Guild Wars 2

schizandra.4587:

Do you think it should?

Being somewhat of loner player, I enjoyed the artificial company in Nightfall. But from what I heard, the hero system unbalanced gameplay… or something. I don’t really know what the problem was exactly.

What do you guys predict?

There was no balance problem with heroes, except for PvP where they were too fast with interrupts, iirc.

GW1 needed heroes because players were spread out to thin, I expect GW2 to expand less in area’s and zones and, should less players be online in the future, the number of servers could be reduced.

… Since the average player is going to be better than an NPC companion, …

Sadly, they aren’t, or weren’t. Dodging and everything gives players more chances to be better then npc’s.

JesseBensen.4817:

… In GW1 weapons could be bought, used, and then resold later when you got bored of the skin.

Ah, no, not really. You could get a +20% damage when ‘customizing’ the weapon, which made it the equivalent of ‘soulbound’. While you might get away with not customizing a scepter or staff, not getting the 20% was folly for martial weapons. Weapons were to easily obtainable from weaponsmiths and collectors, and the player market was of too little importance, to not customize them. The player market was too time consuming to get the piece you wanted from.

Sebrent.3625:

frans, your post is basically saying:

(1) The flaw is that you don’t always have someone to come save you when a thief catches you 1v1 in WvW

I am saying the flaw, or difference is that there is no coordination in Wvw

(2) It’s not thieves that are the problem, it’s WvW

No, the players. The format doesn’t prevent you from organized team play

The second one leads to the question of “then why isn’t this being brought up for other classes”.

Because you haven’t learned to deal with thieves yet. The existence of people who have learned to deal with them proves you are wrong.

You guys keep saying that “there is no infinite stealth build” … but there are posts asking how to do it with replies on how to do it and there are videos showing people do it.

I am pretty certain I never said there is no such build. But I am pretty sure it doesn’t do a lot, you see, hitting stuff doesn’t mix with infinite stealth. If you use the Black Powder / Heartseeker combination you have just barely enough initiative regeneration to keep it going and you can’t miss any HS or the party is over. If you break stealth by hitting something, you get revealed and infinite stealth is over, if you try to hit them in between stealth you’ll no longer be infinitely stealthed, and probably not very effective without backstab.

You guys say to blindly attack in refuge …

Just do something, don’t just stand around waiting to get butchered. You’ll never learn unless you try things and even if you fail your attempt you’ve still learned more then when just standing around.

Enough people have learned to deal with Shadow Refuge for thieves to consider using the skill a risk.

Also, you are staring too much at a few abilities, you qualifying them as (too) strong and keep staring at those and while staring you will not see your opportunities

You guys say to dodge roll backstabs … but we can’t see stealth thieves … hence the stealth part.

First, you’re going to make it harder for them when you keep moving. If he’s going for your back then you know where he’s going to, and where you won’t be when he gets there.

You guys say cloak and dagger doesn’t do much damage, but it did over 5k in the screenshot I posted from this week.

I don’t say that.

You can keep saying the Thief is “fine”, but, again, there are screenshots, other forum posts by you same guys (and gals), and videos that all say otherwise.

Well, there are people who say they have no problems with thieves, and some of them eat thieves for breakfast. The existence of people who have learned to deal with(counter) thieves completely destroys your position and proves that those guys and gals are right.

Sebrent.3625:

Now, if I could just roam in WvW as a bunker and know that in the next 15 seconds after I start a fight that a teammate will come 2v1 the Thief…

If nobody comes to your aid, the flaw is in how there is less coordination in Wvw

Also … let’s not forgot that skills, state, abilities, etc. are not all the same between PvE+WvW and sPvP.

Perhaps Wvw should simply become PvP area then, PvP gear, no food etc…

Sebrent.3625:

Portals ….

You are completely besides the point, which you started on actually.

As far as classes being equal, I don’t mean they should be able to do everything equally well. I think the sums of their strengths and weaknesses should be equal. Right now, Thief is king of WvW roaming.

