Guild Wars 2

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero? I’m speaking, of course, of the thief’s ability to stealth, spam blind, and teleport, and the elementalist’s complete lack of any useful evasive abilities.

In my opinion, this represents a serious error in the way these class mechanics were designed. According to arenanet’s own description, thieves are “experts at stealth and surprise,” they “move through the shadows,” and can be “very hard to hit” due to their “acrobatic fighting style.” The elementalists, in contrast, are meant to be “multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces” to “do their bidding.”

Conceptually, it makes sense that thieves have a great facility with stealth, blind, and other evasive tactics. What doesn’t make sense is for them to have TELEPORTATION on top of everything else. What do I mean by teleportation? Well, it looks something like the following: Infiltrator’s Arrow; Infiltrator’s Strike; Shadow Shot; Shadow Strike; Smoke Trail; Shadowstep; Shadow Return; Infiltrator’s Signet; Shadow Trap; and Shadow Escape

Call it whatever you want, but this is teleportation (likewise, with the mesmer portal). Traditionally, teleportation was a unique spell-casting ability possessed only by mages, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards. While their magic could be quite powerful, their lack of fighting experience also made them frail and vulnerable. In those respects, the wizard is practically identical to the elementalist. However, unlike the elementalist, the wizard could keep themselves alive by opening gateways and traveling great distances. Besides Lightning Flash, the elementalist/wizard of gw2 is devoid of all magical teleportation, and yet (s)he retains very little by way of survivability.

Why weren’t these skills, so abundant to the thief (and to a lesser extent, the mesmer), given to the elementalist? It’s nonsensical. What do masters of stealth and acrobatics, or experts of deception and illusion, have to do with magical portals? Conceptually, it’s easy to imagine how an ele performs these feats; e.g., they transform into bolts of lightning, meld with the earth, open dimensional floors with their arcane knowledge, and so on. The difference should be clear. The elementalist/wizard utilizes real magic to evade others and move around; the thief and mesmer rely on trickery and confusion.

Now, you could argue that the developers had something completely unique in mind for the elementalist; that it’s less of a traditional spell-caster, and more like a mage with combat training. If that’s the case, why is the elementalist a light armor class with the lowest health and vitality in the game? Moreover, why was the elementalist singled out for these special creative liberties, while all the other fantasy archetypes were left untouched?: i.e., the warrior, guardian, thief (minus teleportation), necromancer, and ranger are more or less consistent with lore, literature, and the history of MMORPG’s. (I’m leaving out the engineer and mesmer as those have been fairly unique to gw2).

My thought is that a creative risk was taken in redesigning the wizard as a battle mage. In doing so, the developers stripped the spell-caster of his beloved teleportation and gave it the thief and mesmer. As compensation, they made the elementalist into a versatile melee spell-casting hybrid; recall the overpowered d/d elementalist. As it turned out, however, this design concept was too strong, and the elementalist has since been forced back into its more familiar role as a glassy ranged magic user. The difference now is that it has none of the effectiveness of a melee class, and none of the survivability of a traditional wizard. This, to me, explains the current state of the elementalist. I hate to say it, but the profession is something of a mongrel; it has no unique function or role that couldn’t be fulfilled better by another class. The design is simply flawed.

For these reasons, I suggest one of two things. If elementalists are to be old school spell-casters, then they need to be given a viable mechanic for survivability (they deserve teleportation). If elementalist are to be melee spell-caster hybrids, as the devs presumably intended, then they need to be given the toughness, vitality, traits, and skills of a medium armor profession. In my opinion, the elementalist will never be fixed with minor skill updates or balance changes. You cannot tweak a design flaw. By the old gods and the new, let arenanet decide the fate of the elementalist and be done with.

There’s no mage in GW2, maybe if u glue mesmer + elementalists in an unique profession.

I think that Anet thought of healing as mean to compensate elementalist lack of tough and vitality, but now we can question its overall viability to this function (assuming that you NEED to trait in water to get this).

I would argue that teleportation is more a mesmer’s ability.

More like the kittens wanted our defense to be healing, all the while they say they don’t want healing to be powerful.

There are so many interesting ideas that you could add as escapes or defenses and I feel the current traits and utilities only scratch the surface.

