Guild Wars 2

Schwahrheit.4203:

Why should you ever compare power and precision in the first place in regards to DPS? They’re BOTH essential in maximizing DPS.

Whats the point of high precision if you don’t even have base damage? And whats the point of having high power when you don’t have critical rate?

Because there’s a limit to gear slots to boost Power, Precision, Toughness,Vitality, Condition Damage etc… and you need to find an optimum.

Rayya.2591:

compared with backstab , 0.25 cast time -12.000 you can cast also 5 heartseekers in that time and 3 normal hits ^^ ,

Ah, no you can’t. There’s more to skills then the listed activation time. Try before posting please.

Aervius.2016:

… IMO, this would call for an overhaul of how instant-cast abilities should work in conjunction with Channeled abilities. All instant-cast abilities should interrupt channeled abilities.

Such as Lightning Strike on a Sigil of Air? That is something we’ve all been waiting for. Complications.

He didn’t just say each time he went into stealth, he said whenever they got him down to about half health he’d stealth. The thief could have Withdraw or Signet of Malice as heal ready every 15 seconds, or 12 with the signet recharge trait. It is not that unlikely it took them 10-15 seconds if the thief had high toughness and occasionally evaded some of their attacks.

I just tried in the Mists, without +healing I get 168 HP/sec from Shadow Protector and +323 HP/sec from shadows rejuvenation, that’s at least 2k for a full 4 second CnD. Add 5k from a healing skill and he’s healed 7k, which could easily be half – or more – of his full health bar.

Maugetarr.6823:

Changing mug is quite often suggested and it always comes back around to the same line, it would affect the other classes’ damage output much more so than the D/D build.

No it doesn’t, reducing, for instance Mug’s damage, or even replacing the trait would not have any effect on other classes. I never suggested making it interrupt the current action (such a change could have terrible effects on everyone).

There really is no single part of the chain that is too powerful, just a good combination of skills.

Yet other parts of the chain were nerfed because the whole chain was strong, making thieves that used those parts, but not the chain, performance lacking, basically pushing them into using that chain.

Steal and it’s traits being fragile is no reason to not look at it at all.

That wasn’t a strawman

“A straw man or straw person … is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.”

The OP stated he wanted stealth to end on any damage and in no way did Nekov misrepresent that opinion.

OP: “Direct, aoe or dot’d, being damaged should take anybody out of stealth”

Neko’s only representation of the op’s opinion (in my view pretty accurate): “If you really want stealth to drop on damage, then …. "

Item nomenclature

Knights armor would be +224 Precision, trinkets +255, jewels +150, weapons +180, runes +165
totals 974 or +46% critical chance, with base and traited that becomes 65%

Tulisin.6945:

….The most important thing that could be done about the backstab opener is to remove Mug’s ability to deliver damage instantly mid-combo, that is really the only unique attribute thieves get that allows <2 second domination. Changing Mug to deal equal or better damage but over a multi-second timeframe (by changing it to a multi-stack bleed or a burn, maybe) would retain the current use of skills/traits in most situations while increasing TTK for that particular combo.

This.
Changing Mug is so obvious but suggested so rarely that it appears to be a taboo.

Lol, clones would be fun, I guess.

Prism.5649:

… boss creatures with true mechanics …

What do you mean by that?

If, like you, many players find end/game content too easy, and voice that opinion, there´s a good chance things get upped a notch, in GW1 they added hard-mode after some time amd chalenge complaints from the players.

Signet of Malice, or Withdraw have a short cooldown, with small health-bubble and +healing gear plus the healing from Shadow’s Rejuvenation that could easily add up to half his health-bubble. He’d probably have lots of toughness as well.

You can not go out of combat by just stealthing, you have to move away from your opponent, just like anyone else. Unless he found some glitch or exploit…. to teleport out of range, but then you’d drop out of combat as well, I think.

Fleet > SoS
When I cross-country and CnD something the speed remains about the same, which would match what the wiki has to say on movement speed.
How do you test it, btw?

You are right, I tested and SoS + Fleet is the same as Fleet alone
Wiki mentions a cap

This is new behaviour, I think, pressing the right button on the mouse starts auto-attacking. Right click’s primary function is to enable mouse-rotation of the character.

