Guild Wars 2

Melonamen.1275:

Uh, I don’t know about you, but until now, I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying there was no progression or anything to keep them interested (including complaints of no gear progression). And it wasn’t just here and there either, these complaints were being brought at least as much as this issue is being brought up now.

And how many players were pretty fine with the ways it was so they didn’t have to complain about something before?

How many players NEED the way it was and would actively complain and leave if things changed?

souldonkey.9534:

READ. READ BEFORE YOU POST.

It says (even in your quote) ITEMS. not ARMOR. ITEMS. ITEMS. ITEMS.

Ascended ITEMS being better than Exotic ITEMS != GEAR treadmill. There has been no indication that any ARMOR or GEAR is Ascended. Just that there are NEW (leading to believe not things in the game currently) ITEMS that are of Ascended quality.

L2Read please.

Hmm, let me bold it for you

“The patch will introduce ascended items. Ascended armors are “slightly more powerful than exotics” and can, in some cases, hold slots for infusions. Infusions will allow you to increase your character’s power."

Is that clear enough?

souldonkey.9534:

People are losing their minds over nothing here. Nothing has been explained here. The only thing that even your precious news sites said was that the ascended “items” are better than exotics. That does not mean they will be required for anything. That does not mean it’s a new tier of armor. That does not mean that you’re exotic armor is worthless.

That. does. not. mean. anything. People are blowing this out of proportion with having little to no information about it. Even the “news” sites people seem so fond of referring to don’t have anything on them more than “they’re better than exotic”. NOWHERE does it say anything about Ascended Items even being armor.

They are better! How can they not make Exotics obsolete? Why aren’t you playing with all level 80 blues and telling people around you that it doesn’t matter, exotics are only slightly better anyway.

If they are only 1% better, why make them better in the first place and put that much emphasis on the fact? If they are really better, why wouldn’t they make Exotics obsolete?

Also, let me repeat that

“The patch will introduce ascended items. Ascended armors are “slightly more powerful than exotics” and can, in some cases, hold slots for infusions. Infusions will allow you to increase your character’s power."

Notice the “Ascended armors are (…)” part. Here you go, Ascended armor is better than exotic armor.

souldonkey.9534:

Arenanet didn’t say that. A game news site did. Arenanet said that Ascended Items are “ancient and powerful artifacts” which is vague as kitten.

And all those different news site pulled that exact same info out of nowhere? Was that some collective hallucination and ArenaNet never said anything of the like in their press release? And putting links to those news sites on their official Twitter without any problem, without any remark isn’t saying that they see no problem with what was posted?

They sure said they’ll post some blog thing to explain everything. But people have the right to be scared of such info just because it was presented in such a way. It is THEIR fault this is happening.

souldonkey.9534:

Or maybe people should take responsibility for their own immature temper tantrums and not jump to conclusions over said vague information. Anet has ALWAYS been vague about their info. Why is this still surprising to people? When will people learn to not flip out over these kinds of announcements?

What is vague about :

“The patch will introduce ascended items. Ascended armors are “slightly more powerful than exotics” and can, in some cases, hold slots for infusions. Infusions will allow you to increase your character’s power."

I’m not a native English but my grasp of the language is rather good. For me it’s written “the patch will introduce Ascended armors which are better than Exotic”

souldonkey.9534:

And what? It was a bad mechanic that they never revisited? Did you even play any of the other campaigns? They literally had it in every one. Closer to the Stars in Factions, and Lightbringer track for damaging margonites in Nightfall.

Closer to the Stars was purely a story line component. The only thing it technically did was allow Factions characters to class change like Ascended did and like, wait what did Nightfall chars needed to unlock class change which required you to be Ascended or Closer to the Stars to do in the other factions ? Just visit the new rebel hideout. They didn’t even say to you why it unlocked class change somehow.

The Lightbringer title was just that, a title you could equip which in my opinion was far far less of a pain than infusing new armor sets.

Asomal.6453:

stof.9341:

Asomal.6453:

Not really. If the thief have traited for full defensive Shadow Arts, condition builds won’t help much.

