills they’re quite likely still missing on worthwhile skills and weapon sets, that or they’re attaking the wrong thing but don’t notice as they need to just throw out kitten that they’ve heard from whatever “authority” they believe in.
Yeah if the sword was 5 months ago the skilled set with inf strike and a month later considered unskilled noob evade spam and attention goes to inf Strike forum went full goof.

7 months from now it’ll be complaints about Shadowstep, tripwire, obsidian flesh and swirling winds. “Swirling winds makes my shortbow useless, no counterplay needs nuuuuurf”

Kits have synergy changing a skill in a kit may make the others Vetter AS a result. That doesnt Mean they need changes to their core. If they find after kit changes they want to change inf strikes time frame to disengage theyll lowee infiltration.

For the occasions when long stealth ganks are set up and you wait because you can make decisions for the short term, but “long” term you are just guessing when they’ll pop out. For when you pop your own Refuge because the other thief you nearly gibbed popped his first, and not wanting to give him 10s of opportunity on you. When that SR revive pops up to rev a teammate and you nuke the place to high hell and have to keep someone on guard for 10s. Not to berate stealth but it is what it is, if you give someone 10s of invulnerability it’ll be stronger than Stealth but due to the visual nature of it, you’ll still be reacting more than predicting so it’s kitten ring. One thing to consider, part of the reason this can be more predictive than reactive is the lack of audio information on what’s going on to give you something to react to.

Effect Durations
This isn’t a big thing, but when you have non-boon buffs, and they have extensive durations, options to play against them aren’t as variable. Sharpening stone, Venoms, Ele Glyph? You can sit on em. That’s not to say that they are broken, they’re fairly weak. The gameplay on it is just not engaging. You have 30 seconds with the thing. For what? Would be better off with more potent effects with short durations to apply them. It’s engaging to use because your time is short. Sure skills can have long durations but when you’re having these attack buff type skills why would you have them on long durations? Back before quickness was nerfed and even now it’s interesting to pop them and see what you’re going to make out of the time you have. What is the goal of having these effects last 30 seconds? Is that to justify how weak they are in some cases or to justify the cooldowns? Going into Boon durations, whats the deal with Might stacking. Isn’t part of the reason it’s stackable so that your teammates can contribute? If you’re stacking might up heavily yourself as an individual it deteriorates from the idea of the group. Same thing with conditions, if you can put up near 20 stacks of bleed condition by yourself why is the cap 25 in pvp? Im not saying increasing the cap. Im saying having players put up near the stack cap of bleeding as an individual is weird in itself. You get two guys who apply bleeding and now they hit the cap on one guy? Since one person applied 18 bleeds and the other 13, but only 7 stuck? It’s a goof to have bleed cap so easily reached. May want to switch some of the bleeds players do to another stackable condition so 2 players don’t cap out each others damage output so simply. When all you had was bleeding and confusion I suppose it was hard not to do…but now there are 3 ways to split condi damage.

Sigil & Amulets
That’s a joke, it doesn’t compare. I don’t think you have to do Sigil revamps all at one time. When you addressed Soldier runes…what in January with the idea that it’ll open stuff up once fixed that was fine. You didn’t have to go through a whole pass of all the runes. Throw in an adjustment or two Karl. Sigils gotta get done, if there is time to make perplexity there is time to improve some sigils.
I’ll admit it, I may be missing something because I don’t feel all the amulets are valuable. I think celestial is mathematically valuable, but builds aren’t designed to take advantage of it with the stats it gives. I’ve asked multiple times in-game, on the forum, tried it myself and never got an answer. Who is using Celestial amulet?

Matches
A ready button
There should be a confirmation prompt when queing before it actually makes a team. That confirmation prompt serving to make sure you haven’t gone afk or the like. If you don’t accept the confirmation or say no to it, it’ll kick you out and won’t consider you for the team. I’ll admit it im guilty of going to get some food after forgetting about a lengthy que and coming back to find myself in a 300 – 100 game.

I need some EXP man
Some trivial pve exp gain on kill doesn’t scale to level would be nice. Can create a new item for the glory vendors “liquid jar of Exp” or whatever if there is already an equivalent. Place it so the amount of exp you can get with the jar is like the tournament reward chests, based on rank you purchase the jar at.

Not really to give solutions but more to convey dat feel.

My convenience.
Expanding the pvp menu.
In the PvP menu, you have Statistics, Arenas, Game Browser, My custom Arenas. I’d suggest a 5th tab under My custom Arena’s dedicated to Glory.
Currently there are Rank NPC’s placed in the mists, consolidate all of these npc’s wares into this new tab and block off what has yet to be unlocked. The NPC’s themselves could and should remain unless something to replace their space is thought of.
In addition to a Glory tab, a 6th tab for the PvP Locker.

