Guild Wars 2

DevilsGlare.7658:

mursie.3681:

just played against a scepter/dagger ele that was bunker spec with cantrips. wow. can’t even remotely dent him and his dmg is nothing to sneeze at..and ranged..

I can’t kite him to try and widdle down for a burst shot. just completely outmatched. if you try a surprise burst… mist form. if you try to trick-shot till he is widdled down for a burst….his range on scepter/dagger will actually out dmg you and his attunement swaps and double water heals (triple actually with evasive) has his health not even moving..

I literally just have to walk away.

Know what my team used to do?
-Chain our bursts together.
I would call out a burst on the ele knowing he would burn mist form. Then our thief or warrior would jump in the fray executing a full unhindered burst. Never failed, always worked. This game isn’t about 1v1’s. I can’t think of too many match-ups in a tourny where a thief should be 1v1’ing a ele anyways, other than by random chances.

my point is exactly this.
you focus burst, the ele pops up mist form, the thief bursts him and we’re all happy.

but what is going to happen when you throw another ele in the fight ?

here when you were about to stomp, the ofher ele comes, updraft and ress the ele back, with mistform ress if you’ re trying to interfere.

in order to do so, you were 3vs1 the ele, now you’re 3vs2 with all your burst on cds against 2 eles.
you won’t kill them and you can’t stay there because you’re outnumbered elsewhere and would lose too much time in order to win the fight.

assuming there are more eles in their team (my feared “full eles”team), the other ele will quickly join the fight and you’ll lose OR those eles will go where you’re outnumbered, since you can’t be faster then them, unless you’re running the same comp.

without quickness, you can’t force stomps, neither you have enough burst and dps to kill a potential ele team.

again, I’m waiting for the first team using 3-4 eles in a single team and statring to dominate, I give you 1 week ar max as soon as they release the ladder.

Mrbig.8019:

again, I’m waiting for the first team using 3-4 eles in a single team and statring to dominate, I give you 1 week ar max as soon as they release the ladder.

Are you gonna be here posting when this wont happen??
And why do you forget about engies condie nades build.Lets say you have an engie and a necro with epidemic in the team fight..Which ele wont be forced off point??Even 2 eles with water gm trait wont have enough cond cleansing and ether heal is according to general opinion too easily countered to be picked over signet.
You have to consider that those eles need to get back the point after they are froced to leave and eventually lost it.But..
They dont have the cc cntrol to force a neutralise when enemy is there.
They dont have the damage to kill the bunker there.
5-4 eles means at least 2-3 of them need to build very offencively or they ll fall to <=2 ele teams by the time they just die or lose the point to the enemy engie /necro.
It also means they have 0 cond damage so its far from balanced and prone to be hard countered
And last dps and glass canon ele melts to aoe damage and is a bad choice.Needs melee rage for the whole burst which might be aoe but it spans over more than 4 sec which most experience players will react too/
Trust me i thought a lot about making a team of 5 eles (troll mode :P) and its just bounches to this:
Ele cant take the role of main burst,or the role of control in teh team

kostbabis.8791:

Mrbig.8019:

again, I’m waiting for the first team using 3-4 eles in a single team and statring to dominate, I give you 1 week ar max as soon as they release the ladder.

Are you gonna be here posting when this wont happen??
And why do you forget about engies condie nades build.Lets say you have an engie and a necro with epidemic in the team fight..Which ele wont be forced off point??Even 2 eles with water gm trait wont have enough cond cleansing and ether heal is according to general opinion too easily countered to be picked over signet.
You have to consider that those eles need to get back the point after they are froced to leave and eventually lost it.But..
They dont have the cc cntrol to force a neutralise when enemy is there.
They dont have the damage to kill the bunker there.
5-4 eles means at least 2-3 of them need to build very offencively or they ll fall to <=2 ele teams by the time they just die or lose the point to the enemy engie /necro.
It also means they have 0 cond damage so its far from balanced and prone to be hard countered
And last dps and glass canon ele melts to aoe damage and is a bad choice.Needs melee rage for the whole burst which might be aoe but it spans over more than 4 sec which most experience players will react too/
Trust me i thought a lot about making a team of 5 eles (troll mode :P) and its just bounches to this:
Ele cant take the role of main burst,or the role of control in teh team

1: I specifically said 4 eles + guardian as the best comp, exactly because you can run a shout guardian and never worry about conditions as long as at least 1 ele supports him.
even more since it has enough CCs to force you off point.

2: you’re not accounting eles unmatched mobility.
not only they will be able to outnumber you elsewhere anytime they want, but they’ll also be able to come back extremely if they screw up and get defeated.

3. quickness neff is more about the issue regarding stomps. the ele can already mist form when downed to avoid the first stomp, now without quickness YOU CAN’T stomp him if another ele interferes. He will simply ress and you can’t do anything.

4. easily countered ? how can you counter them, if not by running the same comp ? if you run othef bunker classes like guard or enge, they’ll outmanouvre you due to better speed.

you really don’t seem to unerstand how bad quickness nerf is: more than bursting them, it helped to stomp them before backup came.
now it can’t happen anymore, and guess what ? after quickness nerf, the ele is by far the best resser, probably better than rangerz (that got hit REALLY BAD by the nerf, but nobody seems to notice it).

try running a 3-4 ele team NOW after quickness nerf. we’ll talk again after that.

