Guild Wars 2

http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/c/2831244

Discussion

how often you guyz wanna post this in this forum?

upload to youtube or dont watch – twitch just to bad for this^^

i agree twitch always lags for me I have to download and watch. youtube pls
good video though

Very true. All of it: true. Compulsary viewing.

Shame they won’t do anything about it.

Yeah these rants need youtube..

But i hear twitch fixed the dpi issues with transferrates..
so now you can view the streams on broadcasters settings.

But i just watched it, and its quite well pcaced this time, everything he states is clear and logical.

Except the necromancer part being easy.. (no i don’t use a staff or wells)

but i hear twitch fixed the dpi issues with transferrates..
so now you can view the streams on broadcasters settings.

“Activly react to passive effects” iow you have to guess what the passive effects are.. i…guess..?

On the picture: it’s obvious what is happening.. and the best expression to commendate it is: “Clusterkitten”

NB: It’s sunny outside Helseth go get some color on you.. go for a ride or something.

Anet should listen to helseth and not the people on this forum. He is correct that if necro/thief/ranger are going to get nerfed then this must be accompanied by big nerfs to mesmer and ele damage. Or things will just go from bad to worse. Every class needs nerfing. Hellseth understands this. The forums dont and neither does anet.

And newbs dont realise how OP sword thief is too. They (rightly) moan about necro and ranger. But a sword thief does the most damage and yet you cant kill or focus it.

And Hellseth is right this game sucks. I spent hours and hours playing necro to become on of the best at it. Then anet make it such a noskill luck based system that all my work on necro is undermined and now anyone can play it at a top level.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Anet should listen to helseth and not the people on this forum. He is correct that if necro/thief/ranger are going to get nerfed then this must be accompanied by big nerfs to mesmer and ele damage. Or things will just go from bad to worse. Every class needs nerfing. Hellseth understands this. The forums dont and neither does anet.

And newbs dont realise how OP sword thief is too. They (rightly) moan about necro and ranger. But a sword thief does the most damage and yet you cant kill or focus it.

He’s right, but no one won’t really listen.

lol nice rant. It’s true, the skill level is like non-existent right now =_=’ It can often all come down to a seemingly random stroke of luck to decide whether one wins or loses, completely independent of actual use of timing and/or anticipation.

It’s very spammy; dodges essentially just seem like they are randomly used, interrupts are seemingly just randomly used, damage is just spammed in a rush to burst the enemy down.

Both evades and interrupts should be saved for key moments with a little amount of leeway to them. A more offensive point of view; you should need to bait your opponent to use certain abilities to create openings to hit them hard.

Then there is also the issue with clones/spirits combined with effects just creating too much confusion with the games targeting system. That screenshot that the video shows at the very end is a pretty good example of the mess that all the effects, spirits/clones, etc. can create to have GW2 just feel super spammy.

Sollith.3502:

lol nice rant. It’s true, the skill level is like non-existent right now =_=’

It’s very spammy; dodges essentially just seem like they are randomly used, interrupts are seemingly just randomly used, damage is just spammed in a rush to burst the enemy down. Both evades and interrupts should be saved for key moments with a little amount of leeway to them. A more offensive point of view; you should need to bait your opponent to use certain abilities to create openings to hit them hard.

Then there is also the issue with clones/spirits combined with effects just creating too much confusion with the games targeting system. That screenshot that the video shows at the very end is a pretty good example of the mess that all the effects, spirits/clones, etc. can create that just makes the GW2 feel super spammy.

I agree.

Many of those issues wouldn’t be a problem if the system had anti – insert name here measures. For example, if the meta was spirit spam in gw1. We had the option to choose something like this:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spiritual_Pain

or this

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Banish

Once again, gw2 doesn’t offer anything similar to that. So the result is uncontrolled summons.

All that is a problem of excess spam. This game major problem IMHO is the lack of energy system to prevent people from using skills on cooldown, or plainly too short cooldowns.

The original intent seemed to be that, “autoattack is boring so we don’t want people to do that too much, they want to use real skills!”, followed by “our skills have such low cooldown, we’ll tune them so that they don’t really do much more than autoattacks”. Same for cast times. “They slow the game too much! People don’t want to wait for their skills to take effect!”.

And what we got as a result? A game where most skills are casted so fast and spammed so much it’s has to read what the other players are doing. So, if it’s hard to react to what the other players are doing, how can we rise above them and win? By speccing in ways where we do not CARE what they are doing! Brilliant.

