Guild Wars 2

This is a salty post.

Roaming classes lack variety, mobility is key quiet obviously in the roaming role but all roaming classes are very unrewarding to play against and feel very cheesy. For example I dont feel like ive had a fun or balanced fight when a thief has so much mobility without a caveat, they may lack health but thats irrelevant with the amount of evades and stealths, similarly with other specs. It may be power creep but I feel like most classes have way too much mobility and evades which may just be the ofcourse the roamers job to have but theres too much disparity between the classes.

Roaming feels unrewarding and theres a lack of variety in class choices. I hope PoF brings more too the table not just reinforces the meta.

PoF won’t change much. It’ll still be primarily daredevils roaming. With an occasional deadeye.

Sorry, but as long as shortbow gives thieves the ability to disengage from just about any fight regardless of numbers, they’ll be the defacto roaming class.

If it makes you feel any better, playing thief isn’t easy.

Running away is certainly easy, but actually getting a kill can be pretty tough. It’s not just about evades, it’s how to maximize them while also killing your target.

As long as one class has such high loss aversion and can reset any fight until it gains the upper hand it will be the default class for such encounters.

It’s a bit more than just that.

Highly-mobile professions with stealth access like thief and mesmer are top-dogs in the small-scale because:

- As covered, resetting a fight is a big advantage given the space to do so and a lack of precedent for staying in combat.

- Most meta roaming builds don’t feel imbalanced or un-fun to play against. They just are. The intent for these builds is to be able to enter any given encounter and either win through sheer overpowered stats (condi thief/reaper/mesmer/pre-nerf condi beserker, bunker druid) or leave (mobility, stealth) if a win can’t be done.

- Mobility and stealth are taken for small-scale because these mechanics negate pressure zergs can apply to solo players. Sending 50 people to squirrel after a thief or mesmer is pointless, and these can OOC unkilled somewhat easily, whereas doing such for less-mobile professions basically grants a free bag.

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

- Building on the previous point, these players are going to be very adept at roaming because it’s basically all they have the option to do. Practice makes perfect. This restriction is also what enforces cheese metas; they optimize around the best thing that can be done for the small-scale fight because it’s all they can really partake in without being called out or being a liability to their blobs.

I share the sentiment that there are too many sources of stealth and spammable resets in the game. That said, it’s been a necessary evil for the design approach of these professions. Until blocks/dodges/cc spam/immunities/boons/AoE bursts/etc. all get toned down I don’t think we can ask for blanket statement nerfs to mobility and the likes.

At the end of the day the existence of this kind of gameplay is on ANet’s shoulders for designing the professions in a way which allows people to be so exploitative of low-vulnerability builds, just as much as it’s their responsibility to clean them up in a reasonable time frame and keep the general game-state healthy. We’re simply not seeing that; these builds come and stay for longer than they’re welcome.

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I will support the mesmers (chrono) too, they are essential to proper group.

As about huge pug zergs, I dunno, these fights tend to be quite random. So many other things could affect the outcome beside simple class.

I have not much to add to the topic about thieves and roaming. That is their role, that is what they are designed for and where they shine.

“Roaming” is not needed or wanted in WvW, and “Roamers” won’t accept that.

Scouting is needed, Camp flipping and Yak guarding is needed.

Having a cheese gank build to crap on people running back to a fight and doing a video with bad dubstep is not needed.

Trajan.4953:

Camp flipping and Yak guarding is needed.

Yes. They are needed because of roamers. A roamer’s ultimate goal is to punish the opposing server for not doing what you say. The goal is to exploit the enemy weak points.
Roamers are not wanted because they are annoying af. But this role is an integral part to any larger scale strategy.

I don’t know if you’ve ever played broodwar, but basically the roamer is like a dark templar. You send one specialized unit to punish the enemy for not guarding its assets.
And I’m by no mean an expert in real life military strategy, but it’s basically the same deal with infiltration, sabotage etc.

That being said, we can agree that thieves can disengage too easily. But they don’t have much going for themselves in wvw in the first place. If you remove thieves’ mobility/disengage without making them more useful in other areas at the same time, you’re just killing the class.

Get hyped on the deadeye meta

I play engineer. Rip

Bisouslove.5260:

And I’m by no mean an expert in real life military strategy, but it’s basically the same deal with infiltration, sabotage etc.

