Guild Wars 2

I’ll keep this preamble short since overall I’ve actually been rather pleasantly surprised by Stronghold (the game mode is fun and forces a lot of fights, which I like!). Please also keep in mind the game mode is still young and I’m sure there will eventually be a more refined meta to counter some of these topics:

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For Supply, I think it would be more interesting to have supply max carry capacity increase as the time elapsed in the match increases. For example, at the start of the game, max supply capacity is 1; at 10:00, max supply capacity is 2; at 5:00 max supply capacity is 3. My main recommendation for this is the change overall doesn’t impact early strategies that are already developing/in place from the beta, but it slows the snowballing a bit that can occur if a team wipes the opposing team at the start of the map (it’s hard for groups to recover once you get put on your heels).

For the Trebuchet, at the moment it feels a little unnecessary. Teams have already begun to simply ignore mid at the start of a match and it also takes a good 15-20 seconds to get to Treb at the start of the match, whereas it takes around 5-6 seconds to get to a mid fight. I think overall this is OK, but Treb. somewhere needs to have a bit of a buff in usefulness: My suggestion here is to make the destructive terrain reveal advantages for the team using their treb. For example, in the middle of the map (at supply) there are two obstructions, one on each side, that simply need to be destroyed in order to treb mid from each side respectively. A further use here with the destructible buildings would be to not only have them remove the obstruction for treb to hit mid, but for the rubble of each building to also turn into a ramp that starts from the outside of the ring and leads up to the edge of the middle ring wall. This would give the trebbing team a bit of a buff in allowing their side to have an elevation to pick middle with (think zerk long bow ranger, nade engi, rifle war, etc).

For Stealth, I’m speaking primarily to shadow art thieves here, I think overall the game mode could use a bit of counter play to. As it stands, even when I run zerker or condi ranger with sic’ em (and I’ve even tried having reduced shouts cooldown), stopping a shadow arts thieves from annihilating all guards is impossible even with two defending as they can simply reset any time they choose, re-open on the guards, and continue to widdle them down. My suggestion here is to introduce the WvW stealth-reveal trap (perhaps they can be purchased for accumulated supply runs) or maybe an orb that spawns later in the match and gives the channeller a buff of ’true sight’ for a period of time would help here. I’m not saying this is completely broken, but it seems rather strong for the offensive lane to have a SA thief solo’ing guards without repercussion and also stealth running/escorting NPC’s.

For the Lord’s Room, at the moment I think each NPC’s numbers (health, damage, abilities, etc) are all balanced and the mechanics overall solid. In other words, a team of 5 falling back to defend their lord typically could unless the attacking team actually had spawned heroes, etc (the balance from my experience felt right in this regard). Nonetheless, I think one additional wrinkle for defending would be really cool in introducing switches that can be found in the WvW jumping puzzle and/or in AC. This again would be an accumulated cost of supply, but having spike traps pop up and/or swinging logs come down and strike the attackers (if you have the supply to support it) would make the defenders of each lane have a bit more to do than simply mow down spawning NPC’s and try to do supply runs with typically mis-timed bomber/archer spawnings since the attacking lane will usually be out of sync with the defenders in this regard.

Anyways, that’s my suggestions; let me know what you all think.

SA thieves are fine imo. And not saying that because I play one. I don’t. It’s just I don’t find them particularly hard to defend against when I know they are around.

SobeSoul.6910:

SA thieves are fine imo. And not saying that because I play one. I don’t. It’s just I don’t find them particularly hard to defend against when I know they are around.

While many builds can kill them or survive indefinitely, it has the same problem as yaks in wvw do – there is literally nothing you can do to prevent an SA thief from killing your defending npcs.

Also, sword thieves are OPAF at attacking defenders/treb as they can, at will pop up and down. Perhaps this why they tried to reduce vertical porting, but its currently a lose/lose situation.

Or they could just pull out the nerf bat and finally make it so SA thieves don’t have healing, pulsing condi clear, and initiative regen all in one tree...., but we all know SA thieves are very strong in WvW; however, they never truly mattered in sPvP as stealthing (rather than holding a point) was detrimental. This new game mode obviously changes that a bit though. The other difficulty of these suggestions though (such as stealth reveal), is we have no idea what the balance/meta will be like for HoT.