Starting attack with the right mouse button is a horrible usability problem.

You get +50% relative to combat speed, when you are in combat, which I expect you’d all be given the situation you want it to work in. You also have a 25% sig so you should be able to reach +75%, relative to combat speed.

Off course, out of combat movement speed is capped at normal + 33% (which is 2x combat)

Pugsley.9627:

Not sure if I really want the rest of the set or not.

Neither do I,
Starter hood, T3 Assassin’s coat, T1 Scout’s gloves and Duellist leggings and boots.

Chill is pretty effective against running in general, including running away. AoE works best if preceded by some form of movement impairment.

Midnight Red, Evening Red, Lemon Tint and Lead

Noid.2871:

If the map contains 10 players and the server sends out all information to each of them, that’s 10*10 = 100 updates sent out per time interval.

You can easily fit data for a few dozen players in a single IP packet and there’s good reason to only send data on pc’s actually visible to that client, so it’s only a packet per client, a couple in zerg fights.

Tulisin.6945:

As has been discussed before, if people are willing to sacrifice looking awesome and unique in WvW then making character models more uniform would reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent to describe each character you encounter.

I sincerely hope they aren’t sending this type of information during battles – it’s static, can only change when a player is out of combat and then the updates to it are limited by their interaction. Unique models should not present a problem for servers or it’s interaction with clients.

Zeroumus.5402:

… so if each player generates about 5k/s of info inbound and there is 100 players near by, then the server needs to send each player upwards of 500 k/s of info, or 50 meg/s total.

You really don’t need to send any more data from client to server then the input the players gives, like key-presses and mouse-movement. In the other direction, from server to client, you only need a few dozen bytes to give the client all the needed information about a pc. Bytes, not kilobytes here.

I’m not sure about this. What if one of those people swaps weapons or armor?

Updates would go at the speed with with the player interacts with his system, which is very, very low. Armor is 6 pieces of standard models that each easily fit in two bytes, then 1 byte (maybe 2) for each color. Two eapons, again a choice out of a limited set of standard models. You actually don’t even need the stats or skills or traits, when the server does all the calculations.

Mouse right is for turning, with what are you going to replace that?

Shakki.3219:

No.

Invest some more Money in an Intel CPU since GW2 is way to hungry for pure CPU power.

I have modest setup with an I3 with AMD7750 and, at max setings, the GPU runs at full while the ‘four’ processor cores do not.

Thanks for the clarification, you’ve (all) answered my question, and more.

If I understand correctly – and going to build implications – to maximize debuf effects you’d want to increase condition duration, to maximize dot’s damage you’d first increase condition damage, then duration?
For duration stacking dots because the lower damage is used, for intensity because increased duration means a stack-slot is occupied longer and the limit is thus reached more easily. For both, condition removal removes relatively more of your dot when duration is increased.

Would be interesting if condition damage statistic were to influence debuf effects.

Assuming you replace the runes, all the pieces that do not come with +healing, such as the Power/Vitality/Toughness pieces are generally usable.

Does application of bleed – or another stacking condition – overwrite existing stacks?

1) Never
2) Always
3) Only when it will deal more damage
4) Other?

The skillpoint at foefire’s heart? Must be a contender for the hardest beginner area skillpoint.

Getting there was no problem, at level 80 P/D, but I found it faster to just skip that circular room by going in stealth and running up the stairs, as they spawned back at an amazing rate.

If you have enough stealth skills unlocked (blinding powder, shadow refuge) you can do that, the veteran Mage should be doable with some dodging.
Otherwise, get help. I am sure everyone is struggling with it as well.

P/D for Cloak and Dagger with 30 Shadow Arts (condition removal, regeneration) combined with some toughness/vitality pieces is quite sturdy for a thief (I have completed event chains with it solo).

DarnDevil IV.2143:

When going to downed state, you notice that you will be invulnerable for a second or two. What if they would add the event to also count as breaking stealth so if you are stealthed you would get the revealed debuff.

Maybe necro wells should be removed when a player is downed in them as well?

Basically, in your opinion, if a player correctly judges the situation and predicts they’re going down shortly and takes action to increase his chances when actually being downed, you want to punish, or prevent, this good, skilful, play?

I see, it’s so obvious, the one healing skill is better then the other because it’s healing is split into a direct heal and a regenerative heal.