Few ideas
New utility that changes depending on your current attunement.
Body of (insert element)
Fire-Become a scorching mass of flames for 5 seconds. Gain stability and apply 3 stacks of might every second to you and nearby allies. You become a moving fire field and attacks that hit you cause burning on the opponent.

Water-You liquefy yourself becoming a transparent body of water. Gain stealth for 5 seconds and apply regeneration to all who enter your radius. You are a moving water field.

Air-Your body becomes much harder to hit and periodically knock foes over. Enemies that attack you have a 50% chance to miss you for 5 seconds and you have a 20% chance to knock over nearby enemies. Hit limit 5.

Earth- You meld with the very soil beneath you becoming an invulnerable area of churning earth for 3 seconds. Foes passing over you are immobilized 1 sec then crippled. Enemies that stay on top of you for the full 3 seconds become shaken as you emerge from the ground and are knocked over. You are immobile while underground.

I feel this would be most likely a cantrip, possibly even an elite if you toned the durations up and possibly altered earth and water.

I’ve been arguing this since the game went live. You hear it all the time, “the class with the least inherent survivability is also ridiculously not mobile.”

ANet has responded in the past that they want the Thief to be the most mobile, usually in response to outcry over Ele nerfs. That doesn’t really explain why Warriors, Rangers and Guardians are also more mobile than Eles, and have been even prior to the massive RtL nerfing. And it doesn’t make sense to give preferential treatment to a profession like the Thief in terms of mobility, when traditionally Thieves skulk slowly through the shadows, using Stealth as their defense. To give the Thief Stealth, along with ninja-assassin dodging ability, blinds out the wazoo, and more teleports than any other profession in the game along with medium armor is just silly balance design.

As for teleports being a Mesmer thing, just no. A Mesmer deals with Illusion and Chaos magic, and draw their power from the Denial bloodstone. Traditionally, Illusionists are great at appearing to teleport, when its really just trickery or Invisibility. In every other game and lore system out there, the quintessential Destruction Mage, being the lightest armored and most vulnerable, has the MOST number of teleports, blinks and general skills related to vanishing or disappearing precisely because they’re the squishiest.

IMO, if the Ele doesn’t regain the top slot as most mobile via skill or trait alterations, then a mechanic needs to be introduced that can compete with profession mechanics like Stealth, Death Shroud, Ranger Pets and the like. Something to compete with every other professions’ abilities, ESPECIALLY when the Ele is expected to perform in melee. But to make the Ele’s sole defense mechanic boons and healing, then nerfing to hell what mobility the profession has and then nerfing healing and adding in boon hate is just all manner of short sighted.

Thieves have 2 cheese things: Perma-stealth, and backstab burst.
Warriors have a billion cheese things.

oh look it’s this thread again. lets also totally forget about the travel time of Infiltrators arrow while the user is under swiftness.

Mesmer teleportations are not just an illusion, they have literally the power to control space and time; Elementalist is not the only real wizard, the three scholars profession represent differents way to use magic.

And ether (the Mesmer energy) is not only a trick, it’s raw energy…the fifth element.

http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/magicSchools.html

Ele ; Abjuration, evocation, conjuration.
Mesmer ; Illusion, enchantment.
Necromancer ; Necromancy (durr).

I suppose everyone has a bit of transmutation and i can’t see how divination fits in here but hey, gave it a shot.

DnD ftw.

Um, no, these classes have nothing to do with DnD magic. kitten , Necromancers actually create and control minions, effects ultimately outside of DnD wizard necromancy. God, DnD fans are the most irritating tabletop fans, always trying to fit the square peg of ANYTHING ELSE into its round holes.

I have no comment on the OP, having not played Elementalist outside PvE.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

oh look it’s this thread again. lets also totally forget about the travel time of Infiltrators arrow while the user is under swiftness.

A guy who steals things should not have more teleports (any really) than the guy who has mastery over the forces of creation and arcane energy.

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero? I’m speaking, of course, of the thief’s ability to stealth, spam blind, and teleport, and the elementalist’s complete lack of any useful evasive abilities.

How seriously do you want to be taken by your readers if you purposefully feed us false information? The only one of the 3 that the ele doesn’t have is stealth. They can teleport and they can spam blinds.

