Guild Wars 2

Step in the right direction.

Unfortunately we have to get the Ring to Mordor and we’re still in The Shire.

Call me when we reach Rohan. Or light the beacons. Whichever.

Imagine if I created a sequel to a game. I touted it as being the e-Sports MMO.

Then I don’t have a ranking system.
I don’t have a spectator system.
I don’t allow custom games.
There is no matchmaking based on skill.
There are no leagues.

And I make a statement saying broadcasting and shoutcasting matches from someone else’s fraps will be removed from Youtube.

Then after 6 months I focus on balancing classes.

Welcome to GW2.

Explain something to me.

In a game where you can pick any class and play it, why do you only limit yourself to one class? It makes little sense to me. Picking up a new class isn’t hard. The only difficult is learning what to do in certain situations, but you also pick that up from just playing the game anyways and talking to friends about what they do.

Don’t know how you could ever consider yourself playing on the “pro” level if you can’t multi-class all 8 classes.

So please, help me understand. Why do players like yourself only play one class.

Chakuna.6325:

This game will never be good until they hire some decent developers.

It could be years, or never.

Pretty much sums up this thread.

Just look at their balance changes.

Burst damage ability + quickness is broken because of quickness. What’s their change? Nerf the burst ability so that it’s useless without quickness.

Thieves burst too much, primarily because of mug. What’s their change? Nerf C&D so that all thief specs get hurt, not just D/D mug specs.

I can go on and on about random changes that don’t address the problems.

In the mean time, they push out more balance changes, which is pointless anyways. One class isn’t dominating the game. You don’t see 5v5 games where an entire team of mesmers is actually a legit comp.

No Infrastructure.

Their design for competitive play failed. No ladder. Some QP system. How long did the QP system take to develop? Answer shouldn’t be longer than 10minutes.

And in turn, how they derive revenues from PvP in general is non-existent. No one buys tickets except with the free money given to them from paids or free tournies.

Basically sPvP has been completely mishandled from the ground up.

Very disheartening.

First, no condition necro should ever lose to a condition thief. You have too many wipes and transfers to make that possible.

Second, that thief is pistol and has to run up to you in order to stealth.

Third, you can condition transfer with the staff. Doesn’t matter if he is stealthed or not. It’s actually best to use this after his heal so the thief doesn’t wipe the bleeds.

You pretty much got outplayed by a spec you should stomp. Wouldn’t really make a post on the forums about it.

But here’s a pro tip. By the time the thief has full bleed stacks, he’s going to stealth because he has full bleed stacks as well. Get on top of him, use staff 4, and now he has 18 bleed stacks and no way to remove them.

Also, since you’re a condition necro, you have the ability to burst about 15+ stacks of bleeding on any target every 10 seconds.

You honestly think people stopped playing GW2 because of balance? Not the massive lack of infrastructure? Seriously?

Wanna know why there are more “nerf thief” threads?

GW2 skill is in the defense. It’s in dodging. It’s in knowing other classes, their abilities, and how to counter them. Thieves have the highest single target burst damage in the game.

So being a new player, you don’t know what they are doing and how to counter. You just die in 1 second over and over and over again. At least in an FPS, newbies can fight each other for minutes at a time because they both can’t aim.

Want to know the real problem with the thief class? The developer missed the memo on “no holy trinity”. Because the class can choose from damage, damage, or damage. There is no support role with CC/heals. There is no tank spec with immunities, stability, protection, and block abilities.

There’s just damage. And that’s the real problem. The class is completely 1-dimensional. Good at damage. That’s it.

A few months?

sPvP ironically enough has no infrastructure. Nothing. Their design for paid tournies and QP’s have failed. You honestly think it will only take a few months for infrastructure? It’s taken them how long so far to release one new map?

Not to mention the complete miss handling of the Monetization of sPvP.

So thanks for the advice. But typically you don’t want to tell people to be patient and wait for updates in order to have fun.