The mists
A waypoint by the profession npc’s? A short blurb is that I think the Mists are pretty large, but it doesn’t seem like it’s large for any particular reason? Kill stacks not operating kitten per kill here are also a bother.

Showing your internal cool downs
I made a thread on this…forever ago, and Evan said it was a way off but something you guys would like to do. Including it anyways. One thing to add from my perspective is… even if I don’t see the CD it’s annoying but not a biggie, however not knowing when it’s up is such a pain. I think clutter is a worry you have but part of mitigating that is keeping the amount of ICD’s that are added to a low amount and that when they are, they share trait slots so that it’s not say 8 ICD’s from 8 trait slots needing 8 icon spaces of representation.

The visuals
-I’d like an option to toggle a players little profession icon over their head or something like that. It’s not a big thing, but it’s convenient.
- Solid Area of Effect rings. There is an option to disable them, but an option to make them stand out even further would be great. I get there’s an artistic reason for their current display, but hey sometimes you’re not looking for the art in semi-transparent puzzles pieces. A solid white border option for example would be nice.

obviously templates
/beatingdeadhorse.

Maps
The maps I enjoy the most are the ones where an action/objective feels like it has a large impact.
These two maps are Foefire and Temple. The lord and the buffs are things that when you kill/get you feel . Killing a lord feels heavier than getting a node, its satisfying, same with getting a buff. Its when the lord and buff elements are at play that Conquest is at it’s most inviting.
Foefire
- Would like to see the Lord more fleshed out. Two “archers” NPC’s above each gate. A monk npc by the Lord and the points increased. This mechanic is fun, but at the same time it feels underutilized and underdeveloped.
Spirit Watch
Not a fan. Profession imbalances notwithstanding , the orb running itself well just feels off. There isn’t one central location that a team wants to bring the orb to which I think detracts from it. You can whip it off to anywhere. I feel the map would be more enjoyable to orb assault/defend if you had to push the orb to Raven regardless of the nodes allegiance to get your moneys worth out of it instead of having bear and wolf as options for that. Alternative? Have the orb give Keg Brawl skills and change lob to something else.
Skyhammer
It is odd. It’s kind of like those fps/tps maps where you’d expect to have buffs spawning such as ammo refills, different guns and health packs. Odd suggestion? Include a fixed spot on both sides (not randomized) where an environmental item that grants stability spawns at a certain interval say once every 2 minutes. That may tone down some of the “launch lust” on the map without changing the map or killing the strategy. Kind of like Capricorns invuln Elixirs on the boat, but for stability. If you take anything away from this, Skyhammer has a giant nuke from the sky, and a bunch of bottomless abysses with worms at the bottom. Reducing either the hammer or the level of knockback significance a smidge would make it more appealing

Gameplay
Stealth
Long duration stealth is so brain numbing on both sides of the equation. GW2 handles it pretty well in general but when it lasts long it sucks. Conquest deteriorates part of the significance due to how nodes work but in terms of playing against it? When it’s short term 3-4, even those conditional 5 seconds no biggie. Longer then that? It becomes Hide & Go Seek: The waiting game. Sharp mentioned during MLG the fast pace of the game.10-15s in this ‘fast pace’ to deal with a) are they attacking b) did they flee? c) are they dead? That’s a really boring aspect of the game. However many of us thieves feel we need that, both for group viability and to deal with bullkitten near guaranteed hit target based attacks in our frail shell. I get the feeling, anet if you feel the same please remedy it so that such a long duration isn’t “needed”. It is boring.

Which kind of removes it from the “best” category when the reality is that it cannot uphold itself meaningfully in the positions that require heavy mitigation

PvE? Use the broke runes.
SPvP? You can maintain pretty much perma burning, and apply poison and bleeding fairly frequently but I wouldn’t say it’s a beast. Keep it for teh hot-joins
However Condi ele is the future.
Viva teh condi ele (until it gets buffed, I find it broken, hate it, and flame Anet).

Phaeton.9582:

dreztina.4820:

Don’t worry guys, conjured weapons are getting buffed next patch. Viability INC.

I’ve been wanting to see earth shield used at high levels since 2012..

Not even kidding

Frost bow is my conjure of choice.
Dat deep freeze.

Mrbig.8019:

Zinwrath.2049:

Just a few in similar genre to gw2 spvp.