Kaleban.9834:

A guy who steals things should not have more teleports (any really) than the guy who has mastery over the forces of creation and arcane energy.

All creatures are magical, including the physical ones. Check the lore behind the Oola’s Lab minidungeon. The thief is as magical as the elementalist.

ThiBash.5634:

How seriously do you want to be taken by your readers if you purposefully feed us false information? The only one of the 3 that the ele doesn’t have is stealth. They can teleport and they can spam blinds.

The Ele only has one teleport, Lightning Flash, a utility, whereas the Thief has multiple ports on both weapon and utility skills. “Spamming” blinds is a bit of a misnomer, the Thief can do it over and over, whereas the Ele’s got a total of four skills that cause Blind, three of which possessing CDs of 10 or 15 seconds, and a utility Glyph of Storms that only applies Blind in Earth Attunement and is on a 30 sec CD. There is a world of difference between the Thief’s ability to teleport and blind and the Ele’s, you should probably try not to misrepresent that fact with accusations of false information. By my count, Thieves have NINE teleports to the Ele’s ONE.

All creatures are magical, including the physical ones. Check the lore behind the Oola’s Lab minidungeon. The thief is as magical as the elementalist.

I would argue that point. All professions tap into, to a greater or lesser extent, the magic of the Bloodstones, such as Guardians using Preservation, Mesmers Denial, and Eles Destruction. But it would be silly to argue that a Warrior tapping into the Aggression stone is as “magical” as an Ele tapping into the Destruction stone. And regardless of the lore, one must look at how the mechanics work out in a balance aspect, and also as to what players expect from a logical continuity. And Thieves being as or more magical (9 teleports to 1) makes zero sense to me and I’d hazard a guess that its the same for the majority of players out there, especially given the Ele’s low inherent survivability.

Kaleban.9834:

There is a world of difference between the Thief’s ability to teleport and blind and the Ele’s, you should probably try not to misrepresent that fact with accusations of false information. By my count, Thieves have NINE teleports to the Ele’s ONE.

No, you’re misrepresent facts by stating the ele has NO teleport. You should state truthfully that we have LESS teleports. Don’t try to make your argument more valid by conveniently leaving out facts. As for the blind spam, with 20% air cooldown we can blind every 8 seconds, which is plenty.

I would argue that point.

Of course you would, but the fact that the thief wouldn’t be magical at all is something you came up with yourself. Nowhere in lore does it say that the thief doesn’t use magic. In fact, the thief probably got the skills from the assassin, a profession we know for a fact used magic.

The difference between an elementalist and a thief is that the elementalist uses nothing but spells and the thief uses spells in combination with physical attacks. But they do use magic, it’s a know fact (or at least Oola knows).

ThiBash.5634:

No, you’re misrepresent facts by stating the ele has NO teleport. You should state truthfully that we have LESS teleports. Don’t try to make your argument more valid by conveniently leaving out facts. As for the blind spam, with 20% air cooldown we can blind every 8 seconds, which is plenty.

Oh please don’t force me to point out where, in every post so far I’ve explicitly stated that the Ele has Lightning Flash as the sole teleport for the class, making my claim of NINE to ONE in the Thief’s favor perfectly valid. I never left out facts, you simply didn’t read or chose not to read, I don’t know which. Your next claim might be true were it not for the attunement cooldowns, along with the need to switch attunements regularly to get any semblance of DPS or support going, meaning the practical CD is even higher than the listed, a problem no other profession has to worry about. Yes, they have weapon swaps, but in most cases its swapping to a different range, or another of the same set to double up on effects, something else the Ele is incapable of.

Of course you would, but the fact that the thief wouldn’t be magical at all is something you came up with yourself. Nowhere in lore does it say that the thief doesn’t use magic. In fact, the thief probably got the skills from the assassin, a profession we know for a fact used magic.

The difference between an elementalist and a thief is that the elementalist uses nothing but spells and the thief uses spells in combination with physical attacks. But they do use magic, it’s a know fact (or at least Oola knows).

You must have a reading comprehension problem. I wasn’t arguing that the Thief isn’t magical at all, the obvious use of Shadow Magic and the connection to the Denial Bloodstone is pretty obvious. What I was arguing was the idea that the Thief, an adventurer profession is AS magical as the scholarly Elementalist, which was the claim you made.