That’s something, as they aren’t much of use in a siege, or a battle of armies. If classes don’t need to do everything equally well, what would be the problem with thieves excelling at roaming? Every class needs a place, something they’re good at, so everyone can contribute in some way.

Sebrent.3625:

d Dagger.
Additionally, Cloak and Dagger still hits hard, as shown by the screenshot I posted earlier where it hit for 4k.

It really should not be that hard to avoid an occasional CnD from someone who’s trying to hit you with it every fourth second. And when they miss one, they loose out on half their initiative bar, there’s not Infusion and no 4 seconds before the next CnD attempt.

… in those 4 seconds you can have stealth you are regenerating 3 of the 4 initiative …

Initiative regeneration is 6 per 10 seconds, or 2.4 in 4 seconds, not 3, a 25% miss. It adds up in the long run.

DanH.5879:

then i would propose that thief to have only 1 stun breaker, or none (better)
all agreeing to this nerf, please raise your feet

Only if it´s an on-stealth stun-breaker

Aflackduck.1835:

All classes should like the warrior

One wonders when it will finally become clear, Warrior will always be better then the rest. It simply can not happen that any other class has better damage, survivability or crowd-control.

DanH.5879:

the thief is immune to CC because of so many stun break skills … oh wait.
it is me, or the deception shadowstep got nerfed in terms of time to use the 2nd skill? (like you have few seconds to use shadow return or loose it)

The range is a problem, if you get out of the return range the return skill dissipates and shadowstep goes on cooldown.

Sebrent.3625:

We can continue to pretend that all classes are “equal” or we can be honest.

Why do you think all classes should be equal? Mesmers have portals, thieves can surf zergs. This is not a shooter.

Actually it doesn´t, it says hostilities began
“they claim that they are warring for territory, and hostilities with humans began in 300 AE when Kryta was settled by Elonian humans”

It does not state the Centaurs lived in Kryta and even less that they were brutally killed off. Kryta might have been mostly uninhabited with nomadic centaurs roaming the continent (everything we see in game points at a nomadic lifestyle), and humans just settling and building and making babies until one day the Centaurs found there movement restricted by cities and what all not.

It doesn´t even matter if there lived Centaurs in Kryta 1000 years ago, the humans that live there now haven´t been brutality killing them, but have been living in Kryta for generations ….

Sito.6352:

Arekai.5698:

Anet also said they wouldn’t add gear treadmill.

There isn’t. Ascended and exotic gear differ maybe 5%.

Lets see, a Berserker ascended amulet adds 126 Power, 85 Precision and 9% critical damage.
It’s exotic counterpart, 90+25 = 115 Power, 64+15 = 79 Precision and 5%3%=8% Critical damage.

That is +9.5%, + 7.5% and +12.5%. Not +5%.

For rings we get
ascended 103, 68 and 8%
exotic: 92, 63 and 6%
And the ascended has 12%, 8% and 13% better stats. Not 5%.

It’s tradition, best armour, best DPS, Warrior >> everything else.

Salacious.7358:

Do you guys think they will ever shut down the gw servers?

It’s still on the shelves, so it couldn’t be in the next 2-3 years.

I have logged on GW 1 but not really played much

Psynch.4087:

Invading a space and brutally killing off another race that had been living there for generations.

Humans only lived in Kryta for slightly more then 1000 years.

oZii.2864:

Vigor on heal- I think is good if you don’t have 15 points in acro but why not just take the extra 5 points to get feline grace?

Because it requires giving up major trait elsewhere. Shadow Arts has many good major traits that are hard to leave out, Embrace, Rejuvenation, Infusion, Cloak and Protector, to name a few. Critical Strikes only obviously good major traits is are the GM traits Executioner and Hidden Killer

Columba.9730:

Death Henk.7143:

sostronk.8167:

Unless things have changed, there was a build you could do to get infinite stealth for a theif. I believe it involved pistol/dagger skill with other deception skills. Its on youtube, Id link it but I am at work and do go on youtube whilst at work.

