Guild Wars 2

This is a 6:50 second fight, my elementalist against a random thief in WvW, the fight was really enjoyable but the culling needs to be fixed, also fraps started bugging(5:15-5:30) out then eventually cut out like…partial way through the fight. Yeah, there was more.

Basically fighting stealh abusing thiefs you’re fighting an invisible enemy 50% of the fight, who can attack while invisible, and disappear to disengage and full heal through passive regeneration. It makes finishing off this type of thief nearly impossible 1v1, I think a possible solution for Anet is a similar system to the one seen in TERA.

For example, If characters are taking a long time to render they should be replaced with very low res shadow figures of the character that take the characters place until the character model actually renders itself.

because while this issue effects all thiefs the most, it also affects everyone else, the entire zerg in WvW a completely un-rendered invisible armie can storm from nowhere to completely annihilate your whole group before they even render. or how about when you run through lions arch and see nobody unless you stand still in a spot for a long while? That’s all this lack of proper rendering and a lack of a lower res model replacing character until they fully render.

Hopefully Anet is listening to the community and can get this sorted out.

It is indeed a issue and have been for a long time. ANet seems unable to fix it thus far so it’s likely something we’ll have to live with for quite a while as it keeps doing damage to the WvW population that just quits in disgusts.

I also suspect it’s behind a lot of the complains about the thief class as general, but before the game is fixed, ANet cannot hope to even try to balance the class into line with the remainder.

Yes, it’s impossible to take WvW seriously if it’s impossible to tell how many enemies are in your line of sight.

Replacing unloaded models with blurry ones would be THE solution indeed.

For now I listen to my PC’s CPU very carefully, when it’s making more noise than usual it means it’s rendering a zerg of enemies :p

that’s one of the reasons i quit my ranger -.- (try hitting a thief who takes almost 5 seconds to load with your longbow xD )
i faceroll thieves with my necro though … balancing ftw ^^

b2t: the easiest solution would be the one used in aion: give us a button to hide enemy character models and only show their names.

This isn’t news. Yes there’s a culling issue, yes ANet is aware and has already said they are making good progress on it.
However you not being able to hit your tab key is a fault of your own. I have played vs plenty of D/D Ele’s now and more often than not get my kitten handed to me as a thief (not a glass cannon btw) I go into stealth and while I am the Ele will just spam tab untill he finds me.
This isn’t rocketscience.

Thief is easy mode in WvW

Same.4687:

This isn’t news. Yes there’s a culling issue, yes ANet is aware and has already said they are making good progress on it.
However you not being able to hit your tab key is a fault of your own. I have played vs plenty of D/D Ele’s now and more often than not get my kitten handed to me as a thief (not a glass cannon btw) I go into stealth and while I am the Ele will just spam tab untill he finds me.
This isn’t rocketscience.

Just wondering, can you link to where this is mentioned?

Clip.6845:

Yes, it’s impossible to take WvW seriously if it’s impossible to tell how many enemies are in your line of sight.

Replacing unloaded models with blurry ones would be THE solution indeed.

For now I listen to my PC’s CPU very carefully, when it’s making more noise than usual it means it’s rendering a zerg of enemies :p

Even worse if a dagger using mass cloak and hidding 20 people which now escalates the problem because not only do you have the rendering stealth dagger issues but the other 20 who run through that radius cast whom are also stealthed until they re-ingage an enemy. To be honest its destroying the pvp because a 2v2 can turn into a 2v10 with the mass stealth rendering issues and who wants to be zerged all day.

Unfortunately.5940:

Same.4687:

This isn’t news. Yes there’s a culling issue, yes ANet is aware and has already said they are making good progress on it.
However you not being able to hit your tab key is a fault of your own. I have played vs plenty of D/D Ele’s now and more often than not get my kitten handed to me as a thief (not a glass cannon btw) I go into stealth and while I am the Ele will just spam tab untill he finds me.
This isn’t rocketscience.

Just wondering, can you link to where this is mentioned?

Well – they’re aware of the issue as it’s been attempted addressed in patches.
However, whether they’re making “good progress” I would question – as that remains to be seen. If anything that it’s not fixed (more) indicates its a problem deep in the game engine.

The duel doesn’t really show any problems imho with the thief class. Invis zergs etc are a problem granted, the video doesn’t illustrate that. It shows you fighting a stealth spec’d thief with very low dps because of it.

What do you think the thief was saying about not being able to kill a cloth wearing caster for 6:50? Your dps was also so much better than his that you were killing multiple mobs at times that you agrod with your ae’s and he still only got you under 50% health one time or so.

The video is a great duel between a well played thief and a well played ele, however. I enjoyed watching it. Do you think the thief also was recording, and he will make a forum post about op’d elementalists? He could title it…

" I used (his 3 stealth skills every min at least for 6 mins) 18 stealth abilities, my elite skill 3 times (maybe 4), backstabbed this cloth caster (not a tank in hvy armor mind you) and his pet (which makes it alot easier to use stealth) about 30 times, made him agro entire groups of mobs (which he killed np while fighting me at the same time), he chased me down several times (I’m supposed to be the most mobile class eva!), I continued to fight him for over 6mins AND I STILL COULDN’T KILL HIM! Plz nerf ele’s or I am quitting the game."