If you want to compare it to real life, then roamers are the special forces of GW. More akin to the Long Range Recon Patrols of Vietnam I suppose. 4-5 guys running around in the enemy’s backyard, blowing stuff up, wrecking general havoc, and hiding or running when they’re outnumbered.

I suppose a lot of you aren’t old enough to remember Vietnam. The section here on LRRPs in ’Nam is pretty interesting. “Outguerrilla the guerrillas”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_reconnaissance_patrol

Anyone here old enough to remember The Rat Patrol? Or am I just carbon-dating myself? LOL

OP is right about one thing, and that is that his post is pure salt.

-Every profession has builds they can successfully roam with. Change it up, get different gear. Just because you want your current gear/zerg build to work with roaming doesn’t mean it should. The complainer’s have probably never even seen Cavalier or Knights stats…
-Not every profession can successfully juke a zerg if the zerg feels like wasting time on that roamer. Learn to not travel using the road if you are not confident in your escape abilities.
-Every profession/build has a counter in the form of a different profession/build. Most roamers keep multiple sets of gear on them in case they are coming across more enemy roamers that counter them than they usually see.

Trajan.4953:

“Roaming” is not needed or wanted in WvW, and “Roamers” won’t accept that.

Scouting is needed, Camp flipping and Yak guarding is needed.

Having a cheese gank build to crap on people running back to a fight and doing a video with bad dubstep is not needed.

Even though roaming is more than just killing people running to rejoin the horde, a ganker as you’ve described contributes more to their side than the average zergling.

Anthony.7630:

I play engineer. Rip

Chin up. PoF is shortly going to give you the most over tuned build in the history of this game.

Anet does not care for balance in a microcosm within a mass conflict game mode. The thief class cannot contest a point in PvP whilst he is kiting around or in stealth. This mode is what the classes were built onand balanced for. They just piggy backed WvW into the game then threw the classes into WvW as is.

You want a semblance of balance, go to PvP where condi classes can actually be blown up like everything else(limited stats) and thieves are reasonable.

sPvP:
- no burst sigils
- normalised stats
- significant endurance nerfs
- skill nerfs (Vault)

look at signet of agility in WvW, 100% endurance buff and three condis cleared on a 30sec icd, is there another utility more overloaded? Maybe shadow step.

Chorazin.4107:

Anet does not care for balance in a microcosm within a mass conflict game mode. The thief class cannot contest a point in PvP whilst he is kiting around or in stealth. This mode is what the classes were built onand balanced for. They just piggy backed WvW into the game then threw the classes into WvW as is.

You want a semblance of balance, go to PvP where condi classes can actually be blown up like everything else(limited stats) and thieves are reasonable.

sPvP:
- no burst sigils
- normalised stats
- significant endurance nerfs
- skill nerfs (Vault)

look at signet of agility in WvW, 100% endurance buff and three condis cleared on a 30sec icd, is there another utility more overloaded? Maybe shadow step.

^

I made an entire thread about this not long ago. If you want balance, roaming isn’t the right place to be looking.

There are broken builds aplenty and fights are rarely a matter of skill. I come across maybe 1 player a week that’s worth remembering. Everyone else is playing a cookie cutter build skill mashing and doing at least reasonably well enough to survive.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

That last sentence just lol. Bring Mesmer so your giant zerg can flatten a smaller zerg, gotcha.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

That last sentence just lol. Bring Mesmer so your giant zerg can flatten a smaller zerg, gotcha.

Giant unorganized zerg, can flatten a smaller organized zerg.

Unannounced to most here, apparently, an organized group of say, 20-25, can take an unorganized group of say, 40-50.

If you’re at on off hour time just kitten ing around in a zerg that isn’t on TS/Discord, gravity wells are actually really good at shutting down organized groups. Since gravity wells gobble stability up like a whale at an all you can eat buffet. And the backline is unlikely to have pulsing stability.

Not that gravity wells are bad in even encounters. I just noticed how good they are at shutting down organized groups.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

Afaik it’s still reasonable to bring mesmers. Generally boons don’t last long enough that the change is going to screw anything over anyway.

