Guild Wars 2

and mesmers? It is almost as if they were balanced.

Yes im actually kind of sad and mad, these two classes have been repeatedly put on the scope of the community because they are alittle bit too much on sPvP.

“But they are easy to deal with, you n00b”. <—— that is a lie, and dirty lie you tell yourtself to not feel guilty about playing them. I have played them and I know what it is like critting someone life before they even see me, and if they do I disappear to do it again. Clones doing 5-6k damage in a go and one of the best healing skills in the game and a couple of stealths for when things dont go well (AKA 3 enemies).

Balance here is null, bunkers/Tanky DPS do the same if not more damage (sustained and even raw) than a pure glass cannon, that at this game standards is more like a glass than a cannon. I cant run a full DPS ele without being blown by a PVT guardian as if i was nothing.
3 of my friends gave up on sPvP, they consider it a joke, merely use it at most for trying out builds. There is no balance in sPvP and there wont be until each class can stand on their own and full glass cannon are as effective as a thief with the same stats is, some guideline as of why they completely gave up on sPvP (as do I):

-Lack of duels
-70% sPvP population are either thieves or mesmers
-lack of balance
-lack of rewards
-Bunkers/ Tanky DPS actualy outDPS’ing a full glass cannon that isnt thief or mesmer (AKA eles which by definition thats their sole job)

/Rant

I still see all the professions in PvP but you are right, there are more thiefs and mesmers compared to a few weeks ago.

The main reason I think players like to play these professions in PvP (and the only reason why I don’t like playing against them) is stealth. It simply has no counters. That’s why these 2 professions are the ones which can be played as a glass canon without being easy to kill.

=> high kill potential, “big numbers”, easy escape = a lot of players play these 2 professions

forget crits, the thieves i despise the most are the constant stealthing caltrop thieves, invisible while stacking insane stacks of bleed, if you remove them you’ll have 10 stacks back within a couple of seconds, 20 stacks within 10 secs.
the only time the thief appear is to spam perma-evade deathblossom, stacking even more bleed (and probably poison from Spider Venom) then ‘poof’ back to invisibility for more caltrops.

dear anet
stealth is a bit much atm
can you give it a weakness
thanks

Haven’t seen so much bullkitten in one topic in quite some time. I have to tell you folks, this is impressive. At least you had the balls to call it a rant post.

Clones are clones, they’re not humans. when mesmers got clones they are not 5 players against one, it’s still one player against another one.

The main reason you do not understand when people tell you thief and mesmer can be dealth with just fine it’s cus you haven’t reached the minimum level to do so (or at least it would seem like so). Now I get that you can’t play, but I’m sure you can see the clones infront of you, and therefore u can dodge em if they charge, you can time ur attacks, you can time your heals, you can destroy them easily if you have aoe (ex: eles and necros), blablablabla.

Thieves? thief is the squishiest class at this moment, and all they really bring to the table is burst and stealth, you take that away from them, they are useless and worthless, so dont wave me that nerf flag, they are totally fine in my opinion and they are doing the job they should be doing, period. You can’t avoid bursts? what happened to predicting moves, what happened to stun breaks, heals, avoidance?
Stealth has no counter? with the health pool on thief being so low its easy to just aoe and/or predict where the thief went, thieves dont stealth and get out of the map, when they stealth they are at that same spot (obviously trying to get away which most of the time is predictable pathwise).

Now I’m note responsible for stealth calltrop kitten thieves but honestly it doesn’t even concern me, since its hardly viable in competitive play.

The way the game is set up, you can’t really look at classes on a 1v1 point of view (in most scenarios anyways), but rather insert it on a team and think of what it brings to the table. And in that line of thought, I’m ok with the roles and don’t think thers OP stuff going around (gotta give a lil edge to eles but its all good).

Ima be an kitten now and go TLDR: stop crying like a kitten, man the kitten up and get good, ull stop having these lame kitten complaints I promise you. work around it instead of resigning.

EDIT: oh ye and stop playing hotjoins, i mean jesus kitten how do u even come here complaining about stuff that happens on hotjoins, no1s gonna bother with that.
EDIT2: people play mesmers and thieves more because they have an exciting and dynamic playstyle to it, fancy shadowsteps and flashy clones, thats all. because at the level your speaking of, which is hotjoints (otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about majorities), skill is the less of their concerns.

less rant and less spvp wont generate this kind of threads.

play tpvp.

I’ve noticed that when people want to play glass cannon, or at least dd, they prefer classes with stealth over classes who don’t have it because..well who wouldn’t. That no counter to stealth basically puts pressure on non-stealth dd classes, who would most likely die quick before they get a chance to react and lets face it, no one wants to be a free kill. This results in non stealth classes just playing bunker because if they do otherwise, they are dead.
And considering that people like to play glass cannon, many people just play mes/thief to not be at a disadvantage.

At least that’s how my theory goes.

@Hugo.9743

There are a lot of things I would disagree with but I don’t see why I should argue about it. According to the amount of “kitten” in you text I am assuming you are one of these “I know everything about PvP, you guys only need to l2p” players. It’s just pointless to talk about any topic with those kind of people.

@Shukran.4851

I do agree. TPvP is really different but if you don’t have the time to play with a team on a regular basis (like I do) or you simply don’t find a team there is only Hot Join left. I think this is what the OP was complaining about.

