Guild Wars 2

Siva I am not crying about being not OP, what I am saying is, if I want to set up a competitive team and I have to decide what class I want each player to play, I cannot find a good reason for telling someone to play as a Thief.
If I need a roamer, I would ask for a Mesmer / War / Ele which all have a better ratio Dmg / survivability and still great mobility, they are also very good in team fights, where the thief is a lot less useful.
If I need an anti-bunker, I would rather have a Necro or a Mesmer rather than a Thief, even if I think a thief would be as good as those 2 classes a taking down a bunker with the new FS, Mesmer and Necro have a lot more uses outside of this (revives, very useful in team fights, portal …).
In every other role the Thief is way too inefficient to be considered.

If you have rock solid arguments that would justify taking a Thief in a competitive set up instead of another class, please share, because I can’t find any personally. (But I agree that all this is a matter of opinion)

1) Mug was 40% of the burst combo. The three burst combos we had : Steal + Backstab / Steal + Heartseeker + Backstab / Steal + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab were so effective thanks to a 6k Mug, now it’s a waste to open with Steal if you have Mug traited.

2) I have, there are some interesting builds to play, unfortunately I hardly find any of them to be more effective at what they are supposed to do than equivalent builds from other classes.

If you don’t feel like reading, there is a TL;DR below

I would like to talk about what purpose the thief may now serve in tPvP.

Previously the most popular thing was to use the thief as a roamer / far point assaulter, running a glass cannon burst build. (Usually D/P, sometimes D/D, but always Shortbow as a weapon switch). That was what the thief was best at: Burst down targets that are alone, travel the map quickly, help in teamfights with the shortbow.

Now that Mug have been nerfed, our burst capacity has been shut down totally. I would like to point out that a full GC thief in tPvP has around 50% crit chance, and the usual burst combo Mug + HeartSeeker + Backstab, had 1/8th chance to do real damage (3 crits) (the one combo that every one cried about), but it had the same chance of not critting anything at all as well (1/8th), most of the time we had 1 or 2 skills crit. And what made the combo powerful is that when you critted Mug, your opponent would be below 66% health, which would make HeartSeeker hit harder, lowering him again below 50%, which in turn would allow you to backstab at full damage (with the Executioner). Assuming your opponent is a mob of course and doesn’t use any kind of stun breaker, tp, dodge roll, aegis, protection, blind, stun, daze and all that kind of stuff.

Now, I think we can all agree that the backstab burst build has lost at least half its effectiveness.

Let’s talk about the shortbow. As all of you may have seen, at max range, trick shot can’t hit a moving target (haters will say that it’s now on par with everything else, except that other projectiles move way faster than our trick shot, set aside the Guardian Scepter Auto attack, which they don’t rely on as much as we do for trick shot when it comes to DPS).

So, in short, D/P is no longer viable, Shortbow has become useless except for the TP.

Sure instead we have the new flanking strike, it’s working decently well, but what’s the point ? You are not gonna burst down any target faster than a Mesmer, nor more easily than a Necro. (Above all else now, since the new 5 sec cooldown on cleansing wave for the eles, good luck getting rid of all the condis).
But let’s be clear here, except for Flanking Strike, S/D sucks. The auto attack is kind of okay, although very slow, tactical strike is kind of okay too, but with that 4s revealed debuff, hardly useful. Dagger off hand is useless as a whole, and Infiltrator’s strike is okay for the first part, but assuming you are getting kited with cripple / chill, it becomes really awkward to use it as a gap closer more than once, because you have to go back to your former location, then TP back onto your opponent, all that for 5 ini.

I personally cannot play without BlackPowder / Headshot in tPvP, it’s too useful for the team. Black Powder enables your teammates to free stomp anyone except Thief / Mesmer, Headshot prevents anyone from stomping your teammates except Guardian Wars and Eles if they feel like using a stab for that stomp, in which case you might still have a Shadow Refuge for them.

So I am wondering, what is it that the thieves can bring to a team in tPvP that no other class can ?

TL;DR D/P Burst has been totally nerfed, Shortbow has become useless in teamfights, S/D set is useless in competitive play with too many useless skills. So what is it that thieves can bring to a team in competitive tPvP that no other class can ?

