Guild Wars 2

I don’t know what the particular combination of skills is that causes thieves to be able to evade for well over 30 seconds (if not longer) during water combat, but it has to stop now. There is no excuse for this. It breaks the Capricorn map.

The fact that it has existed for quite some time is disturbing. Water combat probably needs a lot of different tweaks, but this has to be top priority. Like I said, there is no excuse for this game-breaking exploit.

It’s not an exploit, it’s the spear attack 5 that does a series of attacks, however you get “evade” for the entire duration. There is also a guard/block move and a flanking strike type move that also evades.

It does probably need to be changed, however it’s not an exploit, please learn what you’re talking about before calling exploits.

The 5th skill of spear set lets Thieves evade all attacks and do AoE dmg up to 3 targets (updated since Oct 1st) for few seconds.
The 2nd skill of spear set lets Thieves evade 1 attack and move to target’s back and strike once.
The 3rd skill of spear set lets Thieves block 1 frontal attack and strike back 3 times, also gain 2 initiatives.
All of those skills are only applied in melee range.
So on the paper, in 1v1 fight underwater, with right timing and perfect initiatives management, a thief can block/evade all melee attacks.

I love the qqs of people who just can’t handle pvp.

Honestly, imo, thief has the worst underwater skill set amongst all the classes.

An exploit is something which uses the mechanics of the game to achieve an unintended consequence which breaks an aspect of the game in a significant way.

The only way to hit a thief who knows what he is doing is to sink/float him. You get 2 seconds to attack before he switches back into invulnerable mode. This doesn’t just apply to melee but ranged as well. Thieves can sit on the Ruins for an absolutely ridiculous amount of time while taking no damage whatsoever, making it quite literally impossible to revert the point. Everyone else gets eaten by sharks.

It is an exploit, plain and simple. I will not apologize for calling it this. It is not acceptable.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

It is an exploit, plain and simple. I will not apologize for calling it this. It is not acceptable.

Needs a change? Prossibly.

Exploit? No.

The devs did intend for those skills to function in that way otherwise they wouldnt have those characteristics. However they may not have tested it/seen how good it could be as water combat in this game is a gimmick at best.

This isnt a bug or a mistake that people are taking advantage of, its skill sets that you could argue require a change.

Selling items made mostly of karma items to sell for massive money is an exploit. Buying level 60 rares for 21 karma is an expoit. Shooting keep lords with arrowcarts for unintended places is an exploit.

Using your weapon skills in a certain order is not an exploit.

It’s a series of skills, from what I understand. Whoever designed the thief underwater combat almost certainly did not intend for this to happen. The skills were probably just meant to have evasion with no regard to how they might be used together.

An exploit is different from a bug. I use the term because the combination of skills is so obviously broken that no one in their right mind could think that this is a fair way to play. Thus, knowing that this is a broken mechanic, certain thieves continue to use these skills. That is the very definition of an exploit: taking advantage of broken mechanics.

No thief with any measure of skill is going to sit there spamming his skills just to evade your ranged attacks. Get a second person and try pulling him towards you. Every class has ranged underwater abilities and at least one skill that can CC to some degree to deal with any number of situations underwater including thieves. Just blind his kitten and stay out of range while pelting him with whatever you like. Being good in 1v1’s does NOT mean that any given skill set provides exploitation methods. Now if his skills allowed him to get somewhere on the map that he shouldn’t normally be able to access, then that’s a completely different story, but this is in NO POSSIBLE WAY exploitation.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

It’s a series of skills, from what I understand. Whoever designed the thief underwater combat almost certainly did not intend for this to happen. The skills were probably just meant to have evasion with no regard to how they might be used together.

An exploit is different from a bug. I use the term because the combination of skills is so obviously broken that no one in their right mind could think that this is a fair way to play. Thus, knowing that this is a broken mechanic, certain thieves continue to use these skills. That is the very definition of an exploit: taking advantage of broken mechanics.

How is evading a broken mechanic? Your dodge does the EXACT SAME THING. Maybe you should learn how to use it so you can be invincible too? Evasion will do nothing to hurt you until you get into melee range and the thief can start beating on you. You know whats comparable? A S/P Thief. I can spam Pistol Whip to do damage WHILE EVADING and lay down an AoE PULSING BLIND FIELD making it so you cant land a single attack against me while in melee range/within the field. And did I mention its a combo field so I can just shoot you while standing in it to blind you? Yeah I’d say that’s much worse than them using a single evasion skill, that costs almost half an initiative bar, more than once in a fight.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

It’s a series of skills, from what I understand. Whoever designed the thief underwater combat almost certainly did not intend for this to happen. The skills were probably just meant to have evasion with no regard to how they might be used together.