Not that I’m on a T1 server, because frankly, I prefer my 20 man organized havoc groups over constantly running a blob.

20 is a blob o.o

A big problem I see with the roaming scene is that the biggest offenders (thief/daredevil) continue to receive only micro-buffs and avoid the nerf-bat every single patch.

A couple seasons ago in pvp, they removed many of the burst sigils, runes, and amulets. There were also sweeping nerfs across the board for most all classes.

Some of these nerfs carried over into wvw (and some have oddly been aimed at specifically roamers since they wouldn’t affect zergplay whatsoever) but for thief, none of those nerfs did. Choking gass still pulses daze. Impacting Disruption still does full damage, Channeled vigor still restores 1.5 bars of endurance, Signet of Agility still restores 100 endurance and vault still only costs 5 initiative. This is on top of the fact that buffs to pistol and sword have also carried over to WvW, giving thieves, who are already dominating the roaming scene, even more build variety.

I can’t give a comprehensive review of what does or doesn’t need nerfing but something in the trifecta of thief’s damage, sustainability and mobility has to go. To be conservative, I think just three nerfs would go a long ways for the roaming scene:

Bring the nerfs/changes from sPvP to WvW for Choking gas (shortbow #4), Channeled Vigor and Signet of Agility (aka, equalize them between these two game modes).

These nerfs wouldn’t kill thief roamers since they’d still have fantastic mobility but would go a long ways in helping other roamers fight back since thieves would have to be more careful with their dodges rather than spamming them back to back to effectively escape all situations.

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

babazhook.6805:

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

You know as well as everyone else that “spamming stealth” has largely been replaced by the mobility and evades of Daredevil. Stealth is still a powerful defensive option, but the state of thief in regards to capping hasn’t been what you described since HoT dropped.

Arcaedus.7290:

A big problem I see with the roaming scene is that the biggest offenders (thief/daredevil) continue to receive only micro-buffs and avoid the nerf-bat every single patch.

This just isn’t true, and I don’t even play thief anymore. A couple of patches ago they nerfed back stab, making it that you can’t just spam back stab from stealth on a miss until you connect. There is now a one sec cool down on all stealth attacks on a miss. You might argue that this doesn’t change things all that much since (good) thieves learn to adjust their position to make their chances to land the stab count. But still, it was a substantial nerf to one of thief’s core skills.

I just hope with PoF balance patches classes will lose some of their mobility. That is not likely but with mount some professions will not need that stuff in pve. A pve balance patch effecting mobility would affect wvw too, since their are no wvw specific balance updates.

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

You know as well as everyone else that “spamming stealth” has largely been replaced by the mobility and evades of Daredevil. Stealth is still a powerful defensive option, but the state of thief in regards to capping hasn’t been what you described since HoT dropped.

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

And then here comes dead-eye with the ability to remove reveal, the only real counter to stealth……

There should always be a counter to stealth, its the most powerful mechanic in the game. Allowing a class to complete negate its counter when its needed most is just bad design.

The second most powerful ability is movement, something the thief could always use to counter reveal.

Now its just flat out stupid with the teef now keeping its stellar mobility and the ability to cancel out reveal. I see thief’s taking dead-eye just to run builds off that premise.

sneakytails.5629:

And then here comes dead-eye with the ability to remove reveal, the only real counter to stealth……

There should always be a counter to stealth, its the most powerful mechanic in the game. Allowing a class to complete negate its counter when its needed most is just bad design.

The second most powerful ability is movement, something the thief could always use to counter reveal.

Now its just flat out stupid with the teef now keeping its stellar mobility and the ability to cancel out reveal. I see thief’s taking dead-eye just to run builds off that premise.

The ability to remove reveal is on a 45 second icd. There certainly “two uses” ot it during that period but the ICD remains.

Traiting DE means giving up DrD which is a great chunk of that “stellar mobility”. The port off steal is lost , the added dodges lost and the UC for swiftness and immob breaks is lost.

babazhook.6805:

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

You know as well as everyone else that “spamming stealth” has largely been replaced by the mobility and evades of Daredevil. Stealth is still a powerful defensive option, but the state of thief in regards to capping hasn’t been what you described since HoT dropped.

