Guild Wars 2

Shadelang.3012:

From Ehecatl’s perspective let me say I also play a power ranger (que laughter) We all know how most power ranger builds fair against certain burstier proffesions (which will remain unnamed)

When im on my ranger the most frustrating feeling in the world. THE WORST. Is when I get dropped before being able to react. Be it several strikes to the back from stealth. Purple butterflies of death. Or an axe to the face. Its frustrating. Its degrading. It leaves you with a feeling of “There is absolutely nothing I could have done better in that situation without the ability to see the future” However it makes it that much more satisfying when I change something and get to drive the spike into there chest.

Even if you only have one hit point a wins a win right?

Certain things are going to be frustrating the fight. That is an innate nature of MMO PvP. From the lockdown mes of gw1. To the 3 minute long CC chains of old WoW. TO those gods be kitten ED shadowknights in EQ1 and 2.

The difference between power Ranger thief matchups is that it’s players playing. whereas something like DP vs Turrets is death by AI auto attacks. There’s no skill to that.

When I play D/P I happen to look for my favorite hard counters, Celestial and Condi engi and Dps guardian. These are DP hard counters, but they are steal beatable because you can overcome the build matchups by out playing the player.

When it’s DP vs Mm or Turrets you can outplay the player and it doesn’t matter because you’re dying to AI auto attacks.

Ehecatl.9172:

Shockwave.1230:

I have no issue with stealth burst. You can always see it coming and can avoid the burst.

I find the fact you claim you can always see an invisible attack coming hilarious.

No, you can’t. That’s the entire point. If you’re mid-transport or already engaged and don’t see the thief before he enters stealth, which if he’s a good thief at all you won’t because he’ll come at you from an angle you’re likely not looking at, you are going to be hit by an attack you did not know was coming.

Now if you do manage to see his attack coming, sure. You know what to anticipate. But to say that you can ALWAYS see an invisible opponent coming at you is just incorrect.

Know what you can always see coming though? A huge mob of deformed zombie monsters barreling down at you or sitting on a point. If you see an MM necromancer, or even a turret engineer, you immediately know exactly what is about to happen.

It really does seem like you don’t like heavy AI builds because they counter your playstyle. As a ranged nuker thieves are the hard-counter to my playstyle as well. Most builds do, and probably should, have something that gives them a hard time.

You can’t see the player when they’re invisible, but you can see the burst attempt coming and avoid it because you can always see someone going into stealth.

Shockwave.1230:

You can’t see the player when they’re invisible, but you can see the burst attempt coming and avoid it because you can always see someone going into stealth.

Unless I magically gain the ability to see in a 360 degree range around me, no. I can’t ALWAYS see them enter stealth. That is what makes a backstab thief so incredibly frustrating. 90% of the time you’re not even aware that one is in the vicinity before you’re stunned by basilisk’s venom and have lost a huge chunk of health.

Bare in mind I can and do fight and beat thieves. I actually took the time to play a thief for a little while and figure out how the initiative system works so that I could better predict the thief’s moves. It totally worked, but I can still be caught off guard by one if they are crafty enough to get within sneakin’ range of me when my back is turned.

As stated by Bhawb the minions WITHOUT player interaction do….Pitiful damage. You could sit there and let them beat on you in full glass and it would still take 10+ seconds to kill you. Thats WAYYYY longer than it would take a player to kill you. Assuming your competent (which I will for the sake of argument and my trust in you as a fellow player not to talk about something you dont know) Youl be moving. This will cut that dps in half due to the pets (move…stop….attack…move…stop..attack) If you are REALLY outplaying the owner. This along with dodges….blinds(my minions cant do ANYTHING against blinds) retaliation…reflects…etc..etc.. or any of hte other MYRIAD ways to fight back against them the ONLY dangerous part of them that should even touch you is there actives. Becuase we chain the actives with our control skills to make kitten sure those hit because there the driving force of our builds.

I will go ahead and say this. There are two things that help me beat thieves. I have TRAINED a thief player to beat me and he now does so 7/10 times in 1v1s when we play together. The first mistake he was making. Tunnel visioning. His lack of situational awareness was the number one cause of most of his deaths. When he sat back and looked at the whole screen while zoomed out and actualy let the information hit him he performed SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. He hten was winning against me half the time.