Just report it and be done with it.

Surbrus.6942:

How you cannot see your enemies fleeing in terror as you winning the fight, I do not understand.

It becomes more understandable when one assumes his objective is to kill pc’s rather then completing objectives, like capturing supply stations in Wvw, which would actually help his team/world.

A quote may show that assuming his objective for Pvp is killing other pc’s as quite accurate:

pinkbunnies.4620:

… It’s PvP..if you can’t handle dying – don’t play, lol.

We can not know what looks good in your eyes, which preferences you have. So maybe if you tell people what you’d like to see, someone can help you.

In GW1 you could use Texmod to change textures and colors, some people used sets to highlight the animations of specific skills.
While it’s use was condoned with GW1, I do not know it’s status with GW2.

nofo.8469:

Literally one minute into the video you linked he states “GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 and puts it into a persistent world.”

1) GW1 is a lot of PvE, in fact, mostly PvE
2) It says ‘what you love about’, not ‘what you think it was designed for’
3) Taking that same line and putting persistent world into context around GW1 you realize it is about it’s ‘instanced’ nature, of PvE.
3) The manifesto primarily is about PvE
4) Thread is about WvW, which isn’t competive PvP
5) WvW seems pretty much alive to me, I’ve been queued up occasionally

bigtime.7410:

Make the game F2P , free to play. Cash shop players pay for normal players, its how the model works.

Keep it like it is, the box-price is an incentive to keep the cash-shop free from must-have-to-participate items.

The latter seems to be part of the PvP subculture, every MMO-PvP has lots of drama, just enjoy the entertainment.

I think gw2 guru has a build site, not like PvX but one where you can play around with traits and gear and see the changes to stats. Also lets you ‘publish’ your creation for review and comments.

I am using P/D and SB, not really high damage output but enough survivability to solo some event chains. For a high damage build I’d expect to focus on power, precision and crit damage, but I would mix in quite a lot of toughness and vitality. Traits I’d focus on Critical Strikes and Shadow Arts.

Don’t know, if you manage to kill something 20% faster you’ve basically prevented 20% damage, right?

Then again, if you want to try this, go ahead, it’s your game, and it might work just right for you.

I’d try for less complicated combo’s first, Black powder and then switching to shortbow to make it a stealth field just seems error prone.
Also, your partymembers should be aware of what you want to do, even downed players miss the significance of Shadow Refuge and keep autoattacking, blowing their stealth…
If you’re human, might want to take a look at Avatar of Melandru, the tree brings quite a bit of support.

9/10 – because it is so fantasy in some way and, reviewing a couple of times, she is has a personality.

RedSpectrum.1975:

… not enough blacks in this game to be honest :p

Ok, quite dark anyway:

sachiel.8051:

As for preventing client-side hacks on reported stealthed characters, you’ve got your priorities backwards.

I don’t, it’s not just about stealth and even a small amount of people hacking can destroy a format. besides that, if you implement the communication between server and client properly, sending information on a need-to-know basis does not generate bandwidth or lag problems. Not following a ‘need-to-know’ design philosophy develops faster but creates hard to solve problems down the road, especially for a game presenting itself as an e-sport.

The greater majority of people playing this game are not hacking, but are affected negatively by stealth-culling issues. Do you code for the better gameplay of the majority or for the tiny percentage of people using third party tools to discover stealthed characters?

This is not just about stealth, it’s about selected clients being able to see your build, traits, weapons, even cooldowns. You don’t think that would give an advantage?

Which makes for better gameplay for a larger number of people? ArenaNet has not done a great job in preventing third party hacking evidenced by the rampant teleporting, speedhacks and radar usage in this game as is.

The root of these problems is that the designers believe the client can always be trusted, while they should have designed with the idea that the client is not under their control and thus can never be trusted.

tagnut.8621:

Hate to rain on your parade but you don’t need to be good to play a thief…..

I never said so. Perhaps you can read it again?

Musty.3148:

Either – add to the revealed timer (hopefully just until they can actually fix culling, then revert the change)
Or – Actually FIX culling.

AI opponents have no culling problems, increasing revealed would severely hurt thief gameplay in PvE.