They were probably designed for PvE purposes, with only minimal thought for PvP, like every other under water kit. Underwater combat in general is broken and stupid.

I’m aware that bugs and exploits are different, however one example of exploiting is using a bug to your advantage ala. arrowcart keeplords.

Put your sensible pants on, reframe from crying exploits (unless it legitimately is) and leave capricorn to join firefoe like every other sane person.

Cris Croix.2370:

No thief with any measure of skill is going to sit there spamming his skills just to evade your ranged attacks.

To the contrary, I have seen at least two thieves taking advantage of the evasion on their skills and sitting on the point in ruins for well over 30 seconds if not a minute or more. The only way to hit him is sink/float. With the sharks on that map, simply turning into a bunker is an offensive move.

This is an exploit, and it’s not that hard to understand. Can’t you see that turning invulnerable for an entire minute goes far beyond imbalance and into the realm of absurdity? People exploit this flaw in the game mechanics such that they can hold the Ruins almost without fail.

It is not an imbalance. It is an exploit, and were the stakes higher in sPvP, I would be calling for bans. They’re not, though, so it just needs a fix. This can’t continue.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

Cris Croix.2370:

No thief with any measure of skill is going to sit there spamming his skills just to evade your ranged attacks.

To the contrary, I have seen at least two thieves taking advantage of the evasion on their skills and sitting on the point in ruins for well over 30 seconds if not a minute or more. The only way to hit him is sink/float. With the sharks on that map, simply turning into a bunker is an offensive move.

This is an exploit, and it’s not that hard to understand. Can’t you see that turning invulnerable for an entire minute goes far beyond imbalance and into the realm of absurdity? People exploit this flaw in the game mechanics such that they can hold the Ruins almost without fail.

It is not an imbalance. It is an exploit, and were the stakes higher in sPvP, I would be calling for bans. They’re not, though, so it just needs a fix. This can’t continue.

I’m sorry, but did you just call evasion invulnerability? I think this topic needs to be closed, as the OP seems to have a serious disconnection with game mechanics.

I should add that unlike many glass cannon ele’s, I don’t mind thieves in general. But I happen to like Capricorn when there are no exploitative thieves camping the ruins. Why are you defending people like this? It’s an obvious unintended consequence which they are using to their advantage. That’s an exploit, and we should call it as such. It’s not simply imbalance, and you know it.

Cris Croix.2370:

I’m sorry, but did you just call evasion invulnerability? I think this topic needs to be closed, as the OP seems to have a serious disconnection with game mechanics.

I am well aware of the difference between evasion and invulnerability. I apologize for not being 100% terminologically accurate. I would ask you, then, what it is when a person is completely incapable of taking damage (aside from sink/float, which only comes from skills on long cooldowns)? Have you not seen this in action? It is broken and an exploit. There are no two ways about this.

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

This is an exploit…

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Violet.7935:

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

This is an exploit…

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game’s designers.

take capricom map off the table, its kitteny map. and underwaterevasion not epxloit

Nicomachiavelli.3046:

An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game’s designers.

Because Flanking Strike, Nine-Tailed Strike, and Shadow Assault are CLEARLY, and to use your words here, bugged or glitched and are being used in a manner not intended by the dev’s. /sarcasm

Two of those skills employ a mechanic which is referred to as ‘Evasion’ which prevents all attacks that fall within a frame of time from hitting the user. Now this mechanic is also included, no, designed around, our active Dodge button which provides damage prevention for about 1 second. However, these two skills cost 3(FS) and 5(SA) initiative each and are technically spammable due to the way that the THIEF CLASS WAS DESIGNED up to a limit, that being their initiative resource.

More specifically now: FS requires a target in order to be used reliably, as using it without a current target will send you reeling off in a direction pre-determined by the skill itself which does the player NO GOOD, aside from the initial evasion provided. No damage occurs when no target is selected unless an enemy happens to be at the ‘exit’ point of the skills animation. This one costs a third of your initiative bar for no benefit unless in range of an enemy that is currently targeted.

SA makes you evade for 3 seconds in place, doing damage to nearby enemies. This would be fantastic….if it didn’t cost half of the initiative bar to use EACH. AND. EVERY. TIME. This cost alone makes it a complete and utter waste to use for simply evading an enemies attacks.