A common thread in ANY RPG based game pretty much ever is that classes that split their training time between two different vocations (fighter/mage, fighter/thief, thief/mage, fighter/mage/thief, and all the other ways of “multiclassing”) is usually never as skilled in their various vocations as a “pure” class. Which you seem to be missing. The point isn’t that GW2 should follow D&D rules, its that GW2 needs to follow an internal logic consistent with player expectations. If a Thief spends 50% of his training on combat, 25% on stealth and 25% on magic, should he logically be as (or more competent) at spellcraft than a profession like the Ele who spends 100% of his training on spellcraft? Logic would dictate no, but you seem to think otherwise, for what reason I cannot fathom.

ThiBash.5634:

How seriously do you want to be taken by your readers if you purposefully feed us false information? The only one of the 3 that the ele doesn’t have is stealth. They can teleport and they can spam blinds.

I said…

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero? I’m speaking, of course, of the thief’s ability to stealth, spam blind, and teleport, and the elementalist’s complete lack of any useful evasive abilities.

They key words here are powerful and useful. Yes, we have 1 ability to teleport, and a number of ways to blind our enemies. However, this is a shallow interpretation of our disengage mechanics.

First of all, Lightning Flash has a number of features that make it unviable for the purpose of escape: a) the distance traveled is too short, 900 range, b) its cool down is too long, 40 seconds, c) it’s not a stun breaker, and d) it does damage, making it more of an offensive utility. Having just 1 of these tools at our disposal is neither powerful nor useful in terms of our survivability.

Regarding blind, I said spam blind not that we couldn’t blind at all. For illustration, imagine an elementalist wants to make a build that uses blind to its highest potential. For this, we would use scepter main hand + Signet of Air + Glyph of Storms + Evasive Arcana + Tornado. What we get is Blinding Flash (1 blind/10 sec), Dust Devil (1 blind/15 sec), Signet of Air (1 blind/30 sec), Glyph of Storms (4 blinds/60 sec), Evasive Arcana (1 blind/9 sec), and Tornado (5 blinds/150 sec). In theory, this gives us an average of 1 blind every 2.6 seconds. However, there are a number of limiting factors.

1. We need to be in the correct attunement at the correct time to execute Blinding Flash and Dust Devil at their optimal rates.
2. The radius of Evasive Arcana is a mere 180. We would literally have to dodge roll into our opponent every 9 seconds in the air attunement. If you have any experience with the elementalist, you should see how impractical this really is.
3. The blind ratio of Tornado is negative, since we need to cease all our other skills for 15 seconds.
4. All of our blinds are active and situational. We don’t get reactive traits that passively blind foes. Unlike thieves, we have to anticipate our opponent’s attacks in order to blind them effectively.
5. Most importantly, the majority of our blind skills (besides Glyph of Storms; and perhaps Elemental Surge) are single (not pulse) blinds. What this means is that we cannot evade multiple strike attacks such as the warrior’s 100 Blades, the ranger’s Rapid Fire/Barrage, the mesmer’s Spatial Surge, and so on. Moreover, the pulse blinds we do possess are spaced out at 3 seconds + are on a very long CD (60 and 150)

So, in truth our blind ratio is quite low… I’d estimate it at around 1 blind/5-6 seconds. And this is in a build specifically designed for getting the highest number of blinds.

Compare this now to a thief who spams blind. What do I mean by spam? What I mean is that they have near permanent blind uptime during their active play, i.e., when they are unstealthed. How do they accomplish this? It’s pretty clear:

1. By carefully balancing their initiative to repeatedly use Black Powder ( a smoke field that pulses blind every 1 second for 4 seconds)
2. By activating utility skills like Smoke Screen (a smoke field that pulses blind every 1 second for 7 seconds), or blinding powder (an instantaneous blind + stealth).
3. By using smoke fields with projectiles and whirl finishers.
4. By using dark fields with blast and leap finishers.
5. By depending on passive traits that apply blind on stealth (Cloaked in Shadows), on strikes inflicting more than 10% of their health (Instinctual Response), and on 25% of their health (Last Refuge).
6. By using any number of single blinds: i.e., Infiltrator’s Arrow, Shadow Shot, Ink Shot, Signet of Shadows, Blinding Tuft, Tactical Strike.

