Second Child
The one thing I can say for IoJ is that your forum warriors sure do love to cry. That’s one thing that’s never changed. No one cares so suck it up and move on.
Banzie is our only forum warrior. And even then, he’s pretty tame as far as forum warring goes.
Second Child
Use shortbow to aoe the phantasms if they get too many up. Phantasm mesmers have to play to your rhythm because you determine when you want to pop out of stealth, and x/d allows you to stealth easily off their clones. With CnD, refuge, blinding powder, and hide in shadows, you should always have a stealth maneuver up.
Second Child
Whoa, seems to be happening to thieves using unload in quick succession as well. Was wondering how I was getting 15k single shots. Thanks for posting.
Second Child
I recently started a P/P non-stealth thief and have leveled to only 20 so far. This is easily the worst build I’ve ever played on any class. Borderline unplayable. Running with two signets and potion/food buffs and the damage output is still pathetic. Takes two rounds of unload to kill one trash enemy at my level, and then I’m nearly out of initiative. Pretty clear that not one person at Anet has ever played a P/P thief for even 5 minutes.
That’s partly because you’re low leveled. Unload does decent dps when traited properly, and the additional bounces from unload are also pretty strong. That said, p/p as a whole is still weaker than the alternative weapon sets, and shortbow is probably a better choice for a ranged weapon.
Second Child
No you won’t be doing heavy damage no matter how much you try nor your dps would be “very good” — mediocre maybe.
And while you’re in stealth, you’re not doing any damage — you’re just trolling.
Plenty of d/p and d/d builds hit 6-7k backstabs on medium armor targets with 6 in SA. No, it’s not PvE level of damage, but that’s still very good dps.
If playing teef were about dps alone, you’d see a lot more 5/6/0/0/3 or 6/6/0/0/2 d/d and s/p builds. The reason you don’t, and the reason 6 in SA is so popular, is because even for teefs, survivability IS important.
Again.
You have this limited view that Thief’s survivability relies on having 6pts into SA — time and time again this had been proven to be inaccurate.
I’m aware that you don’t need 6 SA to survive. I’ve even acknowledged that acro and shortbow are good alternatives. However, you haven’t addressed my point. If playing thief is about dps alone, why is something like 0/6/6/2/0 so much more popular than something like 5/6/0/0/3 in WvW? Why do so many WvW builds trait 6 into SA as opposed to 6 into DA?
No it’s not weird at all because the trait also give healing power. Healing power would be worthless if you can’t mitigate the incoming damage.
You don’t avoid damage by going in stealth. Just FYI.
The biggest benefit of stealth is that you mitigate a lot of damage when they can’t see where you are. Yes, they can still aoe you, but good positioning means you really won’t be taking much (if any) damage while you’re stealthed.
Builds take those traits for utility. Even a non-power spec can benefit from those traits. What specific benefit that is exclusive to power build from Trickery? None.
What specific benefit that is exclusive to condition damage build from Trickery? Well it’s obvious, a base 300 condition damage.
Why are quick venoms/potent poison in DA and why is venomous aura in SA? Most venoms don’t benefit from power/toughness/healing power. In fact, this is general to other classes as well. Why do the most important power shatter mesmer traits fall into a line that grants passive condition damage? Note also that the most popular condition mesmer builds don’t trait into that same line at all.
6pts in DA gives 300 power + 200 power from RT = 500 power. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
How can you possibly make up that loss of power when you spec for 6pts in to SA?
If you want to look at cost, that’s it there, right there. That’s how much it cost to spec 6pts into SA — 500 power.
Most builds that spec 6 into SA are WvW builds. You have guard leech, consumables, bloodlust, runes of strength, etc. Not to mention that having easy access and great benefits from stealth means you can gear much squishier and still get away with it. So, yes, you will still do good damage with 6 in SA.
Of course, you won’t do as much damage as 6/6/0/0/2 or 5/6/0/0/3, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who finds that an irrecoverable loss.
The other GM traits are build specific that cannot be used in “general.”
You like to generalize everything using hyperbole. You’re better off admitting that it is your personal preference than trying to speak for every Thief.
I’m not trying to be hyperbolic. Yes, everything always comes down to personal preference, but I think the other GM traits are generally better — they synergize with other builds better, have more team utility, offer more finishing power, etc. I don’t mean generally as in “every thief should take X, Y, Z”, but rather that X, Y, and Z usually fare better.
Compare hastened replenishment and SoH in trickery. Both are strong traits, and certain builds do take hastened replenishment. But in general, SoH is a better choice because it has more team utility and a wider range of offensive and defensive applications, and more people run SoH than hastened replenishment. That’s what I mean by “generally, the other GM traits are better choices”.
Second Child
And I can shut down a Stability stomp.
How so? You can’t daze a stabilized target.
Bountiful theft prioritizes stability. And the boon strip comes before the daze. So with bountiful theft and and sleight of hand, you can steal to a stability stomp and interrupt it.