Everquest next is boasting ground breaking pvp, but refusing to release information so hard to say on that one. But with fully destructible environments and a GW2 style combat system allowing full customization of over 40 classes, it definitely could one-up Gw2.

Wildstar is being built around its pvp format, and thus should have an easier time balancing. Already boasts arena, battleground, and guild vs guild style pvp game modes and uses gw2 dodge and hotbar mechanics, but goes even further to add more skill shot based combat.

Smite is picking up its population (showing insane growth over the last 6 months in its open beta) and is soon to be launched next month. Features alikeness 3rd person pvp with already 7-8 game modes and adding another soon. Also has a very easy to use control mechanic with FULL skill shot combat. (does not have a dodge bar though)

“The Division” is getting some buzz as well for its hardcore pvp format….still mysterious though.

And yes there is Hearthstone, the Blizzard version of Legends of Norrath from the everquest franchise. (will no doubt be more successful as blizzard has a way of taking SOE’s ideas then making them more mainstream much like they did with WoW from Everquest). It will definitely steal some thunder from other games.

And of course the on going many major e-sport games that are planning add ons and expantion. ….league of legends, starcraft 2, counter strike, etc.

Wildstar and Smite’s combat system is terrible when compared to GW2, and this is obvious.

You may argue that Gw2 skills are not “skillful” like in Smite ( being full of skills shots) but the dynamic is way more entertaining and fluid in GW2 when compared to any other game.

GW2’s combat can be more fun to play and feels faster. However the format is less interesting, the balance is wonkier, infrastructure is poorer, self-improvement feels less clear and as far as watching Smite is a hell of a lot clearer and cleaner. That and Smite has practically no real rewards in the same respect as GW2 when you buy Godpack, and skin accumulation isn’t much faster or slower than GW2’s (until later spvp ranks).

GW2 has a ways to go before it’s in smites League and smite isn’t really in a league.

Revised thoughts…
Flamewall ~
Create a wall of flame at the target area that burns foes who pass through it.
Allies who pass through it gain Might.

Might 4 stacks: 10s.
Burning: 4s
Duration: 8 s
Combo Field: Fire
Range: 900

Fire shield
Cooldown reduced to 25s.

Freezing Gust
Chill your foe for a brief time. If they are already chilled they take double damage.
Cooldown reduced to 20s

Damage: 79
Chilled: 3 s
Damage ( chilled): 79 (x2)
Range: 900

Flame wall change increased the support of /Focus in general. 4 stacks of might will be more practical than the near non-existent damage it currently ticked for. Couple that with the burn lasting longer. Fire Shield would be really big when traited, and untraited the extra frequency makes it a bit more relevant.

Freezing gust.
S/F can’t trigger this normally but it will make things like say Signet of Water and Glyph of Elements a bit more attractive. For D/F frozen burst already gives you chill access so this is a straight increase to the effectiveness of D/F.

Gorefiend.9675:

ensoriki.5789:

I tried to watch the video but it was a complete mess of stuff going on. Like the game on a cohesive understandable level does not scale for 15v15.
Like I’ve play Planet side 2, and it can have way more players duking it out then that, but it’s never that unreadable. It was straight messy. It sounds like you guys are communicating but I couldn’t even watch the full thing it was so messy, like everything that is groaned about in SPvP multiplied 3 times if not more.

GW2 just has that much Flash. If Anets vision of PvP is being that messy man they need some glasses.

That is a complaint not only thrown out for 15v15 but even the tournament pvp that happened today.

Definitely I’m saying that it feels like the problem of Tpvp is even more clear with this video that the combat just doesn’t cohesively scale that well for multiplayers as it was even harder to discern things than a normal tpvp match. Which isn’t a good thing.

I tried to watch the video but it was a complete mess of stuff going on. Like the game on a cohesive understandable level does not scale for 15v15.
Like I’ve play Planet side 2, and it can have way more players duking it out then that, but it’s never that unreadable. It was straight messy. It sounds like you guys are communicating but I couldn’t even watch the full thing it was so messy, like everything that is groaned about in SPvP multiplied 3 times if not more.

GW2 just has that much Flash. If Anets vision of PvP is being that messy man they need some glasses.

In some respect it was messier than even a normal Zerg at a keep as the keeps help to force a sort of front/mid/backline a tad that organizes things visually even though it’s flashy. That Ele went from the front, to the back, to the front again, could be anywhere there is no line in the sand drawn and because of that so much flash clutters up the screen….