Shukran.4851:

ensoriki.5789:

Hitting people with Backstab is easy and typical.

if they are sleeping yes. a normal opponent should avoid it or he will be not normal.
play thief for some time. it sharpens your reflexes

You could try an original response.
Hitting Backstab “IS” easy.
What helps dodging it is that every thief telegraphs it with Basilisk Venom giving you a 411 that your about to be backstabbed.

wait??you know you can poison them when down,right?
What is he gonna do ,call his other friends and all are gonna use their 75 cd mist form?
No seriously i dont get from a theorys prespective what you tell?How is is absolutely certain that the other ele will rezz him.And even if that happens what tells you that you wont be able to down him again.Its not like he saved his cantrips knowing he ll get ressed and the possibility he already used water att is over 50%.
Im just saying you massively overreact with thinking that an ele can do everything.It cant!
Also absurd burst was never the only counter to ele.Personally id pick condies and high sources of poison.
But i do understand the issue.When you have something as a mobile tank in a conquest type game common sence says that it ll be the easier setup to run and be effective if you dont want to bother with team synergy,chain cc and flexible roles withing the team..
I get !But be sure that those 3-4 ele teams will ALWAYS lose to people that bothered to sit down together and make their mind work on a balanced strat.
You dont even have to analyse this.Cause if that wasnt the case then this game would be broken beyond repair something that would have been obvious to the devs since beta

Mrbig.8019:

DevilsGlare.7658:

mursie.3681:

just played against a scepter/dagger ele that was bunker spec with cantrips. wow. can’t even remotely dent him and his dmg is nothing to sneeze at..and ranged..

I can’t kite him to try and widdle down for a burst shot. just completely outmatched. if you try a surprise burst… mist form. if you try to trick-shot till he is widdled down for a burst….his range on scepter/dagger will actually out dmg you and his attunement swaps and double water heals (triple actually with evasive) has his health not even moving..

I literally just have to walk away.

Know what my team used to do?
-Chain our bursts together.
I would call out a burst on the ele knowing he would burn mist form. Then our thief or warrior would jump in the fray executing a full unhindered burst. Never failed, always worked. This game isn’t about 1v1’s. I can’t think of too many match-ups in a tourny where a thief should be 1v1’ing a ele anyways, other than by random chances.

my point is exactly this.
you focus burst, the ele pops up mist form, the thief bursts him and we’re all happy.

but what is going to happen when you throw another ele in the fight ?

here when you were about to stomp, the ofher ele comes, updraft and ress the ele back, with mistform ress if you’ re trying to interfere.

in order to do so, you were 3vs1 the ele, now you’re 3vs2 with all your burst on cds against 2 eles.
you won’t kill them and you can’t stay there because you’re outnumbered elsewhere and would lose too much time in order to win the fight.

assuming there are more eles in their team (my feared “full eles”team), the other ele will quickly join the fight and you’ll lose OR those eles will go where you’re outnumbered, since you can’t be faster then them, unless you’re running the same comp.

without quickness, you can’t force stomps, neither you have enough burst and dps to kill a potential ele team.

again, I’m waiting for the first team using 3-4 eles in a single team and statring to dominate, I give you 1 week ar max as soon as they release the ladder.

Someone already mentioned this, but if your a thief and your not poisoning a downed target, then to be honest, you shouldn’t be in here complaining. A thief that poisons a a target that is downed while consistently cluster bombing that target will not allow the person to get rezz’d. If the ele blows mist form to go for a clutch rez, then doesn’t get it, makes for quite an easy kill 2v1.

Your simply trying to throw out ridiculous scenarios in order to reinforce your point, while forgetting that there is always two sides to every coin.
I played this game at a top tier level and won consistently, and we were arguably the 2nd best team in NA.

TOP TIER THIEVES IN NA DO NOT USE HASTE.
Get over it.

Oh wow.

EU’s thief playerbase is really mediocre if they’re reliant on haste to have impact in team fights. This patch was a massive meta-buff to thieves. Less quickness ressing and spike-potential means less pressure on thieves and less ability to react to shortbow poison+cleave. Many of the skills and builds that made playing thief a liability for team fights have been nerfed significantly.

Multiple ele comps are difficult for thieves, but not because of any haste change. Its entirely because of how effective multiple copies of frost and shocking aura are against thief’s damage output. None of that changed, so why the crying now? We already knew that frost aura was crushing Thief and Warrior impact on fights. The quickness change didn’t make that any different; the problem was independent of that.

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Oh wow.

EU’s thief playerbase is really mediocre if they’re reliant on haste to have impact in team fights. This patch was a massive meta-buff to thieves. Less quickness ressing and spike-potential means less pressure on thieves and less ability to react to shortbow poison+cleave. Many of the skills and builds that made playing thief a liability for team fights have been nerfed significantly.

Multiple ele comps are difficult for thieves, but not because of any haste change. Its entirely because of how effective multiple copies of frost and shocking aura are against thief’s damage output. None of that changed, so why the crying now? We already knew that frost aura was crushing Thief and Warrior impact on fights. The quickness change didn’t make that any different; the problem was independent of that.

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

• How would you know who runs what? You don’t.
• Since you will never know who runs what, how do you know what most decent thieves in NA would run? You don’t.
• Since haste was more unreliable and shorter to capitalize than critical haste why would a single decent thief in NA invest on a trait that is worst than the sigil?
• A patch that tones down thieves more is a massive meta-buff?
• Why are you even making this a NA vs EU?

Counter-logic gaming much?