Etc. It’s situational, and in no way some decision that is pre-destined to land on the BA side.
Unlike SoH, where you find yourself saving that Daze, BA encourages you to use Steal as soon as it’s out of cooldown.
Sleight of hand doesn’t make you preserve your steal just for the daze. D/P and S/P use headshot, S/D uses out of steath auto. The daze is just an added benefit of sleight of hand. The only time I could think of saving the steal is if I expect a team mate to go down and I anticipate needing to interrupt a stability stomp.
Other than that, I still use steal whenever I think it’d be a good situation to do so, and rarely is the daze a deterrent.
Second Child
And I admit it doesn’t improve your damage output, but the idea is, again, that the game isn’t just about who does more damage.
In the world of Thieves, it is all about who does more damage because you’ll want to put your target into a defensive on engagement.
And if you’re not doing damage as a Thief, when the whole profession revolves around that idea, then you’re trolling. Plain and simple.
In WvW, running 6 in SA doesn’t mean you won’t be doing heavy damage. Yes, you’ll be doing less damage than you would with 6 in DA, but you still do VERY good dps. In addition, you gain all the defensive benefits of SA.
If playing teef were about dps alone, you’d see a lot more 5/6/0/0/3 or 6/6/0/0/2 d/d and s/p builds. The reason you don’t, and the reason 6 in SA is so popular, is because even for teefs, survivability IS important.
You need to consider survivability as well, and if I were playing WvW, I’d prefer not to give up the survivability that comes with SA.
You have this limited view that Thief’s survivability relies on having 6pts into SA — time and time again this had been proven to be inaccurate.
True, you can survive without 6 SA, but it’s a lot harder. 6 SA just offers a lot of survivability without sacrificing too much dps. Without it, you’d either have to go acro heavy or spend a lot more time on shortbow.
Although trickery’s passive benefit is condition damage, the trait line benefits many power builds — thrill of the crime, bountiful theft, SoH. This is similar to how shatter mesmers have to spec 30 into illusions, which passively improves condition damage.
How is Thrill of the Crime benefits from Condition Damage boost of Trickery? How about Bountiful Theft? SoH?
None of those benefits from having 6pts into Trickery other than having the ability to unlock them. BA on the other hand, benefits 100% from Trickery’s innate ability, both from reduced cooldown of Steal and Condition Damage.
That’s my point. The usefulness of a trait line isn’t decided by the passive stat bonus it grants. If you think about it, it’s a bit weird that you gain 300 toughness in SA when stealth is about avoiding damage in the first place.
My point is that despite the fact that trickery grants passive condition damage, the actual traits in that line greatly benefit many power builds (thrill of the crime, bountiful theft, sleight of hand), and, in fact, many power builds trait 6 into trickery. The passive stat bonus says nothing about how that trait line is intended to be used.
I didn’t make any assumptions about how (or whether you play), so I don’t know why you think my conclusions are theoretical. For the record, I’ve been testing revealed training in my builds (along with many of the other GM traits), but I find the tradeoff to be too great for my taste.
You talk about “cost” and “tradeoff” without specifying what they are, thus your conclusion is nothing but theoretical. I’ve shown you that your “picks” are lacking in many ways, yet you have not written them off even though you can’t even support your reasoning why your picks are better that RT.
One example is how weak is your reasoning why you would pick 6pts into SA even after admitting that the cost of that choice results to a weaker damage output.
I describe the costs at length. The cost is that taking 6 in DA means you give up 6 elsewhere, be that in CS, SA, or trickery. And for the reasons we’ve discussed, I’d prefer 6 in any of those lines over 6 in DA. In PvP, I’d prefer 6 in CS and 6 in trickery. In WvW, I’d prefer 6 in SA and 6 in either CS or trickery.
The tl;dr is that executioner offers more finishing power, doesn’t rely on stealth, and complement more builds (most power builds are crit based). SA offers a ton of survivability in WvW without sacrificing tons of dps. Trickery offers group support, boon strip, daze, and a stolen item (all on 21 sec cd). Compared to the 200 power while revealed from RT, I think the other options are better for most builds.
If you don’t like RT just because you don’t know how to use it, then say so. Someone here may even help you understand why RT is a better pick for their build.
This has nothing to do with knowing how to use RT. Yes, I understand some builds can work with RT, but, in general, I think the other GM traits are better choices.
Second Child
I’m not sure why you want to reply to me like I’m 5 years old. I addressed your objections without intimating anything about your intelligence. Sorry if you interpreted disagreement as personal offense.
Executioner does nothing for stealth build at the first 50% health of your target.
How can you call that consistent?
Yes, RT doesn’t benefit stealthless build. One would think that this is rather obvious. I guess not to you.
