Guild Wars 2

• The personality system has been removed.
• The cut-scene presentation has been retired.
• The city that the second third of the story takes place in was destroyed a year after the events of the personal story, but it is destroyed in all city scenes and missions which makes a few things incredibly awkward and confusing.
• When you look at the map to find next closest story location, you don’t know what the nearest available waypoint is until you enter the zone.

Personal story is a deprecated mess that I expect to just get worse and worse and make less sense in the game over-all as Anet moves away from it. From a mechanical and narrative perspective.

It really is a shame. Especially since they had this figured out in GW1 and the route they took left each campaigns story wide open for independent changes. When you took a character from one campaign to another you received some dialog about experiencing events of the past or how they would have transpired if you were there. It all made sense and wasn’t constrained to time, profession or race (Krytan/Canthan/Elonian). But then we also had instanced and repeatable story missions with bonus objectives and two difficulties.

Hooray for progress…

@Nutshell, i’m not going to respond to that because there are so many holes in it that I won’t need to. The narrowness of your mind-set was given away with…

“Can your class kill anybody if toughness is stacked? no”

@Sunshine, if you read the rest of the post I was talking about the base classes themselves. Eles have more in the way of weapon/utility defensive options, self and party heals, immunity, and condition cleansing than thieves do. For sustained range damage they have more options.

The last bit of my post I acknowledge that glass eles aren’t as effective because they are squish.

Which goes back to what I have been saying this entire time. The thief is there to punish glass builds, both from other professions and thieves. The more defensive a player is, the less effective thieves are. The damage a thief does is inversely proportional to your character’s toughness. If you have a problem with the damage you are taking from a thief’s largest possible burst, it’s a problem you created for yourself with your trait and gear choice.

I am trying to be helpful. You can keep QQing on the forums, which will get you pretty much no where. If it does go somewhere, you won’t see the change for months. And when it does come, it won’t be what you expected. OR you could just modify your build to not be gankable because you want to be able gank everyone else.

Vash Past.4385:

“A thief caught out of stealth is a dead thief” – you mean like how an ele caught out of stealth(all the time, since we don’t stealth) is a dead ele? Aaaand because you’re sooo squishy, stuff your Medium armor class? You literally have it so easy you don’t even realize what squishy means. Lol

This is entirely off topic, and I’m not sure you want to get into all of the ele defensive weapon and utility skills, heals, immunities and cleanses.

If you are talking about purely glass vs glass instead of overall survivability, thieves have no sustainable 1200, 900+ range burst and are required to get in 600 range of the target for medium to high damage. Eles don’t.

If your point is that an ele doesn’t have as reliable and as efficient high damage burst against low toughness characters, you are right. That is supposed to be the thieves niche. If every profession had the ability to do everything as well as every other profession, then why have professions to begin with?

You are comparing apples and oranges and the apples ability to be as orange like as possible.

Sunshine.5014:

Saying it’s a glass cannon complaining about another glass cannon is missing the point.

The point is: insta-gib from stealth is toxic. It’s the same thing for fresh air ele, although you can at least see the ele coming. 13k backstab from stealth is toxic. A thief is not a normal glass cannon. It’s a glass cannon with constant access to stealth and teleport. It has way too much advantage.

It’s not missing the point. It is the point. 13k damage isn’t flat across the board. The attack does not ignore armor or protection.

It only exists because the target was also built as a glass cannon and had insufficient burst protection.

• You think 13k backstab is a problem?
  yes
• Do all backstabs hit for 13K+ ?
  no
• Why does it hit you for 13k+ ?
  low toughness
• If you spec conservatively into toughness does it still hit you for 13k?
  no
• Is 13k backstab still a problem?
  no
• Were your choices enabling 13k backstabs to be a possibility?
  yes

Thieves punish and counter-play pure damage or burst based builds. If you didn’t play one of those builds then the thing you claim is toxic wouldn’t exist. Essentially, players are just mad another player is doing to them what they intentionally built to do to other people.

So we have a glass cannon complaining that another glass cannon hit him too hard?

That thief was doing his job. He was picking the squishiest target he seen and annihilating it as fast as possible. Exactly what you would have been doing if there wasn’t a thief there to do it to you first.

I like how zerker Hambows will scream that their build isn’t cheese and people should just use stability. And zerker shield bash + 100b players will defend themselves saying players should just have stun breakers. Well, the thieves think you guys should just have some toughness.

The mindset that one min/maxed build should be balanced against another min/maxed build is what is toxic. Against someone in PvT or toughness traited, Backstab is a good payoff for the investment but not spectacular. Against zerker specs it gets incredible returns for the investment, as it should. If you balance damage with the assumption a player has base toughness, then someone that min/maxes toughness would be practically indestructible.

The thief’s place in PvP is to keep everyone honest (slight irony there). If you throw caution to the wind and run purely offensive, then a thief is going to tag you for it. If a thief comes after you and doesn’t see their sucker numbers, then they will generally leave you alone and find another target. That’s the reason people that get ganked by a bs or pw thief get hit over and over again in the same match. Its because they are the sucker with no toughness.

tl;dr, try to be a glass cannon, then the natural glass cannon profession is going to sniff you out and punish you for it. If you want to be invisible to thief-dar, take some toughness.

I expect that it is working as intended.

If it were a bug, a community manager would have stepped up and said “Hey this is a bug, they are looking into it” by now. They are fairly quick when it comes to acknowledging bugs.

There have been lots of questions about this and they have gone unanswered. And if you look at the last month of posts about this patch, its been a trend that any sort of feedback, criticism, suggestion, complaint or adverse opinion has been met with deft silence.

The new approach seems to be that if we are unhappy with something to ignore us until we go away.

Seeing as how there were people in the mists screaming about this “bug” within an hour of the patch going live, I am fairly sure it is working as intended.

The first thing a certain style of players did was jump into custom arenas with their guild mates and trade wins to boost the tracks.

I don’t see any reason to have a legitimate complaint about this at all unless your intention was to boost rewards, which is borderline exploitative. Team Arenas and Solo Queue are both more rewarding and uncapped.

Glory farming in custom arenas was already nerfed so that there was a glory cap per match because people abused it. Later it was revisited and some players were banned for grievous rank farming in Skyhammer. Those were both previous paths to rewards that had to be restricted. I’m not sure why any one would have not expected rewards tracks to be handled similarly to hinder the same behavior.