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

Currently because of the changes to burst skills on berserker and AH interactions most warriors run baseline. A DP daredevil that’s got similar experience on their class as their opponent vs a core warrior should win nearly every time. Kite out the endure pains, bait out the resistance or save steal for stripping it when they want to get that burst skill to hit and keep them blinded.

I mean core warrior doesn’t even have a decent CC anymore as the shield bash proceeds to announce it will CC you now.

In terms of the topic mobility and stealth nearly every roamer has loads of it but I feel the more balanced ones are warrior and DH. They can have some mobility but have to pay for it with less effective utilities or weapon choices. Condi mes and P offhand thieves have far too much of all of it and need toning down.

Trajan.4953:

“Roaming” is not needed or wanted in WvW, and “Roamers” won’t accept that.

Scouting is needed, Camp flipping and Yak guarding is needed.

Having a cheese gank build to crap on people running back to a fight and doing a video with bad dubstep is not needed.

Since when?

I roam, I flip camps, and if I am passing a yak caravan that’s close to it’s destination, I make sure it gets there. Just because everyone in WvW isn’t in a zerg spamming #1 on their keyboard, doesn’t mean they’re not doing anything.

Plenty roamers will spot numbers and do a map call-out, plenty roamers will clip off a few people at the end of a zerg, or people running back, lessening the numbers of the enemy.

Just sounds like your salty about being one of those people who get dumped on by a roamer, because all you know about WvW is pressing #1 on your keyboard and blasting fire fields…

apharma.3741:

babazhook.6805:

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

You know as well as everyone else that “spamming stealth” has largely been replaced by the mobility and evades of Daredevil. Stealth is still a powerful defensive option, but the state of thief in regards to capping hasn’t been what you described since HoT dropped.

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

Currently because of the changes to burst skills on berserker and AH interactions most warriors run baseline. A DP daredevil that’s got similar experience on their class as their opponent vs a core warrior should win nearly every time. Kite out the endure pains, bait out the resistance or save steal for stripping it when they want to get that burst skill to hit and keep them blinded.

I mean core warrior doesn’t even have a decent CC anymore as the shield bash proceeds to announce it will CC you now.

In terms of the topic mobility and stealth nearly every roamer has loads of it but I feel the more balanced ones are warrior and DH. They can have some mobility but have to pay for it with less effective utilities or weapon choices. Condi mes and P offhand thieves have far too much of all of it and need toning down.

My warrior does not use endure pain because endure pain can be kited out. Warrior has physical skills and other skills available that have CC. Too many warriors neglect these in order to take endure pain or other “passive” utilities.

To shield bash and headbutt in particular.

The tell does not really matter if you are using it against thief weapon evades. Once the thief uses vault, or DB (the two major ones) the chances of your headbutt or shield bash landing go up. You do not use these before the thief enters that evade. You use them when he enters that evade timing it for the connect to land near the end of the animation.

To the thief dodges there a reason I prefer physical skills against them over endure pain. That because they tend to force a dodge. If the thief does not dodge something like Bulls charge or kick they can be put into a vulnerable position.

This does not mean a good thief would not have other options. It my suggesting that a warrior has options to tilt the fight more in his favor. If the thief does not have stealth as an option as a defense, it follows they will rely more on dodge and evades. Force those to burn INI and endurance on the thiefs part and the the thief tends to have to withdraw and reset.

Yes the theif can always get away in such a scenario , but I am talking about defending or taking a camp or other such location as a roamer. A warrior can do this job very well. They are not as “bad” at is as is a thief in the heart of a zerg.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

Afaik it’s still reasonable to bring mesmers. Generally boons don’t last long enough that the change is going to screw anything over anyway.

Not that I’m on a T1 server, because frankly, I prefer my 20 man organized havoc groups over constantly running a blob.

20 man organized havoc group. Think for a second about what you just said.

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

I guess we’ll see how desirable Deadeye is for zerg play once PoF drops. If it is, that’s one less roaming profession that’s a red-headed stepchild in a zerg.

Kaiser.9873:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

DeceiverX.8361:

- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.

To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.

Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.

Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.

I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.

Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.

There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”

The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.

Afaik it’s still reasonable to bring mesmers. Generally boons don’t last long enough that the change is going to screw anything over anyway.

Not that I’m on a T1 server, because frankly, I prefer my 20 man organized havoc groups over constantly running a blob.

