Guild Wars 2

More on topic for fighting Rangers.

Make sure you are going combos with the stolen item. Rangers give water field which interacts with projectiles for regeneration. The other suggestion is to use body shot to help land unloads (so no dodging out of them).

Another trick using staff is to have a source of stealth so that you can use the stealth attack knockdown for some free burst. Also, if you are using an off-hand dagger (such as with D/D then the pet is always a good reliable source of CnD.

Your number 1 issue is that you stayed immobilized and used 4/5 utilities before confusion ran out (it was never cleansed). Because you were immobilized you took several caltrops and that meant by the time you were blinked away you were down so low on HP that the poison finished you off. Also it wasn’t 1 stack of bleed, it was 7.

Actually the thing that hurt you most in this video was that you were hitting that yak when he put confusion on you, already you took a lot of damage because you were using skills on it.

As to the thief, it isn’t the thief its the runes. Trapper runes and Perplexity runes are what is the problem, not the class that happens to be using them at the time. And fix how conditions are removed? At a certain point you might as well be saying “remove conditions” because if all cleanses only removed the highest damaging conditions then condition builds would be effectively neutered.

Escapist’s Absolution + Unhindered Combatant can clear 85% of what a normal 1v1 throws at you.

I generally would recommend having both a trait based condition removal and a utility removal. Ideally, when combined, they should together result in having mobility impairment removal (such as taking withdraw as your heal) and damaging condition removal (such as taking Trickster to augment withdraw).

I may consider posting a video, if there is enough interest in P/D to warrant it.

Sealey please feel free to PM or message me on game for P/D advice.

Celestial isn’t going to be as good as a mix of Dire/Sinister/Trailblazers.

As to sustained pressure I can go into more detail but not on my phone. Feel free to pm me and I’ll try to respond.

Two problems that you highlight: (1) because players run sub-optimal condition cleanse, soldier’s fare less well comparatively to Dire builds, and (2) some classes have overpowered application of burn/confusion/torment.

I think we will have to disagree on number 1. It is not the responsibility of the condition build player that their opponent isn’t running enough condition cleanse. it might be a balance issue for their class—Anet might need to increase cleanse access to certain classes—but again that is not the fault of the person using conditions.

I also think we will have to disagree on the source of the problem for number 2. Again, I’d love to see how over-powered burn-zerker can be…but I haven’t seen it yet. All of your examples come from individual classes/builds that can use the high powered conditions (confusion/burn). So either the classes are unbalanced or those specific conditions are unbalanced.

That P/D can run Dire and not be over-powered shows class-side balance is the way to address your concerns. That I don’t see burn-zerker dire as a roaming spec shows it isn’t over-powered enough that people will choose it over other specs.

A final note—I don’t think posting more after this will be productive—sometimes a condition build will be superior to the power variant for a lot of non-armor reasons. Some classes/builds will beat others. Perfect balance isn’t possible. What is possible is relative parity which gives player skill/preparation an opportunity to make up the rest. If they took Dire out of the game they would have to take Soldiers with it. And Trailblazers/Wanderer. I merely suggest the balance I’m talking about is possible without removing four entire armor sets from the game.

Just block them. If they make a threat, tell you to kill yourself, or use racist language report them.

For most trolls a sassy response and block are sufficient.

Those are numbers against people. Some people do just stand there and take the damage, surprisingly. 20k, more or less. Obviously a full toughness build will take less—as will dodging/avoiding some of those hits—but so few people run tanky because they like the big numbers (and taking big number damage apparently).

It’s not “in my head” I saw the damage numbers on the tooltip go down as compared to pre-HoT. It wasn’t much, but it also wasn’t the case that the HoT armor increased my damage significantly either. It was minor adjustments, but it was there. I checked because I wondered how the HoT stats would effect the balance. I saw I needed TB stat weapons to maintain my old damage.

And you admit that some condition weapons sets aren’t overpowered, and then point out specific builds you think are overpowered. Again, this is about builds/classes and not about the armor set itself. As I said before. That said, I have rarely had a problem with a burn zerker. I wouldn’t mind fighting one, it would be interesting, but I just don’t see them often. Those that I have fought recently have died…but that seems circumstantial to me.

And you say 11k per death blossom. Really? I have never taken 11k from a single death blossom. Then again…I actually have condition clear. Which is what I have been saying is necessary from the very beginning. DB is a long term bleed. The longer term the more likely it is to be cleansed. Short term is the real “effectiveness” number for me, because if I keep ticking on a target I know they effectively went glass against condition builds and are going to lose.

Given Anet likes to balance with smaller changes, the idea of removing an entire armor stat set seems extremely unlikely—see my earlier comment about balancing with the sledge hammer.

As aside, I saw a Dire zerker dueling today. Well, it could have been dire, I don’t have affirmative knowledge of that. He was dueling longbow though. He didn’t seem overly tough and he took a while to down the thief he was fighting. Normally, outside of a duel the thief could probably have disengaged. I’d like to see the max DPS on burn-zerker now that you posted about it, real DPS numbers against real people mind you.

