Something like the Zaishen keys in GW1 needs to be introduced (PvP rewards with monetary value), but in a way that players are not just there to farm them.
Gear is also an area of concern. How many of you with exotic gear are playing with stats, runes, or sigils you don’t want? How many of you don’t play different builds because an entire set of new gear cost too much? How many of you don’t play more than one character in WvW because it cost too much? To me this is absolutely ridiculous.
Let’s assume for a moment that anet did come up with a new reward system for exotic WvW gear, possibly siege and upgrades too. What is the most fair way to earn it? Drops from player kills encourage more non-team player gankers, while rewards from events are favored towards night cappers that can zerg flip a whole map in no time at all. Drops from trash mobs, if they are more than whites, will encourage players to wear craptastic MF gear, while at the same time garner more players filling your queues to do nothing but trash mob. JP’s in WvW are obviously a joke that make no sense at all.
I want real rewards as much as anyone, but we also need to consider how they are earned.
It’s pretty much a joke if you want to have multiple characters with multiple gear sets and have little interest in farming PvE for gold. I outfitted my 3 characters and bought a commander tag with gold earned through TP schemes, but even that has become very difficult in the last month or so ,unless you are a plutocrat level trader that camps that TP 12 hours a day with huge amounts of gold to leverage for market manipulation.
I’m sure this is exactly what anet had in mind when they made WvW gear progression a total afterthought. I don’t really have an issue with the siege cost since it gives the pugs a reason not to siege cap everything, but the gear and leveling needs to be addressed with some sort of compromise between pure PvE and the system sPvP and GW1 PvP characters use.
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The only thing I don’t like about DB’s night capping is that our guys don’t get to have the same fun on the karma express in the morning. It’s basically first commander on with enough people to run some rams, and they get all the karma / xp without much of a fight or fun.
I only say this because I think it’s a missed opportunity to get more people to WvW on our server. Newbies love the thrill of feeling like they accomplished something, even if it’s just taking an empty keep. DB seems to have a pretty good system for zerging up and dropping the hammer with a numeric advantage…no fail boat distractions or golem rushes. They just setup all their cats and trebs in good spots, and come strait at you like a train. Wish that was something we were capable of doing.
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I regret spending so much money for gear on my engi for WvW thinking it would ever be good. They can be very useful in sieges with nades and flamethrower, and move around fairly quick with speedy kits or centaur runes + med kit, but leave so much to be desired in combat. Condi builds with pistols are basically inferior to P/D thieves and necros in every way, while power rifle type builds can’t even come close to a warrior. You will die basically every time when downed without immediate help (and still die to immediate stealth stomps).
Fact is WvW is mostly about quick, cheap kills and / or survivability…neither of which engi does particularly well. I hope there is a day when all classes are more or less equal in WvW so you don’t have to re-roll or can play multiple alts for variety, but we are nowhere close to that now.
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Just hit the 4k kill mark last night, and I’ve got a grand total of 1 low end exotic and perhaps 8-10 rares in all that play. I usually kill plenty of trash too clearing dredge, ogres, etc. in EB and to charge my sigil. The heavy loot bags do add up to something, but not nearly enough to cover the cost of helping out with upgrades or rebuilding a character with exotics…let alone daring to have a few different characters to WvW with.
I would easily rate engi the worst of the four classes I have played a significant amount of time in WvW (engi, guardian, thief, ele). Unlike the necro and ranger #2 skills, which are also pretty terrible and do nothing to stop stealth stomps or multiple stompers, the engi #2 skill does nothing to delay a stomp and assures the stomper is positioned to try again while the #3 skill is still unavailable. To add insult to injury, the engi trait for the downed state drops something you can’t even kittening use….
This is one the main reasons I no longer play my engi at all in WvW, even though it can be a challenging and rewarding class to play that is among the best for sieges.
If it were my choice, all classes would have the same downed skills, and the chance to rally would be as good as winning a free pinball game (i.e. almost none).
If culling were an easy fix, it would already be fixed…obviously the game engine has technical limitations that may or may not be fixable.
