Guild Wars 2

If you can change your win rate that fast, your MMA rating’s volatility is still high.

Hey, I don’t see Martin in this list!

Yeah, that bug isn’t fixed. It was still happening last night.

What about just a shorter evade time? I’d be ok with that, you’d still be able to dodge the big damage skills and CC but you couldn’t spam it endlessly.

Amaterasu.6280:

I do think they need to fix the animation somehow.

What do you think would be a good way to do this?

Now that I’ve had a couple of months to reflect on the shortbow changes (I didn’t want to post a knee jerk rage post), here’s what I think:

Thief is by far my favourite class in the game, and of all of the kits you can play on thief, I love using shortbow the most. It may not be the most damage (flat or condi), and it may not have the most range or the fastest attacks, but I always felt the shortbow kit just synergized so well with itself.

A while back, ANET rightfully decided that it needed to tone down the shortbow’s perma-evade — and their solution was to add a little scoot/shuffle after cast to the end of disabling shot that can’t be cancelled or dodged out of (you CAN however weapon swap out of it). During this after cast, the thief is a sitting duck for anyone/anything that has the timing (or the luck in some cases) down to chop your glassy head off.

Now, I still agree (as a thief main, that says something) that the evades were too strong, but now disabling shot really feels much worse (to the point that I don’t even want to use the skill) and as a result, makes playing shortbow thief feel much worse. I don’t think this was ANET’s intention, and I’d like to ask all of you thief players if you can think of another way to handle the perma-evade problem without needing to add an after cast to disabling shot. Perhaps adding a second skill use, similar to what they did with flanking strike on sword/dagger would work.

Fellow thieves, what do you think? (Please no thief still OP, why buff? posts)

Most kids are just mad (umad bro etc.)

Precursor prices are nuts right now (so are legendaries) — I’ve seen them on TP up over 1000g. Nailed it.

the sober ninja.6539:

Being able to apply a legendary skin infinitely (and use it in more game modes) will definitely increase the demand for legendary weapons. Expect prices of legendary weapons to go up. Might want to consider buying some of the components (like precursor) before patch if you’re in the market.

Now you will never know if I’m a scrub or about to wipe the floor with you.

So, since Allie took a new job, who is supposed to be our ANET forum champion?

(I nominate Grouch for an encore performance)

Sigil of paralyzation will increase daze duration, but not stack on top of the duration given from mesmer runes. I was mistaken above.

Sigil of paralyzation will only increase stun duration, not daze duration.

Just tested it in PvE and it looks like the duration is increased (easier to notice b/c of longer duration).

I’m going to test this out a little more tonight, but if anyone else has looked into it I’d be interested to see the results.

I’ve tried valk + wurm runes, works well.

Is the daze duration on tactical strike increased by runes of the mesmer?

I’ve tested it, and it doesn’t seem like the daze duration is increased, but I haven’t tested it particularly rigorously.

Can anyone confirm?

WvW thieves thinking they’re better than Caed and Jumper? I mean come on. For one thing, when you fight a really good thief, you can’t just OoC like pretty much every thief does in WvW — cheap tricks like that don’t work on high tier thieves.

There’s a handful of high skill thieves in this game, and it’s pretty safe to say that most of them have played an awful lot of sPvP. After all sPvP is the place where you get the most combat experience per unit time, period.

I can definitely get on board with this!

nickcosta.8256:

Just leaving this here…

Yes I had a really fun and squishy build but seriously!? Why is the system allowing me to get one-shot into oblivion!? Whatever build one uses this shouldn’t happen..

You are a glass ele. Last I checked they were light armour class…

Justin ODell.9517:

JinDaVikk.7291:

Horrid dragon finisher.

We can’t please everyone.

Pretty sure the dragon doesn’t look like a typical spirit.

butch.8136:

You can buy em at the weaponsmith in HOTM.

Yeah, but you still load into PvP with the weapon you’ve been using in the rest of the game. I think that PvP and PvE weapon can be independent with very few, if any, downsides. They just need to make the weapon selectable from the PvP menu.

This would make it, presumably, easy to migrate the system towards one that has build templates (at least for PvP).

Alliance Battles?

I think these solutions are probably simple enough to implement to make our quality of life way better. On top of what wardrobe and all the other stuff is doing to help our QoL.

