Handin.4032

Any issues with stealth are about more than just thief. Stealth in this game is fairly unique compared to other MMO's I've played (for better or for worse). In gw2, stealth as a mechanic is generally high reward/low risk - and while other mechanics which are like this are on longer CDs (e.g. on ele, skills like Obsidian Flesh which has a 50 sec CD, or on mesmer IoL which has a 75 sec CD), stealth can be applied much more often. This is why all stealth QQ threads turn into thief QQ threads. In all other MMOs I've played with stealth, the stealth is generally a skill on a longer CD and allows for SUSTAINED stealth. Further, it generally comes with one or both of the following: 1) Stealth is dropped when hit 2) Stealth is dropped when an attack or any skill is used. In gw2, neither applies. While you CAN be hit in stealth, unless the skill gives revealed, the stealth is not dropped and there is no marker of where the person is who is hit. Further, a player can stealth, and use a number of skills and as long as they do not do damage they remain in stealth. So a player can heal or do a revive skill, for instance, without ever dropping stealth, or a relatively bad thief can spam against a block and not drop stealth. These mean that stealth is generally high reward, low risk - whether being used to attack, disengage, maneuver, etc. If one wanted to "fix stealth", for instance, it could be made so that attacking and having your attack blocked or evaded would drop stealth, just as if you hit for damage. I'm not saying stealth needs to be changed (it may be slightly OP, but generally not overwhelming OP), but that the above reasons I think is why it's very easy to QQ about stealth, and thus thief. Thief because they can stealth often enough, can have rapid attacks and high mobility. Ultimately, anet will likely not change this - it is intrinsically tied to the game that stealth in gw2 is just a different type of mechanic than stealth in most games.

Wasn't sure where to put this, but since I main engi in WvW... If you ever wonder how little anet thinks about supports, especially when it comes to testing, just realize that for the beta characters, they didn't give any support sigils or food, but gave all the dps stacking sigils, some dps food and utilities. The TP is also disabled. (You also can't seem to use bank to transfer support sigils/food: it just highlights how little anet even thinks of supports when it comes to testing and balance, and why there will probably be really borked things)

One option would be allowing guilds to have a 'black list' of players that cannot activate their tactivators. It would not unilaterally stop this kind of trolling, but it will greatly reduce it. At least on TC, our tactivator and supply trolls are consistently the same people over years. Also allow people with specific ranks within guild (just like slotting tactivators) be able to demolish siege within objectives they own (e.g. they go up to it and either allow another option to demolish, or a toggle skill on the siege). In other PvP games I've played, typically either the communities have a way to regulate themselves, or the gaming company actively regulates such things. For WvW, we have neither. Anet seems to care very little, if at all, about the WvW community and dealing with griefing, trolling, spying, etc. For many of these things, Anet has also refused to even give comment on whether such things are allowed or not. So, tl;dr: There's plenty anet could do about the trolling and griefing and spying. They just don't care.

The biggest annoyances I've had with the system, using it only for legendary armor and trinkets are: 1) it does not store the infusions/runes. These stay per character. So, if you have style infusions, when you swap characters you need to either swap the infusions, too (so, may end up being *MORE* bank/shared inventory space than before) or buying duplicates. This seems like a huge oversight... 2) It changing the skins. Yes, this is a minor issue...but, for instance, if I used a legendary cloak and kept it the same skin for all characters, now I have to re-apply that - and any infusions - when I swap them between characters, where before I didn't...

This isn't really an exploit, just a bad mechanic. In general, contesting a waypoint can be very high reward, especially on some maps. For instance, on EBG contesting their keep constantly means there's a much longer run back. Similarly on a borderland, if you're hitting Hills or Bay and contesting their garrison. For a high-reward or high-impact event, there should be some (or considerable) risk. However, as others have said, contesting a keep requires little to no risk, just time, for the reasons others have said. However, as the person above me stated, most that do this permanently are just trolling. They're often in some low damage, high sustain and mobility build and just enjoy having people chase them around the map for hours. If you ignore them, they often go away. But, the contesting mechanic should require more. In this way, anet of course could just incrementally make changes to the threshold to see when it's in a good place, for instance, if it satisfies something like: if (2 NPC guards within ___ seconds) or (wall/door takes X% siege samara in ___ seconds) contestWaypoint In this way, it would take some commitment to contest if you wish to contest where you're hitting elsewhere. E.g. a small group of 3-5 actually hitting the keep while you hit elsewhere, not 1 thief or Mesmer throwing a ram blue print and teleporting away. However, I have super super high doubts anet will do anything about this. It's not a *huge* problem, just an annoying one.

