bq pd.2148

i am not playing on any NA server. further i am not defending exploiters just pointing out that the video you posted earlier is not enough evidence. a single thief can easily kill the lord, but it does contest the keep*. however i don't think players can 'despawn' the lord either, all the hacking i have seen was client side manipulations and i highly doubt that this can be done client side. the only explanation that would somewhat make sense is that the lord was already down when that video started, the event run out and the thief only went into the circle afterwards, the lord being dead does not retrigger the event after all. Edit*: the lord being in combat does contest the keep

the video only shows them inside and you hunting them, but the video itself does not show them exploiting into the keep.

current legendary starter kits require SotO expansion. i would think it should be possible to restrict a gen 2 starter kit to accounts that do have the expansions needed to finish the legendary.

and yet i would prefer this one

i would imagine when crossing the boundaries of a structure there would have to be a check if the movement is legit (open gate/wall or portal) if not, then the players would need to be pushed back out. that should be less things to check then trying out every movement/teleport skill combination from every possible angle + it would account for clients that refuse to load some blocking objects into the world.

anet is terrible at scaling things and it would end up just providing free rallies to larger groups trying to take the fortress while potentially adding a real threat to smaller groups / solos. especially on desert maps it is still quite possible to witness the lords kill smaller groups and solos all by themselves already. now if we could challenge the lord for the structure, so they would summon such bots based on the players about and create a barrier that no player of any team can cross till the fight is decided, that would be alright by me. if the lord were to fall ofc. still need to win the fight over the node.

can you explain what those numbers are even supposed to represent? generally speaking for most of the matchup the populations will not be balanced, be it by sheer number or expertise in combat, coordination and supply/siege usage. usually then we will find the currently stronger side to be more on the offensive and the other team(s) more on the defensive. because of this alone the defending side would need some advantage to compensate and provide meaningful content for the other team(s). however it is quite difficult to pinpoint just how much advantage the defending side would need as the difference in current power could be small or gigantic. these days its also rare to see a fully sieged up keep/tower with the scouts to man the siege in time. would the options defenders have be taken into account if they are not realistically used often ? (as maintaining such defenses and scouting is not considered by the games reward systems)

while it does not explain the teleports in your video, he does run axe/dagger which has a 900 range targeted teleport, but that only works while actually in range.

and yet with 2-3 alt accounts each it would still be trivial to break the balance of the matchups. say you collectively as guild set 3 different guilds as WvW guild for your primary guild for main + 2 alt accounts. first teams your main accounts might be rated as 'very active WvW player', but your alt accounts as practically inactive. so you then play which ever alt account has the better overall team to overstack that team while massively dragging down the team of your main account. then switch the acccount used each time teams are build. anet cannot predict where/how much you are going to play and thus will always under/overestimate your participation wildly. doing this as 1-2 players wont do much but as highly active 50-100+ player guild, especially coordinating the alt accounts WvW guilds will have an effect.

not skilled enough to know someone is cheating would be if they would constantly get farmed and couldnt tell a hacker from an experienced player. however what if you can count the opponents you need to be careful about in each matchup on a single hand and know that what they are doing is legit, because you understand the fights you have against them? are you then too good to notice the hackers because you kill them too fast? that is not to say that there are no hackers at all. yet i very rarely see someone that i can tell is hacking, this week for example we have an opponents with very obvious teleport hack going on. but like all the other obvious hackers i have seen, they are terribly bad. they manage to make harbinger look very weak which is quite the feat. the other reason you do get such a reaction is that experienced roamers will from time to time get whispers from opponents that one is apperently hacking and reported, which indicates that people do actually see hackers where there are none and then it becomes reasonable to question when someone is calling hacks.

i think the problem with the old pips was also people just participation farming on outnumbered maps instead of putting in some effort so the map would fill up with mostly useless numbers. one could however add the pips to more active engagements while outnumbered for example: +2 pips on capturing a camp +4 pips on capturing a tower +8 pips on capturing a keep +1 pip on stomping another player (stomp, not kill) ofc those are just example numbers but it would encourage people to do something or as much as they can on the map but not just passively reward for being about.