I find a thief—properly traited—will negate almost all of my condition damage and reset the fight. So in that sense, actually, soldier will do more damage than me.

If he didn’t have any condition clears I would probably kill him. Simple as that.

People act as though a soldier should only have to wear the armor to be immune to conditions. If you are tanky, trait both to be successful in all situations. If you are zerker, expect to have to evade/block everything if you don’t want to take the hit and possibly die.

Being survivable means being flexible. An inflexible thief is a dead thief.

I noticed my condition damage went down with HoT. I added in some trailblazers to bring it back up. So it was adjusted.

Comparable damage to zerkers? What? Like, an example on comparable weapons.

P/P I can get 20k+ damage in about 4-5 seconds. That’s two unloads. A total of 10 initiative. This isn’t full zerkers, this is a mix and match of armor.

P/D, assuming I use all my utilities to increase my damage, and assuming the target is standing completely still, and assuming they don’t have passive traits that proc condition clears, I can tick maybe 6k? for a couple of seconds. Assuming I used two sneak attacks, it probably took me around 5-6 seconds and involved 12 initiative.

I compare these because they both are the same mainhand weapon. Likewise I would compare D/D builds, or D/P builds on both condi and zerker. I doubt the zerker is lacking for damage over the condition build (assuming one is zerker and the other dire).

Toughness is important, just not enough so that soldier’s gear is made useless or less useful than Dire. I take Dire because of the survivability in general. I don’t, however, think that it makes me more survivable than say a soldier gear warrior with average condition clearing abilities.

In an average situation, with average condition clears, a Dire vs. Soldier’s should be effectively equal. I think that is roughly the case now.

Now in terms of class balance 9/10 I will kill the warrior. But that is because I have superior mobility and many warriors are highly melee oriented. I also have a lot of stun breaks traited/prepared and as a Daredevil am effectively immune from movement impairing conditions. What I mean is that a lot of the complaints about conditions are based around class balance issues, not stat combination issues. Are some classes more powerful with Dire? Maybe? But that seems like a tuning issue that has nothing to do with the set itself—essentially if there are problems to be fixed the solution will be with individual skills and traits and not with an armor set.

To balance by removing an entire armor set is like trying to carve a Greek statue with a sledge hammer.

I’m not sure what condition builds you are talking about “not using utilities to increase damage.” More than half of my potential DPS comes from utilities. This applies to both power and condition builds—Basi Venom on thieves for example doesn’t strictly do damage itself, but does help with applying damage in the first place.

Anyway to answer your questions: Average cleanse means usually having more than one way to clear conditions. Usually it is built into the utilities, or through a passive in the build itself. Below average means, having a single or no condition clear. Basically, if the person meets a condition focused build they are going to die. Above average means the classes you mentioned, with many redundant cleanses and AoE cleanse.

Thieves, your example, are a high cleanse class—to make up for lack of HP—cleanse on dodge, cleanse on trick, cleanse in stealth, cleanse on various utilities, cleanse on attacking, cleanse on being hit below % hp. Before the change, withdraw could cleanse that confusion, and now we have even more options.

If the only examples of condition damage dire being comparatively better than soldiers come from the same two classes, then maybe it isn’t the armor that needs tuning. Also, given how often I see complaints based on toughness “doing nothing” I seriously doubt one of the stats in dire is as important as is being implied.

EDIT—Part of GW2 is build crafting. Saying the fight starts when you start smacking each other is inaccurate. It starts when you spend care in deciding how your traits, armor, weapons, and utilities should best interact to win fights.

I have yet to see condition damage DPS that comes even close to power DPS.

Maxed out with unreasonable buffs, most DPS charts I’ve seen show condition damage at most at 18k. What is power DPS at, 30-35k? These are in ideal circumstances but do give an indication that power DPS is, in fact, much higher than condition damage.

Your real issue is that conditions are designed with cleanse in mind. Also, by design, not all conditions are meant to be cleansed. Condition builds are designed to do damage via conditions…so naturally the cleanse rate will never be 100%. So DPS will always be unreasonably high if you have no cleanse. If you have average cleanse the DPS will be as expected, lower like soldier’s. If you have high cleanse or AoE group cleanse then the DPS falls to almost zero.

Soldier’s won’t do as much damage against high armor targets. Dire won’t do as much against high cleanse targets. Sure, you could remove cleanse from the game and decrease condition application/damage, but I have the feeling that wouldn’t solve the “problem.” People would still be in here talking about how half as much DPS, or even a quarter of DPS applied over time is OP.

The more reasonable comparison is:

Berserker DPS vs. Hybrid DPS.

Solider DPS vs. Dire DPS.

These kinds of threads are generally the bunker meta vs zerker meta argument recast to blame the condition bunker variant on account of the kind of damage being done. I’ve seen plenty of power bunkers rip down zerkers because they have enough time to react/defend.

And, just to point out, don’t treat conditions as magical fairy dust that just appears on you by accident. I hit you. With my pistol. Dodge, reflect, blind, block, resistance, cleanse. All of those work. If you play zerker and I hit you with the power variant of my build…you are going to feel it just the same. Only you won’t be able to cleanse it.