^ This. It's how stealth has worked in every other game I've played. Also, taking damage (or even healing others) doesn't knock you out of stealth. Maybe in gw2 because the amount of AOE this would be too restrictive then? (Unless they set it to some damage threshold). This is why stealth is high-reward, low-risk. If you're in stealth and you miss your burst, you're still in stealth - even if they turn and do a bunch of AoE. With the mobility of most thieves, it only compounds this. Stealth should be high-risk, high-reward. Not "spam attacks while invisible and untargettable, and if you miss oh wells just try again!" (Just to be clear, too, as Scrapper you can abuse stealth a lot by healing and cleansing and reviving people while in stealth, as well... I have personally revived lords this way, while taking damage - just start the revive before you take the 1st tick).

No one tell him about Strawberry Ghosts...

Barrage is meant to not be constrained by line of sight. However, it should be changed so the barrage arrows act as projectiles so they can be blocked by the associated skills. The reason I'm guessing they don't is because it would be too costly to do this (i.e. make barrage make a bunch of actual arrows, rather than just the graphics).

Oh, I think it was just because I was following up on what you were saying. I think - I cannot remember exactly!

It's quite strong. Just not like most peops use it in wvw. Its a great utility pick with the pulsing blinds of flash shell, waterfield, poisen for down control etc. In large group fights, grenades lose a lot of their impact due to the "projectile hate" (e.g. bubbles, reflects, etc), except throwing them point blank at your feet. In smaller fights sure, it can be quite strong. For siege clearing - sure? But that's nothing other professions haven't been able to do, and is moreso an issue with how silly "walls" are in WvW for defense. If you die to an engi spamming mortar while it's running away, it's kind of your fault. The mortars don't move exceptionally fast and they show an AoE ring... so I'm not sure if you're standing still or running in a straight line to get to them? Not saying it's entirely a l2p issue, but if they're running away and you pursue, don't go in a perfectly straight line, or just don't pursue them.

This looks quite fun, but not necessarily meshing well with the engineer. But at least it's unique! I can imagine though, just looking at it quickly, with a firebrand this would become quite OP in WvW. How? Simple: Get in a party with a firebrand (who provides a lot of stab). Then take traits 3/6/8 and build as tanky (e.g. Plaguedoctor or Apothecary or Shaman). Also get something like purity of purpose. Slot Elixir Gun (fumigate), Minion 2 and 4 and the elite. You'd be able to basically walk into a raid, heal and provide cleanses to some degree, and just constantly pump out AoE fear. There are likely other combinations which would be even more obnoxious.

As someone who has played in a game, with heavy pvp, and collision detection let me say this: NO! Not only would it likely blow up the servers, but it is super easy to exploit and troll. Imagine a couple of spy trolls who get in golems and sit in specific points to block people, or just raids starting to use a lot of pets and spawns to body block. As for the choke points, if they REALLY wanted to fix that, they could just re-implement the broken AF ballista spread shot...

As you said said, there is no button for permanent stealth, so the difference between in-combat stealth and out of combat stealth isn't the same. Thieves, typically, do not sit waiting in stealth for minutes and minutes at a time, and nor do raids. For groups, it is mostly used to engage and maybe disengage, so it is still 'active', not passive. Both of what I said are related to "out of combat" stealth. Take a fairly common scenario (at least in US WvW): a raid stacks and uses a stealth gyro + blast to stack stealth. Now, they don't do this to sit around for a long time passively, they do it just before engaging (so, while not 'in combat stealth', it is stealth FOR combat). Now, a raid could see that and put a bomb or AoE there - heck, even some nice CC! But the group remains stealthed. They could have a painter used against them (although that's fairly easy to spot since it has a huge animation...). This is why so many groups in NA seem to love using stealth - it has 0 draw back, other than needing to stack to blast stealth. While there is a timer if you miss an attack in stealth, you are STILL STEALTHED and thus still maintain the advantage, even if you horribly messed up. You may take damage, but you're invisible so you're not directly targetable - can just disengage... Yes, I agree -I am not advocating that getting hit in stealth totally drops stealth, or put on reveal, unless there would be some high threshold. I mentioned visual markers, mostly so that you know your hit landed and where the person was - or if it was a condi something like a foot print (removed if condi is cleansed, which does not drop stealth). Compared to many other mechanics, stealth has far fewer viable counters than most others, especially given the advantages stealth gives. (I remember both in lotro and Archeage - where stealth was VERY OP - you could even see them if they got too close for too long, and your speed was reduced). While stealth is certainly OP, it almost always is in any game. It should have attention and maybe tweaks, but I wouldn't put it anywhere near a priority, more like a "meh...if there's every time...".

