Even 15% more damage per hit is pretty significant imo. I understand why heavy armor classes take less damage thematically, but I still don’t understand why warrior, a class already taking significantly less damage than light armor classes, also gets quite possibly the best defensive traitline in the game. Its just strange to me. Though this isn’t really all that relevant.
What if they started by going back to GW1 where everyone had the same HP pool and balanced around that? Right now while it’s possible for many classes to exceed the 2600 armor mark, doing so typically means low HP or low Attack.
If can start bringing things down to a similar baseline, we might be able to cause stats to be more effective and meaningful.
You tell me. Would you run a weird survival build like celestial ele or marauder thief for solo open world? Or is just not worth your time when you could get the job done faster by bringing friends or running with the zerg? Because somehow I doubt glass builds are soloing a lot of the champions in HoT (okay, maybe necro or ranger can but the so-called squishy classes?). Am I wrong here? Or is it just that it straight doesn’t matter enough to people to register the value of survival stats in these scenarios?
Unfortunately you are. A lot of individuals who solo content can do so in just about any gear and typically don’t run any form of tanky gear. It’s just far more unforgiving but by no means impossible.
I myself have done it getting most of my HoT skill points by myself for a few classes. ;_; Suck at Mesmer though, I do.
Having played a survival thief for the latter half of my thief career (read: marauder’s before we had a prefix), I can say I definitely have been there and done that and solo’d most of the content. As for champs? Nope, never could manage it, because even with near-constant heals, I just don’t have the Armor or HP pool to back up being a self-repairing glass cannon. I’m much more adept at picking off foes in ones or twos and clearing group events than going face to face with a big nasty monster.
But that’s also because playing solo-thief with a critical focus is basically the equivalent of a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. Fun times.
Thus to comment on the OP: let me put this all into real-gameplay context.
A few nights back I was doing the Jade Armor event in Bloodstone Fen. Nice big zerg that day, so the screen-lag was amazing. Also meant I could circle the fringes of the fight avoiding the AOEs and pot-shotting the Jade Armors from range, generally floating between 60% and 100% HP depending on how poorly I was judging the floor. However, if I lost track of it during the duo fights (because I was sitting on a Jade Bow in melee), I’d go down near-instantly. Not just because I can’t survive a hit from those guys, but because my HP is constantly all over the map from Regeneration, Life Leech, Heal, Health Gain, and a dozen other effects — and even if you take the Legendary out of the prefix and pit me against the Champion bloodstone elemental that spawns, he can effectively one-shot me because explosions deal 7k damage and his leap does a bit more than that.
So if “bosses” could stomp players who fell, we’d see a far worse outcome to battles because, and I’m putting this in bold here, prioritizing other players and resurrecting them in battle is far slower than when out of combat and leaves you vulnerable while simultaneously decreasing the pressure on the foe(s).
Not many will choose to do that for those very reasons. Picking up a downed ally is an entirely different matter, and while it takes a few out of the fight, it’s not pinning you to one spot hoping that bringing someone back at half health will be enough to swing the fight.
Let’s go back to that Jade Armor event. I probably help pick up a good 20-30 players in that sequence, across … what is it, 6 fights? That’s of the ones that I can reach. There are scores more. Now imagine how poorly this world-event would turn out if each of those players we didn’t reach was instantly stomped.
No one would be happy, least of all the players.
Your solution isn’t a solution.
Your solution is a symptom of a bigger problem.
The problem is not that any given boss is too loving since the odds of getting up from a boss with no adds is about zero if you go down in the first place. The problem is that “damage output” really is the summation of the game. You can almost read the coefficient of a skill and know whether it is worthwhile or not since longer fights with fewer enemies increase danger levels exponentially.
You want more skilled gameplay? You don’t change the stats of the players, don’t demand more dodges and don’t reduce rally mechanics; if you want more skilled gameplay you need to make the opposite rules true:
Battles need to be more “Wars of Attrition” where surviving them is actually a matter of withstanding inevitable strikes rather than racing to deal incredible amounts of damage and enemies should actually hit less hard but hit more frequently reducing emphasis on perfect active defense (blocks, evades) and focusing more on granting passive defense (toughness, healing power/regens) a more active role in survival.
Your solutions would actually only have the opposite effects of your intentions. And for the record your “suggestions” are actually already in the game. That was what HoT was on release basically. And every-casual-one hated it.
GIVE THIS MAN A KITTENED MEDAL.
I’ll get to the gist of this post immediately: I’m coming back from a very long and mostly inactive hiatus of playing GW2. The last time I played engineer was shortly after release, and all I know about it now are a few forum posts and a few builds I cobbled together on the gw2skills editor.
Will it be worth picking up engineer and going for scrapper?
I might skill leveling entirely; I’ve got an Insta-40 scroll and more than enough tomes to get me the rest of the way, but after a lot of bad experiences with Heart of Thorns, I’m not so sure about how dedicated I am to unlocking scrapper.
Experimenting with the Insta-80 thing sent out to everyone showed that I found grenades and a few other kits pretty fun (but most of the standard weapons dull). I’ll need to do some more research on traits to get a better sense of synergies, though. My big regret is that the trial mode doesn’t let you check out the elite spec for the profession, since that’s the one thing I’m quite interested in after seeing a number of players using it.
Insofar the only other characters I’ve gotten to 80 are: Thief, Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer. No particular builds, really, as I play PvE and Fractals exclusively, the latter when a few guildies or friends are up for it.
Engineer looks like it’ll be different, which I kind of hope it will. I could use a change from the characters I have. But I’m still not sure on if investing in the profession and pushing for scrapper will be worth it.
Can ANet add in a incredibly low chance that being hit by a Bear’s “Maul” attack can cause any piece of armor to gain the Damaged or Broken condition?
