Guild Wars 2

Alloy.2839:

Engineers and elementalists only have one weapon set.

Funny, how come they can make us of the “on weapon swap” sigils then?

It’s WvW, not Elementalist vs Elementalist or AoE vs AoE. ANet won’t make AoE that powerful because they want to balance their game and their professions.

The class repartition in WvW is bad enough already, there’s no need to make it worse. The huge amount of elementalists I met is already annoying enough.

The AoE cap is there so that ANet can balance AoE skills and AoE heavy classes the same for small fights than big fights. Remove the cap and the AoE using classes become MUCH stronger in WvW. Remove the cap and rebalance the power of those skills and the classes become very weak in normal small group/solo PvE and PvP.

And what about weapon swap? Other classes can weapon swap and get fresh cooldowns. Thief cannot.

Let’s just face it : even if Initiative is the “thief weapons cooldown”, the mechanic works sufficiently differently from normal cooldowns that you cannot just say “it’s the same, Chill should apply”.

Because thieves initiative isn’t cooldowns. Thieves do not have enough initiative to use 2, 3, 4, 5 weapon swap, 2, 3, 4, 5 like other classes can. Not enough by FAR.

Chill doesn’t put your high CD skills into CD even before you used them right?

Because it was coded specifically to be like that by ANet.

The ability only fails if the stomp ends while the target is stealthed btw.

That’s because you didn’t read correctly the effect. It’s an AoE condition removal that removes one condition to you and one on each of your allies in the area.

Are you trying to remove the only counter to mist form stomping?

Meteor shower IS affected by the target cap … And it would be much stronger without.

Iove.3902:

I quite like the trait. I don’t see a problem with it, and have not experienced a problem with it. If anyone wants to enlighten me, please do so. Though, the reason I might not have problems is because I’m not a stealth spamming Thief — I use Evades.

Regardless, what are the problems you are having with it?

If you aren’t really using Stealth, why do you spec into Shadow Arts?

If you want to use a lot of Stealth, you have to spec into Shadow Arts and then the trait gets annoying.

Wait, someone found a use for Needle Trap? No way!

How did he place it exactly?

There was coop in Doom. Networked games at the time were VERY hardcore to get working with material few would have.

And even today it’s a blast to play it but far easier :p

A possible change for venoms would be doing away with the charge thing and instead making them into a temporary buff with a cooldown between procs. Say, the poison venom would give you 10s where all attacks you do apply venoms with 1s cooldown.

Basilisk Venom would keep it’s current behavior and venom share would apply only a half duration buff on allies.

The only thing wrong with Venoms is Ice Drake and Skale.

Ok, they could use all some tweaks but those two are extra bad.

Daecollo.9578:

And then ONE or TWO guardians uses Shield Sphere and stops ALL of them.

GOOD COUNTER PLAY.

I doubt in those big fights the guardians will be able to react fast enough to cast a 1.5s duration Sanctuary/Shield of Absorption spell. RtL takes 2s from start to finish.

Also, the RtL users can be stealthed or under Stability if needed.

The other night in Deso BL, around our Garrison SFR was holding with split groups both side towers and constantly taking the north supply camp. Send the whole zerg to cap a tower too ages because the place was constantly painted with AoE circles everywhere. And during that time the towers were still trebing the walls.

SFR did a very good job of managing a single zerg blob with their split push tactic and still managed to hold territory well thanks to their generous usage of AoEs.

And you want to make AoEs even stronger? :’(

Grimwolf.7163:

How can people say that? S/x is way better because of Infiltrator’s Strike.
Infiltrator’s Arrow is only good for bypassing terrain or fleeing in stealth. It costs 6 initiative for Christ’s sake.

A 600 range Shadowstep that can only be used towards an hostile target isn’t good mobility …

LordByron.8369:

so many theories…
Guys aoes had no cap since few months ago….
And people was happy while nobody asked for aoe cap :|

What are you saying? Damaging spells have had the current AoE caps since old betas …

You can’t go with “uncapped AoE will allow us to destroy zergs” and conclude “It won’t buff AoE much”. It is a massive buff to AoE plain and simple.