Since solo roamers is a proportion of the WvW population, no matter which server you play on, you will find more solo roamers on highly populated servers. Sure the zergs will be proportionately bigger, but you are supposed not to hang around zergish areas.
I play on a highly populated T1 server, and I have a hard time finding solo / duo, non upleveled, willing to fight, not NPC / Teammates backpedaling roamers.

Usually, the lower tiers have the least organized WvW because they have the lowest population, so I think you have better chances to have fun as a solo roamer on highly populated servers, on higher tiers.

I play only solo while in WvW on a T1 server, I don’t have many kills, a couple thousands tops but that’s hard to grind kills while playing solo.

When I roam solo here is what I try to do :
-First you need to roam between enemy bases (and not between one enemy base and one their opponent’s base -either yours or the third opponent’s-, since there is most likely to be a zerg fight there.)
-Then you need to find a spot where you can get a high visibility to spot your targets (usually I choose the top of a cliff, or behind walls and play with the camera to see your surroundings without being seen)
-Spot the nearest lake (I use Withdraw and Roll for Initiative underwater, it allows you to travel very quickly in case you need to flee, both skills under swiftness make you travel like 2000 each, maybe even 3000, and they are initiative free).
-Don’t hesitate to retreat if there are too many people that you can handle, I know it’s tempting if your target has 1/4 hp left, but chances are that if there are 2 other ppl there, you are not getting the stomp anyway.
-As a thief, the only thing you can rely on to escape an incoming zerg, is shadowsteps and stealth. If the zerg is too big, chances are you are not going to be able to stack stealth, they will either stand on your Black Powder / Smoke Screen or pull you out of your refuge. So I advise you to Steal / Shadow Shot / Signet of Infiltration on mobs to put distance between you and the zerg.

Usually when I meet a good opponent and I know I am in a relatively safe zone, I don’t stomp and wait for the guy to rally in order to have a second fight. There is a chance the guy might run away but I’ve had quite a few good fights that way.
However, you will often find backpedaling idiots that will turn around as soon as they see teammates or NPCs, and then jump on your body if they manage to zerg you

Steal should TP you behind your target.

It makes more sense to steal someone from behind rather than from in front of them, plus hitting foes by behind or the sides is one of our profession characteristics (traits and skills).

Same bug with the trait Hastened Replenishment

The problem seems to be that every trait that is supposed to trigger on use of the healing skill, are actually only responsive to Signet of Malice, Hide in Shadows, and Withdraw and not to the general meaning of the healing skill (the sixth skill). As a consequence, I cannot use Prayer to Dwayna as my heal because it makes my traits useless.

Could I please just have a quick word from a dev saying that it will be taken care of sometimes ? Just to have a confirmation that they actually read …

The trait Vigorous Recovery does not work with racial healing skills. (The trait is supposed to give vigor when using a healing skill, it works for Signet of Malice, Hide in Shadows, Withdraw, but not for Prayer to Dwayna).
It’s like it’s coded to be triggered after one the 3 non-racial heals the thief has, instead of being triggered after using your 6th ability.

I haven’t look into this but I hope other racial skills synergize properly with traits, unlike this one. If you use racial skills, you should check if there is any synergy with your traits and if they work as intended, or not.

Thanks

Could we have just a word from a dev to know if that is intended or not please ?

I am tired of those messages “The enemy captured the windmill” right on my opponents buffs’ bar. I can’t see if they have stab or protec on for christ sake. Playing on Khylo is a nightmare with all those points / treb / repair kits messages.
I can see on the top of my screen that the point has been capped by the enemy team, and even if I didn’t see it, I hear it perfectly fine, I don’t need subtitles, especially not in the middle of my screen.

Thanks.

Defektive.7283:

Tier List v0.0.3 POST PATCH – On going.

Tier S
+ Elementalist

Tier A
+ Guardian
+ Mesmer
- Engineer

Tier B
+ Ranger
= Necro
- Thief

Tier C
-² Warrior (it was suggested this get moved down to an even lower tier)

100% agree.

