Guild Wars 2

When it comes down to it, the game has to favor offense, even if only slightly, because if it didn’t, then games would go on forever and no one would die.

They got rid of dedicated healers for a good reason.

Defense should take as much skill, however, to use as offense.

Passive defense – Toughness, Armor, automatic condition removal (like some signets) are just stat stacking.

Active defenses, like skills that block or reflect, are much more interesting because they require the player’s attention to be effective, and can be countered in the same manner (for example, when someone is blocking, the correct response is to not attack them – a win for the blocking player in a sense, as he’s not getting attacked, although it’s always better for you if your opponent wastes a powerful attack while you’re blocking).

This kind of active defense is the kind I prefer – anyone can whip out a calculator and figure out the optimal amount of passive defense that can make fighting you annoying.

While the game probably has to have some level of passive defense (you need something to mitigate a little damage while you’re attacking, else everyone gets one shotted) – I wish they’d lean more heavily towards active defenses.

In fact, they kinda did, with the entire dodge mechanic.

Now, let’s convince Anet to continue tweaking the game in that direction – let’s open up more options for customizing your dodge roll – let’s go far beyond Vigor (and I guess the occasional “gain back half your endurance” or whatever) and put lots more traits, runes, and sigil effects that make everyone’s dodge work a little differently.

Hell, Shield wielders could have a trait (or a sigil) that turns the Dodge roll into an active Block.

Sword wielders could have the same thing – only it’s a Parry.

There are so many possibilities for making the game more active in defense, but I bet Anet is far too cautious to go this route. They will “play it safe” an go with endless balance patches to tweak numbers like Toughness and Vitality and Healing Power.

Make the game more engaging.

I wish pets had their own trait lines, for greater customization.

That said, I use Owl/Raven – mostly for aesthetic reasons, as I don’t consider pets a significant part of my build – but I do like the Chill on the Owl’s attacks – it’s a nice way to open up with a bow before closing in with Sword/Warhorn.

It would be nice if something else substituted for the leap when your target is already in range.

There’s no reason for the leap attack, when the target is standing right there – so how about swapping a different attack when the target is in range of your weapon already?

More ways to apply Weakness would be great.

Death Blossom is the cornerstone of my Apothecary build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAoY8Ylcm6OXcy5E+5EBPDnaUPFgtr6MoZLB-jECBYiDimkO0UBBKNtIas12FRjVPjIqWfEzcrIa1SB4nwK-w

I would like, however, a gear set that has Healing Power (primary) and Power/Condition Damage (rather than Toughness/Condition Damage) – my main defense comes from Healing Power, not Toughness, and a little more DPS from swapping out Toughness for more Power would be nice.

(Also, while I’m on the subject – gear with Healing Power/Condition Damage/Crit Dmg – Healing Power/Power/Crit Dmg – Healing Power/Precision/Condition Dmg – Healing Power/Power/Condition Dmg)

I like DB, but I think it can be improved:

1) Perhaps lower the Initiative cost by 1

2) The animation starts with a pause on launch, and then a pause at the end (stumble on dismount). I think it would be a massive improvement if the entire animation could be done while continuing to move fluidly in whatever direction you were already moving (much like the direction of a dodge roll can be controlled by pushing a movement key in the desired direction – DB should also work this way, instead of always attacking in the direction of the target – in addition to having a fluid movement that doesn’t break forward momentum). These changes would make ‘strafing’ runs with DB much easier to pull off.

3) Slightly increase the white damage on DB – or make it scale better with Power. Maybe give DB crits a slight bonus in damage as well, so that Precision helps out some. This would make it a true hybrid skill – if you put points into Condition Damage, then that portion of the skill will be strong – but if you put points into Power or Precision, then that portion of the skill will be stronger – as it is, only the Condition Damage portion is any good. Balance it so that it is strong wherever you put points – that’s the definition of an actual ‘hybrid’ skill.

All of them, because we are the worst class.

Axelwarrior.9084:

So you can have more than 10 secs of continuous dodging? Doesn’t sound OP at all.

And while you’re dodging, you’re not doing any damage to anyone else, and when you’re done, you have no initiative left = no offense, except autoattack.

Everything’s a trade off.

Reroll Warrior.

+1

/15 characters

I don’t have a glass cannon build.

This is my build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAoY8ImQ2ZsT6EPDL0p8UAWdFA-jECBYiDimCMQk0hONtIas12FRjVPjIqWfEzcrIa1SBYuuK-w

Needs moar evasion.