Perplexity isn’t the problem so much as the builds that can spam interrupt and achieve very high amounts of confusion combining the runes with their regular abilities. I’ve heard of mesmer/chrono builds that can stack 50+ stacks of confusion if the person stands there and eats it.

That is an unreasonable amount of confusion application. Personally confusion should be shorter term, like burning, given the high DPS potential. I also think the cooldown on perplexity seems a bit low for the advantage it offers.

One option would be to cap confusion stacks. Another option is to reduce the base time to require more rapid reapplication. I favor the second merely because rapid reapplication is, like the condition itself, confusing or disorienting. Confusion should be flashy, like attacks coming from every direction at once. That way rapid reapplication still matters but a person can fight back more often/consistently. Confusion should be about rewarding players who pick the right skill to use—even though it damages them—and punishing those who spam.

Likewise, torment is fairly good now because it rewards people who move as tactically as possible and punishes those who mindlessly run away. Burn, usually applied in fields, also reflects the “don’t stand in the red circle” and rewards those that don’t let multiple stacks easily build up. These are “tactical” conditions. Same with poison to prevent effective healing. Bleed is the only real “generic” condition that provides baseline dps without a tactical element other than generally “don’t get hit.”

As to Dire armor, without it or soldiers one-shotting becomes a lot more common and that would be a problem. I’m not talking endless bunker builds that can tank four people at once (like pre-nerf scrapper), but a well played “tank” build is a vital role. WvW Commanders need survivability. Roamers need survivability. The only people who don’t are classic backline fighters who lay down cover fire or pick off reinforcements/backliners for their team.

As a roamer, I can 1v1 versus good players. 1v2 versus ok players. 1v3 versus bad players (or good players having a really bad day). I can do 1v2 because I have the HP/armor to survive long enough to put one of the two into downstate. If you can wait out their blocks and invulnerability and resistance, etc. you are much better able to fight when outnumbered.

The easiest way to adjust this, given the limitations of the mega server system, is to reduce the number of keys given for events.

Honestly, because players can do other stuff besides AB and generate materials into the economy, there is not 70,000 more ectos being generated daily by this activity. More likely it generates, given that not every player is doing this, around 10,000 or so more ecto’s per day.

The decrease in HoT specific material prices, like Black Diamonds, has been significant. This is, however, also partially a response to increasing the drop rates for gemstones used to make AG’s for HoT legendaries. To say that all of the price drop is due to the AB farm mechanic is not 100% accurate either.

I think the rewards in AB are over-tuned, mainly in how many keys are generated. Even with minimal effort I had over 3k aur. and 250 keys. This is too much, obviously, because the currency should be worth “something.” I think reducing the key drop rates—you can get like 15 keys from some pylon events individually—is probably where we will end up.

Pylon events reveal chests, and I think it is fair that pylon events reward more keys than those chests require. However, I think that rewarding 3 or 4 times as many as the pylon requires is a bit much. A single map’s pylon events can give upwards of 30–40 keys and even multiple meta maps of full or partial looting do not use up all those keys.

I’m considering an upgrade to my system. Currently I run an i7-4770K and GTX 660ti on a 1920×1080 screen. Clearly, GW2 runs more on CPU than GPU speeds, however I have found that messing around with several of the GPU based settings has increased or decreased my FPS in various areas including WvW—where I like to run at full settings where I can.

Running at max/close to maximum settings I get ~25–35 FPS in cities, ~45–60 FPS in various open world areas, and anywhere from ~15–60 FPS in WvW (and in large scale events in HoT zones with tons of people) depending on how many are on screen.

I’d like to ask everyone what they are running CPU/GPU wise, screen resolution, and what their FPS experiences are like. I’d like to move to a GTX 1080 when the partner cards are available so I’d trying to temper my expectations for GW2 with some rough numbers.

High evade spam is useful, but this thief lacks somewhat in the mobility and chasing department. Strong ranged attacks or classes with AoE stuns/knockdowns/etc will prove the death of this particular build.

That said, it is a strong build against players who have no answer to perma evade builds.

Many people disparage what can work as being too easy. That’s why it isn’t meta. There are also those who feel power damage is superior to condition damage and like to see big numbers—also why this isn’t meta.

Personally I like to have the flexibility that range (pistol) gives me against people. That is why I personally don’t take a D/D condition approach.

That video brings back memories (seeing the buffs the streamer was running from old old WvW).

Very effective build. I can think of a few counters to it. Basi venom, all AoEs, lots of wells, traps (yay counter traps!), etc. As always, need at least two good people coordinating in order to counter two people coordinating.

Stealth allows them to avoid large groups and pick their targets. Otherwise it is just a strong build that the people fighting it didn’t understand.

All the glasses should come back. But especially the Inventor’s Sunglasses.

Here is a tip on fighting against traps in general.