1. Siege account bound
2. Commander account bound. Commander can see total supply carried by allies in map range. Commander can type a short description of current objective (e.g. flipping camps, taking NE tower, etc.) that can be seen by hovering over icon. Players can see commander’s stats like total hours of WvW played, objectives taken, etc.
Those two are no brainers, but I doubt they will happen because of the gold sink wastage philosophy.
3. WvW utility skill slot. Small selection of classless skills that will enhance WvW and be easy to balance / modify without running into class balance problems. Here are a few ideas:
-Steroid Injection – For 60 seconds you move 50% faster, has some sort of negative aftereffect to prevent combat use, ends if you use a skill. 60 second recharge. This gives everyone equal non-combat mobility for traveling medium / long distance.
-Shield Bubble, or some other type of skill to aid in sieges
-A res skill that ties into a completely overhauled downed / dead system for WvW.
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It seems to me that the thread is not so much a thief thread as it is a Cloak and Dagger, and culling thread when you look at the most valid points. The getting killed while downed issue may be aggravating, but I can’t support that argument. I think if C&D were tweaked slightly then a lot of complaining would stop.
I would also encourage thieves in general to experiment a little more with builds, there are more weapons out there than dual daggers and dual pistols my stealthy bros!
I will just keep rolling along on my tank thief, killing you all slowly but surely.
What’s there to experiment with? P/P is awful and S/P is only viable as a burst. S/D, with more conservative use of C&D and more reliance on tactical shadow steps would be interesting if flanking strike wasn’t so terrible.
Not saying C&D shouldn’t be looked at, because a heavier meta of D/D eles would be FAR FAR worse than dealing with some random ganking and culling frustration, but are very limited build options for thieves. You can play the build itself many different ways of course…but because so much of the two main builds (D/D, P/D) is loaded into stealth mechanics, it’s not easy to find a happy medium of balance.
What I don’t get with the badge drops is that my kills per hour with my engi are probably twice as high than my thief and I do way more total damage with AoE skills and condi stacks…yet I get far more badges with the thief because it is much easier to do big chunks of single target damage and stomp. I gave up on invader’s armor a long time ago and just use the badges for seige…which even then it’s like 3 nights of WvW for one golem. Such a terrible reward system.
Well I’m certainly not a 16 year old anymore that could play Unreal Tournament all night fueled by nothing more than mountain dew, but 28 isn’t that old. I can still mash my buttons with the best of em’, which what 95% of wvw is. A lot of the players and commanders on YB are older people who appreciate good company more than being the flavor of the week server rolling with huge transfer zergs.
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DB has a really big night crew and just ripped through SM with barely any resistance. This will be an interesting, albeit expensive week if they can bring half that number every night.
You know in group play thieves are one of the lowest desired classes for group makeup. We offer next to nothing to help our group and our AoE is sad unless we are standing right on top of them. We are a low HP squishy class that relys on stealth to keep us alive. Hell if we were to go into full soldiers gear (power tough vit) We would have 20k hp, and about 3k armor. We have no block mechanic like the other melee characters do and our only source of damage mitigation is through dodge.
This is true…I have a guardian / engi / thief and have played them all quite a bit in WvW.
This is also the big problem with the thief in WvW. Most pug players want to be the gank boss / big damage machine / badge collector, because it’s a lot more “fun” to that than be a team player with valuable support functions. I like playing my thief, but half the time I’m thinking…gee, if I had my guardian, there would be fewer friendly bodies around here, this siege would be going faster, maybe we could have held that tower, etc.
I think the most annoying part about thieves and DD eles, beyond their broken movement, is that most of them simply won’t give up on pointless 1v1’s in the open. It’s pretty boring playing as a guardian and having 5+ minute battles of the button mashers when you have zero interest in a 1v1, but no way to withdraw from combat…again since their movement advantage is broken in WvW.
I also think back to when GW Factions launched, and assassin shadow steps completely broke movement / positioning in that game. Why anet chose to go down this road again and double down with even more gimmicky game mechanics is quite baffling.
The person who had the idea to put the jumping puzzle in EB is borderline sadistic when you really think about it. Personally I have probably played 200-300 of WvW and never even finished it…the only time I went in, I was upset about losing SM while puzzlers filled team chat, and all I did for about an hour was grief lowbies.