Let me just put as many evades as I can on my thief. No need to evade specific attacks, I’ll just evade 70% of the time at seemingly random. How can I counter that spaming thief?

Common sense here is even more doubtfull than the amount of skills required to play this game.

Decisions regarding balance should be made by taking in consideration not only the immediate benefits but also the consequences, something that @Helseth seems to forget.

He first speaks of ele and mesmer and how they deal so much dmg, the first thx to a single trait and thr second thanks to its utilities, He then suggests that Anet should directly nerf the damahe of both..but then what would happen to ele builds not using the fresh air trait and mesmer builds not using those particular utilities?

Quite few people don’t use the fresh air trait, if you nerf the damage of the ele in its entirety then…what are we supposed to do in order to kill somebody when using a simple power build and not burst build? Our dmg would be so abysmal that there would be no point in running a balanced build , better to run what will be left of the one trick pony fresh air build or a no-damage bunker build, same can be said for mesmer.

The s/d thief is a playstyle, deadly it is for sure but a playstyle nevertheless..or this or thieves will go back to stealth spammers.
While some adjustments may be in order, we don’t want to totally destroy the high evasion of this weapon set…high evasion is what define the weapon set and should be left as it is

The necromancer, again only require few adjustments there and there, but the high pressure playstyle should be left intact, having mained a necro in GW1 I know that the class can be devastating if left alone, and it should be more than able to wipe out your entire team..given enough time, now they just need to lower a bit the amount of conditions they can apply in a single instant by maybe eliminating some conditions from signet of spite.

GW1 was very balanced not because what was considered OP by the community was nerfed to oblivion..but because new options were given to counter what was strong and minor adjustments were given to “OP” skills.

THINK BEFORE YOU ASK FOR NERFSTo destroy what is viable won’t make the game better in the long run

Good job on cleaning up your face/hair Helseth.

I actually couldn’t help but nod my head and say yea.. yea.. while listening to this,
Where’s the skill gone? Just spam all day and you’ll win most of the time
(If you’re a necro or spirit ranger that is)

Arheundel.6451:

GW1 was very balanced not because what was considered OP by the community was nerfed to oblivion..but because new options were given to counter what was strong and minor adjustments were given to “OP” skills.

This is true, but in gw2 this doesn’t exist so we are left at the whim of the developers. Which is why there are tons of buff and nerf threads.

Someone said in another similar thread, that gw1 system was self managed by the community. While gw2 is self managed by the developers.

Its very true.

Rome II comes out the 3rd. So does the next update. Well guess how many people will go to that game, or future MMO’s and leave the bullkitten balance/meta that is GW2?

Anet should listen to this man.

The PvP is in the state it’s in now because Anet simply has no capacity for foresight. They simply don’t know what they are doing, nor the effects of the things they change.

The easiest way to verify this is to simply open the Trait line page and gloss over all the completely useless crap there is in it, and compare that crap with the grossly overpowered Traits that you’d have to be stupid not to take.

How many Mesmers do you see without Deceptive Evasion? Really good trait right? Crazy good, huh? How many Elementalists would have forgone Evasive Arcana for something really special, like Lava Tomb? Boy, how about them Conjures? A great set of skills that see a lot of competitive usage? You guys remember when Persisting Flames, the freaking grandmaster trait of Fire Magic just made your fire thing last like 1 second longer?

No foresight at all. Someone, an actual, thinking human being, actually thought that people would use traits that make your Ranger pee himself when he goes into downed state and that it was competitive with all the other traits in the same tier.

These are the same people that said “cast bars are lame, animations are cool” and then implemented a midget race with stubby arms and legs that hold child sized versions of the weapons that determine your skills. Thanks, bros.

The same men, that when they were determined to make Necromancer more competitive, managed to blow up the meta and now everyone and their mom is a condi guy.

These are the men, that were like “man traditional rogues are lame, invisibility sucks, our thief will be different, short duration and infrequent stealth” and then give them stealth stacking combo fields and spammable combo finishers. For real.

There are reasons as to why even crap like Injustice or MK9 rake in considerably more viewers than GW2 despite the fact that GW2 has a significantly higher player base.

Like is said in the video, this game is more of Build Wars 2 or Class Wars 2 than anything else. Your build and class are far more important to your performance than any genuine skill. Why would anybody watch something like that? Why would we care?