It’s consistent for two reasons. (1) because it applies regardless of being revealed and (2) because it works well for any power build (as opposed to stealth heavy builds). You can swap to shortbow and still reap the benefits of executioner, for example.
And yes, it’s obvious revealed training doesn’t benefit stealthless builds. That’s precisely WHY I’d prefer executioner — because it benefits more builds.
Right, “every single WvW teef takes it” — amazing hyperbole.
Yeah, yeah, 300 toughness is nice and heal while in stealth. You’re free to spend all points into SA, but don’t expect that you would out damage someone who didn’t.
I didn’t intend that to be hyperbolic. Many, many teefs take it. And I admit it doesn’t improve your damage output, but the idea is, again, that the game isn’t just about who does more damage. You need to consider survivability as well, and if I were playing WvW, I’d prefer not to give up the survivability that comes with SA.
You mean, it reduces “STEAL” recharge? I get it.
But my point is about how B.Ambush sync naturally into the Trickery trait line. SoH can keep the reduced cooldown, but it’s more suited to be in the DA trait line.
If you don’t get what I’m suggesting, I’ll explain it slowly.
I…would…like…to…spec…for…both…SoH…and…BA — get it now?
…thanks for adding periods between your words. I suddenly get it now (>_>). I agree that it’d be nice to have both BA and SoH, but this isn’t a discussion about what an ideal trait spread would look like. Given the actual trait spread, which traits would you take? In this case, the question is whether it’s better to take SoH or BA (not whether you can take both). And between the two, I’d take SoH for the reasons I’ve addressed.
Note also that BA doesn’t inherently “sync” with the trickery line better than SoH. Although trickery’s passive benefit is condition damage, the trait line benefits many power builds — thrill of the crime, bountiful theft, SoH. This is similar to how shatter mesmers have to spec 30 into illusions, which passively improves condition damage.
I’ve ran Executioner for a long time, same with SR, and SoH. I’ve used them all in many different situations that brought me to my conclusion about those traits.
You on the other hand, your conclusion is nothing but theoretical.
I didn’t make any assumptions about how (or whether you play), so I don’t know why you think my conclusions are theoretical. For the record, I’ve been testing revealed training in my builds (along with many of the other GM traits), but I find the tradeoff to be too great for my taste.
Second Child
Often, I only want the clones using their auto attacks, and not other attacks. For example, staff clones do nice condition damage on their autoattack and sword clones rip boons. Moreover, I might prefer a greatsword clone autoattacking (say, to stack bleeds) than for them to use gs 3.
Second Child
But at what cost? Among executioner, shadow rejuvenation, sleight of hand, and revealed training, I would take any of the other three GM traits over revealed training.
Executioner does nothing for stealth build at the first 50% health of your target.
Executioner is much more consistent, offers a much larger damage boost, and benefits all power builds. Revealed training only applies for 3-4 seconds and will hardly benefit stealthless builds.
Shadow’s Rejuvenation is for trolls. It does not contribute to damage. Taking this will actually reduce your overall damage output.
And yet, just about every single WvW teef takes it. Obviously, the game isn’t just about who does more dps; the idea is that you need some defensive maneuvers as well. Traiting 30 into DA might mean you give up 30 in SA, which includes 300 toughness, healing power, condi removal, and regen in stealth.
Sleight of Hand was good, but no longer necessary. The new GM trait for Trickery is 1000 times better in practice since it actually sync with the condition damage you get from Trickery. Sleight of Hand should be in DA to benefit on the condition duration.
Sleight of hand isn’t used to apply conditions. It reduces stealth recharge by 20% (which is a huge deal) and dazes the target. The new bewildering ambush just applies confusion, which isn’t great on power builds that would benefit from revealed training in the first place. That said, I’d still take sleight of hand over both revealed training and bewildering ambush.
In actuality, the cost you have to pay to take the first three GMs is actually greater than picking RT.
Executioner will benefit all power builds (as opposed to revealed training). Shadow Rejuvenation (SA in general) is crucial in WvW (as opposed to revealed training). And sleight of hand recharges steal, dazes, and helps with sustained dps /group support (as opposed to revealed training).
Second Child
I’m still a little confused about why a few people think Revealed Training is a good trait. It’s something like a 8% damage boost, right? That literally a small 8% damage boost for a few seconds. That surely can’t be enough to call it a godsend for anything — if anything it makes our damage a little closer to what it was pre-patch?
I’m not attacking it, I just don’t see the promise in a 8% boost.
If an 8% damage boost is the difference between a dead target and a living one, then I take it.
But at what cost? Among executioner, shadow rejuvenation, sleight of hand, and revealed training, I would take any of the other three GM traits over revealed training.
Second Child
If you play the meta p/d dire build, you really won’t need p/p or d/p to interrupt. Sleight of hand is more than enough for interrupting your opponent, and the 20% chance of applying 3 stacks of confusion is entirely sufficient (keep in mind that a single sneak attack is already five hits).
