Guild Wars 2

LoneWolfie.1852:

phys.7689:

When you are balancing traits, its a self balance thing, you arent really disagreeing that opportunist was unbalanced, you are merely saying that other traits should be on the same level, so more builds of thief have access to good ini.

problem with this is, that means you would be increasing the max ini regen by even more, because if you improve those traits, people would get opportunist and the new traits.

you could move the traits up so it would be hard to get both, however that mean balanced builds wont have access to decent iniative gains.

the only way to make traits exclusive is to put them in grandmaster teir, and that brings a host of problems.

the honest best solution is that all theives need more access to a faster base ini regen. This means that traits that give ini CANNOT remain the same. it would just give people op ini.

Maybe the numbers arent perfect, or need tweaks, but its definately the right direction. Have you tried playing with other theif builds? you will find yourself out of initiative very fast and very often.

Now to the point that overall, theif needs buffs, i agree. Thief does not excel in any game mode, and is average at best in spvp. weak in PVE and not very good in WvW at actually doing things that matter. (best at annoying people and running away) So yeah, i think nerfs are bad, because its already barely hanging on in most modes, however as i evaluated the ini numbers, its going to give more ini to the majority of weapon sets, and close to break even for the others.

My point is how the original opportunist + base regen = 80 initiative per minute, new system = 60 initiative/minute. As far as I’m concerned why is ANet nerfing our pve aspect, then thrashing our traits and weapon sets to kitten in PvP?

And if you think it will give more initiative to weapon sets, that’s completely and utterly wrong. S/P, PP, Shortbow, S/D instant nerf for critical line. There’s NO way other lines in the new system can output more initiative than the old critical lines.

If you wanted to increase the viability of the new builds, they should have monitored the critical line closely instead of kittying around with it. It’s not like thieves are meant to be survival tankers.

What’s the use of giving the PVT thieves 15 more initiative per minute. 2.5 Extra cloak and daggers? 1000 more HP gain under stealth? Or what, cast 3.25 extra seconds worth of immobolize/minute with PP set with the new initiative system? Massive buff??? To what aspect? Support thief? Tanking thief? Healing thief with area stealth and traiting regeneration for allies (OH WAIT—- Infusion of shadows nerfed!) WOOOOAHHHH MASSIVE! Changes…. to… erm… what? Massive nerfs to survivability to thief because thief got slapped a 40 % vigor nerf? Yeah. MASSSSSIVE changes indeed.

If they want to increase their base ini regeneration they should have done so without messing around with our meta builds and call it a massive buff. kitten this kitten.

PS: Sanduskel can you stop trying to be the resident you-know-starts-with-letter-T-trying-to-bait-people? We (main thieves and either got to high ranking/did mathematical calculations) know better than the devs who didn’t do any calculations but gut feelings , end of story.

so a pistol/dagger thief has more torments, stealth bleeds, imobs cripples
so a dagger dagger thief has more cloak and dagger, bleeds and evasions
so a sword dagger thief is gaining more initiative while dancing around
so a sword pistol theif is gaining more initiative while dancing around/stunning players

so a venom sharing build isnt giving up all the positional shadow steps and only pressing 1 because he got no ini

Yeah i get that it MAY slightly effect people doing a max dps rotation versus a mob that is never a threat to them and so they never do anything but attack, but i dont think that one playstyle should be the one which forces all others to have crappy ini gains. In fact i would hope they improve thier AI to where thats never the right answer for a fight.

how do you realistically propose they give all the builds which actually need more ini regen ini, without increasing the 80 you are used to, to 120 ini?

evilapprentice.6379:

phys.7689:

Ichishi.9613:

So this is getting closed today without a single answer given?

he gave the answers, hes going to make vigor nerfs a little less so, ini changes are going through, to be honest they need to, the only thing ill say is some of the traits need sme addition effects or synergy so as to still be appealing outside of ini gain.

I agree that a lot of answers were given. I just disagree that we got an “answer” to the communities issues with IR, which is easily the most important of the changes (the init change is nice, but it wont be introducing P/D or P/P into TPvP, while the IR change will almost definitely remove S/D from our TPvP viable weaponsets, leaving us with D/P – SBow) – we were basically told it was happening, with no discussion based on our questions of how S/D was supposed to remain viable after the change. It’s not like a few random players are spreading doom and gloom – there are a number of long time, experienced players who are convinced this is an awful, awful idea.

IR he says must not mitigate stuns, or be used for stomps, which makes sense.

Why? Thieves aren’t gaining much in the way of survivability this patch (Assassins Reward has the potential to be good, but not amazing, and its a GM trait in 1 line, not like its Healing Signet we’re talking about here) – in fact, they’re losing survivability at every turn. Less vigor uptime for less evades (our only non-stealth based way to avoid damage), No more Perma Stealth (which I agree with 100%, but still results in a squishier thief), and No more IR teleporting you away from danger when one of the 50 CC’s that every popular meta class (except thief) can drop every 5 seconds tags you. They already reduced S/D’s survivability AND utility last month they they halved LS’s boon steal, so now S/D is as useless against boon bunkers as it was earlier in the year when FS was a non-split skill. Jumpers post (Here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/page/8#post3168211 ) is actually pretty accurate on that account – This is, nigh verbatim, my experience with every half decent bunker since the patch.

The Dev’s decided we don’t get stability or protection. They decided we don’t get to block, or go immune. They decided we should have 10.8k base HP. D/P at least has burst and blinds – what’s an S/D spec supposed to do, literally dodge every non auto-attack while they slowly kill their target (in comparison to D/P) in plain view? That’s what they’ve been trying to do, and the community cried so hard vigor uptime (the 1 defensive boon thieves have good access to) got nerfed.

I don’t get why they want S/D out of the meta so badly and I really don’t get how they can just annihilate the set against the opinion of several experienced players without even discussing it (though they still have a month to discuss it with us, I’m just assuming from the way the issue has been dodged thus far that we won’t be getting the discussion we want. I hope I’m wrong in that). It’s not as if S/D thief is super strong in the current meta – it’s mostly taken specifically because it allows them to not get 2 shot by current CC spam warriors – it’s still an uphill battle, but IR allows S/D thieves to actually have a chance.

They aren’t replacing it with any other options either. If these changes go through, its D/P, quit, or roll Warrior.

i can tell your very invested here, and i understand that, but lets try to be objective. Other stomp ensuring skills require the use of a 60 second cool down (base) utility that has a very high value in use, (usually invulnerability of some sort) The IR technique can be done every 22 seconds with steal, which is short cooldown, you can do it 3 times even without points in steal reduction by using a different utilities in addition to steal.

Now, i dont feel this justifies the nerf to IR, because i feel other solutions are better, and dont alter the spirit of the skill, and weapon outside of the flavor of the month builds/techniques.

yeah this solves stomps, but how does it effect a weapon with only 3 skills, lets be honest the 2 skill totally defines sword. The 3 changes, the stealth skill is below average in use, the 2 skill is what gives it is flavor and use. the IS/IR combo is all about tactical positioning control, and reactive play, the cast time limits that ability

Imagi.4561:

And now, back to the point of this thread.

Is there any more dev feedback about the IS change—or any of the other Thief changes, for that matter? There hasn’t been a dev comment in 4 or 5 pages.

sorry, the last post was essentially that JP felt the spirit of the constructive feedback wasnt being honored, dont know if you will see any more responses, also they are closing this thread soon, probably because after today all changes with be decided, and they will begin implementation and testing.

If its not too late, i suggest that devs try to think of solutions to IR that do not limit the skill from its original intention as a strong positioning and reactive evasive tool. by all means solve the downing issues, and the stun issue, but dont defeat the purpose of the sword, which is supposed to be the best tactical weapon which allows you to control the flow and spacing in the field.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Incredibly powerful against what? What sort of baseline are you comparing it to? Is it the condition/dps from Necros in PvE, or warriors in PvE, or elementalist in PvE, or Guardians in PvE?

I think some of the people here are going about it the wrong way. Why are you comparing thieves builds amongst themselves? You should compare against other professions. Take this for example. P/P vs warrior’s rifle, S/P vs warrior’s GS. If you have trouble reaching the warrior’s DPS with the current system, it’s quite obvious you won’t even come close with the new system.

Critical lines isn’t “op” compared to the other lines, it’s because the other lines suck in initiative management. Critical lines requires you to be high in crit chance and we do so by managing our gear/food and make it compatible with the trait lines.

I keep telling other people I don’t understand why you want to let yourselves sink into a bad position. The changes made for thieves are nerfs across the board, and the “buffs” are very questionable whether or not they are effective.

You cannot expect the next balance patch to come in 3-4 months later (remember cloak and dagger 4 seconds in PvE, that was hell). Don’t you remember who nerfed S/P damage by 15%, then nerfing quickness by another 50%, and thereby making S/P to the equivalent of auto attack damage? Now you want to accept anet’s nerf stick from the messing around of initiative traits and thereby decreasing even more DPS from a weapon set?