Aza.2105:

Its apparent you have the meaning of counter play confused with avoidance since you go on to reply to me in respect to my statement about no counter play with this:

“It doesn’t even sound like you know how to play against a telegraphed root, multi-hit skill with a 2s animation. You don’t have to stick with me here, because your mind is already long since blown.”

Telegraphed skills can “be avoided” but were is the counter play? There is a distinct difference between the two. What you are saying here is like someone asking how do you counter a class that relies on boon spam, to which you reply: “Wait until the boons fade then attack them”. Its a legit tactic but its not counter play, counter play would be to make a build that boon strips.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/counter

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/avoidance

Again, very distinct difference in what the word means.

Read the definition yourself.
Then go play the game and read the skills.
You can interrupt Pistol whip
Shocked aura, distortion, headshot, counterattack, fear, so on and so forth. Moving past the ability to interrupt you can also adjust play to face it and mitigate it’s significance or make it threatening to the user, pop retal to counter punish, pop stability to negate it’s holding power, pop a blind to prevent the stun, teleport out. Continue about how a telegraphed skill with plenty of vulnerability frames doesn’t let you counter it’s like saying Zealots defense and HB can’t be countered. I don’t need to wait until PW is finished then attack, the tactic is straight interrupt it, that is countering it. Are you even remotely serious?

Aza.2105:

What thief builds don’t use regen traits?

You’ve completely missed the point of bringing it up which is pointing out contrast between the thief’s base state and what traits provide them.That directly relates to the frequency of stealth and evades.

So your perspective is that thief’s weakness is their skills have a more universal appeal which makes weapon swapping less favorable? Are you kidding me man? All of this is to justify the fact that many of their skills do not have hard counters.

Weapon swapping is less favorable on a thief because it doesn’t increase anything for you. All Weapon swap does is provide you some utility functions. On a War you can rush to a target, bladetrail, HB, whirling strike, using all 4 cooldowns. Swap and have 4 up because the cooldowns are seperate. On Thief you use BP, Inf strike, PW, you are not tapped, switch to Shortbow, no initiative for anything because the resource is global. For that reason it’s not about universal appeal wtf, it’s because flat out if you had 5 ini in D/P, you have 5 ini in Shortbow, With multiple skills dealing insignificant damage the main to swap is for the utility of it. If Chill actually affected thieves it be causing a global effect on the usage of 8 skills. Rather than the 1-1 on use nature it has with CD skills, which thief is not exempt from since the other half of their skillbar is affected by chill.

Do you understand why counter play scares the average player? Stick with me now because this may just blow your mind. Counter play requires the player to “THINK”. You do not have to think when nothing you do has a form of potential punishment attached to it. The result is you just do it again and again until you succeed.

Im sorry wtf is scary about counter-play? If players don’t want to think they can play Snakes & Ladders.

There is no counter for PW in game, just like how most of the game lacks counter play.

It doesn’t even sound like you know how to play against a telegraphed root, multi-hit skill with a 2s animation. You don’t have to stick with me here, because your mind is already long since blown.

You said a evade counter is counter productive. And that all you have to do is time to frames to hit them while they are vulnerable. What skill besides auto attacks and the occasional instant skill has the ability to hit a thief in the interval when they transition from finishing a evade to starting another?

Is this even a serious question? Outside of Distracting shot, none of the thieves actual evade weapon skills chain to back with full i-frames. You can’t evade with LS for 5s or until you pop it, vulnerable frames. Death blossom doesn’t have complete iframes and can easily be interrupted by interrupt skills. Pistol whip’s stun takes as long to come out as CND and is vulnerable even after landing that stun. So the only other evades coming through are A) RFI, Dodge rolls possibly extended with Signet of Agility and C) Withdraw possibly extended with Rune of Adventurer in a rare blue moon that you won’t see since if anything they’ll have rune of Lyssa.

The stealth mechanic itself is counter productive to the game, which is suppose to be so visual that you are suppose to look at the animations as if it was a fighting game. To determine your next move. What is the problem? Stealth makes the enemy invisible, so you can’t see what animations they will do.

Stealth is to be a brief defense, which is manageable by a sense of pacing. Except when the duration is long it’s all you need to do is flipping count.

Even in street fighter, with a character who has stealth like Twelve in sf3, you could still see the outline of their figure. So counter play was possible. Stealth in gw2 completely removes the entity from the battlefield, single handly negating the idea that understanding character animations are essential for winning.

Stealth doesn’t remove you from the battlefield. It removes you from sight and makes you untargettable those are different from being a removed entity from the game. Invulnerability is much closer to that in actual effect.

Everything in your post denies the fact that counter play should exist. Gw2 is in its current state because it doesn’t exist.