I don’t want to accidentally load into my PvP build with my PvE or WvW builds’ weapon set. It would be nice if the the weapon were selectable from the PvP menu (this may conflict with some new wardrobe stuff) and I think that as long as we have the weapon needed for the PvP build selected in our inventory, we should just load in with that one. If there is no weapon in your inventory, you load into the match without an item in the weapon slot. To fix that problem, add a weapon token generator to the PvP build menu, and if you must, you can make it cost a few silver or w/e to match what it costs in HotM.

This would also allow us to more easily jump in and out of PvP from outside of the HotM (like LA or equivalent) — which is where I need to be to take care of all of the materials and stuff you get. So for that matter, add a bank and TP to HotM.

Added constructive criticism: Please add a way to toggle the fade in/out effects on the wardrobe UI. They’re too slow.

Lol perma stealth was nerfed.

Now that we get lots of PvE stuff, we need a bank, TP, merch, etc. in HotM to deal with it all. Make it happen, it’s in everyone’s best interest.

What changed specifically?

Have it a little early this year?

bhagwad.4281:

“Thank you red/blue team for leaving your point undefended”Playing dirty?

Forcing the other team to notice that their home point is capped. It will increase enemy response times, and no one wants that.

Although, I will say that high level PvP (in any game) is more about being unpredictable and out-witting your opponent than it is about actual killing ability.

Branden Gee.2150:

soon™.

Branden Gee.2150:

™

Made my day lol

Allie Murdock.8152:

the sober ninja.6539:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,
As of tomorrow, I will no longer be a part of the ArenaNet team. I have accepted a job offer elsewhere, and it will be a big step in my career path.
Allie

Kind of wondering if Allie know about this when she did the RU interview!

I did not

Life happens fast!

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,
As of tomorrow, I will no longer be a part of the ArenaNet team. I have accepted a job offer elsewhere, and it will be a big step in my career path.
Allie

Kind of wondering if Allie know about this when she did the RU interview!

There is already a random button, and I don’t think it would benefit the community to take away the option to be able to select the team to play on the same team as friends and guildies.

IMO increasing incentives to switch is the way to go. If it were 1g (for example) for volunteering, everyone would do it and we wouldn’t have stacked teams nearly as often.

I know that most of you tryhard kids don’t like to acknowledge that hotjoin servers even exist, but the problem of unbalanced teams is a problem in hotjoins just like it is a problem in queued matches (though its not as important for obvious reasons, and this post isn’t about that).

If hotjoins are to be used as a training place for new players (or casuals), it is in everyone’s best interest to increase the incentive to keep the teams balanced. There are a few ways to do this, but I think that perhaps the best way would be to give extra gold to people who volunteer to balance the teams.

Personally, I almost always volunteer to balance the teams. It’s better for everyone: more competitive, more fun, and the result is a much better learning environment for new players. Not to mention, team switch wins are just more satisfying.

All we need is more incentive to volunteer switch.

Skyhammer farming has been dead for a long time. Let it go bros.

Demonts.4593:

They have probably the lowest amount of AOE damage, top 2 lowest survival if you dont count running away in stealth and doing nothing for your team. All they can do is burst people and with this tanky crap a burst only takes away about 33 percent of health… BUFF THIEVES

Just wait until crit damage nerfs.

XacTactX.6709:

Guardian stolen mace head crack is a 4 second daze. I don’t think this skill is significantly stronger than the guardian one, not enough to require a nerf. Feel free to counter my claim I haven’t done an in depth comparison on the two.

The difference is a stun versus a daze. Daze is way more dangerous than stuns.

nerovergil.5408:

omg another theif cry nerf thread

Bro, I main thief and still think this skill is OP.

I don’t think that the thief steal skills that they get from other players is OP, just the ones that they get from random PvE enemies. There’s a reason you don’t get these in SPvP, because a 3 second stun is crazy long.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Long term goals aren’t a bad thing. Even after the re-balance, it will take the average player a very long time to reach 80 and will still be the long term goal for most people.

It’s important to have goals for different time commitments. Short term goal could be reward tracks or some skins. Medium term goals could be season rewards and a ladder. Long terms goals could be a legendary, rank 80 (for most people) or possibly multi-season rewards and yearly tournaments.

What kind of long-term rewards would people like to see? Maybe a rank 80 ‘prestige’ system is something to explore.