Jon already admits Anet team don’t have the resources to change weapon sets. He also posted poor reasons as to why anet devs want to nerf IR (Stomping? Seriously?) or how initiative is a massssive buff (users playing critical lines already posted statistical evidence that it’s a nerf).

Opinions are opinions, but quite frankly more than enough people posted statistical results to show FACTS that this upcoming patch is a nerf. Unless you want to post your evidence that some other obscure build lines actually benefits from the changes in terms of DPS/condition damage (and actually be able to replace the current meta builds of having executioner in the critical line for PvE or hidden assassin in PvP), I suggest you rethink your position whether this patch is a good thing or not.

When you are balancing traits, its a self balance thing, you arent really disagreeing that opportunist was unbalanced, you are merely saying that other traits should be on the same level, so more builds of thief have access to good ini.

problem with this is, that means you would be increasing the max ini regen by even more, because if you improve those traits, people would get opportunist and the new traits.

you could move the traits up so it would be hard to get both, however that mean balanced builds wont have access to decent iniative gains.

the only way to make traits exclusive is to put them in grandmaster teir, and that brings a host of problems.

the honest best solution is that all theives need more access to a faster base ini regen. This means that traits that give ini CANNOT remain the same. it would just give people op ini.

Maybe the numbers arent perfect, or need tweaks, but its definately the right direction. Have you tried playing with other theif builds? you will find yourself out of initiative very fast and very often.

Now to the point that overall, theif needs buffs, i agree. Thief does not excel in any game mode, and is average at best in spvp. weak in PVE and not very good in WvW at actually doing things that matter. (best at annoying people and running away) So yeah, i think nerfs are bad, because its already barely hanging on in most modes, however as i evaluated the ini numbers, its going to give more ini to the majority of weapon sets, and close to break even for the others.

Ichishi.9613:

So this is getting closed today without a single answer given?

he gave the answers, hes going to make vigor nerfs a little less so, ini changes are going through, to be honest they need to, the only thing ill say is some of the traits need sme addition effects or synergy so as to still be appealing outside of ini gain.

IR he says must not mitigate stuns, or be used for stomps, which makes sense. However i feel, putting a 300 ms cast time on it limits the skill as a reactive tool

according to the net
“The average (median) reaction time is 215 milliseconds.”
adding 300 ms to that we have 515 ms

now, in warriors thread they slowed down mace skill to .5 seconds so someone can react to it, however we see the average human will not be able to us IR to react to skullcrack,

this doesnt include any latency at all.

reactive skills generally have extremely short to non existant cast times because of this. Essentially we are losing IR as a reactive skill, its now a proactive skill. I dont think this is a good change unless it gives us more benefit for predicting the enemies actions ahead of time.

LoneWolfie.1852:

I’m not a maths expert, correct me if I’m wrong.

Current initiative gain for 100% critical strike opportunist:

Attacks per second, 1 second ICD, 1 to 5 attacks per second, 1-0.7*0.7*0.7*0.7*0.7 (probability of triggering opportunist = 83% at 5 attacks for 100% critical chance)

Estimated initiative per 5 seconds for each opportunist trigger.
1.5 2.55 3.3 3.8 4.15
Base regen = 3.75

Estimated gains/5 seconds.
5.25 6.3 7.05 7.55 7.9

New Opportunist/5 seconds (icd 5 seconds)
5.5 5.75 5.87 5.94 5.97

Effectiveness of New opportunist over Old opportunist for 1 to 5 attacks:
1.05 0.91 0.83 0.79 0.76

So my numbers are quite different from yours.

Now take Pistol whip (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip), (9 hits) * (3 enemy cleaves), and work it in a PVE settings. Never mind about the sPvP and WVW settings, this new change alone already affects PVE.

I’m not sure why you want to thank the devs for nerfing the thief class (overall) in PVE and PVP. Is there any other way to play pve other than zerk or semi-zerk?

WvW impact

I have over 2000 hours on my thief and even went around as a thief commander. PTV gear fully placed and non-crit gear. What does the improved initiative do for me as a Non-critical thief?

Opinion: The new initiative system does better on blasting fire fields and water fields. D/D spam ‘3’ will be slightly more spammable so I can kite around as a “commander leading the zerg”.

But how about the critical line?

Opinion: I tested quite a bit on thief builds to make my critical chance to reach 100% with fury on certain builds with gear. This obviously reduces my initative gains by 15-20%.

Overall patch changes along with traits?

Opinion: My current DPS build will do more poorly by around 5-10%. Survivability will be worse off with vigor changes (- 40% vigor uptime = death for thief commanders). S/X ‘2’ IR doesn’t remove us from danger anymore from stuns.

Other builds will find themselves doing more poorly with trait and weapon nerfs. Initiative overhaul is mostly junk changes to the good players because the previous initiative trait system is managed carefully (The overhauled system is actually good for non-crit lines, but the crit lines just got nerfed 10-20% making it a painful thing). Gimmicky venom share players will have more initiative that does no damage output.

This patch basically turns thief from a sick tiger to a sick cat. Have fun for the next 3 months while anet “balances” things.

every build/amount of enemies evaluates to a different amounts of hits per second, so its hard to quantify this change, but you still must remember, you have a 1 second period where it cant trigger, then from that point on average 3 attacks before it triggers again, how long it takes you to do those attacks is the huge factor. This also assumes you are attacking non stop, no dodging, no shadowsteps, no invisible back stab set ups, no enemies moving away or dodging you.

passive regen is always working.

I really dont believe this is going to be a nerf for most theives/playstyles, the numbers dont really suggest it. But lets say im wrong and your right, apparently this skill was insanely powerful compared to all other ini management skills. even with 4 signets using them all on cooldown, you dont come close to the points per second. If it was as powerful as you suggest, it most certainly needed to be nerfed because its so far and away better, that any build not taking advantage of it is wasting space.

short version, either it aint the end of the world and now more options are open, or it was so incredibly powerful it had to die so other options exist, either way its better off gone.

The IR issue though is different, as someone earlier showed, there are more instant weapon skills

mostly used for defense or reactive play, which fits into the same category as IR.

Haltair.3062:

Dear Devs, I belong to the biggest thieves´ guild in the whole world.
At the moment you are talking about changes that will kill the p/p weapon set.
For some of us that weapon set is the only playable one due to internet connection and computer issues. It is less affected by lag.
If you bury it we will not be able to play the game anymore.
The changes will affect pvp, MvM and PvE.

Below you will find dozens of opinions saying the same, you are killing one of the less used builds, p/p .
If these concerns are already known by the dev team and the best alterantive is to choose the lesser evil just tell us, please.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Some oppinions regarding p/p:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3154426
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3151773
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3150950
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3151304
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3152947
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3145857
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3146912
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3146913
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3147266
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3147899
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3152343
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3145689
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Farewell-my-D-D-theif-after-Dec-10th/3145857
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3154416
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3152397
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3152516
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3152724
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3152865
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3152893
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3149387
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/3150657
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3150669
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3150796
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/3145525

sorry but PP was dead since launch. The fact that one of the main things going for it, is its lag friendly since it almost plays itself, is not a plus. It needs a big rework, and it doesnt have much options since its 1 2 and 4 5 is locked in.

JonPeters.5630:

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

I started looking at the data, i wasnt really aware of the stomp issue, because i rarely spvp these days, but i agree its a problem. mostly because by combining this and utilities/steal, the theif could get 3 shadow step finishers back to back, and they of course still have some protection with stealth stomp (many skills need a target to work)

However, i think that you are cutting into its main intended use, as you put it, its an escape. Its supposed to reward reactive play. by putting it with a cast time, you make it a lot less effective as a reactive skill.
The way i see the skill, is you use it to control your position in the fight, you can get in and out, and back in again instantly. If you see a big aoe, you can shadow return. By putting a .3 cast time, you are eliminating it as a reactive skill for people without really high reflex time. its one thing not to be able to use it to remove stun, its another thing to not be able to avoid stun with it.

And Escape/evasion with cast time isnt a very good escape/evasion
I recommend 3 options,
a)put an extremely short cast time (.1),
b) use some other method that makes it not work while stunned, or
c)give it evasion frames equal to its cast time, if you need a certain number for the cast time not to be buggy.

This is the only way the skill can actually still do its job of being a viable escape, it must work from the moment you press the button, or its not an escape, you will often get caught.

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ELEMENTALIST

• Arcane Resurrection is going up to master tier instead of Renewing Stamina.
• Windborne Dagger is going to function outside of combat.
• Soothing Disruption is moving to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery is moving to adept tier.
• Soothing Wave redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incmoing critical hits. 10s recharge.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

MESMER

• Confounding Suggestions – We will merge the old functionality with the new functionality. It will now have 50% change to stun on daze and increase daze duration by 25%.

THIEF

• Vigorous Recovery: Vigor duration will be 5 seconds instead of 4.
• Bountiful Theft will come down to a 10s Vigor instead of 8s.