He then made a different change I didnt expect. Before hed used blinds to try and stop my minions from effecting him. He decided to throw a hydromancy sigil onto his melee and ranged weapon sets. He would attack me. Cause my minions to cluster around me. Then switch to his shortbow chilling my minions KEEPING US CLUSTERED and then evading away to fire that cluster bomb on us. It effing wrecks me when he does that. Hel then kite my flesh golem and any unexploded bone minions away and when they get close weapon swap again slowing htem down AGAIN and shadowstep to me and dpsing me.

This was effing brilliant and something id never seen a thief do up to that point. He adapted an underused sigil and used to pretty much violate my key mechanic. Id reccomend trying something similar. Find something NEW to use instead of repeating old mistakes.

The second thing I meant to say was hte habit of the thief to always repeatedly use the same attack patterns over and over. Even an ape can figure out how to fight if there attacked hte same way repeatedly.

Ehecatl.9172:

Shockwave.1230:

You can’t see the player when they’re invisible, but you can see the burst attempt coming and avoid it because you can always see someone going into stealth.

Unless I magically gain the ability to see in a 360 degree range around me, no. I can’t ALWAYS see them enter stealth. That is what makes a backstab thief so incredibly frustrating. 90% of the time you’re not even aware that one is in the vicinity before you’re stunned by basilisk’s venom and have lost a huge chunk of health.

Bare in mind I can and do fight and beat thieves. I actually took the time to play a thief for a little while and figure out how the initiative system works so that I could better predict the thief’s moves. It totally worked, but I can still be caught off guard by one if they are crafty enough to get within sneakin’ range of me when my back is turned.

How is this different than missing a Warrior rushing into a team fight and getting eviscerated? Or missing a Ranger pull up to a team fight and quickness rapid fire you? Or missing a dps guardian who teleports into a fight?

The difference is none if you miss them all happening.

Shockwave there is actually a fairly key difference. Its the twitch reaction. If I see a warrior eviscerating me from behind around 6 times out of ten I can do something about it. Whats frustrating with thief backstab is I dont have that opportunity for a twitch reaction. My body WANTS to avoid it as its been trained to do. The issue is quite LITERALLY by the time I notice its to late. But thats part of the AWESOMENESS of playing a thief. Hitting an oponent before they can react. A good thief approaches without his oponent even knowing and wrecks havic in that gap where a players reaction SHOULD take place. If I see a thief coming then yes I have a significant advantage because his element of suprise is gone. But those times when I dont holy kitten its annoying trying to break away in order to regain the flow of battle.

Shockwave.1230:

How is this different than missing a Warrior rushing into a team fight and getting eviscerated? Or missing a Ranger pull up to a team fight and quickness rapid fire you? Or missing a dps guardian who teleports into a fight?

The difference is none if you miss them all happening.

In all my time playing pvp I’ve never had any of that instantly down me.

The warrior rush I’ll see BLAST onto my screen and thus have a fraction of a second to get a dodge off before it connects. Same for a ranger rapid fire. There’s also audio give aways that I can listen to if I’m not already actively battling someone. And… DPS guardian? I think I’ve seen one of those in my entire time playing this game.

Yes, a thief catching you unaware from stealth is different from the above methods. I’m not arguing that it’s overpowered or that it needs to be nerfed. I’m just saying that it’s incredibly frustrating, and that for me there’s nothing more annoying to deal with in this game. Thieves give me the same feeling that AI builds give you.

Shadelang.3012:

As stated by Bhawb the minions WITHOUT player interaction do….Pitiful damage. You could sit there and let them beat on you in full glass and it would still take 10+ seconds to kill you. Thats WAYYYY longer than it would take a player to kill you. Assuming your competent (which I will for the sake of argument and my trust in you as a fellow player not to talk about something you dont know) Youl be moving. This will cut that dps in half due to the pets (move…stop….attack…move…stop..attack) If you are REALLY outplaying the owner. This along with dodges….blinds(my minions cant do ANYTHING against blinds) retaliation…reflects…etc..etc.. or any of hte other MYRIAD ways to fight back against them the ONLY dangerous part of them that should even touch you is there actives. Becuase we chain the actives with our control skills to make kitten sure those hit because there the driving force of our builds.

I will go ahead and say this. There are two things that help me beat thieves. I have TRAINED a thief player to beat me and he now does so 7/10 times in 1v1s when we play together. The first mistake he was making. Tunnel visioning. His lack of situational awareness was the number one cause of most of his deaths. When he sat back and looked at the whole screen while zoomed out and actualy let the information hit him he performed SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. He hten was winning against me half the time.