I think the funniest death cause of Last Refuge comes from this post : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Last-Refuge-strikes-again/first

I was about 30% health. I saw 12 stacks of confusion on me but I decided to heal anyways. Then bam bam I’m down.

I forgot about that stupid kitten Last Refuge trait. Confusion hit me as soon as I started my heal and it proc Last Refuge which triggers confusion again.

Doomdesire.9365:

Vitality. Toughness is crap, and it seems worse on thief. Full toughness and no vitality will leave you still at 10850 HP, and you’ll still melt just as easily from a BS thief/100B warrior if you don’t watch your back. Toughness also does nothing against condition damage, where as vitality does.

Actually, both Toughness and Vitality have more or less the same return on investment in survivability (Effective HP) against armor mitigated damage. Vitality is better here than Toughness for thieves cause we start with a very low HP pool. But that’s not the only factors.

Toughness is better than Vitality when you expect to heal a lot, Vitality is better than Toughness when you don’t heal a lot and face conditions or other damage types that ignore armor.

If as a Thief, you go full vitality and no toughness, the BS combo will do 6k, 6k, 10k and all that vitality wouldn’t have saved you anyway. Same for a Toughness build you’d say.

But if you save yourself from the Backstab somehow, once you apply your heal skill, at this point, the Toughness build will be in a slightly better position than the Vitality build.

In all that, I find it funny. Funny because ANet said they find AoE to be OP currently compared to single target skills. And so they said to be working on a case by case AoE nerfs to make them more in line with the rest of the skills.

And even before that nerf is ready, people already want a MASSIVE AoE skill buff in WvW. You do not do a massive buff like that to something that is OP.

If you uncap the AoE target limits, any big group will become death for any melee class that tries to approach them and be useful. No matter how many melee there are.

Auesis.7301:

So if I took Quick Venoms and Residual Venoms, every 12 seconds I could, on a single target (pick 3 of 4):

Immobilise for 6s

Immobilize does not stack in duration. You cannot immobilize someone for more than 2s + slightly more depending on the short time it takes you to do your next two attacks

Sarrs.4831:

Out of curiosity, what if there were a WvWvW ability that, when purchased, would raise the target cap for your abilities while in WvWvW?

What if there were a WvWvW ability that reduced damage and conditions and CC received specifically from AoE skills?

jportell.2197:

I mean thieves get a damage bonus for each condition a target has on them (Deadly arts 25) so they should up the conditions a thief can dish or make venoms better in pvp…

No. They get a fixed damage bonus if the target has at least one condition on them.

teg.1340:

Were AOE professions to strong in DAOC RVR due to no AOE cap? No.
Did all just have played AOE professions in DAOC RVR? No.
Did no AOE cap has prevented zergs in DAOC RVR? No, but…
Did smaller zergs had a chance to win against larger zergs? Yes!!

If I remember well, DaoC had all mages stand still during their casts and any damage would interrupt the spell and send it to full cooldown? It’s not really the same. Melee classes could rush dowkittenerg of casters and shut them down in the process. Do the same here and each mage a melee attacks will be defending himself with AoE spells since that’s all he has, and he’ll be damaging you and EVERY other melee that is charging with you. And you will be damaged by every single mage that is defending himself at the same time.

Remove AoE limit and you will instantly obsolete all melee classes that aren’t big AoE using casters themselves.

aydenunited.5729:

It’s been my opinion, ever since launch, that retaliation is really only an issue for burst builds, and that’s still my opinion. I’ve never had a problem with it unless I ran burst.

My Mug/C&D/Backstab thief laughs about your puny retaliation. Retaliation punishes multihit attacks, not burst.

Rome.3192:

So, say if you’re a level 10 in all whites, you get scaled to an all white level 80 gear? What would that for a berserker set be, like a 400 power/precision 20% crit damage (minus all the traits) or much more? That doesn’t seem all that much of a handicap when it’s a 1v10, especially when the game allows you to res each other all the time. Also, is it common for zergs of 10+ people not to have a single player that is geared or knows what they are doing?

There’s no level 10 berserker. At best you got a “Power” set with only power as a stat. So you be like a 400 power 0 precision 0% crit damage

Ostricheggs.3742:

You do realize that I don’t play power much at all, right? And that hundred nades no longer exist, right? And that grenades are the most constant source of multi-hit damage available to any class in the game, right?