Because at this rate, the last Elder Dragon is probably just a really grumpy dire bear.
I sure miss when we just got Skill Points from leveling up and could level indefinitely and used spare skill points to buy Mystic Forge things. Gave you a reason to keep accumulating them after Level 80 and push for map completion as well to get all the extra ones (while leveling more in the process and further gaining points).
And if you were like me and had some 300 extra skill points sitting around unused, well, no big deal.
Makes you wonder why the decided to completely revamp the entire skill and trait system just to shove “Hero Points” in place of everything (and then muck it up further with Elite Specs that can already only be unlocked at Level 80). We didn’t have these issues before.
If I could get a perma-use pass for this, I’d absolutely use the gems I’ve been sitting on to get it.
Old Lion’s Arch was infinitely better and more fitting to Tyria and Kryta than this new version. Sure it might be prettier and vaguely better laid out, but it suffers from the same massive region of unused space — only at least in Old Lion’s Arch there were things to see and encounter there rather than literal empty space. And considering how little of LA was ultimately changed between the two versions (discounting the ruined one), the only thing we really got was a facelift and a few regions moved around. That’s … it.
So yeah. Permanent Old Lion’s Arch gateway / pass / portal scroll / whatever. Totally would get one.
There was this game long, long ago called “Guild Wars: Prophecies.”
Specifically, “The Flameseeker Prophecies.”
So yes, some of us already did.
The utterly forgiving nature of open-world core Tyria content, I think, has attracted/kept a new level of “casual” compared to most gaming environments. Which is a good thing! I think that mindset has led to the creation of one of the most unique game worlds I’ve ever seen, and I’d be sad to see it change.
That being said, I always wonder if OP and other casual players have offered serious thought to whether or not they would even enjoy being in an environment like the HoT maps. They certainly don’t have the expansive feeling of most core Tyria maps, and they are meant to be extremely hazardous war zones that have decimated the Pact. HoT maps very much belong to the jungle, not to the silly Tyrians who decided to set foot in it to challenge the natives.
As for the parts of the personal story and HoT story set in challenging environments, I really have little to say other than I’d be happy to run content with you if we’re ever on at the same time.
I think the OP and their husband’s issues are similar to my own: we’re here for the story and exploration, with gameplay being secondary.
When it’s too much of a pain to keep slogging through the undergrowth just to get to the next bit of dialog and uncover a bit more of what has been going on (especially after missing out on lots of LS1), it becomes harder and harder to simply care to play.
Grinding out Verdant Brink so I could complete at least a single map was an utter chore that required following groups around just to complete the Hero Challenges, and at times entire areas were rendered inaccessible because I had the poor luck of jumping into a map during the majority of the combat.
For someone who spent hundreds of hours playing a single character with the desire of seeing every bit of what happened to Tyria since Prophecies and learning the story it’s kind of a huge slap in the face when the developers quietly say “git gud or go home.”
If I wanted that kind of gameplay, I’d go back to the Souls series.
Serious question here, as I’ve not looked at my settings in … years now, but was there ever or is there currently an option to toggle mouse-look mode?
Something along the lines of: “press [KEY] to make the mouse act as if right-click is always depressed.”
I could see that being really useful for people who find it difficult to adapt or have health issues that make holding down mouse buttons a pain. Likewise this could be a nice way for the OP to slowly break into things without feeling trapped one way or the other.
(Or we could finally get proper controller support, not like that’ll ever happen~)
Yes, there is a mode called “action camera”, where you move the camera simply by moving the mouse, the cursor is locked in the middle of the screen, and all skills you cast will cast on your cursor. You can set a custom hotkey to toggle this mode on and off. Unfortunately though, this prevents skill clicking, as your cursor is locked in the middle of your screen. You could use the hotkey to toggle it off whenever you want to click a skill, but then you might as well just keybind your skills directly.
… how did I completely forget about this? Thank you for reminding me.
Hate to break it to you, but the thief was way worse pre-HoT. Daredevil carries the profession so hard it’s ridiculous, even with the power creep on others.
The thief’s big nerf came with the trait rework when they removed stats from trait lines and forced builds into taking entire trait lines rather than partial ones. Prior to that (first couple years) thieves were a serious force particularly in duels and a lot more fun to play. The Dare Devil line brought back some of that feel but added a ton of strong builds in other classes to contend with.
+1, because kittening THIS.
I’ve been upset about it for a good year now and have been fighting to recover a build that can no longer be done because it was both removed from the game and made less viable because of stat splitting.
I lost 300 Vitality, 7% Precision to Vitality, endurance-on-dodge, and boatloads of swiftness that helped me kite around foes and deal with 1v3 fights against tougher mobs with relative ease. And that’s just from the old Acrobatics line. And then there was Shadow Arts which gave me even more defenses for a dual-dagger build with blind-on-stealth and longer stealth duration (and some 50 Toughness and Healing Power, I believe) which made breaking combat for more viable. Now it’s either re-gear my thief and hope to make ends meet by undercutting my primary force of healing (Invigorating Precision), or grind the disaster zone that is HoT and try to find the ebony orbs needed to make a full Marauder set.
And while I may run Daredevil for the damage and durability boosts, it feels like I’m just taking “the rest of Acrobatics.” Not a new trait line, but one that I had before they turned it into a half-baked husk of itself. I might not PvP (I am seriously bad at it regardless of game), but it’s a shame that the “build diversity” we were promised turned into “Daredevil or bust.”
Serious question here, as I’ve not looked at my settings in … years now, but was there ever or is there currently an option to toggle mouse-look mode?
Something along the lines of: “press [KEY] to make the mouse act as if right-click is always depressed.”
I could see that being really useful for people who find it difficult to adapt or have health issues that make holding down mouse buttons a pain. Likewise this could be a nice way for the OP to slowly break into things without feeling trapped one way or the other.