In all cases, the only way that thief would have that many stealth is by using C&D again and again, which requires him to be in melee range. So, dodging it and kitting him the rest of the time should be enough to “counter” it.

You can use the D/P combo ( Heartseeker + Blinding Power) which is much, much better. Not only it eliminates the necessity staying close to your target, but also you get the amazing blinding condition that completly destroy any melee dependent build, and it’s very useful to stomp. Plus, your Heartseeker hits before going stealth, that way you don’t get the revealed debuff.

I wasn’t aware that shortbow ranger was considered a melee dependent build. Also, D/P uses a lot of initiative to stealth.

Asomal.6453:

Not really. If the thief have traited for full defensive Shadow Arts, condition builds won’t help much.

In all cases, the only way that thief would have that many stealth is by using C&D again and again, which requires him to be in melee range. So, dodging it and kitting him the rest of the time should be enough to “counter” it.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

How is this thief using his healing skill once every 5 seconds?

Maybe both players fall asleep for one minute each time the thief uses his stealth + heal skill?

Anyway, I’m not sure which build he was using but kitten I sure want that many on demand stealth utilities XD

We want no gear treadmills in this game. We were promised that.

Now let’s just wait for that blog post and stop bickering about the subject. If on the other hand you want to justly complain about such scare tactics from ArenaNet, feel free :o

blazer.7942:

It’s still there, and they get stealth from stealing if they’ve traited it so it’s silly to completely dismiss it. Why does the downed skill not count? Has it never saved you ever? Seriously, instead of trying to belittle others try to see their point first.

They had no point to begin with. OMG, thief got 250 stealth skills ! Nerf ! Wait, any trait you get is another trait you cannot select. Any utility you equip is another utility you have to pass by.

Stealing a thief is hardly an interesting thing to do unless forced. Stealing a mesmer clone is stupid, and anyway you do get random items out of them. The downed stealth is just two miserable seconds, it starts in CD and, it’s a downed skill! I must proudly say that this skill barely never saved my life, it only bought me 2s usually.

Then we get to :

- Instinctual Response : automatic stealth when you lose 20% health in one hit, 60s CD. You know this thing actually caused me to die already? Because it triggers out of my control, I ended up with the Revealed debuff at an unwanted moment and lost initiative on a C&D because of it.
- Last Refuge is the same as above, and you cannot even not take it
- The stealth on Steal trait is actually detrimental to the full Backstabk combo since it prevents you from using the C&D=>Steal=>Backstab combo.

Then let’s compare. You knew that mesmers got 4 skills that grant stealth, one trait and one downed too? And it’s their 2 downed which is always available.

blazer.7942:

stof.9341:

blazer.7942:

I looked up “cloak and dagger” on the wiki… when I saw it was only 3s duration, I knew that couldn’t be what he used because I could have sworn he was stealth for well over 10 seconds (I know because he kept hitting my traps) so I looked if they had anything else…. They have… 8 stealth skills…. I knew they had at least 3 or 4, but wow.

Well, we could have 100 stealth skills we are still limited to 3 utilities and one healing.

Let’s see :

- Dagger 5 skill Cloak&Dagger
- Healing skill Hide in Shadows
- That fancy shadowstep + 5s stealth trap utility
- Blinding powder utility
- Shadow Refuge utility

Hmm, that’s 5 skills. What are the 3 other?

From http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth
1. Cloak and Dagger, 2. Hide in Shadows, 3. Blinding Powder, 4. Shadow Refuge, 5. Shadow Trap, 6. Blinding Tuft, 7. Throw Feathers, 8. Smoke Bomb. Not sure how often you can get the stealth items through steal, though, but it’s still technically an option

6 : stolen item (in PvP, stolen from thieves themselves)
7 : stolen item with the EXACT same effect as 6 but different icon and animation
8 : downed skill 2

At best, you might plead for 6 stealth skills, not 8. It helps when you know the class to talk about it though.

blazer.7942:

I looked up “cloak and dagger” on the wiki… when I saw it was only 3s duration, I knew that couldn’t be what he used because I could have sworn he was stealth for well over 10 seconds (I know because he kept hitting my traps) so I looked if they had anything else…. They have… 8 stealth skills…. I knew they had at least 3 or 4, but wow.

