Guild Wars 2

Miss Murdock,

Hello, I have a few criticisms on this topic. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Re-Pistol-Whip.

1) Empirical data VS Factual data.

Empirical data obtained from forum players should be mostly disregarded, due to subjective biased opinions from various players and professions, namely the lightest/glassiest builds, Elementalists/mesmers/mighty morphin power rangers! (sorry, couldn’t resist jabbing at that pun).

Nowhere did I see anyone giving out any mathematical numbers on the thread. I do hope you know that’s a known fact, that many players are disgruntled and irate over the thief class. If you don’t believe me, please take a look at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-stolen-Whirling-Axe-is-OP/first and see that Thumbs up, topic creator’s with a star post.

Thieves have one of the highest direct damage, be it backstab or pistol whip, the classes that find difficulty in mitigating that direct damage will always protest over how strong the thief class appear to be. I am certain that once upon a time, mesmers were very strong in putting out high dps.

Finally, rather than seeking opinions, you should actually take a look at top PvP win percentage. You should check the top ranking matches and see if thieves contribute to the winning rate. That is a far more accurate representation of the current situation rather seeking forum users claims.

2) Questionable balancing.

One of the major concerns I have is how class balancing is done. Right now, you make me feel like ANet is balancing the game around the opinion of players, not on skill + theoretical numbers offered by the game. Why do you seek the opinions from the forums and not the ranked tpvp players?

Another question I have over the previous patch PvP balancing is how one of the devs stated thieves were able to freely stomp players with infiltrator’s return, something that drew the players’ ire on the fact it was shadowstep with a 50 seconds cooldown that stomped players “freely”.

Your post here in the SPVP forums doesn’t make me any more confident in the team that’s “balancing” the current meta now.

3) Skill balancing.

And for my final gripe, thieves are in my opinion quite complex. They are using a unique initiative system, not based on cooldown but a pool of limited resources that need to be managed. It is in my opinion that players should not be able to influence devs.

At best it should be devs asking thieves “What sort of buffs you want to see to change the meta in sPvP”, while internally devs will crunch numbers and make adjustments to the current issues in sPvP.

4) I firmly believe that…

A large majority of the players here are biased against thieves.

5) In conclusion….

Do not actively seek players opinions but ask QA testers who are skilled to actively play the professions. Biased players are bad for balancing.

Personal opinion (maybe biased?).

Thieves S/P builds are at a comfortable spot to stop bunker meta. The problem is how other lower health professions like elementalists require better access to mitigate direct damage, while being able to handle bunker meta too.

Thank you for reading, if you did.

Yet another post from someone whos not even in the top 1000% telling people whove played over 4000 tourneys that thieves arent as op as we think this is why the game is how it is, anet are listinging to people like you and not listening to people like Lordrosky, he has 3 accounts that have been number one in solo que, a really good win ratio only reason people dont listen to him is because hes angry at how the game is progressing or not as the case may be, thats passion about this game Anet are ignoring, hes the best necro in the game and he knows what hes talkin about, hes one of the only people who dont say biased opinions all he wants is this game to get balanced, people like you need to stop posting your useless and always outdated opinions and leave it to people who know whats going on, oh and btw i said 3 months ago pistol whip was op, noone believed me and now look what happened.

It is not the damage of the skill most people are complaining about. It is the ability to spam 3 all day long and get so much out of it. Good damage, Evade, and a stun/daze. This is also on top of the thief ability to teleport anywhere he pleases whenever he pleases. O and also the ability to reset fights whenever, aka stealth. No other burst class can do this.

Imagine a Elementalist D/D could chain burning speed 5 times in a row, but also got an evade for the duration and the skill immobilized the target when activated. So now the target cannot interrupt the ele and has to burn a condi clear and all your dodges to not take damage. And now the Ele can teleport 1200 units away and reset the fight and do it all over again, but now you have no more condi clears or dodges.

It’s just dumb and bad game design. I came to this game thinking they had a different approach to the Stealth war games, but sadly was mistaken.

Yes. Because s/p has way to much access to stealth

In the core of your statement you´re definitely right. Balancing should be done according to solid numbers gathered ingame and not mainly on the opinion on forum users.
The reason is simple: Why do a lot of people visit the forums instead of playing the game? I´ll take chances and say that a lot of people are here to whine about something. Also you can´t say whether a person on the forums has ever played pvp, if he played the last few months at all, if he´s biased as hell or if he´s a pro.

