DoomNexus.5324

> @"Divsen.9864" said: > Currently winning game at higher rating gives you +8-11 at good times or even as low as +3-5 while losing usually ends up in -14 - 20. > People now have number of alt accounts to q ranked pvp My guess would be that you and or those people in question are at least plat1 or plat2? If so then this is understandable and to be expected from the matchmaking.. Since the population is so low you are likely to play against people who are ranked way lower than you. Which in return means you are supposed to win those matches. Changing this to a "more static rating" would just cause the MM to be even less effective since it can't change the fact that there are just less people in higher skill groups to match you against. People in Legendary even got +0 from wins sooo... ye.. The thing is that the bad rating is not causing anything but is rather a result of the low playerbase, so I'd argue that Anet should first and foremost focus on new features and stuff for people to actually stay in PvP other than rewards or other temporary incentives. Because this just promotes everyone and their dog to get into pvp, play through horribly tedious matches and possibly throw them just to eventually get to the loot while ruining every competitive player's matches (at least if they happen to be on their team). Even if it's just a separate full team queue for example to give PvP guilds a reason to exist. You know... because if you want to support a large playerbase you have to have features in place a large playerbase can make use of.. If everything just gets tailored towards a low population then it can't grow in the first place.. But Anet has no interest in PvP anyway so I don't think there will be any changes.

For me it's a YES! kind of.. I'd definitely exclude f2p accounts from ATs and increase their entry level for Ranked.. I think you need to be PvP level 20 for ranked atm? yea.. I'd increase that to at least 30 or maybe 40. Legit new players can still play Unranked and get into the game mode and if they are feeling it they can buy the game or can play long enough to get into ranked. It's not that reaching pvp level 40 takes a huge amount of time anyway, let alone 20. Also.. a ton of stuff is behind paywalls already, EVEN KITTEN TRADING POST AND MAIL, why the heck make a competitive game mode completely available without any restrictions whatsoever. Guild Wars 2 is still a b2p game, the core game being f2p is just an pretty big demo or unlimited trial time and NOT the full game so treat it as such in the other game modes pls.

> @"Styros.8931" said: > > @"azzardome.9184" said: > > man pls buff thief, class trash :( > class is trash if you playing non pistol / dagger, dagger / pistol weapon set. If you playing pistol its broken trash with 1 shots or endless blind/free stealth restealth Ye no, whatever.. troll..

> @"The Subterfuge Of Dwayna.8320" said: > because your win rate is stuck between 40% and 60%. Well yes.. That's to be expected, a match making system aims at matching you in such a way that your win rate is close or ideally at 50%. Anet however apparently tries to achieve the defeats necessary to stay at that percentage not by matching you against players on a slightly higher skill level but by putting you in an absolute garbage trash team, but that's a topic for another time. > The only thing that should be displayed when you open up the sPvP panel, is the amount of PIPs you currently have and the Unranked / Ranked queue buttons at the top. I disagree, in fact I'd love to see even more statistics. Top stat count, average top stats, average k/d, average damage, etc. ideally a separate display for each class individually (otherwise it would be a bit meaningless). Not because I'd constantly check for updates on my stats or because it grows my e-pen but it's rather interesting in my opinion. Ideally this would also be displayed for every match in the history and I actually don't know why stuff like in the Details tab aren't displayed for each match afterwards but is just condensed into the score and the match result.

That's a troll right? Or at least please tell me you are not naive enough to think that this would actually be feasible to do?... This is virtually impossible on different layers.. Technologically, legally, ...

> @"Fueki.4753" said: > > @"DoomNexus.5324" said: > > Also.. More money doesn't hurt, at least I don't think NCSoft would complain if Anet had more profit.. So even IF they made enough from the gem shop there is still nothing wrong that they want to get paid for actual content they developed. > > Would that actually lead to more profits, or would it just drive players away, who might buy something in the future? > I can't see how they would get more profits, when players, who occasionally buy things from the Gem Store, start to leave the game because > between-expansions content is no longer free. > After all, free content between expansions is one of the stronger points for GW2. > > I certainly wouldn't want to pay for Living World of the abysmal scale that Season 5 (and especially Episode 5) delivers. > Exactly, that's my point. It would either get paid by the people who are actually interested or wouldn't make enough money so Anet has to switch their content delivery.. Or just fuck all and continue and let people pay for stuff they don't want. Also I don't think it's one of the stronger points for GW2.. The content we get is almost all the time pretty abysmal, short lived and the only positive side of any Living Story (for me anyway) was some good farmable maps. Ditching the (mediocre at best) story would also speed up the development cycle.