I’ll be checking the ele forums to see if this post pops up. I can’t wait!

Thief’s are already over powered compared to most if not just better then the rest. My group of 4 was capping something, out of no where one of us gets killed very quickly, in this instance, he went invisible 14 times, had quickness all during this, he also one shot a 16k ranger and he did all this in 30 seconds. So I talked to a thief friend he didn’t act as if he surprised and said this is normal. Fix the class while you fix this <3 thx.

Yeah that is total BS. The thief class needs a total redesign imo. They have waaay to many escape cards. It’s funny, every thief I’ve talked to complains they have no utility, to which I reply you don’t NEED utility when you can do things like this.

Come on mods… useless thread, right? Posts not a meaningful contribution?

Kam.8109:

Yeah that is total BS. The thief class needs a total redesign imo. They have waaay to many escape cards. It’s funny, every thief I’ve talked to complains they have no utility, to which I reply you don’t NEED utility when you can do things like this.

Come on mods… useless thread, right? Posts not a meaningful contribution?

Well I don’t entirely think the thief class needs a whole new design, maybe backstab could do a little less damage but overall it’s really just the rendering issue that’s causing the problem because they have 4 seconds or so when they come out of stealth until they can go back into stealth again, however, because they don’t render sometimes they can stealth again but because of rendering they can stealth again before they even become visible to you or right after they become visible, as you may have noticed in the video.

My main concern with this rendering isn’t even thieves 1v1 since that doesn’t do too much damage in WvW besides some really good supply camp campers, it’s the invisible zergs that really piss me off. :P

Why is there two posts on the same topic.

Why didn’t the ele die for 6:50’s? Clearly the class is op. How was anyone able to possible outlast the “op” thief for 6:50?

All this is, is a good duel video for 7mins showing the strength of two classes. Looks pretty balanced to me.

I watched the vid again, still a great duel.

I think the point was without the rendering sillyness he would have rolled the thief, buff thieves and fix the rendering!

The point is a thief gets a bonus 3-5 seconds of stealth AFTER his cloaking abilities expire because of the way the engine renders player models. For the purposes of fighting other players, stealth abilities last significantly longer than the tooltip duration specifies because of an engine flaw.

Let’s not make this about class balance. Balance is not the point at ALL. Stealth is simply a boon with unintended benefits (a significantly lengthened duration) caused by the engine’s deficiencies.

Imagine if stun took an additional 3 seconds to wear off against other players. Imagine if Time Warp gave 15 seconds of quickness due to an engine flaw rather than 10. That is the problem with stealth in WvW.

Xandax.1753:

Well – they’re aware of the issue as it’s been attempted addressed in patches.
However, whether they’re making “good progress” I would question – as that remains to be seen. If anything that it’s not fixed (more) indicates its a problem deep in the game engine.

At 1 point the issue wasn’t there. They introduced culling to enable the game to run on lower end machines. As for it being addressed I’d actually argue its getting worse. Its worse now than it was when they first introduced it and this is after patches that were supposed to make it better.

morrolan.9608:

At 1 point the issue wasn’t there. They introduced culling to enable the game to run on lower end machines. As for it being addressed I’d actually argue its getting worse. Its worse now than it was when they first introduced it and this is after patches that were supposed to make it better.

I agree, it’s gotten worse.

They silently tweak culling pretty much every patch. Many will remember the patch that introduced a bug causing some users to be completely blind to opposing worlds’ models in WvW. It was addressed in a hotfix a few days later but was obviously a product of tweaks to rendering/culling. There have been a few tweaks since then, and for me, since I began playing in September, it’s only gotten worse and worse.

Even NPCs in sparsely populated cities like Rata Sum take longer to appear. Try waypointing to the center waypoint in Rata Sum and see how long it takes the bankers and traders to appear. This didn’t use to be a problem.

Yup, as an ele I have experienced this crap in wvw all too much. Thieves are everywhere in wvw because they know they can exploit the culling crap to get badges off of just about every class. Zergs are the worst because sometimes THEY NEVER BECOME VISIBLE.

How is this not fixed?

I don’t want to alarm anyone but:

For now, they don’t care. New content is always more important than challenging bug fixes since the developer can placate the majority of its player base with far less effort. Some of the game-breaking bugs and quirks in GW2 (culling, for example) have puzzled the developers to such an extent that they have admitted “defeat” in that no solution is currently available.

I think the real issue is…. Blinding. Thieves actually have to have a degree of skill to Cloak and Dagger, also, u can hit them.
What’s happening in this video, is the same issue I see all the time. He’s only stealthing a little bit, but he’s blinding you. The person who applies the blind, you can’t see. The blind is an aoe too, it takes no skill once so ever to apply, and their’s no cooldown on it, they can use it all day long.
I see lots of people confuse stealth with blind. Thieves can’t stealth forever, but they can blind forever.

