(edited by Aeonex.7482)
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However, I would like to highlight these issues because it has become an increasing problem with high level party’s of 5 joining random matches and stomping all the low level players, thwarting their fun.
The problem with this is that even if you join a match while being in a party, you cant be sure to be placed on the same team in a random game, only way to be sure to play together is tPvP
While this is a legitimate response. Most people just team switch to bypass this so at least 3 people can party up and win the match however they like. Which adds another problem I hope can be fixed.
4: Disbar team switching if the level difference for each team exceeds a certain threshold. (Say, 15 ranks or so)
This is a long term problem. While I agree sPvP is definitely not serious. I see a lot of newbies suffering from the above problems. If (hopefully) they add other game types first (which I would rather have added, rather than this being fixed). It would be a great relief for the newbies in sPvP. sPvP is for the newbie friendly and casual gamers, after all.
Okay, going back to the original thread, avoiding the childish angst….
“It might “bring glass cannon thief back into line with other glass cannons” but it would also severely nerf non-glass cannon thief.” -Syeria + BluePrintEl
^This. Though Glass cannon thieves are only good for stomping in sPvP. So they aren’t very good except to have fun from time to time.
Furthermore, they are glass cannon for a reason. Play a glass cannon thief, try to stomp someone in the middle of say, the Graveyard in Legacy of the Foefire. It won’t happen unless you have invisibility. You won’t be able to unless the entire team is full of level 1’s.
Lastly, Glass Cannon “Ride the Lightning” elementalists with daze+stun+blind. Thieves are the best glass cannon build when stomping? Your argument is invalid.
As a player who has used thief since the start out of Beta. I haven’t used FOTM builds or such with thief, I stuck with it, despite all the changes, like pistol whip, backstab nerf twice, etc. Invisibility has to be one of the most important aspects of thief survivability. Without it, glass cannon thieves are utterly useless. In a fight against a ranger glass cannon who uses a raven, it’s all a matter of them interrupting your heal and they win. Likewise, it’s all about you landing that basilisk to get them down. At the very end, if both a thief were downed, and a ranger. The ranger will ALWAYS win because of their pet. That is why invisibility is absolutely necessary.
However, to ask for a nerf on invisibility while stomping, think about how useless a glass cannon thief would be in team fights. They could down 50 people, but unless they make that kill, it does absolutely nothing for the team. I personally haven’t had any problems with mist form on ele’s. Yes, it does suck from time to time, but in a 1v1, if you get them down first, you’re in the clear unless they get out of your line of sight.
Though honestly, the haste stomp is a bit over-powered if you have a slow reaction time. Think faster! lol, all I can say for now.
Dear ArenaNet,
Love GuildWars2, very great dynamics, especially with combat. Just for the record, this is not going to be a rant about bugs, profession imbalances, etc. This is a post regarding the current imbalance on random teams in structured PvP.
More specifically, how the levels and players are scaled in structured PvP (sPvP). This system seems to be done on purpose because sPvP isn’t serious, nor does it affect anything else other than your win/lose record. However, I would like to highlight these issues because it has become an increasing problem with high level party’s of 5 joining random matches and stomping all the low level players, thwarting their fun.
3 Major problems (in my opinion):
1: The Play Now function helps balance out the PvP ranks, but can be bypassed by manually joining sPvP servers.
2: The sPvP maps don’t auto-balance team ranks. (On purpose?)
3: The sPvP team auto-balance on player quitting, joining, is slow. So slow, it often decides the outcome of the match frequently.
Screenshots:
http://tinypic.com/r/23hsuog/6
http://tinypic.com/r/20p8va1/6
http://tinypic.com/r/65bza8/6
I have more screenshots, and I can edit these screenshots, since the numbers I added up in red are sometimes hard to see. Again, the primary issue here is low level players competing up against a team of often, 3 level 30’s, only to get stopped at every turn because of inexperience.
Proposal: Perhaps there is an algorithm or system auto-balancer that could be put in place that is speedy and balances the current game based on added rank + # of players on a team? If this isn’t already in place…
Thank you,
Aeonex
They’ve already said they are adding paid tournaments and ranking systems. So even if you have capture objectives now, at least they are working on it as we talk about it. WvW is fun, but only if you’re on the winning side or with a good guild. x)
I’m killing this thread. Backstab’s damage has been reduced, but the new patch has fixed the problems I was facing with Assassin’s Signet. The build is now both fair for others to fight back, and has a high DPS rate. Closing.