20 man organized havoc group. Think for a second about what you just said.

I was thinking the same thing. My guild barely gets a squad of 20 for our WvW raids. And this guy is rolling in 20 man havoc groups. kittening ah, no wonder WvW is completely screwed.

babazhook.6805:

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

I said evades and mobility, not specifically dodges (didn’t say “infinite dodges” either). And I’ve sure fought a crap tonne of thieves, which is all that’s needed for this discussion.

If you’re on a warrior and you come across a halfway competent daredevil, they can mostly rely on shortbow and LoS to keep you from getting the cap, though there’s also shadowstep, dodges, staff movement (if applicable), sword ports (if applicable), Bandit’s Defense (if applicable), etc.

And each camp has its terrain to exploit too. If you’re talking about borderlands, se camp has the huts to skitten around, ne camp has the mill and wood piles, n camp has the table and well, nw camp has the supply structure and the steps (that will force anyone without ports to go the long way), se camp has, well, everything (buildings, fences, etc.), and then s camp has the barn.

I’m able to delay a cap against most people (often groups) for a good while in some of those camps just using my mobility, and it’s not nearly as good as what most daredevils are packing.

So, to the claim that thieves are boned when it comes to contesting a camp due to the stealth mechanic, I say you’re limiting your horizons.

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

I said evades and mobility, not specifically dodges (didn’t say “infinite dodges” either). And I’ve sure fought a crap tonne of thieves, which is all that’s needed for this discussion.

If you’re on a warrior and you come across a halfway competent daredevil, they can mostly rely on shortbow and LoS to keep you from getting the cap, though there’s also shadowstep, dodges, staff movement (if applicable), sword ports (if applicable), Bandit’s Defense (if applicable), etc.

And each camp has its terrain to exploit too. If you’re talking about borderlands, se camp has the huts to skitten around, ne camp has the mill and wood piles, n camp has the table and well, nw camp has the supply structure and the steps (that will force anyone without ports to go the long way), se camp has, well, everything (buildings, fences, etc.), and then s camp has the barn.

I’m able to delay a cap against most people (often groups) for a good while in some of those camps just using my mobility, and it’s not nearly as good as what most daredevils are packing.

So, to the claim that thieves are boned when it comes to contesting a camp due to the stealth mechanic, I say you’re limiting your horizons.

I DO play a warrior and I do roam with it, and I know exactly how well it perfroms against theives when flipping or defending camps . I also face many warriors who are much better able to deal wit thieves than you suggest when I am on my own theif.

I suggest you get on a thief and play one for months on end and you will run into those warriors.

That said.

You did not bother to read my first post, assumed I was responding to you when it was generic and then choose to misrepresent what I said.

Further debate on this manner is pointless.

apharma.3741:

I mean core warrior doesn’t even have a decent CC anymore

Woah woah woah, hold on.

Have you played warrior since the Bull’s Charge changes? That skill is INSANE. I’d fill all ten of my skills with that if I could. Hammer got massively buffed and it is also seeing some substantial use now as well.

I think we should clear any potential confusion between overbearing CC in mass quantities which most HoT elites bring as a requirement to deal with all the rest of the powercreep versus what can be defined as having relatively decent access to good CC skills on the profession-level. Core warrior has great CC and has always had it, but there is too much going against it to make it as strong as other options.

I’d put blame on failures elsewhere, though.

babazhook.6805:

I DO play a warrior and I do roam with it, and I know exactly how well it perfroms against theives when flipping or defending camps . I also face many warriors who are much better able to deal wit thieves than you suggest when I am on my own theif.

I suggest you get on a thief and play one for months on end and you will run into those warriors.

That said.

You did not bother to read my first post, assumed I was responding to you when it was generic and then choose to misrepresent what I said.

Further debate on this manner is pointless.

You’re off topic. You said,

babazhook.6805:

“Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

And I merely pointed out that a thief is perfectly capable of contesting a camp against enemies without using stealth. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that a high mobility thief is probably best equipped to contest a camp when compared to other classes.

It doesn’t matter if you play both thief and warrior (I didn’t even mention warrior), it doesn’t change the truth of that. I’ve no idea why you seem testy about it either.