On the other hand I don´t believe that they´re balancing ONLY according to the opinion of forum users but rather see it as a possibility to get kind of a dialogue with the community about what´s going on.

LoneWolfie.1852:

At best it should be devs asking thieves “What sort of buffs you want to see to change the meta in sPvP”, while internally devs will crunch numbers and make adjustments to the current issues in sPvP.

O.o
I mean, sure, that’s how devs are supposed to work, the playerbase (pro or not) is typically always nearsighted or biased in their proposed ‘fixes’. The job of the devs is to get a feel of what is going wrong by listening to the playerbase and then find the root or best place to tackle it and then fix it….
Ideally that’s how it should go down so I guess you get one theoretical point.

The thing is, the current devs’ issue is far detached from that, like leaps and bounds.
They already don’t take any idea proposed on the forums seriously so there is no need for any warning against it. What they do do wrong though is that they can’t make the game more enjoyable.
Allot of people don’t find the game all that fun even the people that want to like the game.

At this point I don’t think Anet physically can push out a patch that seriously improves how this game plays (not balance, gameplay). That’s why the players are so full of QQ, that’s why they are so headstrong in the ideas they are shooting out over these forums.
They know the game needs change.
Anet isn’t giving it.

LoneWolfie.1852:

4) I firmly believe that…

A large majority of the players here are biased against thieves.

Real problem, perceived problem, for all intensive purposes they are one and the same.
It’s a game.
The whole point is for enjoyment.
Whether or not thieves are actually ruining the game for players is irrelevant, a large portion of players think thieves are… so now they are.
:’(

You gave me a lil’ laugh though, Anet… listening to the forums?
LOL.

LoneWolfe, 100% of the people in the world can bring out statistics from thin air that don’t make any percentage of them right. If you wish to challenge the opinions of the people vying for a thief change then let us here your point of view rather than trying to discredit their opinions with this post that is shakey at best.

Now, this is not to say that the core of your point isn’t something to be considered it’s just, you went about it the wrong way.

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

Yet another post from someone whos not even in the top 1000% telling people whove played over 4000 tourneys that thieves arent as op as we think this is why the game is how it is, anet are listinging to people like you and not listening to people like Lordrosky, he has 3 accounts that have been number one in solo que, a really good win ratio only reason people dont listen to him is because hes angry at how the game is progressing or not as the case may be, thats passion about this game Anet are ignoring, hes the best necro in the game and he knows what hes talkin about, hes one of the only people who dont say biased opinions all he wants is this game to get balanced, people like you need to stop posting your useless and always outdated opinions and leave it to people who know whats going on, oh and btw i said 3 months ago pistol whip was op, noone believed me and now look what happened.

So what if he’s the best necro? Doesn’t mean he knows anything about thieves or how to balance the game or even the thief profession. Pistol whip had a 15% increase in DPS with the reduction of aftercast, bringing thieves directly back to the part where they had a full 1 second stun (thanks to the rounding up of stun time) to do the same amount of damage. Makes me wonder why you didn’t complain about it 6 months ago.

Just before the december patch, pistol whip was utter trash 0.5 seconds that did 2/8 slashes before you can dodge. Way before that pistol whip stunned for 1 second (rounding up of stun duration) while doing 4/8 slashes before you can dodge. Now that ANet brought it back to 4/8 slashes, you’re complaining about it?

Pistol whip is in a good spot and the initiative system is almost a spamming system (S/D spam 3, occasional 2, we all know it annoys the kitten out of everyone because the evade frame was over 9000, including me when I see a S/D player in the past). If you want to change that skill, you need to improve the other sword abilities, including headshot, IS/IR.

If you actually believe that a skill which functions as CC, massive burst, and evades which can be spammed 6 times in a row is balanced: good luck to you sir.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Finally, rather than seeking opinions, you should actually take a look at top PvP win percentage. You should check the top ranking matches and see if thieves contribute to the winning rate. That is a far more accurate representation of the current situation rather seeking forum users claims.
.

Do you watch any yoloq, teamq or other tournament streams?