I like the game and hoped for the best, but Anet has to get their act together.

Arheundel.6451:

stuff being said

omg you need to understand that you SHOULD build for offense if you want to do damage.

Ele has both precision/crit damage on the same traitline, just like the thief, so if you want to do damage YOU NEED TO TRAIT IN THAT kittenING TREE.

If you want to do more damage, than you need to go deep in the power tree too.

Otherwise you’re just creating an hybrid build, hoping it will be good enough as long as you have sustain ( offensive D/D ele pre nerf and current warrior are good examples).

This goes specifically for the ele, which brings TONS of utility to the team along with his dps ( something only the mesmer can compete).

Mesmer issues are only based on current condi spam meta, it has been one of the strongest proff for all this game existance, along with bunker guard, and in fact they should BOTH be nerfed like ele was .

S/D thieves are not that OP, but the skill floor is ridicolously low, added to the fact you can’t really focus him , makes S/D thieves playable with decent results even by a brainless monkey. The skill cap may be good, but you can’t let idiots running with such builds and able to compete against competent players, not even a chance.

Same with spirit ranger.

Regarding thieves ( the class i know the most) the issues are esponential, they should really reahul its resource system in order to balance it: some skill costs are ridicolously low in current contest( flank-larcenous strike for 5 ini for example) but if you just increase it by 1 you totally destroy the set;
this shows how fragile thief design is, and the reason why a simply nerf to Mug literally DESTROYED D/P full burst.

Necro pressure just needed ONE MORE CONDITION to cover poison and the costant 10+ stacks of bleeds, which , paired with Terror, were already doing great.

Now they have both torment and burning, and we’re wondering why 10+ stacks of bleeds + burning+ poison+ torment+ terror is bursting a player from 100 to 0 in 5 seconds ( -.- wtf, seriously).

Burning was never a good choice to begin with, procs giving burning with no counterplay allowed is the dumbest thing game’s world have ever come to see, they should just spread burning around weapons for all the proffs involved ( ranger, necro, engi) or just make procs to give you a buff giving 1 sec of burning per hit for the next 2-3 hits or something, in order to avoid 70% burning uptime with a single trait + condi duration ( 4 secs burning on proc + 40% condi duration anyone ? ) .

This game is in such bad shape due to tons of HORRIBLE design/balance decisions that even a kittened kid could have understood, and even more due to devs listening to the QQ of the community, of which 90% has absolutely NO IDEA how to play this game ( berserker stance, Necro buffs, spirit rangers, S/D thieves etc etc).

They said " UEEEE UEEEE THEY SHOULD NOT BALANCE AROUND TOP PLAYERS, WE’RE THE MAJORITY HERE".

This meta was balanced around you, my dear “majority”: i hope this “majority”, after seeing what has happened to this game thanks to their “smart” QQ, will shut the kitten up for the rest of their existance.

There are 3 sad things i can tell after watching this vid

1) he is right
2) most ppl playing pvp know this
3) I’m not sure this will ever get fixed

the third point is definitely the worst… i hope i’m totally wrong about it, but it scares me badly….
I hope really that Devs will seriously think to solve quickly this situation, cause….. with all most followed pvp teams taking breaks/leaving, i wonder how they plan to push this game to esport lvl.

OMG at the image ate the end… just lol.

Also i agree on the mesmers/elementalists, they are kind of balanced the thing is that this meta revolves around necros and evasion spam thieves thakittens very hard to find a spot on that classes, its not that they are underpowered, its that there are other OP classes on the game.

@MrBig

Ok…you say huge DPS build with great team support..right
This is the video @Helsest is reffering to :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlXskSmfpI

And this is @Mogwow build
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k34;2B2-V0w4VL-Z0;9;5J-JT;159;245-45A5w0;3G3G3G3G34BN

Not a fresh air build ( the one mentioned by @helseth in its video ), a double arcane ele with no stun breaker and 13k HP ( what more ele should sacrifice in order to get some burst dmg?)…do pls find me this Huge team support as you say.

It should be comparable to the current support engy,rangers and necros offer right now, but before that, got another question for you Have you ever played a burst ele without double arcana and valkryrie?

As both you and @Helseth both suggest to nerf ele dmg..did any of you two actually played a non valkrie/double arcane ele build?

As I’ve stated before : Common sense here is even more doubtfull than the amount of skills required to play this game.