BlackBeard.2873:

SobeSoul.6910:

SA thieves are fine imo. And not saying that because I play one. I don’t. It’s just I don’t find them particularly hard to defend against when I know they are around.

While many builds can kill them or survive indefinitely, it has the same problem as yaks in wvw do – there is literally nothing you can do to prevent an SA thief from killing your defending npcs.

I didn’t find this true when fighting them on my engie. I think certain classes are better equipped with dealing with SA thieves in this particular mode. Area cleave with some a few decent burst skills seems to be able to deal with them as long as you have some clue how thieves operate.

SobeSoul.6910:

BlackBeard.2873:

SobeSoul.6910:

SA thieves are fine imo. And not saying that because I play one. I don’t. It’s just I don’t find them particularly hard to defend against when I know they are around.

While many builds can kill them or survive indefinitely, it has the same problem as yaks in wvw do - there is literally nothing you can do to prevent an SA thief from killing your defending npcs.

I didn’t find this true when fighting them on my engie. I think certain classes are better equipped with dealing with SA thieves in this particular mode. Area cleave with some a few decent burst skills seems to be able to deal with them as long as you have some clue how thieves operate.

It’s not an issue of 1v1; it’s simply the fact that thief can ignore you as an opponent in 1v1 and kill the guards. Thief pops up, nukes guard a bit (guard doesn’t reset), you nuke thief, thief resets, pops out few seconds later with full hp, rinse/repeat. It’s especially a pain when the thief is PD condi running dodge-roll caltrops with carrion amu (20k+ hp).

That is true of a lot of builds with or without stealth. Condi engie can kite players while AIDSing up NPCs. I know because I did that. You can ignore players for the most part with ranged to get down mobs.

Don’t get me wrong. I think SA is silly, and Shadow Rejuvenation is too much. Just I think there are match ups that put it to a stop. And if that line got nerfed it should be for the reason that is silly to begin with and not SH alone.

Oh, and I also think the ability to spam caltrops might need to be looked at rather than an entire line.

Disagree completely with any of proposed Thief nerfs. I have 700 hours + on all professions, just played 3 in beta, and Playing against thiefs is a piece of cakes. The most ‘escapist’ ones, are so defensive they dont mean squad, full zerker thiefs, (even if perma stealth) are easy to deal with, litteraly. Just spam a little aoe where they need to be (stronghold has objectives you know) and they are dead, period. There is no masssive open field, so any decent aoe has a huge chance to hit thief. If thief just plays full escape, then HE IS NOT SUPPORTING HIS STRONGHOLD AT ALL – no supplies, no kills – wich means that thief is useles). Your frustration that you can’t kill the thief is your mistake. Necro’s can run around full zerker yet own with a lifebar of 45k hp, wich in the end is attrition. A thief is 3x as squishy (hp wise), yet must survive somehow, has no protection at all from aoe’s other then a few dodges, what you think thief has to survive? Right stealth.

And Shadow embrace nerf? oh Plz, I got spammed conditions so hard by a spirit ranger, necro, engie, that it was unable to cleanse what was needed to. Spite signet + additional + fear = kaboom thief, no escaping that, even in stealth.

I’m not calling for a nerf of those skills either, I accept that conditions (even with SA) are a weakness of thief. Deal with it, if you have thiefs so much build around aoe condition spam. If you don’t it’s your fault you cannot kill them.

I met some enemy rangers who kept standing between other enemy archer npc’s, and lemme tell you, apart from just trolling and perma stealthing, not even landing a single backstab, there’s not much you can do as thief to mitigate npc’s + rapid firing ranger that knows how to play. And funny thing: op is a ranger.