Master of Timespace.2548:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Finally, rather than seeking opinions, you should actually take a look at top PvP win percentage. You should check the top ranking matches and see if thieves contribute to the winning rate. That is a far more accurate representation of the current situation rather seeking forum users claims.
.

Do you watch any yoloq, teamq or other tournament streams?

He obviously doesn’t lol

Ignoring the actual content of this post for a second, just pointing out that 99.99% of mmo devs in the history of gaming have always ignored threads that are titled directly at them.

And to the actual content, you really think they have been balancing based on the opinions of people on the forums? Really? Just look at the history of say, the necro or ele forums and the patch notes from those time periods and see how much they have based balancing on the forums in the past. God knows what they end up basing their final balance decisions on but its not these forums

OP, you can’t dismiss opinions due to bias. That’s a problem a lot of people have… A proposition can be true or not, even if the person making it is biased towards the truth/falsity of said proposition. So say I were to tell you “I’m good at working on computers” say for a job interview, would you dismiss it because I could be lying due to my personal bias towards getting this job?

Instead of dismissing opinions, what we need to learn to do is weigh the available data in support of opinions. Just dismissing every opinion is stupid, and this is a game after all… their prime concern is making sure people have a positive opinion of the game.

Send her a PM if you do not agree with her way of working. No need to make a thread about it, nothing good comes from this.

Arius.7031:

OP, you can’t dismiss opinions due to bias. That’s a problem a lot of people have… A proposition can be true or not, even if the person making it is biased towards the truth/falsity of said proposition. So say I were to tell you “I’m good at working on computers” say for a job interview, would you dismiss it because I could be lying due to my personal bias towards getting this job?

Instead of dismissing opinions, what we need to learn to do is weigh the available data in support of opinions. Just dismissing every opinion is stupid, and this is a game after all… their prime concern is making sure people have a positive opinion of the game.

I did write “Mostly disregarded.”.

LoneWolfie.1852:

1) Empirical data VS Factual data.

ur first mistake is right here, data collected from the opinions and experiences of players would be labeled anecdotal data, empirical data would be collected with some form of technical methodology—with a measure

factual data…u prolly mean statistical data thurr
l2research

If spirit ranger and hambow wars would get nerfed thief would be very op. Right now they are just strong but not op.

Just go to the 1v1 servers, you don’t need to do the math, just look at those fights. Thieves win almost all of them.

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

Yet another post from someone whos not even in the top 1000% telling people whove played over 4000 tourneys that thieves arent as op as we think this is why the game is how it is, anet are listinging to people like you and not listening to people like Lordrosky, he has 3 accounts that have been number one in solo que, a really good win ratio only reason people dont listen to him is because hes angry at how the game is progressing or not as the case may be, thats passion about this game Anet are ignoring, hes the best necro in the game and he knows what hes talkin about, hes one of the only people who dont say biased opinions all he wants is this game to get balanced, people like you need to stop posting your useless and always outdated opinions and leave it to people who know whats going on, oh and btw i said 3 months ago pistol whip was op, noone believed me and now look what happened.

Wow. You win for the longest sentence ever.

Spooko.5436:

LoneWolfie.1852:

1) Empirical data VS Factual data.

ur first mistake is right here, data collected from the opinions and experiences of players would be labeled anecdotal data, empirical data would be collected with some form of technical methodology—with a measure

factual data…u prolly mean statistical data thurr
l2research

Empirical evidence (also empirical data, sense experience, empirical knowledge, or the a posteriori) is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation.¹ Empirical evidence is information that justifies a belief in the truth or falsity of an empirical claim. In the empiricist view, one can only claim to have knowledge when one has a true belief based on empirical evidence. This stands in contrast to the rationalist view under which reason or reflection alone is considered to be evidence for the truth or falsity of some propositions.² The senses are the primary source of empirical evidence. Although other sources of evidence, such as memory, and the testimony of others ultimately trace back to some sensory experience, they are considered to be secondary, or indirect.²

In another sense, empirical evidence may be synonymous with the outcome of an experiment. In this sense, an empirical result is a unified confirmation. In this context, the term semi-empirical is used for qualifying theoretical methods which use in part basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and experimental results.