People still getting beaten up because they can’t understand stealth are bad. WvW players are bad in general. Try that P/D ‘infinite’ stealth in sPvP. All the higher ranked people will laugh at you.

Last I checked, thieves were nerfed for Spvp.

Last I checked nothing involved in your precious ‘infinite stealth’ worked any different in PvP compared to Wvw/PvE

SuperHaze.4210:

… If stealth can let them reset the battle, then stealth should allow enough time for other classes to reset as well, …

What is reset to you? If the thief drops out of combat (like being able to use map travel) then so would his opponents, or they should. If it’s just not attacking to recharge then normally their opponents should see their skills come off cooldown. It’s not like the thief has Time Stop.

Thief animations also make it hard for them to be targeted

Using mouse targetting is your own choice. You’re standing still or using keyboard turning while trying to mouse-target the thief hopping around?

Now I understand while peeps jump all the time, it’s not to dodge attacks but to dodge the mousepointers …

aliksyian.7642:

Do ascended items still have better stats? Do their improved stats still count outside of the fractal dungeon?

Yes, yes, and they’ve announced not only more stat combinations but also more gear to be available in ascended tier.

But hey, now it’s only +15-20% on a couple of items. It’ll be harder to go without them when all gear has ascended variants.

Precision is mostly wasted, or at least poorly spend, without high power and +crit damage, precision simply doesn’t pull it’s numbers. Karma armor only has condition damage combined with precision (Rabid). PVT is the better choice Karma armor, imo.

Advent.6193:

I have noticed that. The main reason to keep the crit aspect, tbh, is to keep the straight damage rolling.

Then I’d focus on Power + crit or Power + condition rather then condition + crit since without power the crits don’t do a whole lot.

What on earth do venoms have to do with survivability?

oZii.2864:

Escaping via heartseeker since it is affected by speed you can get out of a jam really really effectively.

You’ve just explained why the Black Powder – Heartseeker stealth build-up (BP HS X HS HS) worked so strange for me, putting me on the edge of the field on the second and returning heartseeker.

Daecollo.9578:

“When you stealth, you gain swiftness for 10 seconds.”

Lets not. They’d make it like the regen trait, where it’s not applied if you already have that boon active, to prevent in from stacking in Shadow Refuge.

Dee Jay.2460:

There should be at least 2-3 P/T/V items out there for Karma.

Only the legs appear to be without a PVT karma option.

Equipment acquisition by stats

Rhysati.4932:

… The contents of the chests is not worth the investment at all.

I did get 5 fine transmutation stones recently. But I realize the chance for that to happen is pretty small. And no, I didn’t buy the key.

Ricky Da Man.5064:

Anyone else getthis feeling?

No.
While it was true that there was a lot of coop in the first year or two of GW1 – we even made parties for questing – the last years you could do just about everything with heroes and henchmen.

Could be different for new players starting with GW1 now…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vanquishing Majesty’s Rest? I didn’t find it all that fun, I found it very freaking annoying. (Anyone ever parse how much health Rotwing actually has?)

The biggest obstacle with Rothwing is believing it is a tough fight. When I finally ditched the tactics and special builds we simply charged right over him.

Kick system could be disabled when near a boss, or near the end boss.

If someone is disruptive, kick them right away. Waiting until the end of the dungeon is abuse and should be answered with a temp ban.

Dee Jay.2460:

… But overall the 3 abilities mentioned above are ALWAYS useful.

You can do without SoS when using Fleet of Shadow. SoS is the standin for FoS when you’d want Descent of Shadows. Infiltrator signet has a shadowstep / stunbreaker that doesn’t require ground targetting.

Columba.9730:

well none of my ranger weapon skills work under water either.