Yes, buff Thiefs because they can’t solo- and insta-kill Targets in a very tanky Metagame anymore…

If they Buff Thiefs in any way, they need to leave the Bunker-Ele’s as they are now, or if they Nerf Bunkers, they can’t Buff Thiefs, maybe even Nerf them more, because in a Metagame that isn’t that Bunker-Heavy, Thiefs are still Godlike. Besides that, in actual competetive Play with premade Teams, Thiefs are still good and absolutely needed to deal with Bunker-Chars; They can’t solokill stuff anymore, but together with the Mesmer, they are still the best way to deal with Bunker-Eles.

Really, ppl that want Thief-Buffs, either have never played on a high level with premade-Teams or they don’t understand how a Metagame works.

Why do you think Ele’s started to go overly defensive, because it’s so fun? Nope – they needed to because they were sick of getting one-shotted by a class that is better than them in every Aspect possible (If the Ele was running a Balanced Valk-Amu build or even a Glass-Cannon build).

Oh and yes, the haste-nerf was a buff to Thieves, they are now the best Burst-Class – they were before as well, but the haste-nerf hit other classes harder than them. I’ve never understood why you’d use haste on a Char that instakills anything anyways. But Thiefs just misinterpret the current Tanky-Meta for their class being weak. Yes, you can’t instakill everything anymore and yes, the only viable build probably is the BS-Thief, but you can’t just Buff Thiefs overall because the Meta doesn’t fit how you play them.

Would I have a Problem with buffing their sustain or their pressure-DPS – most likely not, but as soon as you Buff their Burst, we will have huge outrcries as soon as the Meta shifts to a more offensive playstyle.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

Critical haste is/was bad. To get it you give up 7& additive crit chance from behind/side. This ends up being +18.5%.
Way too good to pass up.
Not to mention unfavorable situations like hasted heartseeker for half distance or hasted evasive shot for half evasion duration.

This is why I love gaming meta.

2 weeks ago. The forums are full of thieves posting crap about its all l2p and thieves aren’t op.

Now its, every other class posting to tell thieves that they are actually going to have to learn to play now.

The fun of mmo’s

I’m sure haste nerf didn’t hit us thieves that hard. Most good thief builds don’t require haste, especially if you’re running dagger/dagger or dagger/pistol. Unless you go full haste heart seeker spamming build which after u burst someone down, you become a walking sankitten because of the endurance penalty. TBH, haste nerf only ruined warriors because of the damage penalty and turning their awesome 100blades burst into only 50 blades

PowerBottom.5796:

Yes, buff Thiefs because they can’t solo- and insta-kill Targets in a very tanky Metagame anymore…

If they Buff Thiefs in any way, they need to leave the Bunker-Ele’s as they are now, or if they Nerf Bunkers, they can’t Buff Thiefs, maybe even Nerf them more, because in a Metagame that isn’t that Bunker-Heavy, Thiefs are still Godlike. Besides that, in actual competetive Play with premade Teams, Thiefs are still good and absolutely needed to deal with Bunker-Chars; They can’t solokill stuff anymore, but together with the Mesmer, they are still the best way to deal with Bunker-Eles.

Really, ppl that want Thief-Buffs, either have never played on a high level with premade-Teams or they don’t understand how a Metagame works.

Why do you think Ele’s started to go overly defensive, because it’s so fun? Nope – they needed to because they were sick of getting one-shotted by a class that is better than them in every Aspect possible (If the Ele was running a Balanced Valk-Amu build or even a Glass-Cannon build).

Oh and yes, the haste-nerf was a buff to Thieves, they are now the best Burst-Class – they were before as well, but the haste-nerf hit other classes harder than them. I’ve never understood why you’d use haste on a Char that instakills anything anyways. But Thiefs just misinterpret the current Tanky-Meta for their class being weak. Yes, you can’t instakill everything anymore and yes, the only viable build probably is the BS-Thief, but you can’t just Buff Thiefs overall because the Meta doesn’t fit how you play them.

Would I have a Problem with buffing their sustain or their pressure-DPS – most likely not, but as soon as you Buff their Burst, we will have huge outrcries as soon as the Meta shifts to a more offensive playstyle.

lolwot.

I never said i want thief bburst to increase, thief burst is fine.

We’re the best burst class by far now.

The point is that kind of burst will soon have no role in the meta, and this will hit HARD the thief, which doesn’t have any other viable option.

It’s really that simple.

I would take, instead of a thief, a condi pressure class like the enge/necro anytime.

And 3 eles will soon become standard, you’ll be able to play even with four ones.

If you can’t understand HOW BROKEN the meta is when you can stack 3 players of the same profession in a team and actually have a profit, then i’m sorry but there’s no room for such discussion in these forums.

I suggest you to go back in GW forum and take a look at people complaining about full air eles team to have any actual idea about what i’m talking about.

I think people can’t read.

Thieves aren’t bad at all, in fact, thieves are very powerful.

The absolutely necessary nerf to haste has and will continue to see more classes build offensively (those without haste), as they now can afford to be more aggressive, which is really bad for glass cannon thieves.

The end.

Mrbig.8019:

Zodian.6597:

Mrbig.8019:

Med.6150:

Haste was way over the top and regardless of how any class is going to suffer from the nerf to it, in the long run the nerf will allow for these classes to get balanced in a more adequate manner.

Before the nerf, even if the opponent managed to evade part of my burst, if I managed to proc “Critical Haste”, my opponent would simply die from the sustained DPS I would generate from autoattacks.

