roamzero.9486

Speaking from a non PVE angle Axe/Dagger is completely dead in the water, I rank it down there with Ranger daggers as a sort of failed concept. Burst is really good but the stars have to align for you to pull it off and not die in the process because it requires you to teleport to the target. Not enough initiative to work with to incorporate cloak and dagger. MH pistol or Scepter are better condition-weapon options. Axe/Pistol is decent as a hybrid weapon option however. Even though both the thief and the axes needing to be in 900 range it janky and should be readjusted.

it's pretty much worthless now ironic, considering the cerus relic does almost as much damage on the same cooldown but I guess one relic is p2w and the other isnt

True, but I actually think it would be healthy for the game if projectiles could have a separate buff that could possibly be applied from unblockable. Still blockable with aegis and abilities like warrior's shield, but unable to be destroyed or reflected by auras/bubbles/ranger staff/etc with the buff.

Remove the blast finisher on Cunning Salvo and make it unable to be reflected/destroyed and suddenly you have your meta zerg thief (when used with rending shade)

It's pretty oppressive that it seems that both you and the axes need to be in 900 range to hit the enemy now. Makes them a lot less usable in battles with a lot of movement and the axes cannot reach your target even though you yourself are in range.

Dual Specialization Every class would need to have 3 new mechanics designed and implemented for each combination to work properly however. (i.e mechanist plus holosmith might have a unique photon forge that effects both the mech and player)

Axe/Pistol is ok, damage feels kind of low. The stealth attack is comfortable to use with the ini regen it provides, and it's nice that the axes actually target the enemy. Axe/Dagger feels frustrating. Building up 6 axes and then they're too slow to hit properly when you use Axe 3. It's not even worth it for the 5 torment even if they did hit reliably. Overall Axe is a slow weapon, and if anything needs to be done A/D 3 needs to be tuned a lot better.

Personal Siege Event: Siege deals less damage to buildings, but build costs are significantly reduced (does not apply to golems), and can instantly be deployed if you have the supply. Guard Loot Event: Killing guards grants you guard loot currency, which you can trade in for rewards and ppt points at an NPC in the center of the map, the more you hoard the bigger the reward! But you lose half your loot upon death, distributed to whoever killed you. Play Harder Event: Players cannot change builds/templates outside of spawn, out of combat timer is lengthened, and out of combat porting is no longer instant (now a channeled effect) WXP and skirmish tickets are increased 100% for the matchup. Consumeable Chaos Event: Trinkets, toys/tonics and consumables that are normally disabled in WvW are now enabled. Warclaw Wars Event: Warclaw endurance reduced to 1 bar, but dismount attack is now an AOE attack that deals increased damage, removes boons, and can effect up to 50 players (similar to a siege cannon hit) (aka Boonballs Beware event) EoTM Only Event: WvW now takes place entirely in EoTM for the week, the main maps are disabled and faction allotment (Red, Green, or Blue) is handled by the Restructuring system which uses guilds instead of servers. Winner takes all Event: The winners of the current match are allowed to vote in a poll for what the next event should be.

PVE elements that PVP players fight over can be some of the funnest things in MMO's, but I have a feeling Anet and the devs are fully in the camp of the ppt blobbers who would complain about PVE players ruining their experience and clog up the queue's

Feels like their main consideration when designing and balancing stuff is spreadsheet math and results from automated data crunching on player activity. Sometimes they act on youtube videos when a player breaks the game and solos a raid or something. You can really, really sense the disconnect.

Malice bonuses suck so much on anything that isn't rifle/dagger

Even the stealth attack has anti-synergy, if you daze someone and then pistol-whip it cancels the daze with a much shorter stun. It would be nice if there was some kind of bonus effect if you hit a dazed opponent with pistol-whip.