Think about it this way. By taking offhand pistol, not only are you giving up shortbow, but you’re also giving up cloak and dagger, sneak attack, and shadow strike. All of those tick more reliably, have no internal cooldown, and do more damage.
Second Child
I’m fairly fond of the the rivalry between red, green, and blue. Red is has no skill and is carried by their PvDoor night crew. Blue refuses to run in blobs fewer than 60, and I see their solo roamers dying to sentries. Green is outnumbered all the time but still wipes every single red and blue blob it comes across — definitely the highest average player skill among all the servers.
Second Child
(edited by mango.9267)
Your last pharagraph (spelling..) doesn’t make sense. People run staff + scepter torch so the torch is there no matter how you look at it, only thing you change is you loose staff and get sword and pistol.
Plenty of people run staff and scepter/pistol or staff and sword/pistol. The point is that you can’t have both pistol and torch.
The duelist bleeds okay do a lot of damage but it’s just one condition. How hard is it to strip 1 condition off yourself? No problem. With staff you put on loads of conditions and they won’t all get removed as easily.
Actually, staff clones only apply one condition (burning) that s/p doesn’t apply. And staff clones don’t even reliably apply all of the conditions. You could very well end up stacking bleeds only with staff clones (but still not as many as you would with a couple of duelists).
I used to run sword pistol + scepter torch and I only recall one incident where I actually needed to use the sword blur, in over 20 hours of play with it.
To be fair, 20 hours isn’t a lot of time to get used to a new weapon set. Whether or not you used it, blurred frenzy is an EXTREMELY useful defensive maneuver which mesmers use all the time.
You really don’t need the immobilize, it will stop your target from running for like 3 seconds,
The immobilize isn’t just to stop a target from running away. It sets up nice burst combos and can be used to buy you some time defensively.
Chaos storm really isn’t as you say in my experience, yes, they may avoid meleeing you but what if you’re against a ranged class?
That’s my point. It’s less effective against ranged builds than melee builds, since you don’t really stop the ranged dps as much as you do the melee dps. That said, it’s still good because you can use it to restrict (say) a ranger’s positioning.
Second Child
- Chaos Storm is such a great skill, you get aegis, retaliation, swiftness, while you daze your enemy, put chill, poison and weakness on him. It’s best used defensively. It’s also an ethereal field. You can phase retreat through it to get chaos armor => back to #5
Chaos armor is nice, but chaos storm isn’t reliable. What makes chaos storm good isn’t really the boons or the conditions, since you can’t reliably get the same ones each time. Rather, it’s good because it restricts your opponents mobility and prevents the opponent from melee’ing you while it’s up. The boons/conditions (whichever ones you happen to get) are just a bit of an added bonus.
With regards to staff dps. It simply doesn’t match the duelist bleed stacks. On a rabid PU build, 2 duelists will stack 10+ bleeds every 6 seconds or so, and the base damage of their shots is also non-negligible. Staff clones simply don’t compare.
For boon stripping, you normally take phantasmal disenchanter on fights up to 1v3, after that it’s better to get portal. Also, you really think going in melee range auto attacking is a good idea on a mesmer? The stun break isn’t reliable here as you need to have the clone actually go out and spawn which as we all know doesn’t happen every time.
Just because you can take a utility to boon strip doesn’t mean the sword boon strip is somehow useless. If anything, having sword potentially frees up a utility slot if you previously relied solely on disenchanter for boon strip.
The stun break is reliable. The only thing not reliable is summoning the clone, but that’s (presumably) a bug that Anet is fixing (yes, we’re still waiting…). Lastly, don’t forget that sword 2 offers an evade, and sword 3 gives you an immobilize.
Vulnerability is useless since we do not do straight out damage so that argument is invalid.
Just because you don’t use direct damage doesn’t mean your team mates won’t.
However, debating sword vs. staff is a bit misleading. The debate is really having both pistol and torch vs. having staff. I think it’s better to have both pistol and torch. Sword is viable both offensively and defensively on a PU build. Duelists outdamage staff clones, and magic bullet offers a nice stun. Torch offers stealth, blind, burn, retal, confusion, and (traited) condi clear.
If you take staff, you either give up the stealth/blind/burn/retal/confusion from torch or you give up the duelist bleeds + magic bullet stun. On a PU build, I don’t want to give up either.
Second Child
@OP, if you play condi, take a rabid sword. If you play power, take a zerker sword.
You gave up Staff for Sword? Before you ask what stats to use, ask yourself if that was a good idea. I mean, really.
Swapping staff for sword is a good idea on PU builds. Sword clones apply vuln, strip boons, and always run to melee the target, making it much easier for them to apply conditions on clone death.
Moreover, giving up staff means you can take both pistol and torch offhand. In my experience, sword/torch offers just as much defensive play as staff. You have a stunbreak on iLeap, stealth on torch 4, and (if traited), condi removal on both torch 4 and 5. And as much as people would like to believe staff does good condi damage, it simply doesn’t compare to duelist bleeds + sword clone deaths.