I could do the winter's day jp all day long and I just love winter (only with snow tho) in general, ingame and real life. I'd have picked the festival of the four winds but idk.. the very first time during living story it was amazing but every time it gets reintroduced it feels more bland. Maybe because we got used to the vertical movement but the zephyrite skills were really cool back then.

I have absolutely no interest in DRMs tbh.. They are just so boring with waaaay too much unskippable crap. I don't want more boring PvE content, give us some new competitive content.. Give us an additional "Eternal Battlegrounds" WvW map or maybe even rework Stronghold to not be a complete clownfiesta if you can't afford designing something new or a full team queue next to solo/duo Q.. Make 2v2/3v3 a permanent ranked mode or whatever.. Just pleeeease no more unnecessary PvE crap.

> @"Anchoku.8142" said: > This should be a very old discussion inside Arenanet but I often wonder why Living World episodes are completely free for those who log in and play them? > > Why not charge a small fee (microtransaction) to purchase the episode before the next episode and increase it later? The fee could also be discounted but not eliminated with gems. > > The same could be applied for competitive play seasons while giving a bump up for in-game rewards or a guaranteed skin unlock. > > The "every little bit of content is free" business model was fine in the first few LW seasons but does it still make sense? > > Share your thought here! I'm wondering since LS1.. I HATE that my payments indirectly (or directly) support Anet making Living Stories. I'm not interested in the chapters at all and the only reason I may buy some would be if the map had an enjoyable farm. Also, why would you not monetize actual content?! By that logic they'd have to give away expansions for free as well imho. I mean.. if they earn enough money from the gem store then why lock bigger content updates behind paywalls and exclude the "poorer players" on the important stuff? And if they don't earn enough money then why give away dlc-like content updates for free?.. Pretty inconsistent if you ask me but on the other hand Anet has always been inconsistent af so nothing new I guess... Look at ESO for example, they pump out WAY more content without flooding their cash shop as much and I'm preeetty confident it's because they monetize their dlcs and Anet doesn't. Also.. More money doesn't hurt, at least I don't think NCSoft would complain if Anet had more profit.. So even IF they made enough from the gem shop there is still nothing wrong that they want to get paid for actual content they developed.. That would be as if McDonalds gave away burgers and drinks for free but sell a bag and straw for 10 and 15€. Players who don't own Living Stories also don't miss out on anything important anyway imo. Even having them for open world farming is not that important, it's just nice to have an alternative to Silverwastes (Because who the fuck cares about the story anyway, it's boring af..) Would highly appreciate a reasonable price tag on living story episodes ngl. But I think the reason why they don't monetize the LS episodes is because they know exactly that it's not worth a lot and by forcing every player to own them, fanbois can defend Anet by saying "we get free content updates regularly, why do you complain?!".

> @"Terrorhuz.4695" said: > > @"DoomNexus.5324" said: > > So if you cast even 1 IA now, you don't even have enough to pull of a stealth combo so you have to wait for the missing initiative regenerated. > > This means you either have to slow down entering combat A LOT because you have to stand around waiting or you have to skip IA entirely.. > > Where's the negative side? There is none, it's just the effect of the IA nerf. Unfortunately we don't get any insight on the reasoning behind the balance changes in this patch (sad to see Anet ditched this habit again btw) but if all the statements cluttered in the forums are true and this is indeed to target the high mobility of thief then the change was an utter failure tbh. If the target was to slow down thief a bit in general and make it clunkier to play then it kinda worked I guess. I've overreacted at first ngl, thought shortbow is useless now (which for most viable builds is the only secondary weapon that actually makes sense due to sharing the ini pool btw.. anyway). But the more matches I've been playing and the more I've been thinking about how the changes affect the playstyle of a typical thief build, the more I'm leaning towards the opinion that this change doesn't do a lot other than annoying thief players because they have to relearn their timings and slowing down their game a bit. This includes roaming ofc so you could say it "worked as intended"? idk. My guess would also be that the change is primarily targeted at nerfing disengage capabilities anyway, not mobility in general or roaming in particular. Since this is actually the only circumstance where having to wait those 2 extra seconds mid-fight to be able to cast IA is a crucial difference but then again you are now just forced to disengage earlier or not spend as much initiative during the fight. Which is actually a kinda useful thing ngl, because it forces thieves to learn and play more cautiously and not waste resources because they get greedy or something. I think since the patch dropped I'm more aware of my resources and improved my thief play quite a bit. The only matches I've lost the last couple days were against (almost) full condi comps. My main criticism still stands tho, tweaking with initiative costs to influence play style is an awful way of balancing (since it affects EVERYTHING aka has a lot of side effects) and Anet could've done or at least tried a couple different things. My suggestion to nerf overall mobility would still be to add charges to IA and keep the initiative cost where it was.