Um what? More like you’re trying to create some idea of “No counter-play” that you can attack just for the sake of making noise. No one said anything about having no counter-play or denied it’s value. However apparently you have some perspective where telegraphed skills have no counter-play to them.

It affects recharge skills and steal. Initiative. Is a Resource pool just AS life shroud is. Chill doesnt affect Resource pools. Deal With it? Engineers dont have to worry about weapon a weapon swap CD the game is assymetrical and looks for balance within that not in sameness.

Evade counters is counter productive to the purpose. The counterplay itself is attacking during the aftercast and non-iframes if its not a full evade. These are basic principles Genres have accepted. Maybe its because GW2 is in a hybrid Stadt between the old targetting systems and Mord contemporary action combat that players need target based solution to an action based Problem.

Stealth doesnt need More counterplay it needs to stop being handedout nilly Willy and durations made consistent. 11s of stealth is completely out of sync with the original way it was marketed to the playerbase.

The “weakness” of thief design is having skills with significant more general use than others making them more preferable in 80% of cases. It diminishes the value of weapon swapping and makes it more of an unfortunate inconvenience you have to ocassionally do. Coupled with base initiative being incredibly tight without INI regen traits and effects that are ridiculous for their cost until traits come in to play.

MrBig once pointed this out though who knows where his train of thought is now; How off the untraited thief is to treated versions. You end up seeing a similar state with 30 DA thieves where there small resource pool coupled with little or none INI regen makes them completely hit or miss, high risk rare reward, hit or run players without any resource to run with for that matter. Hence why you pretty much only see 30 DA on the non existent venom thieves. Despite its lack of effect on the weapon skills not mattering for kitten given how thieves normally use less variety in skill use to worry about to begin with given how long a thief sits in a weapon set for relative to everyone else. Yes we needed chill to have an affect so they can continue to use less skills than everyone else since there is a shared pool for both weapon sets.

But forget that let’s focus on kittening chill as one of the great crimes of the thief. Not SRS.

Achilles.2197:

Am I the only person who’s frustrated we were told the update would be October 1st and of course, it’s been pushed back 2 more weeks? Oh, but by showing my frustration now they won’t give any clarity on when these things will happen and we’ll get the “when it’s ready.”

At this point I don’t believe “when it’s ready” either. Sounds more like “if it’s ready.”

They recieved a lot of feedback and are possibly affected by that.

Aza.2105:

ensoriki.5789:

Mathias.9657:

How do you stop mindless builds when classes like thief exist, I main thief btw serious question.

It’s always going to be something between flank spam, BS stealth spam, pistol whip spam, heartseek spam. War will always be CC chain, HB haste spam, etc. you get my drift.

Internal game design flaw. kittened cheese builds will always exist because of how the classes are so simple. It’s just pop cooldowns, run in, faceroll, repeat. there is no soft ebb and flow, you are either getting hit by a truck or tickled by a feather.

Pistol whip and HB have like 100 ways to counter play them. Possibly a million.

You mean there are ways you can avoid it, not counter it. There is no counter for PW in game, just like how most of the game lacks counter play.

A counter would be if you catch them spamming pw and you interrupt them, its locked out for 10secs. Sounds familiar? Yes yes it does, gw1 had lots of counter play.

You can interrupt PW even after being stunned. Assuming you don’t dodge it. Initiative is consumed regardless. Opptornist is unlikely to proc on 1st hit so full 5 INI. Without 15 preparedness thats 42% of resource gone to crap. If using inf strike to land it more than half. If it hits you stun break and walk out mitigating possibly half the damage of a skill notably weaker than HB. Without quick recovery its almost 9s to recover INI from failed PWs. With a wind up like CND and stability to counter if you are hit anyways and traits like tempest defense skills like phase retreat its easy to cancel PWs and counter attack.

Hb , pw , zealot defense earthquake kill shot are all easy to play against because they’ve Been given restrictions.

Daendur.2357:

Excalibur.9748:

I don’t think people understand how pivotal this skill is to the S/D kit. This skill ALONE allows you to spec pure offense with almost no sustain (personally I roll with completely no sustain, and I don’t even evade spam (S/D makes it possible to not evade, not stealth ONLY because of infiltrator strike), it’s all about the positioning and CC) because you can use it to avoid a key attack and then continue with the offense immediately after. You don’t have to worry about getting CC’d and then 1HKO by a chain because #2 exists. You don’t have to worry about getting stuck in the midst of a bunch of necro marks or other AoE because it exists. You can actually preemptively evade key skills with either #3 or evade, but if key skills hit it’s no big deal because you always have an escape plan.