WARRIOR

• Combustive Shot. To clarify this change, the damage is normalized to about 15% less physical damage than it used to do at all adrenaline levels, but that the damage per pulse is the same regardless of adrenaline level.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

as for thief, i think the vigor is probably needed so thanks, id like to see 6 seconds on the heal, but we ll see how it goes.

I understand you dont want to give thief a stun breaker on ini use, but i dont think htc will fill that gap well, compounded by the fact theif has virtually no stability, i think thief does need access to an additional stun breaker more outside of their utility

my proposal

hard to catch becomes:

all shadow step skills break stuns 30 second recast.

this gives essentially the same usability as previous htc, but under user control, for that extra control, thief must use ini/cooldown but i think its a fine price. Only downside is that pistol pistol has no shadowstep, however it does have steal

Sifu.6527:

JonPeters.5630:

I said it in he other thread but this trait has to get hit hard because it is breaking the profession. We need to push the effectiveness of this trait into base thief functionality. If any other profession had a trait that reduced weapon cooldown by 30% for all weapons as a 15 point minor we would have to balance around that. A single trait shouldn’t be holding thief balance hostage so we will steal from this trait, no pun intended, and impart the savings on to every build via base initiative regeneration.

Jon

What?!?

I don’t understand Jon. You’re saying a 15 point minor that reduces cooldown on all weapon set is OP yet you moved Mesmer’s Illusionists Celerity from a 25 minor to a 15 minor (reducing all cooldown of illusion summon skill by 20% which affect all weapon sets and 4 utilties). That is kittenING OP but nothing is being done to balance around it.

I don’t understand your logic……

to be honest, its not quite as hax, first of all only two skills per weapon set summon illusions, second of all its only 20% instead of 30%. The truth is, it was in fact a trait that you almost had to take, illusion skill, not so much. its nice, but ehhh. Also if they lowered all cast times on illusions, and bumped the trait down, so that it was essentially the same cast time, no one would complain. And by the numbers, they essentially did that with opportunist. its not really .3 ini per second unless you are very lucky, and during specific skills, due to cast time, and crit chance.

the truth is that the ini changes are probably better overall.

HOWEVER, i think opportunist could use some other benefit, that rewards pressure attacks as opposed to stealth or dodging for extended periods

Black Teagan.9215:

Stx.4857:

Black Teagan.9215:

The increase of the Ini reg. is much stronger than every nerf, from the signets, Quick Recover and Opportunist, together.
Calm down guys.

Any numbers to back that up?

For what, it is simple math.

With 100% critchance, trigger opportunist average 1 time every 3,3 seconds. this were 3,3 inis in 10 secs, the same value, like the improved ini reg. gives you in 10 secs.
And lesser critchance means less inis from opportunist.

you are assuming the average attack speed for thief is once every second, you must consider multihit skills, and aoe attacks as well.
the absolute limit is 1 per second, (lets assume it will always proc just to see the luckiest or best case scenario in either case)

lets say that it takes 1 second to get it to proc again just from animation times,
you get optimal case of 1 ini per 2 second gain

optimal post patch,
you get optimal gain of 1 per 6 second gain.

so while the old skill had a max potential of being a .5 per second ini gain the new skill has a max potential of being a .16 per sec ini gain.

ini gain has gone up .25 but the skill has gone down .34
so the max potential of ini gain with the skill has gone down .9

even if the 50% chance thing comes into play, i approximate that it will likely put you around break even point +- due to luck

so really, crit builds are probably going to notice minimal to no gains in using opportunist in battle (this change does help outside of battle thieves though which i thought is what they wanted to de incentize though)

they want to give thieves more reasons to engage, but changes to opportunist do the opposite.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Oghier.7419:

D/D didn’t get nerfed. Increasing base initiative gain by 33% is a pretty big deal.

It’s more than a big deal. It’s a MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs.

sorry people are yelling at you, you guys have to understand though, that theif users are angrier than other professions, because almost since launch you have been constantly either nerfing theif, or altering their main playstyles. For a thief every single update usually is them hoping to be ignored, because very little good comes from an update.

But to try to put the negative feedback in a more constructive fashion,

1) I dont think your initiative math will work out to a big or any increase for many builds that used ini gaining skills, This of course is probably your intent, but i dont think you should have lowered the max ini gain in normalizing it.

2) most builds that use crit% of 50%+ and opportunist wont see much change t ini gain.

To be honest i think ini normalisation is a good thing to happen, but i dont think max ini gain should go down. I think you need to change ini to a higher point system so you can make less drastic changes to skills, or start giving out partial ini point gains. some skills take to heavy a loss in use going from 1 to 2 points or having to put cooldowns on the skills, it probably better if you had an initiative pool of like 120 instead of 12, then you could adjust point gains of 20 to say 15 instead of 2 to 1.

But this isnt the big problem, the big problem is you need to stop nerfing thief survivability, thief doesnt have a lot of survivability, it has the least defensive potential in the game.

Thieves were built with the idea that thief is supposed to actively avoid and react to damage, this is why they have decent access to vigor, more active dodge skills. you are lowering ALL builds access to vigor with this patch, I dont think anyone would argue that thief was too tanky, what are most builds supposed to do to compensate for this loss in defense? keep in mind this solution should be in the spirit and playstyle of thief which is supposed to benefit more from reactionary type play.

Giving thief a bunch of protection, or increased heals, while nice, would not promote the spirit of play that thief is supposed to be about.

also if you want to improve the validity of engaged thief play, signet of malice is a better candidate for a buff than assassins reward.

It gives HP for actually hitting the target, which you cant use while running away, and its not a level 30 grandmaster trait.

Assassins reward buff as the means of survivability is working cross purposes to opening up other builds since it is a level 30 ability, it also rewards initiative use, which doesnt necessarily mean you are engaging.

I mean to be honest, it needed a buff regardless, however it is not going to be the answer for the nerf you are doing to MOST thieves builds survivability by nerfing vigor uptime on thief specifically

JonPeters.5630:

Starfall.6813:

JonPeters.5630:

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Jon,

I like a lot of where you’re going with the Guardian here, but I am a little concerned about the Symbol of Swiftness change. Not as a matter of balance but just as a quality of life issue. 4 seconds of swiftness on a 15 second cooldown is pretty much useless as a means of traveling for a solo Guardian, and the symbol is one of the better ways for Guardians to get around. Having to stop and stand in the symbol to get the full ticks of swiftness while traveling long distance is just going to be counter productive and annoying. And I don’t like the idea that this skill is being balanced around the zerg rather than solo players who probably are only running one source of swiftness to begin with.

Math wise you can now sit in the symbol for 3 seconds with boon duration and end up with 9 seconds of swiftness which is more than you would have had before. I do still think it may need to be 5 seconds to account for the fact that you only get it every second so by the time you get the second one you have lost 1s of the first one.

Jon

ganto hit the nail on the head, stopping for 3 seconds fits into the math. in terms of distance traveled over time, it takes 3 seconds of actively moving for swiftness to equal 1 second of actual movement. this means to break even for standing still for 3 seconds with some one who just ran, you have to be running with swiftness for 9 seconds

now, since the first pulse is instant its really only 2 seconds for 3 pulses, however, that still means you need 6 seconds of swiftness to catch up with someone who didnt stop.
you get 10 (12-2) so really you have 4 more seconds of swiftness than a person who didnt stop in a 10 second period, which means essentially

mathematically there is no reason to stand around waiting for swiftness, you may as well just run through it`

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
_One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.

You are dealing with thief like they are other classes.
you forgot that you built thief with no other defense aside from evasion. other classes have invulnerability skills, or access to big heals/protection.

you forgot that thief essentially has no way to deal with being disabled, you realize thief has no stability oustide of 1 elite skill?

you want to make thief less dependent on the acrobatics line for initiative, but then reduce their survivability and place it all in a level 30 grandmaster trait?

as well you want to maintain the identity of classes, but you are lowering the identity of thief as a highly manuevrable evasive class, that has to actively deal with opponents attacks.

i think the across the board vigor changes are bad. I think it stems from a decision that anet feels vigor all the time is a bit OP, however i dont think they are considering the fact that certain classes have no other defensive options.

theif is the prime example, low hp, low base armor, low condi removal, lackluster heals, few active defense/counter style skills.
Dodging is all they got, if you want to reduce it, you probably have to give them some other means to survive.
30 in one trait line, and a never used catch me probably isnt going to make theif as a whole more able to sustain engage enemies.

Ricky.4706:

if wvw was expected and intended to be unbalanced, then why add a score ?
- from this perspective the best score represents the most dysfunctional and delusional groups that insist on placing value on the score.

Perhaps it was part of a psychological experiment ?

“Let’s play a game of “How Stupid are you ?” … this is a hammer, and that’s your hand….every time you bash your hand you will scream in agony and score a point…….50 points will get you a brand new shiny set of bandages….the first 3 people to get 50 points will also get a bonus prize of salt to place on your wounds!! …..Ready?? Go!!"

