Guild Wars 2

Over the past weeks I’ve been pretty vocal about why I hate the revive mechanics in this game so much and finally I’ve found a great visual example.

The revive system essentially puts a cap on what even the most skilled player is able to achieve. Take this example of a P/D Thief trolling a small group of 6 players.

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

GW2 is the only MMO where you can go up against 6 players, kill 5 and still end up fighting against 6. No mechanic in this game allows a player, no matter how skilled, to overcome the ease of rezzing a dead player. Even after killing 5 players out of a group of 6, all he managed was to occupy 6 players for 7 minutes?

Is that what we have to accept as a success? Is that supposed to feel like a win?

Because it doesn’t to me and the fact that 3 players can resurrect even a defeated player in a matter of seconds has ruined any joy that I could have found in WvW.

Except that you didn’t actually kill 5

1 vs 6 where you hold them off for 7 minutes seems like a total win to me, expectations of being able to completely defeat all of them seem pretty far fetched.

I would add that he also uses shortbow, which means you should hate him a bit less.

About the revives:
Let’s be realistic. He’s by himself, being attacked by arrow carts next to a tower and completely outnumbered. He probably didn’t care so much about ensuring that everyone is dead and capturing the tower. He probably cared about having fun.

I think he had fun. So yes, I’d accept it as a success. I’d say he won.

Meh, it adds a decent element to the game. Last night I and a guildie went against 5 FA players. We had 3 downs where we thought we might get the kill, we got one of the 3 possible kills, 2 were revived. Numbers do make it harder.

I don’t blame the mechanic, I blame myself for telling my third guildie to stay away we can force them to move.

The revive is a great thing for this game and should stay, I know it will make ME plan better in the future.

PS

That thief should stop using a mini while fighting. He was giving away his location.

Lucky for him the people he was fighting weren’t very good.

Dee Jay.2460:

Over the past weeks I’ve been pretty vocal about why I hate the revive mechanics in this game so much and finally I’ve found a great visual example.

The revive system essentially puts a cap on what even the most skilled player is able to achieve. Take this example of a P/D Thief trolling a small group of 6 players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYVUpNj2k_c

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

GW2 is the only MMO where you can go up against 6 players, kill 5 and still end up fighting against 6. No mechanic in this game allows a player, no matter how skilled, to overcome the ease of rezzing a dead player. Even after killing 5 players out of a group of 6, all he managed was to occupy 6 players for 7 minutes?

Is that what we have to accept as a success? Is that supposed to feel like a win?

Because it doesn’t to me and the fact that 3 players can resurrect even a defeated player in a matter of seconds has ruined any joy that I could have found in WvW.

Wow great player! I could never hope to do that!

I think what this boils down to is that reviving is a game mechanic. It is unlikely it will chance and even less likely that it will go away. I’m sure that all players want to be able to 1v6, but in the end, what’s the point of it? If you really care that much about it, maybe you should take reviving into account when you make a build. Bring knockbacks, strong AoE, etc. After you do that, I guess you need to go into WvW just to find groups of 6 or more players to kill.

What bothers me the most is the super fast downed state ressing and the duration of the finish. I’ve had SO many 1vs3’s that ppl just stood up after 1 or 2 seconds because their team mates instant ressed him up to 50% hp after making mistake after mistake. I really wish they would either:
1. reduce downed state hp
2. speed up the finish (and maybe make it impossible to speed it up with quickness)
3. reduce the ress speed of downed state

Also what I would like to see is that it should be impossible to ress up defeated players while being in combat mode.

The name of the game is Guild Wars. I don’t mean to come off as a jerk, but cooperation is the entire point of this game. While they might not have been near your level 1v1, they showed great coordination as a team to pull off that many “from defeated” revives. If the game was about facerolling pubs 1v6, they wouldn’t have put so much emphasis on the team aspect of the game. Guildwars has always been a franchise that values the community that plays together and works towards a common goal, and everything from Story mode quests, to PVE, to sPvP, and WvW reflect this. It may be cheesy, but if you were expecting this game to be about dominating entire armies by yourself, maybe you shouldn’t have skipped those cut scenes where the Divinity Reach settles their differences and learns about teamwork.