Second Child
So it seems this would only really benefit s/d and p/d. But taking it means you can’t take 30 in Shadow Arts and Trickery in WvW, and you can’t take 30 in Critical Strikes and Trickery in PvP. I’d prefer 30 in any of those trait lines than 30 in Deadly Arts — the 200 power just isn’t worth it.
Why cant you take 6 SA and & Trickery in WvW? And why can’t you take 6CS and 6 Trickery in PvP?
6 Points DA with RT outdamage 6 Points CS with Executioner while the health of the enemy is over 50%.
There aren’t enough points to take 6 DA, 6 SA, and 6 Trickery. I’d prefer 6 SA and 6 Trickery in WvW if I were playing p/d or s/d. Similarly, I’d prefer 6 CS and 6 Trickery in PvP because Revealed Training relies on being revealed. It won’t affect most backstabs, it won’t affect pistol whips, and it doesn’t boon strip/daze/grant aoe fury/might/swiftness.
Second Child
So it seems this would only really benefit s/d and p/d. But taking it means you can’t take 30 in Shadow Arts and Trickery in WvW, and you can’t take 30 in Critical Strikes and Trickery in PvP. I’d prefer 30 in any of those trait lines than 30 in Deadly Arts — the 200 power just isn’t worth it.
Second Child
I imagine because mainhand pistol is already pretty great on a P/D set. And offhand pistol is pretty great on D/P and S/P sets. They really couldn’t improve the 1,2,4,5 skills without making P/D, D/P, and S/P stronger.
The only way for Anet to really improve P/P without messing with the balance of other weapon sets is to work on Unload. However, Unload is generally what P/P teefs spam to begin with.
Second Child
Is this intended ? Or is this a bug waiting to b fixed
This will probably be fixed. It’s a bit sad because I quite enjoyed the random extra fears every once in a while, back when it was a 5% chance of proc. It wasn’t game breaking and opponents generally didn’t mind. Now that it’s a 50% chance of proc, everyone notices, and it downright destroys small group balance.
Why? Well, the fact that you fear more frequently and for longer durations than necros is already a sign. But also because fear now interrupts. Couple this with perplexity runes and the new GM trait, and you’ll be stacking insane amounts of confusion while forcing almost all of your opponent’s skills onto a 10 sec cd.
Second Child
D/P is probably still the most forgiving power weapon set. P/D condi is also an extremely powerful set. S/D and S/P are both also viable, though S/P is a bit nerfed due to increased initiative cost on pistol whip.
For zerging, shortbow as main weapon set, hands down.
Second Child
Going to shamelessly self-promote by necroing this old thread.
Build works very well with the new torment trait.
Second Child
Each mesmer clone has its own internal cooldown for fear when you wear six pieces of TA armor. You can keep summoning clones and effectively perma-fear people who are careless about attacking clones. Yes, the fear duration stacks if they hit multiple clones with a single AoE. I’ve gotten 8+ seconds of fear.
Note that this is very specific. Six pieces of TA armor. Runes don’t matter. WvW/PvE only. Doesn’t seem to work with non-TA armor with Nightmare runes.
Note also that this has always been the case. It just wasn’t as noticeable when it was a 5% chance, but now that it’s a 50% chance of proc…
Second Child
(edited by mango.9267)
What? In my opinion I think they should allow MORE players into WvW maps. The map is just way to big to have 40-50 player caps. That’s just not viable. Are you trying to make WvW as empty as PVE zones? If you don’t like it go play sPVP scrub.
Nope.
For almost all servers below T3, WvW maps have fewer than 40-50 players 90% of the time. Not only is it viable, but it’s also less blobby and less laggy.
Second Child
Energy. Often, I’ll swap to SB because I’m on the defensive, and that extra dodge is a life saver. Also saves you some init from having to spam SB 3/SB 5.
Second Child
Because you selfishly assume your server, its populations, and player activity schedule represents all 56 of them.
This has nothing to do with my server or anyone else’s. If anything, this proposal hurts my server more than many others.
Your suggested guild cap won’t even let the amount of active players in my guild on one map .
Many people would object to your guild running 50-60 people. The most common criticism is that at that point, it becomes a blob fest where people mash 1, and there’s no real skill.
But I guess, that is your point. To hose my guild and make sure were are not permitted to have fun when it is not a convenient “peak” time, as you see it, for your server.
Firstly, I play during offpeak hours, so it’s not about peak time bias. It’s about reducing the influence of coverage and population and increasing the influence of strategy and communication, which most people seem to support.
Secondly, this has nothing to do with my server, as I already mentioned. IoJ has a strong Oceanic crew, so if something like this were put in place, it’d hurt our PPT more than many servers around us.