Its a war game, and much like war, or any fight really, its not fair.
the score is just a digital record of who beat who up more`

Tyrion.5764:

Lenador.1436:

there goes my garry………..i afk for 5mins……………………T.T.T.T.T whyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Sorry but SBI BL was so empty, so i decide to hit DB garri some1 told me you guys have cookies and milk .

Now to the real thing. [BOMB] has been doin WP’s in SBI BL BAY for 4 days ( the only day you dont made a WP was monday, i dont play mondays ^^)

We face every single guild from SBI, TE Abyss BEAST, and the others, none can took back their BAY, when [BOMB] was online ^^

Now i have to say maybe the warrior commander from TE was the most hard to kill, and i have to say BEAST was the team more hard to kill.

But at the end all die, we die too but come on SBI die more ^^ in open field battle from the 4 days maybe the score its 70-20, and on shoke point most be 20-20.

You guys really know what to do in shoke points ¬_¬

Anyways [BOMB] has a blast this week, we are waiting for the next time we face you SBI maybe you got better ^^

Video of the Weekend :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT6hhJWNWUY

translation:

I stole your garrisson cause they had cookies and milk

On the real side though, My crew has been keeping a waypoint up and holding it for 4 days, We stopped every single attempt from multiple guilds.
TE commander was tough
BEAST group was tough

But overall 7/2 times on the open field you guys get wiped up.
in choke points yall match up,

Fun battles, step up we will love crushing you even more next time especially if you get better.

BOMB BOMB what what.

"

now im not bomb, just a random militia head, but i got to say most of the time was rolling with bomb, they were tearing through zergs like i wouldnt believe. I remember the time yall guys zerg jumped off the cliff, ahhhh good times.

sadly i doubt we ll have this much fun in awhile, but heres hoping there will be more close battles.

Tyrion.5764:

Lenador.1436:

there goes my garry………..i afk for 5mins……………………T.T.T.T.T whyyyyyyyyyyy!!!

Sorry but SBI BL was so empty, so i decide to hit DB garri some1 told me you guys have cookies and milk .

Now to the real thing. [BOMB] has been doin WP’s in SBI BL BAY for 4 days ( the only day you dont made a WP was monday, i dont play mondays ^^)

We face every single guild from SBI, TE Abyss BEAST, and the others, none can took back their BAY, when [BOMB] was online ^^

Now i have to say maybe the warrior commander from TE was the most hard to kill, and i have to say BEAST was the team more hard to kill.

But at the end all die, we die too but come on SBI die more ^^ in open field battle from the 4 days maybe the score its 70-20, and on shoke point most be 20-20.

You guys really know what to do in shoke points ¬_¬

Anyways [BOMB] has a blast this week, we are waiting for the next time we face you SBI maybe you got better ^^

Video of the Weekend :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT6hhJWNWUY

translation:

I stole your garrisson cause they had cookies and milk

On the real side though, My crew has been keeping a waypoint up and holding it for 4 days, We stopped every single attempt from multiple guilds.
TE commander was tough
BEAST group was tough

But overall 7/2 times on the open field you guys get wiped up.
in choke points yall match up,

Fun battles, step up we will love crushing you even more next time especially if you get better.

BOMB BOMB what what.

"

now im not bomb, just a random militia head, but i got to say most of the time was rolling with bomb, they were tearing through zergs like i wouldnt believe. I remember the time yall guys zerg jumped off the cliff, ahhhh good times.

sadly i doubt we ll have this much fun in awhile, but heres hoping there will be more close battles.

sminkiottone.6972:

IF Anet really intend to keep ascended in WvW I hope they will consider to give us WvWer an easy way to get them.

Like :
- At the end of the league every person who has completed the achivements will have the possibility to chose between 1x 2h weapon or 2x 1h weapons, like the skins from achievement chests.

OR

- Make them drop more often, like rare equip ( Account bound )

OR

- With Badges + Golds + Karma ( not laurels pls )

they wont make it any easier than pve, but it should be similar, right now dragonite is too rare in WvW. As for people who arent familiar with PVE, and want to know how to get in fast,
gw2stuff.com
the good stuff for dragonite is
Inquest golem mark II
fire shaman
karka queen
all the orr events.

what you want to do is look for when the events are in their final phase or their before final phase, that means people are completing it, and you can just hop in and enjoy the ride.

aside from cof speed run, empyreal is actually faster from WvW, so stick to WvW for that item

Aberrant.6749:

phys.7689:

you dont need to gather anything except the vision crystal part, which is bloodstone dust, dragonite, empyreal, and skill points. all awarded for regular gameplay in decent amounts.

(edited stuff out here)

point is, you need vision crystal and gold, both of which you get from normal play in WvW

Dragonite is not not obtainable in the amounts required for the vision crystal in WvW… unless you want it to take several months and MANY times longer than the PvE counterpart…

yeah i agree dragonite is a problem in WvW, but the best source of dragonite takes about 5-10 min (except lyssa) for 30, so its not really that big a deal. Hopefully they figure an objective or something that gives you dragonite aside from smc.

the only thing you guys need is better dragonite from WvW. The loot in the last few weeks beats dungeons, and i get more empyreal here than in pve
dragonite does suck, but you get 30 per charachter per day for doing Orr finishing events or tequatl. So its actually pretty easy, and doesnt require dungeons.
Loot wise wvw is close to most PVE activities except the champ train.

you really dont have to do much pve to get ascended, and soon you probably wont have to do any.

Shaymi.9124:

phys.7689:

If FA is a gold tier server, so is sbi, 10k is not a large diffrential

I don’t think anyone denies that SBI is a gold tier server. You guys did beat sos and mag after all, you just kind of got screwed over on the rankings.

i am FA haha

morrolan.9608:

phys.7689:

no one can insist on anything in GW2 ascended gear can look like whites, and you cant even inspect, you can also ping any gear just from having the codes. Not only this, but WvW is an open field where you can go wherever you want. Elitists are going to be elitist,

Its not about being elitist its about giving your team the best chance to win. Its about not being the one to die in the middle of a battle and allowing large numbers of the opposing players to rally. These guys have done the theorycrafting on it.

its not a team, its a server and its a place thats meant to house all players from level 1 to level 80. People expecting everyone on there server to pass some arbitrary bar are fools.
People laugh at uplevels in WvW, but fully geared ascended people still get crushed by uplevels zerging em down, or tactically coming from behind when you were looking in front. Or sitting on an Arrow cart raining hell on you in a closed space while you were fighting someone else.

you are a more likely to rally off the low skill player than the exotic guy. We are talking about the difference in level 78 exotics and level 80 exotics here. People want to tell themselves they died due to gear tier, but its so rarely the case.

So why do i want ascended? hmm i dont really necesarily want ascended itself, but what it represents. You can work to improve your charachter. Thats a part of WvW. Its not fair, but that kind of makes it interesting a different way

Mathias.9657:

Anet hears we want more skills

>adds a healing skill (of all things rofl) in temporary content

Genius!

i really hope the new skills and traits thing isnt 1 sub par healing skill for all classes.
ANNND if this is temporary it will definitely be subpar.

but i have a feeling it is, and will be. All i got to say is if this is what yall meant by new skills and traits….

go back to the drawing board, come up with
either new weapons
new skill swaps for weapons
new utilities that fill in missing gaps
or new elites

this type of thing will never satisfy the need for progression, growth, and new builds that players are asking for.

morrolan.9608:

Mackdose.6504:

morrolan.9608:

eisberg.2379:

Never said that it wouldn’t make a difference, just saying that it is unlikely to make a difference. There are so many things that have to line up equally to for ascended gear to make the difference between winning and losing, and you named several of them in your post.

So why do hardcore WvW players and guilds insist on playing in exotics instead of not caring?

I think insisting on exotics is pretty convincing that it doesn’t make a difference to them.

Strawman, once ascended becomes more available you can bet they will be insisting on ascended. Why care about someone in yellows or greens if it makes no difference?

no one can insist on anything in GW2 ascended gear can look like whites, and you cant even inspect, you can also ping any gear just from having the codes. Not only this, but WvW is an open field where you can go wherever you want. Elitists are going to be elitist, if it wasnt ascended it would be WvW rank, or titles, or whatever. You cant live your life trying to catch up to their expectations.

If FA is a gold tier server, so is sbi, 10k is not a large diffrential

morrolan.9608:

phys.7689:

You dont believe in advantages, but WvW is all about advantages. gear is one of the smallest advantages you can get in WvW. If this is a sticking point for you, you will hate WvW with a passion.

Well I don’t.

Substance E.4852:

If you play WvW enough, you should be drowning in ascended materials to the point that not making the gear is a matter of choice, not inability.

Not dragonite ore. And the mats are more than just the dust, ore and shards, you need 5 types of wood and ore etc etc.