He then made a different change I didnt expect. Before hed used blinds to try and stop my minions from effecting him. He decided to throw a hydromancy sigil onto his melee and ranged weapon sets. He would attack me. Cause my minions to cluster around me. Then switch to his shortbow chilling my minions KEEPING US CLUSTERED and then evading away to fire that cluster bomb on us. It effing wrecks me when he does that. Hel then kite my flesh golem and any unexploded bone minions away and when they get close weapon swap again slowing htem down AGAIN and shadowstep to me and dpsing me.

This was effing brilliant and something id never seen a thief do up to that point. He adapted an underused sigil and used to pretty much violate my key mechanic. Id reccomend trying something similar. Find something NEW to use instead of repeating old mistakes.

Fights don’t last 10 seconds in Guild Wars 2, even as a glass cannon vs glass cannon. Fights last two to three times that long at least unless you get the jump on a glass cannon. As a glass cannon even if you get the jump on a sustain build they will always last more than 10 seconds unless they’re afk.

Black powder doesn’t work against MMs. It’s you vs a player and AI. You only get to focus on one or the other. Black powder has no effect on turret engi. There’s no way to know that you need to spec vs an AI build until it’s too late.

Also, if the AI is losing to cluster spam, you aren’t using your fears, golem charge, or dps right. There’s no reason you shouldn’t CC someone targeting your minions. You can’t cluster bomb and avoid the CC at the same time. You basically get to let your AI win for you in that situation.

We have already stated that Turret engi is a poor example of an AI build and shouldnt even be refered to as such. It is everything than an AI build SHOULDNT be able to do. ALthough its no where near as OP as people think it is.

And from what you JUST said.

“Also, if the AI is losing to cluster spam, you aren’t using your fears, golem charge, or dps right. There’s no reason you shouldn’t CC someone targeting your minions. You can’t cluster bomb and avoid the CC at the same time. You basically get to let your AI win for you in that situation.”

The ENTIRE PLAYSTYLE is based around the necro acting as a control center. this has been stated MULTIPLE times throughout our thread. You just ADMITTED that it takes player interaction to be able to win against the clusterbomb attacks. and your right. it did. And I did. I….not my pets….ME…the person controlling them adapted and found a way to beat them. Ty for admitted that it takes a player decision…timing…and yes…skill…to defeat an opponent.

Hopefully youl remember that next time one of us eats you alive.

Edit: Added Quotation marks

And to be more precise on the situation. There was more that goes on during our fights than I stated. theres alot of stealthing and restealthing. Lots of sneak backstabs. Lots of Bouncing arrows and poison volleys. and a HELL of a lot of well timed dodges on his part as I activated my minions abilities

Shadelang.3012:

We have already stated that Turret engi is a poor example of an AI build and shouldnt even be refered to as such. It is everything than an AI build SHOULDNT be able to do. ALthough its no where near as OP as people think it is.

And from what you JUST said.

“Also, if the AI is losing to cluster spam, you aren’t using your fears, golem charge, or dps right. There’s no reason you shouldn’t CC someone targeting your minions. You can’t cluster bomb and avoid the CC at the same time. You basically get to let your AI win for you in that situation.”

The ENTIRE PLAYSTYLE is based around the necro acting as a control center. this has been stated MULTIPLE times throughout our thread. You just ADMITTED that it takes player interaction to be able to win against the clusterbomb attacks. and your right. it did. And I did. I….not my pets….ME…the person controlling them adapted and found a way to beat them. Ty for admitted that it takes a player decision…timing…and yes…skill…to defeat an opponent.

Hopefully youl remember that next time one of us eats you alive.

Edit: Added Quotation marks

You interrupting cluster spam doesn’t change that the thief is dying from AI auto attacks.

As for the “A fight doesnt last ten seconds” remember thats ten seconds of you sitting htere doing absolutely nothing. By moving in any direction assuming im not ACTIVELY attacking you youl double that time atleast. By chilling/blidning them you add even more time. Every action you take is weighed against every action I take. Im trying to lock you down. Your trying to kill me. Its how we fight.