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

I DO play a warrior and I do roam with it, and I know exactly how well it perfroms against theives when flipping or defending camps . I also face many warriors who are much better able to deal wit thieves than you suggest when I am on my own theif.

I suggest you get on a thief and play one for months on end and you will run into those warriors.

That said.

You did not bother to read my first post, assumed I was responding to you when it was generic and then choose to misrepresent what I said.

Further debate on this manner is pointless.

You’re off topic. You said,

babazhook.6805:

“Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

And I merely pointed out that a thief is perfectly capable of contesting a camp against enemies without using stealth. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that a high mobility thief is probably best equipped to contest a camp when compared to other classes.

It doesn’t matter if you play both thief and warrior (I didn’t even mention warrior), it doesn’t change the truth of that. I’ve no idea why you seem testy about it either.

I tend to get testy when people misreprsennt what I said when they respond to a post I make as you did in your first response to me. The ORIGINAL post mentioned theifs high access to stealth. How on Earth is my poiting out using stealth on point is NOT useful off topic?

I merely pointed out that STEALTH thieves could not contest points. I was not talking about dodges. You brought that up.

Can you point out where I stated, as example, that thieves that could not stealth were “boned” when taking a camp . Do you understand that not all thieves spam dodges or rely on dodge builds?

As to playing both classes. I spend the vast majority of time in WvW roaming. I play both warrior and thief. It is pertinent because i can compare how well they perfrom against one another when roaming. Warrior IS a good roaming class. That it does not have stealth or the mobility of the thief does not change that.

babazhook.6805:

I tend to get testy when people misreprsennt what I said when they respond to a post I make as you did in your first response to me. The ORIGINAL post mentioned theifs high access to stealth. How on Earth is my poiting out using stealth on point is NOT useful off topic?

I merely pointed out that STEALTH thieves could not contest points. I was not talking about dodges. You brought that up.

Can you point out where I stated, as example, that thieves that could not stealth were “boned” when taking a camp . Do you understand that not all thieves spam dodges or rely on dodge builds?

I mean, the original post emphasized mobility and evades more than stealth and said nothing about contesting. A boatload of posts had been made after the original post and before your first post, the previous seven posts weren’t talking about stealth at all, the immediately previous post gave a perspective on roaming, roaming was the subject of your post, and you didn’t quote anyone. So it wasn’t clear who you were talking to or what you were responding to.

Then, for my part, I directly addressed your claim by pointing out that thieves have better potential than all other classes to have the advantage in the situation you described, and that stealth hasn’t been the primary defense strategy pretty much since HoT dropped. I also quoted your original post in full.

Frankly, I don’t see how I misrepresented anything you said.

apharma.3741:

Condi mes and P offhand thieves have far too much of all of it and need toning down.

The trouble is these classes have no role outside of roaming. Are they over the top in this role? Sure, absolutely. But what else is there for them to do in WvW? One stray CoR and down goes the thief in any zerg situation. And the mesmers clones/phantasms will insta melt in a zerg fight to AoE. At least the mesmer i guess can play a supporty type role I guess.

The same argument could be made about zerging rather than roaming, do reapers need to be toned down in larger scale conflicts because they dictate/dominate?

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

I tend to get testy when people misreprsennt what I said when they respond to a post I make as you did in your first response to me. The ORIGINAL post mentioned theifs high access to stealth. How on Earth is my poiting out using stealth on point is NOT useful off topic?

I merely pointed out that STEALTH thieves could not contest points. I was not talking about dodges. You brought that up.

Can you point out where I stated, as example, that thieves that could not stealth were “boned” when taking a camp . Do you understand that not all thieves spam dodges or rely on dodge builds?

I mean, the original post emphasized mobility and evades more than stealth and said nothing about contesting. A boatload of posts had been made after the original post and before your first post, the previous seven posts weren’t talking about stealth at all, the immediately previous post gave a perspective on roaming, roaming was the subject of your post, and you didn’t quote anyone. So it wasn’t clear who you were talking to or what you were responding to.

Then, for my part, I directly addressed your claim by pointing out that thieves have better potential than all other classes to have the advantage in the situation you described, and that stealth hasn’t been the primary defense strategy pretty much since HoT dropped. I also quoted your original post in full.

