Guild Wars 2

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

lvis.3824:

Thief changes are good?
From what Pov?

Just check all the profession subforums and you will get an idea about how feels great and who doesn’t .

Dagger did not need cleave, its a singletarget DPS weapon, nn for cleave .

And the poison changes are so crappy, you’ll have to spend all your traitpoints to make them usefull – great …. Not one traitline, no TWO !
Tell me of any profession that needs to do that ?

Guardian actually has to spend all of their trait points to get spirit weapons halfway decent.
Even after they do they still die to incidental AOE.

Plus spending all their trait points this way leaves the guardian extremely squishy & without condition removal.

And setting up a Venom Share thief leaves you without any form of condition removal and no stun breakers.

Although the people saying you need 2 trait lines (12 points) for Venom Share to work are wrong : you only need 10 points and go 4/x/6/x/x. This is because the GM trait related to venoms suck. Yeah that’s right, we have a GM trait related to venoms that sucks, even once you selected 3-4 venoms as utilities and put 10 trait points specifically to improve them. At that point, the 2 extra points needed to get that GM trait are STILL not worth it.

Also, the new “improvement” to Venom Share is barely worth mentioning, unless we also use our own condition duration stat. This is because Venoms do barely no condition damage in the first place.

Well, if I was the one, I’d make Hide in Shadows remove Torment (removes all damaging conditions), and Roll for Initiative/Withdraw remove Torment (removes all movement imparing conditions)

It’s true that somehow, the thief original idea for condition removal was never updated to the patchs the game received those last years. The fact is that we do get weak generic removal but very strong specific removals and Torment was never added into those. And now, more and more classes get access to Torment thus as a side effect, nerfing our already weak condition removal little by little.

Otaur.9268:

LOL… Dodging is the damage mitigation. Toughness is not. When stealth grants thieves the ability to backstab players with over 3k armor for 10k damage, Dodge is the best form of mitigation, sorry.

My 3k armor warrior never received 10k backstabs. He did receive plenty of 10k damage eviscerates though. Which would translate to 15k damage on a 2k armor user.

coglin.1867:

Yeah, well if they would have simply made it so damaging a stealth character broke stealth, just like almost every other MMO I have ever played, it we would need no reveal.

Other MMOs usually don’t have spamable big AoE cleaving melee attacks you can use without target and hit people in stealth with.

The only thing I’d change in the downed state is the rally mechanic. It seems a little too lenient and has the potential to create such huge swings by itself.

Maybe limit rally to kills from targets you damaged in the last 5s? Maybe limit it to 1 (2, 3, more?) rally per kill and select the downed players closest to the kill in priority?

It was VERY spammable in PvE. The core build was even called the “dagger spammer” build : http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dagger_spammer The longest CD of the 3 skills in the chain is 3s.

Carighan.6758:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

no one wants another spirit ranger in any pvp, whether its hotjoin, soloq or teamq

Great. Look at a tiny minority in the tiniest game mode, and then also assume that you can speak for everyone even in that limited group.

You don’t like builds based on pets. You also didn’t investigate the general balance idea behind them in that case (lower maximum power, in return high and automated minimum power). Pet builds work perfectly fine in virtually any game. GW2’s have the general game problems work in their favour, but also the fact that players keep thinking that the game is balanced for the tiny slice they personally seem to play exclusively.

If you really think pet setups are so broken, how come they’re so rare? Moreover, how come you seem to be resisting balancing being done on them, when it sounds like that’s exactly what you should want for?

There’s a difference between pet builds and zoo builds. I’m not aware of many PvP MMO that include zoo builds. And if there is, they probably include uncapped AoEs that destroys those.

Solution for zoo builds : remove the AoE cap in sPvP.

coglin.1867:

Because stealth is stealth is invisibility. If the skill is on too long of a cool down, then perhaps that needs addressing, but counter play to prevent stealth should be consistent against all versions of it, be that another profession with stealth/invisibility skills or even combo field uses for professions with no native access to it.

And where’s the counterplay when we get hit by those anti invi skills?

I’m very sad that death blossom went from one of the best AoE burst directe damange spamable skill in Guild Wars 1 to the current iteration.