I think there is some confusion with ascended, you can buy the parts from the BLTC you only need
vision crystal
weapon blade
weapon head
ascended inscription.

you dont need to gather anything except the vision crystal part, which is bloodstone dust, dragonite, empyreal, and skill points. all awarded for regular gameplay in decent amounts.

and before you say you dont want to get robbed by crafters, crafters are notoriously cheap, and tend to not value their time that much

the profit on deldrimor ingots is 66 silver per ingot for something you can only make once a day
profit on spiritwood plank is -28 silver (actually cheaper to buy this)

profit on the inscription is like 6-8 gold BUT it requires them to get 10 dark matter which you get from breaking down exotics, whose cheapest price is usually around 1.1 gold, how many i takes to get 10? based on luck could be as few as 4, could be as many as 20. So, yeah basically break even on this piece

point is, you need vision crystal and gold, both of which you get from normal play in WvW

Aberrant.6749:

phys.7689:

the OP doesnt want progression, and he wants WvW to be fair. Its meant to not be fair. what part of 50 versus 10 people is fair? what part of 20 seige golems versus your door is balanced?

Yea it’s unbalanced, so lets just make an orbital ion cannon available for 400g. Why not! Makes perfect sense that because something is unbalanced they shouldn’t in any way strive to make it as balanced as possible. +1

look at this way.
WvW isnt sport, its war. Its only supposed to be as fair as the servers make it. The only fair part about WvW is that everything that the otherside has, you have the same ability to get.
what you want is spvp, or for them to make GvG

You dont believe in advantages, but WvW is all about advantages. gear is one of the smallest advantages you can get in WvW. If this is a sticking point for you, you will hate WvW with a passion.

morrolan.9608:

phys.7689:

the idea of one on one fairness is just not relevant in WvW

Yes and players accept that but you should do everything you can to reduce factors that contribute to this inequality.

not in wvw, WvW is basically about saying my inequalities can beat your inequalities. Servers hope that their off hour players can make back points they lost in primetime.
Prime servers hope they can spank players in primetime hard enough the points they lose in off time wont be enough

People get to pick the things they are good at, and see if that can lead to server sucess. The rich bastid tries to buy seige, and food trays, the observers play scouts, the zergers try to get high numbers and brute force it, the solo players try to get the best gear possible. The small groups work on small group tactics and coordination. WvW is about exploiting every thing your good at, and hoping in the end it makes your server win. One small advantage you can gain is your charcachter’s own personal growth, what skills it has, what gear it has, your own skill at controlling it. But it is one of the smaller advantages one can have in WvW. Just like being a martial arts expert wont help you much in vietnam.

morrolan.9608:

phys.7689:

you dont need 5 months.

It was a hypothetical period given for gearing up a character fully in ascended with 5 weapons.

The principle remains I would have to spend whatever period it is grinding for mats or grinding for gold for those mats given the price of every single mat required has gone up to silly levels.

is it a hypothetical period that is actually accurate? I got about 400 empyreal fragments wayyyy too much bloodstone and like 60 skill point books doing mostly WvW this weekend, i also made about 20 gold from WvW alone. I can tell you right now, thats about 70% of what is needed to make an ascended weapon. I wasnt targeting ascended either. My guild mate got an ascended weapon crate from a rank up chest. so to get 1 weapon without luck your looking at like 4-5 days, or 20-25 days for 5 different weapons without grinding at all.

Now of course i may play more than you, so to really have this discussion, you kind of need some real numbers

id say if your goal is getting an ascended weapon you can probably get 1 per week if you play 12 hours a week through normal play. so probably 5 weeks to get 5 weapons if your taking it easy.

If you dont want to use the gold you earn in wvw on wvw, well then you just dont want to spend

Dark Catalyst.1028:

phys.7689:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

You guys have fun then.

I honestly don’t understand why people who want vertical progression and power creep came to Guild Wars 2 of all games. There are several other games out there that would meet your needs.

I think ANet lost a lot of their fans they gained through GW1 by making this move. I certainly won’t be playing WvW AT ALL because of ascended gear.

Did you actually enjoy WvW before? if you did, i really doubt youd stop because of ascended gear, the game mode still plays the same. And the gameplay type there isnt duplicated much. I mean, its always been unfair based on gear/time. I remember when the game started, people worked super hard for exotics.
42k karma per peice.
at 370 karma per event, and 5 min per event, thats 9 hours per piece. (didnt have all those karma items back then)

tokens were pretty rare, and exotic armor costs 950 for a set, for a hint back then people spent 1-2 weeks getting 500 badges for legendaries
so you are looking at 3-4 weeks to gear from tokens

dungeons, used to take about 25-45 minutes (dev said 40 min was their target for average players and 30 for good players) it started out giving less than 60, i think it was 45, and you need 1380 for a full set, thats about 30 runs at 45 tokens, and 23 runs at 60 tokens. at 40 min per run, that would be 15 hours of dungeon running.

Point is, Exotics were pretty hard to get at start too, if you look at the controlled means of getting exotics, and times to obtain them, you see it was never meant to be as easy as it is now. And people could make the same argument people make now about ascended giving an advantage.

Got it. It’s always been unfair, so let’s make it even more unfair and make people grind out BiS gear doing the most mind numbingly boring crafting tasks ever designed.
Which doesn’t matter anyway I guess because I don’t have any gold because I don’t farm or grind and I’m not about to spend real money to craft this ascended “we couldn’t provide with you real content so here’s some busywork” tier.

i personally think they should have made the final ascended weapons/armor be able to be mystic forged from things you can buy on the TP. nobody should be required to craft to get best in slot thats not random (i do feel crafting should be the main means of creating the parts) I also think they can add other methods that use a vision crystal, (make vision crystal mystic forgeble as well) and put some other methods attached to it (though these should be more work than crafting)

Basically you should be able to make ascended by doing the activities that give empyreal, bloodstone, and dragonite, and skill points and using that and some other resource, get an ascended you want. If the final recipe/vision crystal was mystic forge, you could do that with gold+ what i mentioned before. But it should still be based on the effort of the player, and it should probably still take a bit of doing things like taking keeps, castles and camps to get this gear (this is how you get it in WvW) only dragonite is an issue in WvW.

really what im getting at, is if the idea of someone beating you because they do 5%(the difference from a weapon specifically) more dmg than you then you will hate wvw, Any time WvW comes down to a fair fight between people, its usually because of an error in planning.
you place and reinforce seige so the fight wont be fair in your keep
you organize and scout so fights wont be fair when you attack
you fight larger groups with less, when you believe that their lack of skill or poor tactical choices will allow you to overcome.
you portal in 30 people when 15 were attacking your tower.

the idea of one on one fairness is just not relevant in WvW

Yenn.9185:

selan.8354:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Tibstrike.2974:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Chaba.5410:

Ah good ol’ FA, roflstomping yet another bandwagon server.

Didn’t CORE join you guys to join a top tier silver league server?

Bandwagon indeed.

We joined FA because we thought it was the best fit for us concerning their culture. We looked at multiple servers, none of which were the ones people were expecting to win their respective leagues. We then chose FA. We were not concerned about winning the league, but hey, if that happens and we can help then why the hell not?

We like it here on FA and think this is what we have been missing. The people are great and the atmosphere while playing WvW is one of fun, not work.

Plus, when we joined the wider consensus was that FA was failing. People were mistaken. FA is as strong as ever.

Good for you guys (really, its just a kitten video game at the end of the day).

My post was an attempt to point out that other servers also get transfers. If the came to be with a top tier or because they thought it was a good fit, than all the more power to them.

To the guy who said

You’re right, one medium sized guild joining a server makes it a bandwagon…
Whatever floats your boat, mate.

You got more than one, but aside from that, exactly how many transfers does it take to qualify as ‘bandwagon’?

gaining 1 or 2 guilds that are medium sized after losing 1 60 man guild and a 45 man guild and a 15 man guild and another one because of t1 matchups, is not bandwagoning. gaining around 100-150 people all at once is badwagoning. the FA u met last time was demoralized and tired after fighting t1 for 6 weeks+

all the people i see atm are people i know for very long here on fa( apart from the pve players and the new guilds)

You can spin it up however you want, my friend. SBI lost more in the mass exodus than they gained recently.

whatever
we can wax poetic about the past and what was and who is riding whos wagon. Today we are here, with whoever we have, the question now becomes, with this Aspenwood versus this SBI versus this Dragonband, who can beat who with whatever they got when it matters. It will be exciting to find out who has what it takes right now.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

You guys have fun then.

I honestly don’t understand why people who want vertical progression and power creep came to Guild Wars 2 of all games. There are several other games out there that would meet your needs.

I think ANet lost a lot of their fans they gained through GW1 by making this move. I certainly won’t be playing WvW AT ALL because of ascended gear.