Frankly, I don’t see how I misrepresented anything you said.

I will tell you what. Next time our two servers face off you get on your d/p and SB thief and I will get on my roamer warrior and you let me know which map you will go roaming on. You can then show me how just by using SB and D/P you can flip those camps while my warrior there just by your using dodges and kiting without entering stealth.

babazhook.6805:

I will tell you what. Next time our two servers face off you get on your d/p and SB thief and I will get on my roamer warrior and you let me know which map you will go roaming on. You can then show me how just by using SB and D/P you can flip those camps while my warrior there just by your using dodges and kiting without entering stealth.

You’re saying you don’t know how to do it on your thief? My bet is you do, and a better test of it would be me on my warrior and you on your thief.

Just run me around a hut, use shortbow and shadow step, and watch how easy it’ll be for you. And that’s me competently playing a speedy build. Pity the poor necro.

Nike Warriors are a thing to behold. Escape is almost non existent. However on a thief this might be a different story.

babazhook.6805:

apharma.3741:

babazhook.6805:

Choppy.4183:

babazhook.6805:

Just some perspective on roaming as it pertains to a thief.

There is a lot of give and take and especially when it comes to those roamers focusing on stealth as defense and that is , if defending or taking a point such as a camp , your single largest defensive asset is now a laibility if facing an enemy player.

“spamming stealth” may help you survive a given encounter, but if your only goal is to survive you might as well stay parked in a tower. “Spamming stealth” will very often see an objective lost to a single enemy player because all that time you were stealthed saw the circle up go his way.

You know as well as everyone else that “spamming stealth” has largely been replaced by the mobility and evades of Daredevil. Stealth is still a powerful defensive option, but the state of thief in regards to capping hasn’t been what you described since HoT dropped.

You do not play thief. First off if you can remove stealth access from a thief, even one that uses dodges, you have removed a good deal of defenses. My post mentioned steath specifically and did not refer to dodges.

Secondly I DO play warrior. If I come into a camp the same time as an opposing thief and can prevent that thief from entering stealth due to the mechanics mentioned , my chances of winning go up exponentially.

Contrary to claims made . thief does not have infinite dodges. Added to that the weapon evades are easily read and there should be no reason a warrior can not time his attacks to hit said thief in their vulnerable frames.

Warrior will always have more attacks then a thief has dodges and the more of those attacks used that force thief into expending a dodge or evade , the more followup attacks that will hit. I know I mentioned it to you before that a warrior using some of those physical skills (kick, stomp bulls charge as example) can much better counter an evade thief then can a warrior that traits endure pain and all defensive utilities.

Currently because of the changes to burst skills on berserker and AH interactions most warriors run baseline. A DP daredevil that’s got similar experience on their class as their opponent vs a core warrior should win nearly every time. Kite out the endure pains, bait out the resistance or save steal for stripping it when they want to get that burst skill to hit and keep them blinded.

I mean core warrior doesn’t even have a decent CC anymore as the shield bash proceeds to announce it will CC you now.

In terms of the topic mobility and stealth nearly every roamer has loads of it but I feel the more balanced ones are warrior and DH. They can have some mobility but have to pay for it with less effective utilities or weapon choices. Condi mes and P offhand thieves have far too much of all of it and need toning down.

My warrior does not use endure pain because endure pain can be kited out. Warrior has physical skills and other skills available that have CC. Too many warriors neglect these in order to take endure pain or other “passive” utilities.

To shield bash and headbutt in particular.

The tell does not really matter if you are using it against thief weapon evades. Once the thief uses vault, or DB (the two major ones) the chances of your headbutt or shield bash landing go up. You do not use these before the thief enters that evade. You use them when he enters that evade timing it for the connect to land near the end of the animation.

To the thief dodges there a reason I prefer physical skills against them over endure pain. That because they tend to force a dodge. If the thief does not dodge something like Bulls charge or kick they can be put into a vulnerable position.

This does not mean a good thief would not have other options. It my suggesting that a warrior has options to tilt the fight more in his favor. If the thief does not have stealth as an option as a defense, it follows they will rely more on dodge and evades. Force those to burn INI and endurance on the thiefs part and the the thief tends to have to withdraw and reset.

