Guild Wars 2

I don’t know so much about WvW, but it is obvious that SPvP has completely fallen to having to choose between either Thief or Mesmer. Don’t believe me? Just look at the average classes played in matches.

Perhaps it is time to examine this?

I would not suggest nerfing either of those classes in any way. I have been against nerfs since I was first harshly introduced to them way back in the days of playing Dark Age of Camelot and even more so later in WoW.

What I suggest is doing something to make all of the other classes viable in PvP.

Perhaps making other melee classes more mobile, not stuck in one spot for their most important attacks, or reducing the cast and/or cool down time for some of the important Elementalist skills.

Or, here is an here is an idea (as silly as it may sound), fixing pets for Necros and Rangers in general. Something I personally have been waiting for since beta.

I admittedly can’t give you any very specific ideas for improving the other classes for PvP, and would rather not even open arguments for such thoughts in this post.

I just know that it feels very wrong to me that PvP so overwhelmingly favors only 2 of the classes that it has caused this trend. Especially in a game that is supposed to be about freedom from the old school templates of specific roles based on classes.

There are more than mesmers and thieves. Although they are common, the title is completely false. If anything Engineer is the least played, but necro warrior ranger and guardian I see very often in both spvp and tpvp. What they need is more viable builds for all professions since most of these ppl flock to 1 generic build and spvp becomes very much the same every match on who you fight.

Those two professions are the choice of the cowards.
And since both PvP and WvW are filled to the brim with cowards that will use all the cheap tricks they have available until they get nerfed, and those two professions have the most cheap tricks; of course you’ll see them around more often.

What we need is some kind of honor system that favors those who are not cowards, like getting more and better rewards when fighting in equal numbers as opposed to fighting only when outnumbering the enemy, and to fight to the end instead cloaking and running away as soon as their HP goes under 50%.

Well thief and mesmer may be annoying but not all of them (I main thief) fight the “cowardly way”. The only stealth skill I have is shadow refuge, which is EXTREMELY easy to counter, and steal. Both of which I only use for either a last minute escape or to put on SB for the immobilize skill. Can’t call out 2 entire professions, its the players who spam HS or cloak and clone the entire fight that are the problem.

Considering elementalist is the strongest pvp profession right now, I think op is just trolling. Sure, thief rocks low level tpvp and spvp, but a good ele (or 2) will completely shut down another team with less elementalists.

Eles, mesmers and thieves rule sPvP.

I main a ranger since beta and never stopped playing her, even when everyone were talking crap about the class
I never cared about wich profession is the best, I play to have fun, and that doesn’t mean winning 90% of fights and running away the other 10%. But you simply need to accept that for most people that’s their idea of fun, that’s all.

And on a side note, the only class that I find irritating in hotjoins are thieves. Noobs can spam #2 a couple of times and kill anyone. And no, you can’t easily dodge them, because they never 1vs1, they just jump in a fight to get the glory : )

Noob eles are everywhere, I guess it will get annoying when they learn to play. And mesmers are ok in my opinion.

The amount of buffing to the other professions won’t fix the actual problem:

Neither stealth or teleport have any hard counters. Even table-top RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder RPG offer hard counters to them: see invisibility, true seeing, invisibility purge, teleport anchor, anti-magic field. For some crazy reason Anet designed both mesmers and thieves have the superb ways avoid getting by enemy (stealth, teleporting, short range teleports away, replaced by clones etc). In most other MMORPGs you cannot enter stealth during combat and any damage during stealth or damage over time (bleeding, burning, poison) reveals you from stealth. This is the only sensible way.

Stunbreaks are very important pvp. Both thief and mesmer have the highest amount of stunbreak skills in the game (6 total for both profession, vs just 2 stun break skills for ranger). And some of those stubreaks have almost no cooldown e.g. shadow return from thief sword skill #2.

Thief and mesmer have the best down states in the game, together with the elementalist. Able to move considerably during downed state and enter stealth during downed state are big NO-NOs, unless all professions would have equal ability. Stomping someone during stealth should not be possible as the downed opponent cannot even attack against such stomper.

Dual dagger elementalists are also very common in both pvp and WvWvW. Superb mobility and survivability is very powerful combination. The 4th most popular profession seems to be the bunker guardian, an obvious counter to extreme burst damage (bunkers wouldn’t make so much sense without so overpowered burst, it would make more sense to play a balanced build).

So the overpowered and easy top 3 is: 1. thief, 2. mesmer and 3. D/D elementalist

The Anet developers seriously underestimated the importance of mobility. Classes with extreme mobility and free “get away” cards (stealth and teleportation) should NOT have very fast deadly burst. Having such combination leads to static boring meta: glass cannons vs bunkers. No profession should have the ability for extremely fast and easy burst to death. The problem is exemplified in WvWvW where a huge map makes the escape way too easily and allows these problem professions to run a glass cannon without much risks compared to the reward. A good thief, mesmer or D/D elementalist can always get away, unless the enemy is able to predict all its actions.