Dodge through the trap to trigger it. Basically, a large part of the DPS here is based on (1) you not moving around/away, (2) you not having sufficient condition clears, (3) you not using dodge effectively to trigger the trap and avoid all the condition application at the same time.

The other person in your video didn’t move enough and that is why he was downed several times.

As to the person being invisible for 90% of the time. Think of this build like a bunker build in a lot of ways. It trades damage, especially against a mobile target, for high stealth uptime. It spends a lot of initiate maintaining it’s defense—stealth—along with several utilities.

This is WvW. This build can’t kill anyone in a duel or effectively take an objective. Anyone dying to this build needs to understand they need anti-stealth to take out a stealth bunker build. Otherwise, they need to learn the mechanics and understand why this build shouldn’t be killing them in the first place.

A side note. I spend/spent currency, tokens, whatever, on a lot of things that help me kill people. Food, siege, armor. WvW is not pay to win but it is about investing some resources into honing a build that works. This isn’t sPvP where playing isn’t an investment of resources. Why is spending a few badges (which now drop far more often) and a few silver—and only if you reallllllly want to kill that thief—such a shocking investment? And that assumes you don’t use any abilities that would force reveal the thief (anti-stealth or those that push the thief out of refuge, which I saw this thief using quite a lot).

As a thief main—

Thief disengage is strong, so either bring strong cc or pile up wells/traps to focus down their HP quickly.

Other than that, rule number 1 of any 3v1 (which seems to have been more 4v1 odds in your case) is to always rez downed quickly. If you don’t, expect to have them continue taking down people one at a time. Why would they stop if you can’t be bothered to play as a team?

That looks like a valid P/D build. My comment on the armor is that condition builds generally need to survive longer to deal their damage so…but I can see it working for some people.

EDIT:

Dire is what I use, with a bit of Trailblazer thrown in to boost damage. This is for WvW where I often am facing multiple person roaming groups, or multiple defenders. I tend to solo roam so taking a strong defense is very helpful as a general rule. The difference between 2200 and 3100 armor does matter given the relatively small HP a full Dire thief gets.

P/D is fun to play because it gives you an evade in the form of a teleport. P/D is also fun because it relies on the timing of CaD but has the flexibility of a ranged weapon. High stealth uptime is essential to do damage because it relies on Sneak Attack. This is the condition variation to what I consider a classic thief—D/D backstab. (Lots of stealth, lots of damage. High burst and terrifying to fight against because they can stay hidden). The main difference is that the burst is less—because condi—but the survivability is higher due to more armor.

Of course a condition build doesn’t see the big burst numbers that power does. I rarely see it used by other players because a lot of thieves play for “big numbers” that only power builds can achieve.

Right now I’m working on a P/P build and I really miss the flexibility of having an offhand dagger.

As to the Dire v. Sinister debate. Hybrid does a lot of damage (just fewer big crit numbers) and is just as much glass as zerker builds. Dire is like taking soldier’s. You are losing out on big bursty crit numbers. Your base damage—in either case—will be lower but you will be able to better survive being ganked.

A lot of glass thieves will target another thief with the expectation that lower HP/armor + first to engage will win. They are often frustrated by thieves with enough hp/armor to survive long enough to get a teleport stunbreak off (and therefore survive).

No, conditions are not a problem in WvW. In 1v1 combat there is no automatic win for a condition build vs. a power build as a general rule.

Mainly people are mad about (1) confusion as a condition and (2) runes that put confusion onto people (mainly because of their issues with “1”).

Confusion is a troll condition because it makes the person kill themselves. Passive condition clears counter it better than active clears (making it frustrating for players to deal with). Personally, confusion makes more sense as applying random negative conditions on the player periodically and on skill activation.

But, Anet likes Confusion the way it is. So, maybe dealing with the runes is the way to go. Either way, lol at trying to get Anet to nerf a fundamental part of the game that has consistently been buffed to make it more competitive with power builds. (AKA now that conditions actually DO something people are complaining like it’s the end of the world).

Anet’s position, as I read it, means that as long as you are using mechanics that are a part of the game itself you are fine. You are fine because the autoloot mechanic combined with pets and other passive damage is a logical outcome of those two features used together. There is no need to clarify their policy because they have already stated that (1) this is fine when you are using the masteries and traits, (2) this produces unintended outcomes that need to be addressed on their end. Anet is not seriously concerned—if they were they would have disabled autoloot until they patched in a fix.

This is a design issue and does not mean that Anet is not ultimately concerned with addressing this natural outcome. AFK farming is obviously not what Anet intended to enable or promote when it introduced autoloot into the game. That said, Anet has relatively few options that will address this consequence.

One option is to make mobs more like HoT mobs. If active defense is required to mitigate the damage, if the mobs will switch targets, if the mobs heal (or are healed by other npcs), etc. then there are fewer opportunities for the person to afk. The issue is that other active players can compensate for this to a certain extent.

Another option is to implement a faster time-out for players that are sitting without moving their character. The issue is that if you make this timer too short it would kick players who merely walked away for a few minutes. There is, however, a balance to be struck here. Honestly, I think this option is the more likely scenario. Ten minutes of sitting without using skills or moving—and you get kicked to character select. You could also have this disabled in certain “safe areas” including cities and settlements that don’t have events.