Any major changes to the stealth mechanic, which is the prerequisite for offence and defence, would require a complete redesign of the profession.

If you were to increase revealed from 3 to 5 seconds you’d almost half the damage output of several builds aimed at survival and attrition, pushing thieves into the only remaining build, the Mug burst assassin

Oh, and the effect of the culling problem is not limited to Thief, or stealth. People do find themselves in zergs that they never saw coming…

I do agree that culling affects everyone in WvW and that is unfortunate.

It would be a major fail to have an optimization interfere with a class mechanic so badly that it would require a redesign of that class, which is likely a lot more work then fixing the optimization problem.

tagnut.8621:

You know your op’d lil ezmode toy is going to get nerfed again – you’re just running desperate interference to try and minimise it. Hope its a big one.

Then you’d stand to loose the most, because the good players simply move on to another class. It would not help bad or beginning players getting better at the game, it would only encourage them to not learn from their mistakes because whenever they fail the challenge is removed for them.

How can it be that the entire group failed to bring CC. Not one ranger had these root thingies, none had cripple, or chill, knockdown/back to prevent the stomp, etc. I haven’t done a lot of WvW but I’ve very quickly learned that getting stunned, or even just crippled, near an enemy zerg means I can respawn at a waypoint within 10 seconds …

The minimal reporting to clients is to prevent hacks, any information you send to the client that the player shouldn’t see risks players hacking the client for any advantage. You don’t need to send more then a handful of bytes to the client to give it sufficient information about PC’s to render them.

sachiel.8051:

Does the blood that hits the ground and separates from you remain invisible?

Yeah, ever wondered what the blood does with your grip on your Greatsword’s hilt?

When I look on our guild roster I see Rangers and Warriors have the most specimens, followed by Guardian, Ele and Thief, then Necro, Mesmer and Engineer, in that order. If you feel that is not representative, neither is meeting a band of Adventurer class invaders.

Silverkung.9127:

8/10 from enemy I see in WWW is thife…
Kytra is full of Crime lol.

Yup, big bandit problem, perhaps worse then Centaurs. And Lion’s Arch is run by pirates.

Trevyy.8567:

… he ran into 10 thieves …

How can you know they’re thieves? There’s no indication of profession on the name-tag and armour is shared with Rangers and Engineers, weapons are shared as well and the combat log only shows generalized names.

Well, Rangers are supposed to track

You cannot know if they saw you or not. It sounds like that ranger was the only one who spotted you.
Body size doesn’t count when hiding, everyone basically has the same ‘hitbox’, so maybe while you though your asura was completely behind the rock, it wasn’t and the name was displayed to that ranger.

Not displaying name tags would give smaller races (and body sizes) an advantage.

Lurch.9517:

… the way I have seen them perform so far makes it much more likely that they are from one of our opposing servers (Looking at you Pikeys), …

All’s fair in love and war.
We just persuaded them to use their mom’s creditcards (don’t think we’d spend it), which wasn’t all that difficult.

I’d either build for what I consider my primary environment, or find some trait distribution that can be adjusted to either one without reset and with minimal gear switch. P/D would run fine on condition gear, but your trait distribution is more important as it likes the 30 points in shadow arts more then anything else.

Valkyre has +Vit and Toughness is very low. Precision isn’t particularly high either, might better trade some of the crit damage in for Precision.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

… Thief has the most dodges of all professions in the game. (Utilities – Roll for iniative -, skills like Death Blossom, trait, that makes endurance return on dodge, kinda making a thief dodge bar has 3 bars compared to other professions). …

Every profession has dodge, and various professions have better ways to regain endurance then thieves and thus more dodges. Ranger, Engineer and Elementalist have traits that increase endurance regeneration by 50%, way better then the 15% refund trait thieves get with their trait. Vigor is a boon that doubles endurance regeneration, it’s available to everyone, but arguably more difficult for thieves.

Normal combat (excluding cloacking thus), with the many dodges thief has, should be sufficient to make them ‘viable’.

How could it be when other professions get the same dodge abilities plus defensive skills?

Now, make this mythical non-stealth thief with 3 endurance bars for full defence and offence, without stealth.

Crit change -> Precision, Critical Strikes, equipment
Crit Damage -> Critical Strikes, equipment (berserker, valkyre) & runes/orbs