The lowest ranked professions are the ones with the least profession specific skills (War / Thief / Necro / Ranger have only 1 profession specific skill -their F1 / F2 for the ranger) and the highest ranked professions are the ones with the most prof. specific skills (With the attunements the ele has access to 20 normal skills, Mesmer and Engi have 4 prof. specific skills, and the Guardian has 3).

That’s not a coincidence, the more tools you’ve got in your toolbox, the better obviously.
Maybe introducing new profession mechanism for War / Thief / Necro could bring some balance?

I did like 30 soloQ in 2 days.

Half of them were 4v5, 3/4 of the remaining half were against premades, and the last 1/4 left was with R1s, I think I had only 1 good, balanced game.

I think it’s just you. I tried a few seconds ago and it works just fine

It happens all the time, when you use any kind of teleport ability, if you do that close to some textures like walls or rocks, you will end up inside the texture half of the time. However, if he literally WALKED into it, that’s strange, but if there is a chance that he used a teleport skill and ended up in the wall, that’s just a glitch.

PCanineBrigade.4916:

You can break it if you use stun breaker AFTER your character lands on the ground. Make sure you stopped moving before using it.

Well, the animation of your character being thrown away lasts like 1.5 seconds out of the 2s of the blowout. If you have waited that long, there is no point stunbreaking for like half a second :s

Hey, just want to point out that you cannot break the control effect from a Blowout / Launch with any stun breaker.
When you use a stun breaker after a blowout or launch, your character is still immobilized for the duration of the blowout / launch, and cannot perform any action. It’s just like you didn’t do anything, except that your character is standing instead of lying on the ground, and your skills may or may not appear under CD (from the blowout / launch) depending on the stun breaker used, but either way, you can’t use any of your skills (even if they appear not to be under CD).

I am sure it’s not intended, because it makes updraft imbalanced. Are you aware of that, are you planning to do something about it ?

What do you think about that:

We get our revealed debuff to 3s back.
Instead, for diminishing our burst output, we decrease our damage coefficients (like maybe 15%) which we trade against an increase in attack speed (like 25%) so that our damage output curve will look less like a “wave” and more like a “line” (that’s an extrapolation but you get the idea.) or maybe have our initiative regen to 1 per sec instead of the current 1.33 point per sec (or maybe have the initiative regen as a passive trait bonus like steal recharge).

Do you have any other idea on how to reduce our burst but compensate with something else ?

Bump this. I need it.

The problem is that stealth is one of the core characteristic of our profession, even the smallest modification of its mechanics has ripple effects on almost every build through traits, skills, utilities and combo that rely on stealth.

What the devs had in mind with March’s Update was to nerf our burst output (mainly backstabs, and vital shots). We ended up with moderately nerfed burst, but highly impaired survivability (which has never been our main concern, I acknowledge that, but that’s no reason to weaken what little survivability we had).

Taril.8619:

Anvi.1802:

With http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKOHcS5E/5Ex2DfKUe6VAsaPoZLvJA;ToAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukcNoYWA

You can get 22 stacks of might and +80% dmg. Against a full glass cannon build with 916 toughness, you can deal up to 15K I would say.

Technically yes, but bear in mind, using CnD to gain stealth (I.E. The only way you can in that build) you lose out on the +10% damage from First Strikes due to being taken below 7 initiative (Unless you wait around for 1.33 seconds to regen up, and pray that the target doesn’t stun break and counter you)

No I would not, since I use Signet Use (+2 initiative when using a signet) I just have to precast the signet of malice, then CnD, then use the other 3 signet in an instant (no animation, no cast time) before my backstab, that will regen my initiative entirely.

As far as I know here is what players have been noticing since the update:

About the Revealed debuff increased from 3s to 4s:

-Damage/CC output reduction (The time interval required to use our weapon-specific stealth skill -Backstab, Tactical Strike, Sneak Attack, Surprise Shot- has increased by 33%)

-The time during which we are forced to be visible has increased by 33%

-Timing awkardness (The 3s revealed debuff matched perfectly the necessary time to perform one full auto-attack chain without quickness, and 2 full auto-attack chains with quickness (the old 100% attack speed one). Now with the 4s revealed debuff it corresponds to 1,5 auto attack chain without quickness, and 2,25 auto-attack chain with the new quickness (50% atk speed))