See that's the problem when they changed Shadow Strike to include Repeater instead of just making a new skill. Obviously, they cannot make it a dual-wield skill otherwise the a single main hand pistol will have access to Deadly Ambition. If they take the easy path, they will leave it as is. If they take the right path, they will create a new skill for Shadow Strike. Yeah to be consistent with say, the S/D dual skill which also flips (and the flipped skills count as dual too), the P/D one should at least be unique in some way when compared to the single-hand repeater and count as a dual skill too. Honestly the repeater flip for Shadow Strike has been more of a hindrance than a buff imo, I wouldn't even mind if they just reverted it to the way it was.

Honestly down state doesn't belong in PVP imo.

Personally I would like to see the heal skill particle/glow animation tweaked. It gets buried under all the flashy effects that have creeped into the game, making it difficult to seen when to interrupt (and good luck looking for the actual character animation when fighting an Asura or something).And conversely, maybe a distinct little effect when a character's stamina is full and empty.

I agree that bleed is a very boring condition. I think it exists just to make burning look good/better.

Venoms really need an overhaul. Basi venom kind of sucks, and the only venoms people take other than it are Spider for condi builds (and sometimes Skale with it). Nobody takes Ice Drake or Devourer. The heal venom was only passable when you could reduce the CD to 24s.

impact strike would be nice if it worked underwater to use against those pesky rangers

Just take Archeage, put in GW2's combat system and everything under Anet's management.

Does Camelot Unchained have a downstate like GW2 has? Does this TTK factor in 1vX? Because to me there seems to be a lot to account for before you can begin to say the ideas for CU can be applied to GW2?

I thought the pvp mentality was to avoid passives. Dealing with condis the active way (removing them) takes more skill than having a stat take care of it for you right?

Question: I don't like the wording on this. "Utility Skills" only means one of the 3 utility skills equipped not including healing and elite skills. If it includes healing and elite, it might not be too bad. But if "utility skills" only...aaahh...no thank you. Resetting an Elite skill is the only reason I would take this. I can't believe I didn't notice that. Shooot... this concerns me. Are they quietly getting rid of dagger storm improv COMBO!? Yeah, it's very carefully worded and quite sneaky. @Robert Gee.9246 said:Just wanted to jump in to address a few questions and comments I've seen popping up frequently in relation to these update notes:Can Improvisation recharge my Heal or Elite?Improvisation recharges one of your utility skills. It does not recharge the Heal or the Elite. Boom...It should still be really good if you get a guaranteed utility proc (thief has a lot of good utilities like shadowstep). But if its like, RNG and the steal can pick a utility that's not on CD over one that is then it seems like a straight nerf.

The problem with WVW is that openworld PVP is inherently a hardcore gaming thing and Anet wants GW2 to be super casual.If Anet wants to appeal to the hardcore crowd it can do things like:->Merge WVW into some PVE maps->eliminate downstate->nerf mounts hard->nerf sustain->implement soft collision so blobs cant stack so hard->separate exp/leveling and you die you lose exp->exclusive PVE content opens up for winners Or Anet could redesign WvW as a fun casual thing->make it like Edge of the Mists, no servers and you (or your guild) now choose to align with a red, green or blue faction->Hard separation for roaming and attacking/defending structures. Attacking/defending numbers are now essentially forced to be balanced, you as a player queue up for an event to initiate. (e.g. 5 players need to queue up to attack and take a tower (capped), and while this is occurring defenders can queue to spawn in to defend (also capped))->Roaming mode is essentially capturing camps, sentries, yaks, ruins, etc, while attackers/defenders of structures appear as uninteractable mist warrior things when engaged in their events (essentially it gives you stuff to do while queued to spawn as an attacker or defender of a structure, a detailed map outlines exactly what's going on at all times) Right now its sort of trying to do both and it isn't working.

Interesting that they are going back and tweaking shadow arts again. But why won't they fix Rending Shade to fear around your target instead of yourself? Makes that aspect of the trait worthless with ranged stealth attacks.

If the problem is sword 2 spam/front loaded bursts then the trait could be changed to work on xth strike instead of guaranteed every hit with a cd. Like 2 stacks of poison on every 4th strike (for example), which would benefit fast attacks like death blossom, sneak attack/repeater, etc that's found more on thief's condi weapons over power.