High mobility builds that use Shortbow and Shadowstep are preferable to allow you to move around quickly.

Daredevil is also good for perma-swiftness, although if you prefer Acro is acceptable to also grant perma swiftness.

Also, having a high stealth uptime can help with avoiding things you don’t need to kill. Easier to grab a point of interest or a hero point in a cave if you don’t have to fight a lot of veterans to channel it.

I’d also recommend going a little tankier or evade heavy for HoT maps just because you may have to solo content that can hurt a lot more than in vanilla maps. (Assuming you go for HoT completion).

Inventor’s Sunglasses please

P/D works fairly well as a condition or hybrid set. While the damage isn’t as high it also can apply damage from range as opposed to needing to stay on top of the opponent and possibly in the red circle of death. This, of course, is mainly a question of theoretical as opposed to actual DPS. Your mileage may vary with your play style and the mechanics of the content you are doing.

I’d like to make a case for a rework of this set of skills and traits. The reason is that we have a Goldilocks problem: by itself our venoms are underwhelming and with Venomous Aura (aka venomshare) they are extremely powerful. First, I’ll overview the current state of venoms and the role they can play in PvE/PvP/WvW settings. Second, I’ll highlight my view of the short comings venoms have and then proceed to making a suggestion for a reconceptualization of venoms and Venomous Aura. As venoms are condition build centric this assumes no further increases in condition damage on weapon sets through balancing current abilities or by adding new effects.

Currently our venoms all have the same 40 second cooldown. There are two condition damage venoms—providing torment, poison, and vulnerability—and three “cc” venoms—providing chill, immobilize, and “stone” (daze-immobilize combo). Venomous Aura currently provides a 8 second reduction in the cooldown of venoms and shares those venoms you activate with nearby allies.

In PvE this provides the thief with the ability to significantly impact a break-bar along with direct increases to DPS. For example, VB Matriarch and AB Vinetooth with 20–30 players attacking will fail to break the bar by about 20% margin unless a thief venomshares the three cc venoms at the appropriate moment. Where a break-bar is less important, the increase in damage is significant.

In PvP and WvW venomsharing can help to trap people running away from a group and thereby facilitate a clean kill. This is especially helpful in larger fights. Venoms, generally, provide robust damage when shared, making short work of particular targets. In PvP—playing decap and +1—a thief can share venoms with the group and then quickly move off (providing both damage/cc and decap).

Given the above I’d like to highlight certain problems I see with venoms as currently implemented. First, damage is too low without other people around to bring it up. Arguably, single target damage is too high when taking into account venom sharing. Arguably, single target cc-ability—the ability to project cc—is too high. Second, the cool-downs are, in GW2 2016, too high in comparison. Third, in PvP/WvW venomshare for damage doesn’t do much because of condition clears that benefit groups (ranger hits 5 people with AoE attack w/ venoms and hits 4 of them with a stack of torment, practically no damage)—assuming it’s not a 3v1 situation where venomshare is a significant spike asset.

I think that venoms should be rebalanced to (1) increase individual damage, (2) reduce the factors that lead to needing to balance around having a group at all times, and (3) reduce or adjust cooldowns in line with the current meta. I think that overall individual damage should increase by 15-25%. I propose the following:

Venoms (generally): Spider’s/Scale reduced cooldown to 30s, Ice Drake/Devourer/Basilisk’s increased to 50s.

Venomous Aura: 20% venom cooldown reduction (32s, 40s respectively), venoms permanently imbue your weapons (details below), venoms sharing as before.

Venom imbuing (details): Spider Venom adds an effect like Dagger Training (medium chance on hit, small poison), Scale Venom (medium chance on hit, small torment), Drake (low chance on hit, chill), Devourer (low chance on hit, immobilize), Basilisk’s (very low chance on hit, 1/4 second daze), Skelk (small chance on hit, small heal).

I’m curious what the baseline DPS (un-enhanced, solo) is for each of the weapon sets. I feel that we need to see a comparison between a pure power build, a hybrid build, and a pure condi build for each weapon-set to fairly judge it’s effectiveness.

Obviously, venoms are going to enhance the damage of condition builds quite a bit, hybrid more so, with power builds not really benefiting. Hybrids and powers alternatively have some utilities that can synergize and add damage without relying on venoms.

I’m going to start a list style chart in OP detailing just the basics — weapons, DPS, and build type — to start documenting these variations.

I would like to see:

Trick Shot — Same.

Surprise Attack — This skill needs more damage, personally it should apply torment (like if shot in the leg). Really this ability just needs more damage because what is the point of getting into stealth to attack with an ability that probably won’t slow them down too much or hurt at all?

Cluster Bomb/Detonate Cluster — I think the “bomb” should be focused on big power damage and the cluster aspect should be more condition focused. I would significantly increase the base damage on the single bomb and add more stacks of bleeding or bleeding duration to the cluster attack. I might also add bonus damage to the single bomb if it hits at longer range (punishes people who are bad at evading slow attacks).