The reason why tournament plays have other professions as well is that people playing those other professions don’t like to play cheap simple professions and have higher skill to compensate the unfair advantage (and take advantage of the naivety of the simplistic play of the overpowered professions). The reason why thieves don’t completely dominate the top pvp is because most thief players have low skill (some thief players are really good, but let’s be honest: this profession screaming attention for young kids to do “ownage”). Also points cannot be captured during stealth and thieves have very little utility to offer to their team.

People who want fast and easy points flock to the overpowered choices.

Please see very educational videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u55vHURPQSw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-KMOc_y7xo
Illustrating that the same problem also exists in WoW, with lots of example fights, underlining how broken the game mechanisms and builds are. WoW finally nerfed the things.

I know I am going to be flamed for this message, but just watch the videos first. And I hope somebody would make similar “naked thief” in pvp and WvWvW videos.

Not true, it’s between Thief, Mesmer, and Guardian or Ele (no reason to have more than one bunker :P )

Personally, I want to see two changes. And I love my Mesmer but for the good of the class I know it needs some serious work. I haven’t used my mesmer in PvP for months because it seriously makes me feel like a horrible person. And thieves just need to suck it up and accept that the stealth mechanic is currently broken.

• Revealed now lasts until line of sight is broken. Thieves will not have a masterwork trait which causes blind to break line of sight.
• Mesmers no longer have stealth. To compensate, their clones now spawn between mid and maximum range, and their stealth utilities have been changed to shuffle abilities, which allows them to shuffle between their current clones, switching places at random.

I agree with Conncept that guardian should be added to my list. I edited my post to correct few typos and reflect that change.

Anet developers should take their heads out of the clouds immediately. The E-sport thing is not going to happen with current state of things. Even adding the missing things, like observation mode, are not going to fix this thing.

I am not claiming that D/D elementalist or bunker guardian are not powerful, but the thief and mesmer profession are the most problematic. Imagine a new comer, who has never tried pvp, enters hot join pvp as a warrior thinking that “oh gee, warrior must be such a sturdy profession like it is in pve”. What will be his first experience? Getting downed in 1.5-3 seconds by a stealthed enemy, doing 3-13k dmg/hit, who can even stomp him down during stealth! Or to slash his weapon through exploding clones and never hitting the actual mesmer. Now two things will probably happen:
1. the player never visits spvp again (we lost a potential player for good)
2. the player rerolls as a thief or mesmer

Both of these options are extremely bad for the future of the game. The meta is boring, because the game is broken for pvp. Some minor buffs to the least popular professions are not going to solve the problem. Nor giving some otherwise useless new utility skill to some professions which reveals stealth for 3 seconds once per 60 seconds (the thief can enter stealth much more often). These won’t be enough to fix the issue.

Anet developers must come forward and admit: yes, we made a mistake. Small fixes are not enough to fix these two broken game mechanisms.

Another thing: stealth and teleportation are broken in pve, but to a lesser degree, allowing players to skip considerable amount of game content. E.g. have you ever seen two thieves in a party use shadow refuge to give their team mates and themselves long lasting stealth to run past the enemy mobs?

But for pve side teleportation and stealth are still sort of okay, so they could be kept there as they are. In pvp they are game changing features. Thieves are anycase usually not that welcome to high-level dungeons, because many gamers have noticed that many thief players are bad and thus more of a risk than an asset to the team. A really good thief is great in dungeons, but really good thieves are a rarity.

I would love to see some thief or mesmer player prove me wrong: select a warrior and show it is as easy and good as a mesmer or thief in spvp.

Deniara Devious.3948:

So the overpowered and easy top 3 is: 1. thief, 2. mesmer and 3. D/D elementalist

[…]The reason why tournament plays have other professions as well is that people playing those other professions don’t like to play cheap simple professions and have higher skill to compensate the unfair advantage […].

I have to say I laughed here. I never played as a Thief or Mesmer, but I roll as a Ele, and I can guarantee to you it is far from being a “cheap simple profession”.
While Warriors are using HB and Thiefs are spamming HS, as an Ele you have to be constantly changing attunments and putting combos together.

But besides that part, I have to agree with you. I’m tired of Thiefs endlessly stealthing and running away / getting full heal and coming back for you. Whenever they are losing, cloak and run. Np if they are bleeding / burning. Just get a full heal and come back completely renewed.

I main a Thief in WvW/PvE but I have more success and fulfilment playing my Ranger in sPvP and to some extent my Guardian and Engineer. I don’t know what it is, I just don’t enjoy the Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist or Warrior in sPvP. I love my Ranger in sPvP but not PvE or WvW. I think the Thief, Elementalist and Mesmer are popular in sPvP because they have multiple ways to chicken out of a fight if things turn to custard. This is why I enjoy my Ranger more, because if things turn against me, I actively have to use my skill to flip that situation, I guess the added challenge gives me a more rewarding experience.