@Penguin.5197

That’s what I was trying to say. Completely agree.

Well I hope your assumptions do you good. I’m open for conversation, you’re the one who’s not apparentely if no one answers to my comments with actual arguements what am I going to assume then? mister assumptions.

The reason i came off so ’’strong’’, besides it being a habit, it’s because really kitten es me off to see rant threads about ANYTHING in general. We’re in a crucial period for this game and all you guys want to do is either make it worse or make it difficult and confusing for the devs to work on the really pressing matters. Not that I think many people are reading this thread anyways, just got under my skin.

It’s true that sPvP sucks when you see a lot of thieves, mesmers, and eles, but in tournies, thieves are actually at a disadvantage because stealth keeps them from accomplishing the map objectives in tournaments. Most thieves will try to ninja a node, but will run when there’s someone standing on it. If they do engage, they are still not overtaking the node in any meaningful way. At best thieves are a stalling class. They’ll try to keep you busy but aren’t really that effective in a tournament setting. Mesmers and eles are way more effective in tournies so I see those classes a lot more. I play a necro (main), guard, and warrior. In hotjoin, 2 or 3 thieves spamming HS and 2 or 3 mesmers creating a bunch of clones will make you want to tear your hairs out though. I’ve completely stopped playing hotjoins and just solo join 2v2 tournies exclusively. Just wish the maps would rotate with more frequency than every week.

Hugo.9743:

Haven’t seen so much bullkitten in one topic in quite some time. I have to tell you folks, this is impressive. At least you had the balls to call it a rant post.

Clones are clones, they’re not humans. when mesmers got clones they are not 5 players against one, it’s still one player against another one.

The main reason you do not understand when people tell you thief and mesmer can be dealth with just fine it’s cus you haven’t reached the minimum level to do so (or at least it would seem like so). Now I get that you can’t play, but I’m sure you can see the clones infront of you, and therefore u can dodge em if they charge, you can time ur attacks, you can time your heals, you can destroy them easily if you have aoe (ex: eles and necros), blablablabla.

Thieves? thief is the squishiest class at this moment, and all they really bring to the table is burst and stealth, you take that away from them, they are useless and worthless, so dont wave me that nerf flag, they are totally fine in my opinion and they are doing the job they should be doing, period. You can’t avoid bursts? what happened to predicting moves, what happened to stun breaks, heals, avoidance?
Stealth has no counter? with the health pool on thief being so low its easy to just aoe and/or predict where the thief went, thieves dont stealth and get out of the map, when they stealth they are at that same spot (obviously trying to get away which most of the time is predictable pathwise).

Now I’m note responsible for stealth calltrop kitten thieves but honestly it doesn’t even concern me, since its hardly viable in competitive play.

The way the game is set up, you can’t really look at classes on a 1v1 point of view (in most scenarios anyways), but rather insert it on a team and think of what it brings to the table. And in that line of thought, I’m ok with the roles and don’t think thers OP stuff going around (gotta give a lil edge to eles but its all good).

Ima be an kitten now and go TLDR: stop crying like a kitten, man the kitten up and get good, ull stop having these lame kitten complaints I promise you. work around it instead of resigning.

EDIT: oh ye and stop playing hotjoins, i mean jesus kitten how do u even come here complaining about stuff that happens on hotjoins, no1s gonna bother with that.
EDIT2: people play mesmers and thieves more because they have an exciting and dynamic playstyle to it, fancy shadowsteps and flashy clones, thats all. because at the level your speaking of, which is hotjoints (otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about majorities), skill is the less of their concerns.

Sorry, but 1v1 fights are almost all that really matter. I say this as an r32 mesmer who does pretty kitten well. Screw team contribution – if a class can’t win a 1v1 against another, it’s no good. End of story.

bhagwad.4281:

Hugo.9743:

Haven’t seen so much bullkitten in one topic in quite some time. I have to tell you folks, this is impressive. At least you had the balls to call it a rant post.

Clones are clones, they’re not humans. when mesmers got clones they are not 5 players against one, it’s still one player against another one.

The main reason you do not understand when people tell you thief and mesmer can be dealth with just fine it’s cus you haven’t reached the minimum level to do so (or at least it would seem like so). Now I get that you can’t play, but I’m sure you can see the clones infront of you, and therefore u can dodge em if they charge, you can time ur attacks, you can time your heals, you can destroy them easily if you have aoe (ex: eles and necros), blablablabla.

Thieves? thief is the squishiest class at this moment, and all they really bring to the table is burst and stealth, you take that away from them, they are useless and worthless, so dont wave me that nerf flag, they are totally fine in my opinion and they are doing the job they should be doing, period. You can’t avoid bursts? what happened to predicting moves, what happened to stun breaks, heals, avoidance?
Stealth has no counter? with the health pool on thief being so low its easy to just aoe and/or predict where the thief went, thieves dont stealth and get out of the map, when they stealth they are at that same spot (obviously trying to get away which most of the time is predictable pathwise).

Now I’m note responsible for stealth calltrop kitten thieves but honestly it doesn’t even concern me, since its hardly viable in competitive play.

The way the game is set up, you can’t really look at classes on a 1v1 point of view (in most scenarios anyways), but rather insert it on a team and think of what it brings to the table. And in that line of thought, I’m ok with the roles and don’t think thers OP stuff going around (gotta give a lil edge to eles but its all good).