Now we can all speculate that classes with higher sustained dps and better healing will emerge and become the top dog, because the game promotes self sufficiency due to the lack of true roles and synergies and it may very well be true, but it’s easily fixed by giving all the classes these capabilities in one form or another.

In fact I suspect PvP would be much better, if this became a reality and the standard meta builds (less burst, more sustained dps and better sustained healing) would allow for longer battles.

If something is fundamentally broken, you fix it, rather than designing a game around it.

I advocated for burst reduction for a long time, and I’m not saying I disagree with it.

I’m simply saying that doing so without nerfing bunkering and without giving compensations to those classes relying on burst to be competitive, is simply foolish.

now there’s nothing able to stop eles from dominating, and altough engies and rangers could somehow work, I currently I would NEVER form a team without at least 2 eles.

and in this team, the thief would have no role.

This scenario will soon become true, and since we’re pigeon holed into burst builds, thieves will disappear and eles will rule the world.

and this is why you’re not a competitive player. The pros will always find another viable comp or build, it’s not that the game lacks options (I’ll admit cantrips are too strong), it’s just that no one is experimenting or theory crafting successfully for new strats. They just see one big team do something that works well and latch on to the ideology that its the only way to play.

it seems that " competitive" players, especially in NA where you play, run cheese double ele/ranger build for quite some time, aside sataar .

when something is too strong it’s simply too strong, period.

ask any EU top player how gamebreaking the ele is, they will answer all the same thing.

And stop with the elitist attitude, you have no idea how skilled I may/ may not be. if there was a ladder, you would NEVER see teams experimenting, because you climb the ladder by winning, not by experimenting.

just like in GW, where cheese comps were abused till the nerf hammer here hit hard.

I’m simply expressing my concern about future meta, yet you pick it and refer at hominem.

Pls..DO NOT OFFEND GW1 top 100 players with such remarks, go ahead and name me a single top 50 team which was still running with triple derv after breaking the top 200 treshold, any cheesy team composition like triple derv, triple warrior was easily beaten by any top 50 team, comparing GW2 “top” players to GW1 top players is like comparing copper to gold for which one is more valuable

Jumper.9482:

Archer Henchman.2534:

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

Critical haste is/was bad. To get it you give up 7& additive crit chance from behind/side. This ends up being +18.5%.
Way too good to pass up.
Not to mention unfavorable situations like hasted heartseeker for half distance or hasted evasive shot for half evasion duration.

Your numbers are wrong. Critical hits do .50 + Critical damage/100. For you to do 18.5% extra damage per hit, you’d need to have a damage multiplier of 114% and hit 100% of your hits from the back or side. Assuming full zerker kitten, 5 scholars and 1 divinity, you get 60% critical damage, not 114%. This means you have a 7% chance to do 110% damage, which works out to 7.7% net extra damage per hit if you hit from the side or back 100% of the time. Overall, the skill is around a 3-6% increase in damage overall depending on where and when you fight. Additionally, the skill does not synergize well with hidden killer (and plenty of people are using that, although I much prefer executioner).

Anyways, just some numbers: W/ fury up it procs around 14% of the time off dual strike, 20% of the time off trickshot, split cluster bombs on as single target and 25% off a dancing dagger. An unsplit, saturated clusterbomb procs it 33% of the time, and It procs around 48% of the time during pistol whip. Unload probably procs it pretty reliably too, but lol p/p. A proc essentially gives you 2 extra attacks (assuming a cast time of 1s/skill. just makes it easy for me to calculate, but the numbers will be rough), and as the numbers show, you’ll probably pop the proc within the first 5 seconds of a fight. This means in a 35 second period you’ll get 37 attacks vs 35. That’s a net increase of 5.7% measured from the worst possible time in terms of ranking the skill’s effectiveness. Over the short term the advantage is far more pronounced (over the course of 10 seconds, its a 20% increase in output. That’s massive for cleaning points while roaming).

Should be pretty obvious from the numbers which types of builds would run one trait over the other. I personally dropped critical haste a while ago because of the drawbacks you mentioned, too, but I still see it used pretty commonly.

All of the numbers are for pre-nerf quickness. Its an unsalvageable trash trait now.

Authority.6145:

Archer Henchman.2534:

Oh wow.

EU’s thief playerbase is really mediocre if they’re reliant on haste to have impact in team fights. This patch was a massive meta-buff to thieves. Less quickness ressing and spike-potential means less pressure on thieves and less ability to react to shortbow poison+cleave. Many of the skills and builds that made playing thief a liability for team fights have been nerfed significantly.

Multiple ele comps are difficult for thieves, but not because of any haste change. Its entirely because of how effective multiple copies of frost and shocking aura are against thief’s damage output. None of that changed, so why the crying now? We already knew that frost aura was crushing Thief and Warrior impact on fights. The quickness change didn’t make that any different; the problem was independent of that.

Not a single decent thief NA ran haste besides for critical haste, and even then the trait was unreliable and too short to capitalize on in the majority of cases. Big whoop.

• How would you know who runs what? You don’t.
• Since you will never know who runs what, how do you know what most decent thieves in NA would run? You don’t.
• Since haste was more unreliable and shorter to capitalize than critical haste why would a single decent thief in NA invest on a trait that is worst than the sigil?
• A patch that tones down thieves more is a massive meta-buff?
• Why are you even making this a NA vs EU?

Counter-logic gaming much?

I’m not sure if you’re serious about any of these points, or trying to mock the conversation in this thread has been.