I’d be obliged if you’d stop with your non-sensical ele hate campaign, you’ve been at it since…2011 using another forum ( GW2 guru forum, same name ), what you do is very sad..and given your level of knowledge about the ele I’d like to add your hate campaign is really pathetic also

I used to consider helseth a weird guy wearing ugly shirts. Now i’m starting to appreciate him. This “Rant of the week” thing is amazing.

Arheundel.6451:

@MrBig

Ok…you say huge DPS build with great team support..right
This is the video @Helsest is reffering to :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlXskSmfpI

And this is @Mogwow build
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k34;2B2-V0w4VL-Z0;9;5J-JT;159;245-45A5w0;3G3G3G3G34BN

Not a fresh air build ( the one mentioned by @helseth in its video ), a double arcane ele with no stun breaker and 13k HP ( what more ele should sacrifice in order to get some burst dmg?)…do pls find me this Huge team support as you say.

It should be comparable to the current support engy,rangers and necros offer right now, but before that, got another question for you Have you ever played a burst ele without double arcana and valkryrie?

As both you and @Helseth both suggest to nerf ele dmg..did any of you two actually played a non valkrie/double arcane ele build?

As I’ve stated before : Common sense here is even more doubtfull than the amount of skills required to play this game.

I’d be obliged if you’d stop with your non-sensical ele hate campaign, you’ve been at it since…2011 using another forum ( GW2 guru forum, same name ), what you do is very sad..and given your level of knowledge about the ele I’d like to add your hate campaign is really pathetic also

Uhm, where should i start….

Switch to water: AoE heal , remove 1 condi AoE
Cleansing Wave : AoE heal, remove 1 condi AoE
Evasive arcana in water = cleansing wave ( read above)
Trident : AoE heal on a 15 secs CD

( note: they all heal for 2k on valk ele burst build)

Might stacking ( usually coupled with stealth ambush)

Swiftness stacking ( at the start of the game)

Boon stacking on teamfights ( the N. 1 REASON why teams always run with 1+ ele before this nonsense patch), or rather….

- fire combo field + blast finisher + switch to fire = AoE might
- combo blast ( phoenix-dragon’s tooth-earthquake, churning earth, arcane wave) on allies’ combo fields ( especially with engis/rangers’ water fields) without really changing their damage rotation
- AoE protection ( earth attunement)
- AoE regen ( water attunement) which also removes another condition AoE if you trait for 30 in water and pick up Cleansing water ( there’s a common build out there doing this, and this make the ele removing 2 condi AoE by simply SWITCHING TO WATER)
- AoE swiftness ( air attunement)

Istant, non telegraphed ( unless you see the ele casting Earthquake) burst, by far superior to thieves burst post haste nerf, since thief burst STILL requires actual time to be pulled off and is not made by ALL ISTANT cast like ele ones.

Do you REALLY play ele ?

What kind of silly argument is " try to play a not X not Y build with the ele blah blah blah" ?

It’s just about the same as saying " try to run a full condition guardian than we’ll see ": it’s not OUR fault if aNet has no idea how to balance traitlines and due to this only certain amulets-traits combinations are viable, but it’s definitely YOUR fault if you run a bad build and cry about it not being viable.

Ele has strong builds, it was and ( if the meta shifts away from condis) still will be one of the strongest classes in the whole game.

Again, stop acting like a kid.

Do pls show me this 2k healing and 15s CD water trident ( also 2k healing)..also here, same build again same mesmer( only this time He see the ele)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VYm0MZOEKdE#t=285

And @Helseth is running a glass cannon nonetheless..can you imagine your total dmg against a non glass target and what happen when your burst fail?…no you can’t too biased for that

I grow tired of this discussion, you’re too biased for any possible conversation, I play ele, played it since BWE1 ( and 7 years before that in GW1) thw whole concept of ele is imprinted in my mind like AC/DC theory….on top of that I play thief-guardian-ranger-necro..that must be why I’m a lot less biased than you

He should probably stop playing.
I mean, everything is true, but he will just be more and more enraged, there is no way they can fix this game, short of remaking most skills, utilities and traits of every single class.

Baldric.6781:

He should probably stop playing.
I mean, everything is true, but he will just be more and more enraged, there is no way they can fix this game, short of remaking most skills, utilities and traits of every single class.

They could but I honestly don’t think they care or even know there’s a problem, I don’t think any of the game devs are passionate at all, that’s what it feels like to me.