Did you actually enjoy WvW before? if you did, i really doubt youd stop because of ascended gear, the game mode still plays the same. And the gameplay type there isnt duplicated much. I mean, its always been unfair based on gear/time. I remember when the game started, people worked super hard for exotics.
42k karma per peice.
at 370 karma per event, and 5 min per event, thats 9 hours per piece. (didnt have all those karma items back then)

tokens were pretty rare, and exotic armor costs 950 for a set, for a hint back then people spent 1-2 weeks getting 500 badges for legendaries
so you are looking at 3-4 weeks to gear from tokens

dungeons, used to take about 25-45 minutes (dev said 40 min was their target for average players and 30 for good players) it started out giving less than 60, i think it was 45, and you need 1380 for a full set, thats about 30 runs at 45 tokens, and 23 runs at 60 tokens. at 40 min per run, that would be 15 hours of dungeon running.

Point is, Exotics were pretty hard to get at start too, if you look at the controlled means of getting exotics, and times to obtain them, you see it was never meant to be as easy as it is now. And people could make the same argument people make now about ascended giving an advantage.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

You guys have fun then.

I honestly don’t understand why people who want vertical progression and power creep came to Guild Wars 2 of all games. There are several other games out there that would meet your needs.

I think ANet lost a lot of their fans they gained through GW1 by making this move. I certainly won’t be playing WvW AT ALL because of ascended gear.

i dont love vertical progression either, but whether horizontal or vertical, but thats not really the issue here, the OP doesnt want progression, and he wants WvW to be fair. Its meant to not be fair. what part of 50 versus 10 people is fair? what part of 20 seige golems versus your door is balanced?

Even if they go horizontal, it would probably be skill/trait based. Those skills and traits will probably not be easy to obtain like the others were, because these would be endgame skills, and have to reflect being rewarded for high end activities. Hence along the lines of thinking of the OP they shouldnt be allowed in PVP because you have more build options than other players, and people would assume these skills are better.

The OPs beef is that people who play more/have more gold get an advantage in WvW, which has always been the case, and would still be the case whether that progression was horizontal or vertical.

Ceres.4569:

ARTHUSIMON.7481:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Chaba.5410:

Ah good ol’ FA, roflstomping yet another bandwagon server.

Didn’t CORE join you guys to join a top tier silver league server?

Bandwagon indeed.

You’re right, one medium sized guild joining a server makes it a bandwagon…
Whatever floats your boat, mate.

Good match all around, guys. My fav moment so far would have to be holding Briar at sbi bl last night. So many bagsssss

One medium sized guild doesn’t make up the numbers you guys have this week. So everyone else no showed against Mag and us two weeks ago and you claim you didn’t tank? Riiiiight.

cant speak for the guilds, but the militia wasnt really enjoying T1 that much, also wvw didnt really have a specific focus till leagues, now winning means something. Aspenwood has a lot of semi wvw players. WvW was getting boring for the average player.

morrolan.9608:

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is ascended weapons or not you’ll still spent those 5 months playing the same thing! Thats not counting that you’re likely to get ascended weapon drops too in those 5 months which might save you a month in an instant.

1. I would spend those 5 months drastically differently (and more enjoyably) if not for ascended weapons.
2. I have killed Tequatl many times, have killed hundreds of bosses, WvW lords etc and have not had 1 ascended drop. I have guildies in the same boat.

you dont need 5 months.
get your craft to 500 then look for these on the trading post
http://www.gw2db.com/items/81383-deldrimor-steel-ingot-s <-deldrimor steel ingots 4g ea
http://www.gw2db.com/items/81381-spiritwood-plank-s <— spiritwood planks 4 g ea
http://www.gw2db.com/items/81343-beigarths-knight-inscription-s <—the main peice 40 gold

make a vision crystal and your done.

if you want to save some gold make the inscription buying the ingots planks and other materials.

vision crystal you get from keeps/towers, the only prob is dragonite. But thats not a problem with ascended, its a problem with dragonite aquisition. Also, my friend got an ascended weapon box from a rank up chest sooo dont need to do tequatl, and another from a champ bag, so dont need to do tequatl

WvW ISNT FAIR.
this is why i dont understand these threads
If someone has money and people running supply they can put 20 arrow carts in a keep/castle and blot out the sun.
They can buy trays of the best foods for every single person in their zerg

Its not a tournament
If you want balanced stats, go to spvp.

WvW is about fighting players with EVERYTHING you have earned.
your guild
your skills
your crafts
your random players.

If you want to say the aquisition of dragonite is not good in WvW, ok thats fine. This can be improved, but if you are saying people shouldnt have progression, i think your looking at the wrong mode.

btw, time gating is circumvented with ascended crafting, all the materials that are time gated can be bought

Why do i want my ascended? because fights arent fair in WvW, i ve been jumped by 20 dudes, focus fired, double teamed, chain stunned/immobilized. I aint seen a fair fight in 100 years, so why am i going to put down my best weapons, so as to make my disadvantage (numbers) more of an advantage for my enemy? Why isnt anyone nerfing the fact that the other day there were about 12 from my server on a whole map?
go die with honor to a superior arrow carts, or a zerg, ill keep the few ascended i made with my own hands.

heres the problem with all these threads,

you guys want WvW to fail.

The truth is the more people who get involved with and who enjoy WvW, the better it really will get, the better it will be supported.

you guys are just mad because you had your own little corner and no one cared, so you had it to yourself, now, its being improved, and has become more rewarding so others are getting involved.

Why would Anet put time and effort into solving things like lag with many players and skill delay, if there is never a lot of people fighting? Why would they dedicate large amounts of resources to new maps, if they are doing it for a mode only 5% of the playerbase plays? Why would they continue if players who used to WvW 2 hours are slowly cutting their time to 10 minutes, and maybe an hour on weekends?

the truth is the more people who play and are interested in WvW, the better it will be, and the stronger future it has.

You guys want your apartment to be crappy and in a crime infested neighborhood so that no one comes there and rent is cheap, that type of thinking leads to you getting evicted when they close the building.

Instead of telling Anet to make WvW less appealing, tell them to make more maps, and new content. If anet sees that all servers generally can support more people, they are going to build in more new areas/expand etc. Try to think about more than just how long your queue was for the opening weekend of the biggest deal in Wvw since launch, and more about how to get even more players so that you will have a better game

Sorry but crafting should be the main means of obtaining gear, IE the majority of items created for a purpose should be created directly, not through random drops. And if you do put crafting in a game, it should be the main method in which items are generated.

HOWEVER, it should not be required to craft in order to obtain the item. Crafters should be able to supply people with the items they need.

SO the solution is
make the vision crystal craftable in the Mystic forge as well as the crafting tables.
Make a final recipe that uses more crafting mats in the mystic forge.

this way, crafting is still one of the best ways to get an item, however players can opt out if they hate crafting, or just dont want to invest a large amount of money to level crafting. Crafters then have the advantage of making the items more easily, and with less mats.

Far as the lore elements/quests/etc they really should have more of that, but they can tie that to the vision crystal recipes

Bastien.1645:

I believe Ascended gear should be removed from PvP. It creates the typical “Grind to Win” scenario that is so common in other MMO/Games.

I feel that Arena Net created an amazing PvP game with Guild Wars 1 and they should stick to how things were run. I also predict a very certain power creep for Melee classes like Warriors/Thiefs who benefit so much from weapon power as opposed to classes like Mesmers/Necromancers, this will create a distinct imbalance between these classes that will be compensated by 1) Nerfing the Warrior/Thief/Guardian/Ranger and effectively screwing players who don’t have Ascended armor on these characters; OR 2) Not nerfing them and creating a huge gap in power between “Physical DPS” classes and “Magic” users.

WvWvW players like to PvP, but any PvP’er will do everything in their power to achieve an advantage over the enemy, the important thing for most PvP players is winning (yes they have fun too but winning is the most important), pretty soon we will have fully ascended players in WvWvW which will make it unplayable for people who don’t have hundreds of hours to dedicate to a single character in order to equip them with full ascended armor, I believe the weapons cost 200g each, the trinkets/accessories using Laurels would take almost a year to get and the back piece is not even available, and that’s assuming you do your daily every single day. Fractals should not be required to play PvP competitively.

WvWvW players already have to spend ~50+g on Runes + exotics to remain competitive, I believe that’s enough as you should naturally accumulate that gold levelling your character and doing a few dungeons along the way, a lot of people will say ascended armour makes no difference but if we assume both zergs are of equal skill, the zerg that is fully ascended will always beat the non ascended zerg that has 5-10% less stats, it’s the same thing as putting a level 80 zerg vs a upleveled zerg, which zerg do you think will win? And don’t get me started on roaming/sniping groups fully ascended vs non ascended people, in the law of averages, we have to assume everyone is at the same skill level so the person who is better geared will win. Could a pro player beat a fully ascended “newb”? Of course, but pro players a very rare and they don’t make up the average WvWvW in our realm. Heck, my realm is full of PvE players (Desolation) so if anything Ascended gear is awesome as the sheer power of these people will carry me but I still believe these items should not be implemented in this game mode.

Solution: It’s simple, just scale Ascended gear to Exotic stat level upon entering a Borderland. I believe fair play should be encouraged and “grind to win/pay to win” (crafting) should not be encourage or allowed in PvP, this is not World of Warcraft and I believe the fair play/balanced gear model from Guild Wars 1 was perfect and it should be encouraged not scrapped. If I wanted to go “3 Shot noobs with overpowered gear” I’d go back to WoW and grind RBGs to 2200.

