Guild Wars 2

For the past week or so I’ve been doing nothing but Spvp on a thief that I made and having mixed feeling about it. I figured I’d come here and share my thoughts just like I did about the PvE aspect of the game. (Which I scored very favorably btw)

First, the good stuff. I really like the departure from “tab target” combat. It makes the game feel more engaging, faster, and definitely more dangerous. It can be a lot of fun when you take someone out because you really feel like you did something right or well. It’s validating.

The same goes with the gear. I’m engaged now, back in school again, and about to begin volunteering at a community center here in my city. I still love gaming, and I love being good at gaming, but I simply don’t have time to “pay a pound of flesh” anymore when it comes to games. As much as I loved the arena system of WoW, I could never bring myself to commit to the almost masochistic grind that the gear was in that game. I appreciate being able to “jump right in” with the gear and build of my choice in GW2. It certainly is a fine attribute.

Some of the maps are a lot of fun. My favorites are the one where there is the keep defense objective and the one where you can run the orb to capture points. Skyhammer can be fun too if you have a person or two who can check in on the gun every now and then.

Now for some other points of view…

While some of the maps are fun… there aren’t many, and there is only one objective: domination. Why? Was this intentional to not have any other game modes included in the game? Aside from the fact that it just gets old very quickly (I HATED Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft btw) it creates a disadvantage for some classes.

The game objective is clear: capture and hold points. The problem is that some classes are better at holding points than others. As a thief if I try to jump into the circle during a huge skirmish I am very likely to get blown up very quickly. The classes who shine in the capture point mode are the ones who can hold their ground. Thieves are not designed to “hold your ground” with. They are flighty by nature. It has led to some really frustrating moments.

Being a thief I conceptualize myself as something of a roamer who picks off ranged classes, weak “deserters” trying to run away, or people caught out of position trying to take a point on their own. This is well and fine -sometimes-, but since the game seems to revolve around zerging from one point or another, I find my class role very limited. Stack this on top of the fact that the maps are very small, so the odds of me actually getting a fair 1v1 match up is rare. Which leads to my next point:

The downed state mechanic. It’s awful. >.< As much as I enjoy driving my banner into someone and seeing a deer dance around or a giant smash them or w/e… I think this mechanic is REALLY frustrating to deal with. I’ve had several infuriating moments with it. They pretty much revolve around me downing someone, one of their friends coming over, and me either having to fall back and lose the kill, try to kill their friend while they regen and damage me, or try to burst them down while their friend either kills me or heals them. Obviously every one of those options suck.

I feel like this game simply isn’t friendly to thieves. Or, more accurately, spvp isn’t friendly to thieves. The maps are small, the game favors zerging, the downed state can quickly turn a fight you have just won into a fight you have just lost, and trying to enter into big battles for points is often suicide for a class as squishy as the thief.

Another big issue I’ve been having is dealing with the prevalence of condition based damage. I find myself quickly having to burn a heal and another condition cleansing spell in order to stay alive. By the time those conditions are re-applied, my cleaners are still on CD, which usually leads to my imminent doom. Sometimes I have fought necromancers who literally cover me in dots before I have done any amount of damage to them. Maybe this is an L2P issue… which leads me to my NEXT point:

“L2P” is very hard with how particle effects work, the lack of cast bars, and the general amount of nebulousness the combat in this game shrouds itself in. With the amount of explosions, red circles, conditions killing you, etc going on, its very, VERY difficult (and sort of absurd) to be able to keep track of everyone’s casting animations. Trying to dodge specific spells is hard enough, trying to dodge specific spells between 5 players, red circles, keeping track of your OWN abilities and damage is even harder. It’s nearly impossible. Often times I end up dead in a hurricane of explosions, flames, debuffs, minions, arrows, smoke, gas, you name it… It’s just very overwhelming.

Is there a matchmaking system in this game? I get it, the hotjoin thing is what it is… but couldn’t it be done better? It’s just anything goes with leaving and AFK’ing. Surely there must be a better system than this.

As for the tournaments. I’ve done solo tournaments and found the marginally better then hotjoin games. My main issue with those are the wait times. I’ve waited over 10 minutes at prime time for these games to pop. It’s very boring. Surely there are more people PvP’ing. Maybe cross server PvP is needed? How do people on empty servers handle this?

Overall I think the PvP has potential. It feels like a lot of the pieces are in place, but it just needs more work. It needs more game modes for starters, it needs to have some of the damage looked at, it needs to have a better, respectable matchmaking system, and it needs to have better visuals in order to indicate what is going on.

There are many things that have me feeling like, compared to the PvE of this game, sPvP is an afterthought.

I’ll write a similar post once I spend some time in WvWvW for those folks. Don’t think I’m picking on you sPvP guys. I WANT to get into this game mode. I’ve spent all of my recent free time on it, but I feel like it has some major issues going on that probably push a lot of people away from it.

What happened to all the e-sport hype Arena-Net spouted on about at launch?