Arheundel.6451:

Do pls show me this 2k healing and 15s CD water trident ( also 2k healing)..also here, same build again same mesmer( only this time He see the ele)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VYm0MZOEKdE#t=285

And @Helseth is running a glass cannon nonetheless..can you imagine your total dmg against a non glass target and what happen when your burst fail?…no you can’t too biased for that

I grow tired of this discussion, you’re too biased for any possible conversation, I play ele, played it since BWE1 ( and 7 years before that in GW1) thw whole concept of ele is imprinted in my mind like AC/DC theory….on top of that I play thief-guardian-ranger-necro..that must be why I’m a lot less biased than you

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArICAIKAAAA-TgAA0CvI4SxljLDXSuscB
Just equipped 20 water and valk amulet

cleansing wave= 1831

trident = 1977 ( 20 secs, yeah, MY BAD lol )

You say you’re not biased, yet you fail to see HOW STRONG the ele was pre patch ( god like for 6 moths, ruining the whole meta and ALL TOP PLAYERS said it)

Same for mesmers and bunker guard ( which should indeed be nerfed).

All other professions all have cheesy aspects which should be nerfed ( evasion for thief, CC for wars, spirits for ranger) and really saw the light for very minor times, in this game the only REALLY balanced proff is the engeneer ( and necro pre-patch).

If condi meta gets nerfed, ele, mesmer and bunk guard will rule the meta once again.

All top players think like this, but since you don’t ( and since you’re “unbiased” LOL) we all must be delusional and biased.

Surely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D thieves are not that OP, but the skill floor is ridicolously low, added to the fact you can’t really focus him , makes S/D thieves playable with decent results even by a brainless monkey. The skill cap may be good, but you can’t let idiots running with such builds and able to compete against competent players, not even a chance.

Same with spirit ranger.

Regarding thieves ( the class i know the most) the issues are esponential, they should really reahul its resource system in order to balance it: some skill costs are ridicolously low in current contest( flank-larcenous strike for 5 ini for example) but if you just increase it by 1 you totally destroy the set;
this shows how fragile thief design is, and the reason why a simply nerf to Mug literally DESTROYED D/P full burst.

Sorry MrBig, but this caught my eye …. .
2 things (and yes, this is ofc full of bias as any post is .. we can’t really fully understand what other people think .. but we can try):

1: S/D is imho THAT OP. Evades on no cd, along with boon-stealing on no cd? Along with decent dps and you don’t even have to go gc. Seriously? Talking from a POV that usually face S/D-thives, I can easily say, that unless I take an equally silly build I am toast. Guardians fx do depend on their buffs for defend; yes they are borderline OP in some ways, but when a thief steals all of it, what does that make the thief, when he along with that can’t be hit?

Spirit-rangers are not even close in the evade-race, but they have other issues that make no sense.

Yes … a good solution would be to re-design how thieves skills function … imo.

2: I don’t get why you are saying P/D is unviable. I am not playing a thief as main, so I can’t claim to be an expert, but last I checked P/D was perfectly viable .. it is just, that S/D is so strong atm. If other builds are made less viable, I think P/D will easily shine again, as will fx mesmers.

Poxxia.1547:

Mrbig.8019:

S/D thieves are not that OP, but the skill floor is ridicolously low, added to the fact you can’t really focus him , makes S/D thieves playable with decent results even by a brainless monkey. The skill cap may be good, but you can’t let idiots running with such builds and able to compete against competent players, not even a chance.

Same with spirit ranger.

Regarding thieves ( the class i know the most) the issues are esponential, they should really reahul its resource system in order to balance it: some skill costs are ridicolously low in current contest( flank-larcenous strike for 5 ini for example) but if you just increase it by 1 you totally destroy the set;
this shows how fragile thief design is, and the reason why a simply nerf to Mug literally DESTROYED D/P full burst.

Sorry MrBig, but this caught my eye …. .
2 things (and yes, this is ofc full of bias as any post is .. we can’t really fully understand what other people think .. but we can try):

1: S/D is imho THAT OP. Evades on no cd, along with boon-stealing on no cd? Along with decent dps and you don’t even have to go gc. Seriously? Talking from a POV that usually face S/D-thives, I can easily say, that unless I take an equally silly build I am toast. Guardians fx do depend on their buffs for defend; yes they are borderline OP in some ways, but when a thief steals all of it, what does that make the thief, when he along with that can’t be hit?

Spirit-rangers are not even close in the evade-race, but they have other issues that make no sense.