Ima be an kitten now and go TLDR: stop crying like a kitten, man the kitten up and get good, ull stop having these lame kitten complaints I promise you. work around it instead of resigning.

EDIT: oh ye and stop playing hotjoins, i mean jesus kitten how do u even come here complaining about stuff that happens on hotjoins, no1s gonna bother with that.
EDIT2: people play mesmers and thieves more because they have an exciting and dynamic playstyle to it, fancy shadowsteps and flashy clones, thats all. because at the level your speaking of, which is hotjoints (otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about majorities), skill is the less of their concerns.

Sorry, but 1v1 fights are almost all that really matter. I say this as an r32 mesmer who does pretty kitten well. Screw team contribution – if a class can’t win a 1v1 against another, it’s no good. End of story.

bunker guardian says hi

bhagwad.4281:

Hugo.9743:

Haven’t seen so much bullkitten in one topic in quite some time. I have to tell you folks, this is impressive. At least you had the balls to call it a rant post.

Clones are clones, they’re not humans. when mesmers got clones they are not 5 players against one, it’s still one player against another one.

The main reason you do not understand when people tell you thief and mesmer can be dealth with just fine it’s cus you haven’t reached the minimum level to do so (or at least it would seem like so). Now I get that you can’t play, but I’m sure you can see the clones infront of you, and therefore u can dodge em if they charge, you can time ur attacks, you can time your heals, you can destroy them easily if you have aoe (ex: eles and necros), blablablabla.

Thieves? thief is the squishiest class at this moment, and all they really bring to the table is burst and stealth, you take that away from them, they are useless and worthless, so dont wave me that nerf flag, they are totally fine in my opinion and they are doing the job they should be doing, period. You can’t avoid bursts? what happened to predicting moves, what happened to stun breaks, heals, avoidance?
Stealth has no counter? with the health pool on thief being so low its easy to just aoe and/or predict where the thief went, thieves dont stealth and get out of the map, when they stealth they are at that same spot (obviously trying to get away which most of the time is predictable pathwise).

Now I’m note responsible for stealth calltrop kitten thieves but honestly it doesn’t even concern me, since its hardly viable in competitive play.

The way the game is set up, you can’t really look at classes on a 1v1 point of view (in most scenarios anyways), but rather insert it on a team and think of what it brings to the table. And in that line of thought, I’m ok with the roles and don’t think thers OP stuff going around (gotta give a lil edge to eles but its all good).

Ima be an kitten now and go TLDR: stop crying like a kitten, man the kitten up and get good, ull stop having these lame kitten complaints I promise you. work around it instead of resigning.

EDIT: oh ye and stop playing hotjoins, i mean jesus kitten how do u even come here complaining about stuff that happens on hotjoins, no1s gonna bother with that.
EDIT2: people play mesmers and thieves more because they have an exciting and dynamic playstyle to it, fancy shadowsteps and flashy clones, thats all. because at the level your speaking of, which is hotjoints (otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about majorities), skill is the less of their concerns.

Sorry, but 1v1 fights are almost all that really matter. I say this as an r32 mesmer who does pretty kitten well. Screw team contribution – if a class can’t win a 1v1 against another, it’s no good. End of story.

Condi Necro says “hi”

@OP: You see so many thieves and mesmers b/c that is hot join. People like to run around solo and go pew pew in these types of game formats. It happens in every single MMO I’ve ever played. Hopefully ANet gets rid of hot joins once they implement custom servers.

I see a lot of people discussing balance and everything, and yea, its valuable to debate it.
But really..The issue with pvp has almost nothing to do with balancing classes, even builds; though having more viable specs should be a long-term goal for ANET, for sure.

You can take any moba’s or even other mmos as example..Every one of them has a whole bunch of cookie cutter specs and “op” heroes.
The only real difference with mobas, and I think this game could learn a thing or two from them, is that most OP heroes start a match with zero to no capabilities of doing well by themselves, needing a babysitter.
Well, you can say it’s very similar to what we have here with glass cannon thieves/warriors.
But I believe the real issue right now with balance are the hybrid builds, that pack an insane ammount of damage as well as healing/escape abilities.
And this is where you can see the irony.
As above poster mentioned, you hardly ever see warriors/thieves on tPvP, for teams are way more inclined to have those hybrid specs, whereas on Hot Join all you see is a bunch of glass cannons.
I personally don’t even like testing my hybrid builds on Hot Join, because the average base toughness or condition removal abilities are so low you can’t even grasp if your spec has succeeded in damage, opposite case with healing.
But anet has then achieved a state they are so afraid of implementing, and the community so desperatly pleas for: separating player base through innovation in match styles.
If you are a hot join player, go ahead and make a thief/warrior and have fun.
You won’t be accepted on tpvp, likely.
Or go ahead and try your full bunker tpvp ranger build on hot join, you’ll be ignored most of the time, or zerged.

TL;DR: We’ve been brainwashed by other games to think PvP is always an issue with balance. In GWs case, its not.
It’s about our developers CARING, INNOVATING and EXPERIMENTING to see what the players will enjoy, and THEN build some kind of a balance around it.