Moving on, we have NTS which does the exact same thing as the Mesmer (4) and Warrior (5) skills: Blocks a single attack and retaliates with an after-effect. This one happens to be spammable on thieves, but it does NOT make them anywhere near invincible as the ensuing animation of X number of stabs prevents them from taking an action unless cancelled. Keep in mind that they are also NOT evading during this post-block animation.

So the whining goes underwater now.Ground just wasn’t enough,er?
SPvP is full of people,who think THief is OP,and they desided to make some 2lvl alt
to join the ranks of the OP.Maybe you saw some of them.Totally clueless,starting combat
vs 1 enemy with Shadow Refuge+Thieves Guild(60sec and 180 sec CD skills) and desperately starting to spam 222,when they see that are losing.After some 1-2 hours painfull emabarasing,they go back to they main and come here to demand nerfs NOW

Not an exploit. It’s intended. Literally written into its description. Keep in mind they cannot move whilst doing it and drains 5 initiative each time they do it.

This is pretty much a learn how to counter it issue.

Please stop posting such nonsense here.. If you are worried about a exploid then report it, it you encounter a bug then there is a sub-forum for that as well..
We don’t care about QQ’s so please stop.

Kind regardes

its not an exploit, but its definitly too powerful!

knyy.8276:

its not an exploit, but its definitly too powerful!

Not nearly as powerful as the way minions work when defending/assaulting The Ruins…
Try get the base from a necro just to get your kitten eaten by sharks .

I am a thief.

The skill (5) only hits 1 person. Seems only skill 1 can hit 3 targets.

Anyway, I agree. Its another issue of works in PvE, but gets OP in PvP.

far from an exploit, but the fact that I can keep it going for 1-2 minutes by stealing onto sharks and eating the egg for initiative + RfI into the ground + regular dodges + signets is pretty unbalanced I would say for defending a point where there are mobs that will do damage to people trying to cap it

The worst is when I’m fighting another thief doing it. nothing gets done ever

A) The skill is working as intended, no exploiting whatsoever. Please learn what that word means.

B) Theives have garbage water combat skills, absolutely horrible. Stop whining.

C) If a thief traits for lots of initiative regen and can somehow stay evasive for 30 secs – 1min, he will be doing no damage at all to anyone, so who cares?

I would say Thief underwater skills need to be fixed before the #5 skill is nerfed for pvp.

Underwater missions in story were almost impossible on my thief, that #5 ability was the only thing keeping me alive.

Thief using a move that evades attacks to evade attacks? Bet your knives that’s an exploit.

IF underwater combat didnt feel so terrible for a thief i would almost agree with you… not really.

While i agree it should be fixed, it’s also pretty much the only skill not turning thief underwater into garbage (actually this is true for most of their weapon sets).

At least, it’s not as bad as a single engi with nades being able to stomp the whole enemy team + sharks by himself.

nope, perfectly fine skill, nothing to see here.

@ Shintai

Just in case you didn’t see:

The following profession skills now hit 3 targets instead of 1:

Elementalist Dagger: Lightning Whip, Lightning Touch
Mesmer Spear: Stab, Jab, Evasive Strike
Ranger Spear: Stab, Jab, Evasive Strike, Dart, Counterstrike
Thief Spear: Stab, Jab, Poison Tip Strike, Nine Tailed Strike
Warrior Spear: Stab, Jab, Impale, Mariner’s Frenzy, Parry

October 1st patch. I like it, Lightning Whip is more fun to break out now.

Yep, Shadow Assault and Flanking Strike aint 3 targets. Thats what I used besides auto.

Here we go again, the moment of the beta, where all these new people are raging over something that they don’t have any clue about it.

Riiiiiiight…Thief underwater is sooooo OP. IT MUST BE NERFED NAOOOO!

Then nerf those mesmers and their clones, coz having several identical npcs on the map is clearly an exlpoit…And after that fix warriors, coz when he spins in one spot and is killing everyone while being unkillable is clearly an exploit…

Then fix Backstab, coz dancing around the target hoping to hit the back for high damage once in a while is clearly an exploit…

THEN, fix the evade button, so that people wouldn’t be able to evade, coz when they do so, they are clearly exploiting….

@Shintai

Argh, I confused the Strikes. Sorry!

So what do you want them to do? Other than just complaining, atleast be constructive about it. If you wanna remove the evade from it, then you better make it stronger. As someone else said, without the evade in the attack, I would die while using a harpoon in UW combat.