You can’t just replace this skill with an offensive skill, the whole kit wouldn’t even work. It’s just that important.

So basically it’s always 2 2 2 , no matter which weaponset a thief is using.

Outside of desperation no one spams sword 2.

Stealth prevents stomps. Carry a mez, thief or engi and you can stomp deny everything.

Mathias.9657:

How do you stop mindless builds when classes like thief exist, I main thief btw serious question.

It’s always going to be something between flank spam, BS stealth spam, pistol whip spam, heartseek spam. War will always be CC chain, HB haste spam, etc. you get my drift.

Internal game design flaw. kittened cheese builds will always exist because of how the classes are so simple. It’s just pop cooldowns, run in, faceroll, repeat. there is no soft ebb and flow, you are either getting hit by a truck or tickled by a feather.

Pistol whip and HB have like 100 ways to counter play them. Possibly a million.

katniss.6735:

IMO, this is how we want to play:

In order of enjoyment

WvW: D/D, then Staff, then S/D, then S/F.
Spvp: D/D, S/D, Staff, S/F
PVE: Staff, S/D, D/D, S/F

Right now I’m playing D/D in WvW and Spvp still. WvW = full celestial + perplexity, knights weapons. In spvp: full soldiers with grove runes. Both are 0/0/10/30/30. Ether Renewal, CFlame, Mist Form, LFlash for both. Only use armor of earth for special situations where I need the stab. I have a secondary knights set with travelers. I carry 3 daggers, a staff, a scepter, and a focus at all times. I use: FGS, then greater elem, then tornado (staff, or extra stab, or knockback). I solo roam at least 75% of the time I play.

Most of the patch listed above is meaningless to me. It will not alter my playstyle at all. I really don’t know why anet is making changes to things nobody wants to use in pvp at all. I see maybe 1 ele in 100 matches that has a frostbow in use. I see very few eles in spvp overall. If I want to play fresh air, or fire line, I have to hide behind other people with staff or s/d as glass for it to be worthwhile.

D/F not even acknowledged.

Quickness is balanced as it is. Current action speed is fast enough and it doesn’t need to be slower.

1% faster up to 25 is well flat out slower than 50% action speed at current. Nerf quickness for what.

And lol @ guy talking about one shots. The only things close to one-shot were D/x + quickness. Everything else was a bunch of long multihit skills (and ranger pew pew) that even under quickness gave you a day and a half to react.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Fascinating. There are a number of good candidates here, but I’m going a different way…

Stand Your Ground

AoE Stability application that you can also trait and rune to remove conditions and recharge every 24s. Oh yeah, its a stun break too.

As of this moment, the number of classes that can supply on demand stability to team mates is… 1.

Number of successful teams I have seen play consistently without this skill 0. It isn’t as irritating as other skills that pop up on this list, because it has always been there, but it seems to me that there is an awful lot of mileage to this one.

Elementalists have rock solid to give stability However its not as convenient to use before spec viability is even put into question.

Condi Ele is the future.

They’ll replace it with Capricorn and then you will beg on your knees for it back if it means no Capricorn.

Xillllix.3485:

ensoriki.5789:

Xillllix.3485:

Which is why the air signet should do 33%, like the thief, instead of 25% like the 4th air skill.

Casting air 4 on staff basically renders your signet useless for 20 seconds… Which therefore make the air signet a stupid skill to equip. The sort of things eles have to live with.

Thieves is 25%….
Jesus rice

Well ok, it should do more than the base skill none the less.

It also does instant damage where the thief version does not, and stunbreaks.
There’s nothing wrong with Signet of air -_-.

My perspective.

On skill splits
1. Should keep the same skill balance for WvW and Spvp if you can. Splitting PvE and pvp sure no problem. Splitting two forms of PvP will only increase segregation of those playerbases.
2. Gotta stop killing builds, part of why some players are in WvW is the perception that they have something viable in WvW that is not in spvp. Eg, when S/D was originally nerfed you have the unnerfed Tactical strike and CnD in WvW and the nerfed version in Spvp. The Division is wonky. Alliance battles didn’t get skill splits for GvG, HA, RA, TA, FA, JQ, HB and CA.

other crap

1 ~ Let Glory buy badges of Honor. With the current little use of Glory have it at a high cost to do so.

2 ~ Create a “Beta” Dueling Arena in the home instance that’s purchased with Glory.
Hold on to the idea maybe extrapolate it to Guild Halls however far down the road they are (2020?)