Disabling Shot — Needs to disable in some way besides cripple. Vulnerability or weakness come to mind.

Choking Gas — This should apply small amount of poison initially and then subsequently in larger amounts. The duration should also be increased. Field duration needs to be 5 or 6 seconds. Each tick should increase additional duration by 1 second. 1st tick = 1 second, 2nd tick 2 seconds, etc. Total duration if fully applied = 15 seconds of poison assuming 5 ticks.

Infiltrator’s Arrow: Same.

Gaile Gray.6029:

1. How do you feel overall about reward tracks?
2. What are your thoughts on the rate at which you gain participation?
3. How do you feel about the rate you earn reward track points?
4. Overall, what are your impressions about the types of reward tracks we have?
5. Are there any other reward tracks you would really like to see?

How do you feel overall about reward tracks?

I think the reward tracks are a smart way of getting constant rewards for activity into the game mode. The tracks currently reward more activity but at a certain point players can “coast” by doing relatively little and maintaining maximum rewards. Pacing wise I would make the ramp up in participation faster but also add in a constant drain even when you are not inactive. If you go inactive for 10 minutes this drain should be more substantial. This helps to encourage active play more so than in the current iteration.

Second, I would note that the scoring and population revamp are important to making this system truly dynamic. If, for example, the cap on participation scaled depending on your world’s current score (1st, 2nd, 3rd) then the loot dynamic would properly be one of competing for 1st place rewards. Also, at the end of the match a large amount of Reward Track progress based on the final score (again 1st, 2nd, 3rd) would make the loot system not just good for everyone but also give us something to fight over. “Make winning matter” is how I would sum up this game design premise.

What are your thoughts on the rate at which you gain participation?

See above.

How do you feel about the rate you earn reward track points?

See above.

Overall, what are your impressions about the types of reward tracks we have? // Are there any other reward tracks you would really like to see?

I’d like to see the reward tracks include fewer tomes and instead focus on providing ascended and regular crafting materials as well as more WvW skins (think a WvW weapon skin track or a WvW backpack track). I’d also suggest adding in WvW armor recipes that require mist essences purchased for badges of honor — which could also drop from reward tracks (maybe make this the path for getting the upgraded Victorious armor?)

HiS works very well — although the cast time can be an issue. Sometimes you just need stealth on demand and HiS is a heal that provides that.

That said, with the ready access to teleport to target, something like withdraw makes more sense. CV works better for S/D because you can jump in/out using sword, making withdraw an attractive alternative where the teleport is one-way.

Signet builds are great if you can avoid getting stunned. They have good sustain from lots of hits…but when you stop hitting the party stops. If you have high evade uptime, say a Daredevil/Acro/Trickery build, this might be a viable option. I’ve been meaning to try this out after the patch, actually, because the better sustain overall and higher damage on sword make this a tempting choice.

Reward track feedback:

The system itself is good. Participation based rewards is good, the 15 minute time period is appropriate. I would suggest that participation decrease at a regular rate and at an increased rate after a period of inactivity. This is to address the issue where people max out and have less incentive to fight to maintain their higher rate of rewards.

The rewards themselves need some retuning. I’d like to see reward tracks with crafting resources and materials. I’d like to see reward tracks with legendary crafting materials. I’d like to see some guaranteed rare loot bags. Generally, I’d like to see greater rewards paired with a greater drain on participation in order to pair effort to reward more explicitly.

The other thread for this is focused on power builds and I wanted to have the opportunity to create a companion thread focused on the ability of condition builds to deal out damage. This is especially important because of the large number of threads that have claimed that condition damage is much too powerful. This thread is to reveal the verifiable differences between power and condition thieves.

I’ve done some testing and intend to do a lot more. I will update this post later with some detail of the variations that I used build-wise.

If others would like to contribute, please post the following information:

DPS #:
Weapon: [D/D, D/P, P/P, P/D, S/P, S/D, SB]
Testing condition: [Solo, group]
Intended Use: [PvE, WvW]
Build link/description:
Further plans for testing:

———

DPS #: ~3500
Weapons: P/D
Testing condition: Solo
Intended Use: WvW
Build description: Trickery/Shadow Arts/Daredevil, using venoms. The damage this build can deal out can go up significantly in group settings with venom share.
Further testing: I intend to test DPS without using the venoms. This should give me an simple estimate of the difference in DPS overall and give me a number with which to easily estimate the “burst DPS” during the initial application of damage.

EDIT

Solo, unbuffed, DPS range comparison list (range, defensive to offensive)

DPS ,D/D, Power
_ DPS ,D/D, Hybrid
_ DPS ,D/D, Condi

DPS ,D/P, Power
_ DPS ,D/P, Hybrid
_ DPS, D/P, Condi

DPS, P/D, Power
_ DPS, P/D, Hybrid
~3500–5000 DPS, P/D, Condi

DPS, S/D, Power
_ DPS, S/D, Hybrid
_ DPS, S/D, Condi

DPS, S/P, Power
_ DPS, S/P, Hybrid
_ DPS, S/P, Condi

DPS, Staff, Power
_ DPS, Staff, Hybrid
_ DPS, Staff, Condi

DPS, SB, Power
_ DPS, SB, Hybrid
_ DPS, SB, Condi

I have decided, per my signature, to respond as follows to any accusations of running “cheese.”