The UI is not good. I know it may have been product of being rushed (because that’s how the sort of thing that looks like this happens), but those three buttons across the top of the mists look like some circa 2005 visual basic app that had random square buttons placed because the designer couldn’t think of, or be bothered to come up with something more elegant.

The gear menu is jarring and totally unintuitive in it’s attempt to be minimalist. There was supposed to be a cohesion between PvE and sPvP with this update but the gear and trait UIs are so far removed that its not even initially apparent you are looking at an interface to the same system.

Our weapons now carry over into sPvP, but with the separate builds that means we have to carry the weapon sets with us at all times to jump in and out. Unless I missed it, this is made worse by the lack of bank access in the mists. Four loading screens or wasting two or more trans charges to get the set we want if we don’t have it on us. Why is there a lose lose decision we have to make, if we want to swap out our sets, before we even start playing?

For two years people have gotten into the habit of weapon swapping in the hero window to preview different things, or get a better view of armor. Now weapon swapping is not reflected in hero window. To change to view a different set in the panel, you click the weapon.

When previewing some one handed item skins, my character will randomly become left handed and the offhand weapon will disappear. For example, sword/pistol set when previewing will arbitrarily and obnoxiously decide when previewing pistols to put the pistol in my main hand, hide my sword, and leave nothing in my off hand.

The UI and some of its functions are just a mess. I hope it sees another pass for polish and that sPvP gets a more natural feeling integration into the rest of the game’s traits/gear presentation. And I really hope it doesn’t take years to come around.

Relevant article: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/22/the-power-of-silence-why-the-simcity-story-went-away/

tl;dr, a recent strategy that developers/publishers have adopted is to give players an outlet for them to vent grievances and then just delay or ignore them until the issue goes away. It’s akin to letting the baby cry itself to sleep.

In force, the community is indicating that they really really don’t like this thing you are doing, and they have gotten zero acknowledgement other than a post from Anthony that included some justification and didn’t recognize one single thing we took issue with.

Now in this instance, it may or may not be the case. But either way, Anet should know that that is the way they are making their customers and fans feel. This is how they made customers feel back with Ascended introductions and I think we can all pretty much agree that fiasco is a scar on GW2 history thus far. It may not have turned out that bad in the end because players can largely ignore its existence; however, people left because of those changes. People are still mad about its inclusion. And that incident still comes up as an example of Anet doing an about face on their core design principles and being out of touch with their players.

History is repeating itself. Your customers are telling you what they want. What they need to continue paying your bills. And the silence we get back is deafening.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

Hello!

Here’s some clarification, as I understand that this whole thing is quite complicated to grasp.

• The roll-out plan ultimately include all maps in the open world, including the cities. The speed at which we’ll roll out the system will depends on how the system performs versus our expectations, but the goal is to ultimately cover the whole open world.

• The roll-out is done on a per-map basis. Once a map uses the MegaServer system, it uses it for all Worlds (that is the point of the MegaServer system). The “map population” I am referring to is the average population on the map across all Worlds.

Thanks for your comments!
— Samuel

Sam…Sam…we love you Sam. The thing is, it’s not really that complicated to grasp. The thing is that most of us don’t want it. The thing is it hurts more than it helps on a game wide issue. The thing is the implementation is actually breaking simple features (like the map!).

Well, that’s actually three things. Most of us beta tested the game already. We don’t want to again. We had to wait for months post launch to get the guesting service that was a selling point. So we could have control over who we play with instead of an algorithm deciding for us. So we could do the things we want, when we want, as we can. Not so Anet could force us into a schedule and dictate what we can and cant do on our play time.

These are the things.

Faux.1937:

They fill a map completely to force multi OF maps and try to find a completely empty one, then they will pull only TTS members on TS into that map for the Best chance possible to win.

That is not true. If you are on the TS and you hear a leader say “Taxi on me for overflow” or see someone in the TS chat say they are taxiing to overflow, then you can get in. The TS is open to guests and members are usually spamming the address in /m prior to the move to make sure everyone has ample time to get on that wants to participate.

There is zero favoritism shown to members. Even if they wanted to limit it to members only, that is completely impossible since multiple taxis are bringing in so many people so fast. An overflow fills up in seconds. No one is checking that every single person that requests an invite is a member.

This is all way way off topic and should get back on track. Anyone with questions on how TTS works can visit their website. If you have specific questions, feel free to post on the forums and ask. You will get an answer pretty quick.

Becka Williams.4978:

No, they don’t.

Mass generalizations do not suite you. The community makes up over 6,000 active members. Exactly half of the raids they do are hosted on main instances and totally open to the server community.

The leaders frequently go to other servers to teach that server’s commanders how to effectively run things like Wurm and Teq. And this is done at the request of those servers event guilds.

Even wurm is not 100% exclusive as anyone can look at the website and see the schedule or leader list and ask where they need to be. No favoritism is shown between actual members and guests during migration to a server or overflow. It is purely first come first serve.

Some people seem to be under the misconception that its some exclusive club.

That is incorrect. And also off topic. But I felt the need to make the correction because losing large communities like TTS and TxS would havea negative impact on the game. Quite literally every day there are people that get their first wurm or first Teq kill because a large community was there to organize, teach or help. I don’t understand why anyone would feel the need to disparage those efforts.

downwithdragons.8291:

That’s neat.. so why would you think the “leet” folks with TTS would try to circumvent and break the new system instead of trying to adapt and work within it? just the type of people they are or what?

Large guilds and communities cannot adapt to work within it. Have you been reading any of the last oh…ten pages or so?

This is also not limited to TTS. It also includes TxS, Attuned, GHSC, GASM, PHI (not actually sure if these guys are still active), a Christian community guild with over 400 members, a military community multiserver guild that has two chapters of 500 members, guilds that spawned from other gaming communities and social networks. And those are only the ones that come mind initially, and only in the NA. OCE? Pffft. They don’t even get time slots for world boss spawns.

The point that people are trying to drive home here is that GW has been the game of choice for MANY large, multiserver, multi guild communities. And while they weren’t exactly the best, there were always options for those communities to stick together and do map/world events together. Now there are not. Because the megaserver is jamming everyone together without consideration to multiserver/multichapter guilds.

We get a right click option. That does not solve the problem. We can kickstart events. That does not solve the problem.

What we have now is simply better for everyone except those who play in low pop zones on low pop servers. And even some of them don’t want this.

Also, it breaks the #$#$%%#%$##%ing map. Hello out there, do any of you not see that as an issue? Implementing a thing that breaks half a dozen other things and just put a bow on it and call it a feature…seem a bit weird? To anyone else?

pulseunit.8296:

This feels a bit like tearing down St Paul’s Cathedral and replacing it with a Christian Processing Mega-Facility.