Lastly, this isn’t about your guild. It’s about splitting up blobs so that there’s more strategic play and less skill lag. As already discussed, large guilds could still be viable by hitting two maps at once.
Second Child
Why limit the amount of people? So more people can’t play?
No, to reduce blobbing, skill lag, server stacking, and the influence of coverage. The intent isn’t to prevent people from playing WvW. I think this solution would go well with free transfers to bottom servers and very low cost to bronze servers. The idea is to make the population spread out so match-ups are more balanced.
Here is the solution to your problem….transfer to a lower pop tier. Problem solved. If you want to run in wvw where there are smaller zergs, or almost no zergs, then transfer.
That’s precisely the problem. No one is willing to transfer to lower tiers in the current system because coverage plays such a large role. Server stacking is the antithesis of transferring down. This is meant to address that problem.
Quit trying to make others suffer, for your own selfish reason.
Again, I don’t see how this is selfish. It’s across the board, and the intent is to address many of the problems that are posted here. Blobbing, server stacking, skill lag, and coverage go hand-in-hand, and if reducing the player cap can reduce blobs, make guilds spread out across servers, and reduce the influence of coverage, then it seems to be the opposite of selfish.
Second Child
no way.
I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?
Because it punishes the rest of us who do not play on the schedule that suits you. It is a very selfish suggestion.
In what way does it punish people who don’t play on my schedule? The idea is to lower the population cap across all time zones; it reduces the influence of coverage over all time zones. (For the record, I play in very late NA/OCX).
Second Child
I think dire is better. Other classes (engi, necro, mesmer) run rabid because they get additional condi procs on crit, like burning or bleeding. Teefs get no additional condi proc on crit. Although you can trait into cripple on crit, that forces you to trait into the CS line, which is underwhelming in a condi build.
If you want your attacks to do a bit more damage, carrion is slightly better than rabid. Otherwise, I think the most powerful condi teef builds run full dire.
Second Child
I am currently on HoD and I play mainly anywhere from 3-10PM EST. From what I can tell they have 30 points into SA and some points into CS in order to get the quickness on crit skill.
I asked a fellow thief on HoD and they said it was some new S/D dueling build that a thief on SoS created. I don’t know if it’s true but I haven’t seen a build like it and it is very effective in 1v1s.
Probably 0/10/30/0/30. Practiced tolerance, shadow’s embrace, blind on stealth, shadow rejuvenation, thrill of the crime, bountiful theft, sleight of hand. Mix of zerker, valk, and cav. The proportion of each depends on how confident you are in staying alive.
Second Child
10/0/30/0/30, 0/10/30/0/30, and 10/30/0/30/0 are all popular s/d builds. WvW teefs probably want shadow arts, so one of the first two is probably what you’re encountering. The acro heavy build has unreliable condition removal, so you’d need a reliable teammate to do that for you.
Second Child
no way.
I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?
Because there are already tier 2 servers with hour-long queues on every map. This change would effectively kill off WvW as a game mode.
People seem to miss that that’s precisely the INTENT of lowering the map cap. The idea is to (possibly) couple this with free transfers to lower tiers so that guilds feel motivated to spread out across the servers.
Second Child
The penalty for dying in WvW is the run back.
If they’re able to continuously rush your siege, it probably means they’re defending in their corner or near their spawn, where it should be more difficult for the offensive team to take the objective. There’s no way they can continuously rush your siege near your spawn or your corner. The idea is that the further away from their territory, the harder it is to take/hold objectives, and the closer to their territory, the easier it is to do so. Adding an additional non-negligible death penalty will skew this mechanic.
Second Child
1. More PvE focus
I hope so. I’m a PvE player and these new GM traits look to be very PvP/WvW focused.
The new GM traits are nothing focused. They’re almost all useless in almost all game types. It’s as if the devs just drew random mechanics from a hat and decided to try and shoehorn them into GM traits.
It’s too early to tell. The 3s distortion might work well in zergs, and (although not GM), the torment shatter sounds like it’ll buff condi/shatters. Of course, you never know how these things play out till you get to try it out.
Second Child
Spamming Headshot must be really exhausting! Here, have some more cheeze to regain that lost energy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKuvv_d-4o1. I do not use headshot at all. It is P/D not D/P.
2. That video is two 1v1 fights, one being against an uplevel. All of my fights are outnumbered, I rarely ever use food and I have a mini following me around in stealth.
3. That video is pre-Nerf, even if I could spam interrupts it wouldn’t apply confusion every time.Overall 0/10 troll attempt.
I’ve run this exact build for a couple of months, and, to be fair, it’s pretty cheesy; this is one of the best examples of the condi bunker builds that plague the WvW roaming meta. That said, I don’t fault you for it, since everyone else is running cheese as well, with all the PU mesmers, nike warriors, perplexity engis, dhuumfire necros, etc.