As soon as you introduce the stealth mechanic into this picture you will understand how they can maintain near permanent blind uptime during their active play. Many of their skills have no true cool down, since they use up initiative instead. In practice, this means they can blow out a series of single and pulse blinds in rapid succession (usually 1 blind/second), and then fall back immediately into stealth to regenerate initiative (and wait out their utility cool downs).

This is nothing like what the elementalist can do. The thief’s ability to blind is highly effective because it can be repeatedly applied within a very short period (1 second), and because they have a mechanic to escape exposure when those blinds run out. The point here is that the elementalist cannot apply blinds rapidly enough to significantly impact their survival, they cannot spam blind, nor can they limit their exposure as those blinds go on cool down. This is an unreliable mechanic to keep ourselves alive. Thus, it is neither powerful nor useful.

In fact, I’d be happy if they removed all our blinds if that meant we would get a rapid means of moving from point a to point b; if it meant we had true teleportation. This, and not some gimmicky blind mechanic, is what would impact our survivability. It’s what the elementalist NEEDS from a game balancing perspective, and also what the elementalist DESERVES given the nature of the profession in the world of MMORPG’s. In my opinion, denying teleportation to the only real mage/wizard archetype of gw2 is just as bad as removing heavy armor from a warrior, or giving stealth to a guardian. It’s changes like this that contradict the core mechanics of these professions, and hurt the game as a whole.

To me, there is a distinct reason why the class is called Elementalist and not sorcerer or mage or wizard. In my eyes, the class is more of a front lines magic assault class than this ritualist mage that is suited to reading tomes at the back lines to sling artillery magic. It is a vocation that uses untamed energies to do harm to their adversaries and aid their nearby friends. So in that sense, for me the class design makes a lot of sense, but mind i’m taking about overall direction here and not the lack or benefits of individual skills.

When it comes to skills, I believe elementalist is not that bad off – the biggest issues I see is how certain weapons tend to have a weak attunement that just is less useful to swap to, such as Air for staff (more often than not in pve, for example). I don’t feel like you need to have teleports to avoid things, look at mist form – admittedly, it is a skill that needs to be tinkered with again, I think, but still it did work better once upon a time. RTL is another example, although it too was over-nerfed.

I think the main conundrum that arises with defense is a common one in many MMO’s and I seldom see a real solution in place, namely that defenses are very sensitive on the number of adversaries. Take more tanky defenses, these work very well in 1v1 but they rapidly become useless when more people single you out, and things like instant teleports become stronger and stronger per skill use. But at the same time, there is a point where the cooldowns of those skills simply are too long for a given engagement and then those too utterly fail in their purpose, making the class relying on them even weaker in the same scenario. I’ve often thought defensive skills should scale with the number of people hitting you in pvp environments, whether it be absorb value, cooldown or whatever. Not to make you immortal, but to make them always serve their role.

In short i’m not so sure it’s an elementalist issue as such whether you have x teleports compared to y teleports of another class. It’s just the pvp ‘critical mass’ affecting each class differently.

Elementalist still has decent mobility in /d. People also underestimate Staff 4. Since the buff, it’s almost as crazy as LR for the distance it sends you back on a far shorter cooldown.

Lightning Flash is basically the mesmers Blink, and we have FGS.

I still don’t agree with the change to RtL distance (such a massive overdone nerf there). But we’re still top tier in escaping and mobility, if we work for it.

It’s much harder than it used to be, and Anet for a while there seemed surprised folks used the FGS for that purpose.

I really hope they leave it alone, or give us back the distance we had for RtL before the nerf if they’re gonna mess with it.

I have to agree with others when they say “why do we have to work twice as hard as any other class to escape”.

I don’t know. I think we could use some love in the escape/mobility department, but the complaints here are overblown. We need a quality of life looking at, not a heart transplant.

Maybe a buff to Lightning Flash distance wise and giving back some (all preferably, with the cooldown condition) of RtL former distance, and we’d be in a really awesome place.

CETheLucid.3964:

Lightning Flash is basically the mesmers Blink, and we have FGS.

basically yes but there are important and game changing difference.

1. Mesmer Blink CD 30 sec! (LF 40 sec)
2. Mesmer Blink break stuns
3. Mesmer Blink can teleport on higher or lower grounds

And yes FGS has good mobility but you need to root yourself 1 sec. In a situation you need to run a 1 second root is really bad.