(Or we could finally get proper controller support, not like that’ll ever happen~)
I’d prefer that WvW content be kept to WvW. We have enough issues with balance and whatnot as it is without mixing it into PvE. Again.
Absolute honesty?
Reset the profession to pre-Specializations. We thus get back everything we had before when we were actually good and not just a stand-in for other classes that weren’t in the party.
(caution: nsfw)
If people have really been asking about the structure of Charr reproductive organs, is there more to this truce with humanity than I’m aware of …?
Vanilla GW2 for free-to-play / non-expansion accounts:
Features:
- Critical build with low HP but lots of utility and condition cleansing
- Huge single-target damage
- Some party utility as a DPS role
- What I used to run before Acrobatics got changed and Specializations / HoT happened
For Heart of Thorns, because Elite specs are nachos.
Features
- Swaps dual daggers for staff to gain better auto-attack and DPS
- Loses easy access to stealth but gains Daredevil, which gives the best heal
- … and even more damage
- … and an additional, 3rd dodge
- … and damage reduction after dodging (and capitalizes on your Pack runes for even more swiftness)
Both builds are modeled off the concept of exploiting Thief’s various ways of gaining healing through damage. Invigorating Precision returns 15% of all critical damage as Health gained, and Assassin’s Reward heals you for using weapon skills. You can use Unload to restore about 1,400 to 1,600 HP in a single use, for example. And because you have nearly an 80% critical rate, Weakness has little effect on you and nearly every hit you land will heal you appreciably (and far more than Signet of Malice can).
Skills 7 through 10 can be swapped out to suit your mood, and the healing skill is more of a suggestion than anything.
Likewise you could swap for Superior Runes of Strength to maximize the effect of your pistols, if you wish.
Honestly speaking, and as a player who has only been here since early access, the game has gone through a few very unfortunate changes.
The first was the change to mob priority in aggression AI. Everything went to kitten for a time and it was A Bad Time. Eventually they got that figured out — same with converting Critical Damage (as a static +Percentile) to Ferocity — and things weren’t so bad anymore. They in fact were not all that different from where we started.
Thereafter we saw the introduction of specializations. Player choice, flexibility in professions, and a lot of utility traits went out the window. This is why a lot of people run the exact same builds nowadays, because many builds were effectively lost. Gone. Kaput. You just won’t get that silly little build back that you loved.
On top of that, stats were decoupled from traits. This was at first lauded until some of us — myself included — realized that we just lost anywhere between 300 and 1200 points to our stats. This furthered the punishment to more eccentric (or compensatory builds) by forcing a lot of us to re-gear our characters to make up for the differences (and in many cases, what has been introduced requires an insane investment of grinding from someone with a full-time job and no further interest in the expansion).
And then we had Elite specializations. I’ll just leave that one be, because anything that can be said about them has been at this point.
Lastly, though is what OP posted and quoted, and what I think is the real core of what’s wrong with Guild Wars 2: the mobs.
Yes, a lot of the foes have similar skills to what we can do, but too many of them don’t. Yes, Guild Wars 1 had lots of unique Monster skills (like Agony) that players would never get to, but they were often just different forms of the same things we might have had in other ways. And what that left us with was something you could observe, learn, and eventually overcome through cleverness and the proper use of your own skills — or those of your henchmen or friends.
I played through some 80% of GW1 (Prophecies, Factions, and maybe two-thirds of Nightfall) completely solo, using only henchmen outside of a few story missions that kicked my tail. Because the game was balanced by virtue of how its skill system (and its Traits) worked.
But also because there were no super-mobs with special attacks that could wipe out a party or hit you from infinite range or without line-of-sight. Because nothing had obscene health or armor while still being at your level. Because no development team made a conscious effort to “kill the berserker meta” by ramping up the burst damage of every monster in the entire expansion.
Simply put, other than the addition of things like inscriptions and new professions, Guild Wars 1 was a game that played by its own rules. By contrast, GW2 is a game that can’t seem to keep the same kittened rules for a single year’s time without changing them for the worse.
I don’t really play the game much anymore. I pop on from time to time, but there’s nothing left that I want to work toward. Because either I’ll get punished for doing so and playing the same build I have for some two and a half years now, or because my efforts are likely to be in vain come the next balance patch. At this point, I hope for “Guild Wars 3,” which will be a clean slate that learns from all of this and revitalizes the ingenuity, tactics, synergy, and expressiveness of the GW1 mechanics and its legacy and all its lore while retaining the exploration and beauty of Pre-Scarlet (oh gods is that like Pre-Searing?) Tyria that was what made me fall in love with GW2.
meh. Known problems since the beginning of the game.
Anet have been trying to improve the mob situation. As you can see, the ai system is a rather complex weight base system. I wish anet export the weights so players can create complex mobs. The first mmorpg that can figure out how to monetize player made creation will be much more self sustainable.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI
I think game designers are the issue and raids are a step back.
Actually, we never had this problem before they redid the mob priority AI a few times. You should have seen how bad it was before they rebalanced it again. A single zerker character could pull aggro of a team of 8 from a single crit.
Did that more than a few times myself.
So from the sound of it, people are using metabuilds that aren’t actually all that effective against something with a brain and really upset that they can’t spam a few skills like you’re Jormag?
If you have ascended armor transmuted to a cultural set (lets say, Norn), and you want to send it to another character of a difference race (lets say, Sylvari), and transmute it to that characters cultural armor, is there anyway to avoid having to use double the transmute charges?
Because its kinda lame if you have to spend 6 charges to change the armor to a neutral set to equip on your other character, and then another 6 to transmute it to that characters cultural armor.
I don’t think there would be a way to get around transmuting more than once. Other races can not wear any Cultural Armor skins but their own.
Good luck.