Second Child
No no no this is an awful idea. My guild can field 60+ players on reset night. We already almost que a map dropping it down to 45 to even 60 means that my guild alone will que a borderland and we will be leaving a few of our members out. Leave it how it is if you don’t like giant zergs run 2 20 man zerg busting groups and hit the zerg at the same time its that simple.
Although it’s impressive that your guild can field so many players, many people on this forum have been complaining about just that fact. I get the feeling that people generally DON’T want guilds to be running 50-60 people, and the fact that guilds can get away with massive blobs like that is part of the problem. That’s not to say larger guilds should kick members or anything; they could easily adapt and split the guild into two groups running in different BL’s. The point is that it would naturally force zerg size to consolidate into 15-20, instead of 50-60.
If your positions are sieged correctly. Which they should be during the off hours then 10-15 defenders can take down almost any zerg if done correctly.
Perhaps, but 10-15 people definitely wouldn’t be able to hold 3 keeps against 60-70 people in their BL, presuming the 60-70 people have half a brain and are able to split up into two 30-40 man groups.
The only exception to this is if they bring 15 omegas. Which if you let them build 15 omegas on your borderland then thats entirely your problem.
You underestimate how easy it is to build golems. I’ve built 15 omegas barely leaving spawn. You can run to the edge of the cliff on the side-exit of your spawn and drop blueprints there. Having 5-7 people running supply to the blueprint from other maps, you could easily build 10-15 omegas in 30-40 minutes.
Moreover, if you had a 60 man blob keeping the 10-15 defenders on their toes, it’d be very easy for a 5-10 man havoc group to go around flipping camps and building golems.
Second Child
I’ll turn that around and ask you what reason is there to xfer to T1? Outside of seasons, winning a matchup gives you 3 bonus chests, all of which are inevitably filled with greens. T1 most definitely isn’t more skilled than the other tiers (probably 90%+ of the GvG guilds are in T2). Combine that with the queues and ever-present skill lag and I don’t understand why you’d want to go there.
The people I’ve encountered who have transferred to T1 usually do it for one of two reasons: (1) they value artificial metrics like PPT or (2) they want to be able to join a zerg at any time of day and not worry about map hopping incessantly/other servers rolling their BL.
Second Child
This partiular suggestion would not affect coverage,
It would indirectly. The reason coverage is such a big deal now is that during offhours, some servers grossly outnumber others. Servers with strong offhour coverage can send a 60-70 man blob into a BL and roll everything, while 10-15 defenders are scrambling about. However, if the map cap were lower, it’d be much easier for the 10-15 to defend.
An unforseen consequence may be a surge of elitism due to the increased value of a spot on the map.
This would probably only really affect the top 6 or 7 servers. Outside of reset, we almost never have 40 people in each map, even during NA prime, and we’re in the upper half of WvW tiers. For the top 6 or 7 servers, however, this would encourage guilds to spread out to lower servers, and that’s one of the consequences we want.
Second Child
Apologies if this has been asked before, but is the damage/crit chance of an attack calculated upon initiating the attack or upon landing the attack?
Suppose I’m a teef with 40% crit chance, and suppose my steal grants me fury. If I initiate an attack, steal to a target, and then land the attack, does it have a 40% chance of crit or a 60% chance of crit? Similarly if you initiate an attack and a party member grants you might before you land your attack.
Second Child
Yeah, your opponents were pretty bad, but there are still a few things you could work on.
-A couple of times, you initiated a CnD after an opponent dodged or moved out of the way. You have enough time to cancel this by stowing your weapon or dodging.
-You use refuge for stomps, but you risk getting knocked out (especially when you used it on that guardian) and wasting a great reset utility. I’d save refuge for reviving allies and resetting the fight. If you want the blind/stealth, you can just CnD off the downed target, and it’ll give you the same effect.
-In the fight where the warrior kept using his hammer to interrupt your stomp of his guardian friend, I noticed you swapped to s/p. You could have easily secured the stomp by using black powder on pistol 5, since it pulses in aoe, and lasts for the duration of the stomp.
Second Child
A lot of people help build communities on a server… I enjoy the community that I’m apart of so transferring away from it will never happen.
Well, presumably, the people who value your community less than you do will move, and you’ll still be able to play on your server with the other people who value the community.
Reducing how many people can get onto a map wouldn’t fix anything.. It would just make things more painful to do. [ Defending keeps would be so easy if you just have to worry about 30-40 people instead of a map Q of 70+ ]
Why is this a bad thing? It’s a common complaint here that zerging down an objective with a blob is too easy, and that defending is too difficult. This is an especially pertinent complaint when talking about offhour coverage, where some servers only have 15 defenders against 70 people. It sounds like the general attitude is that defending should be made easier.
You will never see keeps flip.