I don’t mean to condescend. I’m actually unsure. Are you claiming that its impossible to know what other people are running?

Med.6150:

I think people can’t read.

Thieves aren’t bad at all, in fact, thieves are very powerful.

The absolutely necessary nerf to haste has and will continue to see more classes build offensively (those without haste), as they now can afford to be more aggressive, which is really bad for glass cannon thieves.

The end.

I think its the complete opposite. Glassy thief setups have better matchups vs a number of classes when they go glass (necro/mesmer/ranger/ele all come to mind), and in the context of a team fight, the glassier a team is on the whole the better a thief’s cleave and pressure become.

Arheundel.6451:

Pls..DO NOT OFFEND GW1 top 100 players with such remarks, go ahead and name me a single top 50 team which was still running with triple derv after breaking the top 200 treshold, any cheesy team composition like triple derv, triple warrior was easily beaten by any top 50 team, comparing GW2 “top” players to GW1 top players is like comparing copper to gold for which one is more valuable

And to you it was perfectly fine to pass the top 200 treshold by running cheese comps ?

Being able to win against more skilled opponents thanks to cheese is something fine ?

Top 50 were of a superior level.

In top 100 at Nightfall times you could still see comps like Eurospike, running triple monk/double necro.

Ranger spike comps dominated for quite a long time, and they were the incarnation of “cheese”.

Archer Henchman.2534:

I think its the complete opposite. Glassy thief setups have better matchups vs a number of classes when they go glass (necro/mesmer/ranger/ele all come to mind), and in the context of a team fight, the glassier a team is on the whole the better a thief’s cleave and pressure become.

The ele can go burst with valky amulet.

Last patch only favoured the ele as a burst class due to :

1. warriors being crushed

2. 100 nades engies being nerfed and not worthy over HGH builds

3. rangers being nerfed hard by quicknening zephyr nerf, basically nerfing hard the BM build and leaving the trap build as the only viable option, also nerfed hard by quickness bleed stacking nerf.

4. other classes never had viable burst builds aside mesmer, that still is kept for its team utility and NOT for its burst.

The ele can go burst by simply bringing arcane utilities and shifting 10 points from water to air, still keeping valky amulet.

So it’s not glassy at all.

honestly, top 10-20 gw1 teams were at that position because they outplayed even cheese compositions by splitting or playing better. that was a teamplay balanced game. this is not.

Shukran.4851:

honestly, top 10-20 gw1 teams were at that position because they outplayed even cheese compositions by splitting or playing better. that was a teamplay balanced game. this is not.

Honestly i belive this is a team based game too.

The point is team play becomes pretty much irrilevant when classes like the ele can carry a team THAT much.

They say " use team play to defeat the ele, this is a team based game", but then they start to stack eles, and then you need double team play with AT LEAST FOUR teammates to bring down 2 single elements of the opposite team, unless you run the same comp.

All this while the opposite team profits.

It seems people really can’t understand how quickness nerf has hurt the game ( in the short tun) and how imba the game is currently in favour of bunkers & eles specifically.

Same old @Mrbig…thieves are UP, the same threads as you can find them on GW2guruforum…your luck is that here you find far less reasonable people to kick your kitten at your own game

Arheundel.6451:

Same old @Mrbig…thieves are UP, the same threads as you can find them on GW2guruforum…your luck is that here you find far less reasonable people to kick your kitten at your own game

said the ele…

omg ele players are getting ridicolous this time, really.

And i’m by no mean saying the thief is UP or anything ( build variety lacking ? that for sure), i’m saying that the game is slowly going into " tank DPS overlorlds" meta where the thief will have no place ( or a very niche one).

I’m simply asking to fix the 80% of the thief proff that is not burst, because having only one option (that now is also sub-par as you can see in EVERY tier thread) is simply not enough.

L2read.

Mrbig.8019:

Arheundel.6451:

Same old @Mrbig…thieves are UP, the same threads as you can find them on GW2guruforum…your luck is that here you find far less reasonable people to kick your kitten at your own game

said the ele…

omg ele players are getting ridicolous this time, really.

And i’m by no mean saying the thief is UP or anything ( build variety lacking ? that for sure), i’m saying that the game is slowly going into " tank DPS overlorlds" meta where the thief will have no place ( or a very niche one).

I’m simply asking to fix the 80% of the thief proff that is not burst, because having only one option (that now is also sub-par as you can see in EVERY tier thread) is simply not enough.

L2read.

Glad you’ve used the word “DPS” and not burst, as the Devs already explained to you and others, a profession like ele is supposed to be able to do a little of everything at any given time, while still not being the best at anything.
The ele truly reflect the concept of ‘balanced’, we’ve been given the tools to deal with possibly anything at any given time, now if you go and pick a specialized profession then you’ll have access to something better than an ele while lacking in something else compared to it, still a balanced set up does not guarantee victory every single time, each weapon set used by eles got weaknesses that can be exploited by a specialized profession, at this point it’s entirely up to the player to decide the winner.

You keep saying that a 4-5 ele team would win always therefore… I invite you to make a 5 eles team but only using below average players while I will be using a mixed team composition and I will not use an ele, with the profession being as OP as you state you should have not problems in winning by a large margin regardless of the ele player skill level.

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

Arheundel.6451:

Same old @Mrbig…thieves are UP, the same threads as you can find them on GW2guruforum…your luck is that here you find far less reasonable people to kick your kitten at your own game

said the ele…

omg ele players are getting ridicolous this time, really.