There’s a real problem with that, though. They may find the players want something entirely different than what they projected initially.
And we really can be wrong, but at least we’ll keep playing.

hotjoin much? Because i dont see that many thiefs or mesmers in 1vs1 tournies. Especially thiefs, i see them in like 50% of matchs on the other team.
Eles, guardians are more common.

Im sorry but if thiefs and mesmers are what is giving you alot of trouble, you are NOT playing at a high level yet.

daydream.2938:

hotjoin much? Because i dont see that many thiefs or mesmers in 1vs1 tournies. Especially thiefs, i see them in like 50% of matchs on the other team.
Eles, guardians are more common.

Im sorry but if thiefs and mesmers are what is giving you alot of trouble, you are NOT playing at a high level yet.

Since when did only the high level matter? If there’s a problem at lower levels it deserves to be addressed because there are people playing there too.

bhagwad.4281:

daydream.2938:

hotjoin much? Because i dont see that many thiefs or mesmers in 1vs1 tournies. Especially thiefs, i see them in like 50% of matchs on the other team.
Eles, guardians are more common.

Im sorry but if thiefs and mesmers are what is giving you alot of trouble, you are NOT playing at a high level yet.

Since when did only the high level matter? If there’s a problem at lower levels it deserves to be addressed because there are people playing there too.

This is true. But this is partially a problem with hotjoin. First off, 8vs8, the maps arent built for 16 people, turns it into a zoo.
Because ppl come/leave/switch teams theres less focus on the objectives and the meta. So its almost like a zergy deathmatch. this is indeed an issue they need to adress. its why so many people call for hotjoins to be abolished.
(which they certainly cant do till at a minimun custom arenas are availble).

you can’t have a nice balance in a PvE game tbh and that is sad

As a warrior’s point of view the game feels like it has worsened a lot the last few months. Thieves… If they’re not nearly always stealthed they’re constantly on evade and untouchable. Same with mesmers. It’s impossible to pin down any half decent thief or mesmer for a burst and burst is the only thing a warrior can hope to land to maybe get a kill. Sad state of balance.

Players like big crits with big numbers. Both of these professions deliver while also having access to a variety of defensive mechanics like stealth, and clones thus providing difficulty to the opposing player to target them consistently. And these professions feed on noobs mainly because of these issues.

Most of the time hotjoin people cry in map chat about imbalance/OP they are for the most part wrongly correct. Inbalanced in difference of skill level that is rather than mechanics. They haven’t learned to counter. Common to see a single digit or low rank complain in map when they get demolished by 30+ ranked players.

Hotjoin is full of classes like thieves, because the 8v8 & the zerging move the balance in favour of attack.

Ironically enough (skill differences aside) thieves / mesmers are much harder to deal with in 8v8 than tPvP, as you willl rarely have to keep track of more than 1 thief in tPvP, or have your screen flooded with illusions from multiple mesmers, nor will you blow your cooldowns as quick in 2v2/3v3 in tPvP as you will often in 8v8 with all the zerging, which just makes things easier for a class like thief.

But essentially what it comes down to, is in 8v8 hotjoin thieves/mesmers are OP, very easy to do well on and very forgiving in that stealth lets them disengage far better than other classes (Ele excepted) so they can muck up and very often escape the consequences, and in case you hadn’t noticed games these days (especially MMORPGs) are full of bads who like the easiest / most faceroll option they can find.

But quite why anyone continues to play hotjoin (or sPvP in general) in this game is a mystery anyway…

So many thieves and mesmers in 8v8s, because 8v8s are a zerg fest and the ability to run away from zergs in invaluable. No other class besides those two can boast of getting away unscathed when accidentally running into a group of 8. Well, those two and to some extent, bunkers. Hot joins should not be considered PvP.

bhagwad.4281:

Since when did only the high level matter? If there’s a problem at lower levels it deserves to be addressed because there are people playing there too.

At a low level balance isn’t the cause of people winning or losing; disparity in skill is.
If I play with sufficiently bad people (aka WvW), then I can kill more people on bad builds than I could in “paids”

My builds must obviously be more OP if I’m against bad people and therefore need balance.

mbh.8301:

My builds must obviously be more OP if I’m against bad people and therefore need balance.

And if that build is useless in higher lvl PvP and create such drama on low , why not change it , in something more usefull ? :P

Anet doesn’t care. Thieves and mesmers. My God. Every match, 5-6 thieves and mesmers. I’m starting to reach the end of my rope with it.

Well, you see, the problem is that the people who are in charge have no clue what they’re doing balance-wise.
On 11/15 they completely destroyed what may have been the only viable alternative to the pubstomp spec at higher tier play by bashing Sword’s daze duration and destroying the dagger offhand.
Before you start chiming in Cruuk/Deeja/Caltrops builds… No. Just. No. Those are extremely niche builds that will 99% of the time be inferior and never work against teams who know what they’re doing.

Oh, and can you believe shortly after that they changed Mesmers’ shattered strength from 1 to 3 stacks per clone?! (and then back to 1)

I figured there were so many thieves and mesmers because they’re obviously PvP classes. I mean, look at their skill descriptions, how their traits work together. Rogue classes are always excellent at PvP, and the mesmer is overflowing with dazes, stuns, reflects, and confusion skills, all of which really shine in PvP rather than PvE (not that I don’t have fun PvEing on my mesmer or thief). I would wonder what was wrong with this game if those two classes didn’t do well in PvP. Should they be unbeatable? No, but I’m not upset when I lose to one, either. It’s usually because I got caught out on my own, ankittenhus easy pickings for that thief. Actually, I had to go with a defensive build on my thief to keep from getting killed all the time when the guy I was trying to finish off called his friends over to help him. Second rule of PvP, bring a buddy.