“I’m like parmesan. Hard to kill and salty from all the tears.”

Tapioca.9062:

I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the Dreamer, but let’s be honest here, people worked long and hard for that Legendary. So while I understand where people are coming from, if I had to side on whether to change it or not I’d probably vote nay.

I see what you did there… :p

Please bring back Inventor’s Sunglasses.

This sounds like a bug that should be reported in the bugs forum.

This is one of mine. I am still looking for a headpiece, maybe sunglasses, to replace the current piece. I want something to show off the hair — so my options are somewhat limited.

Increased rewards in WvW generally to reflect roughly 75% of the rewards possible per hour for completing HoT content/Silverwastes.

A list of suggestions (mutually exclusive):

“Lead limiter” — limit the total lead allowable between competing opponents. Leader can have at most a 5000 point lead over the next lowest. Ex. — 1st: 25,000 point; 2nd 20,000 points; 3rd 15,000 points. This makes “comebacks” possible and does not allow any server to relax and rest on its 50,000 point lead.

“Population multiplier” — Having less than half as many people as another server for a sustained period reduces all PPT gain by 50% (applies to total population in all borderlands and EB). This means that where there are large population imbalances that one team cannot as quickly build up a lead.

“WvW Leaderboard” — Leaderboard should be visible in game.

“Weekly tournaments” — Each day of the week the matchups change based on the total score gained by each server. Rewards issue on a daily basis to the winning servers according to their rank in that daily matchup. This keeps matches dynamic and attempts to balance higher population servers against lower populations while taking into account their skill level (low population with a high per person impact will rise until it hits a population issue.

“Active Player Impact” — Each server has an overall statistic based on PPT divided by number of active players in a given time period. The more skillful the players the higher the number (more PPT for fewer people). This number would be published to help indicate where servers are performing due to player talent and increase their appeal to players looking to transfer.

“Outnumbered” — Outnumbered buff changes from map wide to server-wide based on overall population on all WvW maps. Outnumbered grants +5 supply capacity, enemy player kills are +5 PPT, and 5% reduction in damage from NPCs.

“Eyes on the Leader” — The current PPT leader’s objectives will provide an automatic objective aura granting enemies improved magic find. This can, in conjunction with rewards balancing, give a greater incentive to take down the leader.

“Fortified bonus” — Upgraded towers and objectives grant bonus to PPT gain.

“Population scaling” — Total PPT gain is scaled based on overall population in WvW at the time. Tier III PPT (> 50% average WvW population): 100% PPT. Tier II PPT (25–50% average WvW population): 75% PPT. Tier I PPT (<25% average WvW population): 50% PPT scaling.

“Dolyak’s Revenge” — All cripple durations applied to dolyak’s are multiplied like sentry’s cripples. Friendly sentries remove crippled from allied Dolyak’s. Dolyak’s gain 90% damage reduction while allied players are within 1000 radius. This lets players defend dolyak’s and apply cripple to slow them down while fighting defenders. It also makes cripple less valuable if the allied sentry is not taken down, and thereby allowing the Dolyak to become quickly uncrippled.

“Tactic: Repair” — Adds a new tactic that spawns workers that gather supply from the objective and repair the objective’s walls and gate(s). Each worker carries five supply at a time. All NPC’s go outside the walls and gate to repair — requiring players to defend them. Tactic consumes up to half of the remaining supply at the objective until the walls and gates are restored.

“Tactic: Scout Banner” — Grants five abilities to the bearer: (1) Enemy Spotted, (2) Scout’s Mobility, (3) Scout’s Shroud, (4) Scout’s Beacon, (5) Scout’s Reward. These abilities provide the scout with the number of enemy troops within visual range, swiftness and stability (not a breakbar), long duration but immobile stealth, a deployable turret that mark’s enemy players within range like a sentry, and a buff that can be applied only to fellow squad members that gives banner holder “tag credit” for targets that those squad member themselves tag.

Stability: Option 1 — Revert the stability change back to duration, capped at 10 seconds. Option 2 — Increase the number of stacks of stability able to be gained. Option 3 — Cap the amount of stability that can be removed from any target to 10 stacks per second. Option 4 — Change stability to provide immunity to disabling conditions on a per second basis per stack. Stability can only be removed using boon steal or negation but not for doing its function of preventing disabling conditions.

Hi all,

I wanted to mirror the Top-5 WvW Overhaul Priorities thread by creating a version for the overall game. By way of background I come from playing WvW primarily/exclusively for years. I only started playing PvE (open world, dungeons, fractals, HoT) more recently but I honestly have mostly enjoyed the content that has been created. I think the diversity, or at least the potential diversity of content, is actually quite good. I’ve recently built my first legendary and am working slowly on my second.

