The only buff the GS needs is to Hilt Bash, make it a 450 range rush without that quarter second root thats lets your enemy get out of range 90% of the time. Otherwise the GS is pretty good imo.
I dont think I agree completely, the only thing Anet went overboard with an icd was the blinding befuddlement nerf on the mesmer, making the trait useless.
In terms of WvW, Op’s build and similar builds are fun 1v1 and in group but ultimately they lack mobility/escape. However, Rampage is a pretty decent get out of jail card if you can time it early enough.
There is ZERO reason to run anything other than a Thief when you’re alone or in a small group, when faced w/ servers that zerg around or have high populations.
Maybe a Mesmer.
Stealth is just too good.
Anet’ has their head so far up it, that they cannot fix the problem w/ that mechanic.
If stealthing is neutered then it would just bring the overall roaming population down, it wouldnt bring any diversity really. The issue isn’t that thieves are too good, it’s that other classes lack disengage when outnumbered.
In high zerg servers it’s even dangerous to run in a small group if you aren’t a thief.
You were outplayed, isn’t it obvious? Haven’t you ever seen ‘Hollow Man’? It takes an exploding elevator shaft with the thief in it to kill him…\
No seriously, insane skill man, kudo’s.
LOL! Yeah that’s how it feels sometimes… The blinds are just so bad now though I don’t know what to do
Play defensively, strafe around the smoke field without touching it. If the thief disengages just don’t follow. In the grand scheme of things they are pretty easy to deal with 1v1 as long as you aren’t intent on killing them.
But the condi mesmer was never defined. All that was said about mesmers is that they rely on their illusions, but the clones themselves are pretty lackluster outside shatter builds and phantasms are mostly single target and thus useless in teamfights. And clones have no survivability in team fights.
You’d think condi mesmer would be confusion focused, but Anet never tweaked confusion quite right and just slapped a 50% damage nerf on it and called it a day (and destroyed traits like blinding befuddlement). But at least condition on mesmer is more viable than say, condition guardians/elementalists. A nice change to confusion might be to have it scale with the number of target opponents inflicted with it hit (i.e., enemy throws down AoE and gets extra ticks of confusion)
This problem becomes worse if you enable nameplates to make the game run better. Speaking of nameplates, how much additional resources would it take to have the option of a circle projected on the surface where a nameplated enemy is standing (so you can judge distance/positioning of the enemy easier)?
This is a great thread.
The TP is part of the world of Tyria and spending your time interacting with it is just as legitimate a play session as dungeons or jumping puzzles or any of our other fantastic content.
Isn’t it a bit hypocritical then to essentially allow unlimited profiteering with the TP (even if only a few players attain it) but at the same time slap DR and time-gating on farming and the other play session activities for everyone else?
There don’t seem to be many (afaik) traits/abilities that factor in whether your group is outnumbered or not, but I think such a mechanic could be a useful fit in the game, particularly in WvW for certain professions.
Two examples to illustrate my point
Warrior’s grandmaster trait Defy Pain (Triggers an invuln at 25% health), what if in addition to that it triggered a +1s stealth on the Warrior per enemy outnumbering allies in a 600 radius?
Warrior’s Sure Footed trait increases stance duration 25%, what if it added a +1s duration on the Warrior per enemy outnumbering allies in a 600 radius?
etc.
Also something interesting to potentially factor into the earn-able/unlockable end-game traits coming later this year, IMO.
As far as playing for yourself, tagging stuff and doing a little of everything, the top are:
Elementalist (carry a staff for zergs)
Thief (shortbow for zergs)
Warrior (carry a bow/hammer for zergs)
Engineer (grenade kit for zergs)
Placing a sigil of doom on two weapons (different weapons sets, to get the effect every time you swap), causes the sigil to simply not function. Is this an intended effect?
Sometimes, there are really good builds that are not discovered for months on end. This is affected by our current playerbase, as well as a revolving meta.
This is not meant as a slight, but the truth is that sometimes things are changing so quickly that you guys just don’t have time to explore new builds and find that one gem that has escaped others.
Do these builds usually come out on their own or do the devs usually know about their potential ahead of time through designing the game (trait implementations/weapons skills and whatnot)? It would be interesting to see a blog post that shines a light on a single example of a gem build that the devs designed but has yet to see wide use.