I wouldn’t consider hotjoin to be a real pvp. That’s more like the little brother of WvW. And as in hotjoin the goal is not to win the map, it’s how to farm the most points. So no wonder you face so many thieves. The “bunkering a point and hold it-strategy” is not provided, otherwise no thief would be successfull in hotjoin.

I feel like the forum should be divided in a “Hot Join” and a “tPvP” forum. For me it is really difficult to give a proper answer because if something is right in Hot Join it doesn’t mean this is also true for tPvP. So far most answers were completely pointless (including mine) because of this.

Blackhat.4016:

I still see all the professions in PvP but you are right, there are more thiefs and mesmers compared to a few weeks ago.

The main reason I think players like to play these professions in PvP (and the only reason why I don’t like playing against them) is stealth. It simply has no counters. That’s why these 2 professions are the ones which can be played as a glass canon without being easy to kill.

=> high kill potential, “big numbers”, easy escape = a lot of players play these 2 professions

Thief stealth has in fact 2 counters – one active, one passive.

Actively – stealth isn’t “you can’t hit me”. Its “you can’t see me”. With stealth generally capped at 3s (4 with 15 points in the stealth traitline), thats 3-4 seconds to get behind you. Your autoattacks will still hit. Your AoEs will still hit. If any of those AoE’s have a CC effect, stealth basically didn’t matter. Stealthed thieves tend to do the same exact thing, every time (try to get behind you) because they have to to do damage, as opposed to other classes that can just charge in and go nuts because that’s how they were built. This isn’t a complaint, just pointing out a fact.

Passively – No protection, no stability, no immune skill, no aegis, no blocks, lowest base HP in the game, extremely poor access to regen – I know, its a big list, take it all in. Shadowstep is the closest thing a thief gets to an “Oh kitten!” button – We cant go immune, we can’t block, we can’t pop stability or protection or chain regens together for 30s… stealth is the only thing keeping us alive, because if you could always see us, we would just instantly be focused and melted down every time.

@evilapprentice.6379

I do understand what you mean BUT what I was trying to say is stealth still is the easiest way to engage and escape without giving your opponent a way to properly react to it. The burst is so fast you can engage and disengage the whole time and that’s why stealth is really strong. If there is any profession/build out there which is a glass canon and still can go all in that easy without dying feel free to post it here.

Your auto attack hit your enemy without you knowing about it? Great! Your AoE hit your enemy any feedback? Congrats! As you most likely know all those hits are pure luck and even if you manage to hit the stealthed enemy you won’t see it. Luck is the worst thing in PvP. If luck decides whether you can kill someone or not is really frustrating. I would much rather see a feature implemented which makes the match up skill based and not luck based. That’s why is think some kind of feedback would be nice (nothing which makes stealth useless though).

About the passively part:

Well that’s how glass canons work. You don’t have all these defensive abilities because you traded them for offensive ones. Besides that like you said you still have stealth and shadowsteps which are REALLY strong. Imo they are stronger than protection and so on. Why? Because you can evade ALL the damage instead of just reducing it. Like I said before if you find a profession/build which offers that much burst while still being able to survive short and long fights feel free to post it here.

Blackhat.4016:

I feel like the forum should be divided in a “Hot Join” and a “tPvP” forum.

.

Issue is population of tPvP depends of sPvP’ population.

If Hot Joins are not fun for new players, thery will not want to make effort to find a team and queue for tournaments. Bad experience in Hot Joins make people move away from GW2 PvP. You have exemples of such feedback in this very thread. But how many in this forum ? And how many people who did not come here to complain and just walked away?

To grow or even maintain a population you need new blood to replace people who become burned out. It is not a question of the quality of the game. Hot joins is an entry point for new players and should naturally lead them to tPvP. But it is not happening.

There is a reason why there are so many thiefs and mesmers in hotjoin. Each player look at his options and eventually come to conclusion that thief and mesmers are the best classes to play hotjoins. (That does not mean those are the best classes for tPvP!)

Invidually this decision makes sense. Collectively it just become a poor experience.

And it kills pvp.

Blackhat.4016:

@evilapprentice.6379

I do understand what you mean BUT what I was trying to say is stealth still is the easiest way to engage and escape without giving your opponent a way to properly react to it. The burst is so fast you can engage and disengage the whole time and that’s why stealth is really strong. If there is any profession/build out there which is a glass canon and still can go all in that easy without dying feel free to post it here.

Your auto attack hit your enemy without you knowing about it? Great! Your AoE hit your enemy any feedback? Congrats! As you most likely know all those hits are pure luck and even if you manage to hit the stealthed enemy you won’t see it. Luck is the worst thing in PvP. If luck decides whether you can kill someone or not is really frustrating. I would much rather see a feature implemented which makes the match up skill based and not luck based. That’s why is think some kind of feedback would be nice (nothing which makes stealth useless though).

About the passively part:

Well that’s how glass canons work. You don’t have all these defensive abilities because you traded them for offensive ones. Besides that like you said you still have stealth and shadowsteps which are REALLY strong. Imo they are stronger than protection and so on. Why? Because you can evade ALL the damage instead of just reducing it. Like I said before if you find a profession/build which offers that much burst while still being able to survive short and long fights feel free to post it here.