-The effectiveness of the following traits have been reduced by 33% (since you can go into stealth 33% less often) :
>Hidden Killer (100% crit chance while in stealth)
>Hidden Assassin (Gain might for 15 seconds when you go into stealth) with which you could get 12 stacks of might in a situation where you go into stealth as soon as the revealed debuff wears off, and get out of stealth right away -2 stacks every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. Now you only get 8 stacks of might -2 stacks every 4 seconds for 15 seconds.
>Shadow Protector (When you stealth an ally or yourself, they gain regeneration for 5 seconds)
>Shadow’s Embrace (Remove one condition every 3 seconds while in stealth.)
>Infusion of Shadow (Gain 2 initiative when using a skill that stealths you.)
>Cloaked in Shadow (Going stealth blinds nearby foes)
>Patience (Regain initiative faster while in stealth.)
>Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Regenerate health while in stealth.)

-The effectiveness of the following skills/combos has been impaired:
>The black powder + heartseeker combo to gain stealth could be used twice (the combo field remains for 4 seconds, the revealed debuff lasting 3 seconds, you had enough time to do Black Powder / Heartseeker / Backstab / do whatever you want while the revealed debuff wears off, then again Heartseeker during the last pulse of the Black Powder combo field to gain another stealth. So basically 2 stealths for 12 initiative. Now with the 4s revealed debuff you can only go into stealth once with the combo, so 1 stealth for 9 ini)
>Shadow refuge (Same here, you could Shadow refuge on you + your target / Tactical Strike / do whatever you want while the 3s revealed debuff / then you would get stealth from the last pulse of the Shadow Refuge because it lasts 4 sec. Now you can’t anymore.

That’s everything I can think of right now, did I miss something ?
Do you think the devs had all that in mind when they decided to apply that 4s revealed debuff change ?

With http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKOHcS5E/5Ex2DfKUe6VAsaPoZLvJA;ToAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukcNoYWA

You can get 22 stacks of might and +80% dmg. Against a full glass cannon build with 916 toughness, you can deal up to 15K I would say.

Can I too ask for something that would go well into my build please ?

Great idea, that way nobody will be able to play the only viable build of his profession.

Teams will look like:
Roamer Guardian
Support Thief
Bunker Mesmer
Burning Condi Necro
DPS Warrior (What? That’s their actual role?)

To be honest, I agree with those who say that they are playing with us. They can’t be that bad at their jobs. If they were, Anet wouldn’t have employed them in the first place, and even if they had by mistake, they would have fired them as quick as possible and replace them with competent people.

This is just how MMO are designed, they are released half way done, and the goal for the devs is to make huge promesses about unreachable goals and slowly work towards them so that we can all follow like sheeps waiting for every tiny bit of progress they can give us every month. That way, instead of having a game with a life expectancy of a few dozens of hours tops like every “normal” game, you get a game with a life expectancy of a couple of years, with a decent pool of players playing it.

If they had given us what we have been asking for since the beginning, we would have played hardcore for a couple of months tops, then we would have moved on.

Erwin.5603:

Do you really think that you know more about formulas than a game developer with a appropriate degree?

Hmmm let me see.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Leaderboards-for-Qualifying-Points/first#post665713

Yeah, you are right, best system ever, can’t argue with that. Those who play the most, earn the most points. Pure eSport material.

I would like to share my concerns about the formula that will be used to calculate everyone’s rating.

They must come up with a formula that does not give an advantage to the ppl who play the most, nor to those who play very little, though that should still be taken into account. (For instance the simple formula that gives +10 points for a win, and -10 points for a loss would be wrong, because a player with a 90% win/loss ratio will have 80 points over 10 games -9 wins, 1 loss- but a guy with a 60% win/loss ratio can have the same score by playing more, here 40 games – 60% wins so 24 games worth 240 points and 40% losses so 16 games worth -160 points, for a total of 80 points).

So I figured it would help if we could give them some guidance while it’s still a work in progress.