Later that night, I honestly felt kind of bad about it, and I got to thinking how ridiculous the puzzle is in a larger context. It’s like someone building a go-cart track in the middle of a WWI no-mans land between the trenches, and probably laughing their * off far in the distance.
I do have to say as a YB player, this week has been a nice change of pace from the staleness of the last few weeks with TC and FA. Last week we had EB full once, maybe twice during prime time…this week EB and YBBL have been full every night for a few hours.
This seems to be a fair matchup that anyone could win. Although, I do have to say, the magumma commander who wiped his group three times trying to portal bomb a non-upgraded Durios needs to be demoted.
Looks pretty good!
I am wondering though, with the end of alt f4, could someone from anet officially confirm that grappling hook is in fact the skill engi’s were supposed to be using when downed? I had just figured alt f4 was sorta there in lieu of something remotely helpful compared to what other classes have to enhance their chances of surviving a down.
Until it’s removed or something is done to equalize the downed state, I’ll keep using it, and I don’t really care. It’s just plain laughable how bad the engi’s are.
I don’t play like coward that is always tip toeing around backline of a skirmish ready to head for the hills when it looks like a fair fight. I stay and defend camps / towers if they are remotely defensible, again, fully committed to the fight and not ready to hop off the back of the lord room or standing there naked.
To me, all the incentives not to die and play extremely defensively all the time are a way bigger problem than alt f4. That’s not an argument for running around like an idiot all the time charging in, but there are times when players are needed that will grow a pair.
Most Thief builds and D/D Bunker Ele.
Most annoying because: Imbalanced mobility. If they aren’t facerolling, they are successfully disengaging from you with massive distance travel skills and run speed.
^ this
I feel a little disingenuous complaining since I usually play a bunker guardian. However, despite the ridiculous amount of defense guardians have, they can still easily be mobbed down with no push to escape button…and their downed survivability is far worse in typical WvW skirmishes.
The mobility of thieves and DD eles compared to other classes is hilariously imbalanced.
Most complaints for being downed come from engineers and guardians because, to be frank, they’re absolutely terrible when down.
Which works out perfect for supreme idiots like me who have an engi and guardian.
It’s extremely frustrating how large the usefulness gap is between class downed skills. All classes should have the same downed skills in PvP, and the chance to rally should be predicated on actual player skill. I guess stealth stomps are just an added frustration when it negates the small usefulness of a downed interrupt and sometimes allows players to nab kills at a lower risk.
Hallmark post of a terrible player. You don’t understand the class so you can’t fight it. Learn the class so you don’t make these posts that make you look like a QQing zergling.
Flames aside, I highly recommend you play the Thief to level 30 or so. It doesn’t take long and will do wonders for your understanding of the mechanics. Yes, the theif class mechanics are so different than all others that it requires this little extra effort to combat them. Doing this for all classes never hurts your ability to PvP though.
It is absolutely correct that playing every class, not just a thief, is the best way to improve your understanding class strengths and weaknesses.
At the same time though, and please understand I’m not sympathizing with the crybabies, do consider that WvW is supposed to be the gateway format for players that would otherwise not play PvP. It’s generally a terrible concept that neither satisfies hardcore players or casual players, but as it is, stealth and thieves in general are what frustrates noobs the most, and it simply encourages a lot of them to quit WvW after a short period of time, or roll their own thief to faceroll other noobs. Fewer players and less class diversity are not positives.
I maxed out the kurz and luxon titles in GW1 playing alliance battles, thousands of hours of play over a span of years, and never got completely bored with it until the very end when alliances were team stacking and the player base became too small. There were so many different builds to choose from that were viable, and staples like a dev hammer, ranger, or water ele never got old…and you could always reroll something in a few minutes as needed.
Anyway, without getting into a giant wall of text, after 200-300 hours of WvW on t2/t3 servers, my enthusiasm for it is waning dramatically, and I’m not at all optimistic that in 6 months it will be any better unless anet shows they are capable of incremental improvements and fixes, rather than spinning the nerf wheel and doing a bunch of random buffs to solve balance problems.