Wait, nevermind its just a support token. Is there a reason for these drops to be yellow? Do they have a use other than converting them to green support buttons? At least the kite fortunes are a pleasant surprise even if they aren’t ecto lottery tickets, but these things are worse than those rare aether scraps that salvage into mithril 99% of the time, since they appear to only have one use.
An easy thing for Anet to do would be the ability to earn some of the racial skills exclusive to each race. Granted, most of the time they aren’t that great but there are some that have nice fits in certain builds.
In wvw, it is gamebreaking and a part of why we have so many zergs. Pugs want to roam, but when they start, they get insta-gibbed a few times against essentially air before deciding to stick with the group for protection.
I completely disagree. Thieves aren’t what get in the way of pug roaming, it’s the lack of ability that other professions have to slip out when suddenly outnumbered. Thieves haven’t pushed out the other professions from solo roaming, they are just the only class really good at it which is why you see more of them.
If thief stealthing suddenly got neutered, then guess what, you’d see even less solo roaming outside of the classes that are already alright at it (ele/mesmer and some ranger/warrior/engie builds), and it would just water down WvW and make it less interesting.
Best way to deal with the stealth mechanic is to introduce an anti-stealth condition, and give said condition to classes which have the toughest time with thieves (since there are some professions which have no trouble).
How the condition could work:
-Cannot be cleansed through stealthing or while in stealth
-Every 1.5s in stealth the victim gets a 1s shimmer (allowing targeting)
-Add some other effect to make the condition not-useless against non-stealth (i.e., shimmering causes the victim to lose his targets, or drains some endurance, etc)
Candidates for said condition:
Ranger
Staff Ele
Minion Necro
Mesmer
I think replacing MF stat with another stat would be a bad move. People have MF gear for one purpose, MF, as such it would be impossible to really replace without resulting in an item that player may or may not find useful. I think it’ll endup somewhat like this:
MF ceases to function on gear. You can trade in your gear to a vendor for a special item, handing in a gear with a sigil/rune/infusion gives back the original pieces of (non mf)gear as well. The special item can be either a) salvaged to recover the costs involved, or b) used in the mystic forge to produce the items that give the permanent account-wide MF boost. So for example, you trade in an ascended amulet with the MF infusion. You’d recieved two ascended tier items (one greater, one lesser), which you can either salvage for laurels or put into the mystic forge. Lower tier items would salvage to crafting incredients, etc.
Would be nice if magnet had a half second cast time like thief’s scorpion wire, instead of the rather impractical 1 and a quarter seconds.
Scorpion wire is 1 skill worth 1 unity while magnetic is part of a kit (5 skills), also Magnetic has a shorter cool down and takes about the same time to pull someone; while it has a longer cast time, but it also has no fly time like scorpion wire. magnetic is also unblockable and doesn’t even need you to face the target.
Magnetic is way better
I would love it it scorpion wire was remotely as good as magnet pull. Half the time scorpion pull just doesnt work.
You should be able to apply/transmute multiple skins onto a piece of equipment and switch between them at will. Destructive stat/rune transmutations can stick though.
The rebuttal to this might be “well, just get another set and expand your bp with some more slots fitted with hidden bags when you want a different look”, but as time goes on, more and more skins are being piled into the game, particularly back pieces. Owning multiple ascended back pieces for example, for the sake of skins, aren’t exactly within the average players reach. The same can be said for armor sets slotted with expensive runes.
Would this affect the sale/profitability of transmutations crystals? No, if anything it would increase demand if you ask me. Though it could indirectly affect the the appeal of expanding your storage options with multiple armor sets just for the skins, but IMO that is a luxury beyond most players’ reach, especially as ascended gear gets rolled out.
I think Anet has an easier time balancing classes that are relatively even across the various game modes (pve/spvp/wvw), which is is why Necro saw such an upswing because it was pretty mediocre in all three areas. Warrior on the other hand is OP in PVE, borderline OP in WvW and crap in SPvP. Seems a much trickier situation.