Giving dagger autoattack cleave-2 is a bandaid when they should just have given Death Blossom the ability to hit 5 targets and make it do a real amount of direct damage and no bleeds. That way, D/D would have a solution for group content and it’d be good old Death Blossom

I’m amazed that wasn’t done already but :
- The fire trails damage do not stack with each other from a same cast of the skill

It should have been done like that from the start. The trail type skills already got semi random damage depending on the number of trail items intersected by the mob collision box, it shouldn’t be like that in the first place. Feel free to up the damage from the trail to compensate.

Even then, there’s advantage in getting the target stuck since it’ll stay in the fire longer. But it’ll not be such a huge difference.

mordran.4750:

And the most stupid thing about stealth in this game is, there is no counter. Stealth is a fire and forget mechanic. You press a button and go into stealth, you do not have to have any awareness at all. In other games for example you are unable to stealth if you do it in front of you opponent so you have to be aware when you do it. Or there are stats which enable you to see stealthed enemies easier. But here, nada no nothing, stealth in this game is a simple, low risk – high reward mechanic. And please please please don´t say aoe is a counter to stealth, this would maybe be true if the thief wouldn´t be on of the mobilest professions in GW2.

In other games, Stealth tends to last a LOT more than 3s.

It’s highly likely that the warrior used http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Might to make the next 5 attacks unblocable.

The worse I find on this skill, that makes it so frustrating is that it cannot work as a chasing tool well.

The reason is that, the projectile disapears after a certain distance traveled linked to the max cast range with some extra tolerance I guess. But since the projectile is so slow, when you use it at max range on someone that is fleeing, it cannot reach them before the end of it’s lifetime.

This makes the skill feel a LOT more unreliable than it should. Really, if I’m in range of someone when I cast a skill, unless he’s using a skill to rush out or he dodges it, dancing dagger should not miss due to out of range.

shinigamith.7120:

-The only few builds that works on thieves are spammy builds. We searched for anything else but nobody found because there is nothing else.

That’s the whole story of the thief here. The initiative system allows us to spam a skill. So as a result, the skills we have access to are weakened so that they aren’t too OP when we spam them. In fact, they are VERY weak.

As a result, we thieves tend to build accordingly and put all our eggs (or in this case, traits/runes) in the same basket so that at least one of our spamable skills will have some efficiency. But as a result, it leaves us with all the other tools at our disposal in a weak state. And so spam we do.

posthumecaver.6473:

Now it forces me with my Elementalist in sPVP get a rune set with Vitality which absolutely I don’t want to.

Try Celestial then. It got a nice upgrade :o http://dulfy.net/2014/03/28/gw2-ready-up-episode-9-livestream-notes/#more-81021

Hey, is it me or will the Divinity/Celestial amulet get MORE Ferocity and Vitality than Berzerk amulet in the first place? oO

643 secondary stat on Soldier. Berzerk splits the secondary stat in half for Vitality and Ferocity. Results in only 320/321 Ferocity/Vitality

I guess that since Celestial gets extra points for the split nature and lack of focus, logicaly Berzerk which also gets a split stat should also get bonus points for that.

They also said that PvP Celestial Amulet was wildly under budgeted and would be rescaled to match better then PvE version. Which also got a buff to all stats to account for the loss of much crit.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The easiest way to look at the 200 power bonus is having 5-6 stacks of Might (less the condition dmg bonus).

Who wouldn’t want 5-6 stack of Might?

Well you could use the 5 points to unlock the “3 more total initiative” minor trait in Trickery which gives you enough initiative buffer so that a C&D => Backstab will happen above the 50% initiative requirement for +10% bonus damage from the 25 points Critical Strikes trait :p

It’s not for PvE obviously. But I’d rather get 3 more initiative and +10% damage on both C&D, Mug and Backstab than just on the latest part.

Which is even assuming that the new trait would apply here which isn’t guaranteed at all ! You get Revealed by the backstab damage itself. So it should logically only apply after.

Thinking about it, even for PvE it’s not that good if backstab doesn’t get the benefit.

I think that trait is bad because it continues the GW2 long tradition of promoting mindless spam.