3 ~ When creating new skills for the game, have Glory be used to unlock new skills/traits if they’re not already purchased in PvE. The current skills & Traits would then be considered the “core” set. Unlocking new skills overtime for something like 3000 glory will give people reason to spend it. In reality it’s negligible since we have an abundance of Glory already but it increases the value of it.

4 ~ Throw sellable miniatures into the Team Arena chest to encourage that, these should be new miniatures. To be “fair” at the same time release some kind of PvE exclusive miniature that is different. Eg. A Miniature Balthazar in PvP Team Chests at 1% chance and A Miniature Rurik or something for PvE.

5~ Change Dishonor. You leave a match, get banned for 15(?) minutes, and escalate it with each subsequent leave by 5 minutes up to the normal current max where the lengthy ban then takes place.

6~ Throw in a confirmation prompt into the que so those who are afk or looking to leave the que and forgot about it, can get out without ending up in a game and ruining someone elses experience.

7 ~ Maybe im tripping but Knight runes aren’t good, Celestial is conceptually strong but there aren’t any builds/weapon sets that can take full advantage of it due to dispersal of effects so maybe it warrants a buff due to lack of cohesion to take advantage of it. Options are nice if they work.

8 ~ Some sort of Glory to Karma conversion.

9 ~ If templates are a way off maybe a preset npc? Some kind of NPC who has 2 or 4 builds preset by the devs? Maybe that’s a faster short-term thing the devs can do until they can complete templates.

10 ~ Make the mists count as PvP already. NPC’s still giving 1 stack of on-kill effects.

11 ~ Usage statistics panel in the pvp menu to see top and bottom 3 utils/weapons used per profession?

12 ~ Seeing our ICD’s though Evan said many months ago that it would happen eventually if they can manage it…

13 ~ Hold an in-game PvP-event?

Xillllix.3485:

Which is why the air signet should do 33%, like the thief, instead of 25% like the 4th air skill.

Casting air 4 on staff basically renders your signet useless for 20 seconds… Which therefore make the air signet a stupid skill to equip. The sort of things eles have to live with.

Thieves is 25%….
Jesus rice

OP? dunno about that but I want Obsidian Flesh on my Thief, my Ranger, my Warrior, on off-hand dagger Ele, on Staff Ele, on Guardian, on Engi.
I want Obsidian Flesh at all times.

Mrbig.8019:

Again, there’s no way to change it, it should be removed completely, altough i know this would nerf significantly the thief ( thief has always had a role in the meta exactly thanks to this skill).

If you keep stealth only while you’re in the refuge, you’re basically marking your heads with a big arrow telling your enemies " ehy guise, HERE".

You won’t be able to use it as a reset, nor as a ress, nor as an offensive tool ( since as soon as you exit, you won’t be stealthed anymore).

This is the biggest source of stealth in the game, reason why it’s totally cheese.

It should be removed and replaced with a better, less cheesy utility.

Smoke screen is also a totally useless skill, they could remove them altogheter and rework deception skills, since basically only shadowstep and blinding powder are actually balanced.

Just make the stealth after the refuge 3-5s whichever.
Could even up the heal to just shift the direction elsewhere.

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

Daecollo.9578:

It would add new traits which allows rolling to shrug off condition damage or lower it.

Traits on the same principle already exist.
Your idea is “Break the game and then see what happens”
1. It wont happen because of PvE.
2. It’s a longshot that would end up making every profession have to go through a series of revisions when damage they’re taking goes up heavily.

Says da thief. :P

I’ll take it that you don’t know what to say so you decided to say nothing of worth.

Daecollo.9578:

It would add new traits which allows rolling to shrug off condition damage or lower it.

Traits on the same principle already exist.
Your idea is “Break the game and then see what happens”
1. It wont happen because of PvE.
2. It’s a longshot that would end up making every profession have to go through a series of revisions when damage they’re taking goes up heavily.

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

Daecollo.9578:

Yes, but it would also come to a damage nerf to some things.

You’d have to nerf every skill in the game excluding Freezing Gust. Actually probably nerf that too.

Would make combat a bit funner to watch though, probably.

How so? Nothing would change. You fire off attacks because they can’t be negated any longer. In What reality does it slow down the actual pace at which a player clutters the screen with skill effects. In addition with how the game works it would break condition based attacks. You go from dealing 0% damage on an evaded attack to 50%. You go from dealing no conditions on an evaded attack to dealing the full stack.
With the idea of break the game and then nerf things? To this new shift? Doesn’t compute.

Daecollo.9578:

Yes, but it would also come to a damage nerf to some things.

You’d have to nerf nearly every skill in the game.