And i’m by no mean saying the thief is UP or anything ( build variety lacking ? that for sure), i’m saying that the game is slowly going into " tank DPS overlorlds" meta where the thief will have no place ( or a very niche one).

I’m simply asking to fix the 80% of the thief proff that is not burst, because having only one option (that now is also sub-par as you can see in EVERY tier thread) is simply not enough.

L2read.

Glad you’ve used the word “DPS” and not burst, as the Devs already explained to you and others, a profession like ele is supposed to be able to do a little of everything at any given time, while still not being the best at anything.
The ele truly reflect the concept of ‘balanced’, we’ve been given the tools to deal with possibly anything at any given time, now if you go and pick a specialized profession then you’ll have access to something better than an ele while lacking in something else compared to it, still a balanced set up does not guarantee victory every single time, each weapon set used by eles got weaknesses that can be exploited by a specialized profession, at this point it’s entirely up to the player to decide the winner.

You keep saying that a 4-5 ele team would win always therefore… I invite you to make a 5 eles team but only using below average players while I will be using a mixed team composition and I will not use an ele, with the profession being as OP as you state you should have not problems in winning by a large margin regardless of the ele player skill level.

there’s something you still don’t understand :

1. the ele has too much mobility, overlapping with other roamers, while giving more than other "specialized professions for that role.

with quickness nerf, and consequentially nerf to wars and thieves (quick stomp), a valky air built ele + arcane utilities has +- the same burst potential than those proffs without having drawbacks regarding sustain while also giving boons, healing and support.

The ele is now a better roamer

2. the ele is not an inferior bunker than guardian, the guardian is better for mid point simply because it’s slow and has more CCs. if you have fast roamers, they can easily go supporting an eventual mid bunker ele.
and we all know how bad ele stacking is on a point, especially when they’re both S/D bunkers.

3. az you said, the ele is the jack of all trades, but it is the only profession bringing so much healing+ condi removal+ boons stacking to the team while speccing for dps (20 air, valky amulet) .

add this to ele mobility, and you can easily see that the ele overshadows any other dps proff unless we talk about HGH engies or necros (the necro still has more utility than engies as long as they know what they’re doing).

5 ele teams will never exist, that’s for sure.

but currently, due to the above reasons, playing with 3 eles is not onpy possible, but also perfectly viable (saying 4 eles was a bit too much, I admit it).

this is ridicolous and aNet needs to do something.

as a thief ( or rather current less viable proff after the war) I feel legitimetely concerned.

@Mrbig

1. If your desire is to reduce the healing potential of bunker eles then you need to re-consider your opinion on our mobility, healing and mobility is what keeps the eles alive after all, as the devs realized and many other players, chill and immobilize are the worst enemies for an ele.

The double arcane burst ele will sit in the same situation as a burst warrior and thief, the ele burst is as obvious as the warrior one, you just need to wait for him to try the updraft combo or maybe just switch to fire, still the arcane burst is nowhere as “one shot” kill as the warrior/thief burst and by using double arcane your only way to really delay your death is mist form when everything fail

Regarding mobility, I believe people main problem is RTL, which is effective on an horizontal plane as you can travel effectively over 1500 range, by removing the skill you would effectively remove the roamer role from eles and that would leave the semi-decent bunker role, already contested by rangers-engineers

Thieves should have better mobility even on the horizontal plane, but that can be achieved without removing RTL from eles, furthermore by simply adding chill/snare to the list of possible counters, you would practically solve the problem as you see it

2. There are plans to add increased casting time on water healing skills and these I presume are water trident and cleansing wave, weeks ago i made a thread where I suggested to remove the healing factor from water trident and reintroduce back the knockback animation as it was prior to BWE1, and cleansing water with an increase casting time along with its long CD should be enough in my opinion, the ele is after all a jack of all trades

For now two cleric amulet eles with s/d build can be still hard to bring down but not as before after the 50% nerf on healing ripple and EA water dodge ( + the double water dodge fix)

Now it’s Anet intention to make so that an attent player will be able to reliably interrupt a s/d bunker while he’s attempting to heal himself, like it was for monks in GW1 against magebane rangers, where a single interrupt could screw you over

3. We should wait for the boon hate mechanic before anything, we don’t know if in the future will still be good to stack boons, true the ele when traited to do so can stack boon faster than an engineer while still having faster access to them, of course guardian can be good also in stacking team boons

About team/personal condition removal ,an ele is nowhere as effective as a necro who can literally send back all the team conditions while still stealing your boons

Having 4 attunements means that an ele should have access to different options at any given time, if not you’d have another profession who can chose between 2 weapon sets and that would simply remove the necessity of having 8 professions in the first place, the ele cannot after all switch weapon sets during combat, we must have something as compensation for that and the devs know it..it’s just the players who refuse to see it this way

heh, after reading alot of this it seems the best way to balance this game would be to give every class, except ele and guardian, 20 more trait points.
You will read this, and think its kind of funny, then you will think about it and it will blow your mind.

Nemiros.3590:

heh, after reading alot of this it seems the best way to balance this game would be to give every class, except ele and guardian, 20 more trait points.
You will read this, and think its kind of funny, then you will think about it and it will blow your mind.

Would love that.

@arheundel

1-2. I don’t want to nullify ele healing, i want heal scaling to be nerfed into dust.

It’s ridicolous to have the ele heal to full by simply switching into water and make a dodge roll.