A GC warrior can still run endure pain and a shield OH on his second set.
GC Mes’s still have distortion and (in a pinch) Blurred frenzy if they’re running Sword, and a block on their scepter (Just one tho) MH. GC Rangers can still slot Protect me (or whatever its called). Engi’s have shield OH as an option or their immunity elixir (S I believe). And so on and so on. Not a single one of those options is affected by spec or gear – Endure pain does the same exact thing for a toughness/vit warrior as it does for a power/crit warrior. Thieves don’t get that option. Nothing is as strong as “there is absolutely nothing you can do to kill me for X seconds”.

Stealth and Shadowstep are strong – Protection and stability are too. I won’t make a claim about how much stronger apples are than oranges, but there’s a reason your ability to bunker in this game is directly tied to your access to protection.

As far as Luck goes, my point about thief playstyle is that its not luck. You’re not getting lucky when you run in a direction for 2 seconds, do a 180, start AAing and hit a thief. That’s called counterplaying…because if that thief isn’t trying to get behind you, he isn’t trying to burst you. Of course there are ranged options, but P/P P/D and SHbow aren’t bursty specs – they use stealth as a defensive utility more than anything else. If a thief is using stealth as an offensive tool, he’s trying to do 1 thing – knowing that lets you counter it to a fair degree. Of course you aren’t countering it completely, but did you really expect a complete counter to a class’s core mechanic?

Good point imz – if only they implemented a “live” tutorial or training server exclusive to new players, so they can comfortably learn pvp mechanics instead of being instagibbed at spawn point by a glory farming thief in hot join.

evilapprentice.6379:

Blackhat.4016:

@evilapprentice.6379

I do understand what you mean BUT what I was trying to say is stealth still is the easiest way to engage and escape without giving your opponent a way to properly react to it. The burst is so fast you can engage and disengage the whole time and that’s why stealth is really strong. If there is any profession/build out there which is a glass canon and still can go all in that easy without dying feel free to post it here.

Your auto attack hit your enemy without you knowing about it? Great! Your AoE hit your enemy any feedback? Congrats! As you most likely know all those hits are pure luck and even if you manage to hit the stealthed enemy you won’t see it. Luck is the worst thing in PvP. If luck decides whether you can kill someone or not is really frustrating. I would much rather see a feature implemented which makes the match up skill based and not luck based. That’s why is think some kind of feedback would be nice (nothing which makes stealth useless though).

About the passively part:

Well that’s how glass canons work. You don’t have all these defensive abilities because you traded them for offensive ones. Besides that like you said you still have stealth and shadowsteps which are REALLY strong. Imo they are stronger than protection and so on. Why? Because you can evade ALL the damage instead of just reducing it. Like I said before if you find a profession/build which offers that much burst while still being able to survive short and long fights feel free to post it here.

A GC warrior can still run endure pain and a shield OH on his second set.
GC Mes’s still have distortion and (in a pinch) Blurred frenzy if they’re running Sword, and a block on their scepter (Just one tho) MH. GC Rangers can still slot Protect me (or whatever its called). Engi’s have shield OH as an option or their immunity elixir (S I believe). And so on and so on. Not a single one of those options is affected by spec or gear – Endure pain does the same exact thing for a toughness/vit warrior as it does for a power/crit warrior. Thieves don’t get that option. Nothing is as strong as “there is absolutely nothing you can do to kill me for X seconds”.

Stealth and Shadowstep are strong – Protection and stability are too. I won’t make a claim about how much stronger apples are than oranges, but there’s a reason your ability to bunker in this game is directly tied to your access to protection.

As far as Luck goes, my point about thief playstyle is that its not luck. You’re not getting lucky when you run in a direction for 2 seconds, do a 180, start AAing and hit a thief. That’s called counterplaying…because if that thief isn’t trying to get behind you, he isn’t trying to burst you. Of course there are ranged options, but P/P P/D and SHbow aren’t bursty specs – they use stealth as a defensive utility more than anything else. If a thief is using stealth as an offensive tool, he’s trying to do 1 thing – knowing that lets you counter it to a fair degree. Of course you aren’t countering it completely, but did you really expect a complete counter to a class’s core mechanic?

Thanks for your answer.

Comparing stealth to these abilities doesn’t make sense imo. They have a higher CD and need to be stronger. There is no doubt about invulnerability being stronger BUT those skills always have a high CD. Besides that they don’t help you to disengage a battle or get in a better position without your enemy knowing it. You can still see your enemy and react to it.

My comparison was pointless too (like you said). It was basically my opinion about it.

About the counterplay part:

It is still luck. You don’t know if you hit your enemy or not. The counterplay you mentioned is the way I try to play against thiefs most of the time but it simply doesn’t work against good players. A good thief will know about it. How would you counter his playstyle then? AoE everything around you for very little damage (remember single target damage > AoE damage when it comes to a single enemy)? Besides that how would you try to defend/cap a point? I can’t just run straight for 3 secs without leaving the cap area. How is this well balanced if I have to run every single time a thief/mesmer uses stealth?

I am not asking for a complete stealth nerf, I just want feedback so I can think about the next step to beat the enemy.