Yes … a good solution would be to re-design how thieves skills function … imo.

2: I don’t get why you are saying P/D is unviable. I am not playing a thief as main, so I can’t claim to be an expert, but last I checked P/D was perfectly viable .. it is just, that S/D is so strong atm. If other builds are made less viable, I think P/D will easily shine again, as will fx mesmers.

1. S/D is not that OP, if you can’t face him i can do nothing but to say “wait for larcenous strike than use your CC/burst”, but it depends accordingly to where you play. This is valid for EU standard S/D thief build, in NA ( if they still play jumper’s build) it’s difficult to time it ( since that build LITERALLY spams dodges) but you just need to outsustain him with blocks/evades/regen or play the “point control” game ( like engies).

S/D OP side is it is able to snowball low HP classes which are already engaged in another fight ( mostly thanks to inf strike mobility) and since it really has little importance if you’re able to reposition yourself, since an S/D thief will catch you anyway ( again, it’s mostly inf strike ).

People usually bash larc strike or shadow return as culprits, the reality is that Inf strike is what has basically made a class with low mobility like the mesmer to disappear: an S/D thief, paired with condies, is lethal, since it gives you no time to reposition you properly, and even if you do it, still you can’t escape him.

S/D thief is not OP in a direct damage meta, since it’s a sustain build with decent burst which offers only AoE poison and AoE stealth ( the real reason why a thief is brought in a team), and this build also offers boon stealing ( which was an issue only during bunker ele and HGH engies) and better mobility than standard thief builds ( but again, map travel mobility has always been thief clutch).

S/D thief can be fought 1vs1 by eles, certain mesmer builds, engies, warriors and rangers and CAN be defeated: it’s strong 1vs1 but not unbeatable, infact 1vs1 is not where this build shines and not why it is considered OP.

2. D/P thief is not viable since mug nerf. Infact, even Caed switched from a burst build to a more “team” oriented build with more sustain ( the trickery burst build) which still offers decent burst and good support via boon stealing.

Yet it is inferior to a certain degree ( altough different) to S/D, and S/D thieves, along with necros, are “forcing” the meta.

But if you remove the thief, the meta will be the same, with another spirit ranger in the team. If you nerf necros/rangers, the meta will shift.

This means the thief is NOT THAT OP, but maybe simply a little bit too strong ( and infact it should be nerfed somehow, i even said it).

Well. I will have to agree once again.
Very similar to the earlier ones about spam and animations, so no wonder I’ll agree this time as well.
I found the video pretty hilarious at times as well, so thanks for that. I literally laughed when I heard the Jon Peters “quote”. Hadn’t heard it before, and still don’t know whether is true or not, and/or where it comes from.
Still funny.

Mrbig.8019:

1. S/D is not that OP, if you can’t face him i can do nothing but to say “wait for larcenous strike than use your CC/burst”, but it depends accordingly to where you play. This is valid for EU standard S/D thief build, in NA ( if they still play jumper’s build) it’s difficult to time it ( since that build LITERALLY spams dodges) but you just need to outsustain him with blocks/evades/regen or play the “point control” game ( like engies).

S/D OP side is it is able to snowball low HP classes which are already engaged in another fight ( mostly thanks to inf strike mobility) and since it really has little importance if you’re able to reposition yourself, since an S/D thief will catch you anyway ( again, it’s mostly inf strike ).

People usually bash larc strike or shadow return as culprits, the reality is that Inf strike is what has basically made a class with low mobility like the mesmer to disappear: an S/D thief, paired with condies, is lethal, since it gives you no time to reposition you properly, and even if you do it, still you can’t escape him.

S/D thief is not OP in a direct damage meta, since it’s a sustain build with decent burst which offers only AoE poison and AoE stealth ( the real reason why a thief is brought in a team), and this build also offers boon stealing ( which was an issue only during bunker ele and HGH engies) and better mobility than standard thief builds ( but again, map travel mobility has always been thief clutch).

S/D thief can be fought 1vs1 by eles, certain mesmer builds, engies, warriors and rangers and CAN be defeated: it’s strong 1vs1 but not unbeatable, infact 1vs1 is not where this build shines and not why it is considered OP.

2. D/P thief is not viable since mug nerf. Infact, even Caed switched from a burst build to a more “team” oriented build with more sustain ( the trickery burst build) which still offers decent burst and good support via boon stealing.