It makes sense for the Thief – we die too easy.

Withdraw gives you an evade and heals you – and only removes crippled, chilled, or immobilize.

This skill would heal you every time you dodge and remove one of any condition at the same time.

It would be tied directly to your dodge ability, and would be a passive healing skill (it’s triggered by dodging, not by using the heal skill).

Dodge, heal a moderate amount and remove one condition.

Zacchary.6183:

Would like “Dodge = Remove 1 Condition” before “Dodge = +1 initiative”.

This should be a new trait, in addition to tying dodging to our Init.

Or, here’s an idea for an alternative heal:

Dodging heals you and removes one condition.

vincecontix.1264:

Well your suggestion is basically asking for increase init regen not a new dodge mechanic. Also you idea for 1 init is not needed and kinda op.

Honestly if they just fixed the sword cast time and buff some of the thief useless utilities the thief would be in a good spot.

I’m not asking for increased init regen, how’d you get that from what I said?

By tying dodging to Init instead of endurance, you give Thieves the option of spending Init on defense or offense – as much as they want. Plus, whatever Init regen you are using, contributes to your evasion just as much as it contributes to offense.

It also lets you store up a bunch of consecutive dodges, if you choose.

Thieves have too few defensive options – this is the limiting factor that forces cookie cutter builds.

Permastealth is a result of that. It’s not because it’s an appealing style of play, it works because Thieves have to mitigate damage somehow, and this just happened to be one that worked out.

Give Thieves the ability to dodge from their universal resource – Init – and you provide a baseline of evasion/defense, no matter what build you are going for.

You can build all out DA/CS and you still have a minimum amount of dodging/evasion available to you.

The exact cost isn’t of concern to me – maybe it should be 2, or maybe even 3 (though I doubt it – seems like no higher than 2 Init is appropriate).

The point is, having more dodge on demand than other classes is appropriate for the Thief, who is the most vulnerable character in the game, and should be more slippery than any other class.

Since Thieves are so fragile, and it seems that everything we do revolves around survivability, I think that Thieves deserve to have a slightly different dodge mechanic than other classes.

Dodge Roll = 1 Init

My Apothecary build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY8Ylcm6OHcy5E+5EyOjdSn4ZYhOlnCwqrA-jECBYiDimCMQk0hONtIas12FRjVPjIqWfEzcrIa1SB8ouK-w

Viking Jorun.5413:

ipan.4356:

For a burst heal – I just don’t think it’s bursty enough.

It needs just a little more, like 2-3% more healing.

Part of it’s problem, is that to get it to work at all, you have to invest in full Healing Power – otherwise, it doesn’t work, and that means massive trade offs to dmg.

The thing is, SoM isn’t meant to be used at all. It’s meant to keep you actively engaged in combat by design, so using it is a counter to its design.

I’m not talking about activating the Signet – I’m talking about the amount it heals per strike.

It needs to be increased by a small amount.

For a burst heal – I just don’t think it’s bursty enough.

It needs just a little more, like 2-3% more healing.

Part of it’s problem, is that to get it to work at all, you have to invest in full Healing Power – otherwise, it doesn’t work, and that means massive trade offs to dmg.

It’s much easier to calculate than all that – just go hit something, and calculate the total percentage of health you get back when you land all 3 hits from DB on a single target.

I can tell you that as Healing Power increases, it approaches 5% of health returned per Death Blossom on a single target.

At just over 1000 Healing Power, I am practically right at 5% each DB I use (single target).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY8YlcmyOHcy5E+5EyOjdSn4ZYhOlnCwqrA-jECBYiDimCMQk0hONtIas12FRjVLjIqWvEzcrIa1SB4suK-w

I’ve noticed that as you add more HP, SoM approaches 5% of health healed per DB (on a single target).

I am running over 1000 HP right now (apothecary and passiflora) and I am just about at 5% of health healed each time I use DB on a single target.

5 targets would mean 25% health for every DB.

The drawback I have with SoM, and I try very hard to make it work is not the amount of healing it gives – it’s good, and it seems to be balanced right.

The problem I have is that for that amount of healing, the disadvantage is that you have to be hitting something to get it.

There is so much CC in this game, that this becomes a major drawback, and I don’t think the healing amount was balanced taking this into consideration.

If you can’t hit, you can’t heal.