There is a certain sense of realism in the way they balance this game. You aren’t supposed to beat 6 people up by yourself. Its not a realistic goal. If your goal is to distract that many people for as long as you did while your buddies flip a camp or grab some points, then you most definitely succeeded, otherwise, grab some guildies and run a 5-man.

Great example TC, the downed state and in combat res have no place in WvW. It’s just a means by which to enable the weak and unskilled to hide together in a group. It’s why zergs are so prevalent.

But that’s the kind of game Anet seems to want. A zergy, low skill level environment. I feel sorry for the zerglets whenever roamers decide to band together…

Rashagal.5867:

The name of the game is Guild Wars. I don’t mean to come off as a jerk, but cooperation is the entire point of this game. While they might not have been near your level 1v1, they showed great coordination as a team to pull off that many “from defeated” revives. If the game was about facerolling pubs 1v6, they wouldn’t have put so much emphasis on the team aspect of the game. Guildwars has always been a franchise that values the community that plays together and works towards a common goal, and everything from Story mode quests, to PVE, to sPvP, and WvW reflect this. It may be cheesy, but if you were expecting this game to be about dominating entire armies by yourself, maybe you shouldn’t have skipped those cut scenes where the Divinity Reach settles their differences and learns about teamwork.

There is a certain sense of realism in the way they balance this game. You aren’t supposed to beat 6 people up by yourself. Its not a realistic goal. If your goal is to distract that many people for as long as you did while your buddies flip a camp or grab some points, then you most definitely succeeded, otherwise, grab some guildies and run a 5-man.

Ok, so scale that 1v6 up to a 5v30 and re-evaluate the situation. Should 5 skilled players working as a team ever be able to take down 30 randoms?

I think a fair approach to rewarding skilled play instead of sheer numbers would be to increase damage to downed opponents (enough to negate 2 opponents worth of rezzing) and to make defeated players un-rezzable until out of combat. If it seems like a bit much, keep in mind that both sides are affected by that.

I have joined Dee Jay in some other threads regarding this topic. I will condense my take on the subject.

~No rez of a spiked ally while in combat. (WvW)

This is my opinion and the best option since the mechanic is not going to be removed from the game.

For me it would defy the point of being in a group entirely. (At least Pugs anyway.)
I only stay with people near my area to counter thieves since they are kings of 1 vs 1 and I would I fall to a disadvantage otherwise.
At the moment, even bad players can contribute by at least ressing me and giving me a second chance.
Thieves get much to easy kills for ressing to be removed from this game.

Stop crying if you are skilled enough to win 1vs6 then become a bit more skilled and learn how to kill downed players. Downed doesnt mean dead, hes still alive, you didnt kill it! Stop whinning for gods sake.

Honestly, I feel a P/D dagger thief has more hard counters than any other thief build, even P/P. The main reason is the damage output and lack of crowd control, and you have to waste a utility to put on more than one condition being a condition build at that. Being an elementalist, I am pretty much immune to P/D thieves unless I’m afk. I just heal too much for them and can remove the conditions easily as soon as they’re put on. Sneak attack, if every shot lands, does about 1k not counting the bleed yeah? That and the fact that you can dodge a cloak and dagger, do that and they do hardly any damage.

Its a good build for dueling, but its going to be really hard to actually keep people dead without any aoe or CC. Though for that, maybe you could switch to D/D and death blossom + basilisk venom the people reviving? Caltrops on them maybe? Who knows, maybe scorpion wire?

Now that I think about it, scorpion wire into cloak and dagger sounds hilarious. Also P/D isn’t that hard to play even against 5 people.

@hharry -Between TC and you, you look like the whiner.