First, if one day this game wants to make it to eSports, it needs first of all a proper and reliable match making system. And imho that should be a mandatory basis for building a reliable leaderboard ranking.
(Because you are all happy about the leaderboards, but you have no idea how biased it’s going to be given the current matchmaking system. You rarely face opponents of your level, if you play on busy hours you are a lot more likely to face a PUG team of PvE players getting their laurels than a competitive team seeking PvP challenge, whereas if you play in the late night you are more likely to face hardcore gamers, or Asians :p. Just this makes the rating system biased if the formula does not take everything into account as I suggest below.)

Then it needs a fair formula for calculating the leaderboards, and MAKE IT PUBLIC. (If the formula is 100% fair like we hope, I guess Anet won’t have any concerns making it public, if they don’t, you can rightfully assume that the formula is biased/wrong, and showing it could lead to exploiting it.)

So, here is my little contribution.

The rating system should have the following features:
-Points cannot be created nor deleted, they must be swapped between teams. After each game, the winning team must earn as many point as the opposing team loses. Otherwise it will lead to exploits.

-The difference in the average win/loss ratio of each member of each team should be taken into account (If you are in a team with an average win/loss ratio of 50%, winning against a team with an avg w/l ratio of 90% should gives you more points than winning against a team with an avg of 10% w/l ratio)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly

-The difference in the avg of games played should be taken into account (Again, winning against a team which has an avg of 90% win/loss ratio over 500 games must give you more points than a team with the same w/l ratio -ie 90%- but over only 5 games.)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly

-For lack of making a separate category for competitive 5-players premade team tournaments, the formula should take into account how many members of each team queued together. (If you are 3 guild mates queueing and get 2 PU players who soloqueued, your team should get something like a -20% on the loss of points after a loss against a 5-players premade team -and obviously the winning team will have a -20% penalty on the points earned as well- to compensate for the PUGing)
PS: this rule would not be needed if the matchmaking system worked properly

-Prevent players from changing characters AFTER the game has begun.

-Dealing with AFKers / Leavers: Huge point penalty like the equivalent of 20 losses, and provided that the matchmaking system works properly, after afking or leaving a few games they will only face r10- teams.

-Reset the leaderboard every so often (every month?) in order to kick out players who don’t play anymore, and give a chance for new players to get in.

I really hope that this thread will be useless because everything has been accounted for.

Doing the 180 degree camera rotation + withdraw or roll for initiative thing does not get you further than where you would have gotten if you had just walked. (Test it yourself, walk along someone in a straight line, do your combo, and see how far ahead of him you end up. Basically right at the same level at which you started :p)
I think that’s because just like all our kitten mobility skills which are not shadow steps ( flanking strike, dancing dagger, heartseeker), those skills are affected by our movement speed. (Try heartseeker when chilled, your reach goes from 450 on the tooltip down to like 5.). So yeah, there is no point doing that camera rotation thing to move faster. (I know that withdraw and roll for ini remove movement speed debuffs, my point is that whether you have swiftness, signet of shadows, or no movement speed buff, you won’t get further, nor less far, than where you would have gotten if you had just walked).

It wouldn’t be too much to ask that our mobility skills get untied from our movement speed. It’s always been an issue. If you’ve got swiftness and want to use your flanking strike, you end up out of reach for the strike…

10 bucks say he’s gonna get banned anyways

Here is how it works. (And how it has always worked as far as I can remember)

If you have a target but you are out of range : 5 second CD on your steal.
If you have NO TARGET : Full CD on your steal (but you still trigger whatever trait you have on steal activation -like Thrill of Crime that gives Swiftness Fury and Might-)

During the Gw2 Guru’s latest conference with some Anet developers, it has been mentioned that we can soon expect several features that could make Gw2 eligible for eSports (PvP Leaderboards, Custom Arenas, Spectator mode).

ESL.eu has already shown in interest in having Gw2 at eSports in the past (3 months ago), but they had dropped the idea at that time due to the lack of the PvP features mentioned above.

Now that everything is coming along together, do you think what Anet has planned for Gw2 is enough to get it to eSports ?

Sources :
Conference : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUvIrH2BlU
Summary of the Conference : http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1070-gurus-spvp-state-of-the-game-w-tyler-bearce-jonathan-sharp-and-karl-mclain/
Reddit Thread about Gw2 to eSports from Peli (ESL.eu Admin) : http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13zzfx/gw2_on_esleu_why_not/