The difficulty in balancing a skill like this is that it’s going to partially be dependent on the players skill….I mean even more so than other skills.

A CC’d Thief using SoM heals = 0.

Additionally, the healing benefits from increased attack speed, which there is so little of in this game – Critical Haste doesn’t actually provide that much benefit (2 or 3 seconds every 30?) and to my knowledge, there is no other way to increase attack speed (there’s that crappy haste utility, but I never use it).

I think that SoM needs a 25-33% boost in healing per strike – at least for PvP. I do alright with it in some PvE, although dungeons are hard.

CD’s just need to be a lot shorter.

I really don’t like the long CD’s.

Guild Wars 2 was supposed to have more action based combat – instead, we got tab targeting and long CD’s.

Can we please shorten all CD’s across the board? Even if this means lowering the power of all skills……..the longest CD should be 30 seconds, if that……

Initiative is fine for me – but the Thief is still terrible for many, many other reasons.

Tremain.4623:

Alrik Vas.3507:

Apparently some people are still doing well, i don’t know. I’ve always been a little slow on my thief, so i can’t say personally. Though i also don’t play any of the builds that got “nerfed” (i use quotes, but i agree they did get smacked hard), so I’m not sure how much harder it is, other than from the complaints on these forums.

Sorry your experience was so crappy.

Good players will do well with any class because the grand majority of the player base are horrible players. That doesn’t mean the class is fine or balanced, only that there are tons of sheep for the wolves to feed on.

Exactly.

I play all classes, and I’m no pro. Nowhere near esport level.

But, all else being equal, that is if my skill level with each class is approximately the same, I ought to do roughly about as well with any of them.

In truth, I’m a little bit better with some than others, but not by much – the difference resulting from my skill level is a very small contribution, that is comparing between each class I play.

But I do the worst with the Thief.

I’ve seen those videos of people owning with a Thief, and I can tell you there are two factors in play there:

1) Really good players who can eke out almost anything using almost anything.
2) They are fighting really bad players who fall for almost anything.

Give those same players another class – one that’s actually not broken, like a Warrior, Necromancer, or Guardian – and they will own even against the really good Thief players.

It’s one thing to watch an expert tear apart a bunch of noobs with the Thief – but post a video of great Thief vs. a great Warrior, Necro or Guardian, where the footing is equal, and you’ll see something much different.

Anet hates Thieves.

Ask for Krait – you get Quaggan.

They won’t allow “evil” races – but my gut tells me that Kodan and/or Tengu will eventually be playable.

I look forward to playing the Kodan, Tengu not as much.

Don’t hate me for saying this, but I think Diablo 3 had a great skill system – in principle.

I’m not saying that it was balanced, or that it’s an awesome game (it isn’t), or anything else – just that the basic infrastructure for skills was one of the best I’ve seen in awhile.

Just be glad you’re not a Thief.

Ranger: second worst class in the game.

Presumably, this game doesn’t have “tanks”.

I’ve never actually played an MMO that completely ruined the Rogue archetype as thoroughly as this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAscTjkO9uBPGPMRA

I think that a lot of diversity would open up if we had just 5 more trait points.

You could even do a true jack of all trades, 15 in every trait line.

You could grandmaster 2 lines, and 15 in a third.

But, most of all, I noticed that that extra minor trait opens up a lot of possibilities.

Over the last six months I’ve tried four or five different builds with my Thief.

I just got done experimenting with Skelk Venom on two different builds.

I’ve spent more gold on my Thief than any other class, and I play all eight classes, three (Thief, Mesmer, Necro) at 80.

This is the worst class in the game – especially for PvP.

I tried one final build – with the new heal, and I got two shotted by a Warrior without putting the slightest dent in him.

This class is wrecked.

I mean, it’s really dead, completely useless, defunct.

Anet does not understand the Rogue archetype at all – they don’t want highly specialized gimick classes, they want steady, sustainable classes (like Warrior, Necro, Guardian) only.

I am retiring my Thief indefinitely, while I work on a real class – like Warrior and Necro.

R.I.P. Thieves

Improve the healing on Signet of Malice.

It’s official: Anet hates Thieves.

I would love to be able to sell crafting mats in BLTC directly from the collections tab.

Signet of Malice needs improvement.

I love open world PvP, but the problem I have with it in GW2 is that the zones themselves aren’t really designed as anything more than a theme park ride, and therefore wouldn’t be very much fun to hunt people down in.