Remember when transmuting used the old crystals and you could open a separate UI not part of the wardrobe / equipment tab and just … transmute anything? I sure do.
Really helped to not have this problem ever.
A single attack can generate well over 10k in damage with regularity. This need not wait on the next cooldown or next batch of INI to replenish as multiple attacks from varying utilities/skills can generate this sort of damge.
With the low health that is available to the thief , they had better dodge more then one or two or three attakcs in a row or they are dead. Before the complaints about “dodge spam” there were complaints about “blind spam” and complaints about “stealth spam” All of these builds came not because of exploits or because of the OP nature of the same but because the thief was adapting to changing circumstances on the ground to find that balance of survibability and ability to inflict damage. Those dodges/blinds/stealths are how they survive.
By DESIGN these are the things a thiefs survival built around. A warrior can absorb far more damage due to armor, vitality and health regen via adrenal and healing signet. We do not see any of this in game because none of these are active skills. That armor just “happens” . The thief on the other hand has to ACT in order to trigger the greatest portion of his or her defenses. This act can be a dodge or a stealth or a blind.
That is by DESIGN. It an underlying mechanic of the game and one of the attractions of the thief class. We can not rely on armor and health to protect us, or some passive kicking in, we have to actively perfrom an action to avoid damage (In this case dodge)
I do not see even the dodge spam thief dominate at any level, be it WvW , PvE , or the PvP that I am aware of. It does not make them invulnerable and they can still drop quickly if they miss a dodge, are stunned or Immobbed.
I do not see any real issue here. That the technique used to avoid damage appears on the screen as an action results in the appearance of “spam”. Other forms of defense require no action thus giving less perception of “spam” on that classes part.
+1. Absolutely agree on this.
I think the sentiments of the thread, though, are that it would be really nice if we didn’t have to rely on using dodges or evades or active skills and could maybe (just maybe, perhaps even Soon™) receive some kind of baseline durability and sustain improvements in place of “react faster and more often.”
I picked thief because it was the most active class in a game that had shifted away from GW1’s skill rotations and standing about flailing weapons. Unfortunately, it’s also the class that, as you identified, is stuck in a permanent “glass cannon” role no matter what we try to do nowadays.
Blind and Stealth have seen both nerfs and hard counters over the years, leaving us almost exclusively with Daredevil and 1 extra dodge over the competition. Other classes have more condition cleansing and reveals than ever before, so really, all we can do anymore is keep dodging out of the way.
So, like you said: with few other options, all that’s left is to be really obnoxious and avoid damage entirely.
I would definitely like to go back in regards to the following two changes:
- Trait rework (it needed a rework, but this one turned out to be nearly worse than the original).
- New Player Experience (the starting zones used to be full of flair and theme, now they feel rather sterile and broken, even to a new player)
I CANNOT +1 THIS ENOUGH.
Personally? I just find Daredevil / Staff gameplay to be insanely dull.
Just autoattack, evade a few times, press 5, repeat.
Mind you, I only play PvE because I’ve sucked at PvP since the GW1 days.
I’m thinking of starting a new character, as Elementalist just is a bit too samey for my liking, and Engineer sounds like it has some cool potential. In particular, I’m looking at the Scrapper elite.
So, my question to all the engineer players out there: should I pick up the class and is the Scrapper elite worth it?
Good for Players
Build diversity and choice. Above all else, this new system would allow players to take exactly the traits they want, how they want (within specific limitations), but otherwise operate exactly as the current system. The two key differences are the ability to freely select traits independent of their current trait lines, and that Elites no longer require the use of the third line.
Greater build diversity also means that meta builds specifically tailored through the more limited Specialization system can be subverted.
Elite Specs are “Free”
Instead of having to slot the last Specialization line (the gold one) to your Elite, you can still use all of your trait lines similarly to how you could in the Pre-2015 system! Moreover, because Elites get their own unique slot, they don’t actually count against you.
Min-maxing Remains a Compromise
Sure you’ll be able to get rid of a bunch of minor (or major) traits you aren’t enthused with, or be able to use your Elite Spec’s weapons and skills without needing to take its traits (or vice versa), but doing so is a trade-off. Current specializations, like their trait-lines before them, are tailored to particular needs and styles of play. Eliminating some can undermine a character despite the seeming appeal of boosting a very niche aspect — such as focusing on Illusion and Phantasm use on a Mesmer to the detriment of their utility and potential.
Works with the Existing System
With how traits, skills, and other things are presently unlocked via the Training tab and Hero Points, this system works with it by allowing a player to dabble across more domains without feeling restricted to a particular one to maximize it — due to the current slow progression of Specializations. Instead, with a new slot unlocked every five levels, players can naturally progress through their chosen trait lines or train others as they explore and conquer in Tyria.
It works out to the same 9 major and 9 minor traits currently available, so there’s no change aside from vastly greater diversity, which has been on a downturn for some time since Specializations went live in Sept. 2015.
More Sense of Growth and Progression
This has the added bonus of providing more immediate goals and a sense of growth that is lacking in the current leveling system. You get a new slot every 5 levels, and two free ones for simply playing. This lets players experiment and grow accustomed to the system without having it dumped in their laps at Lv.21 — and then again at 45 and 71, which is arguably a huge amount of time to wait. When I made my Mesmer, I was seriously frustrated by how awkward it was to be exploring Mount Maelstrom and Orr without my final trait line, only to then experience a third awkward power shift when I then had it fully unlocked (blame lots of map completion).
The new system will grant players short-term goals they can build toward and gives them even more reason to level up and enjoy all the various events, activities, and other modes of play.
As someone who has been playing since Early Access and logged far more time in the game than I care to admit, it has certainly been a ride watching ANet change things up in anticipation of new features and other things. Someone in my party today in Fractals asked us what our least favorite change was. That got me thinking.