Well, we could have 100 stealth skills we are still limited to 3 utilities and one healing.

Let’s see :

- Dagger 5 skill Cloak&Dagger
- Healing skill Hide in Shadows
- That fancy shadowstep + 5s stealth trap utility
- Blinding powder utility
- Shadow Refuge utility

Hmm, that’s 5 skills. What are the 3 other?

sPvP isn’t competitive PvP that’s why :o It’s a cesspool of low skill players in a zerg vs zerg fight gamemode where a strong burst has more chances to give you some “kill” than careful and skillful play. And since the scoring system rewards kills, in that zerg environment the scoring system is very close to a combined burst/DPS check which glass cannon thieves excel at.

All signets are worth activating except maybe the Signet of Shadows but even so this is borderline. For the later, I’d rather take an AoE blind which could mean life or death and the additional 5 stacks of might and 2 initiative one can get from that can be worth it. When you are already stuck in a fight, the move speed is nice but not THAT important.

Signet of Agility, I actually take it more as a condition removal skill than the tiny crit chance boost.

The shadowstep signet one is awesome for good for both usages

And the Signet of malice is the only one I do NOT want to use but at times, my life is just plain too low and I have to take the time to use it to my great displeasure :/

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I mean if the stat stick and inscriptions only apply to that dungeon (let’s say that outside the dungeon, the gear is only as good as exotics), then should we really care? Treadmill folks get their treadmill without affecting everyone else’s experience… why is that bad?

Try taking a 2 month break from the game, coming back and getting rejected from all groups for that dungeon because your gear score is too low :o

Rottaran Owain.6789:

To be honest, there’s practically no point to using the active effect of the assassin’s signit now.

If you’ve got a power of say, 1800, the +90 passive is an extra 5% damage. The difference between active, and passive is not nearly enough to justify the 40-ish seconds of downtime, and the skill goes from gimmicky to rather pointless.

Then there was little reason to use it before too isn’t it? Well there was one : burst > not burst, especially when you expect non fighting downtime right after to let the signet recharge. And another reason : using a signet gives me 5 stacks of might and 2 initiative.

Also isn’t power added to weapon damage to get your “attack”? On a power oriented build you should be at around 3k attack on average. 90 power is 3% of that only.

Edelweiss.9815:

You’re getting nerfed. Learn how to get over it.

Remains to be seen. If it’s a nerf like Assassin Signet for example :o

Could be nice if you could “slot” any preexisting exotic with that thing instead of having to drop brand new stuff.

I seem to remember than GW1 added such “slot” thing in their weapons with the Nightfall expansion, isn’t it? The “inscriptions” or something.

Don’t take it too badly. Even in a perfectly balanced games you’ll see call for nerfs for every single class happening in the forums because you’ll always meet someone who things what you use is OP.

This is because for a lot of players, the definition of OP is : I lost against it. Just keep your head cool about it and wait for the next big patch changes first.

Funny, I don’t mind the tab targeting much myself but losing track of my mouse cursor happens often and is very very annoying when you use ground targeting skills with the fast cast ground target mode.

I’d say bodyshot only has two uses :
- it’s a 100% projectile combo finisher on a not too expensive cost with the added bonus it applies vulnerability XD
- it’s a good way to kill the guild claiming NPCs faster when they got their buff

Edge.4180:

Knote.2904:

Yeah it makes TOTAL sense!

Let me just throw this fireball at this guy and….. GAAH, MY LEG!

Seriously, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just balanced the game around a single base movement speed.

They very easily could have, but I guarantee you the speed they would have chosen is the one that we use currently in combat. And then everyone would be complaining about how long it takes to travel between fights.

Most complaints are because jumping puzzles are nearly impossible to do while in combat mode. Which is another pain on top of the skilless trap jumping puzzle campers in WvW. It’s a PvP zone there, not a PvFall or PvSpikes XD

Undermine.1678:

This suggestion would bring into balance the class and return it to play as intended. It is not a big hassle to move out of line of sight, Thieves normally already do this to break combat to heal up.