Also, F.Y.I. Killthehealersffs, when in stealth, thieves have increased vulnerability. It’s not pulling them from stealth as much as it is downing the opponent and revealing them.
The gravity of balancing sPvP lies equally in the results it will have in all parts of the game. The game is all one unifying system. Which is why ANet deliberately postpones promising features unless all groups, the game balancing, PvP/WvW and PvE groups can decide together and agree.
Regarding the transparency issues, I am content playing this game for months to come, I don’t need someone to explain every single issue to me, only the greater problems ANet faces. So perhaps a middle would work best?
Yes, as I have stated before. Flanking strike has it’s usages, however, it’s not nearly as useful as a lotus death blossom in turns of functionality. Not only does the lotus stack bleed, attack 3 times, but it also hits multiple enemies. With the sword combo, you don’t get a heartseeker, which can really help you narrow the distance, if you have no shadowsteps left.
I use the bow regularly, especially against mesmers. I usually envenom my bow with immobilize RIGHT as the arrow is about to strike on a regular attack I know a mesmer won’t dodge. Simply because that can help me put them in their place, shadowstep and backstab for a quick, effective kill. A good mesmer will usually mind wrack at this point, downing the glass cannon thief and it’s a fight to the death on downs.
I don’t have problems with 100b, I simply stated how it’s an effective measure against stealth thieves. I have had many situations where I needed to back off from a C+D while a warrior used his/her 100b.
LONG VERSION
Replaying the thief several times with the new signet changes, the primary problem here is the ability to STACK the damage, versus before, where the damage was combined all into one attack. No matter if you missed before with your assassin’s signet with 50%, you still had a second chance to attack because it proc’d on damage. The new signet changes gives other professions the ability to heal from the C+D, or even the backstab, since the damage output is low. Heartseeker isn’t a good option anymore after the opponent heals. Here are some damage numbers:
2 venoms + new assassin’s signet + steal = 10 stacks of might:
3-4K steals, 4K C+D, 6-9K backstab, 4k heartseeker below 25%.
Before: 2 venoms + assassin’s signet + steal = 10 stacks of might:
steal, 3K C+D, 10K backstab, heartseeker if necessary.
In this altered build, I had to use mug to stack my DPS, as a steal wastes 1 signet use. This nullifies the other trait abilities I had, which dumbs down the power of the stealth BS thief.
It’s VERY difficult to land a backstab against good players. The reason why the old signet was so useful is because you were never tempted to proc the signet upon entry into combat. You used it WHEN you were stealthed, when you had the prime opportunity to hit your target. Now you WANT to use it opening combat, so you can still retain your DPS. Yet so many times, people will dodge just one of your attacks, recover, and smash your glass cannon build.
SHORT VERSION –
More chances for attacks to miss = less DPS
Glass cannon builds centered around a backstab are now more vulnerable to punishment.
Why would you even activate Assassin’s Signet?! the passive power boost has better DPS that the active one…
^This. I really don’t get why they nerfed the signet to begin with. Even if you managed to land the attack, which wasn’t very often, you had to stack other venoms and signets together in order for the signet to have any lasting power. On top of that, you’re a sitting duck after you’re out of cloak and dagger for 2 seconds. You can’t stealth again because of the stealth cooldown.
Yes, , that’s the build I started off with. I even tried tweaking it, the build is too slow and doesn’t have a lot of options to work with. The Unicorn double dagger workers better than the sword because while you’re dodging, you’re also stacking bleed conditions.
There are 3 primary builds a thief can create which are effective in sPvP (arguably 4)
1: Pistol Whip thief with stun locking (CC)
2: Stealth thief with backstab, venoms and signets.
3: Tank condition thief with high dodge rates.
4: (arguably) Heartseeker spam thief with haste (I don’t like this build, it’s nooby)
Analysis of each build are in spoilers.
Pistol Whip Thief:
As you all know, Pistol Whip was nerfed, as it should have been. I played it, the stunning combined with the massive DPS was far too powerful to match up with any other profession. A thief can still use Pistol Whip combos with blind and CC other professions well enough.
Condition Thief:
The tank condition thief is extremely difficult to play. Sure you can spam 3, but when it comes down to playing really well, any good player will just immobilize you and hit you with power moves (Mind Wrack/100 blades/etc.) So this build really requires you pay attention to what’s going on and hold down points as long as possible for others to help. Or stack venoms and conditions as much as possible to down your opponents.
Venom Thief:
Cookie Cutter venom thief with haste. All you do is up your initiative to max, apply venoms, hit the target, when they are venom locked, spam 2. This is a really annoying way to play and if you fight against anyone good, you’re going down, fast.