EA mechanic is lame and unskillful, they should remove EA at all or rework it, because having both heal on water attu swap and EA togheter is simply ridicolous.

making trident or cleansing wave have cast times would totally kill balanced ele survivability.

The only thing they need to do is rework EA and nerf scaling HARD, in order to avoid these perma vigor spamming heals by simply dodging.

As far as mobility is concerned, even with thief mobility buffed, i would pick an ele over a thief, because the ele offers much more to the team.

they need to nerf RTL and make it 900 range FIRST, and affected by slows ALSO.

Add this to 3. the boon hate mechanic ( hoping for goods) and then you can start buffing fire and earth sucky traitlines in order to have more builds.

But in current state, the ( at least) 20 water -30 arcane ele is totally imba.

As far as the OP is concerned….

DEVS, are you going to do something about the thief ?

Do you know we’re playing with the same build for 4 MONTHS after you ruined the only decent alternative ( S/D daze spamming) ?

Are you going to fix P/P, S/D, S/P and condition builds ?

DO YOU KNOW the thief is the least viable class in the game after the war ?

I am not a scientist but I’m pretty sure I would explode if thieves quickness skill was rebalanced before rangers

Murdock.

Are you considering introducing a paralyzer sigil on the dagger only for thieves? Are you considering giving the thief more CC options?

Can you generally inform us in the types of changes you are considering apart from mobility?

AllieMurdock.1785:

Hey all, thanks for the feedback! I just wanted to pop in here real quick to let you know that we’re looking at ways to balance out skills and traits that were affected by the quickness change.

Right now, Thief is still very good in WvW, so we have to take that into consideration. Also, in lower Elo games, it is still doing well with its burst. In higher Elo, we recognize that it could use some tweaks.

These are things that we need to consider when making changes to the Thief, so try to keep that in mind when giving us feedback.

First of all, thanks Allie, this is problably the first dev post regarding thieves in sPvP and i’m very happy you took the time to answer.

The point, anyway, is not burst, thief burst is indeed strong if not the strongest in game.

The point is that basically all other options are very lacklustre, and thieves have been running the same 3-4 u-skills from game start, after some very HARD nerfs like Pistol whip, venoms, OH dagger and Tactical strike ( not accounting condition builds which were never viable from the start, due to few conditions applied in huge stacks, so easily removed by the abundance of passive condition removals and by eles in team fights).

Are there any plan to bring other sets up to par by rehauling/buffing stuff like Tactical strike, Flanking strike, P/P, S/P, condition builds and useless/ sub par traits and utilities ?

If WvW is so much of a problem, why don’t you split thief skills /traits more for PvP ?

Thanks for your time, it’s really appreciated.

www = mass fights
tpvp 5v5

i don’t get how could it be difficult to understand that those are 2 differents worlds (pve one, pvp other)

With Warrior needing an complete revamping, I cant see why we’re even talking about thieves atm. Backstab w/signet. Backstab some more.

or play Ele while youre waiting like all the Warrior players are atm….

AllieMurdock.1785:

Also, in lower rated games, it is still doing well with its burst.

People in the low tiers will always have trouble with something.
People in the low tiers tend to complain most about something when they can actually tell what it was that killed them. Things like 100b and heartseeker are visually distinct so there’s something to point their complaining at. If they die to a mesmer then they just say “I DON’T GET IT, MESMER OP” and call it a day.

Bads are always going to die to something. Pve is there to make them feel good and pvp shouldn’t be as forgiving.

xantosnightwish.5438:

With Warrior needing an complete revamping, I cant see why we’re even talking about thieves atm. Backstab w/signet. Backstab some more.

or play Ele while youre waiting like all the Warrior players are atm….

What kind of argument is that ’

Simply because the war is in a worse shape, we should ignore the 90% of the thief profession that is underperforming/not viable at all ?

If i were a P/P thief, i would feel like a war.

With the only difference i would have NEVER been viable from game release.

Moreover, the thief is the LOWEST tier proff after the war.

AllieMurdock.1785:

“People in the low tiers will always have trouble with something.”

Sure, but we still need to consider how the new player experience is going to be. Particularly when it comes to Thieves.

Sure, how about meaningful skill cues or a skill activation bar on the enemy you have selected? That way everyone will know what’s going on. Even if an Asura is casting something.

The most frustrating thing for new players is not knowing what killed them. The death recap is a reasonable attempt at this, but it isn’t all that informative. You can say that you’ll improve the death recap, but that doesn’t really change the fact that teamfight combat is shrouded in aoe effects and it’s hard to decipher a visual skill cue in that environment.

Bumping up the base damage and not having it scale ridiculously may be a good short term fix at the very least.

The problem lies with being forced in to a full berserker build, as if you don’t kill someone instantly you are suddenly at a huge disadvantage.

Being able to build more defensively and produce more streamed DPS – similar to the mesmer, which is capable of so many other things in terms of defensive, team play etc etc – it would enable different build styles, while pulling up their 1v1 capabilities.

Mrbig.8019:

xantosnightwish.5438:

With Warrior needing an complete revamping, I cant see why we’re even talking about thieves atm. Backstab w/signet. Backstab some more.

or play Ele while youre waiting like all the Warrior players are atm….

What kind of argument is that ’

Simply because the war is in a worse shape, we should ignore the 90% of the thief profession that is underperforming/not viable at all ?

If i were a P/P thief, i would feel like a war.

With the only difference i would have NEVER been viable from game release.

Moreover, the thief is the LOWEST tier proff after the war.