Sure you get to process a lot more Christians, a lot more efficiently but you can’t quantify what you have lost. So it’s impossible to argue against, it happens, we all deal with it and two years later no-one can remember what it was like before.

Stupid progress.

This assumes people are so apathetic towards the changes that they stick around for two years. This is a consumer market. People demonstrate displeasure with their wallets. There happen to be two new high-profile contenders for our money.

And as someone noted in a meeting I was in last night “its really easy to spend more for gems in a month or three months than you would on three months of time in a sub game. This is the first time a subscription could end up saving me money”.

This just makes no sense at all unless ANet just really really misunderstand player needs. In which case we are here to bounce these sort of drastic ideas off of. Does this just demonstrate to us that the CDI is all bread and circuses?

Star Ace.5207:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Pretty sure people already posted it, but…

How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.

“Bravo” for calling people you don’t know “unremovable dead weight.” News: not every random player is an idiot who must by necessity ruin your meta world events just by being there. Some despicable attitude right there.
…

Star Ace, bird has a point. Even if they worded it in probably the worst way possible. Other player on the map are not “dead weight” with regard to the raid attempt because of their personal skill level or experience. It has no personal connotation at all, what-so-ever.

In reality, a good portion of people that show up for community runs are new, not very experienced, cant or won’t get on voice comm, may not even speak the same language as everyone else, and are far far far from what you would consider a “l337 player”.

Fact of the matter is just that other people in a map that aren’t participating in raid activities seriously hurt the odds of being successful.

Just to throw some numbers out there…a map roughly caps a 150. For Wurm in particular you need kitten people per path to have a fair shot at success. Now suppose mega-server has placed 20-30 people on the map that have no interest in Wurm. They might be there for map completion, or skill points, or a guild bounty, or Covington or whatever other business they have. Those people are essentially dead weight , against the server cap, for that attempt. A guild or community organizing the raid under those conditions has no chance for success.

Basically guild/community raids now are at the complete mercy of the megaserver algorithm. If your people get on maps with a dozen or more people that dont care for the world events, or are afk, then you are just SOL.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Also known as an underflow and suggested many times previously.

Underflows were dynamically generated instances based on zone population that get sort of messy when you consider how Transferring to main might be offered and what main map pop should be to trigger it. Or if you didn’t want to go into an underflow due to timers.

What I propose is more along the lines of what we expected megaservers to be before Anet Britta’d it.

The lowest pop zones are always mega servers. Mains for those zones do not exist. They have their own timers and their waypoints are reflected on everyone’s maps in general. If those maps somehow hit cap, it would work just like an overflow does now. The zones are outlined or have shiny borders on the map, the portals in are greener or bluer, so you know regardless of how you enter that you are walking into a common instance among all servers. Beyond those areas, the rest of the game is left untouched and the player’s at large end up exponentially happier than they will be.

Since this thread has had a lot of criticism and not many suggestions, I am going to toss one out there. +1 if you think its an approach closer to what players actually want and the game needs…

Megaserver consolidation should happen in areas that have consistently seen 20 players or less during peak hours. And it should be virtually transparent.

Categorize them as a new type of zone. Let’s call them “Communal zones” or “Shared Regions”. Outline them on the world map as blue or something so players have a quick visual indicator for if they are entering a shared area.

That will actually create it’s own sort of draw. Since those places could be seen as cross server game hubs where players can meet up and play together without necessarily burning a guest pass.

If the goal of this was facilitating friendly play. Mission accomplished. Low pop areas are higher populated and can serve a purpose. Existing communities remain intact. Every player, regardless of schedule or geography, has ample opportunities to participate in world events.

This Leaves the rest of the game and bosses alone and doesn’t break the map

Nage.1520:

Nexxius.6017:

A really hope anet come to their senses and cancel the mega-server before there’s a mass migration back to WoW, Aeon, Rift and Final Fantasy 14.

The mega server will more likely save the game than kill it. Everyone on an underpopulated server is complaining, people playing at off hours are complaining and people who play on busy servers are complaining that they can’t get on their servers because you people keep guesting to them.

This is probably the best bit about the entire patch. It’s a major improvement to the game. Time will bear this out.

I’m not saying this to try and BS anyone, or make hollow threats or anything like that. I just want to say that Nexxius isn’t totally off track. At least when it comes to my reaction.

I am a huge GW and Anet fan. I was there from day one of the original, right up until Winds of change. I have the GW2 CE, artbook, and soundtrack. I have been waiting on the Chinese CE to pop up on Play Asia so I could import that also. My fiance has an Etsy store where she sells Quaggan plushies we make together!

I do not play any other MMOs and have always been staunch against sub fees.

All that said, yesterday after reading the blog, I was so disappointed and put off that I reflexively purchased a game about stars. Its supposed to be wild. Consequently, thats where my monthly budget for “fun/game stuff” will be going instead of gems.

I couldn’t even bring myself to log in to GW yesterday, and I play everyday. Ev-er-y day. I know I’m just one person, but I’m one person of the type that has always supported Anet’s decisions (well 90% of the time) and never thought Id turn my back on them after being a fan for going on a decade now. So if this change can put off a player like me, how will it affect lesser personally invested players that are more mercurial or migratory in play habit?

I won’t reiterate everything in the 10 page long feedback thread. Ill just summarize by saying this change is horrible for communities, horrible for the player economy, horrible for exploration, horrible for non-peak time players, and horrible for casual players that can’t adhere to the strict boss schedules. It even breaks the map. You can read up there to hear all of the explanations and more about how this patch seems great on the surface, but when you get into the fine print, it’s a community killer.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Lord Kuru.3685:

AcidicVision.5498:

No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

LOL!! I’ve always seen going FTP as implying impending shutdown as well.

It is. If a game is not making enough money via subs to sustain the game, it usually goes f2p and then shuts down 2-3 months after that point.

Naming other games on the forum generally isn’t looked nicely upon by mods. But there are no less than six (seven. Just thought of another one) MMOs over the course of the last five to six years that have gone free to play and are still releasing regular content with healthy sustainable player populations.

It has almost become the norm for a game to release with a sub, and then go FTP when box sales taper off. You could probably place a Vegas bet on how long the latest two will stick to their sub model. It’s not a good norm and that’s way off topic and for a separate discussion in another place. But there is no denying it has become a trend over the last few years and FTP conversion hasn’t had a correlation with shut down.