1) Rewards balancing

The reason I put rewards balancing at number one is that, in general, PvE rewards have vastly outstripped PvP and WvW rewards. People should not be “PvPing to have fun and PvEing to earn money” to such a great extent. Players should be rewarded relatively well for playing the content they enjoy. As it stands now, some content earns anywhere between 10%–40% of what can be earned farming a meta in HoT or Silverwastes (meta or chest train). Players should be earning 50–75%.

2) Living world, dungeons

Living world episodes should come out monthly. Episodes can be episodic (one off stories) or part of longer story lines. Living world episodes that do not permanently change the world should be converted into fractal content.

Dungeons should be revamped to allow for “challenge modes” that offer new bosses with increased difficulty.

3) WvW Overhaul (previously mentioned, covered in other thread)

4) New Content: Mixed PvP GvG

PvP allows for GvG on a small scale. WvW is limited to particular servers affiliation and is therefore somewhat clunky. Guilds can invite players to their GH arena, but this depends on having HoT and the arena size is rather limited.

I propose introducing one larger PvP map designed for between 10v10 and 20v20. Like Stronghold players can take supply and then use that supply to build siege weapons (not spawn NPCs). The goal is to capture the enemy castle. There is no keep lord. Instead, players must stand in the capture circle to contest it. If players fill up the bar a 3 minute event begins. If the capturing side can hold the ring for 3 minutes then they win the match.

Interesting about PI…I like the idea of pulling a DH off traps and into yours. Given your experience with the build how have you handled conditions put on you? It seems a solid condi burst would down you.

I use TB weapons. I’ve found that the returns on condition duration can be deceptive. The reason is that the longer the condition lasts the greater chance the condition will be cleansed. In a pure DPS sense at a certain point you are better off adding pure condition damage or alternatively buffing another stat. TB is certainly worth it for the weapons. Playing around with it in the build editor should give you an idea of what you are giving up.

On your build — one issue I can see is that there is really no “hybrid” statistics built into it but you have chosen Pul. Impact which relies on power/precision/fero and not condition damage/duration. Another issue is that you drop trap on heal but your heal is channelled. This means that someone can interrupt you and reduce your healing significantly. Otherwise I suppose dropping a smoke field and then healing would usually be acceptable.

A huge issue I can see with this build is the lack of any condition clears. You have to be close to drop your traps and can expect to get hit with a lot of conditions. This makes the build very niche against non-condition users. As per above, getting EA might be a solid choice for you.

Ultimately, your build has good interrupt/condition dealing synergy. Where it doesn’t is in the area of utilities. You can consistently rely on HS to interrupt. I assume you are using scorp wire to pull people into your trap(s). This is good but I feel that the wire won’t be as helpful as taking Impairing Daggers and having to work a little harder to land your traps.

A crossbow is a mechanical bow. Not sure how it would be a pistol or a rifle when it fundamentally involves a “bow.”

I know…just hoping it is in the high-tech type so I can eventually complete my collection of all three legendaries….eventually.

For the next shortbow I would really appreciate stepping outside the box and making a crossbow. A crossbow is like a steampunk variation on a shortbow. Incinerator is a high-tech daggar, HOPE is a high-tech pistol, this could be the “high-tech” short bow.

Effect would be shooting red plasma bolts and the footsteps would red as well.

Name would be AMAZES: Azuran Modified Auric Zero-point Energy Shortbow.

Think Chewbacca’s Energy Crossbow.

As a condi P/D user:

Roaming I can take down most people 1v1 or 1v2. I can also take down a few people when being chased around by a group of 3 or more. I have also had on occasion been able to take down 1v3, because they were bad.

In a zerg I mostly tag with SB and use venom share to spread immobilize, chill and basi venom. This lets the zerg catch people and apply their full damage potential. I basically am a super powerful support weapon for a larger group of people.

Thief does, however, face problems in certain regards largely on account of active defense abilities, high protection/block uptime, and extremely forgiving healing. DD isn’t immune to this, we’ve gotten much stronger evade, much stronger condition clear, much stronger perma swiftness, much stronger heal (CV). And all of the various new weapon sets are heavy on “active” defense type skills. Staff has lots of evades and a blind for example.

What you might say is that Anet converted passive bunker statistics, such as by removing defensive PvP amulets, into “active” play that reflects faster pace eSports “skilled play.”

Where thieves lose out is where specializations still promote bunker meta. Even losing the defensive power of statistics isn’t sufficient because active defense skills (dodge, block, etc) are more powerful than extra toughness. In WvW the problem is even more prevalent because, while they removed tanky amulets, they obviously didn’t remove tanky gear. The result is people with extremely good “active defense” abilities, strong defensive stats, and a full range of specialization buffs.

Thieves in the power meta need to rely more on hit and run or a burst method of winning fights. Strong active defense is a counter to burst. For this reason, hit and run becomes the strongest option for a power thief (although a poor one if the target has strong healing), at least against elite spec. classes using their new weapons/skill sets.