Mance.5640:

Why is there two posts on the same topic.

Why didn’t the ele die for 6:50’s? Clearly the class is op. How was anyone able to possible outlast the “op” thief for 6:50?

All this is, is a good duel video for 7mins showing the strength of two classes. Looks pretty balanced to me.

I watched the vid again, still a great duel.

To answer your question the elemental was pretty kick kitten definately skilled cycling through their elements a lot etc. In comparison the thief just keept going poof every few seconds looked like a build i also use for luls.

Mance.5640:

Why is there two posts on the same topic.

Why didn’t the ele die for 6:50’s? Clearly the class is op. How was anyone able to possible outlast the “op” thief for 6:50?

All this is, is a good duel video for 7mins showing the strength of two classes. Looks pretty balanced to me.

I watched the vid again, still a great duel.

Because he, like many thieves, is only surviving by the grace of the classes many escape cards. The ele in the vid is very skilled, and the thief player is faaaaaaaaar outclassed in terms of skill. Yet, due to the OP thief mechanics he is able to survive this long against a clearly superior player.

Balidore.2790:

I think the real issue is…. Blinding. Thieves actually have to have a degree of skill to Cloak and Dagger, also, u can hit them.
What’s happening in this video, is the same issue I see all the time. He’s only stealthing a little bit, but he’s blinding you. The person who applies the blind, you can’t see. The blind is an aoe too, it takes no skill once so ever to apply, and their’s no cooldown on it, they can use it all day long.
I see lots of people confuse stealth with blind. Thieves can’t stealth forever, but they can blind forever.

I always thought blindness simply caused the targets next attack to miss. I’ve been blinded several times. I can still see my attacker but my next attack misses.

Nerf Thieves and Mesmers! Hard! Very hard. Gut them.

Balidore.2790:

I think the real issue is…. Blinding. Thieves actually have to have a degree of skill to Cloak and Dagger, also, u can hit them.
What’s happening in this video, is the same issue I see all the time. He’s only stealthing a little bit, but he’s blinding you. The person who applies the blind, you can’t see. The blind is an aoe too, it takes no skill once so ever to apply, and their’s no cooldown on it, they can use it all day long.
I see lots of people confuse stealth with blind. Thieves can’t stealth forever, but they can blind forever.

What are you talking about? Blind is a debuff that causes your next attack to miss. It has nothing to do with stealth or rendering.

And to the thief defending this: lol@U

The elementalist’s and thief’s gameplay might be fine, but this is not a good fight. It’s actually quite stupid. No good PvPer nor Anet wants fights to play out like this.

As a thief I’ll just say this…….tab target…….problem solved.

The thief may not appear on your screen but you can still target him.

So yeah…..there ya go.

I think you’re upset because you couldn’t kill the thief. He tried to run away several times and you chased him hundreds of yards to force a fight. You know what happens to me, as a thief, when an elementalist I want to kill runs away and I try to chase him? He probably gets away, and I don’t post video’s complaining about it.

The thief’s utilities appear to be Shadow Refuge (the AoE stealth ring), Blinding Powder (vanish) and the run speed signet and he doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of damage. He’s probably spec’d for stealth and survivability which I think is a reasonable trade off for the profession and not some cheap-OP-thing.

Finally, while there is a “culling issue” in this game, the video doesn’t show it. By design, the thief has max 4 seconds of stealth and min 3 seconds out of stealth (ignoring shadow refuge), which is what I’m seeing in your video.

Culling would be seeing the thief use a backstab and go back in stealth in noticeably less than 3 seconds.

Edit: Didn’t realize this thread was necro’d

Completely agree. Was fighting a thief yesterday on my ele, 22k health, 1600 armor. He only started becoming visible after he’d done 10k damage and by the time he was targetable I was dead.

I don’t mind the stealth/mobility thing but huge dps in combination with the rendering issue gives thief a faceroll advantage in wvw. It’s the only prof that can go for full glass cannon spec with complete impunity.

Unfortunately.5940:

Same.4687:

This isn’t news. Yes there’s a culling issue, yes ANet is aware and has already said they are making good progress on it.
However you not being able to hit your tab key is a fault of your own. I have played vs plenty of D/D Ele’s now and more often than not get my kitten handed to me as a thief (not a glass cannon btw) I go into stealth and while I am the Ele will just spam tab untill he finds me.
This isn’t rocketscience.

Just wondering, can you link to where this is mentioned?

It was in one of the first posts on this issue where ANet actually responded. There is no way to find that freaking thread because millions of these threads with people complaining pop up daily.

They said they knew that the culling issue was there and that they were making good progress on solving it. However this was about a week or 2 ago..

the part i love is how when I finally get close to killing a thief 1v1 in WvW, they just stealth and there is next to nothing I can do except hope I hit the right spot and somehow knock em down. I had to play better than them just to get them to that point and with the flick of a button , poof. ezmode noobs imo