That said, we should stay on topic.

Hiding a merge or working around it, the gains do not justify the costs for players.

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s interesting. I wonder if that’s how a lot of MMO vets feel about server merges (this is my first MMO and I’ve always associated server merging with impending doom).

A few games, a notable one that focuses on a galaxy far far away, seen more activity and became more profitable after server consolidation.

All MMOs see server merges eventually. Some of them have seen several and are still alive and kicking and a lot of fun. Considering it a death knell isn’t really accurate anymore. No more than a sub game going FTP is really indicative of impending shut down. Its just trend.

Which makes this entire thing silly if it was just a way to camouflage a merge. It makes no sense to have upset this number of people to just avoid the “rofl game is dead server merge!” kiddies. Especially since they are going to be saying it anyways.

IMO this is exactly what they say it is. Just a way to reinvigorate dead zones since all of the paths to leveling, paltry rewards, and lack of motivation have left them ghosttowns. Its not that there is a lack of players. Its that no players have any need to go those places for anything other than map completion. And a server merge wouldn’t help that at all. But consolidating all the people in the game that are doing map completion, or whatever else, into those areas at the same time will make them seem more populated.

The problem is that every…single…thing…revolving around this change besides that comes at a very high cost (Like breaking the fraking map) and it just isn’t worth it.

If condensing instances to save money was the issue, then they could have just merged a few servers and created an underflow for traditionally low pop zones.

Server merges are a thing that happens with MMOs. It’s normal and pretty much expected at some point. This mega-server thing is pretty much a forced underflow system and with how they are rolling it out, we know that it can be localized.

Cut six servers ,have a category of maps that defaults to underflow, have overflows for hubs and big meta events.

As far as WvW goes, you have two less total matches going on, but the influx of players to the higher end bronze or low end silver leagues gives those servers more resources so there is the potential for closer matches or the pop push those servers needed to move up.

That would preferable, and a “cleaner” solution for the game overall if cutting servers and reducing instances needs to happen to reduce cost.

Given the latest earnings report, and the launch coming up in China, I wouldn’t expect the upkeep budget to be this big of an issue. But it is NCSoft and they make funny decisions sometimes.

In my opinion, Anet wouldn’t knowingly spurn this much of its core player base and disrupt the way people play the game so drastically just to obfuscate a server merge.

Just bad news all around man.

Krassix.4017:

You will lose a lot of long time players over this change, I guarantee it.

I know of three different “emergency” meetings being held tonight by three different prominent communities (talking between 600 and thousands of players apiece) for their leaders to discuss what they are going to do when these changes come along. If/how they can adapt, and if its even worth it given new options available in the market.

One of those communities has been together for years and has migrated between quite a few games, so they are no strangers to packing up shop when something in a game gets in their way of doing what they enjoy, which is playing together.

Needless to say this dropped like a bomb-shell on a lot of people and the opinions are not optimistic.

I hope Anet seriously reconsiders this system. Or that someone comes along soon and at least says they are taking a closer look at it given the feedback. …I mean…they want to launch something that actually broke the map. That just blows my mind.

Becka Williams.4978:

Essentially, large guilds (read: TTS) will be able to start the 3 Mega Bosses (and only those 3 (teq, 3 worm, and karka) off timer). These bosses will spawn 3 times a day, because apparently, people had to it too good before. Oh yes, the best part? TTS apparently doesn’t have the ability to start the world bosses because they don’t accumulate influence, and most guilds don’t have NEARLY enough people online to make it worth their while to spawn teq or the worm.

TTS isn’t a guild. Its a community made up of about 12 guilds and over six-thousand members. All from different servers. The guild structure is essentially used for them to organize, but since the member base is so large, varied and spread out, they don’t actually do guild missions, upgrades or spend influence. Tbh, I would be surprised if the leaders of each respective guild even knew what their guilds home server was.

So I wouldn’t be looking for TTS to start kickstarting the raid events for a good while.

If you really want to know “the best part”, it’s that guilds like TTS and TxS exist purely so everyone can get a fair shot at harder world events with no bias towards server or guild. Because some of them require more coordination than your typical map full of random people can get together on the fly. Now, not only do the problems that necessitated those communities still exist, but the new changes reduce their ability to organize and provide community services in a reliable way.

It could almost be viewed as Anet intentionally trying to sabotage players. We know that’s not the case, but consider…

1. They introduce open world bosses that require nearly full maps, high degrees of coordination and communication, are prone to player griefing, and do not scale effectively with consideration to players mapping the zone, harvesting, or just too-ra-looing around.

2. The playerbase reacts by creating large communities of like-minded players, that span across all servers to come together at designated times and run these events for themselves and for the general playerbase.

3. Anet reacts in a “feature patch” by obliterating those communities methods of organizing and puts in a guild system as a concession that is functionally useless for events that require 150 people because the ambient population of the zone has increased by an average of more than 200%. AND now they are limiting the amount of attempts in any given day.

Tell me that despite all reason, it doesn’t feel like we are just repeatedly set up to fail?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it
  • deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it
  • help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content
  • help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc
• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

I see what you guys think you are doing. And I see where you want it to go.

What most of the people are trying to get across (and I have to say I’m honestly surprised it’s stayed so civil), is that it’s not going to go that way.

These changes are not helping the players. Without seeing them. Without playing them. The concepts alone are fundamentally flawed with regard to how people actually enjoy playing and the things they do.

Were there ever any complaints that there were just too many chances in a day to kill Teq? Did anyone ever post that it would be really swell if we couldn’t get any information at all about what was going on in the world from the map? How many communities said they were a-o-k with it being more difficult to get their large guild together in one place because the zones had become a melding pot? And finally, I don’t recall seeing the public outcry for guilds to be able to kick off world bosses in a public zone where they actually have no possible way to ensure they can get enough of their own members there to organize it because there might be 20 people in the instance somewhere AFK at the bottom of a lake.

I know you all worked kitten this. And are pretty proud of its capabilities. But you have your customers here pretty much begging you to not do this because of the detriment it will be to the many different communities they make up and the things in the game they enjoy. These changes are hurting exponentially more people they are going to benefit.

Again, the fact it takes twice as much to travel and two loading screens just to know if you can go to the place you want to go or do the thing you want to do should be a GIANT indication that this is on a horribly wrong path.