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the rank finisher lately. I think that something that might make the community happy is to add new finishers @ certain ranks past 80 (maybe @ r150 or r200), and make them super long term goals. Perhaps a balthazar finisher or a grenth finisher, or maybe a dragon finisher— but with the GW dragons (like Glint or Zhaitan or something). Whatever it is, it has to be epic if we’re to be expected to put lots of time in to unlock it.

So you guys think that skills like bone crack (which is better than my elite skill) are fair and balanced?

I still think it’s pretty OP.

bhagwad.4281:

Ultimately I feel that many people seem to have a problem just knowing that someone has reached a unachievable (to them) goal. So they say “Ranks don’t mean anything”, while at the same time being vociferous supporters of the removal of ranks. Why? Because when it comes down to it, ranks do mean something – at least to them. Otherwise there would be no reason to remove it.

Well lets be frank here, if ranks really didn’t mean anything, and no one cared about them, than no one would be talking about it on the forums. A-Net planned to remove ranks, but after they got an overwhelming flood of player feedback in support of keeping ranks (and making them attainable), they decided to take it in a different direction. We were probably very close to losing rank finishers all together — if that happened we only would be left with whatever prestigous rewards the ladder system gives us.

Teutos.8620:

With the launch of the April 2014 Feature Pack, we’ll be activating the megaserver system on our level 1–15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby.

Is this ligit? Where did you find that quote?

bhagwad.4281:

1. Higher ranked players like OE who are r70+ should not be shafted and get rewarded less than r55+ players when it comes to retroactive chests.

This is definately an unfortunate outcome, though I think its the principal of the thing that OE is concerned with, not the actual reward chests that he’s losing out on. 15 reward chests or whatever isn’t worth complaining about itself, it’s the principal of the thing.

bhagwad.4281:

2. Any form of progression is cool. Whether it’s ranks or tourney wins or whatever. The idea is to always have a higher goal to reach. At no point should someone say “I’ve achieved it all. Now I have no more goals to reach and no more reasons to play”.

Yeah, I kind of feel like I’ve “beat the game” as far as PvP is concerned. This is why I’d like to see a whole bunch of achievments added along with the rest of the stuff coming on feature patch day.

bhagwad.4281:

The problem with leaderboards and MMRs is that they’re temporary. You lose progression if you stop playing, or experiment with a new build and lose repeatedly. I think that’s wrong. Progression should be permanent. Else no one will want to do anything different. Rewards once given should not be taken away.

An unranked queue that still uses matchmaking might be nice for this reason.

So SPvP has been pretty neglected since GW2 release. We always got crappy rewards (excluding wintersday) and no one deals with the frustrating OP meta builds more than SPvPers. Thankfully though, come the 15th PvPers are going to get a little love from A-Net. The crappy part, like most A-Net patches, is this love won’t be realized without a few downsides getting in the way (its hard to keep everyone happy).

The Dragon Rank Controversy

If you played GW1, you’re probably not a stranger to obscenely high requirements to get a respectable PvP rank. The GW1 PvP community used to use these ranks as a way of gaining prestige. Understandably, this mindset continued with the release of GW2 and the ridciulous rank point requirement to get dragon only strengthened it.

A-Net has said multiple times (even on multiple community forums) that the current ranking system is too unattainable, even to the hardcore players that have the time to play all day everyday. This is the core reason why ranks had to change. Now, because the PvP community historically attaches prestige to the ranks, lowering the requirements to get dragon rank correspondingly lowers the prestige associated with dragon rank (and all of the ranks below it). A-Net knows this, and they said on last week’s Ready Up that it is not in their vision of GW2 to have these ranks be the measure of prestige, but rather the new ladder system will be used for that purpose. No one really likes change that much, especially when ranks have been associated with PvP prestige since the release of GW1
(back in 2005). It is only natural that changing the measure prestige that players have used for nearly 10 years would foster some community unrest.

With that said, I don’t feel like I deserve Dragon rank, I would even be willing to bet that some rank 70s don’t even feel like they deserve dragon rank. Dragon rank has been so unattainable to most people that I can’t imagine anyone truly feeling like they deserve it. What we need to keep in mind though, is that ranks are not supposed to be a measure of prestige anymore. Ladder rewards will fulfill that role, and I’m confident that A-Net can pull it off.