See, ANet tries to pass that as a skilled trait where one times Revealed correctly to avoid some CC. The problem here is that this is a very very highly unlikely situation. Not that it cannot be done really. It’s just that, which thief will ever find himself in that situation :
- in stealth
- with some big CC attack incoming
- ready to break stealth reliable before the CC attack lands

“In stealth” isn’t exactly rocket science. It’ll happen. But if the thief is in stealth, why is there in the first place some big and dangerous enough CC attack incoming his way? Dangerous enough that you’d rather break your stealth early than get hit.

And if it somehow happens, what are the odds you’ll be in a situation where you actually CAN get revealed in time to get the stability? Remember that ranged attacks usually have travel time too.

No, the reality is, this is another “mindless spam” tool, like dodge tends to be. It’s actually hard to dodge only when it matters in the game currently, so you should rather design a build to have AS MUCH dodge as possible, and throw them randomly when you are full. It’s mindless and will allow you to dodge more stuff than if you tried to do it on reaction only. This trait is the same. It might work, but only because you passively use it and it’ll luckily block a CC or two in the course of a fight somehow.

EverythingEnds.4261:

I suppose, you talk about WvW, as the ferocity changes wont affect spvp?

It will affect sPvP. The PvP jewels have far too much crit damage and will be hit hard. The amulet part on the other hand will get more crit damage. The combo of the two will remain the same.

But you will still lose 10% crit from the trait line.

Actually, see the Power stat as the “damage” stat. If a 1000 power thief does 1000 damage with one attack, he’d do 1200 with 1200 power, 2000 with 2000 power etc… The skill coefficient and other bonuses do not matter at all.

You are right that +200 power would result in a 20% extra damage. And I just noticed I used wrong values overall because I looked at the wrong stat on the skill calculator :’(

The sPvP zerk player has 2139 power, not ~3000 so the trait is 9% more damage for him. The sPvP no power at all player has 1216 and the trait would be much more significant for him.

Bonus will be weaker in PvE since you can get more Power. If you go the extreme with full ascended, 25 might stacks, 25 Bloodlust stacks, Butternut food and the like, you are looking at a 4758 power Thief that would gain 200 power which is a 4% damage increase.

Please note that the % bonus I talk about are multiplicative with all the other factors considered (except getting more power) so your +26% damage value is wrong. It’s actually slightly more.

Still, do you know that in a typical PvE rotation, you probably get more DPS out of a 25/30/0/0/15 build because the 3 bonus Initiative help you activate the effect of the “First Strike” trait more reliably which gives you 10% bonus damage?

Well currently, the sPvP Zerk amulet has 768 power, 569 precision, 284 vitality and 15% crit damage. This means that 15% crit damage is equivalent to 285 stat points here. So 1% crit for 19 points which is weaker than the selected ratio.

If you count the jewel too which is stacked towards crit damage, you get 315 stats for 20% crit which is equivalent to 1% crit for 15 points which is the selected ratio exactly.

So, all in all we got :
- if you use the Zerk or Valkyrie amulet without using a crit damage jewel, you’ll have more crit than before (buff)
- if you use a crit amulet with a crit jewel, you’ll have the same crit
- if you use a non crit amulet with a crit jewel, you’ll get less
And obviously, as is already known, if you put points into the crit damage trait, you’ll get less crit overall up to a 10% loss at max.

Question is, how do the runes that give crit damage change now. Without them, the most extreme form of crit damage builds will lose 10%

Is that 200 power even worth mentioning really ? A non power based sPvP thief with 30 in DA has 2231 power already. On the other hand, a Zerk (or any other power main stat) based thief has 3029 power. Not counting rune sets here.

So that 200 power bonus while revealed is at best a 9% damage increase when you are 30 DA with 0 power in your gear and no might stacks at all and a 6-7% increase with the 3000 power thief.

6% damage increase with such a highly situational requirement as Revealed isn’t fit for a grandmaster trait I say.

DeceiverX.8361:

How so? The cost of an extremely prolonged period of stealth – not to mention the incredible condi cleanse, water field, and healing this skill can provide if used in combat should have appropriate penalties attached to it.

Shadow Refuge is a dark field, not a water field …

Well, let’s compare those two traits :
20% more damage on a target under 50% HP. On average, it counts as a plain +10% damage on all hits more or less. This causes the HP differential between you and your target to increase 10% faster then.