Learn to play issue. And wvw thief op? Have you read how they will buff dolly defending in future wvw maps? Have you tried thief zerg vs zerg in new aoe pirate ship meta? Nope. Otherwise you would have realized, man thief has a hard time. There are build purely focussed on surviving, and if that is abusing in conjunction with stealth, it frustrates enemies. And i get it, once that did frustrate me too. But one thing everyone that ask for nerfs forgets: a cloacked thief is a useless thief. He litteraly cannot do Anything, other then attack you (and give you chance to kill him) or stay cloacked and do nothing. You think doing nothing in stronghold is gonna help yoru team as a thief? Trust me, that’s a big no. Also perma stealthing thiefs use up tons of initiative, that means they got no room to spam head shot (interrupt), wich is crucial in stronghold. Just free channel supply/mist and tada, that thief is useless if you are even a bit defensive.

Hey Phoebe, settle down a bit there; this is one topic of a sub topic regarding a specific game mode that’s in beta and will also be released alongside an additional class and an entirely different meta. The point of this post was to have a simple discussion, not flame each other because you simply disagree and think we all should ’l2p’. Let’s not kid around either, we all have 5000+ hours (as I do myself w/ 2,000+ on thief alone) & 8 80’s and that is hardly a metric for ’pvp extraordinaire’. Thanks for the constructive discussion, k-app-uh.

I agree with some of these suggestions. Completely disagree about SA thieves.

It really sounds like a L2play issue. I defended against plenty of SA thieves yesterday with no problem (well, no more of a problem than defending against other builds). I’ll grant that it’s probably harder defending on a condi build than a power build that can burst a thief down fast, but that’s more of a problem with your build than it is a problem with SA thieves.

Hi DocMed – I’m not too sure about your level of experience in this game, or whether you’re new or not. But let me list a few tips when fighting SA thieves:

• Try knocking them out of their Shadow Refuge!
• When they stealth, count to two and then dodge! Most bad SA thieves will try to backstab you during that time!
• Always rotate to mitigate your chances of being backstabbed!

Hope these basic tips help when fighting enemy thieves!

Regards

I like the supply suggestion.

docMed.7692:

For StealthMy suggestion here is to introduce the WvW stealth-reveal trap (perhaps they can be purchased for accumulated supply runs) or maybe an orb that spawns later in the match and gives the channeller a buff of ‘true sight’ for a period of time would help here. I’m not saying this is completely broken, but it seems rather strong for the offensive lane to have a SA thief solo’ing guards without repercussion and also stealth running/escorting NPC’s.

I would rather have this than getting the nerf bat on a whole trait line itself. There has to be a risk for rewarding thief doing constant stealth and i feel like 4sec revealed in Spvp is not enough.
It will definitely makes the map more tactical and promote teamplay, i bet that is OP wants to say.

SA line does need a nerf.

It won’t effect Conquest since the mode is very anti-stealth. But in stronghold and Deathmatch, SA really need nerfing.

nyckolag.2394:

Hi DocMed – I’m not too sure about your level of experience in this game, or whether you’re new or not. But let me list a few tips when fighting SA thieves:

• Try knocking them out of their Shadow Refuge!
• When they stealth, count to two and then dodge! Most bad SA thieves will try to backstab you during that time!
• Always rotate to mitigate your chances of being backstabbed!

Hope these basic tips help when fighting enemy thieves!

Regards

Just read the thread and you would actually have an idea.

docMed.7692:

For Stealth, I’m speaking primarily to shadow art thieves here, I think overall the game mode could use a bit of counter play to. As it stands, even when I run zerker or condi ranger with sic’ em (and I’ve even tried having reduced shouts cooldown), stopping a shadow arts thieves from annihilating all guards is impossible even with two defending as they can simply reset any time they choose, re-open on the guards, and continue to widdle them down. My suggestion here is to introduce the WvW stealth-reveal trap (perhaps they can be purchased for accumulated supply runs) or maybe an orb that spawns later in the match and gives the channeller a buff of ‘true sight’ for a period of time would help here. I’m not saying this is completely broken, but it seems rather strong for the offensive lane to have a SA thief solo’ing guards without repercussion and also stealth running/escorting NPC’s.

I could not disagree more. Not that I play thief in PvP nor that they don’t diserve a nerf for other reasons, but because the reason used here to pledge for a nerf is not a valid a reason.

During this beta, guards were extremely weak and it was simply not possible to prevent anybody from killing them, whatever their class and your class were. Well, it was possible to stack all the 6 guards and kill them at once without dying …