Yes, nade engis have it the worst as far as retal goes.

I beg to differ. Flamethrower autoattack is the worse :p It’s still an Engineer thing though.

We are talking about an AoE effect that gets retaliated on 5 times per second while doing 49 base damage per hit.

Why use shadow refuge? You could permastealth a whole zerg with just a few thieves throwing up Smoke Bomb on cooldown.

Good job taking probably the strongest autoattack chain in the game to illustrate your point. Btw, Chop/Double Chop/Triple Chop is an AoE skill too. It’d have to be uncapped in targets then?

Every single “remove AoE cap” poster seem to put his arguments as if a single elementalist was pitched against zergy hordes of melee players. Oh no, my AoEs have long CD! That won’t be OP at all. Except that when you get 10 elementalists, they can cycle their huge repertoire of AoEs and between all of them together, there won’t be a single square foot of land to stand on safe in the whole area otuside a tower gate and be in range to hit it.

Delusion.6854:

everything is easy for no life

You just need 10 fractals. All it takes is level 1, level 2 and level 3. Even if you somehow fail those easy dungeons, the partial progression you did is still recorded!

It IS easy. It doesn’t take long at all.

Well, daily/monthly achievements are also meant to push you to try different things. Do the Fractal one. It IS very easy. Maybe you’ll like them ?

Kozai.8269:

Siphaed.9235:

For casual players, doing 10 Fractals might span across 2 weeks, not 2 days.

Yeah, 10 Fractals? Between every person in my guild, we have completed a grand total of 3 Fractals, I believe. We’ll have to get a serious move on on the one day a week when we gather to play for 2-3 hours.

A single fractal run gives you 3 fractals or 4 if you are on the boss one. It’s REALLY easy to get and very fast.

Zoutsha.1093:

Noctis Assassin.4035:

I once died from 7.2k retaliation damage by cleaving a guardian and thief. the guardian was rezzing the downed thief and i couldn’t kill the guard cause he had a shaman’s amulet…it made me sad.

retaliation depends on power not condition dmg a guard with shaman’s amulet deals almost no dmg with retaliation: 198,45 + (0,075 * 916) = 267,15 | 7200/267,15= 26,95
wow u hit that guard 27 times without killing him u should change your build!

It’s much more likely that the guardian gave AoE retaliation to his thief friend that was using a power oriented build. Also, it procs two retaliations per cleave that way :p All it took was the guardian use “Stand Your Ground!” for a Stability oriented revive which gave him and his friend Stability AND Retaliation for 5s.

The monthly is rather easy to do indeed if you spend a lot of time in WvW. In normal PvE those achievements you did take quite some time more.

Casual : doesn’t want challenges
Hardcore : wants challenges to overcome

ANet made it so that all sigils that have an internal cooldown shared the same cooldown. A reason why putting a “something on weapon swap” sigil with say, a “sigil of fire” doesn’t work sell. When one procs, the other is stuck with the same cooldown as the first until it can proc again.

Also, you say the CD isn’t one, it’s more for weapon swap. Well let me tell you that the CD is very important because many classes can weapon swap a lot more often than once every 9s. Warrior got a trait to reduce swap CD by 5s, elementalist can change attunements more often and the worse, engineer can change kits like once every 0.5s.

The reason your case works is probably because they both proc at the exact same time and the cooldown is started a little later, when it’s too late they already started to give you back endurance. It might not be considered a problem so the bug might remain as it is for a long time though.

Sigils of Bloodlust have no cooldown at all so I’m not too surprised that they stack as you say. Still, since their effect is capped anyway, it’s balances itself because the sigil becomes useless once at the cap.

The idea of going dual D/D and profit from the initiative on weapon swap isn’t knew. It was one of the core points of the original immortal unicorn build that existed since the betas or so :p The usage of twice the sigil of endurance per weapon is novel and is sure making it stronger than at the time. I think I’ll try it in sPvP while it lasts. It was fun at the time so the same but a little stronger should be OK now.