As for your last post shockwave. You’v flat out shown you have ignored a large chunk of what we have said. If you played hte class youd realize the work it takes to getting those (ai auto attacks) to even LAND. We arn’t fighting you. were fighting your ability to move and your ability to deal damage to us. We are atcively working to mitigate your movement and your damage in that order. I do so using chill,immobilize,fear, and weakness.

THOSE are my damage sources.

Edit as follows: it also shows that you didnt even fully read my post and understand what it meant. He use dhte hydromancy runes to NEGATE that “ai auto attack” leaving my my own auto attack and my largely control focused attacks as my only damage sources against him. Which are all MUCH easier to avoid once my pets are out of play

Shockwave.1230:

You interrupting cluster spam doesn’t change that the thief is dying from AI auto attacks.

I’m curious. What’s the difference between an AI hitting you with auto attacks and a player hitting you with auto attacks?

I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but… Auto attacks fire themselves. Automatically. It’s what they do. They also will always be aimed in your general direction so long as the player is facing you.

All the player has to do is hit 1 and the attacks start coming of their own accord. If I’m playing my elementalist I’ll also be hitting you for 2-3K damage a fireball, which is a lot more than Mr. Minion Master is putting out with his minions alone.

Shadelang.3012:

As for your last post shockwave. You’v flat out shown you have ignored a large chunk of what we have said. If you played hte class youd realize the work it takes to getting those (ai auto attacks) to even LAND. We arn’t fighting you. were fighting your ability to move and your ability to deal damage to us. We are atcively working to mitigate your movement and your damage in that order. I do so using chill,immobilize,fear, and weakness.

THOSE are my damage sources.

AI is the damage source. Play spirit Ranger if you don’t believe me. It’s not a hard counter, because AI aren’t the damage source. It’s just annoying because of the screen clutter and AoE/projectile absorption, other things AI builds are annoying for, but less so than their completely passive auto attack damage

Again you completely ignore it o.o ah well. Ill try one last time. Yes…our pets are our physical damage sources. But its not the auto attack. if you REALLY think that then….well…I have no more hope for you o.o The vast majority of the damage you are going to take..are going to be from active abilities. If your taking THAT MUCH AUTO ATTACK DAMAGE FROM MINIONS….then maybe you SHOULD to go PvE. Its obviously the more challenging content for you. It may sound rude. But its 3:52 A.M. here and ill be going to sleep within the hour.

If you seriously want to learn what your doing wrong. I will HAPPILY teach you in game. send me a mail. Dsseren is my necro. Ill teach you EXACTLY why MMancer isnt used in tournaments by anyone with common sense. I will show you every mistake that you most likely repeat against every MMancer out there. But you havnt shown any desire to learn how to win. You just know you lose. you blame it on the auto attack (how I have absolutely NO idea) of my pets.

But form what ive heard. It sounds like your terrible at knowing when to reset a fight. which is wierd because its supposed to be a thieves specialty.

Thats it for me though. I may post here again tommorow to whatever reply you’l think of next.

I do however apologize to the OP for semi swallowing your post. It was not my intention.

Ehecatl.9172:

Shockwave.1230:

You interrupting cluster spam doesn’t change that the thief is dying from AI auto attacks.

I’m curious. What’s the difference between an AI hitting you with auto attacks and a player hitting you with auto attacks?

I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but… Auto attacks fire themselves. Automatically. It’s what they do. They also will always be aimed in your general direction so long as the player is facing you.

All the player has to do is hit 1 and the attacks start coming of their own accord. If I’m playing my elementalist I’ll also be hitting you for 2-3K damage a fireball, which is a lot more than Mr. Minion Master is putting out with his minions alone.

A player has to position himself to land auto attacks. I don’t know of Pvpers that have auto auto attacks enabled so that’s news to me if people still do that. The other difference is the number of damage sources. Glass builds need to use dodges to avoid imminent high auto attack damage, which minions have on top of the necro attacks, which don’t crit but have high power. Plus the necro has 2 health bars, both of which are high health and high toughness.

You just can’t deal 40k damage as a thief to something with high toughness before you go down to auto attacks from the AI. It’s also a super long fight as a Shatter if you choose to take it.

Shockwave.1230:

A player has to position himself to land auto attacks. I don’t know of Pvpers that have auto auto attacks enabled so that’s news to me if people still do that. The other difference is the number of damage sources. Glass builds need to use dodges to avoid imminent high auto attack damage, which minions have on top of the necro attacks, which don’t crit but have high power. Plus the necro has 2 health bars, both of which are high health and high toughness.

