Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. I’ve talked here before about some of the changes I’d personally like to see applied to Thieves. One of those was allowing shadowstep mechanics to bypass physical barriers (LoS issues) creating a viable infiltration role for Thieves in WvW. That idea was met with a lot of criticism as folks thought it was OP and gamebreaking, or how “everyone would be rolling thieves”.

Well, in light of the recent Mesmer portal issue, allowing unfettered access to keeps for large groups via the Mesmer portal itself, ANet has officially responses that it is a legitimate strategy and completely legal. So I guess that means it’s not an impossibility for Thieves to have such control over their individual selves with some changes to our shadowstepping mechanic.

Read the official response here

Read the full article here and let me know what you think!

Thank you,
-LoreChief

Them stating that usage of the current Mesmer mechanics are not an exploit does not really in any way imply that they’re going to make any changes to the thief mechanics…

It would certainly be nice to be able to play an infiltrator role, but it would be pretty game-breaking if a group of people could all just role thieves and climb/shadowstep the walls of a keep instead of bothering to break down the door. A Mesmer at least needs to get inside the keep once to put down his portal.

How is it anymore game breaking that a group of thieves would all have to individually use their mechanic to sneak into a keep/tower, when one person using one skill which allows dozens of people to sneak into a keep is not considered game breaking?

And it’s not so much as them definitely making changes to Thief, as it was that when I originally brought the issue up, the skepticism was followed with comments like; “it would break wvw” or “it’s OP, no one should be able to get into a tower/keep without taking down the gates/walls!” and “if arenanet wanted you to get into enemy structures before taking walls/gates down, then that’s what they’d do!”.

I think it’s more reasonable of a strategy to say that when 10 people role thieves for the specific purpose of being infiltrators in WvW, that they’ve put in the work to be able to do that, vs. one person skilling into one skill that bypasses the entire siege mechanic of WvW for an entire realm.

I suppose the long and short of this, aside from the part where you should cease completely misrepresenting what ANet posts, is that you don’t seem to realize that Mesmers can only place Portal ends at their feet. E.g. the Mesmer actually has to walk to wherever they place portals.

Sorry but if you’ve spent any time at all in WvW recently, you will no doubt have heard the kitten-complaints from players who’ve lost their keeps in record-breaking sub-2 minute zerg attacks. These were at first believed to be squads of flight-hackers, but in reality turned out to be very tactical mesmer portal placements. So no, the gate/wall did not need to be downed in order to cross into enemy structures and take them over. It was all a clever use of portal mechanics.

No. The only way a portal can be set up into a keep is as follows:

1. Mesmer exploits through geometry using bugged teleport skills that allow them to clip through the ground. This is a bannable exploit.

2. Mesmer blinks up / past impassable terrain due to bugged pathing issues (cough garrison inner west, cough, gj HOD, cough). This is also a bannable exploit. Sidenote: Bay also has some terrain where this can actually happen.

3. Mesmer was inside the keep from a prior time when the Mesmer had access to the keep, and hid. This is legit, and all Keeps actually have enough room where sloppy defenders won’t find the Mesmer hiding. Edit: The east keep in the borderlands has some really good spots for this, actually. The west keep has water in general, which can be good for hiding, although there are only a few semi-ok spots for hiding.

Tyrestrian has the best solution I’ve seen thus far. It allows Thieves the freedom of wall-fighting without the game-breaking side effect of Thief lord-zergs, and prevents the Mesmer mechanic (either the glitched version or the legit version) from providing an OP advantage to an entire realm.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Of-Portals-and-Pouncing/first#post273928

Good stuff.

1. Client rendering has nothing to do with server-side position tracking. It seems like the actual teleport action may be clipping through the thin underwater gate (similar to how all teleports have a chance to clip through the ground). That, or they just zerged it fast and people are fabricating excuses.

2. As far as the change, they would have to make the lords invulnerable for it to work at all. In terms of whether it would be “good”, the primary tactical effect is that keeps would be indefensible against larger numbers, due to the ability for attackers to simply annihilate defending siege — and to simply kill defenders then jump out.

Tbh I think it’s a bad idea. It’s already too easy to kill defending siege in the majority of cases. That change would simply make it pointless to defend a keep at all against any numbers.

This sounds like it’s mainly a series of QQs / suggestions / changes proposed to alleviate feelings of Thief inadequacy due to the 900 range limitations. I think it would be more useful to take a look at suggestions related to the shortbow and pistol, and the 900 range, or thief siege capability in general rather than trying to create a new WvW mechanic which breaks a dozen other things.

Personally, I don’t see an issue since poison combo fields are insanely powerful, nevermind the Thief’s ridiculous utility during actual pushes with AOE stealth and smoke combo fields. Note: for people that don’t have a good grasp of WvW combat, range pew pew pew spam is not very relevant to decide who wins or loses the fight. In most cases, that rests on the melee or diving / pushing actions that occur to end fights. In these situations, Thieves have valuable potential roles, although HS spam is not one of them.