The expression anecdotal evidence refers to evidence from anecdotes. Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.¹² Anecdotal evidence is considered dubious support of a claim; it is accepted only in lieu of more solid evidence. This is true regardless of the veracity of individual claims.³⁴⁵

Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting account, which may depict a real incident or person.¹ Anecdotes can be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based in a real incident² involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place.

- Wikipedia

For lack of a better sentence describing builds that are capable of handling itself against pistol whip builds (health + boons vs direct damage), I chose the term “factual data”.

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

Yet another post from someone whos not even in the top 1000% telling people whove played over 4000 tourneys that thieves arent as op as we think this is why the game is how it is, anet are listinging to people like you and not listening to people like Lordrosky, he has 3 accounts that have been number one in solo que, a really good win ratio only reason people dont listen to him is because hes angry at how the game is progressing or not as the case may be, thats passion about this game Anet are ignoring, hes the best necro in the game and he knows what hes talkin about, hes one of the only people who dont say biased opinions all he wants is this game to get balanced, people like you need to stop posting your useless and always outdated opinions and leave it to people who know whats going on, oh and btw i said 3 months ago pistol whip was op, noone believed me and now look what happened.

During week days I’m in the top 500 in TeamQ and have to agree with the OP.

DanSH.6143:

Just go to the 1v1 servers, you don’t need to do the math, just look at those fights. Thieves win almost all of them.

The game isn’t balanced around 1v1, even if I disagree with your statement entirely.

Well are you a top sPvP player? Because otherwise you just contradicted yourself in your own post by giving a biased opinion on thieves while saying that the devs shouldn’t listen to the forum player base because they are biased. I’m not trying to be rude but thieves aren’t complex at all. They solely rely on stealth if you build for that with back stab or pistol whip if you build for that. That’s it. The initiative system is at the core of this problem. I don’t blame thieves for using the only thing they can use to get damage. This is why I think thieves just need a complete class rework. This is so that they don’t have to rely on stealth and one attack to do damage but have more diversity within their weapon set and have CD’s like everyone else. Obviously this wouldn’t work with the weapon skills thieves have now. I believe this would make thieves much more fun to play and play against. This is also coming from an unbiased view as I have more hours on my thief than any other class as I mained a thief but just grew tired of the same old stealth back stab or teleport pistol whip combo over and over again because that’s the only thing I could do to get damage. I believe stealth should be a mechanic that should only be needed for defense and not relied on for offense. When it comes to shadow step stomping I don’t see a problem with it. I used it all the time and its almost equivalent to stomping with mist form. You are blowing a long CD for a stomp and I don’t see a problem with that.

This topic is going to get you an infraction come Monday.

#nerfthief

Cush.4063:

Well are you a top sPvP player? Because otherwise you just contradicted yourself in your own post by giving a biased opinion on thieves while saying that the devs shouldn’t listen to the forum player base because they are biased. I’m not trying to be rude but thieves aren’t complex at all. They solely rely on stealth if you build for that with back stab or pistol whip if you build for that. That’s it. The initiative system is at the core of this problem. I don’t blame thieves for using the only thing they can use to get damage. This is why I think thieves just need a complete class rework. This is so that they don’t have to rely on stealth and one attack to do damage but have more diversity within their weapon set and have CD’s like everyone else. Obviously this wouldn’t work with the weapon skills thieves have now. I believe this would make thieves much more fun to play and play against. This is also coming from an unbiased view as I have more hours on my thief than any other class as I mained a thief but just grew tired of the same old stealth back stab or teleport pistol whip combo over and over again because that’s the only thing I could do to get damage. I believe stealth should be a mechanic that should only be needed for defense and not relied on for offense. When it comes to shadow step stomping I don’t see a problem with it. I used it all the time and its almost equivalent to stomping with mist form. You are blowing a long CD for a stomp and I don’t see a problem with that.

May I suggest one of my many, notably wonky builds for you? I’ve got a shortbow trap bunker, a dual p/p celestial life siphon roamer, a tanky s/p bruiser, several venoms builds, and a new 20/15/0/15/20 P/P build that is apparently OP according to QQers. Pick your poison!

I’ve been playing my Engie and mesmer more lately since the QQ and constant verbal abuse for just playing a thief is getting to me.