I think these are good observations.

On the downed state feedback though, imo that is a LTP issue. As you play more you’ll see that downed state is highly strategic and there are key skills and plays for guaranteeing stomps or reviving. Especially as thief, one of the most common builds is dagger pistol, which has amazing stomp or stomp assist skills.

The zerging is a lot less in team/solo queue. In a proper match just blindly “zerging” won’t win- coordinated zergs are pretty good though.

I would say thief is one of the best spvp classes, but it has a high skill cap, and only certain builds work. Also if your team sux, or the other classes/builds don’t compliment you then you can have difficulty. A tanky/condi spam build esp. necro/warrior/engi etc, can do reasonably well in any team line up, because those builds are so forgiving.

Hotjoin is actually the best implementation of casual pvp I have ever seen, and the two other modes give us room for more serious games.

Great first constructive post! Seriously. For being a new player you’ve named a lot if not most all of the problems people have been speaking up about. I agree with all of them except for one. That one is the downed state. It’s a great game changer and could be very exciting with an audience and it is definetely very satisfying finishing a stomp on someone, haha. But especially with thief, you have a really good stomp skill. That skill is stealth and another one is blinding powder. If you’re a D/D thief, you can use Cloak and Dagger to stealth on them, which will also blind them if traited, and then they can’t attack you because you are stealthed, thus they cannot target you. With a D/P build you can throw Blinding Powder down which makes all of their attacks not hit you and miss thus leading to a successful stomp.

Now to your other points.

• Everybody has been screaming about new game modes and the devs say they are working on new maps and game modes with the maps being specialized for the game mode. They will be out sooner or later, hopefully sooner as it has been awhile.
• Condition damage is an extreme problem is sPvP right now and is dominating it. It’s a problem for everyone and most people on other classes run condition builds because it is so powerful so I completely understand where you’re coming from. I hope to god that they find a solution to this soon.
• Finally, particle effects. Everyone is aware that the particle effects are really a bit much and you really can’t understand what is going on most of the time. Even the shoutcasters for tournaments don’t seem to call out specific skills and I’m almost completely positive that this is the reason behind it. It’s just too kitten hard to see what’s going on a lot of the time.

Oh, I did miss one point. You said sPvP isn’t friendly to thieves. It depends on how you look at it but there is almost always one thief in every organized team. That is because a thief is good at decapping far point and jumping into a point to make a quick kill. With thief you really have to understand that it’s not your job to hold points. Each class has it’s own job, or at least should. A thiefs job is to jump in when timed right to finish off someone real quick and then back out if you are taking damage. As well as like I said, running over to farpoint because they have the best mobility and decapping it and sometimes capping it as well. Thieves are great in 1v1’s. Some other things a thief is good at is taking down the treb or holding your own treb. Things like that. Hope I helped and we all hope some of these issues are resolved as well

Generally, you’ve made a lot of good points.

Game modes:
The devs started out with conquest, which for the record I really like. The maps are all unique, with the “secondary objective” (treb on battle for khylo, bosses on forest of niffhel, etc) providing enough flavour to make each feel distinct. I think its engaging, encourages good communication and allows lots of different roles to have a place. It isn’t all encompassing though, I’ll admit. There are new game modes coming at some point though, having been confirmed on a livestream.

The thief:
You have your thiefs role down to a T, other than that they are excellent roamers. GW2 pvp can be broken down into two very basic roles, Bunkers, who stay on the point and roamers, who move between points. There is a lot more depth to this, but thieves are the most mobile of all the roamers. They can harass the enemies home point, and be the first ones to cover back at home if they see its going to be taken. However, in team fights, as a class with limited defence, its best that they stay out and only engage when they have the opportunity to burst someone down. This all comes with team communication though! I recommend you have a look at these guides:

sPvP 101, you’ve probably got most of this already:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-to-PvP-Start-here

Guide to movement on maps in a team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZczwwJFVcMI

Example of top teams playing, with their movement explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxg7Wl1BVGY&list=PLn_ScZuoPt885JOBcMkSS84kTwLnnF4uy&index=1

Thieves are very strong in 1v1s, and would normally be backed to take on anyone other than an Engineer in a straight 1v1. Hammer warriors can be an issue though, I’d recommend you find the duelling servers under the hotjoin list, and watch some of the more experienced thieves and how they play. You can even look at their builds and gear. Sizer is particularly good if you see him!

Downed State:
The downed state mechanic, along with the ability to dodge, completely make this games pvp for me. I don’t need to sell dodge to you, but every class has a huge amount they can offer to the downstate. Imagine youre running into a point and your teammate is going down. You dont have any interrupts on you and your teammate is getting stomped, but you lay down a shadow refuge on top of the body. You are able to run into the shadow refuge and attempt to res your teammate, having prevented the stomp. However, now that youre there, your enemy knows where you are and will try to aoe you.