A few have been great, like the #13 grandmasters being added in way back, and a few slightly silly — like unlocking traits — but of every change had been pretty good for the most part. There are others I simply don’t agree with, but I think my biggest gripe remains in the new Specialization system.
While I don’t expect anyone to put stats back into trait lines, I would like to propose a new system of unlocking trait slots that progresses with your character again, as well as providing a vastly greater level of build diversity.
The Basics
Upon completing your introductory mission, you gain access to the Build tab. This shows your current unlocks and your build. The changes are as follows:
- At 1st level, you have access to Adept traits and can slot one Minor and one Major trait.
- At 5th level, and every ten levels thereafter, you unlock another Minor slot, to a maximum of 9 slots at Lv. 75.
- At 10th level, and every ten levels thereafter, you unlock another Major slot, to a maximum of 9 slots at Lv. 80.
- Additionally, at the 80th level, you acquire the “Elite” slot, which allows you to activate an Elite / Specialization / Prestige (whatever you wish to call it), granting access to new weapons, skills, and traits.
- Traits can be freely slotted so long as they are available; by default, this means that as you ascend through the ranks — Adept from 1 to 20, Master from 25 to 50, Grandmaster from 55 to 80 — and acquire access to new traits, you can change them out without be locked into a trait-line.
- An Elite Specialization can be slotted into the final gilded box at the end, expanding your access and changing your profession’s mechanics, icon, and name.
Diagram of Progression
1: 1 Major, 1 Minor, ADEPT
5: 1 major, 2 minor
10: 2 major, 2 minor
15: 2 major, 3 minor
20: 3 major, 3 minor
25: 3 major, 4 minor, MASTER
30: 4 major, 4 minor
35: 4 major, 5 minor
40: 5 major, 5 minor
45: 5 major, 6 minor
50: 6 major, 6 minor
55: 6 major, 7 minor, GRANDMASTER
60: 7 major, 7 minor
65: 7 major, 8 minor
70: 8 major, 8 minor
75: 8 major, 9 minor
80: 9 major, 9 minor, ELITE
(Continued in next post …)
Hey @babazhook, mind posting the build? I’d love to see what you’ve got set up to do all of that, which makes it sound way better than I would have expected.
Be cool if thief had more access to one of their (originally) defining mechanics: shadowstep. As it stands, we have a lot of (weapon-oriented or situational) means to do so, but only a few have real mobility and most of those have nasty cooldowns. Kind of why Infiltrator’s Arrow was so popular before.
Why waste endurance and possibly get hit anyway when you can just zoop over to things?
I think he needs a boost on his sustains because he gets too much punishment for a single mistake. Usually it goes like this
I evade
I evade
I evade
I fail to evade and I lose 2/3 of my healthSo unless Anet wants this class to be balanced around asian reflexes they should do smth about teef’s sustain like boosting his health-gain-regen on evade or smth.
The fun fact, since thief was forced into “asian reflexes” gameplay everyone is crying rivers about thief dodges now lol.
This is what I’ve been talking about.
We’re forced into crazy timing like this is some kind of quick-time event rhythm game, then people start complaining about it when our ONLY real defense was “50% more dodge than all other classes (and various effects stacked onto successful dodges like vigor, condi-cleanse, etc.).”
If we had more baseline capability, we wouldn’t NEED to be obnoxious dodge-spammers.
A little info from my prior post:
I’ve been running a high life-gain build (Assassin’s Reward, Invigorating Precision, ~225% crit damage, 75% crit chance, rounded out with Shadow Arts) which would go up the slightest pittance more with Signet of Malice. Even with all that I cannot recover fast enough to compensate for the bursty damage most mobs deal in the expansion content and Silverwastes, yet in Central Tyria I have few if any problems getting into a 1v4 fight (in PvE, of course!)
A finished product.
Dungeons. I don’t even care if they only have 1 path and no armor/weapon sets, I just want more 5 person instanced content, especially if its used to add to the storyline specific to the expansion
Cantha. Elona.
**Cough**playerTengu**Cough**
THIS.
All of it.
(p.s.: Tengu were indeed planned and had a city location, but were scrapped: Tengu)
Honestly? Forget all the minutia of stealth durations and AOEs and whatever. Our biggest problem is that our historical capacities are simply gone. Not diminished, but gone.
Here’s the flavor text / blurb for Thief:
Thieves are expert in the shadow arts. They utilize stealth and shadowstepping to surprise and to get close to their target. They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. They have an affinity for setting traps and using venom. As an adventurer profession, thieves wear medium armor.
Insofar our role as a 1v1 powerhouse has diminished to the point of being laughable, but our damage is still quite formidable when spec’d for. The problem is that while yes, other classes have eclipsed Thief in utility of skills (traps, conditions, control, etc), Thief hasn’t lost them. Ours just never got better.
The reason I say “gone” is because our playing field is still somewhere around 2014 levels of power. When the “role” of Thief changed from ANet’s own description of it to +1s, decaps, etc., we lost our edge; namely the two mainstays that disappeared come Specializations:
1). Acrobatics got nerfed into the ground. Not only that, but we no longer could compensate for builds with +3,000 HP anymore.
2). Various defensive traits were removed in favor of something else, like higher Swiftness uptime, 7% Precision to Vitality, and others that allowed us to stay alive without constantly consuming Initiative or dodges.
I could even add that our own elite specialization (“prestige”?) completely de-emphasized Stealth, as did all the changes to other professions as many have rightly pointed out. So not only that, but the core theme of the profession is effectively a moot point, as is the old defensive line of Shadow Arts if you take Daredevil. You’ll only be depriving yourself of better offensive power — and that’s provided you can even keep your stealth to begin with.
Thus, the third point:
3). Stealth holds little purpose outside of PvE, and even in the jungles of Maguuma its usage isn’t all that worthwhile any longer, effectively cutting out the only other defensive trait line we had: Shadow Arts.