You unlock underwater weapon skills by using the weapon in combat, same as regular weapon skills. If they are broken I am sorry, they oughta be fixed asap. Underwater is poorly done, combat wise.

The OP was talking about utility skills.

Precision alone does little and what it does is better matched with Power. Unless you want to go all out on condition damage I’d suggest PVT and use trinkets, jewels, orbs and runes to match your desired build stats.

The amulets are +15% from their exotic counterparts, which is quite substantial.

Elthurien.8356:

I get my dailies done just by playing naturally.

You regularly craft 10 items at once during natural play?

Kincaidia.3192:

Can you IA out of Shadow refuge without being revealed + invis debuffed?

You’ll become revealed.

Sebrent.3625:

…D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.

You forget the number 4 to cripple and catch fleeing opponents. Thats … all 5?

Sebrent.3625:

P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative

It’s direct damage is quite poor, to use effective you should really focus on the bleeds (+duration, +condition damage), which rules out power based weapons (just about everything else)

… Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths …

Blind and CC is the way to go, if a zerg fails to catch a thief it’s really their fault. There’s only a limited amount of endurance and stun breaking. It’s more the zerg’s hive-mind that let’s them escape.

He’s supposed to uncloak and re-render when the first bullet hits, not when it’s fired.
I don’t screw up peeps with a bug, I am not responsible for any bugs (in GW) and I have to use stealth once in while. And yes, culling is annoying, inconsistent culling is very annoying.

I know what they’re doing and it’s deviously cunning.

They’re not trying to kill thief pc’s, oh no, they’re attempting to make us, the players, die. From laughing. That’s it.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

It’s very time consuming and maybe not hardware friendly to have the highest of high quality animations for millions of players. That’s why you can’t compare. It’s 1 guy vs. thoustand of players.

It doesn’t matter one bit if it’s online, the client does the rendering same way as an offline game. Secondly, character animations don’t make rendering all that harder, every frame is redrawn with the character in a different pose anyway so it really doesn’t matter which sequence of poses is drawn.

You killed them and prevented them from taking a keep, isn’t that a somewhat memorable event? And wouldn’t such events add to the variety and spice of WvW?

Burjis.3087:

frans.8092:

Burjis.3087:

Your facts are half complete. …

Perhaps you have your fact half complete? The thief that focusses on stealth and survival is not the thief that drains half of your life bubble in 2 seconds.

It surprises me that a thief player can give such a thoughtless response about their own profession (I am assuming you’re even a thief player). You only need 20 points in shadow arts for all the traits I talked about in my post. Unless you only run on 20 trait points, you can do that.
But nice try lol

A burst thief would probably run something like 10 Deadly Arts, 30 Critical Strikes and 20 Trickery, at least, which leaves 10 points for Shadow Arts, at the most. While they don’t have to take Bountifull Theft, it looks rather tempting when building on steal.

Revealed limits stealth to about 50% at most, assuming the thief extends their stealth to 3-4 seconds every time they use it, I don’t see them getting an 80% when they’re actually doing some damage. And always staying in stealth for 3 seconds before striking makes the thief very predictable….

Rivets.9064:

Is there a hard cap to power? Shouldn’t a build like this be stacking power and toughness?

Traits can actually do something more active and supplement your build – and sometimes that is more important then the relatively small boost to static attribute. If someone with a power / crit oriented build does not spec in Deadly Arts they did so because they liked the traits from another line better.

That said, the +30% critical damage you can get on the Critical Strikes trait line is quite significant. Sadly the traits in that line are a bit underwhelming, but that is likely to compensate.

Burjis.3087:

Your facts are half complete. …

Perhaps you have your fact half complete? The thief that focusses on stealth and survival is not the thief that drains half of your life bubble in 2 seconds.

Mackdose.6504:

IF the stat inflation starts limiting my gameplay options, …

It will, eventually. Ascended gear is just the first step, every additional tier brings in real money from the fine transmutation stones that are bought with gems, which are ultimately bought with real money.