The only way I’d like this, is if the entire world was truly open – no more invisible walls and zone doors – and down leveling were turned off.

As is, the open world PvE is just a training ground for the real game – it is so boring, so trivial with it’s stupid renown heart quests and lame events, that I think that in itself would ruin open world PvP.

I’m all for duels.

I go 25/25/20.

I use Longbow instead of Shortbow (I’ve used both, but I keep going back to LB).

And I use Call Owl, Viper’s Nest, and Signet of Stone.

It’s interesting to see other people’s Well builds.

I’ve been using this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAod7djQaV6haOb8bKiJFebcQKcPuiUQMkRVocA-TkAifU/4+x8j8H7PDMWYMdA

It’s a Vampiric Well build – tons of life on hit and fast Lifeforce gain for DS. With some Chill to catch victims. Works wonderfully so far.

Funny thing about this build, is that I actually originally chose it just to put something skeletal/skull/reaper on my entire toolbar – it just turned out to be really powerful. The health gain is ridiculous.

Some of us aren’t using those other methods though.

Steal
CD: 30 Sec.
Cast Time: Instant
Interrupt your target, F1 changes to whatever skill you interrupted. Unblockable.
If you do not interrupt a skill, then CD is halved.

Edit: Alternatively, instead of changing to exactly the same skill as you interrupt, Steal could change to a very similar, but Thief themed skill based on the skill you interrupt.

Examples: Interrupt an Ele’s Fireball, and you get a Fiery Throwing Knife – Interrupt Guardian’s Flashing Blade, and you get a Reflecting Blade – each skill you get would be thematically based upon the skill you Steal from them, and it’s level of power would be tied to your own stats.
The drawback to this method – for Anet, not us – is that Anet would have a lot of work to do creating an alternate Stolen version of every skill in the game.
Would be tons of fun however.

I think this Signet would work better if the passive portion worked in pulses.

Maybe grabbing one or two conditions per pulse, like once every 3 seconds or so, and also shedding the same – one or two per pulse.

That way, it would have an ebb and flow to it, rather than an “oh s*it, I just got all these conditions and now I have to blow my signet to get rid of them”

The active can remain the same – blow it to get rid of all conds every 60 secs.

Or, let the passive pulse and periodically shed a few at a time.

I am looking at the new Logging Axe in the store, and about to buy one, when I find this growing irritation in the pit of my stomach that previous endless harvesting tools are soulbound to a single character (I bought a bone pick and a jack in the box scythe as well).

I think it was a poor choice to make previous tools soulbound to single character to begin with – but now that you’re offering an axe that is account bound, it’s even worse: it’s like a slap in the face to everyone who decided to support the game beyond the box price for convenience items we don’t absolutely need.

Additionally, why can’t these endless items be accessed from any character anywhere, like achievement skins (I don’t know if other skins can as well, I’ve only received two skins so far, both from achievement chests)?

Look – we pay cash for a digital item that is essentially a string of zeros and ones – this is a pretty good deal for you.

The account bound axe is an improvement, and I’m going to get one – but if you’re going to allow it to be shuffled around from character to character, then what’s the point of forcing us to go to our bank, log out, log in, go to bank, retrieve axe.

Why not just make a spawn copy available?

And also retroactively change all previous harvest tools to match the improved functionality of the new axe.

Thanks
ipan

Steal

CD: 30 Sec.
Cast Time: Instant

Interrupt your target, F1 changes to whatever skill you interrupted. Unblockable.
If you do not interrupt a skill, then CD is halved.

This is seriously limiting build diversity.

While you’re at it, create some new stat combinations for armor. You haven’t made every possible stat combo that a character can trait, therefore gear lines are incomplete.

I’ve always used crit to proc Sigils, nothing more. I’m beginning to rethink it’s usefulness.

Steal:

Interrupt
F1 Changes to whatever skill you interrupted for 30 seconds.

Curious: why do Sigils of Battle and Purity share CD’s, one is on-crit, and one is on swap.

One the question of defense:

Primal Reflexes (vigor for more dodging)
Shared Anguish
Natural Vigor and Companion’s Defense
Sigil of Purity
And lots of move speed (Rune of Traveller, and Signet of the Hunt)

yes, it is a glass cannon build, except that it has a little defense in the form of 25 pts. into Wilderness Survival line, which actually makes it more of a hybrid build.