Backstab Thief:
Backstab thief with signets and venoms was by far, a very powerful build. Stacking 10 might and hitting for 10K on an elementalist really helped this build take on 2v1, which thieves really can’t do unless they are fighting chumps. Is it overpowered? Some say it is, having fought dozens and dozens of 1v1 battles with this build before the update. I can safely say that it was a fair glass cannon build.
With the 15% set x5 on assassin’s signet. The backstab thief has a great deal of trouble dealing DPS, especially against Guardians. Getting them down to 25% before, with the 50% signet, really put Guardians in their place. Any competent warrior would either Hundred blades when this shadow based thief would disappear. Guardians could pull their Aegis boon and eliminate the backstab. Warriors/Guardians could also use ground smashing AOE’s to stun the thief and nullify the backstab. Any competent mesmer, elementalist, ranger or engineer would blast AOE attacks to reveal the thief, while running in circles to avoid the backstab.
Fighting a Guardian now is a down right chore. Not only can you not get them past 30% HP, but their heals recover most to all of their health. Mesmers were already extremely difficult to deal with, now it’s plain absurd. Warriors don’t have any trouble with this build anymore, their high toughness allows them to recover from that 6K backstab instantly. The BS thieves might stacking wears off very quickly, allowing the warrior to stun them and heal, to recover almost everything. This builds backstab is now 6K for Heavy, and 9K for light. I can’t even down an elementalist with 14K HP.
Can anyone suggest another good thief build? I’m getting trampled by every profession.
It is quite over-powered, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they can move while being immobilized. Clearly a bug.
Hello ArenaNet,
After extensive testing, I encountered a bug with the utility skill Devourer Venom and any skill that stealths you, on NPC’s. I searched the forums for a similar thread and couldn’t find one. Sorry if one already exists.
Details:
Upon applying the devourer venom, I hit the mob/NPC and then used cloak & dagger (Also used Shadow Refugee), in an attempt to backstab. The NPC then teleports to the original location where it was residing before I entered combat with it, despite being immobilized.
Conclusion:
It seems possible this bug is related to the venom only, as the NPC teleports only when both devourer venom and a stealth skill is used. When hitting with just cloak and dagger, the NPC returns to the original location via walking, flying, etc.
How to reproduce:
Step 1: Aggro an NPC
Step 2: Apply Devourer Venom [Thief]
Step 3: Hit the enemy with the venom
Step 4: Use any skill that stealths
Result: The NPC’s aggro is removed and teleports to the original location, ignoring the immobilization.
This is very frustrating, as I use venoms and sigils to stack might so I can spike my backstabs to critical hit for massive damage. I cannot backstab if the mob teleports over 24 units away and my stealth wears off before I am able to hit it again. Your help would be greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Aeonex
Regardless of the speculation, but that did help us pinpoint the issue. Will it be fixed soon? I’d hate to see 100 naked people on the streets. :/
Edit: A few details I forgot to file in this report.
1: The player was in front of the bank, dancing.
2: The time of the forum post was the time and date, EST, in which the player was online.
3: Is anyone willing to simulate this [Bug] to see the exact cause of the bug? That would help the Staff out a bunch.
(edited by Aeonex.7482)
Hello ArenaNet,
Earlier today I encountered a naked female human player by the name of Boring Fantasy Name. I am not sure whether this is a bug or a hack? I don’t see anywhere to report this? Is this even illegal? Granted she’s not technically nude, since she has no nipples or anything, but she has no clothing, not even town clothing on. So I’ll leave it here on these forums for reporting.
Screenshots:
[Screenshots will not be posted here due to graphical content. Please e-mail me directly for them.]
Thank you,
Aeonex
Hello,
I have submitted a bug report via in-game method, but also wish to make another bug report here on the forums for clarity and a more detailed description on the issue being addressed. According to some users, it has been approximately 3 days since the Skill Point was unattainable in Blazeridge Steppes. There is no NPC that can activate the skill point. There is no “place of power”, nor any method that I know with earning a skill point. I have been in Blazeridge steppes for about 10 hours no, with no luck in getting this skill point.
Searching the region thoroughly and looking for tutorials (youtube, asking around), there is supposed to be an NPC located near the Brandview Waypoint which allows you to receive a skill challenge for the skill point. Neither is there an “underground” area where the skill point might be, having searched all throughout the area.
Your help on this matter is greatly appreciated, thank you.
-Aeonex