It’s why these threads are so pointless.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Considering backpedaling is half the speed of forward movement (in combat)

Forward movement is not only faster then strafing and (even slower) back-pedalling, it’s also the only direction that profits from improved movement speed from skills and boons.

Red Falcon.8257:

frans.8092:

Wrong, ascended items are only obtainable through grind.

Nope.
You can get ascended by just doing laurel dailies or one daily fractal.
Neither of these system require you to “grind” anything.

That is grind. It’s the definition of grind, repeatedly doing the same thing to get some carrot.

Unless you’re one of those people who thinks doing an action every 24 hours is a grind,

My RL daytime job is less grind then the GW2 dailies.

Grind is continuous repetition, not doing ONE thing ONCE every 24 hours.

It’s repeating the same action over and over again. It doesn’t matter if it’s 30 minutes per day. And 30 minutes requires you to follow a few specific event chains and routes again and again.

I played Perfect World, the game had become a chore, then a grind, with dailies, just like GW2 has. I got to level 50, when, one evening I tried to login but felt sick at the thought of doing doing so. Never touched it since.
I don’t want that to happen with Guildwars.

Gestankfaust.4216:

I do not “need” ascended gear to play this game…at all. Neither do you.

It’s only a couple of trinkets now, maybe +5% on the total. It will be 15-20% when every piece of gear has an ascended version. And that is too large a difference for Wvw. I hate loosing, I hate loosing because of inadequate gear even more, I can not play Wvw when I am under-geared and Wvw (and PvP) will be all this game has to offer in a couple of months.

kenshinakh.3672:

frans.8092:

kenshinakh.3672:

… In GW2, I could probably login every 6 months, play a lot for a week, and then stop with decently high end gear, and I wouldn’t be jumping far to catch up either.

Really? you think you can get 6 months worth of ascended gear in a week, six months from now. The trinkets are about a month of dailies each, what do you think the armor peices are going to take?

No, I didn’t mean to say that I will be fully geared with the best. I meant that I can decently gear myself out in a week to play on a level field with others. Maybe it’s bits and parts from exotics and ascended, but whatever it is, the end result is me feeling like I’m within acceptable margins of the current max.

Would being at around -10% be acceptable for you? Assuming that the people around you couldn’t get a full set in 6 months either.

EasymodeX.4062:

He’s talking about crit chance related to damage. But he’s talking about too much crit chance for what the ability actually does in comparison.

Same mistake many, many players / novice mathcrafters make. It’s all completely irrelevant though because the numbers were already posted.

I feel inclined to report your post for the insult, novice mathcrafter? Just for suggesting that I would ever think, let alone write, of any chance >100% you should get you a ban, possible a permanent ban.

No I am not talking about critical chance, but damage, critical hits can do 150-250% damage. The word chance wasn’t in my post.
A guaranteed critical adds hits quite a bit more then the +15% from Assassin’s Signet you are referring to in your statement: “And the Thief, amazingly enough, has a similar Signet for 15% damage :O. Omgrz! And that’s mathematically stronger than 5 autocrits!.”

Anyway

Expected damage = Base damage * ((0.50 + (Critical Damage / 100)) * (Critical Chance / 100) + 1)

With no +crit damage on gear:
De = Db (0.5Pc + 1)

For autocrit:
De = Db * 1.5

For 60% Pc wit AS:
De = Db * 1.15 * (0.5*0.6 + 1) = Db * 1.15*1.3 = Db * 1.495

With 100% crit damage on gear
De = Db (1.5Pc + 1)

For autocrit:
De = Db * 2.5

For 60% Pc wit AS:
De = Db*1.15*(1.5*0.6 + 1) = Db * 1.15*1.9 = Db * 2.185

So, no, the +15% signet is not mathematically stronger then the 5 autocrit utility.

Thereon.3495:

…
The game is not a grind if you play it how its been designed.