Bonus:
Two of my favorite quotes so far, from a notable community outside of these forums:
“We lose so much flexibility just so we can run across four more people in Lornar’s Pass? No thanks.”

and

“So I have to map somewhere before I know where I can map, where I can’t, what’s open, what events have been done, and I may or may not know anyone there. Waypointing is like being in a broken Tardis”

Megaserver can be awesome. This is not awesome. It needs some more time in the oven. If devs need to take the time to do some more backend work with regard to waypoints, instances and guilds then everyone would rather have that than a system we have to beat our heads against just to have what we already have with the addition of a few more people in dead zones.

I don’t want to be “that” guy, but this is the first time since launch you have seen any sort of real competition in the market. These server changes are overwhelmingly horrifying and the people they hurt the most (ie. the large communities and multi-guild alliances) are the ones that are most likely to be migratory when there are too many hurdles for them to organize through. And you are making it nearly impossible for multi-guild/multi-server communities to facilitate practically anything.

They were already limited before, but at least the option to guest to a low pop server and all be in the same place with instance room to do the same thing was available. And if all else failed, the system allowed for overflow creation which was almost like creating a personal instance. For good or bad, it was at least an option when you needed/wanted a group of 100+ together. Now any option is gone. Just gone. And if you are in a multi-server guild or have multiple guilds then you are totally at the mercy of the Megaserver as it scatters your guild-mates to the wind.

This is so bad.

Just…

I cant even…

This is no good. This is no good at all. You guys should really step back and re-think this entire thing.

Merging players across server together in low pop zones is awesome. Great idea. Everyone but super paranoid RPers love the idea of a more populated world.

But setting bosses to a twice a day schedule while merging multiple communities at the same time? That is nightmare fuel. The bi-hourly schedule was fine. It would have allowed people to adapt and given everyone that isn’t necessarily a “peak player” options for events.

Letting guilds start the event was the right direction, but implemented horribly. Colin, Anthony, and the other devs there know it takes ~150 highly coordinated people and preparation to kill Wurm. It does absolutely no good, at all, to be able to trigger the encounter when you are in a server that consists of a hodge-podge mix of players from all over the place. There is no consistent way to get all of your members or guests on the same instance. Yes, yes, I understand you can “right click join”, but what if there are 30 people in the map that aren’t interested in the wurm and are doing their own thing? The guild cannot succeed.

The ability for guilds to trigger events, and PvE instances becoming server agnostic directly conflict with one another.

Finally, not being able to see the state of waypoints on the map? I’m sorry, but that seems like a very half-kitten implementation. You look at the map to find where you want to go, and to see what the closest waypoint is to that place. If we can’t get that simple information, then you have broken the absolute most basic point of having the map to begin with. There has to be a more elegant and functional solution than “make all the contestable waypoints contested all the time!”

Consider that for a moment. At a fundamental level, this approach has broken the freaking map and player’s world awareness. That is a big, bold, screaming, blatant red flag that this is going in the wrong direction.

I generally support you guys. And I am a huge fan of the “wait and see, have faith” approach. But conceptually this is bad man. This is very very bad. You need to not do this.

Seconded. The Minstrel finisher should really keep the bobble head. It has this excellent jack-in-the-box vibe to it that would be a shame to lose.

I don’t mind the rank change. A good portion of the higher rank people now were just Skyhammer farmers anyways and since there is no way to differentiate, the entire system is pointless.

What I think would be pretty awesome is if Anet added a new series of ranks up to 120-150 or so. It doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon since they capped it at 80 and are making rank up past that work similar to level up at 80 in PvE.

Another really neat thing would be CoD style “prestige”. When a player hits 80 give them the option to reset their rank and change the color of finishers. Prestige up once and your finishers turn white, then blue, then purple, then red. I think that works with the current system and cap, and over time some importance could be applied to rank again since farmers either stop at 80 or have to work their way up through prestige tiers like everyone else.

For whatever it’s reasons are, Anet seems to like dealing with actors unions.

One of the downsides of that, in my experience, is that unions don’t like it when companies hand over significant voice work to in-house employees (over 300 lines of dialog, recurring roles, or any other way they might decide to measure “significant”) and reserve union actors for special purposes. Union representatives could just deny actors to that company in the future.

Then the burden of time and resources falls on the company to handle open call auditions when they can’t fill a role in-house. That leads to more problems if the independent actor is needed again later and isn’t available for whatever reason or demands higher compensation.

tl;dr
It could just be as simple as Anet not having the time or desire to micromanage auditions, terms, schedules, and actors so they streamline that through a union and they avoid in-house, open call or guest work so they don’t make the union mad.

A lot of the PvP achievements are tied to the tournament modes only. I know that’s why a lot of my guild-mates stick to team arenas instead of hotjoin. They want their champion titles.

Personally, Capricorn was one of my favorite maps and pretty much the only reason I will jump into hot join anymore occasionally instead of sticking to team and solo queues exclusively.

It was a small map that had good fights, the boat was under utilized by players and the underwater point with shark allies was a nice mix up from all of the other maps.

I think underwater areas in games just get a bad rap overall because players aren’t comfortable with having to consider that additional axis. This is also observed in flight/space based games. The most popular are on rails that only untether the player in certain circumstances. And the ones that aren’t only find a niche audience.

The underwater system (aside from the insane gravity when you try to jump out and miss) is among, if not thee, best that I have seen in any online game or MMO. And the environments themselves in most cases have just as much going on as the surface areas.

It’s a shame they either get the axe altogether or end up neglected because players reflexively dismiss the concept of underwater features at the mere mention.

Edit: Why not the opposite? Anet has been undergoing this huge movement the last few months to teach people to play the game better via boss mechanics and LS encounters. The issue with UW isn’t that it’s not good, its that people aren’t good at it and its been traditionally bad in gaming as a whole, so they respond negatively. A better solution would have been to make an entire Underwater map that focuses on the freedom of movement and pitch. Throw it in hot join rotation and customs arenas so people can learn and adapt. That leaves open the possibility for more underwater content and hybrid maps later instead of removing the potential completely.

I think everyone is getting ahead of themselves. We don’t know yet how much the traits will cost from profession trainers. And even if we did, we have no idea how long it would take to get the funds needed via pvp only, because we don’t know what the final reward system looks like.

So it’s just as likely this is all much ado about nothing than it is anything else. Folks should demonstrate a little patience and a least get all of the information or a little experience with it before locking in those opinions.

Tbh I dont even miss the chests. I already had every (or kitten near every) skin available from the win reward chests. For months now I have been getting nothing but dupes that I would have to salvage to make room in inventory, so I could stock up on mats that would only craft something I didn’t have 1/10 tries…

Glory chests weren’t much better. You would get nearly every piece of the common sets and weapons for a tier within the first dozen or two. Then you were just wasting glory on dupes and salvages.