Play as intended? Who are you to decide that?

Nearly all MMOs have stealth in the form of non combat stealth. Most such skills cannot be used in combat at all and are long duration invisibility. When those games add combat stealth it is usually in the form of a rare long CD skill to be used only in emergencies to disengage. Aion even gave you a lot of speed on that one.

GW2 is the polar opposite of most MMOs on that aspect. All stealths last a very very short time : 3s. More or less only shadow refuge breaks the mold by making you stand still to get a longer duration. All stealth skills are in fact more “in combat” skills than out of combat. And you came and say more or less that we shouldn’t make use of them in combat freely ?

Taobella.6597:

Lol yesterday i hit a group of player for total of 45k dmg(15×3k dmg splash roughly why they where stacking i have no idea) with 1 auto swing of sword and dagger

Of course, considering nearly all AoE in this game is capped at 5 targets, except those like the thief sword attacks which are capped at 3, I doubt you hit 15 targets in a skill.

DesertRose.2031:

“Behind the target” is an 180° arc, so it’s not that easy to avoid.
And pretty much anyone who isn’t trolling has agreed that Backstab itself isn’t the problem but its synergy with other skills and the Shortbow.

It’s behind, not behind or flanks. It’s more strict than a 180° arc.

sorrow.2364:

Sorry sir, but… what?
PW is 3/4-1s channel skill, just sayin. In fact while the stun lasts 1/2 seconds, it last about half or more of the channel.
The wiki also agrees with me.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip

The other part about the S key is completely extraneus to me, what are you talking about? Have I posted any gameplay of me abusing of the S key?

PW has a cast time and a channel time. The 3/4s is the cast time. During that part, we can still move and nothing of worth happens. Then the attack with the stun procs, a little delay happens and the “cannot move while evading and doing a flurry of sword strikes” part starts.

All in all, you do more or less two PW in a single Haste duration so I’d say as a rough guess that the total PW duration from start to finish is around 4s or slightly more.

It’s very hard to reach 18k damage in sPvP without heavy might or vulnerability/frenzy stacking now. Any such vid is probably obsolete and was done before the signet of assassin nerf.

+Healing increases the amount you and your friends will leach per venom hit. It both increases your damage output and your survivability.

Also, stealth skills often carry a healing component if you trait or use the right utility too. There is a reason why the stealth trait route boosts your healing power.

But anyway, the healing part isn’t that important. You can try the WvWvW stuff with power, toughness, vitality to get great survivability too.

Anyway, if you are going for a classic venom share build, you should try the leeching venom variant for 1v1 efficiency.

Leeching venom is actually good armor ignoring damage. And when you got a lot of pets around you, it multiplies that damage by a lot. So you focus on two things :
- getting as many pets as possible (ambush trap, rune of the ogre and thief guild elite are the main 3 sources)
- getting venoms with as many charges as possible (poison venom, additional charge trait).

And remember one thing : if you use two poisons at once, the leech effect will only proc once per attack so try to make sure you and your pets finished using a poison before you use the next one.

You could try using the Cleric item sets for Healing Power primary and Power and Toughness secondaries. More healing power = more life leeched per venom charge. And I think it actually becomes a nice healing supplement in dungeon runs! There you can drop ambush and thief’s guild to take an utility adapted to the fight or another poison and the elite poison.

You know, if you run a build focused on healing, it would be more natural to put a secondary focus on toughness than on vitality.

But in GW1, money was extremely hard to come by at start too and most of the good sources where added later. There’s no monthly fee so just take a break and come back to see the next content update.

Which is somewhere between this WE and next WE :o

Ahm.3952:

Problem: Locking skills into certain weapons is restrictive. End of story.

Question: ok it is restrictive yes, but why is it bad and needs to be fixed?

Dodge after they vanish then.

Technically, in sPvP you cannot do a pure berzerker set so the damage output at max is slightly lower.

Confusion is kitten strong already in PvE you know. My engineer uses it to kill stuff far above his level with ease.