Kaleban.9834:

Oh please don’t force me to point out where, in every post so far I’ve explicitly stated that the Ele has Lightning Flash as the sole teleport for the class, making my claim of NINE to ONE in the Thief’s favor perfectly valid.

The quote I was replying to was:

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

…while elementalists were given a total of zero?

Apologies if I replied to the worng person.

Kaleban.9834:

A common thread in ANY RPG based game …

But this isn’t ANY RPG based game. I don’t understand why you insist on the lore being similar to other games, when it’s the same as saying ‘it was the butler because it was always the butler in other detective novels’.

The thief focuses purely on shadow spellcasting, making them vastly superior in that particular area of spellcasting. If you’re a professional cook, ’does that automatically mean no Italian pizza maker can bake better pizzas than you can? Of course not.

Also, if you’re really that much into lore, you should know that the whole ‘separate schools’ thing has been retconned.

Soulview.4532:

CETheLucid.3964:

Lightning Flash is basically the mesmers Blink, and we have FGS.

basically yes but there are important and game changing difference.

1. Mesmer Blink CD 30 sec! (LF 40 sec)
2. Mesmer Blink break stuns
3. Mesmer Blink can teleport on higher or lower grounds

And yes FGS has good mobility but you need to root yourself 1 sec. In a situation you need to run a 1 second root is really bad.

Yes, this is good info here. Points 1 and 3 should be looked at in particular with regards to ele’s Lightning Flash.

Point 2 is by design, they moved the stun breaks to Signet of Air and Glyph of Elemental Power.

On that point, I think Cleansing Fire needs a buff as well to compensate for the fact that it’s no longer a stun break.

If they fixed Lightning Flash with regards to your point 3, kept the 40s cooldown, but increased the range you can travel to about 1200 or so, we’d be golden.

CETheLucid.3964:

Soulview.4532:

CETheLucid.3964:

Lightning Flash is basically the mesmers Blink, and we have FGS.

basically yes but there are important and game changing difference.

1. Mesmer Blink CD 30 sec! (LF 40 sec)
2. Mesmer Blink break stuns
3. Mesmer Blink can teleport on higher or lower grounds

And yes FGS has good mobility but you need to root yourself 1 sec. In a situation you need to run a 1 second root is really bad.

Yes, this is good info here. Points 1 and 3 should be looked at in particular with regards to ele’s Lightning Flash.

Point 2 is by design, they moved the stun breaks to Signet of Air and Glyph of Elemental Power.

On that point, I think Cleansing Fire needs a buff as well to compensate for the fact that it’s no longer a stun break.

If they fixed Lightning Flash with regards to your point 3, kept the 40s cooldown, but increased the range you can travel to about 1200 or so, we’d be golden.

Point 3 -> they changed it. LF was like Mesmer blink. I don`t think they change it back.

If you want to play a true spellcaster, closest archetype possible to other MMOs + dark themed, simply roll Power Necromancer 30/10/0/0/30. Your Life Force Bar is equal to Mana Bar, you cast very powerful Blasts (bolts of life force). It’s real fun in PvE because it works pretty decent. Just a traditional spellcaster maintaining source bar, having downsides and bursts while in longer combat. You can have 3 total teleports:
-Flesh Wurm – TP to minion pre-set location
-Spectral Walk – Teleport back to the point when you’ve triggered skill, 6 second long.
-Dark Path #2 Death Shroud – teleport to target’s location
Feel free

ThiBash.5634:

But this isn’t ANY RPG based game. I don’t understand why you insist on the lore being similar to other games, when it’s the same as saying ‘it was the butler because it was always the butler in other detective novels’.

The thief focuses purely on shadow spellcasting, making them vastly superior in that particular area of spellcasting. If you’re a professional cook, ’does that automatically mean no Italian pizza maker can bake better pizzas than you can? Of course not.

Also, if you’re really that much into lore, you should know that the whole ‘separate schools’ thing has been retconned.

I’m not discussing lore, I’m talking about balance that is consistent. Class concepts are a part of this. If ANet wanted to give the Necromancer the ability to fly, blasting enemies with wells and life blasts while being totally immune to melee attacks, would that make sense from either a lore or balance perspective? Of course not.