In hotjoin games it can get ridiculous, you can have an 8v8 with like 3 or 4 people down on each team and whoever gets a kill first wins. I’d recommend you stick to 5v5 servers in hotjoin btw, 8v8 really isnt representative. So no I don’t really think downed state works in hotjoins, but in proper sPvP its a massively interesting part of the game.

Conditions:
The general consensus, that isn’t held by all players, is that some classes can spread too many conditions for most classes to be able to condi cleanse effectively. Conditions are meant to wear down a target gradually, where power damage is typically more bursty. In a team fight though, when lots of players are supporting you, a guardian often will be cleansing you of conditions. Conditions feel very different in a proper team situation, and its really hotjoins where theyre at their most potent. However, they still can be tricky to deal with, be sure to try to catch a thief take on a necro in a 1v1 though, they typically will win!

Particle Effects:
I completely agree that the particle effects in this game can be overwhelming to new players. I still think we need clear animations but because of the dodge mechanic people find it much more important to be able to tell what their opponent is doing, so they can play better. This all does come in time though and once again I’d say its not quite as bad in a 5v5. The game has to be built around that gametype primarily for now.

The best thing I can recommend is to get a group of 5 people together, through the forums or by meeting people in soloq’s. Find a relatively upto date build for classes that you play, and make sure that your teams composition is reasonable, and give team queues a go. Hopefully if people do that, a lot of things that happen in sPvP would make a whole lot more sense, and they’d see how enjoyable it was.

Thanks for the friendly responses, all.

I’m willing to accept that maybe the downed state is something I’m just having to get used to. I’m also willing to accept that sometimes backing off is just what I have to do. Thanks for the tips about stealthing and finishing. I didn’t know I could actually do that. I thought finishing would break stealth!

Right now I’m using a Dagger/Pistol setup with a Short Bow in the switch slot. I’m finding the Short Bow useful when I just don’t feel safe going into the big zergs for capture points and honestly it works out sometimes.

I’ve tried running Sword/Dagger and really didn’t like it. Dagger/Dagger felt pretty decent. So far I’m enjoying the Dagger/Pistol the most. As for my setup, I was running full power, crit, condition for awhile, but I dropped the points in condition and put them in vitality.

I then swapped out crit runes on my gear for runes of Melandru and BOY has it made a difference in survivability. I would recommend to ANYONE struggling with the condition builds to swap out to some Melandru runes. It feels like it is making a big bit of difference for me.

One thing I am finding with the thief is that they are great “saboteurs”. I love going and beating on a gate, destroying a treb, etc. I’ve spent entire games just blowing up capture points with a trebuchet and ultimately winning. Great “gun gankers” for Skyhammer too.

Thanks for the feedback and tips all.

I know this is probably not what you’re looking for, but I’m going to say this anyway:

In a teamfight, don’t stomp as a thief – thief is terrible at stomping in a teamfight simply because it’s incredibly dangerous to do so. Cleave the body instead with aoe attacks like shortbow and let your teammates stomp them – always plant a poison field on the downed body because it reduces the amount of health they get healed if a teammate of theirs starts trying to res them. You can also pop down a blackpowder on their body, but don’t stomp. Instead let your teammates stomp. Thieves shouldn’t be stomping people. They rely on mobility to survive and the 3 second “stun” when stomping is going to kill you.

Also, hotjoin is naturally more zergy than more structured forms of play. It only takes one person to cap a node, and most hotjoiners (like groups of 3 or more) will sit on a node for like 15 seconds waiting for it to cap – this is a big nono as more than 1 person capping that node is effectively useless for the time it takes to cap that node. If you see a bunch of zerging, then get out of there and move to a new point. Even if you can’t really cap, simply taking the 5 seconds to decap a point is incredibly effective at reducing the zerging effectiveness.

You know, often I do just what you proposed with letting teammates do it… for the exact reason you propose. I will stomp 1v1, but if I sneak in and down someone in a huge team fight i will zip out and avoid trying to stomp. Really, anytime it is more than 1v1 I don’t try to stomp.

And yeah, I feel you on the shortbow. The more I play the more it comes together.

I would recommend that you try Lyssa runes in conjunction with Basilisk Venom as your elite skill. It provides a full condition clear every 45 seconds, and grants you all boons for 5 seconds, very useful for dealing with condition classes. Beware though, some Necros will be using an ability that can corrupt those boons.

Here is a brief guide to running Dagger Pistol you might find useful:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/professions/thief-build-guide-daggerpistolshortbow
This guide does say not to use black powder, which I generally agree with but it is incredibly useful for stomping in 1v1’s. You’ll have noticed that players interrupt you when you’re trying to stomp them, so laying down a blind field beforehand means their interrupt misses and you get your stomp!

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlUmiOncy9E/5Ey2jeqC5JvHk1YZWaFoJA-ToAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFtsYWA

What did you find the most difficult thing moving from PvE to sPvP? Has it made you want to try any other classes?

You explained it with a clarity which I have yet to possess!

I agree completely!