Guild Wars 2

Hi. So I’ve been playing a thief for a couple weeks now and it’s really fun! Exploring with a thief is such a different experience. However, i’m an Australian player and consistently have ~ 230-300 ping, often with a small but still noticeable delay between skills. Would you guys say that a thief unplayable with this amount of latency? I really like the profession, but i’d rather just go back to my engi if i’m not going to be able to perform adequately or even survive adequately on a thief.

I just tell you out of experience that it is the most annoying thing when you want to react on time to something in pvp but just cant due to lagg/delay. Since thief is so squishy and fast paced you probably will rage a lot. but at least give it a try. Thief is the coolest profession in the end.

S/D thief will be dreadful to play for you. Anything else however, could work until you get to higher tiers of gameplay.

As a fellow Aussie who has played thief a lot over the time, I have found playing anything dagger related is not great due to the lag. S/P can do well depending, but have had varying results. By far the best weapon set for me has been P/P due to being ranged helps with compensating for the lag, and due to not being meta, throws a lot of players off because they don’t expect it ( not the good ones, but they aren’t in the majority)
Obviously we can’t really compete at the really high tiers on thief because of the lag, but that would be the same with any character so just play what you like and you will learn to compensate somewhat.

caerulean.4837:

Hi. So I’ve been playing a thief for a couple weeks now and it’s really fun! Exploring with a thief is such a different experience. However, i’m an Australian player and consistently have ~ 230-300 ping, often with a small but still noticeable delay between skills. Would you guys say that a thief unplayable with this amount of latency? I really like the profession, but i’d rather just go back to my engi if i’m not going to be able to perform adequately or even survive adequately on a thief.

Depends on the game mode probably. I managed to pull D/D thief off on NA with a 200 ping (I’m EU) – don’t ask me how I did it – my win ratio became higher on EU though. I’m a wvw player, playing pvp with that latency might be worse.

Someone from the EU itself, I can’t even play with 100+ ping, you can definitely feel the delay between skills, such as with D/P, the black powder and Heartseeker combo.
Even with that much delay, it can get you insta-ko’d.

I play from India and I’ve been playing thief at the highest competitive level. My ping usually varies from 150-300ms depending on the time of day. Anything up to 180ms is doable with lots of practice. On 180-200ms, it’s hard to get interrupts with headshot, but you can still dodge skills with big tells. After 200ms, there’s no dodging/interrupting, only instinct. This isn’t limited to thief, however, and any class you play will give you problems at those pings. But as long as you’re not playing ESL tournaments and such, you should be fine with good rotations, map awareness and positioning if not mechanical skill.

You need to adapt to your ping.

I’ve played since start with 150-190 ping s/d thief, I have to think twice as fast as any other guy with 40-60 ping, I have to guess what people will do before I react because the delay is a fact.

Once you get it the rest is up to you, I’ve never considered my “ping” as an excuse but as an attribute.

People who play at 40-60 ping will tell you that it’s impossible to play in a competitive way, that’s false I’ve beaten many top players 1v1 and many top teams in my 3 years with my 180 ping so it’s all depends in your own skill imo.

A kiwi here so about that same ping as you, I’ve played it all, and it don’t matter what you play, when the game gets frantic and you wait stuff to work you’ll be wanting to smash your screen no matter what class you play. It becomes a sick sadistic joke. I can use skills at my end, I see then work and go off, yet, I still die, skills that would save my life. it’s like someone nailing your feet to the floor and saying, now run over there before I drive this steamroller over you.

if you can deal with that great, or just take it is small bits. PvE is generally fine, and dying is not that big a deal, WvW and PvP can get.. I’ll say, frustrating at times.

on the plus side, you know your play with a -180ping handicap. that’s got to count for something right …..

You can learn to predict but high ping is still a big handicap with thief. I used to have alt account in NA and the difference in gameplay was massive vs my EU account which has 40ping. I just eventually gave up on thiefing in NA.