I think cheaters/hackers are covered by 'Botting'. If I remember correctly then botting is Anet's general category for anything related to using third-party software. On the other hand, it doesn't even matter really, because these are just different labels for the "Goes directly into the trash bin"-category, it just seems like you have options.

I don't think it would be terribly useful though. For example I am stuck at gold 2 at the moment, even though I used to play in plat2+ pretty consistently over the last 2 or 3 years. Got back into the game after a longer break, didn't really care for my rating (neither do I now tbh) and ye here I am. Playing over the weekends and later at the evening has always been a complete clownfiesta but due to my work schedule I can't really play at the prime times anymore. The other end of the spectrum is probably also true, a lot of people with minimal knowledge about how conquest works get carried by some flavour-of-the-month build and are in gold 3 even tho they belong in silver 3 or something. Even if you'd see the rating you couldn't do anything about the defeat either and everybody has good or bad days and especially good or bad matchups against other classes/builds. Maybe someone simply can't handle matchups they are usually supposed to win or even vice versa.

In my opinion without full team queue there's not much of an incentive to form pvp guilds or anything similar. Aside from people grouping together to regularly compete in (m)ATs. So I'd prefer having solo/duo and full team as two separate match making systems. I mean I don't know why Anet didn't bring back full team queue already, if there are not enough players then the queue dies and that's it, nobody has any disadvantage from having it in the game. Same goes for Stronghold, (almost) nobody plays it but it has no influence on Conquest by being in the game..

> @"Wisdom.4712" said: > Anyone who has actually played thief for more than a few weeks quickly realizes they are sub-optimal at nearly every role except de-capping, running away and "ganking" targets who are at 3K health and completely distracted. They possess the physical resistance of wet tissue paper. I laugh and roll my eyes when a thief jumps me because I realize they can't do anything. ^ This. Let's not think about the current state of thief for a moment. We can agree on the mobility on thief being broken if it makes you feel better idc, just follow me for a second. Changing the initiative cost of a skill affects EVERYTHING. By making IA more expensive it not only nerfs mobility but also brings down overall damage output and utility access, since if you have to spend more on mobility then this means you can't spend it on a Heartseeker for example. Now this statement on its own is pretty obvious but this is especially important when considering how spending initiative is weaved together and the ini pool in general. Entering stealth is kitten expensive. You need to cast Black Powder which is 6 ini + at least one Heartseeker (an additional 3 ini) which costs entering stealth a minimum of 9 initiative.. That's 60% of a thief's entire ini pool (15), given they are using Trickery otherwise it's even 75%! (But realistically there's not a single viable thief build without Trickery since initiative is so fucking precious) So if you cast even 1 IA now, you don't even have enough to pull of a stealth combo so you have to wait for the missing initiative regenerated. This means you either have to slow down entering combat A LOT because you have to stand around waiting or you have to skip IA entirely.. Tweaking initiative costs has enormous impact on the entire playstyle of a build and with a skill so crucial to a thief's kit as IA it will affect every single meta build and most of the viable ones. An example for Shiro-Rev mains.. Imagine the cost of Riposting Shadow suddenly gets increased from 40 to 55 and swapping your legends won't reset your energy to 50% anymore and you keep your exact same energy pool across both legends.. Imagine how Rev effective Shiro would be then..