Yet it is inferior to a certain degree ( altough different) to S/D, and S/D thieves, along with necros, are “forcing” the meta.

But if you remove the thief, the meta will be the same, with another spirit ranger in the team. If you nerf necros/rangers, the meta will shift.

This means the thief is NOT THAT OP, but maybe simply a little bit too strong ( and infact it should be nerfed somehow, i even said it).

GAH … you write long posts. Anyway: EU here, so that part is simple. As I am now playing around with guardian, I can assure you S/D-thieves have reached a new peak of hate for me. As you rightly point out: If you are engaged and are a class that rely on buffs in order to survive, S/D is a hard-counter. Yes, I can wait for LS, but that doesn’t really matter, wen my HP is naturally low, and I most likely have a ton of debuffs (some ironically from the thief) and the thief stole my buffs. It is really a slap in the face. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest you try the peculiar feeling of being stripped naked.

Don’t get me wrong though: I am not out to gut/delete the class.

I was thinking of Cruuks build (think we are thinking of the same?) S/D+P/D, which is a mix of boon-steal along with burst; imho that build is really a strong one (and more stealth-based than evade-based).

You are saying S/D can be fought by certain builds, but imho many of those builds are just as broken; some are held back by the condi-spam atm; some are not even being held back by that. So yeah … not even sure what to say, other than I prefer counter-play over hard-counters. The degree to which some speccs are hard-counters seems ……. pointless.
Maybe I am just completely clueless on my guardian still. I have “no issues” facing a thief on my engie (far less at least) though.

/cheers

Haha, S/D can be fought with certain builds? What skills have anti evade? None!

Its quite bizarre that Anet created unblockable skills, made signet of strength to negate block. But didn’t think about making un-evadable skills. Its weird since you can generally spam evade but not blocks.

It just makes me realize how out of touch they are with their own game.

Block = Has unblockable skills
Dodge = Has weakness but I don’t feel its very strong
Evade = Has nothing to counter it

GG Post over

Good job censoring this post.

Linksville is basically a graveyard.
Too much truth in one thread to handle.

Knote.2904:

Baldric.6781:

He should probably stop playing.
I mean, everything is true, but he will just be more and more enraged, there is no way they can fix this game, short of remaking most skills, utilities and traits of every single class.

They could but I honestly don’t think they care or even know there’s a problem, I don’t think any of the game devs are passionate at all, that’s what it feels like to me.

Hmmm… I don’t think that’s quite right at all; the devs definitely seem passionate about their game, spvp is just a small part of the whole. There are many, many players that play the pve and wvw too.

PvP just needs a bit of focus now; personally, I don’t believe it’s beyond saving if they take a month or so and focus on it. There need to be a few tweaks to some of the animations and telegraphing that they provide. Cool downs could be tweaked a bit too, but not so much that all skills have some insane cool down, but enough that if someone spams evades they will be left open for attack for about 5-6 seconds.

If you want to see some games with good telegraphing, one should look to the fighting game genre and simplify it a bit. Also, action combat games like DragonNest have done really well with their tels (although the game has a little too “cartoony” graphics for some and its ran by nexderp…; the combat itself was always pretty fluid back when I played it for a while).

Another thing that they could work on animation wise, is by adding actual foot work inherent to attacks. Instead of having someone awkwardly running and swinging a sword around, they need to added a certain amount of footwork to skills built into the skill itself. If you have ever seen or actually practiced a bit of fencing and/or kendo (Japanese style fencing essentially), you would understand that when you attack you almost always take some kind of advancing step that puts your attack in range to hit your opponent (conversely, it also brings you within range of their attack).

If they added:

1. Proper telegraphing (small movements in actions that “clue-in” what your next action may be; ex. the wind up a pitcher does in baseball, the rotation of the arm before they actually throw the ball)

2. Footwork to attacks (skills in general; this sometime can also act as a form of telegraphing; in lacrosse I used to watch other players hips to tell which way they were pivoting to predict where they were going, also in kendo they wear those long baggy pants, the hakama, to somewhat obscure their foot movements to prevent telegraphing somewhat)

It could go a long ways to helping in balancing the game. The issue is they chose to use a somewhat action oriented combat system where movement is important, but they kind of gutted many of the other key points of an action combat style, which throws things way out of balance. If they hadn’t gutted those other key aspects to an action combat game, I don’t think they would have as many problems as they do with balance at the moment, or would at least have a much easier time balancing things.