It’s not very useful against champions though because you have to let the mob attack as much as it wants which means mitigating the damage they do rather than kitting them to maximize the confusion efficiency.

penatbater.4710:

so far only prices of t6 is what scares me yet again x.x esp vial of blood t6.

Well, if you want berzerker stuff, go farm the Crucible of Eternity and buy it there then :o As a bonus, you might loot some of the Charged Lodestones which are insanely expensive currently and get some nice money while helping solve this specific issue at the same time.

The first time I went to a level 1-15 zone to complete it on my exotic geared level 80 (magic find mind you, not berserk) I twoshot the first veteran mob I met. I don’t think you should be rewarded with much better stuff for doing that.

Grazingcattle.1627:

I never understood the problem with bots. The people most effected by bots are hardcore farmers. Why? because bots increased the supply ten fold and in Econ 101 we learn that when you have more suppliers the consumer benefits.

But I still see bots from time to time. Not as much as before though.

Bots make all items normal players can farm themselves dirt cheap and at the same time insert so much money on the economy that the rarest items become affordable by the ultra rich only.

Think of the current precursor prices for example.

Looks like it, others that were in my group got disconnected, updated and cannot rejoin either. Sucks really.

I just got disconnected from the in the middle of a boss fight because of a “wrong password” despite playing since an hour already. I restarted the game without problem but I get a login server error message when trying to reenter the instance now.

The error code is 19:9:181614:101

sorrow.2364:

But the damage is still less.
Anyway you are comparing 2 skills which are in the same bar.. This doesn’t make so much sense.
Also, when dazing your opponent, you are going to get the revealed debuff for 3 seconds, which make you exposed for that amount of time while, with FS, you get about a second of evade without drawbacks.
Plus, while you can use FS for 3-4 times in a row, you can use the daze combo only 2 times with your initiative bar, dealing also less damage and, most important, without stripping any boon.
Don’t understimate the boon stripping effect.

No, the damage is more. Tactical Strike does more damage when it connects than the first hit of Flanking Strike. With a level 10 trait, the daze combo only costs 4 initiative too. With the Mesmer runes the daze lasts nearly as long as the revealed debuff.

Mavec.7469:

Because you can do 3 pistol whips in the time it takes for 100b to cast completely. All while evading for a good portion of it and dazing 3 times. If you want 100 blades play a warrior.

No you cannot. You have no idea how long it takes to Pistol Whip. Hint : the attack doesn’t start as soon as you press the button. There’s first a 0.75s cast time before the stun happens, then a small delay then the flurry animation with evade starts. All in all, I’d say it’s a full 2s time from start to finish. Hundred blades is a 3.5s channel skill. You cannot even do 2 full Pistol Whips in the duration of one Hundred Blades. Btw, it’s not a Daze, it’s a 0.5s stun.

sorrow.2364:

So 4 initiative to stip a boon, evade and deal decent damage are more than enough.
Still, it is better than 5 initiative to apply 3 bleed stack, have a longer evade and having a good damage only if specced into conditions or using 6 initiative to have 2s of daze, less damage and 3 stacks of vulnerability.

Using 6 initiative to get 2s of daze gives you more damage than using Flanking Strike. Don’t forget that C&D hurts quite a lot by itself. It does supposedly as much damage as FS second hit.

EasymodeX.4062:

It’s balanced when you die to a 2s channel followed by a burst after being CC’d.

Why did they nerf Pistol Whip then?

From what I remember when I tried it, FS was the only skill in the game that would start working less reliably when I was using speed boosts like the signet or receiving swiftness XD I tended to overshot the target by a lot for the second string and miss it the faster I was going.

Backstab does less damage than an axe warrior third autoattack chain skill, Tripple Chop. Why would you want to nerf it even more?

You can dodge while in Stealth.

You know backstab does exactly twice as much damage as the first dagger autoattack skill right? So if you cut backstab in half will mean it does roughly the same damage or slightly more than just plain attacking your target with the 1 skill, except it’s much much harder to pull off.

I tested the Lyssa rune 6th set bonus in sPvP and it applied all the boons each time I used the Basilisk Venom on CD. I didn’t try with the shorter venom CD trait though but so far it seems reliable.

Go dual dagger and use one of each