Consistency in game design is crucial because players expect it. If you have a class called a Warrior, no one expects it to start teleporting around the battlefield and calling down meteors from space.

I’m not sure what is unclear here, your metaphors don’t really make sense given the discussion at hand.

why don’t you just play a thief and stop complaining about ele can’t stealth or port or what not? e.e’ ele has way more survivability, aoes and buffs/boons for the party than what a thief has to offer. Plus, its not like we lack dps or mobility either to get away from a fight.

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Does anyone else find it unreasonable that thieves were given not just one or two but three powerful abilities to disengage, while elementalists were given a total of zero?

Are we playing the same class?

Burning Retreat
Lightning Flash
Ride the Lightning

There’s your three. Depending on definitions, thief has more like 15 actually. I’d consider things like BP+HS or Blinding Powder to be possible disengages.

Kaleban.9834:

Consistency in game design is crucial because players expect it. If you have a class called a Warrior, no one expects it to start teleporting around the battlefield and calling down meteors from space.

And that was my point: you demand consistency for the sake of consistency. Guild Wars 2 is a game in its own style. In most games, warriors don’t have ranged attacks either but the Guild Wars 2 warrior can be made into a ranged character if you want to. So why is it so hard to accept that magical thieves might be better at teleporting magic?

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

What have you contributed to these forums? Besides arrogant commentary?

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

What have you contributed to these forums? Besides arrogant commentary?

direction, balance, etc etc. it’s hard to disagree when everyone agrees.

If we are looking at all the facts I’d say overall we are in a better position with defensive abilities then the thief.

I could be wrong but I don’t recall the thief having as many options to throw up the protection boon, or regen boon as an elementalist has.

And depending on the weapon type we have auras, some of which mainly D/D, are strong abilities even untraited, and then on top of that we have the blinds, teleport, invunerability.

Granted thieves have an easier time of slipping away from a battle due to stealth, but stealth isn’t invulnerability, so you just need to hit the thief while he’s hiding. Ele’s have alot of AoE attacks that can do this.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

What have you contributed to these forums? Besides arrogant commentary?

direction, balance, etc etc. it’s hard to disagree when everyone agrees.

It was an Open field fight, the thief was equipped with a Shortbow, Sword/Pistol. I was a d/d Ele, once the thief changed to Shortbow there is a range difference, especially since it was open field, the thief was kiting, while I was a sitting duck. I wanted a 1v1 but d/d Ele’s aren’t the “best” are ranged dps. As soon as I get close, the thief would Teleport away.

So whatever you said is invalid.

I’m just saying some of my experience with thieves, be it pro-thieves, shiet-thieves, whatever you want to call it. They do have much, much more teleports than an Ele does.

Quinti.5204:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Gesamtkunstwerk.6590:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Quinti.5204:

Side-note: Just vs’d a Thief in wvw. 1v1. I went looking for one, we played a while and I noticed that the Thief had a shiet ton of Teleportation/Shadowstep, w/e you peeps call it.

I was just a normal bunker Ele (d/d – 3 cantrip build) with pvt looking to play 1v1… the battle lasted a while, but I couldn’t kill the thief. I’d get him to low hp, then he’d just reset. I mean QTF is this?!?

Thieves have tons of Teleport/Shadowstep/QTFstep~~~

Conclusion, you’re just mad that you couldn’t pin him down and finish him off, instead of coming up with a plan to trap and kill him you came to this terrible thread to feed it’s walls. Clap clap

What have you contributed to these forums? Besides arrogant commentary?

direction, balance, etc etc. it’s hard to disagree when everyone agrees.

It was an Open field fight, the thief was equipped with a Shortbow, Sword/Pistol. I was a d/d Ele, once the thief changed to Shortbow there is a range difference, especially since it was open field, the thief was kiting, while I was a sitting duck. I wanted a 1v1 but d/d Ele’s aren’t the “best” are ranged dps. As soon as I get close, the thief would Teleport away.

So whatever you said is invalid.

I’m just saying some of my experience with thieves, be it pro-thieves, shiet-thieves, whatever you want to call it. They do have much, much more teleports than an Ele does.

Reposition.

Would it be interesting, since you can trait into arcane, to add an arcane attunement?