I know that the removal of downed state would wreck a lot of newbies strategies for WvW. “Huddle together and mass res” shouldn’t be a viable strategy ever. It will ruin their current approach, but it will also cause them to get better out of necessity.

The problem is, the game doesn’t reward high skill level play. It deters it. It says, “just stick with the group and spam skills. Here, have a badge. You’re so pro.”

Solo kills should be encouraged. Small group play should be incentivised. Every change possible should be made to bring zergs to their knees.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Rashagal.5867:

The name of the game is Guild Wars. I don’t mean to come off as a jerk, but cooperation is the entire point of this game. While they might not have been near your level 1v1, they showed great coordination as a team to pull off that many “from defeated” revives. If the game was about facerolling pubs 1v6, they wouldn’t have put so much emphasis on the team aspect of the game. Guildwars has always been a franchise that values the community that plays together and works towards a common goal, and everything from Story mode quests, to PVE, to sPvP, and WvW reflect this. It may be cheesy, but if you were expecting this game to be about dominating entire armies by yourself, maybe you shouldn’t have skipped those cut scenes where the Divinity Reach settles their differences and learns about teamwork.

There is a certain sense of realism in the way they balance this game. You aren’t supposed to beat 6 people up by yourself. Its not a realistic goal. If your goal is to distract that many people for as long as you did while your buddies flip a camp or grab some points, then you most definitely succeeded, otherwise, grab some guildies and run a 5-man.

Ok, so scale that 1v6 up to a 5v30 and re-evaluate the situation. Should 5 skilled players working as a team ever be able to take down 30 randoms?

I think a fair approach to rewarding skilled play instead of sheer numbers would be to increase damage to downed opponents (enough to negate 2 opponents worth of rezzing) and to make defeated players un-rezzable until out of combat. If it seems like a bit much, keep in mind that both sides are affected by that.

“Take down” as in a 5-man downing 30 people and spiking every one of them? Absolutely not. They shouldn’t be able to take on those odds unless those 30 people are AFK or trolling.

Breaking them up and scattering them while laying down a spike on 5-10 of them? Yes, and for the most part skilled 5-mans already can. There are loads of zerg busting videos around and very few of them are more effective than killing a 1/3rd of the zerg because thats not what they are trying to accomplish usually. They are trying to stop the zerg in their tracks and scattering them with a well planned ambush and lots of coordination. They aren’t going to kill them all. They are going to make those 30 people be useless for the next 10-30 minutes by forcing them to retreat and regroup then possibly hunting down the 5-man while the rest of the guys on the 5-mans server leads a zerg against a critical point.

I will say that Rally should get a bit of a nerf or possibly even be done away with. 1 or 2 people instantly getting up when someone is spiked is manageable in a zergy fight, but I can see how it could mess things up in a smaller fight. If there is some way to restrict the number of people that can get up from a rally it would be beneficial, seeing as how someone stated before in another thread that 25 people could rally from the death of 1 enemy being spiked.

SteepledHat.1345:

@hharry -Between TC and you, you look like the whiner.

I know that the removal of downed state would wreck a lot of newbies strategies for WvW. “Huddle together and mass res” shouldn’t be a viable strategy ever. It will ruin their current approach, but it will also cause them to get better out of necessity.

The problem is, the game doesn’t reward high skill level play. It deters it. It says, “just stick with the group and spam skills. Here, have a badge. You’re so pro.”

Solo kills should be encouraged. Small group play should be incentivised. Every change possible should be made to bring zergs to their knees.

This is World vs World. The entire concept is to rally armies of soldiers against each other. Its not an arena fight where skill is king. The battles are supposed to be epic where you face insurmountable odds and declare the moral victory by stalling them long enough to collect points to help your team. Sure you want good quality fights and fairly even numbers, but if you’re stating that there should be regulation against those types of epic battles then I strongly suggest looking in to sPvP. I’m from a server where we have one of the strongest sPvP communities in the game, but there is a reason that WvW is not sPvP. sPvP is individual skill. WvW is macro level cooperation with hundreds of other teammates and large group tactics. The concept of war on this scale is that while there is a place for elite small groups to make a difference, the matchup is won by the unskilled collective willing to die for a point and help their teammates in need. Armies (“Zergs”) win wars.