> @"UNOwen.7132" said: > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > @"UNOwen.7132" said: > > > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > > > @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > > > > > > @"Armen.1483" said: > > > > > > > @"Anomaly.7612" said: > > > > > > > > @"Vavume.8065" said: > > > > > > > > Escape/reset potential needed a nerf, I approve of the change. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > You realize this is the entire playstyle of Thief, right? Thief isn't a bruiser meant to stand there in a fight for long. They get in, do damage and get out. Now that's even harder. Basically just dunked on the basic Thief playstyle. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Anet has zero clue what they want to do with Thief. I'm sick of this kitten. I was already taking a break from the game and now I'm done. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > All while Necro lich form saw no changes at all. What a joke. > > > > > > > > > > > > I mean it's broken right ? When you play any non-support class you want to do the same. Get in do damage and get out. But other classes can't do that unpunished. If they get in, do their kill, it's nice. But if you get in and screw up and still get away with it ? Does it really sound fair to you ? It is not about the thief it is about any other class. If you are a guardian and you want to +1 some fight, do you want to get in there, do damage and stay forever ? Apart from some specific bunker classes, everyone class wantsto be able to do that, they don't because they can't. > > > > > > I don't agree with you that cheesing the hell out of the blink mechanic is the "thief's basic playstyle". It is toxic for the game and it makes playing thief also kinda boring. Thief is just so much more than that. Now you actually gotta play thief how it is supposed to be played. You calculate your chances before engaging in a fight. It is how it should be, just deal with it. > > > > > > I agree about the necro tho. It needs some nerfs too. > > > > > > > > > > Yes when other classes can shake of 3x the dmg a thief can take. > > > > > > > > When a fight is happening just 4k damage from a +1 on a good moment can be enough to decide a fight, so having 10 times more damage won't help much either. And btw I can assure you as a mediocre thief player I can demolish 1vs1s with a thief, thief doesn't lack damage at all, especially if you go for a damage build :) It's been showcased so many times by actually good thief players. Because truth is people just don't know how to play thief, because without his broken mobility, it is actually a hard class to play. But with so much overtune it doesn't feel that way. Playing different thief builds after the last patch I still think that thief is in a good spot. I can feel the difference, but not as much as I thought. My experience might vary from yours, but it is what it is. > > > > > > Yes, you dont need much damage in a +1. Thats why thief is still good. And no, you cannot win *any* 1v1s as thief other than maybe Condi Mesmer (Plasma is op). Thieves are already using a max reliable damage build. Thief absolutely lacks damage. Whats been showcased is that if you set up scenarios where the damage doesnt matter, you can do a lot of damage. > > > > Dude you've been trolling those forums for too long. I ask you kindly get out of your box and think. If you have ever used offensive traits and utilities, you would notice that thief can actually have 100-0 oneshot builds. Thing is those builds use utilities and traitlines that are not META. As I have said earlier thief has better things to do than 1vs1 people randomly. If you still absolutely want to 1vs1 easily with thief you just gotta use those offmeta builds that are easily capable of doing that. Most of those builds are not always very known or played because they are strong in 1vs1ing, they are not as strong as meta ones in general. Take for example deadeye. Yes it is way worse than a core thief as a whole, but it is a simple solution to your problem. Easy to play and is designed to win 1vs1s if it is what you want. Necros causing you trouble ? Go deadeye. > > Oh I have done that for fun before. I noticed that thief, under no circumstances, can even get *close* to 100-0 oneshot builds. The most you could is do barely enough damage to 50% a squishy if you go all-in on damage. Of course, then you immediately lose all your damage and die. Let me let you in on a little secret: If such a build existed, it *would* be meta. But of course, it doesnt exist. There is no thief build that can 1v1. Dude what are you talking about? Have you even played thief aside from one match prior to writing this... I mean.. You really don't know all those secret off-meta builds that easily one-shot EVERY other class? Let me tell you this secret then. It's actually a mechanic everyone in the game can use, however nobody benefits from it like thief does.. It's completely relies on some form of Preparation skill, however it's not labeled as such because you have to do it before joining a match! The mechanic in question is called "Character Select" and it allows you to reroll to an actually useful class that enables your true one-combo potential such as DH or Mesmer.. It's like a disguise you know, everybody knows thief can use stealth but it's a rare secret that we can also use mimicry to use other classes builds.

