Guild Wars 2

So after playing a bunch of sPVP here are my thoughts.

The ups!

-our ability to escape is pretty good, and I love the ability to come in and out of a fight.

-our damage is good, and burst is high with certain builds. I dont like playing all in burst builds though. I can see their appeal in roaming and changing fights, but they are far too counter-able.
As long as I have shadowstep up, no hundreds blades or pistol whip build will come close to beating me. Mid-high burst and a lot of stealth with a mix of shortbow and daggers seem to be the most fun.

The downs I see, and class balancing.

-it seems to me that high defense/skilled guardians are a game ruiner. I have tried quite a few different approaches. Even if I get a boon steal and a good 4 sec daze they can still last and easily beat me if I try to kill one defending a node. I’ve had situations where me and another player burned both of our elites and the guardian can still outlast and do quite a bit of damage back with retaliation until friends arrive.

I think the defensive guardian is a good idea, but as a thief at least, it feels like my chances of winning the game and contributing a high amount are reduced 30% per skilled defensive guardian.

-Mesmers are also a problem, but I’m having a better time against them now that I’m running shadows embrace. It seems kinda kitteny on paper, but mixed with shadow step and hide in shadow, it gives me a lot of control over conditions.

Other thoughts: I wish the trebuchet was removed in battle of kyhlo as manning a single ability siege weapon is hardly a fun way to play pvp. You’re at a huge disadvantage if you don’t utilize it.

I havent played so much on live yet but I did play a fair bit during the beta, all I can say is that thiefs are fun as hell to play and the “issue” you have with guardians/mesmers aint really a issue. They’re probably the best anti-thief classes in the game so it’s simply your counter, what I could advice vs them is to play smart, if you see the guardian put up retaliation simply stop attack with physical dmg, if you use a bow put down some venom on the ground and wait it out or get a skill to strip boons (think swords flanking strike got a boon removal added for live).
As for the mesmers, once you learn to see which one is the real they’re fairly easy to kill, just keep a condition removal for their annoying confusion stack

guardians and mesmers are just a hard counter to single target burst thieves. I run a crit damage specced shortbow thief and I have no real problem with fighting mesmers due to my aoe, guardians still take a while to whittle down, so either my team comes or his. Guardians are countered by conditions (think necros, eles, condition thieves). I like to think i’m more of a support thief, but I get rampage every kitten game because my #2 skill hits 4-6k crits erryday

defensively specced Guardians are VERY hard to deal with. i basically can’t kill them and they can hold a map point from me without me having any realistic chance of taking it from them. when i identify a defensive Guardian on the other team i usually try to avoid direct confrontations with them and try to just outmaneuver and attack map points that they aren’t guarding.

I’ve played Thief in randoms as well as a Mesmer… Quit playing a Thief to play the Mesmer. Not that I was bad with a Thief, just that I only had to put 10% effort into a Mesmer; rather than 100% with a Thief. A really fun class all around if you know how to play it correctly.

Coronach.6792:

I havent played so much on live yet but I did play a fair bit during the beta, all I can say is that thiefs are fun as hell to play and the “issue” you have with guardians/mesmers aint really a issue. They’re probably the best anti-thief classes in the game so it’s simply your counter, what I could advice vs them is to play smart, if you see the guardian put up retaliation simply stop attack with physical dmg, if you use a bow put down some venom on the ground and wait it out or get a skill to strip boons (think swords flanking strike got a boon removal added for live).
As for the mesmers, once you learn to see which one is the real they’re fairly easy to kill, just keep a condition removal for their annoying confusion stack

Rock paper scissors balancing will not work in this game. The open 5v5 conquest maps require too many 1v1’s for that to even out with teamplay.

I appreciate the advice you’re trying to provide, but its really just common sense that i’ve ruled out a long time ago. They can have retaliation up around 50% or more it seems. The fact that it takes me a solid minute to bring one down without stopping my attacks, just make me disgusted thinking how long it would take if I avoided damage with it up. The knockbakcs and defensive shielding is the problem, as well as the ridiculous elite healing tome.