I dunno, like the mechanic overall. I don’t like how some of the downed states allow certain classes to be more aggressive with their play style than others, but it’s not the end of the world either.

I like the mechanic because of precisely what the video showed. 6 bad-to-mediocre players, mostly up-leveled, stand a chance against one guy in a troll spec trolling with his legendary. I’m sure a number of you won’t see it that way, and that’s fine, but I think the game is better for it. If Mr. Troll brought a friend or two with him, I’m sure the outcome would have been different, and rightfully so.

As an afterthought, I suppose if they completely overhauled how long it takes to kill people (meaning greatly increase it) and significantly improved the stats and survivability of sub-80’s, then sure, rez can go.

Dee Jay.2460:

GW2 is the only MMO where you can go up against 6 players, kill 5 and still end up fighting against 6. No mechanic in this game allows a player, no matter how skilled, to overcome the ease of rezzing a dead player.

GW2 might be the only MMO where you can kill 6 players, period. I won’t claim to be an expert on it, but I feel that more often than not, players in other games that try to fight 1 on 6 don’t fare so well.

Altie.4571:

PS

That thief should stop using a mini while fighting. He was giving away his location.

Lucky for him the people he was fighting weren’t very good.

I’m guessing since his build seems to go for max damage while remaining in stealth (CD reduction, trops, trops dodge along with lots of endo regen) the entire point of the mini may be so that his enemies stay on top of him and run over all his trops.

I’m fine with resurrecting people, but I think they should change it a little:

Limit of 4 people ressing from downed
Limit of 2 people ressing from dead
Slow res speed from downed by 15%
Keep res from dead speed the same, as the player count is capped much lower

You’ll still encounter some issues but to a much lesser extent, and particularly the 2 ressing from dead one can be handy for zerg busting.

meanwhile…perma stealth is fine but a d/d elementalist is imba

those guys probably dont even load the thief fast…when he was killing the second or third guy he has no stealth anymore and the other people is like trying to guess where he is and are spamming skills, and the guy downed isnt even attacking like if he cant see him.

Dee Jay.2460:

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

Try to ignore the fact a P/D thief, WvW and the word ‘skilled’ do not belong in the same sentence.

hharry.1967:

Not to mention that video only shows how stealth is broken in this game and thieves takes no skill to play.

The engineer is the only opponent that even had the slightest idea what was going on in that fight and even he only did the right thing a few times.

Bottom line, the thief would have died very quickly to any group who knew the counters and this video would have never been posted.

Dee Jay.2460:

Over the past weeks I’ve been pretty vocal about why I hate the revive mechanics in this game so much and finally I’ve found a great visual example.

The revive system essentially puts a cap on what even the most skilled player is able to achieve. Take this example of a P/D Thief trolling a small group of 6 players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYVUpNj2k_c

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

GW2 is the only MMO where you can go up against 6 players, kill 5 and still end up fighting against 6. No mechanic in this game allows a player, no matter how skilled, to overcome the ease of rezzing a dead player. Even after killing 5 players out of a group of 6, all he managed was to occupy 6 players for 7 minutes?

Is that what we have to accept as a success? Is that supposed to feel like a win?

Because it doesn’t to me and the fact that 3 players can resurrect even a defeated player in a matter of seconds has ruined any joy that I could have found in WvW.

The only error here is your thinking. You’re trying to implant your sense of what’s right and how things should be into a system where that has already been determined for you. Your arbitrary feelings about what should or should not be considered a win are irrelevant. Obviously anyone can make up their own rules regarding what’s a “win” any time they like, but that doesn’t dictate what objectively is so.