Wrong, ascended items are only obtainable through grind.
The only way you don’t (gear)grind is when you play the story and then quit.

An exception to the above are ascended items. They do offer a stat increase and therefore the so called ‘treadmill’ has started, this cannot be refuted. However explain to me how hard it is to get ascended items (except the +5AR and shiny looks that come from throwing LOTS of ectos). Seriously, I dont understand.

30-35 laurels for the trinkets, I expect the armor to be more. You get a laurel when completing a dailies, so for one trinket you have to log in every day for a month. Three weeks if you manage to get the monthly in that time. How is that not grind?

Those that complain about the ‘grind’ in GW2 are entitled players who would love nothing more that to be given everything as soon as they hit 80.

I find that an insult and I have reported it.

Youre trying to rush content that wasnt designed to be rushed and then are complaining about the fact its a grind. This is a casual game!

You will not get a single ascended item by playing it as a casual game. The only way to get top-tier, ascended, rings and amulets is trough grinding dailies or dungeons

kenshinakh.3672:

… In GW2, I could probably login every 6 months, play a lot for a week, and then stop with decently high end gear, and I wouldn’t be jumping far to catch up either.

Really? you think you can get 6 months worth of ascended gear in a week, six months from now. The trinkets are about a month of dailies each, what do you think the armor peices are going to take?

Vargamonth.2047:

Even if I had read it dozens of times, GW1 top tier gear being more accessible than GW2 exotics is something that I don’t know if I should agree with.

Well, it’s not something you can disagree on because quite frankly, it was readily accessible for everyone.

If you look at vanilla Prophecies, making tons of money was far from something you achieve naturally. By the time you reached Droknar, you probably had to invest all your funds in order to get the top-tier armor which still came without runes at all (and a Superior Health one wasn’t exactly cheap).

Majors were dirt cheap, actually the better choice for many cases and, since you mention it, the Major vigor one was 9 HP away from superior (out 480). Besides, I had them drop occasionally, they were hardly rare.

Then you had the weapon issue. ¿How were you supposed to get your top tier weapon?

Collector weapons were top tier, they didn’t have the skins and you had to put the upgrades on them yourself, but those could be salvaged from stuff you found.
And actually, a gold bow dropping meant something, exciting. I’d be curious for it, now, we all know what, where and what to get, some even before they make a character.

I didn’t have my first and main fully equipped by the end of the campaign, but I never had to grind for what was missing by then.

Ascended gear will take a month of doing dailies per item.

In order to get, lets say, a perfect health sword pommel, you needed: a) a rare sword to drop, b) that sword having a pefect health sword pommel and c) getting randmoly the pommel instead of any other upgrade the weapon could had.

Mhh, you can select the upgrade, might have been different at launch but I can’t remember not being able to select the upgrade I wanted salvaged. And you could buy stuff from other players.

If you look at latest versions, gearing could seem easier since money was given to you nonstop, but it still had its tricky parts.

Why you could buy everything. Most runes and insignias were dirt cheap and the ones that weren’t because of popularity weren’t the best pick anyway.

I feel however that there are a couple of points about the latest versions of GW1 that affect the “gearing” process and need to be taken into account
a) The game became highly oriented to 7H groups, which means that you should probably unblock skills and get some runes/insignias/weapons for each one of your 7H, probably more (and obviously unblock the heroes themselves).
b) There were really powerful PvE-only skills which performed based on rank levels, so even if it wasn’t gearing at all, you still had to earn/farm those rank points (which were character based iirc) in order to perform at full potential (this was eased A LOT with one of the latest patches, not too far from the launch of GW2).

a) By the time 7H were introduced my main was quite capable of gearing them on a whim. And you didn’t have to take 7 heroes, you could still use the same henchmen you used before, seven of them if you wanted.
b) Most became quite effective at levels obtainable by playing through content. But yeah, they where grind material, that’s true.

The sigil works in PvE/Wvw, you get a sword chain on them while they’re stunned.