Yes the theif can always get away in such a scenario , but I am talking about defending or taking a camp or other such location as a roamer. A warrior can do this job very well. They are not as “bad” at is as is a thief in the heart of a zerg.

Yes, talk about staff thief and death blossom except I said DP daredevil as in what you are most likely to come up against and was talking about core warrior as most players recognise that berserker is now inferior. So I don’t know why you’re bringing up head butt as well you should read first or refrain from making strawman arguments.

In terms of taking a camp the only times it isn’t in the thiefs favour in a warrior vs thief fight is if the DP thief literally gets there just before it’s going to be capped or is trying to take the camp vs guards and a warrior. The former the thief can do very little (mes, druid and scrapper would likewise not fair well) while many classes wouldn’t have got their in the first place in the same time so would have lost the camp anyway. The latter the thief can use its superior mobility to kill dolyaks. If the warrior leaves and escorts the thief can take out the guards and make it an even fight, if the warrior stays he gets little to no value from the camp.

Hexalot.8194:

Arcaedus.7290:

A big problem I see with the roaming scene is that the biggest offenders (thief/daredevil) continue to receive only micro-buffs and avoid the nerf-bat every single patch.

This just isn’t true, and I don’t even play thief anymore. A couple of patches ago they nerfed back stab, making it that you can’t just spam back stab from stealth on a miss until you connect. There is now a one sec cool down on all stealth attacks on a miss. You might argue that this doesn’t change things all that much since (good) thieves learn to adjust their position to make their chances to land the stab count. But still, it was a substantial nerf to one of thief’s core skills.

That happened over a year ago. Although technically a nerf, it was an excellent balance move and should have been done a lot sooner. And yeah, it did absolutely nothing to curb thieves/DD from dominating the roaming scene.

When I play daredevil in WvW, I notice I can live through so many things whilst making bad decisions, spamming, and abusing mobility. I find myself saying “man, this is boring and gimmicky.” Daredevil is….. lame. It’s just lame. It’s effective, and it’s badly designed and does not feel rewarding. Thief felt great when there was more risk. Anyone with decent mechanical speed can abuse this class for roaming. And then, you have condi thief for those without mechanical speed.

I don’t know that I can call it completely OP, but I feel confident in saying that most daredevil builds are overtuned right now for WvW Roaming. And it speaks in the volume of players using the class.

Arcaedus.7290:

Hexalot.8194:

Arcaedus.7290:

A big problem I see with the roaming scene is that the biggest offenders (thief/daredevil) continue to receive only micro-buffs and avoid the nerf-bat every single patch.

This just isn’t true, and I don’t even play thief anymore. A couple of patches ago they nerfed back stab, making it that you can’t just spam back stab from stealth on a miss until you connect. There is now a one sec cool down on all stealth attacks on a miss. You might argue that this doesn’t change things all that much since (good) thieves learn to adjust their position to make their chances to land the stab count. But still, it was a substantial nerf to one of thief’s core skills.

That happened over a year ago. Although technically a nerf, it was an excellent balance move and should have been done a lot sooner. And yeah, it did absolutely nothing to curb thieves/DD from dominating the roaming scene.

LOL… to state the obvious, one man’s nerf is another man’s “excellent balance move”. :P

Trajan.4953:

“Roaming” is not needed or wanted in WvW, and “Roamers” won’t accept that.

Scouting is needed, Camp flipping and Yak guarding is needed.

Having a cheese gank build to crap on people running back to a fight and doing a video with bad dubstep is not needed.

Someone get this poor guy a glass of water, sodium levels are critical.

Scouting, camp flipping, and sometimes yak guarding is part of my “roaming”. It works out that I can both build for smaller scale combat and mobility simultaneously. I’m sure plenty other self identifying “roamers” are here to have fun, and are doing it a lot better than the mindless zergling who is too busy getting upset about the fact that they exist.

And to be honest, people running just straight up gank builds can be effective at decreasing reinforcements, and obviously hurting morale of the neckbeards who can’t hold their own 1v1. (And if your build only works specifically for zerging, that’s the very definition of cheese. It’s only enabled through hiding in numbers.)

Zerging is fun, roaming is fun, and having these elements interact with eachother makes WvW more dangerous and appealing for both sides. The game starts to feel just a bit less casual with these interactions.