I’ll make it easy for you. 3 players can res a defeated player in a matter of seconds. That’s a game mechanic, and one you you have to deal with. Perhaps you didn’t notice, but the mechanics also have a feature that hard counters this. Opponents who repeat-down rally with fewer and fewer hp’s, making the following resses take longer, and eventually outright killing the opponent with no option of a res.

You Sir, are a scrub. You need to start playing to win, which is a mental game as much as a mechanical one. Whatever game you’re playing, or wanting to play, it’s not Guild Wars 2. When you’re ready to join us again, feel free.

lol, the interesting thing about that video is Bows Poison Field doesn’t break stealth …didn’t know that

If anything this shows you just how abusive stealth can be

That thief was actually pretty skilled. Great use of shortbow. You guys can hate thieves all you want but it was pretty obvious they had a big enough window to kill him when he was using the shortbow.

Doomdesire.9365:

That thief was actually pretty skilled. Great use of shortbow. You guys can hate thieves all you want but it was pretty obvious they had a big enough window to kill him when he was using the shortbow.

Yeah they had plenty of chances to kill him. It’s almost comical that they didn’t. Here’s my tip of the day…

If you don’t know how to kill a thief, go play a thief for a few days and you’ll figure it out.

SteepledHat.1345:

It’s just a means by which to enable the weak and unskilled to hide together in a group. It’s why zergs are so prevalent.

This.

Decked.8274:

SteepledHat.1345:

It’s just a means by which to enable the weak and unskilled to hide together in a group. It’s why zergs are so prevalent.

This.

Alternativly: Zergs- a way for the powerful and skilled to come together in a group so they can laugh and/or ignore soloists, or pretty much over come anyone who likes to QQ over zergs.

..regardless of if you like zergs or not.

hharry.1967:

Stop crying if you are skilled enough to win 1vs6 then become a bit more skilled and learn how to kill downed players. Downed doesnt mean dead, hes still alive, you didnt kill it! Stop whinning for gods sake.

If you had actually watched the video you’d see that the player actually defeated 5 players. That’s right…dead. Not downed, dead.

But that doesn’t stop people from resurrecting.

SteepledHat.1345:

@hharry -Between TC and you, you look like the whiner.

I know that the removal of downed state would wreck a lot of newbies strategies for WvW. “Huddle together and mass res” shouldn’t be a viable strategy ever. It will ruin their current approach, but it will also cause them to get better out of necessity.

The problem is, the game doesn’t reward high skill level play. It deters it. It says, “just stick with the group and spam skills. Here, have a badge. You’re so pro.”

Solo kills should be encouraged. Small group play should be incentivised. Every change possible should be made to bring zergs to their knees.

Downed state might help newbies but used on skilled players it is also godlike, reason some small teams can take huge teams.

Although the video is impressive, I’d like to point out a couple of things.

I timed his stealth from the 0-2:00 minute mark and he had stealth up for a minute 1:20 (67% of the time). Add in latency, to some of them it probably appeared like 1:30(75% of the time). He also was able to use shortbow attacks while staying stealthed. On top of that, during the 30 seconds he was visible he was able use dodges to cancel out many of their attacks. Combined with people’s feelings towards stealth finishing (I think it’s fine, others don’t), I actually think that video is a good example of why reviving is fine. If reviving in a fight isn’t fair, then neither is being stealthed 65-75% of a fight; while attacking.

CrassBippy.4619:

If anything this shows you just how abusive stealth can be

^^ This. While some of the points about revives are true, let’s fix thieves stealth abuse first, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don’t call all the thieves skilled just because they are invisible. An aside invisibility, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

Reviving should take longer.

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

Katsumoto.9452:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

No reason for those to be nerfed. If your team knows you are getting stomped and don’t react accordingly then that is their problem. Being stomped when you don’t even know you are being stomped, is a problem however.

Furthermore, all the skills you mention are on fairly long cooldowns, whereas stealth is easily accessible.