being able to use the painters more easily wont help on even number fights as those usually thieves will still have the tools to escape almost any build while marked and even 1 vs 1 fight many without much of a handicap. where the painters do have an effect is if you want to zerg them down X vs 1. smaller groups tryhard chasing single roamers is much worse for roaming than any stealth build so i would rather not see that playstlye supported. maybe try to offer them a reasonable risk/reward for engaging you, then you have much better chance to kill them. like even numbers or slightly outnumber them if they are a lot better than you, but not to the point that they cannot win. for then they will just use all resources to avoid engaging, for no potential reward any risk is too much.

the golems were mostly useful against 1-2 people trying to flip a camp, even a small group of 5 (if not 4 of them are support) will kill these golems quickly anyway. if you cannot hold a t3 camp against 1-2 people (at least until more people come to defend) IMO you should lose the camp.

for alpine ones at least: the new more frequent defiance bars to interrupt the lords new 'OP' skills are much easier to break than the old ones, often the next defiance bar is broken before the previous ones DPS boost has run out. because of this that change was mostly a nerf to the lords. additionally lords scale with both attackers and defenders, less defenders -> weaker lord.

killing a dolyak can also give you 50% of your current maximum supply carrying capacity, in enemy territory that would be 10-15/2. it actually does give half supplies, so with a capacity of 15 a first proc will set you to 7 and the next to 15. so on top of camping all the camps they would have to escort all dolyaks. my spotty memory thinks to remember that after EB NPC commanders were added but when the structures were still build up with local supply and a poor worker, commanders wouldnt want to drain structures that are still being tiered up so they would trigger the NPC commanders with a blob and he would give everyone supplies when he moves out. because of that it was important not to trigger them by accident but keep them for a full supply refill when needed.

you forgot Ranger: every arrow shot, every axe thrown now costs 1g. when out of gold the skills become disabled.

as far as i know it has always only worked on dodge rolls, not on evading skills. however you do not need to actually evade anything with the dodgeroll to remove the goop. the wording on the mastery could be clearer.

only tested in PvE/WvW myself. when opening the shadow portal from out of range, you will get correctly an 'out of range' message and the skill goes on a ~1s cooldown as expected. however after that cooldown a portal is placed on that out of range location. this portal can not be interacted with and the thief will still have the shadow portal effect in their boon/effect bar. if the thief then moves into range and tries to open the portal, no portal will appear and the skill will flip over to an unprepared state. i guess that the new unusable portal is blocking the further use when later in range and it shouldn't open anyway.

given how out of place some of them look, i don't think they had enough time for the nodes.

i don't see when i would ever slot bloas on a thief, just a waste of a good utility slot as my targets usually can't run away from me like one can kite a warrior. the poor mans spectral grasp however has its uses in WvW for some gravity kills or getting people off a wall.

indeed mesmer could use another melee weapon. in the form of a longbow would it fit right into how they use their weapons.

wouldnt it make more sense to offer black lion statuettes on the gem store for slightly less than keys? or would that still be an issue in belgium because you can buy keys from the statuettes?

Equipment Template Swaps with Legendary Weapons: - please retain sigil stacks when the new template also has the same one in it. curretently if you have a non-legendary weapon with a non-legendary stacking sigil in the same slot on 2 or more templates, swapping between them does not remove the stack. but using legendary weapons the stack will always get lost. alternatively: - sigil stacks could be per equipment template, so swapping from template 1 to template 2 will remove the stack from template 1 to allow building a stack for template 2. then when swapping back to template 1, you would get that stack back. death/downed should remove stacks from all the templates.

spvp balance is and should be separate from wvw balance for the encounters are very different both in scope and context of the fight. so a change in spvp does not warrant one in wvw. sure make it 40s cd but reduce ammo count to 2. given that stab has been nerfed recently on ventari rev and chrono i would think the dominant stab provider since its existance should not get buffs to that.

so you want to add more false hacking reports to the CS todolist