5% damage becomes healing. This trait causes the HP differential between you and your target to increase 5% faster.

Except, it’s only on crits XD So even if you get 5% damage as health for every single attack, I’d still value it as twice as bad as Executioner. Let’s not even mention the fact that you typically attack tanky targets and they take very little damage from you while you get hurt a lot since you built glass canon (who doesn’t with CS trait line maxed ?)

Doggie.3184:

Great seeing that we’re finally getting new traits, although of all things Critical Strikes was the one trait line that didn’t need a new GM. New Adept and Masters ones more-so. I wish they showed a different example.

All trait lines get one new GW trait so why shouldn’t Critical Strikes get one too?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Yep. The only puzzle piece left for this is making it so the sound will play through the ‘Mute game while minimized’ option. Then it will be caaaaaaaaaake.

Please make the task bar icon flash too.

In fact, play some DotA 2 and copy everything from them (not that DotA 2 is the only game doing that but they seem to have a pretty complete package for that topic)

I did always suspect that Fleet Shadow was capped at Swiftness speed out of combat. It seems it’s not that but very close anyway.

BEINGHUMAN.4167:

style.6173:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No game that has stuns, should also have stunlocks. Neither the player nor his enemies should get stunlocked. It’s never fun to be completely helpless. Especially for classes with poor access to stability.

This ^^

Agreed. There is nothing less fun then losing all control of your character til death.

DotA has stun locks and very very very limited access to stability. We don’t call it “losing all control of your character til death” but “you where out of position” :p

The named set is very assassin looking too and available for all races.

Whit.2385:

I’m confused why this topic is getting attention. The solutions are essentially an overhaul to the core of the game. This is completely outside the realm of financial or physical possibility. Financially, it simply doesn’t make much sense, and physically – ok, you can debate this one, but my faith in the balance team is low.

Actually, all it’d take in sPvP is to remove all amulets and jewels except the Celestial ones as was already suggested quite a few times since the game release

NinjaEd.3946:

Dancing dagger has nearly no use. Sigils on it can proc off the main hand attacks, the damage is weak, the cripple even on a bounce is hardly noticeable (spamming it is horrible…), and it’s really slow moving making it miss or be obstructed more than it should.

I find Dancing Dagger to even be bad at what should be it’s main usage : slowing down someone you are chasing. The problem is that with the slooow projectile, if you throw it at someone that is fleeing from you and max range (max range which isn’t very much in the first place), then you are 100% certain the projectile will never connect for two reasons :
- any little movement to the sides will make it miss
- the target us fleeing away and even if he was in range when you threw the dagger, by the time it reaches your target it’d have passed the maximum tolerance range allowed in the first place

whyme.3281:

Why can conditions counter every build? Is it the damage, some skills, CC thats effected by condi duration….?

It’s simple really. Conditions are strong (in PvP), because there is no real condition counter.

See, GW2 is kind of a rock paper scissors game in that tanks counter direct damage and conditions counter tanks.

The problem is that, people are making tanky condition users because they can (Rabid and Dire sets). So it’s a game of rock paper scissors where one player constantly holds two hands at once, one rock and one paper and says you can only win if none of his hands can beat your choice

zone.1073:

Right now, every stealth ability in GW2 works like the super strong version of stealth in RO. If the devs split stealth into variations, it could make things feel more balanced to the player. This will especially be important when conquest is no longer the only game mode in PvP.

I remember RO. It was so fun The thief hide skill had no cooldown nor cast time and made you invisible for 30s a the first skill rank, up to 5 minutes at max rank. It was a tad stronger than GW2 version, aka 3s max stealth that needs a target for C&D with a cast time and a somewhat high resource usage.

Electro.4173:

I’ve noticed this little bug / glitch / whatever it is as well.

The dye channels are obviously there on the Aquabreathers for this to work at all. I mean, they dye perfectly, there’s no overlapping colors and its not your breather is just getting overlayed with your colored helmet texture or anything. It acts just like you could actually dye them. So really, why are they not dyeable? I know underwater combat is criminally negletcted as a whole, but why not at least include a dye function for breathers when they’re clearly made for it?