@Cirax.9231

If I remember correctly there is a training area which is called combat training in the “Heart of the Mists”. It’s only vs NPCs but it is still enough training for Hot Join.

Blackhat.4016:

It is still luck. You don’t know if you hit your enemy or not. The counterplay you mentioned is the way I try to play against thiefs most of the time but it simply doesn’t work against good players. A good thief will know about it. How would you counter his playstyle then? AoE everything around you for very little damage (remember single target damage > AoE damage when it comes to a single enemy)? Besides that how would you try to defend/cap a point? I can’t just run straight for 3 secs without leaving the cap area. How is this well balanced if I have to run every single time a thief/mesmer uses stealth?

I am not asking for a complete stealth nerf, I just want feedback so I can think about the next step to beat the enemy.

Any chain attack AA will move to the next hit in the chain when you hit a stealth thief. If I double strike and hit a stealthed thief, my auto attack moves on to wild strike – that’s how you know.

You dont need to counter his “I’m not going to try and get to your back arc” playstyle – if you are preventing his burst, you’re already at a huge advantage. A skilled player might outplay you (that’s not a personal attack, there’s always someone better), but he’ll do that with any class he’s good with – it’s not a product of stealth.

imz.8593:

Blackhat.4016:

I feel like the forum should be divided in a “Hot Join” and a “tPvP” forum.

.

Issue is population of tPvP depends of sPvP’ population.

If Hot Joins are not fun for new players, thery will not want to make effort to find a team and queue for tournaments. Bad experience in Hot Joins make people move away from GW2 PvP. You have exemples of such feedback in this very thread. But how many in this forum ? And how many people who did not come here to complain and just walked away?

To grow or even maintain a population you need new blood to replace people who become burned out. It is not a question of the quality of the game. Hot joins is an entry point for new players and should naturally lead them to tPvP. But it is not happening.

There is a reason why there are so many thiefs and mesmers in hotjoin. Each player look at his options and eventually come to conclusion that thief and mesmers are the best classes to play hotjoins. (That does not mean those are the best classes for tPvP!)

Invidually this decision makes sense. Collectively it just become a poor experience.

And it kills pvp.

players who think the way you explained should be kitten really.
i don’t like hotjoin so i won’t like tournaments, EVEN if Tpvp is another game .
better lose that kind of players…
and btw use above wrote about FORUM. because there are a lot of QQ threads about Spvp.

@Blackhat
So now it’s not a rant thread but rather you just want feedback to “beat the enemy”, I see some improvements.

Look a good thief will know you will try to chase him through stealth just as you will know he will try to backstab you, or just like you know his stealth takes 3 seconds. There’s no secret on that or no way around it, the best player wins at that point so thats no disadvantage or something to even talk about.

As said before, you don’t need to run whenever a thief goes stealth, thats you panicking. if you’re fighting a thief you already know how he’s gonna play so you save at least 1 breakstun, invulnerability or anything that will soak the damage. Also thers good timing on dodging, cc’ing, bursting, everything which obviously you haven’t learned but you (and every1) can work on. It’s about time people star predicting stuff instead of merely reacting.

And it’s not hard to say if your hitting them or not, good players can always say if they actually killed the thief or if he ran away, you’ll get it out of practice, nothing to say about that. Judging paths, knowing the damage uve done etcetc. as I said before he doesnt stealth and gets out of the map, he’s still gonna be there, around.

Capping points is very relative, if your 1v1ing and u feel like if u chase for 2-3 secs you can kill him and get back on point, than it might be worth it to take the risk instead of not killing him and having him fight u over and over, making u waste more time on capping than you would have if you had done the other way around.

You see this is what I mean, you came at me saying I have the attitude of ‘’i-know-all-about-pvp" but really what I see here is a big difficulty in players to accept they aren’t the best players and that they have flaws, people they can’t deal with yet, weaknesses. And in that sense my friend im way more humble than you appear to be (depending this last part, judging by your last phrase which still remains to be seen if you mean it or if you’re just excusing yourself).

Some people seem to imply that things are different in hot joins or tPvP when people will actually complain about balance because of what they observe in 1v1 fights, where thieves, mesmers, and elementalists are pretty much in a league of their own with all other professions below them.

shaolin.9716:

Some people seem to imply that things are different in hot joins or tPvP when people will actually complain about balance because of what they observe in 1v1 fights, where thieves, mesmers, and elementalists are pretty much in a league of their own with all other professions below them.

Man you’re mixing so much stuff up. few weeks ago Ranger was being called one of the best 1v1 classes in gw2. Ranger is DEFINETELY not above the classes you mentioned. So I’m thinking you’re saying 4 out of 6 classes AT THIS MOMENT, in this very meta, are strong 1v1ers? Well thats nice because thats more than a half and the other 2 classes, necro and guardian have massive importance and impact teamwise.

And you’re taking the classes for the role they’re playing with this meta and not really for it’s whole. I’m pretty sure you can build 1v1 in ANY class and be successful with it.

People are not listening and I’m saying stuff twice, there are certain ways of playing this game, and you shouldnt look at classes and they’re pro and cons as individual and seperated events, they affect the game and match as whole and they all bring their importance to the table.

A necro can’t be a thief, and a thief can’t be a necro, and a thief can’t be an a guardian.

Game is fine on that matter just accept ur flaws, improve and keep playing.