+1 to the downy system being for downies….

Gab Superstar.4059:

Katsumoto.9452:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

No reason for those to be nerfed. If your team knows you are getting stomped and don’t react accordingly then that is their problem. Being stomped when you don’t even know you are being stomped, is a problem however.

Furthermore, all the skills you mention are on fairly long cooldowns, whereas stealth is easily accessible.

They are all more powerful than stealth stomp. A majority of “stealth stomps” is a thief coming up to you while you are down, hitting you with C&D then channeling stomp. Maybe they don’t have the init and use a SR near you or hit blinding powder or their stealth heal. In any case, if it thief goes stealth near a downed person don’t you sort of assume they are stomping? Everyone but war, egnie and ranger can interrupt them with their #2 and anyone can come to the rescue with a KB or just DPS.

Only two profs can avoid stability and immune stomps, Thief and Ele and no one can help you with KB or DPS (for immune). Those stomps are way more powerful at the cost of being less accessible. It’s pretty balanced. You just need to pay more attention to what’s going on around you.

Dee Jay.2460:

If you had actually watched the video you’d see that the player actually defeated 5 players. That’s right…dead. Not downed, dead.

But that doesn’t stop people from resurrecting.

Maybe he only survived because his opponents kept stopping to res.

Stiv.1820:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Katsumoto.9452:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

No reason for those to be nerfed. If your team knows you are getting stomped and don’t react accordingly then that is their problem. Being stomped when you don’t even know you are being stomped, is a problem however.

Furthermore, all the skills you mention are on fairly long cooldowns, whereas stealth is easily accessible.

They are all more powerful than stealth stomp. A majority of “stealth stomps” is a thief coming up to you while you are down, hitting you with C&D then channeling stomp. Maybe they don’t have the init and use a SR near you or hit blinding powder or their stealth heal. In any case, if it thief goes stealth near a downed person don’t you sort of assume they are stomping? Everyone but war, egnie and ranger can interrupt them with their #2 and anyone can come to the rescue with a KB or just DPS.

Only two profs can avoid stability and immune stomps, Thief and Ele and no one can help you with KB or DPS (for immune). Those stomps are way more powerful at the cost of being less accessible. It’s pretty balanced. You just need to pay more attention to what’s going on around you.

No. 1v1 you might expect it. In a 10v10+ you won’t.

Furthermore, Stealth Stomping does not waste an entire cool down simply for a stomp. An ele who uses Mist Form to stomp for example, knows that he is using Mist Form solely to get that stomp off. Take for example a Thief stealth housing to res a downed ally instead. 2 people join in the effort. You now have a free revive and 4 players stealthed for 10 seconds that may run around the battlefield and stomp a variety of people. A player downed on the edge of the battlefield may have no clue that Stealth House even went down, and neither will the players around him. They are completely unaware that their ally is about to get stomped, and react to the situation accordingly.

Mister Mustard.7203:

GW2 might be the only MMO where you can kill 6 players, period. I won’t claim to be an expert on it, but I feel that more often than not, players in other games that try to fight 1 on 6 don’t fare so well.

No.

GW2 is the only MMO where a player of surpassing skill can kill 6 scrubs and they will overwhelm the player with chain easy-rezzing.

In other games, 1v6 is just as possible. But players stay dead when they die (or rezzing can be countered more readily).

While the downed state is a valid game mechanic, it is currently over-tuned to benefit raw numbers.

I miss the days where 8 v 120 was a legit concept. Overpowered? No, because that 8 could die to another 8 of equal skill. That 8 would still lose to 120 if the 120 weren’t terrible. But if they were, they would die.

In a game like GW2, 8v120 is impossible due to game mechanics. Pure AFK would be required to pull that off.

Best I’ve seen in recent MMOs is 1v4 odds (e.g. 6 v 24, 24 v 100). In GW2, I’ve seen about 1:4 as well — the downed state mechanic is just so kittening annoying, though.