Regards,
Bastien

The problem here is you have a different concept of what WvW is. Its actually supposed to be the place you can progress and invest in your charachter AND pvp. MANY people actually want someplace they can take the gear and things they have earned on their charachter into a PVP/PVE setting. One of the big reasons people who GvG had for doing it in WvW, was they wanted to take their charachters, that they built and fight them, not the premade/limited stat options in spvp that they have no investment in.

Second of all, WvW was never fair, and its still not fair.
If you have more players, you will be more effective
If you have higher skilled players you will be more effective
If you have people who can get people on the other servers to do what you want you will be more effective
If you spend more money you will be more effective
If you have played it longer you will have higher ranks.

I understand some people feel that ascended is too hard to get, but its totally fits with the idea behind WvW. WvW isnt a fair battlefield, its a war, where players get to bring almost everything they have earned or learned to the field for an advantage, whether that be the fact that they leveled cooking to 400, and have a different food ready for every playstyle, or the ascended they built over a long time frame, or the guild which always plays, and means they are never without at least 10 people working together.

tldr, wvw is actually about playing against an unfair world with every advantage you have built through play, whether it be gold, skills, gear, or people.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

I believe you already have some tech/tools for this. In early beta you had books you could find, i think related to skill points. These books when clicked would show some history and an image, usually a model. II believe i saw one featuring the thieves of queensdale or something.This would be perfect to add with lore and create it in a collectible fashion, and should be fairly inexpensive. The cost per book is to use premade models, that rotate, perhaps posed/situated, or you can even use illustrations, and the text which you are writing anyway.

The only thing i would add, is a seperated collection tab, or just a different part of the UI for the books. (we dont want these using inventory) This would also act as another thing to collect and a good reward for certain content, and take a lot of the lore you guys have generated and put it in game to make the world richer. Even existing content could benefit. Imagine you do a hard jumping puzzle and find a book relating something that happened in that area.

If the tech was giving problems, or was scrapped, it shouldnt be that hard to do, all you are really doing is referencing text, and an image or a model. Getting large quantities of text in game is already done by the BLTC, and i believe BLTC used a somewhat web based ap, or at least had web based functionality. Heck, come to think of it, you could do it with the same base tech as the mail system.

They should have a mystic forge recipe/npc that will forge it that uses slightly more base materials, i believe it is a mistake to require each player to max crafts, its not a gameplay that is universally enjoyed.
problem with mystic forge is it doesnt have a recipe list officially.

any means of getting it should require a vision crystal, other than low chance drops, and vision crystal should be a level 0 craft, or have a mystic forge/npc version as well. the vision crystal is important because it gives value to high end activities

RyuDragnier.9476:

There is a counterplay to that phys. Stop making zerker stealth builds and actually start wearing equipment that allows you to take hits.

Builds that arent glass dps suffer alot from this,
Defense suffers
grandmaster trait for condi removal on stealth
trait for heal while stealth
trait for movement speed while stealth

people see stealth and they think its just not being visible, but anet tied many of thief traits to stealth, and thier main weapon defining skills to stealth. There are a couple builds that dont really need or make use of stealth that much, but it is few.

to try to make it clear to you, im saying Even if you could see the player perfectly clearly, stealth would still be highly useful for some builds. This is not about being perma stealth or even being invisible for a second, its about having these skills disabled with no counter

use a condi removal skill
unable to blind an opponent
unable to use a primary bleed skill
unable to use an inititive gain mechanic
unable to get on next hit crit
unable to get movement speed buff
unable to daze
unable to get an extra boon

It simply shuts down too many skills with no counter, its a bad design. Its not a good solution to the problem.

crossoverAtt.9680:

“Refer to my post above for comments on perma-Stealth.

While this particular implementation has plenty of problems, the main implication of the change is that this is only the beginning of a campaign of similar anti-Stealth changes. It’s safe to assume that ANet intends to make further use of the Revealed mechanic as a hard-counter going forward.

For all those of you who advocate to wait until enough of these are implemented to affect gameplay significantly before complaining, I urge you to consider this metaphor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog"

Well, now you are really making my point. Instead of speculating about how this change today will impact gameplay, we should also speculate wildly about changes to the game Anet hasn’t even thought of yet.

I agree with several other posters that eliminating the ability to stack stealth to silly levels would be better than a reveal, on ONE skill, for ONE class. But after reading all the posts crying about the massive unfairness of this act, any sympathy has vanished.

It’s not fair! Now I can’t be in stealth for 3 seconds, every 40 seconds! Of course this only matters is I run into someone who actually uses it…

My entire build and play style is based on being in stealth all the time. This, in combination with the built-in evasions in my attacks and the blindness they cause, is key to my success. What am I supposed to do if other players can see me? Some of them are going to try and kill me! I don’t want to raise my toughness past the 917 I already have.

We thieves are squishy enough as it is. Seriously, they make us wear light armor and there are no ways for us to get vitality or toughness besides traiting for it. Oh wait, that is every other game ever made, except this one.

Engineers, Elementalists, and necros are all long range characters. We have to get really close!

i play a lot of classes, and its not that its a bad idea to have counterplay, its that they are disabling your ability to use your class/build defining skills completely with no counter. If you are a pistol condition thief, they are disabling your main source of bleed stacks, if you are a backstab theif, no dmg, if you sword, no daze. I mean i think players should be able to adapt for 4 seconds, but to disable some of your most powerful skills with no counter/avoidance skillfull play is bad design in this game imo.

Also the thing with thieves is they arent really OP. Annoying? yes. Many a time ive been annoyed versus a theif, but,
are they actually doing much useful in WvW that anyone else cant do just as well or better? not really, mostly what they can do is run away very well. and assist burst dmg

are they hax sPVP class, not really, they kill unaware newbs, but in mid to high level play, they require a lot of skill to use, and dont really shine even when used at high skill

are they hax in PVE nope, their dmg is similar to other classes, but since npcs dont really care about invis (they remember your agro, and tend to use massive aoes) invis is mostly just for traits and skills, and occaisionally running past mobs more easily.

So this considered, why is theif consistently nerfed? because the perception of them is very negative. I want all the classes to be fun to play, and viable. I have most classes to 80. If the perception of stealth is going to cause the devs to consistently ignore thief problems and nerf useful thief skills, throw away the mechanic and go with something else, or alter stealth without nerfing the class/build defining skills that they tied to it.

Im looking for solutions, not the anger and the idea that thieves should die in a fire (which is honestly pretty common viewpoint in this thread)

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kaon.7192:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kaon.7192:

Pet’s dying is caused by taking damage. This affects all entities in the game, players or pets. It’s by no means a counter to Pets specifically.

I’m not saying pets are well designed in this game, but the state of pets has little relevance in this discussion.

EVERYTHING is the counter to our pet. But yet you thieves are QQing that you have a single counter ON A 40 SECOND COOLDOWN! Jesus you guys are such carebears, QQing because you can’t play easy mode as easily as you could before in WvW. Get the hell over it.

I assume by “EVERYTHING” you mean taking damage. Taking enough damage to die will take anything out of play. It’s not a hard counter specifically to your pet mechanic, and you have plenty of opportunity for counter-play in terms of mitigating, healing, and outright negating damage through pet swap on 15s cooldown.

If you want to talk complain about your pets being useless or too easy to kill, feel free to do it in another thread. But until another class gets a button to disable your pet and pet swap completely and instantly for 4s, this thread is not the place to discuss it.

Every class has that ability to do that to Rangers, Kaon. But ours can be shut off for an entire minute easily. And that’s not all, immobilize makes our pets useless, cripple makes them useless, chill makes them useless, anything that prevents them from hitting their target makes them useless. Every class can do that to the Ranger pet, every class can effectively shut off our pet’s usefulness entirely for more than 4 seconds.

But yet thieves are complaining that their stealth can get shut off for 4 seconds? No, I have no sympathy, go level a Ranger to 80, do every dungeon and instance multiple times, play through sPvP for weeks, and WvW for weeks, and THEN come back and tell me you’re willing to complain about stealth being shut off for 4 seconds. You won’t be, I guarantee it.

you can remove conditions on your pets, thats counterplay, and they have ranged pets. Swapping your pet also effectively deals with conditions. But even all that aside, even if your right, poor handling of pets (whom i think need more control options and better AI) is not a good reason to actively destroy other classes mechanics. If anything pet AI/management/traits should be improved. Just because you got robbed doesnt mean everyone in the neighborhood should get robbed as well

RyuDragnier.9476:

phys, Rangers have had to deal with hard counters to our mechanic (pets) since Day One. Do you really think a counter to stealth is going to destroy the thief class when stealth is not required to succeed? Example, Rangers have had to deal with our pets dying constantly to the point where most Rangers build themselves up and ignore their pet. It’s there, but the bulk of our builds ignore the pet completely, so we can be effective without it. Stop QQing about stealth when you can start building up in the traitlines that allow survival or don’t require mass amounts of stealth. Be creative, don’t be a cookie cutter build.