AikijinX.6258:

In Spvp I run Perma evasion build, With 4 sigils of energy in my dagger sets. The sigils stack and work. You guys can test it out yourself. Just need to wait a half a sec for the endurance to kick in on swap. If you interrupt the 100% endurance you get back.

Those sigils have a cooldown, they shouldn’t stack together. It’s probably a bug so. The first sigil when it “procs” should throw the cooldown on the second one and it shouldn’t restore endurance at all.

Indeed, retaliation could use a visual distinction on the way the damage you receive is shown, same as confusion has.

Darth Llama.9217:

stof.9341:

Darth Llama.9217:

So, I look around the net and I can’t find anywhere that ANet has ever verified that there will be Ascended Gear beyond trinkets. Have they ever actually said that there will be Ascended Armor and Weapons?

Yes. They said :
- Legendaries will have improved stats to match Ascended weapons cause Legendaries are supposed to be the best. The fact the improved stats were available (as a mistake) for one day when the first ascended items were released is proof enough they well intend to do it.
- Some ANet dev said they’ll be releasing ascended weapons for guild commendations.

I’m sure there are other examples.

Is there a source where someone from ANet officially said this? Not calling you a liar or anything, just that the only news I have seen like this is from people on forums. I have never seen anything on this from ANet.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

The first one is old and was I though kind of common knowledge. ANet did say they intend to release a full ascended kit over time though.

The second one isn’t a certainty. They don’t want to commit to anything anyway but they did post :

Ascended weapons may be available from guild content at some point in the future, but that hasn’t been decided yet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Rejoice-Small-Guilds-Guild-Mission-Blog-Post/first#post1682308

Darth Llama.9217:

So, I look around the net and I can’t find anywhere that ANet has ever verified that there will be Ascended Gear beyond trinkets. Have they ever actually said that there will be Ascended Armor and Weapons?

Yes. They said :
- Legendaries will have improved stats to match Ascended weapons cause Legendaries are supposed to be the best. The fact the improved stats were available (as a mistake) for one day when the first ascended items were released is proof enough they well intend to do it.
- Some ANet dev said they’ll be releasing ascended weapons for guild commendations.

I’m sure there are other examples.

I don’t see how a GC thief can 1vX at all. You cannot down anything. The moment you stop to finish someone, you are dead. If you don’t, they easily get healed back into the fight.

Well I think they should look at Evasive Arcana in water. The fact it allows elementalists to use every 10s a spell that usually has 40s cooldown and 0.75s cast time should probably be considered OP. Especially when that spell is an AoE heal of good power combined with a condition removal effect.

Withdraw and Roll for Initiative remove Chilled and Cripple though. Also, you might be a little slow in turning your camera if you don’t gain distance with Roll for Initiative. Withdraw itself is a little short yeah.

Also, when you chain both together, you only have to turn your camera once so it adds up quickly.

Well, Obsidian Shards are used to make Mystic Clovers. Which is a 33% chance result of a recipe you make T6 crafting materials with. Would using your Obsidian Shards in that recipe be worth it? The T6 mats you get when you “fail” making Mystic Clovers are tradable.

Static Field is a spell that stuns people that cross it. As such, it is very efficient on the way it’ll stun the whole zer since a stuned player cannot cross another static field and use it’s charges.

From a recent WvW fight where the whole way inside a tower was littered with AoE circles 100% of the time, not to mention the lines of warding and other movement denial AoEs, I must say, no.

Without the AoE cap, it wouldn’t take a lot of players to permanently deny a chokepoint with nothing you could do to prevent it.

If you want to go the “precast towards chokepoint all day” boring gameplay, just build enough siege weapons which have a much higher AoE limit than player skills and fire them continuously.

Seeing as how Retaliation can proc 10 times against one use of a skill like the Flamethrower autoattack or Pistol Whip, all that while each individual hit from those skills does pitiful damage, and against some other class that dumps all his weapon cooldowns at once, it would only proc 5 times, I think something is broken.

Retaliation doesn’t punish skill spammers, it punishes multi-hit skills which is a weird thing to do.

It makes the Flamethrower kit of the engineer even more useless. Since it’s the coolest weapon in the whole game, it shouldn’t be.