Among game mechanics it may be “fair” in a sense, but it is pure “un-fun”, to borrow game design terminology from Riot games.

EasymodeX.4062:

Mister Mustard.7203:

GW2 might be the only MMO where you can kill 6 players, period. I won’t claim to be an expert on it, but I feel that more often than not, players in other games that try to fight 1 on 6 don’t fare so well.

Among game mechanics it may be “fair” in a sense, but it is pure “un-fun”, to borrow game design terminology from Riot games.

Un-fun for the 6 players or the 1 thief? You may not agree with design decisions, but in the end Arena Net will always cater to the majority. Same reason you won’t see any nerfs to zergs.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Stiv.1820:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Katsumoto.9452:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

No reason for those to be nerfed. If your team knows you are getting stomped and don’t react accordingly then that is their problem. Being stomped when you don’t even know you are being stomped, is a problem however.

Furthermore, all the skills you mention are on fairly long cooldowns, whereas stealth is easily accessible.

They are all more powerful than stealth stomp. A majority of “stealth stomps” is a thief coming up to you while you are down, hitting you with C&D then channeling stomp. Maybe they don’t have the init and use a SR near you or hit blinding powder or their stealth heal. In any case, if it thief goes stealth near a downed person don’t you sort of assume they are stomping? Everyone but war, egnie and ranger can interrupt them with their #2 and anyone can come to the rescue with a KB or just DPS.

Only two profs can avoid stability and immune stomps, Thief and Ele and no one can help you with KB or DPS (for immune). Those stomps are way more powerful at the cost of being less accessible. It’s pretty balanced. You just need to pay more attention to what’s going on around you.

No. 1v1 you might expect it. In a 10v10+ you won’t.

Furthermore, Stealth Stomping does not waste an entire cool down simply for a stomp. An ele who uses Mist Form to stomp for example, knows that he is using Mist Form solely to get that stomp off. Take for example a Thief stealth housing to res a downed ally instead. 2 people join in the effort. You now have a free revive and 4 players stealthed for 10 seconds that may run around the battlefield and stomp a variety of people. A player downed on the edge of the battlefield may have no clue that Stealth House even went down, and neither will the players around him. They are completely unaware that their ally is about to get stomped, and react to the situation accordingly.

The longer I’m down with any Thieves around the more leery I get. You just have to pay attention. I don’t really have sympathy for someone in a 10v10 that doesn’t notice or hear a house go down and then sits there not using #2. People going to save downed people with thieves around usually blow their knockback before trying to rez, as they should. I’ve been knocked back after 8-9 seconds of stealth trying to stomp someone because a guardian came to rez and just did a KB as a precaution. Warriors will frenzy/100blades over a downed player and quickly down a Thief who is trying to stealth stomp. It’s not hard. Stomping is by far the most dangerous activity a thief can do even with stealth.

Reviving IS a valid tactic against people who gank and/or frontload damage. Basically, you want a counter to your ability nerfed. Invoking the meaningless word “skill” is meaningless. They could say reviving people before you stomp them or preventing stomps is a “skill”?

Also your premise that no other game does this is just wrong. DAOC and Warhammer, two big open-world RvR examples…both had long distance resurrections with cast times of a couple seconds. This game requires melee range and everybody can resurrect…but on balance it’s about a wash.

I’d say in the arena of PvP-based MMOs ….the games where ressurrecting is easy to moderately difficult outnumber those where it’s difficult or nearly impossible….

Zosk.5609:

Reviving IS a valid tactic against people who gank and/or frontload damage. Basically, you want a counter to your ability nerfed. Invoking the meaningless word “skill” is meaningless. They could say reviving people before you stomp them or preventing stomps is a “skill”?

Also your premise that no other game does this is just wrong. DAOC and Warhammer, two big open-world RvR exampkitten th had long distance resurrections with cast times of a couple seconds. This game requires melee range and everybody can resurrect…but on balance it’s about a wash.