K let me be clear: Yes, there are problems with diversity in our thief builds. But we at least have 1 semi-viable build (backstab) that is still used quite often in tpvp (I had three on my rank 40+ solo que tonight and we won easily). P/P, P/D, S/D are still useful in WvW, PvE and hot join to an extent.

Meanwhile: Warrior community has virtually nothing after the quickness nerf. Elementalist is still stupidly overpowered after 3 months of ArenaNet claiming they’re “looking into it”. I’d personally rather see these two issues addressed ahead of helping out P/P thieves.

TRDL: ArenaNet should make sure every class has at least 1 viable build before moving on to making each class more diverse….After the quickness nerf, Theif is still has one very viable build while Elementalist remains OP and Warrior has become unplayable.

JonathanSharp.7094:

So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker), but a lot of other things are weak in comparison, which is bad.

The goal is to allow them to punish boons (something we also want to try with the Warrior) while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).

As Allie said, we want to be careful to balance their WvW/PvE potential against their PvP potential, and then inside of PvP, we have to be careful to watch how they perform at high ranks vs. low ranks.

Do yourself a favor a split PvP from WvW/PvE.

Thief will still be the thief, the class will not change, but some values should in order to balance out PvP. It will not be a big impact for people who come out of WvW/PvE into PvP… the mechanic is the same, just some values and %s should be different.

Same for other classes… this is a very friendly advice that will make your work at least 2x easier..

JonathanSharp.7094:

So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker), but a lot of other things are weak in comparison, which is bad.

The goal is to allow them to punish boons (something we also want to try with the Warrior) while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).

As Allie said, we want to be careful to balance their WvW/PvE potential against their PvP potential, and then inside of PvP, we have to be careful to watch how they perform at high ranks vs. low ranks.

As a necro this conerns me. The fact we have boon stripping as our thing and now you are planning to give boon punishment (way better than boon stripping) to other classes leads me to question why people would then ever want necros as we have no mobility or burst really. I hope that any changes in this direction would see some sort of “thing” the necros can do We would need a rework if this is the plan. Maybe a condition buff to put our conditions on a par with the current engi build which can easily out condi us.

Although such combos provide high damage, it only takes a single block to negate a huge portion. As a spike is based on 3-4 large hits, taking out one or two of those completely nullifies it.

Personally I feel this game is has no incentive to improve your game play or understanding. Largely due to 90% of PvE just being a big faceroll.

Would boon punishment not force a certain trait setup though?

Will you change the steal receivers from engie and ele?

JonathanSharp.7094:

So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker), but a lot of other things are weak in comparison, which is bad.

The goal is to allow them to punish boons (something we also want to try with the Warrior) while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).

As Allie said, we want to be careful to balance their WvW/PvE potential against their PvP potential, and then inside of PvP, we have to be careful to watch how they perform at high ranks vs. low ranks.

I overall agree.

But is “boon hate” or “more mobility with other weapon sets” going to help it ?

let’s face it : no thief will ever run without shortbow due to obvious sinergy between Lotus Poison + choking gas and due to it being the only AoE weapon in thief arsenal.

Moreover, it’s the only weapon allowing us to move in Z axis and reach points beyond other classes reach.

The shortbow gives us too much, and i think no good thief will ever leave it in the backpack unless you nerf it HARD.

moreover, let’s face it: the boon hate stuff won’t also fix anything, because the only working weapon set is D/P.

S/P doesn’t work due to being slow and wonky, and without quickness is worthless, and it will still be worthless even if you make it able to “hate boons”

P/P doesn’t work due to being bad in all aspects: burst-sustain-utility and it will still be worthless even if you make it able to “hate boons”.

S/D became totally useless after the brutal nerf to OH dagger and tactical strike; flanking strike is wonky and slow, and more than often it puts you in disadvantage due to a slow animation and bad pathing.
This set will still be worthless even if you make it able to “hate boons”

Dagger OH, after that brutal nerf, is totally useless, and i would never use it, unless you are able to create good sinergy by making it “hating boons”, in conjunction with Sword MH.

But even it that case, Flankin strike issues are too glaring, and i would still not use it till you fix it ( or buff tactical strike again).

Moreover, things are not going to change till you create good sinergy between other traitlines, because currently we’re using the only build with good sinergy, at least for a conquest gae type ( a shadow arts heavy build was possible only pre-november nerf to S/D, due to heavy CCs and more sustained power).

Thief issues are way beyond " more mobility and boon hate".

From a “structure” standpoint, the war is a lot more solid than the thief, and needs less “work” in order to make it work.

From a thief standpoint, i really don’t see how to handle it without heavy rehauling.
__________________________________________________________________
Edit:

Anyway, thanks for your time.

This is the level of communication we’re asking for ( not only regarding this thread).

keep it up

I generally avoid these threads because the negativity and hostility are terrible for the game, but the boon hate idea certainly perked my interest. Any information about how boon hate would be implemented? Ie would it be pushed as you do X% more DMG per boon or another mechanic, I’m not sure that giving thief and warrior a straight damage buff on targets would necessarily be a great idea, a sustain buff would seem more helpful, for both professions, and “boon hate” being a very situational thing, as punishing players for class mechanics/skills that gain boons could in all possibility create less viable builds than currently available.

Also thanks to the Dev and Community team for being very vocal today, keep it up!

JonathanSharp.7094:

The goal is to allow them to punish boons

Guardian here, what the kitten do you think you’re kittening doing??!!! Thieves already whoop us, we don’t need boon hate on top of that!