Sweet more damage when attacks are spammed.
Brb dropping entire skillbar on dude since dodging will only reduce the damage he takes while applying my conditions. That wont glance. Even if I’m not condi based will just throw out more attacks anyways. I went from doing 0 damage on a dodge to dealing 50% that wont have any ill effects on TTK.
Perfect.

They only have to change animation/cast times and cd to decrease spam.
As if they’d overhaul their system.

Kuruptz.4782:

in other words is this what ele will be getting for balance patch seems pretty accurate on what jon sharp is saying ? is this those the fixes we need? i mean i cant see anyone still going with conjure weapons ( if they mean they are buffing them for ppl to use them more in tpvp? ) or that people will start using staff for the geyser buff?

They’re acknowledging that conjures are having issues and trying to make headway with improving them. They’re saying that staff is underperforming with its heals and make adjustments to improve that.
I don’t think Sharp is saying that anything that they’ve done is what is specifically needed, but that they are the steps to move Ele options they’d like to see into a better light.

colesy.8490:

Exactly what I was thinking. The more smaller attacks you give mobs, the more people will demand protection and aegis so more guardians get used.

Boon removal.

Fortus.6175:

Eurantien.4632:

Fortus.6175:

Paraphrasing: “…yeah but you got it wrong eles play using only 1-2 attunements, fire and air….” . Perhaps these pro dev ele players can “teach” us how to play eles only using those 2 elements, Im quite intrigued myself

They were referring to the majority of PvE elementalists. Come on.. get your facts right.

actually no, you get your facts right. They were talking about necros, guardian and eles in the PvP enviroment and how the rotations for necros had been made easier and the “pro” player wasnt happy about it, because he knew necros were that strong but only a few could pull it off, they mentioned the way eles worked and they said that “actually no, most eles dont attune out of fire/lighting” as in saying all eles dont know how to bring the max potential of the class

No he prefaced it with PvE.
I think its been a month since i listened to the thing and I still remember that.

Anyways please don’t exaggerate Ele plight. The game doesn’t need more overdone changes in response to hyperbole.

Lol you need to fix the encounters.
You need encounters who push out more frequent damage in smaller packets to go against active defenses and place pressure on zerker specs.

Mean PS: With that being said, I would appreciate if perhaps you would drop warriors from top priority and gave other classes (namely elementalists) a chance to flourish, it certainly feels that said class is getting all the goodies and attention, having a unending amount of viable builds, weapons, roles and places in team while others barely see any action other than players trying to make it work somehow [in vain]

You need to drop this train of thought that they’re favoring a class.

Btw Evan when you mouse over a players “dot” in the minimap it says their name over it. Is it possible to make it so when you mouse over their name in the party menu it’ll bring up their name over the dot on the mini map?

Evan knows why kids love cinnamon toast crunch.

tora.3205:

Hi guys, the title said it all,
Wich is the most difficult WvW build have you ever played on a Thief?

I’m still looking for it…

(for sPVP I think I will open a new thread since roles are very important)

P/D + S/P, Trap thief.

Eles, guardian and thief have the same health pool.
Lol @ trying to make corrections.
Eles Signet passives are fine “umimpressive” relative to what? Everyones signets passive basically do the exact same thing and Signets passives were already buffed across the board. This cannot be real tea.

For next patch.
Make it on swap/ only go on ICD if it removes a boon or hell only when they’re above or under 50%, maybe if they’re standing on their tippy toes or some kitten. Something more reliable…

Bottom line I’m looking to trade some of the damage I usually get from my sigil on targets without the boons of interest, to be able to deal better with the targets who do have the boons….but the sigil is bleh.

Real talk I know, slow and steady, no dart boards, wait and see. Well make Null usable and wait and see who’s picking that up.

Rome.3192:

ensoriki.5789:

Condi elementalist is the future. Believe that.

I can’t tell if you’re joking about this, but a Shaman’s amulet staff ele can be a pretty strong far point assaulter (provided it hasn’t been caped yet). With buffs coming to the staff skills (which might include a cast-time reduction for Eruption), I can see how this will be viable in the future.

I’m actually serious. Though I haven’t tried it with staff. Tried scepter. Easy as hell to maintain burning as an element a list and bleeding isn’t an issue either. Poison also isn’t out of the question. Mixed with shaman allowing you to heal for more than a sneeze and its been somewhat surprising to see how close Ele condi abilities are to being at a solid and reasonable level. I don’t have even a 20th of experience with my ele than my thief they may be much better than I’ve experienced in more capable hands.

Condi elementalist is the future. Believe that.