This is just false. I’ve seen plenty of keeps flipped without 70 people. Many skilled guilds have managed to flip well-defended keeps while outnumbered, and a keep can definitely flip to 30 people, even if it’s defended. If anything, it seems like this would make the offensive team rely on good communication and skill, as opposed to sheer numbers, to flip harder objectives.
Second Child
If I have to sit in a Q for longer than one hour I wouldn’t transfer away from my server.. I’d quit the game. [ A lot of people likely think this also. ]
Would you (or anyone else with this line of thinking) say the same thing if Anet made bottom-tier transfers free and lower-pop servers very low cost?
Second Child
Even if you reduce the number of player per map you still would face zergs. The real problem is the AoE cap and the lag wich makes smaller groups really difficult to take that big group down.
If I split up my forces into two groups, either group will get crushed whenever it encounters the full force of the other server’s zerg.
I think both of these arguments, and the ones similar to it, are working from the assumption of a larger map queue. The reason it’s better to blob now isn’t just because the blob wipes smaller sized groups. Rather, it’s because there are enough people not in the blob to scout/defend objectives that the blob can exist in the first place. The non-blob players give the blob intel and time to react defensively.
In a scenario where ONLY 45 people could be on a map, it would be more effective to split into three 15 man groups. Consider server A, with 45 people on the map in one blob, and server B, with three 15 man groups running around. Sure, server A will wipe each of server B’s groups, but while server A spends time wiping one of the groups, they can’t defend their objectives from the other two 15 man groups. And 15 people is more than enough to take upgraded towers/keeps, especially if they’re undefended and unscouted.
Second Child
Thought you were trying to fix map blobbing not population imbalance?
I’m not trying to fix anything in particular. I just thought something like this would be able to fix many problems, population imbalance among them.
P.S there are other ways to help with scoring even with population/coverage imbalances, made a thread on that 4 months ago.
I’m aware there are a number of ways to deal with population/coverage, just as there are a number of ways to deal with blobbing, karma trains, and skill lag. However, the appeal of this solution (to me, anyway) is that it’s a simple, one-faceted solution that solves many problems by itself. It doesn’t require drastic changes to other aspects of WvW like changing the way PPT or zerg v. zerg works.
Second Child
Even if you reduce the caps now people will continue to zerg, it’s still more efficient and quicker to take towers and keeps that way. If you want to hurt the karma train then need to do something about their supply gains. If you want to hurt the zerg busters then hurt their tagging and bagging, urieldhynne.2743 is on the right track. Raise the percentage damage for required tagging for reward, other games have it set to 50% damage instead of one hit for tags, you will see how fast people move back to smaller groups because less people to fight over tagging.
None of those suggestions would fix the population/coverage imbalances. The current player cap allows one server to grossly outnumber another, whether that be in a giant blob or many smaller groups. Reducing the players allowed on a map would reduce the influence of coverage and population on score, along with many of the other problems.
Second Child
no way.
I don’t expect everyone (or even most people) to agree with this. But why do you think this is a bad idea specifically?
Second Child
As the title suggests, the idea is to lower the number people able to play on a map. I’m not sure how the algorithm works now, but the current system makes 50-60 man blobs possible without queueing the map. The proposal is to make the queue hit at, say, 40-50 players on the map.
I feel this could address many of the recurring problems that players bring up here.
1) It decreases blobbing. If the queue is 40-50 people, it becomes inefficient to stay in a 40-50 man blob. Zergs would probably naturally split up into 15-20, with smaller havoc and roaming groups.
2) It decreases the influence of coverage without being biased towards any time zone. If the player cap is decreased on all maps, it becomes a bit easier to defend structures. As it is now, some servers are able to run 60 man blobs over BL’s of 10-20 defenders.
3) It decreases the influence of population. Same reason as above.
4) It discourages server stacking. If the player cap is lowered to 40-50 people per map, some servers will easily see 250+ in queue for all maps, even post-Season. At some point, it becomes better for guilds to just transfer off to a lower populated server. This offers guilds some reason to look into dead servers.
5) It decreases the amount of lag players experience. Self-explanatory.
I realize this sounds viscerally unappealing at first, and I don’t pretend there are no cons to it. But after thinking about it, it would help with many of the recurring issues. Thought I’d open the thought for discussion here.
Second Child
Kinda odd to post a thread asking people to talk up your server. That said, I’ll play along.
Sometimes, I find myself wishing YB roamers would come out of their towers more often, but, in all honesty, YB doesn’t tower hump more than most other servers. Your reputation as “arrow cart bend” is a bit unwarranted, and I do admire your defensive priorities. I’ve seen your EB zerg map hop to your BL immediately after a scout spotted our zerg, and that’s more than can be said for a lot of other servers.
Supply traps are kittening annoying though.
Second Child
well… /dance will fix it but might be awkward in the middle of battle…
Sadly, I’ve done this many times in the middle of battle to have my opponent think I’m taunting him, when, in reality, I’m just trying to break the immobilize bug.
Second Child