Even in their current state, Necros aren’t OP at all in WvW/PVE (not even close to Warriors/Mesmers/Guads in PVE), I would say that Anet should strongly consider splitting any tweaks they make if they are basing the changes on PvP feedback.
I run something similar, except it isnt a condition damage build, it’s a 30/10/30 S/D direct damage + 100% condi duration build (focusing on CC conditions like immobilize/freeze)
Guard should shadowstep your pet to the targeted area. And they really need to fix the effects of these shouts and pet abilities so they stack and dont overwrite eachother.
Yeah badges of honor are kind of ironic when you go chase to 1v1 someone, and they run off only to come back a bit later with a bunch of people just to take you out. Would be funny if they were only awarded if you win even or outnumbered battles.
This is based on Puandro’s BM build, and IMO in practice it works pretty well.
0/10/0/30/30 GS/Sword/Horn
The primary advantage is that you don’t need Dwayna runes or signet of the hunt, because you achieve perma swiftness/regen via shouts. So instead I run Hoelbrak runes, Poultry and Leek Soup (sometimes lemongrass), and for utilities guard/signet of the wild + open spot.
Anyone else try something similar? Haven’t seen too much discussion about Nature’s Voice, other than people suggesting dropping the BM traitline.
The Achilles heel of this build (in wvw) is that it lacks ooc mobility, otherwise it’s quite good. In my build I run full lyssa runes and the stealth elite, and null field to take care of condition (I may also take purity sigils). I also use condition duration food since the lyssa runes take care of the precision.
The only thing that needs to change for DS is for the #2 -
It needs to be a teleport to you target like Judge’s Intervention
The condition effects need to be AOE
The range needs to be set to 1200
Has anyone played around to see if LB is better for open world PvE than SB now? (as in, just roaming killing mobs, farming, doing events, world bosses, etc.) Or more bluntly, is it faster at killing individual mobs?
If you can stay at max range, yes otherwise no.
Thanks, sb it is. (except for mostly stationary bosses/mobs)
Even before the patch I found this to be the most relaxing overworld build:
LB/GS
30/0/10/0/30
Full clerics with either Dwayna runes + mango pie or (if you WvW), Hoebrak + condition reduction food
The bad parts of the patch aside, Anet did at least open up a shout build, but I cant help but wonder if the guard shout should be tweaked. Does anyone actually use it for a purpose other than the stealth + protection for your pet? What’s the point of tethering your pet to an area? This seems like an ability that was rigidly designed for sPVP so Rangers could keep a pet on a point while going to do something else, but imo other than the boons/stealth it’s very inflexible.
Proposed change:
Instead of the pet guarding an area, pet shadowsteps to target area.
The problem with toning down burst in sPvP(even more than it already is), is that it just makes bunker/condition specs even more appealing. Without burst, everything suddenly boils down to boonstripping/conditioning down the bunkers.
Continue to release balance patches only every 2-3 months.
Part of the problem I think is less about the philosophy and more about the bottlenecks involved. It takes 4 weeks just to change some text because it needs to be translated in several languages.
Easiest fix would be to make it an escort mission once you capture the area where the orb is in. Only it wouldn’t be an orb obviously, instead it would be somekind of acolyte/priest that summons an orb where you take him to the destination.
If Torment strictly acts the same way in the game as it does on paper (from the leaked update notes), then more people will be complaining on how UP it is than anything. On paper it’s just a stronger bleed (when moving). The main benefit from it is adding another condition to the stack making it harder to cleanse everything. Unless I’m missing something and the damage ticks based on distance covered, or it has some other effects tacked on, Torment will just generate more yawns and eye rolls.
Another problem with Venoms is that as far as I know, some of their abilities do not stack despite providing multiple strikes. Devourer Venom for example, gives you two immobilization strikes for some reason (immobilization doesn’t actually stack so the second attack is wasted).
On the flip side, with strikes that do stack there are situations where you would ideally not want to blow all your stacks at once, but the way venoms work you have no choice.
To make venoms good: Make all venoms insta-cast and single strike (buff the duration of said effects to compensate), whose application is unblockable. Add in additional effects when you load a venom, like stunbreaks/swiftness.
Unless you plan to zerg only (in which case double bows, piercing arrows, and traps are a must), you pretty much have to take either the GS or Sword for mobility.