> @"Yasai.3549" said: > We wouldn't have this sort of problem if Ini was a balanced mechanic just saying :^) Not even arguing with this. Anet simply has no idea what they want the class to be. Guess they didn't want to bring back Assassins from GW1 without giving them a bit of a twist.. Now, I think it's an extremely interesting system and you could argue that Rev's energy works similarly but it's kinda balanced due to Rev having cooldowns (not speaking of how loaded their kit is at times or how Kalla works tho) I think it could be worth trying adding charges to some skills on thief like IA or Unload on pistol/pistol. Like.. You can cast it 2 times in rapid succession and get a 5 second cooldown but if you only cast it once (aka spend only 1 charge) then it will recharge after 3 seconds or something like that. Similar to how the Mantras on Firebrand work, like the charges have lower cooldown than the mantra itself. It would probably not be that hard to just make two identical vresions of IA, one being the "lower cooldown charge version" and the other one being the "higher cooldown final charge" version. Just an idea and it could be worth giving it a shot in my opinion.

> @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > 2 Initiative more for sb#5 has ruined the class D: ?? I think people are over reacting here. Yes, it ruins the class. Trust me. I mean.. I don't really care, I'm leaving now, that's bullshit, but I hope you guys all have a lot of fun automatically losing your matches when you get teamed up with a thief and the other team has a proper comp. I just hope everyone celebrating the changes to IA recalls that before flaming another thief for being garbage.. ye.. ye they will pretty much all be garbage now and you are to blame ngl. Happy solo queue guys.

Literally nobody arguing in favor of the initiative increase has ever played thief and it shows. Yea yea keep those lists with dodge, stealth, escape, teleports, etc coming.. This IS true, thief has a ton of utility for avoiding fights but they don't have shit to actually WIN a fight and there's the difference.. Also why does this bullshit with 2,7k distance by spaming IA keep popping up in this thread? Even with a cost of 6 initiative you can just do 2 shots aka 1.8k distance, then you have to wait to get 3 more initiative to do the third but keep in mind folks that the thief then is completely helpless... 0 initiative left, the only thing left to do is auto attacks... and yea, deadeye has a third dodge but literally nothing else... entering stealth either costs firing a utility skill (Blinding Powder) or in case of D/P takes a 9 initiative combo... good luck entering stealth when you just ran out of initiative because you had to "spam those 2,7k distance".. With those 8 initiative you can't even do 2 in quick succession since thief only has a max of 15.. keep in mind that this is after the additional 3 initiative given by Trickery.. Another thing Anet keeps fucking up.. Trickery is a must have trait since every just because Anet can't balance the skills without making them more expensive. Soon IA will cost 13 initiative so you can't even cast it without Trickery, you heard it here first folks. Initiative is the single most important resource to the entire class.. what makes it even more crucial is that all weapons share 100% the same initiative pool. Imagine Rev sharing the energy 100% aka not resetting to 50% on legend swaps.. That's also the reason thieves always take shortbow with them.. Not only because it's an extremely powerful tool but because it's also pretty much the only option that makes sense... if I play d/p, s/d, ... then which other secondary set would complement the playstyle even a little bit? I'll tell you: Nothing. Why would I take d/p as a secondary for s/d for example? It's a completely different playstyle that requires completely different traits, amulets,... The only example I can think of that ditched shortbow was rifle DE for more versatile stealth access but that's gone as well.. I just hope you all have fun losing your matches with thieves in your team from now on since they can't do shit anymore. I'm out again, didn't take long for Anet to fuck up their game again after I came back from my break.. weeeell Anet is still pretty consistent with fucking up their balance, at least something we can rely on.

> @"Azure The Heartless.3261" said: > >Thief > >**Shortbow, plasma Thanos snap** > > Mmm, pain. mmm. Delicious. Hope y'all want some non shortbow thieves to spice up your ratings. Yea guys, enjoy your non-shortbow thieves in your teams. Your match will be a 4v5 and you'll auto lose with a thief on your side, good job anet.