The result is that we’re a purely offensive class with no health, toughness, or defenses to make up for it any longer.
To put that into perspective, I’ve been running the same Berserker / Assassin gear for the past 3 years because I’m lazy and cheap. It worked great with the build I noted above (Dual daggers, Invigorating Precision, Assassin’s Reward, Assassin’s Retreat, and Pack runes for ultimate roaming and survival). Only two of those still exist and I’ve swapped to Daredevil + Staff for better durability (thank you new healing skill!).
This would be fine if I didn’t feel I now need to grind for a while to obtain all the materials I need to make at least a set of Marauder’s trinkets to bring myself back on par with what I just described, or the baseline thief before the September 2015 updates. And that’s bad.
Just ran it twice today (before around 12:00 noon, EDT) and got chest rewards for BOTH runs.
However, I did not get the secondary rolls on either reward. See Ascent to Madness for more info. As it has been about a year since last I did this (and Halloween, lol), I don’t recall if the secondary rewards beyond the 2 to 15 treat bags are an “always” or “maybe.” The wiki does say chance, after all, but the language is unclear and I cannot find any concrete references to the drops.
Edit:
Could removal of diminishing returns a few days back have affected chest usage?
Yes, this should most definitely be done.
Logged in just to upvote this.
Thank you, OP. Thank you so very much.
(And because I was reminded of necroposting because hey, whatever old post, I’ll add to the discussion and say: I think it’s time people start actually reflecting on this kind of adverse behavior in the “competitive” portions of the game. That includes you, ANet. Since you’re the ones reminding me, and all.)
Personally? I’d love to see the trait and specialization system reworked completely. It has been a huge drain on everyone, and thief especially since its inception.
I’d much rather see the ability to freely select 9 Major and 9 Minor unlocked traits across all specializations rather than needing to slot three of five (or six, with HoT) specializations. In the very least, this would help build diversity as a whole and bolster synergies without being shoehorned into specific specializations.
So from the perspective of thief, rather than my choosing Acrobatics, Critical Strikes, and Trickery to make a nicely durable and versatile sword/dagger build whilst exploiting Invigorating Precision as I have been since the trait was first introduced, I could pick and choose in a way similar to how traits were prior to June 23rd, 2015. Thus I could dabble in Shadow Arts (for more stealth and durability) or take Daredevil (for more dodges and staff) as well.
And the biggest bonus is that players could begin with a pair of traits at 1st level, gain a second pair at 10th, and so on every 10 levels thereafter (to the maximum of 9 pairs at 80th level).
(That and, in theory, we could get more than 9 major + 3 minor traits per line, allowing build diversity to continue to grow.)
Recently felt the desire to try and get back into the game now that there’s possibly another patch rolling around soon and seeing a lot of good activity on addressing old issues. Lo and behold a friend with similar thoughts said “let’s go try fractals.”
Gotta say, only needing to do a single fractal is a massive improvement over the olden days, and I really enjoy not having to worry about bringing repair canisters. Everything feels faster and more rewarding to boot when you’re getting loot in nice, manageable chunks without investing a couple hours (or more) into a run. Especially when you’ve got a day-job that limits your free time.
So that got me thinking and I have a suggestion to make: would it be at all viable to use similar logic with how dynamic events are managed to cause fractals to scale with party size?
Admittedly this might mean being unable to complete certain content without a minimum where simultaneous actions are required, but now that we can simply ditch out without losing a whole run, that might not be so bad a compromise for solo, paired, or even trio play.
Anyway, a little background
The idea came to me when I realized that October (and the Mad King) aren’t that far out, and how much fun I have every year rampaging through the Mad King’s Labyrinth for a ludicrous amount of sugary stuff (to promptly sell on the trading post). But there was something equally rewarding about just getting piles of bags and loot for having fun and fighting an infinite wave of foes (or pugging a boss spawn) and opening doors that got progressively more intense the greater the population of adventurers was.
So that got me to thinking that it’s a real shame there’s no equivalent for us year-round. Obviously there’s the monetary issue (but then again, this IS a virtual economy saturated with mithril and sticks of butter…), but with fractals, most rewards are exclusive to fractal vendors or the fractals themselves (i.e.: agony resistance / infusions). Thus the only influx is the same thing we would see already in the form of the occasional rare and exotic piece of gear or materials floating around.
That said …
TL;DR:
It’d be cool if fractal difficulty and their rewards would scale to your party size with respect to the current fractal level / scale being played, thus allowing players to engage content without waiting on LFG if they feel themselves capable.
Edit:
Minor addendum here:
I realize you can attempt to enter a fractal even without the requisite 5 party members, but only once have I seen a 4-man team survive (and thankfully we were on the jade sea so it wasn’t too bad).
Compared to many Group Events in open world PvE where you can cleverly (albeit arduously) complete them on your own, or dungeons where undersized parties can still complete a path competently, there just doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in the world of fractals.
(edited by fluffdragon.1523)
I was going to ask something regarding elite specs, but after browsing the fallout of recent happenings, all I can say is that I think I pity the new players when they decide to get a full account and forum access…
… only to find themselves being assaulted any time they use the forums.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve watched nothing but hostility and insults slung left and right in debates of weapons, reveals, and even play styles of whether one mode of play should take precedence over another. And for what? So we can all … I don’t know, play a game?
We can’t even seem to decide which professions or mechanics need work without insulting people who play them.
Look, I get it. Our elite specs aren’t quite what we envisioned, and veteran players once more feel left in the cold with seeing things being announced that the core game is now Free(mium). I equally feel sorry for those who probably got into the game a few months ago when the Heart of Thorns hype started back up with PAX and such and get a nice fat “Thanks for the $60” but recently as their reward.