There will always be complaints and people leaving the game when the 1v1 balance is as bad as it is now. It is understandable that nothing can ever be perfectly balanced in an MMO game but it should at least be close enough that a good player doesn’t have difficulty beating a mediocre player playing an overpowered profession in a 1v1 scenario because 1v1 do happen in games. Also, the popularity of people wanting to duel just shows how important 1v1 really is to the success of a PvP game.

@evilapprentice.6379

Thanks for your answer.

I mainly play an elementalist (currently “non bunker” O.O) so I don’t have any chain attacks. I know what you mean though.

@Hugo.9743

Also thanks for your answer.

Like I said to evilapprentice.6379 I am currently playing a non bunker ele which means I only have low health/low heals. The only stun break, invulnerability, etc. eles have are Cantrips. Cantrips have a really high CD (90 secs for Armor of Earth, 75 secs for Mist Form) which means it feels like a waste if I have to use them for a single stealth ability. The only CC for D/D I can think about being useful in this situation is " Earthquake" which also has a 45 sec CD. Dodging sometimes works but I can’t dodge for the whole stealth duration.

If I play an bunker elementalist however stealth is no problem. Switch to earth → protection → switch to water → heal → full HP. For me it’s not about a bunker being able to fight against stealthed enemies because you can turn a stealth attack into your advantage AFTER being hit. It’s about other builds having better chances because they can react to it before being hit.

The last sentence was no excuse. I really don’t want stealth to be nerfed really hard. Why should I?

Like I said, thanks for your answer though. I will try to improve the build and my playstyle. Maybe it helps a little bit.

Blackhat.4016:

@evilapprentice.6379

Thanks for your answer.

I mainly play an elementalist (currently “non bunker” O.O) so I don’t have any chain attacks. I know what you mean though.

@Hugo.9743

Also thanks for your answer.

Like I said to evilapprentice.6379 I am currently playing a non bunker ele which means I only have low health/low heals. The only stun break, invulnerability, etc. eles have are Cantrips. Cantrips have a really high CD (90 secs for Armor of Earth, 75 secs for Mist Form) which means it feels like a waste if I have to use them for a single stealth ability. The only CC for D/D I can think about being useful in this situation is " Earthquake" which also has a 45 sec CD. Dodging sometimes works but I can’t dodge for the whole stealth duration.

If I play an bunker elementalist however stealth is no problem. Switch to earth -> protection -> switch to water -> heal -> full HP. For me it’s not about a bunker being able to fight against stealthed enemies because you can turn a stealth attack into your advantage AFTER being hit. It’s about other builds having better chances because they can react to it before being hit.

The last sentence was no excuse. I really don’t want stealth to be nerfed really hard. Why should I?

Like I said, thanks for your answer though. I will try to improve the build and my playstyle. Maybe it helps a little bit.

Burning speed and static shield are your best friends – save them for stealth. It’ll take some time to get used to judging it, but notice where a thief is when he’s stealthed – move away for 1-2 seconds, then burning speed. Worst case scenario, all you did was cost him a backstab. Best case, he ate the burning speed AND you ruined his backstab chance.

Static shield won’t prevent a backstab all the time, but it does prevent the follow up and give the chance to wreck said thief – Thieves are squishy by design, and a burst Ele can do some serious harm in 2-3 seconds if the thief is not careful.

@evilapprentice.6379

THAT was the answer I was waiting for. Finally something that might help me. I usually try to use all my abilities when they are useful (which would be a non stealthed enemy being close to me in this case) but I barely save these 2 skills for the stealth. I am pretty sure this will help!

In this case, forget about what I said.

I don’t know about the other professions but maybe there is a simple answer like that as well.

Coming back to the original topic:

I still think the high kill potential and “big numbers” are they main reason why a lot of people like these professions.

sigh… don’t just go blowing CD’s on a stealthed target. That’s just a straight up bad idea. Fact is unless you’re Nostradamus you can’t predict where he’s going or what he’s doing- unless he’s completely terrible. The best you can do is glean some insight into his objective which will allow you to make some initial positioning decisions. If you’re a D/D Ele you’re Auras can give you a decisive response against Thieves. Standing still waiting for them to open is also not advisable.

The only time you drop skills on a stealthed target is a.) when you see the shadow refuge right in front of you – because he’s obviously still standing right there, or b.) because you immobilized him before he entered stealth (this stands for Engi’s and Rangers using the appropriate traits as well) and you know you still have a second or two before the immob wears off.

Re OP: People flock to Thief and Mesmer because they’re not terribly difficult to play, while being extremely difficult for the uninitiated to play against. Meaning it’s a short road to positive results. It by no means makes them an instant pro, but a well played mesmer or thief at higher levels can be equally unforgiving against some classes/builds as you really can’t afford to make mistakes against these two classes when they’re played well.

They must remove hot join and give a ranked game separated of normal free torunraments 2 teams, then ppl who don’t have the time to find a team can join solo in normal games and learn the game and ppl who want to play competitive can play ranked games. otherwise ppl gona complain about balance in hotjoin and they never gona balance one game of 5vs5 in a 8vs8 game when the ppl dont do any strategi to win

Hotjoins are just a bad experience overall. All theif/mesmer groups lose badly in tournament play. But in hotjoins where the skillcap is alot lower i can imagine that would be frustrating.