Rewards for PvP

Reward tracks are a nice start for helping PvPers get over their monetary problems; but essentially they’re PvE rewards (A-Net calls them GW2 rewards), that we will then be able to sell on the TP (or do whatever) and make money. I’m 100% ok with the new reward track system, I try to play all of the areas of the game, and being able to work towards whatever I want just feels like freedom.

PvP players are also indirectly getting very rewarded with the new wardrobe system. High ranks are more likely to have more skins in their PvP locker that will become automatically available through the wardrobe come feature patch day. I think that a lot of PvPers are undervaluing A-Nets decision to give us all of these skins. You gotta think that PvE/WvW kids’ wardrobes are starting off with the clothes on their backs and nothing more, where we will all have 100s of skins immediately available (some of which cost 100s of gold on TP for the PvE version).

Achievments in PvP

Since the top 1% of spvp ranks (r54-55+) will be dragon rank, that means that we will all have most of the achievments in the PvP tab maxed out (all the way up to Legendary Champion). I would very much like to see more achievments added to keep us busy until the new ladder system is underway. Adding tiers (and new titles) to the champion titles would be a very nice start — 150 wins isn’t much.

Conclusion

I’m hopeful for the future of GW2 PvP, I’m kind of sad that tons of Dragon ranks will be born on the 15th (me included), but I think that we’ll all get over it. There’s no disputing the fact that the ranking system had to change, and as long as the ladder system rewards properly give us the prestige that we feel we’re losing with the with the Dragon rank busniess, then I think we’ll all be better off. It’s a bold move by A-Net, but like I said, I’m hopeful for the future.

SharpShot.9508:

My suggestion is that we expand the Champion titles to be beyond 150 tournament wins and display on your character, (e.g. Champion Shadow II, Champion Shadow III and so on…)

I would love to see more tiers (and associated titles – like ‘Legendary Shadow’ or something) added on to the champion titles. 150 wins really isn’t that much, and since most of us are getting the majority of the PvP titles auto-completed on the 15th, we will all need more achievments to work towards while waiting for the new ladder system.

If A-Net gives us all of the PvP titles (ransacker, mist walker, etc.) to the point where none of us have much left to do, what will we work towards? This is especially important when you consider the very high ranked players who will probably have every single pvp title completed. A-Net needs to give us more achievments, if only to offset the 500 or so achievment points they’re handing out essentially for free come feature patch day.

S/D is not burst. It can hit hard, but it doesn’t one shot anyone like a backstab can. The reason S/D is so kitten is mostly because of the unblockable larcenous strike. Evades just help make it viable, and the Lyssa rune nerf that’s incoming isn’t doing anything to help S/D thieves.

Ugruk.4069:

I thought on the ready up they said they were retroactive (made sense at least)

Dev forum post corrected that.

Raph is Chilled.8304:

Right now it is very hard to kill a good thief even if he is not attacking you and that is because of evade spamming.

Good thieves don’t spam.

A thief keeps their steal skills until they’re used. That means that a thief can steal Bone Crack from some ogre, have it for 20 minutes, and then use it to absolutely face roll someone at their convenience.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

the sober ninja.6539:

When theives steal they get skills based on the profession that they’re stealing from. If a thief steals to an NPC (like a vet ogre), they have a chance to get other skills. One of these skills is Bone Crack. It STUNS (not daze like thieves from guards) for 3 seconds, which is a long time. I play thief and I think this is way too OP for an environment where PvP happens.

To put it into perspective, this stun has twice as long a duration (and a 1/4 sec cast) as Basilisk Venom, which is an elite skill.

TBH I’m suprised it has lasted this long. I think the best solution would be to make it so you can only steal certain skills in WvW (only the ones we get from players), even from ogres and other PvE.

Thoughts?

You could always bring along a stun breaker to deal with it.

A single-use, 3-second stun attack is nowhere near as powerful as the many spammable and stackable immobilizes/conditions or chainable hard cc you’ll run into frequently in WvW.

Of course you can bring a stun breaker to deal with stuns, that a given.

But if a thief knows that you’re likely out of stunbreakers (maybe they basilisk venom first or something) and then hits you with a 3 second stun, you’re basically kittened. Even 22222 spam can take care of someone stunned for 3 seconds.

A one min bleed is strong, but its not the damage from the bleeds that is the problem, its the out of combat thing. The solution mentioned in the OP post would fix this problem too.

I’ve personally wasted so many roamers with bone crack, its not even fair to go up against it. Most people don’t assume that a thief has a 3 second stun at their disposal.