They were more of an inconvenience than anything.

I think its more of the psychology behind getting the shiny chest for winning than the actual contents. It was recognition for victory that wasn’t just a barely noticeable bar on the bottom of the screen slowly filling.

I contend that the the only real loss here was being able to buy bags with glory for alts. Otherwise, I can go a few weeks without adding to my piles of dust and shards to see what they come up with as replacement. I just hope its not that dumb 1 chest per 10 ranks system in place now permanently. Three greens and a scroll of wisdom is not sufficient reward for the time, frustration and persistence it takes to get to rank 40,50,60+.

Loves it. This is more of what Mesmers should be about. In GW1 the entire class was based around CC and locking down the opponents skill bar. And you had to be good enough to hit 1 sec to 1/2 sec casts with your own 1/3 sec skills. Monk spot heals usually needed to be baited or anticipated. If there is going to be a class in the game that collectively teaches the community that spamming is awful and that careful, deliberate skill timing is the way to play…it will be old school style Mesmers.

Mantra of distraction is going to be brilliant.

Now if only Echo were a proper Echo…

I, for one, missed skill and trait hunting from GW. And I’m glad to see it back in some form. I wish it were still just skill unlocks instead, so we could have neat novelty PvE skills that throw back to EoTn days. Nothing so OP or required as some of the faction skills, more along the lines of cultural elites (cultural utilities?). That would give players a major incentive to do harder, out of the way content.

As far as how that plays in PvP, progression in the form of traits is pretty cool. It’s not exactly progression you can showcase. I guess that’s what rank is for. But contrary to popular belief, options are not always proportional to power. And until we see an instance where two new grandmaster and a new master trait, user together, become the one build to rule them all, it’s sort of jumping the gun and speculating to argue the point. Just falling prey to a “MOAR is Powherr!@!!!1111!” mentality.

All of the classes have new heals. Did thieves get more powerful with the addition of skelk venom? In almost all cases, no. But it’s a nice option to have if you are using a venoms build. Residual, leeching and venomous strength play with it nicely. Are all thieves now running venoms? Is that heal mandatory if you are? Did it all of the sudden make venoms more viable than they were? Absolutely not. It is what it is, another option to people who might have a play-style more inclined towards it. I believe that traits are designed to fall into that same niche.

If it’s not something you would use, or doesn’t mesh well with your style, then you can just skip it and be non the worse. The only people this change could even possibly come close to inconveniencing or setting back to any degree that might be reflected in performance, are those that just jump on the meta train and copy the flavor of the month build to score easy wins before the community solves it, without a single kitten given to how or why it works. And thats assuming dominant meta is ever based on any of these traits.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Also, there is a limit to how coordinated a zerg of strangers can be. Expecting intricate raid-level coordination from peeps logging in and jumping on to participate in a large group event is again sign of a larger problem.

Are you talking about the event or the achievement? The level of coordination required for a zerg of strangers was right around the marionette level to complete I think. It was tough, but far from impossible once everyone got a grasp of the mechanics and how to handle each Knight. I mean, that random group of zerg strangers did get proficient enough to aim for the achievement. So the baseline difficulty for the event itself wasn’t beyond everyone’s capabilities. Super organized or otherwise.

The achievement was meant for raid levels of coordination. That’s why it was an achievement. A recognition for doing something that was above and beyond what was just required to move on. You shouldn’t and don’t get every achievement just for doing what you are supposed to in order to proceed. Your wife doesn’t give you a trophy every time you remember to put the lid down. Your boss doesn’t give you a raise every time you are on time. You didn’t get the “good” ending in games that had multiple for sitting on the comfy critical path.

Yes. I do have the achievement. But defending the content has nothing to do with ego. It has to do with the belief that the game needs some content like this that requires a step up in organization and communication. I did not get the Spider achievements or the Admiral. And I don’t blame luck for it. I could have dodged his AoE, and I could have done a better job breaking egg sacks or snaring up the spider. I won’t try to blame what I didn’t do on some phantom factors beyond my control to excuse the fact I would rather complain about it.

I enjoy the Wurm, I enjoy Teq, I enjoyed Marionette, and I enjoyed the 6 min attempts in LA more than the actual Scarlet fight. Because I, and the hundreds of other people that organize in servers, create overflows, get on chat clients, make posts to advertise runs on websites enjoy those large scale events and it’s a breath of fresh air compared to the 99.8% of the rest of the game that is the video equivalent of a casual Sunday stroll in the park.

And the game doesn’t rely on 3rd party tools. Beating the knights, succeeding at the event and getting the loot was entirely possible without checking reddit or the forums for game events. Without teamspeak, mumble, raidcall or some other voip program. You didn’t need to have a 50mbps+ internet connection.

But, again, for the people that want that level of organization and coordination, there was an achievement that was in no way required for anything. And if you wanted that achievement, those resources were open to everyone. If _you_chose not to remove the luck factor, then that’s on you and nothing/no one else.

It’s really sad to see people would just rather have anything that they can’t do, for whatever their individual reasons/excuses might have, removed entirely than see a diverse set of content, objectives, and goals set up to accommodate a range of play styles.

Players will always be able to consume content faster than it is designed. You make that content care-bear easy and 1/3 of the players complete what amounted to months of work in less than 3 hours…then they aren’t going to keep playing. One piece of content that can satisfy multiple types of players, from super casual, to weekend warrior, to hardcore, should be appreciated. Not b*tched about because you couldn’t do something for a reward that had zero in game impact on the event.

@sablephoenix, none of those guilds or community events require membership. This is something you would know if you bothered looking into being involved. In fact, most of them dont even have rep requirements if you do decide to join so they become a second, or third guild to their members.

@Wolfpaq, you are cherry-picking my post. The achievement is not “luck based” it is organization and skill based. The people that get lucky are the ones that just happen to venture into an overflow where a community or alliance is making a run. That is bound to happen with any open world event.

The event rewards skill and hardwork (after it was fixed) for those that want to put the work in. Most of the people that think it requires luck are the ones that were just counting on luck to get it and then getting upset when they didnt. Like Sablephoenix for example. She is quick to come on the forums and go on a tirade about how horrible it is she can’t get the achievement after trying 30 times and not getting “lucky”, but couldn’t be bothered to come on the forums to get the info to participate in one of the dozens of successful public events. She had the option to remove 100% of the luck element, and chose not to. And then complains about it.