We’ve a lot to be upset about — heck, even the Living Story is still a complete mess and there are dozens of skins we can’t unlock anymore (not by playing, in many cases), to say nothing of bugs left unaddressed for months or years — but what happened here?
Half the threads I see are players attacking one another over the stupidest of things.
So I guess all I’m left to do now is wonder what went so horribly wrong.
(I’m sure when I look back on this thread later, I’ll regret it, assuming it doesn’t get locked for derailing before I do)
My major concern here is that, sure Staff cannot self-combo (Dust Strike doesn’t cause a Smoke field, unlike Black Powder), but is a 2s Knockdown really so much more devastating than Sneak Attack?
Sneak Attack:
- Damage (5x): 405 damage
- Bleeding (x5)(4s): 440 damage
- Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
- Range: 900
Using these numbers, we’re comparing Hook Strike’s damage plus 2s of knockdown to Sneak Attack’s 2,465 theoretical damage with its multiple projectiles (“real” damage will be significantly higher). AND the fact that Dagger/Pistol builds can do this again approximately 5 seconds later or so thanks to Black Powder + Heartseeker.
While I understand that Staff isn’t supposed to be “reliant” on stealth and offer us an alternative via evasion and dodges, it seems a bit silly not to let it be able to — even if simply to synergize with Shadow Arts builds for an ultra-evasive build (say, Acrobatics + Shadow Arts + Daredevil).
Request: add a linear Smoke Combo Field to Staff #4 to bring it in line with Black Powder and permit greater synergy with other specializations. Being as it would not be a radial field, this would require clever usage to enter (and maintain) stealth.
Edit: Changed from Pistol/Dagger to Dagger/Pistol, as apparently writing forum posts shortly after waking up leads to doing stuff backwards…
(edited by fluffdragon.1523)
No mention of confusion on steal?
It seems to me like the issue is bleeds. Pre-berserker warriors had the same problem when trying to go full condi. The bleeds take to long to dish out decent damage and end up getting cleansed long before they cause any pain.
I think that the new spec line adds enough sustain to warrant a full condi build, but is held back by near-useless bleeds. Hopefully the increased torment will make it viable.
I forgot about the traited conditions (even though I use them), because it’s a pretty high-CD application which requires us to jump directly on the enemy’s face – not so good with out low health.
I agree with your assessment of bleeds, and would say the same more or less applies to poisons too.
as for the torment, it’s nice – but I don’t think it’s enough to make a difference.
I’m worried that cleanses’ availability will be balanced against burning, leaving other higher-duration lower-damage conditions much less useful, and those conditions are all we have.
Just popping in again to comment on the condition situation~
Yeah, bleed and poison — the current mainstays of thief — have really been made near useless. Especially when I’ve had my regen/bunker warrior (Dolyak runes, Adrenal Health, Healing Signet, Sentinel’s gear) 1v5 some trash mobs with 10 stacks of Poison and still take more damage from any single mob’s physical attacks.
I played around with a full-on Condition build in PvP lobby on my thief, modified from a venom meta. It was … sad, to say the least. And that’s with +50% poison and +30% bleed duration, or so.
Even getting 12 stacks of bleed on a dummy or sparring target was barely doing more than my pistol’s auto-attack, and it took slapping a venom (or two) on them to bring my DPS up to line with my usual PvE precision/crit style.
Compare that to remembering I was running a mace/torch burn guardian way back (Balthazar runes, Dire gear (might swap to Carrion), otherwise what became the existing meta): with a single Zealot’s Fire and Cleansing Flame, I could take down 1~3 trash mobs per use. With just the ongoing burning damage thereafter.
Our condition situation is insanely lackluster compared to most other classes right now.
Agreed, however I’m sure there will be a response of:
Well, seeing as the range was 130 units, which exactly matches a one-handed weapon, we thought it’d be best to hold it in the center like it were this really big, hefty thing. Since, you know, you’re only using half of it.
Not to mention Monkey King’s animation would totally require it to at least meet a 2-hand weapon’s range increment of about 150u.
Edit: turns out that everything BUT the ranger’s Greatsword uses 130u radius attacks, even two-handers! Apparently I misread something a while back when I thought they were 150u range.
(No, seriously … I am really unimpressed with the default attack animations. That, and the final whirl could have totally been a circular 5 target strike similar to the warrior’s hammer attack pattern!)
(edited by fluffdragon.1523)
Disrupting daggers needs to stick around more than 15 seconds. It’s basically a mantra that throws a dodgeable projectile.
The visual effect allows the enemy to see when it is cast, and exactly how many daggers you have left, which is good for counterplay, but IMO 15s is too short to get good use out of it.
Since it tosses a counterable projectile, and the enemy can easily predict when we have the ability to use it due to the visible daggers, why doesn’t it just work like a mantra with an icon visible to the enemy? Heck, you could even greatly increase the cast time to balance that if you wanted, but 15s isn’t really enough to use it as pressure, or successfully interrupt.
15s is actually a sensible amount, it’s to stop thief players from setting up the daggers too far out of combat and not giving enough information to their opponents. Will have to wait till the BWE to see if it’s cooldown is solid, but maybe a 2/3rds cooldown if you prep the daggers and don’t use them?
Sure hope you never have to fight a Mantra mesmer! Three blasts of Mantra of Pain out of nowhere? How do you counter that!!
Missed the POI here (yay work), but yeah, logging in to +1 the OP’s post.
I did a theory craft for a possible rework of my thief (who I’ve not touched for more than 5 minutes in months) which came out to Critical Strikes, Acrobatics, and Daredevil.
Aaaaaand my damage would suffer quite impressively for it.
Not to mention that even D/D builds, which have been my go-to since I first started playing at launch barely have the condition damage needed to sustain a condition build anymore. Sacrificing most of my utilities for conditions didn’t help, and stealth just let them all lapse.