Consider that there’s an aquabreather that uses plain helm armor skins. There is indeed no reason why those items cannot be dyed.

Isn’t Impale 5 stacks of 12s of Torment? With +100% condition duration it turns to 5 stacks of 24s of Torment.

Azgarn.2145:

First off, you are hanging on to something that was said BEFORE the game launched, over a YEAR ago. Before ascended armor even existed. And this … “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game.” They say LOOT. As in drops.

Ascended weapons and armors are loots too.

I’ll sum up what I don’t like that way :

Bunkers can outsustain DPS while non bunkers tent to die instantly to burst. Both are unfun.

The burst is tuned to stand a chance to beat bunker sustain, but doing so it just melts glassy specs. All that stems from the fact that the sustain in this game is too strong.

Karolis.4261:

Did IS ever had speed boost passive? Not on my watch.

I think it had a speed boost in the beta.

Trolls find trolling fun too

Shaogin.2679:

Is this game just nothing but damage? Is there no real bunker or support builds that can hold their own against multiple opponents at the cost of doing no damage?

How is that fun anyway?

Morderger.6298:

Maybe there should be a delay on initiative regen for the duration of the interrupt.

Maybe other classes should have their weapons cooldowns freezed for 5s each time they are interrupted?

Lordrosicky.5813:

And if people QQ about PW and auto attack chain not having much DPS difference then the auto attack should be nerfed because that is also too strong. Auto attacks shouldn’t do massive damage

Yeah, thieves shouldn’t do damage at all in fact.

True, but the main point stands : a thief that at worse was out of initiative after Black Powder => HS is a thief that was at 9 initiative before he decided to flee. IE, he was nearly at full initiative and so obviously didn’t use much in the first place.

Also please note that you can prevent Shortbow #2 from stealthing him by getting hit by the blast in that case :p

gesho.9468:

does this thief has any init whatsoever? if he can stealth, at least once, he most likely got reset.

If you interrupt the thief HS once, then that thief required having 12 initiative to do a second HS anyway to stealth. That’s a far cry from “any init whatsoever”. That’s in fact a full initiative bar.

If the thief didn’t have a full initiative bar in the first place, which tends to happen very quickly if he’s trying to do any threatening action at all, then that interrupt you did would prevent him from doing the second HS in the first place.

Dual.8953:

And if thieves get nerfed to the point that they’re no longer “considered” the best roamer? Where will they go after that?

They go share a CDI thread with the Ranger I guess.

gesho.9468:

chaos, should we count 9 init as cost? for bp is still there, isnt it? only 3 init lost (from that single interrupted HS), and normally thief would still have enough init to x2 HS in the same old bp. that’s what needs to be prevented. if BP was gone and whole thing was to be started anew (after a while), that’s what i would call fair.

What do you mean “normally thief would still have enough init to x2 HS” ? Are you talking about a 15 initiative Thief? Someone that did nothing at all so far? The first reaction the thief that did nothing yet had when he saw you was start his flee combo?

Can you prevent a “no CD at all so far” warrior from escaping by interrupting a single of their skill? No.

ronpierce.2760:

Here’s a good consideration.

" •Putrid Explosion: This ability is no longer unblockable."
Because it “Didn’t make sense and had no counterplay.” It’s an EXPLOSION… On an ai that has to be near you (and we all know how brilliant AI is)… Fast forward to thief.

A warrior can hold his tiny shield in front of his face and block a Backstab in that position. Makes sense yeah.

ronpierce.2760:

Pistol whip – Randomly swinging your blade around makes you evade every attack. #Logic. Counter play to someone evading everything? Quit the game and wait for a better one. Check.

Evade doesn’t prevent Retaliation damage and Pistol Whip does a LOT of low damage hits.

Clownmug.8357:

So the only reliable way we have left to stop the black powder combo is to intentionally get hit by the heartseeker?

Interrupt it. If the thief can throw two HS in a row inside a Black Powder, it means he had 12 initiative available. IE, he didn’t use a single weapon cooldown so far. He did nothing.

Can you stop a warrior from rushing, whirlwinding away, weapon swap into main hand sword leaping away with a single interrupt skill? He doesn’t even need to keep all his weapon skills of CD to do that, just 3 are enough.