Sorry, no sympathy. The information, the tools, the communities, the time, and the support were all there. The ones who decided to take advantage of those things are the ones enjoying their shiny APs. The people QQing about it now have spent more time and energy failing the event and complaining about it, than it would have taken to get info on a public event, jump in and get it done.

Temple of Ages is in the bottom of Godslost swamp.

kgptzac.8419:

AcidicVision.5498:

snip

If you read this thread in its entirety, you will find most of your points already debunked. “Get organized and do something about it” isn’t really a valid response for this particular achievement. It’s not like an entire guild of 150 people can open up a private overflow. If that’s possible then sure, it would be fair. But we all know it isn’t possible, thus we are asking no more of such achievement.

And also being bugged one week out of two weeks window didn’t help.

Actually, an entire guild of 150+ people can open up their own overflow. And large guilds do it pretty frequently. Its been done for Wurm, Karma, Marionette, and Wardens. Sure you will end up with some players that just get lucky and happen to be zoning in, but more often than not, they are there for the achievement anyways and are willing to listen to the guild/alliance running the event.

Attunement did regular runs. TTS, TxS. And Mireles Lore hosted public events that were advertised on reddit and these forums. 9/10 of those organized community runs were done via creating an overflow and shuttling in the people that wanted to participate.

And before anyone chimes in “you shouldn’t have to be part of a large organized blah blah blah”….yes. Yes you should. That is exactly who this achievement was designed for. Those players that want that kind of challenge, preparation, planning and coordination. If that’s not your style, then you don’t have to do it.

Despite what a lot of you want to believe, there are players that love that sort of content and a single encounter can keep them busy for hours. Nearly the entire game is catered to casual and very forgiving play. So how do you make an event that will push casuals to at least be somewhat competent with the mechanics, and engage those that want something more challenging? You put in a totally optional speed run or milestone achievement for them to work for that everyone else can freely ignore.

Just because some players don’t want to make the effort, doesn’t mean things should be removed from those that do. Its a “If I cant do it, and I cant have it, then no one should” mentality. That’s the exact opposite of what you want in a game, which is content that can appeal to a wide audience in one way or another to keep the game healthy.

There were three options here:

• No difficulty – craft a cheap event back-piece, hop through a portal and see the finale.
• Average difficulty – defeat watch knights, fight Scarlet, see finale.
• High difficulty – defeat watch knights in six minutes, fight scarlet, see finale.

Thee approaches for three different types of players. You don’t see as many people making a big deal out of the In tune achievement as this. Why do you suppose that is? Because you can go into Scarlet fight, get the attunement and hit the hologram three times and then just run around without attacking and leech off everyone else for it. Six Minutes to Knightfall doesn’t allow that reward through laziness. And that makes people upset.

Tbh I really can’t take any of the QQ regarding these things seriously. This particular cheese and whine has been served up by some facet of the community since the reveal of the achievement system.

People thought it was unfair they had to do jumping puzzles for AP; people thought it was unfair they had to PvP for AP; or play dungeons; or only had a measly two weeks to find the time to get on and accomplish something; or do anything that may require some effort or problem solving beyond maniacally giggling while pounding on the keyboard like an over-stimulated monkey.

Now its the exact same thing for six minutes to Knightfall. It was an achievement. There was no special loot. There was no title. You didn’t even have to do it to get the meta because you could substitute if with a daily. It was an extra challenge specifically put there for people that wanted to tackle it.

There were options. Everyone knows the high pop servers that they can guest to and try to help. Or get into a full overflow. Many of you know about the large, public event guilds that do these things multiple times a day for the entire duration of an event. There were reddit posts for servers and alliances hosting six minute runs. And last but not least, how do you think all of those things that led to successful runs started out? They started with a player that couldn’t do the event on their server or by themselves and decided to do something about it.

There is a legitimate complaint with the achievement. And that is that it was broken for a week and some people that did earn it, didn’t get their little badge that only they can see and sense of personal accomplishment.

Other than that, if you were unable to get the achievement, it is honestly your own fault. Instead of pursuing one of the many avenues available to get it done quickly and easily, you decided the path of least resistance would be to just give up and complain about it. Anet did not make this content for players like that. But they do have them in mind — there was a special portal that could be used to jump right to Scarlet and see the finale of the entire LS season. And yet, people still found a way to say that was too difficult. You had to dodge twice and press F!

Leechers, trolls and bugs are a different story. But to blame not getting it done on server, or difficulty, or that you had no opportunity is just a cop out for not wanting to make even the slightest effort besides showing up in the instance and hoping.

Zirith.6429:

If the evade is removed then the skill is useless, you cant have a channeled skill on the squishiest class in the game that roots you without some form of defence. Everyone in this thread is acting like they are taking 8k per pw at all times but that is actually impossible against anyone half decent. Most pw do 3-5k tops because people get out of the way.

This doesnt even touch on the fact that is you remove the evade frames, unless the skill is separated from the PvE version, you completely destroy the weapon set for PvE.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I suck atm at this game but there are thieves who really are alot worse than me and they can dominate right now. The game is unplayable

My advice to you is maybe then get better before weighing in on balance issues? The thief has low barrier to entry gimmicks that any player can get comfortable with and score some points. The same as warriors.

But when a player knows how to handle those gimmicks, the thief just dies. And dies. And dies. The skill cap to be useful and survive once your gimmicks no longer work is a lot steeper than most of the other professions.

Most of the anger here is from people that just cant or won’t adapt to beat the gimmick so they want the game changed for them instead.

In tPvP sword/pistol thieves are waaaaaaayyyy less common than they are in hot join, and there are fewer all the time. If it was so OP, why wouldn’t it be dominant in organized play? Because sword/pistol is not viable and Pistol Whip leaves the Thief much too vulnerable on a stun break or evade. In fact, there isn’t a single cookie cutter Thief meta in tPvP right now. But signet of spite/epi Necros, shatter/sword Mesmers, Diamond skin Eles, and Engi bunkers are gaining more and more traction.

You dont nerf an entire class or skill because a sub-group’s (PvP) sub-group’s (hot join/solo queue players), sub-group’s (that use the forums), sub-group (and cant seem to figure out pistol whip) refuse to step it up.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Be aware that shaving thief is not sufficient. Big nerfs are required as it makes even warrior look bad

We must not be playing the same game…

Shield bash for a stun twice as long, hundred blades, with opportunist in the crit trait line that also happens to reduce its 8 sec CD by 20% AND gives might…all while have three times the health and armor glass specced.