There are really 2 big things which make stealth in gw2 much more OP than many other MMOs. 1: You do not drop stealth if you attack, and MISS - or if your attack does not deal direct damage (E.g. Caltrops do not drop stealth). So, even if you have a player which dodges your first attack, you can still attack while stealthed. In every other MMO I've played, the moment you attack you drop stealth, regardless if it hits or miss and if it is an attack skill (versus a heal or buff).2: You do not drop stealth when you take damage (or show any visual markers). This again means that you can attack, disengage and even if they hit you with a big burst, it may likely not drop you out of combat, allowing you to disengage and heal. Both of these result in stealth being low risk but very high payout. Whether you are single thief roaming, or an entire Zerg stealthing. In fact, big groups using stealth is a bit more of the issue - even if you see them stealth, and can apply some burst, without a painter trap or similar, it will not reveal them. They can even stack stealthed and heal (which does not drop steal) through a burst if an opposing group has an idea where they are. Some of the videos posted here shows just this happening: a thief applying an opening burst while in stealth, missing, and still remaining in stealth - even if they take some damage in return. Most games, having stealth invokes a trade off (e.g. slower movement, having to risk dropping it if you take damage or miss) with the huge bonus of having the 1st move in an engagement, and a way to disengage. In GW2, you don't have any of those tradeoffs, but still the substantial bonus. Painters do counter, but they're on a much longer cool down, a somewhat small AoE (or for thrown, a big animation) and take supply - they are not a good viable counter. Pulse detection was a decent counter, then it got shunted to a POS gadget (gadgets are a whole other rant...). tl;dr: Stealth doesn't need to be removed. They just need to modify it so it involves more risk/tradeoffs. There are ways to do this without killing Thief, or Zerg play (e.g. drop stealth if you miss an attack, or show footprints if you take damage).

There are really two issues that result from the system: It much more easily allows for harassment/stalking in game (finding when a player is online/offline, where they are, etc).In WvW, this is one of the ways people guild/tag watch to see when certain groups are on online, what map they're on, etc. They can block -> get account name -> add to friends. If they are on the MAIN server, opponents show as just "World vs World". If they are on a LINKED server, they can see the BL the person is on. So, they can see if a person swaps maps very easily. This can greatly inhibit stealth caps (e.g. you make your tag private, your raid ports to a random BL, and....the enemy is already there waiting).While both of these things can be solved by going invisible, that also then inhibits the person being FOLLOWED more than it does the person following. I don't think it would be too much to ask, or too breaking, to have a notification when you gain a follower, and the ability to right-click -> remove follower.

This, basically. I've played WvW for years (taking a 3ish year break to play a couple other MMOs). The biggest problem with WvW isn't the game mode - if anything it was far more zergy early on (e.g. 3-way map-queue fights somewhat regularly, even in lower tiers). But, it was newer then, fresher. The game mode has been left to stagnate for YEARS, with very few real updates to incentive the play or introduce new things There is also very little unique, in terms of loot/gear, for WvW. If they brought out no major PvE updates for years, while often promising them for years, it's almost guaranteed PvE would have a pop problem too. tl;dr: The problem with WvW pop isn't game mode problem or even zerging. It's that the game mode has been left out to pasture by the devs and left to slowly die, while they occasionally whisper sweet nothings in our ear to give us hope.

The problem isn't AoE on walls - that's completely fine. The main issue/imbalance is that it is, more often, completely one sided. Someone on the group can throw an AoE up on the wall and hit the entire wall. However, someone on the wall cannot often hit the ground because of line-of-sight shenanigans (. This requires the person on the wall to put themselves in the much much more vulnerable spot of standing on the edge of the wall, rather than actually on the wall. So, someone on the ground can cast a meteor standing against the wall and cover the whole wall - but a defender who wanted to interrupt it would have to stand on the edge of the wall to do so.Effectively, this defeats the purpose of having a wall to stand on, in that in lends little advantage except the few siege placements on walls which are out of AoE range (another issue, but a different topic). Some classes can get around this - e.g. engi Mortar because it is not a line of sight. However Mortar also then has some weird issues of it colliding and exploding on invisible barriers and what not (such as if you wanted to hit someone close to the wall). Unfortunately, I think the only way around this would be change certain AoE skills to not need line of sight, or change how line of sight works.