I’d say in the arena of PvP-based MMOs ….the games where ressurrecting is easy to moderately difficult outnumber those where it’s difficult or nearly impossible….

In DAOC there was also a resurrection sickness debuff and casted resurrection could be interrupted by a fart in their general direction.

Stiv.1820:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Stiv.1820:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Katsumoto.9452:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Reviving is fine. Not being able to revive from dead when you are in combat would fix nothing.

Stealth stomps on the other hand, should be removed.

Remove stability stomps, mist form stomps, invulnerability stomps and elixir S stomps and maybe we can talk.

No reason for those to be nerfed. If your team knows you are getting stomped and don’t react accordingly then that is their problem. Being stomped when you don’t even know you are being stomped, is a problem however.

Furthermore, all the skills you mention are on fairly long cooldowns, whereas stealth is easily accessible.

They are all more powerful than stealth stomp. A majority of “stealth stomps” is a thief coming up to you while you are down, hitting you with C&D then channeling stomp. Maybe they don’t have the init and use a SR near you or hit blinding powder or their stealth heal. In any case, if it thief goes stealth near a downed person don’t you sort of assume they are stomping? Everyone but war, egnie and ranger can interrupt them with their #2 and anyone can come to the rescue with a KB or just DPS.

Only two profs can avoid stability and immune stomps, Thief and Ele and no one can help you with KB or DPS (for immune). Those stomps are way more powerful at the cost of being less accessible. It’s pretty balanced. You just need to pay more attention to what’s going on around you.

No. 1v1 you might expect it. In a 10v10+ you won’t.

Furthermore, Stealth Stomping does not waste an entire cool down simply for a stomp. An ele who uses Mist Form to stomp for example, knows that he is using Mist Form solely to get that stomp off. Take for example a Thief stealth housing to res a downed ally instead. 2 people join in the effort. You now have a free revive and 4 players stealthed for 10 seconds that may run around the battlefield and stomp a variety of people. A player downed on the edge of the battlefield may have no clue that Stealth House even went down, and neither will the players around him. They are completely unaware that their ally is about to get stomped, and react to the situation accordingly.

The longer I’m down with any Thieves around the more leery I get. You just have to pay attention. I don’t really have sympathy for someone in a 10v10 that doesn’t notice or hear a house go down and then sits there not using #2. People going to save downed people with thieves around usually blow their knockback before trying to rez, as they should. I’ve been knocked back after 8-9 seconds of stealth trying to stomp someone because a guardian came to rez and just did a KB as a precaution. Warriors will frenzy/100blades over a downed player and quickly down a Thief who is trying to stealth stomp. It’s not hard. Stomping is by far the most dangerous activity a thief can do even with stealth.

The thing about thieves are that they are gimmicky beyond belief. Any reasonable thief will always do one of 3 things when they stealth in this order of priority:

1. If an enemy is downed, all thieves in the area will stealth as soon as they can and try to spike him. Use knockback, or if you have burst, burst next to corpse. Unless they are tanky or have quickness, or you have no dps or cc (bad luck, add more knock back to your build?) they won’t get the stomp off.

2. If they are below half hp or losing the fight, they will stealth and move in the direction that has the least number of people in the area. Follow that path and drop CC, AOE, or autoattack and continue this for 4 seconds. If after that time he isn’t laying of the ground downed, he will reappear and be at most 3/4 hp. He will most likely have his shortbow out, stun him before he can shadowstep away. If he uses Shadowrefuge at any point during this, if you have a pull or a knockback, use it to get him out of the circle. Direct damage and AOE to the circle until it dissappears, then follow escape path for 10 seconds.

3. If they have yet to engage, they will go for whomever they think is the glassiest first. anticipate this and protect them. If its you, run to a tank.

The thief in the video does these exact things in the same priority, minus a couple times when he delays the stomp.

90% of tanks are glass cannons and only have enough hp for one attempt at the stomp. Close that window for them and they will run.