Dervim.3817:

Riiiiiiight…Thief underwater is sooooo OP. IT MUST BE NERFED NAOOOO!

Then nerf those mesmers and their clones, coz having several identical npcs on the map is clearly an exlpoit…And after that fix warriors, coz when he spins in one spot and is killing everyone while being unkillable is clearly an exploit…

Then fix Backstab, coz dancing around the target hoping to hit the back for high damage once in a while is clearly an exploit…

THEN, fix the evade button, so that people wouldn’t be able to evade, coz when they do so, they are clearly exploiting….

This made me lol. And yeah, people will complain about every thing that beats them. And dancing around your opponent trying to land a backstab is sometimes a pain, and impossible if you go into stealth and get immobilized. >.<

Ruufio.1496:

Look at all the idiots!!! LMAO! Not an exploit? HAHAHAHAHA! Have you noobs played this game?

I, a Thief, frequently guard the Ruins with my spear 5 attack INFINITELY with my signet build because I NEVER ruin out of initiative. I just sit there spamming 5 while the sharks kill everyone. But no, being able to never die ever defending a point isn’t an exploit. Not at all. LMAO.

I like how you people are trying to act all smart when you are clearly wrong rofl.

At least someone knows. Everyone else thinks I’m just some guy QQing because I lost.

Look, I have no problem with thieves in general. It has grown increasingly easier for me to beat them in sPvP. This, though, is clearly an exploit. Infinite initiative for infinite evasion. Obviously not intended.

So, what I got out of this is: I can now kill thieves extremely easily on land, but somehow I am unable to kill them as easily under water…exploit…fix pl0x anet!

Hardly. It is almost impossible — in the very literal sense of the word — to kill them underwater if they use this exploit. I have 3 spells which can hit them, none of which do damage and rely on my ability to spike my damage to have any hope of killing them.

This probably doesn’t apply to most of you. This is only a problem for this one particular exploit. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t apply to you, and I have nothing against you. I can’t comment on the rest of your underwater abilities, and perhaps they need a buff. I don’t know and won’t know, because I don’t want to play a thief.

What I do want is fair play. This is not fair. It is — I’ll say it again — an exploit.

In PvE I can spam it even without Initiative bonuses, as it strikes so slow that it refills by the time I’m ready to do it again. In PvP, with the proper set-up…I’m not doubting you or thinking you’re wrong; just based on PvE I can imagine how absurd it’d be. I’ve never tried it.

I’m just wondering if there are possible counters to this that haven’t been addressed. In my experience and in reading this thread, it sounds like the sharks are the biggest issue to this particular scene.

This “exploit” if any of you actualy play Pve does not work against npc aswell against nubs in PvP. as soon as you “nerf” spear, the thief is back to crying at underwater hearts. use an interrupt, kite, get two people, stop being bad, stop QQing, use a pull, use range and win. L2P.

Your opinion of me is irrelevant. It’s an exploit, plain and simple. Barring inane developers, which is unlikely, infinite evasion was never an intended consequence.

For the record, I’ve never been killed by a thief underwater in a way that I thought, “Wow! That was so OP. I should go complain.” Rather, I have been killed by sharks and other people while being completely unable to take the ruins simply because a thief was doing his infinite evasion exploit.

EDIT: Also, read for comprehension. Nowhere do I say, “Shadow assault is OP!” Using that skill is not an exploit. Figuring out that the game mechanics allow you to use that skill infinitely, however, is.

OP needs a FIX on his skills. Apparently games been almost in 3 months. 1st time to see a post about this.

QQ post is QQ.

Garlic Sensei.4103:

OP needs an FIX on his skills. QQ post is QQ. kthxbye

He needs a “fix” on his ability to play the game as well because it’s creating “exploits”.

I do just fine in sPvP. I’m not the best player in the world, but I do pretty well. I am one of the few ele’s who thinks the class is fine save for a few bugs, and I’m not begging for a buff. I don’t complain just because I lost a fight. I’m complaining here because this is broken.

EDIT: I should add that every time I’ve seen a thief use this exploit, he knew it was unfair, and so did everyone else.

This thread really needs to close. I wasted minutes of my life reading this. To the op, try fight against a Engineer in the same spot and you will see how annoying the underwater turrets can be.

Wrong thread hah.

Hi,

As the issue seems to be solved, and to prevent future flaming this thread is being closed.
Thanks