So yeah, OP’s right. We need more work on base thief.
(…)
#2: I hope you are joking about Guarded Initiation. Sarcasm isn’t really a thing in my culture but i really hope that was indeed sarcasm.
So in other words….? You Escapist Absolution should be a minor?
AGREED. Escapist Absolution should be a minor and swapped as other posters have indicated.
(Guarded Initiation is only “powerful” from a purely numeric standpoint, until you take into account that maintaining those numbers is impossible.)
Alright guys!,
I know the Stream still have to get started but I would like to point out a few questions which hopefully will get asked by users on the Stream so that they can be posted here!
- [Pulmonary Impact] Does Pulmonary Impact stack?
- [Impacting Disruption] Is there an internal cooldown? Or can we just spam [Headshot] and get damage from it.
- [Brawler’s Tenacity] What does it mean to “First” activate a physical skill, is it the first in combat? Or does it mean that followup combo skills (like the elite) do not trigger?What do you guys think? Personally I don’t think staff will be super practical in PvP (because of its lack of stealth), but we’ll see about that!
I think “first activation” is for chained skills, so we can’t use the elite or Disrupting Daggers or whatever it’s called (the one where it says “equip”) to exploit Brawler’s Tenacity.
It would make sense, at least, given how several can be “activated” multiple times.
If we can up the number of target from 3 to 5, staff becomes a much better AoE weapon.
A part of me would be very, very happy with 5 targets.
I run Critical Strikes primarily (assassin gear, yeah, I know …) and spec’d for Invigorating Precision and Signet of Malice to offset my lack of HP (now that Acrobatics sucks and no longer gives +3,000 HP).
If I could hit 5 targets and get 7-10 pops of HP, I would be an insanely happy Charr.
Let’s just … take a moment to remove the numbers from the equation.
No, seriously. Shut up about the total dodges or evasions. We aren’t freakin’ rangers here and YES, initiative actually depletes quickly, even with Preparedness.
Let’s look at the scenario nice and simple:
- Thief has access to condition cleansing of Bleed, Poison, Torment, and Confusion via Stealth from Shadow’s Embrace.
- Thief can remove Bleed, Burning, or Poison via Pain Response.
- Thief can remove conditions via Guarded Initiation.
- Thief can remove conditions via Trickster.
In reality:
- Shadow’s Embrace removes only 1 condition every 3 seconds. While stealthed. That’s … poor. That’s one on entry, and one on exit if you go the full duration. This is actually 2 every 7-8 seconds if you can rapidly chain stealth (because of Revealed).
- Pain Response only removes all of three specific conditions, only triggers when you have less than 75% health and has an internal cool-down of 20 seconds. That’s, at best, 3 condition every 20 seconds, which is faster than most of our heals can keep up because you’ve not even got 9,000 HP to play with at that point.
- Okay, Guarded Initiation. If you really can keep >= 90% HP every second, then this is arguably the most powerful build. Except a base-line Thief has only about 1,200 HP to spare to maintain that margin. That’s a single hit from most powerful foes, or a general attack chain. Every second.
- Lastly, Trickster is a joke. Even if it’s “remove 1 condition on-use” with a -20% cool-down, there’s still:
- Withdraw: 1 condition per 14.4 seconds + remove Chilled, Crippled, and Immobilized (total: 4)
- Caltrops: 1 condition per 24 seconds (worse than Pain Response)
- Haste or Roll for Initiative: 1 condition per 48 seconds
- Scorpion Wire: 1 condition per 16 seconds
- Dagger Storm: 1 condition per 72 seconds
I mean, sure, I could take Improvisation but there is NO guarantee that it’ll select Tricks, and even under perfect conditions, that’s a recharge every 19.5 seconds when fully traited.
Oh, and to fully counter the “remove on evade/dodge” nonsense, I can equip 5 tricks and remove 8 conditions quite quickly via that route. I’ll screw myself (the same as dodging 3~4 times and wasting all my endurance), but hey, I mean, I can do it, so let’s nerf that, right?
(edit: fixed Pain Response; I had originally misread the effect)
(edited by fluffdragon.1523)
I’d like a complete spec rework in the style of the berserker traits.
in the Berserker, the traits are pretty clearly split between three options:
- Pure Damage options
- Condition Damage options
- Defensive options
I’d like for normal specs to be like this. as it stands, and condi thief probably needs SA just for venom share, as well as using trickery for the conditions on steal. power thieves use DA for some of the power-based traits, and no-one uses trickery. it’d be nice if we could say, for example:
DA = conditions
CS = crit/power
SA = stealth perks
Acro = evasion defensive
Trickery = Steal perks, Initiative perks, etc.currently, our specs feel like a mess and there’s no clear correlation between builds and specialisations.
Back in vanilla when that was EXACTLY what we had (albeit DA was more of the condition/power split)?
Yeah … what the KITTENS happened to us? Dyslexia? Amnesia?
Liberal application of Confusion and or a permanent Drunk effect?
Whatever’s going on, it feels like the Specialization patch shuffled everything around rather than condensed it all.
Based on attack radii of datamined weapon skills, I’ve a feeling we’ll hold it in the center and whirl it a lot.
Possibly Star Wars Kid style.
Or I could be wrong. 130 (1H) range in a melee two-hander is a bit odd (ex: hammer is 150).
First off: okay, actually … this is awesome. Goodbye, signets and crap Elite!
Hook Strike, the steath attack from Staff cause Knockdown. This is extremely satisfying…
Problem is staff doesn’t provide stealth from itself so….
Staff might be a replacement for SB… given it’s 5 and the trait line giving you 150 endurance… Like it seems it could be used to get around places like SB….
I’m so ditching my shortbow outside of dungeons. kitten that thing. Now gimme a built in stealth and O.B.E.B.I.