The sword/dagger build (flanking strike removes boons) is jut not viable. The damage is far lower than dagger/pistol without an interrupt. No backstab from stealth as well makes it less sought after. It just does everything at a mediocre level compared to other options.

mesmers are dealable, but man they are rough. A good one will always beat me . Its easy to tell which one is the real one, its not easy to deal with all the damage coming from 50 different sources though.

Gankfest.4965:

I’ve played Thief in randoms as well as a Mesmer… Quit playing a Thief to play the Mesmer. Not that I was bad with a Thief, just that I only had to put 10% effort into a Mesmer; rather than 100% with a Thief. A really fun class all around if you know how to play it correctly.

^
This is the truth!

Although i insist playing with my thief, the mesmer requires a lot less effort to play effectively and with the same or even better results.

Hey they can actually have retaliation up 100% of the time with a few utilities and a first tier trait. Or just knowing the great sword combo 2/4. I tried it after seeing one do it. They don’t even need a superdefense build. That retaliation shuts down any instagib you might’ve been hoping to unleash.

i guess using Headshot against defensive guardians might help abit, i’ve tried S/P ( not the burst-mode one) and it works quite good compared to other weapon choices.

i would say that mesmers-guardians are just hard counters. This is bad by default, since in this game there should be no hard counters, but whatever -.-’’

Heavy condition necros are also tough to beat, but it’s doable by any kind of thief build, it’s only tougher.

I’m currently running a S/D+ shortbow power/crit build with mesmer runes, and i can also say that all those stealth bugs are TOTALLY RUINING any try for a stealth thief to be competitive : people will abuse of pets following you in stealth ( AOE HERE !!!!) , of channeling following while stealthed ( AOE HERE !!!) of bouncing attacks hitting you in stealth ( AOE HERE !!!), of their attacks still hitting you, like if you were targettable, A GOOD TIME AFTER you’ve stealthed.

Thief needs tons of fixing on lots of his skills ( FS, Shadow shot, Heartseeker, shadowsteps in general, scorpionwire ) and after that, still i would struggle to find a role to the thief, in a world where every team has 2 mesmers and 2 guardians, with the other being an engeneer.

only certain builds of Mesmers or Guardians are hard counters against certain builds of Thieves. So while its true that a Defensivesly built Guardian will hard-counter a Burst Damage built Thief its not true that Guardian > Thief in general. i don’t have a problem with this situational, contextual, build-specific hard countering. That seems like a fair way to implement a PvP metagame.

metaphorm.6904:

only certain builds of Mesmers or Guardians are hard counters against certain builds of Thieves. So while its true that a Defensivesly built Guardian will hard-counter a Burst Damage built Thief its not true that Guardian > Thief in general. i don’t have a problem with this situational, contextual, build-specific hard countering. That seems like a fair way to implement a PvP metagame.

A well built mesmer ( with arcane thievery/null field or condition removals) can totally shut down any thief.
Especially power/crit mesmers are unbeatable, not only for the thief, but for every class.

The guardian can easily go offensive, with the right build, and have 3k+ toughness.

Those 2 classes hard counter the thief ridicolously, while there’re no counters to them, if not coordinated CC/burst.

This is not the symptom of a good meta game, it’s only the symptom of OP professions dominating PvP ( retri monks ? sounds familiar).

As thieves, we can’t really blame nothing since we’re definitively better ( about performances, surely not about thief design) than most other classes, but hard counters are not how the game has been presented , or rather a game where skill will trump builds/professions .

As long as the game is like this, no matters how brutally i’ll outplay the guardian/ mesmer, he will always win if he’s AT LEAST able to use his stunbreakers.

And for the majority of other classes ( necros, eles and warriors on top), it’s even worse than for thieves.

maybe you/we just haven’t come up yet with the builds that still fairly moderately counter most profs and can deal with and/or shut down the guardian and mesmers with thief vexing build/styles

Volrath.1473

This is the truth!

Although i insist playing with my thief, the mesmer requires a lot less effort to play effectively and with the same or even better results.

a lot less effort than spaming HS? :o

Gawmbles.5308:

Rock paper scissors balancing will not work in this game. The open 5v5 conquest maps require too many 1v1’s for that to even out with teamplay.

Rock paper scissors balancing doesn’t work in any games. It’s nothing but lazy game design, by companies who can’t be bothered to do proper balancing.