I don’t know about other thief players, but i’d be happy to trade 1.5sec of evade for 3x my health and armor and my init recharge in my crit line.

The warrior right now has higher burst and sustained damage than the class that is supposed to trade burst for frailty. It has a better Pistol Whip than thieves, and doesn’t even need a pistol.

With the upcoming boost to rank, are we also going to see a crack down on farming in custom arenas or hot join?

IMO nothing should be awarded for custom arenas because they are just way too easy to boost in.

As we speak, Sky Hammer farming is undermining the intrinsic value of rank and the time people spend in tournament queues and matches trying to earn it legitimately.

To a lesser, but similar, degree you have obvious ladder ranked teams queue dodging each other in order to boost glory from non ranked teams as quickly as possible (the leaders do this by communicating when their team has entered a match so the other team can queue up). This particular issue is irksome because it hearkens back to the days of smurf guilds abusing the ladder in GW.

Now in two weeks we are going to see the removal of glory, and an increase in rank rewards. Two things will result from this, as I understand it: casuals will be less involved in PvP since the skins and currency are removed (when rewards and pve/pvp crossover is introduced they will return), and the number of rank boosters and queue dodgers, along with their activity, will increase exponentially. This will continue trivializing the entire rank system.

If we look at this type of boosting in the past…
When IWAY became the popular build in GW, those players using it amassed rank quickly by using a very strong, low skill build and farming Hall of Heroes. This went on for so long unchecked, before expansions and balance patches removed it from being dominant meta, that the average IWAY player’s rank was 6-8 or higher. Most other players were in the 3-5 range. Rank became the measurement through which you found parties. And the minimum teams wanted was 6 or higher. So if you wanted to play Heroes Ascent and did not participate in IWAY rank farming, you were almost completely locked out of HA PvP. That was a negative impact of allowing the trivializing of rank that wasn’t full realized until years after the fact.

So…I hope you guys have something in mind.

Vile.5678:

IS = INFILTRATOR’S STRIKE

Oh! Your doubles is’es got me. I can totally see how that looks like a long time initially.

But, I mean, look at what will follow…
Pistol whip, which is half second stun after a 3/4 cast. Infiltrator strike > pistol whip would not even be possible to combo if you reduced the stun.

If you are using sword/dagger then flanking strike is a half second cast with larcenous follow up that is another half second. It would be really difficult to combo those and survive without a stun on Infiltrator’s.

I believe the stun was balanced over what is naturally supposed to follow and to allow for burst setups while still giving the target time to break. Minus that stun, you would never land a sword dual skill against a competent player.

Reikou.7068:

Main thief.

I think Pistolwhip is more broken (doesn’t work well with GW2’s mechanics) than “unbalanced.”

If I could change PW, I’d remove the second-part (the slashing and evade) of PW altogether.

Instead make PW a two part skill. First part, a stun, and the second part a singlestrike akin to Larcenous strike. No evade, no root, no slashing.

That removes just about every bit of damage from the entire weapon set. The damage would need to be so high on that one hit, to be consistent with other dual skills and keep s/p a viable option, that it would be infinitely worse than PW. Then traited for crit? You would be looking at backstab meta all over again with the benefit of headshot in the back pocket.

What people fail to see in general is that the startup, duration, root, traits, and init cost work in the targets favor. Start up allows for avoidance, duration allows for stun break and recovery, root allows for punish, traits to get that extra init make the thief squishier, init cost locks out head shot and black powder after set up.

Vile.5678:

On a side note I think the immobilization on IS is too long.

The immobilization duration is both less than the cast time of the skill and 1/3 of the duration of attack frames.

It is one of the shortest stuns in the entire game.

Unless you are talking about the root on the thief for using the skill. We are stuck in place for nearly two seconds. That is quite a long time. I wouldn’t say “too long”, more like just long enough since there are staggered evades. The skill wind down is usually where the thief will get destroyed. Especially if she tries to use the skill again.

There is nothing wrong with pistol whip. It has already been nerfed into the ground by several reactionary patches. The result is that instead of players ever learning how to deal with thieves they just come scream en masse on the forums and wait for the next one.

There is a very obvious startup to be avoided; if you get hit, a CC can be used to break and that leaves the thief rooted; if you cant break the CC the stun is shorter than the attack duration and you can just dodge to avoid it if it’s being spammed.

A pistol whip spamming thief is essentially a still target. A thief can infiltrate in and use pw, then infiltrate out for a relatively safe short burst. Or it can spam pistol whip maybe three times depending on the situation and essentially be stuck in place. But the thief can’t do both.

After you have seen (or used) the skill a handful of times you can also recognize the recovery frames and punish after the evasion. There is absolutely zero difference between how you would treat a thief mid pistol whip and how you would treat a mesmer mid blurred frenzy. A thief can’t just cancel pistol whip evasion into pistol whip evasion to avoid punishment because of the start up frames. When you see it, stuff it.

I main a thief and since launch I have switched from Sword/Pistol in sPvP to Dagger/Dagger because Sword/Pistol and pistol whip is no longer effective in tPvP and solo queue in most instances. It was the thief meta for so long, and so many people are familiar with it that it, gets shut down hard outside of hotjoin zerg-fest glory farming.

Mesmers have blurred Frenzy and more than double the base health of a thief. Warriors get hundred blades, top tier base hp and toughness. In exchange thieves get evasion on their duel skills, damage that is directly proportional to how easy they are to murder and some tools to gtfo when their setups botch. What does it matter that a thief can use the same rooting skill a max of three times, under perfect conditions when every profession has the ability to evade, break, and punish across the board?

The thief is in a good place right now and I really thing its time for the forum community to learn to deal with it rather than pass on yet another nerf and ask thief players to react instead. The way the meta has evolved since launch is that builds have evolved in response to buffs to other professions. Thief meta has evolved in response to their own nerfs. And every time that happens, players here get up in arms again over the new thief flavor of the month, because that’s been working.

GW players had to figure out Iway, ranger spiking and air/shadow spikes and there was just as much if not more crying out for devs to make a change. I have all confidence the GW2 players can figure out initiative and pistol whip.

OptimistPrime.9283:

Noc.2459:

PvP is now officialy dead because you leave?

Did Arenanet write a Blogpost about it?

Link please!

Dude, you don’t understand.

He’s hardcore.

So that means that he is what, Wolf rank right? I always forget if thats the hardcore one or if the Mountain Lion is.