I have a ranger, i enjoy the ranger class and pet. However this would be equivalent to warrior getting an ability to knock your pet out of combat THAT YOU CANT DODGE/AVOID, and make you unable to swap for 4 seconds out of every 32.
no access to on pet swap abilities/traits no access to pet skills. They basically shut down your class mechanic for 4 seconds, unstoppably, thats a bad design. Pet death can be dealth with with skill use/traits, active management, and skillfull use of attack and return commands. there is no counterplay for this skill as implemented. Its a bad solution to the problem.

The honest complete truth, there is a group of people who have an irrational hatred of thief/rougue type classes and mechanics. They will always hate these classes. Its similar to the 300 lb 6 foot 6 guy who hates the tiny skinny guys who wont fight fair. They want the rules of engagement on their terms.

While it isnt the end of the world, the fact is this doesnt really make sense, 1 class, with 1 anti stealth mechanic isnt a counter for invisibility as a whole. Also the trend of having UNAVOIDABLE counters to your main class mechanic is a bad idea. IM NOT TALKING ABOUT INVISIBILITY ITSELF. Im talking about the skills which are currently only usable in invisisble state, and the traits that benefit from invisibility.

following this logic, how would you feel about a 2000 range skill that cannot be evaded, that stops adrenaline regen, or that destroys all your pet summons and you cant summon any more for 5 seconds.

The devs are listening to the irrational hatred of theives. As the OP said, they should have made mechanics that counter the effectiveness of not being able to be seen, not the class mechanics that go with it.

you realize two rangers can disable theif class mechanic for 10/32 seconds.

All of this with the FACT that theif is not top teir in any game mode. Theif is constantly getting nerfed and getting ignored for good balance changes because he doesnt make people feel good about themselves when they play against them.

Honestly i wish they would just remove stealth completely if its going to cause them to ignore/weaken the class to the point of ineffectiveness. turn stealth to camoflauge, which makes all hits glancing and disables name tag (tab targetting) outside of 300 range people can see the predator like effect while active.

Inspired.6730:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I hear this often from people in and out of game. I can’t understand how they can think that crafting something was free since they gathered the mats.

Once you have the mats, you have 2 options:
1. Craft them into something.
2. Sell them.

In both cases, you are without the mats in the end, but gain:
1. The value of the item you crafted.
2. The gold gained from selling mats.

So when crafting, the cost was either #2 (gold you would have gotten selling the mats), or the cost of buying the mats, both of which are pretty similar.

And the time it takes to gather should also be taken into account. Time saved can be used to make gold somewhere else.

Why you’re trying to change the way people define free is beyond me, but I don’t believe you’re going to succeed. People consider free to mean no outlay of currency, not some measure of opportunity cost.

Real life example, someone paints a picture and hangs it on their wall. A friend admires it and asks how much it cost. Most people would say it was free because they painted it themselves. Some would calculate the cost of paint and canvas and say that amount and point out they painted it themselves. You would have them respond based on some opportunity cost of how much they could make at another job, or how much they could sell it for, or something else they could have done with the time; whichever is greater.

Many of us players never sell mats we collect. We store them or use them. Thus, for us they have no gold value associated with them. The opportunity cost involved is that once used they will no longer be stored to be able to be used for something else in the future; and since this is not quantifiable, it is considered free.

I dont think you paint pictures, because i would never say it was free, i would say i painted the picture.

In some ways i understand the people who want to say its free, which isnt really a problem, except when they start to take their products to market or compare it to others time/money/earnings

first off, anything you craft and sell, not including the price of materials is beyond foolish.
Also if you want to compare the effort required to do a task, you must start breaking the costs down to some value people can relate to. Its all good to say its all subjective, until you start dealing with other people. It doesnt make sense to tell people that an ascended armor piece costs nothing, because though you may not have put a value to your own mats, you are actually giving them false information, because it actually requires something. If you want to say it takes about 3 weeks of normal play thats fine, if you want to say it takes gold, you have to include the generally accepted value of materials.

for you personally it may be nothing important, but once you start trying to relate to someone else, you have to make it less subjective. Some one asking how much an ascended costs needs some real information, you can assume they have a bank full of mats, or assume they play the game in a way that generates a wealth of materials. Lets say they play mostly dungeons, or only hunt world bosses, or WvW.

Becka Williams.4978:

Hawkian.6580:

Becka Williams.4978:

No, see, there’s already a way to make content difficult: play it using white gear. I told someone, who was asking for a dungeon hard mode, to do that. He refused, unless he got a special shiny for doing it. Tell you what, you run around in only white gear for a week, and I’ll actually believe you when you say you want legitimately challenging content, and not just bragging rights.

Well that’s a bizarre thing to bring up. What you are referring to is nowhere close to legitimate challenge, but a self-imposed artificial challenge, also referred to as a handicap. This is actually unrelated to the difficulty of the content itself in that any content can be artificially made more challenging this way regardless of how tough it was to begin with.

I have, in fact, done that, by the way, in a dungeon (AC Story) that had become rote with my guildies in fully-decked out 80s. Not white gear actually, but naked. It was fun, but certainly not at all the kind of experience I’m referring to when thinking of “challenging content.”

So, again, we come down to the fact that people don’t want challenging content for them they want challenging content for other people. That way, when they get their shift-clickable shiny, they can go to lion’s arch, and lord it over the “noobs” that can’t get it.

i think his point is simply ramping up the numbers isnt what makes things a challenge. The Teq fight isnt harder because it needs better gear, or more people, its harder because it needs to be more organized.
Doing gear in whites makes you take more dmg, and do less dmg, but it doesnt really change the actual difficulty, riding a fast bike down a strait road is essentially the same as riding a slow bike down a straight road. He wants a curvy road with hills and obstacles, not a slow bike.

Now personally, while i appreciate the organization element, id want difficulty more based on personal involvement and skills, but i dont expect all the content to cater specifically to the type of difficulty i want. There is something to be said for events that require more coordination, unity of purpose, and working together from large groups of people in an MMO type game. I think teq is a worthy addition, and attempt, i wouldnt use it as the blueprint for all world fights, but i dont think there should be one blueprint for all world fights

BlueZone.4236:

So why would it take days or weeks? Ascended weapons.
Considering how poorly balanced the Gauntlet was tested, I think ANet underestimated player ingenuity hence the heavy usage of food buffs, potions and fire elemental summons as crutches to beat Tequatl which gave players more than enough damage to compensate the lack of ascended weapons.

really shouldnt bring up food buffs, they are actually designed into the game, and it is expected that people would always be using some food or the other. I almost never do, but it should certainly be part of game design, even if ascended never existed that they include food buffs.

I do entirely believe anet may not have expected people to beat tequatl, but it probably has more to do with the way in which they do it. The biggest difference is i dont think they expected the zerg stacks with massive constant revivals. They probably thought people would be spread out into smaller parties in different positions jumping waves and what not. The point is, its not really the stats they underestimated, its the techniques. And thats really the thing about GW2, the game is designed more around mechanics and knowledge than gear. There is a lot of people who cant beat lupicus right now with ascended gear, and yet people beat him with greens, and not only that, but they do it faster than a lot of people can right now.

yeah a person who has mastered a fight might kill an enemy faster, but most the difficulty in GW is on mastering the fights, not on a 10% difference in raw stats. Now if harder content does come out, people will in fact be demanding better geared people, and they will think they failed because of gear, but it probably wont be. Other games with a static trinity, the game will often come down to a gear check, because the fight is mathematical.
Everything can be figured out because they have simplified the variables.
you can have a simplified hard dps check because you expect dps to be dpsing 90% of the time, because a tank is tanking 90% of the time and the healer is healing 90% of the time.
Its simply not the case in GW2, you have to back off sometimes, take advantage of openings, heal sometimes, revive sometimes. you cant make a simple equation that can figure out dps, because dps is more based on the skill/coordination of the players.

for example, lets say you have an ele who can give 13 might stacks from combo fields, a mesmer who can give his boons to party members in the area. In a fight that often involves periods of kiting, mixed with periods of tanking. If the party is really skilled they can get 25 might stacks on 4 party members for say 10 seconds. If they are very skilled and coordinated they can use their biggest dmg moves in this 10 seconds, and have 10-15 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy during this time period. The difference in dmg if they can pull this off perfectly is insane and far outweighs any 10% armor difference. most of the gw playerbase, me included havent even scratched the surface of what playing with skill/coordination can do in this game. We probably will never have to. 10% on ascended isnt going to win you much you couldnt win before, and the design of encounters is so far below what is possible, that even if they made things 10% harder it wouldnt come close to a real gear check.

they simply cant break down dps, or dmg mitigated, or hps to optimal predetermined levels with the types of encounters and skills they designed, therefore they cant build content that requires x dps or x dmg mitigated or hps to defeat.