You just can’t deal 40k damage as a thief to something with high toughness before you go down to auto attacks from the AI. It’s also a super long fight kittenter if you choose to take it.

Yah, players still use auto attack. I know I do. It’s annoying to have to keep mashing the 1 key over and over and throws off my usual rhythm. The exception of course being when I use a ranger sword. You can’t auto attack with that thing if you plan to ever survive an enemy counter attack.

The big issue with AI auto attack is that… the AI is stupid. Like, really really stupid. Generally speaking they aren’t going to be hitting you very often if you’re even remotely good at continuously moving. My BM ranger usually has to stand still to lure the enemy into stopping so my raven’s high burst can actually land. This has been the death of many a thief as they think “Oh gee look at this dumb guy he’s not even trying to kite!” just to get hit by 6-8K damage worth of feathers and hate. Shade there continuously mentioned having to cripple, chill, and immobilize his opponent so the minions can actually land their hits. That’s where the skill of playing an AI heavy build comes in. You have to slow the enemy down enough so that the AI can actually hit them.

Just because the damage isn’t coming directly from the player doesn’t make it an easy, noob friendly set up. In fact my experience has been quite the opposite. Because the player has to actively work against his own AI’s innate mental deficiencies it can be much harder to land that AI burst than it is to just go power ranger and hit someone with Maul.

The last bit of your response seems like it’s just a case of your scissors meeting it’s rock. It makes sense that a super glassy profession that heavily relies on his opponent not being able to follow his every move would find it difficult to take on a profession that has automated sentries as one of it’s class features. However, just as the AI builds are your kryptonite, you are the kryptonite of my low armor, low health ranged nuker. And in turn my ranged nuker is a nightmare for Shade’s MM necromancer.

IMO, AI would be better off if it had a minor damage dealing role with auto attacks, more of a defensive role while active and also a skill when used manually that applied excruciating burst or CC.

rabidsmiles.5926:

Shadelang.3012:

P.S. If it looks like we beat you while we were playing mindlessly. It just means you were very easy for us to predict and isolate. And at that point youl be ripped apart by our swarm

^This.

It’s all about control. People like to complain about AI builds because they know their opponent has little/to no control over their AI and the computer will do what the computer has calculated as being the ‘best’ for that moment in time. So neither player has any sort of real control over the situation with an AI running around.

A mesmer can throw around a few clones or phantoms and the only way you can escape from them is to kill them. Which takes resources away from killing the mesmer, to which they can just keep churning out more. You lose the control over the situation the longer you are in battle, so you get frustrated with the situation and blame the mesmer for doing what a mesmer does, create AI. A mesmer cannot get away from producing it’s phantasms, it’s the nature of the profession.

A ranger can send their pet off to distract you, to actively damage you while sitting back and happily trying to take you out with ranged attacks. Their pets have CC that can severely hamper your playstyle and wreck your day if you let them. You again, lose control of the situation and it makes you upset.

AI builds are innate to certain professions, there is no getting around it. They are far from mindless, you just can’t see as easily what goes on with an AI build as you can with a non one. It’s just easier on the ego when you can say that a player actively smashed your face into the ground than it is to say that the player’s AI did.

Plz dun compare ranger pets to clones. Rangers actually have a reasonable amount of control over the pet, mesmer can only pray the clones attack the target and not something else.

Ranger pet if used skillfully, and yes it takes some skill to play bm, can be like a remote controlled weapon. However if you want the ai to do the work for you, you can do that too.

Lifestealer.4910:

I like how people are trying to explain AI builds as if they require skills to manage and play LOL. No seriously, i have played turret engineer, spirit ranger etc.. I haven’t tried minion mancer but there is literally no skill involved in these builds, its all passive, all you need to do is focus on staying alive which isn’t an issue since you can go the tankiest amulet with all defensive traits allowing you screw up a ton.

Not saying it isn’t an easy build to play, because it is, but are you gonna try and elaborate how a spirit ranger with passive, non-attacking spirits compares to any of the other AI builds? The player is still responsible for damaging the opponent.

considering they’re improving guardian spirit weapons (we’ll hear the details tonight)
and not touching spirit weapons or turrets (we’ll have to wait to hear about minions tonight)
i’m guessing they like AI builds!