Probably because every time they suggest (or community suggests) increasing WvW rewards, the forums get filled with a lot of "fight guild" players or super stacked servers saying how it would be the downfall of WvW from people coming in just for the rewards, rather than people "looking for fights (pvp)". Honestly, every time it fills up. Also, people saying "but pvp takes skill to get rewards", which just isn't true. Having higher skill means you get rewards faster, but heck - I went into pvp after not playing it for YEARS and earned more in a few days then I would over a week of WvW. At the end, the reason there aren't better rewards is mostly because a small, but very vocal, amount of the player base seems to dislike anything that brings PvE folks into WvW.

You described Obsidian Sanctum, for the most part. OS even has an area which was intended, in large part, for things like GvGs - which is totally underutilized. Then they gave guild halls the ability to have some form of GvG - and it wasn't enough. There's already enough things which have been suggested to make WvW a better game mode without introducing maps or other things which are a totally different game mode than WvW. Anet shouldn't cater to guilds that claim to be "all about the fights" because the bar always moves. They should focus on making the WvW game mode - which is fighting pvp for objectives on a large scale - as best as they can, rather than cater to niche things that those individuals are never happy with anyways. (Case in point with GvGs, anet has introduced several things for GvGs and it's never perfect enough apparently). I mean, what you described sounds great, but a lot of that is already around and under utilized. If people want to ignore objectives and just fight, they can (and some do) already do that in WvW. The people who would care about that wouldn't care about PPT or their server score anyways.

I've been playing engi in WvW since the game started and I've loved the roles that Scrapper now plays (and the now seeming rebirth of kit and core engi!). As others have mentioned, Scrapper has some key weak points - name that it does not have a lot of shared stability, and if you're set up for the optimal support build you yourself have a lot less access to stability! It is quite easy to lock down a support Scrapper if they're caught too far from the stack! Scrapper itself is one of those classes thats thrives and does remarkably well at it's job when the other team is playing specific builds or doing something else wrong. For instance, playing a scrapper against a pug raid with burn guardians is great - it means Aegis spam for yourself and your group! The last time I ran arcDPS in WvW as a support scrapper (which was some time ago) the largest contribution to healing didn't come from the heal kit spam but from regen spam and medical dispersion field. Furthermore, the heal kit spam works BEST only when partied with other boon-generators. I think support Scrapper is honestly in a great situation. It thrives when combo'ed with other roles, doesn't outshine them solo and has some clear disadvantages for countering. Many scrappers I've seen in raids often came from other professions and haven't yet figured out all the field combinations the scrapper can self-generate, so it's a profession/role that can be picked up and improved upon over time without pain (particularly with light fields - but you can do a lot with Mortar fields if you're feel frisky and don't need the stealth).

Just go extreme SAB with 2 changes: Replace dragon banner with the SAB banner. The skills allow you to drop tribulation-mode-esque traps and SAB NPCs.New T3 passive. If installed, it fills the lord room randomly with traps so players have to find the right path.But in all seriousness....a reward track and changing the mobs up would be pretty cool.

It does seem like the develops have been really pushing for scrapper to have superspeed and quickness, but at the same time the hammer is quite slow and the gyros are not affected at all by these. So, I have yet to understand why they keep pushing this - have any of them actually tried to playing scrapper out of a PvE loot farm?

It's almost useless to use outside of the field. In any sort of Pvp, it can even be killed by the downed skills. So you basically would have to down, keep stunned/interrupted. The "function" of the function gyro is basically useless and I'm not sure why they keep pushing the reviving/downing aspect - it hasn't worked and there really is no way for it to work without it being massively OP or massively useless.

It's an issue, but anet has also shown they will do absolutely nothing to stop it. We recently had an alt (650 AP, no guild) that was brand new on the linked server come and drain our EB keep supply every time they had an active group. It wasn't a new guy, just an alt throwing down golem after golem to drain supply from keeps.

Took a long break... but I've been back for a bit and loving it! Once I have more free time I will be able to start hosting Dolyak Parades on TC in EU (or early NA) times again!