Fellknight.4820:

I can’t respond to your post because literally everything in your post was a lie!

you don’t play a warrior or mesmer as your main YOU PLAY A THIEF! That’s why 99.9% of your posts are you vehemently defending every gross class imbalance that the class has.

The rest of what you send is such non-sensical garbage it doesn’t even deserve a reply, Warriors have the best condition removal LOL is my only comment. And pretending thieves dont have 50% run speed in stealth with only 10pts in acrobatics with fleet shadow LOL again.

I multi-class everything. Although Mesmer not as much as the others. Thief is just the most fun glass cannon out of all the other classes.

And warriors do have the best condition removal for a heal. Restorative Strength + Mending removes 6 conditions.

Only condition thieves go into acro, in which case you’re not instantly killing people.
It’s a bad spec anyways. Either you’re D/D and LDB’ing all the time, in which case you have a slight delay between each LDB and can get stunned if people know when to interrupt your animation. If you’re pistol, you suffer from the same thing all single target non-burst ranged classes suffer from. Apply pressure and damage decreases immensely.

Better point, you have constantly complained about thieves since day 1, instead of learning to dodge their combo’s.
Even better point, balance means little in a game where everyone can pick up a class and play. As long as 5 of a single class is not a viable setup, then the game is fine.

People will always cry about dying, because as I said, the skill in this game is in the defense. Which means new players will spend the majority of their time on the ground going wtf hit me, as they try and figure out counters to the incoming damage.

Also, only Engi’s can move faster than +33% movespeed.

Fellknight.4820:

We all know common sense isn’t too common now adays and that’s the only way anyone could believe thief class in GW2 isn’t the most grossly overpowered offensive class in any game.

not a single arguement that is anything but a childs angry rant to defend what makes no sense has been proposed to why any class in any game would have;

1. The best escapes including a 6 sec restealth ability

2. The best mobility and condition removal+ shadow removal lol which lets you outheal most conditions.

3. The best mobility with super stealth speed+ teleports and flat 25% run speed with signet, coupled with swiftness on avoid with 5 pts in Avoidance.

4. Plus the highest dmg in the game bar non.

All I hear to refute it is WAHHHH I play thief and it’s because I be best player not class op.

1. Wouldn’t call it the best escape. Thieves who stealth against me typically die when I play my warrior very easily. I sadly don’t get to see my 3k auto attack crits, but they just die while invis.

2. Warrior’s have the best heal for condition removal, as you can trait for it and remove every single debuff in the game.

3. Lots of classes have teleports. Ele’s, mesmers, Guardians can tele through walls and appear in a blaze of fire. Also signet and swiftness doesn’t matter. Either you have +25% or +33% from swiftness. They don’t stack.

4. My mesmer can do the 90% of the damage of a thief, yet in AoE. Much more punishing, especially since downing someone in a 1v2 as a thief really doesn’t matter, as they’ll res in your face. While my mesmer will down both of them and walk away.

Offense in GW2 is defaulted to high for all classes. The skill is in the defense and how you avoid it.

Exact opposite of an FPS, where the skill is in the offense (aiming)

Numot.3965:

If you run a gimic and run into a counter, you deserve that loss. Run balanced team setups so you have something for what you think are going to be prevalent in the tournament.

You do realize that a condition team only has 3 condition damage dealers, one DD, and a guardian.

Calling that a gimmick now? What is a team with 3 direct damage? That a gimmick as well?

Better be careful on what you label gimmick.

His argument is that offense in this game trumps defense if you do nothing.

That’s how it was designed. Kind of backwards from an FPS.

In an FPS, bad players don’t do well because they can’t aim.
In GW2, everyone is already strong offensively. It’s your defensive cooldowns and dodge usage that separates the good players from the bad.

Mufa.1326:

I do not get your argument, should we be constantly running extreme setups with huge gaps that in turn attempt to exploit some huge gap that other team is having? So you lose the first fight in the mid, you reconfigure come back and win the second. Then they reconfigure, come back and win the third….etc….is that how it is supposed to go? Sounds lame to me.

Yea.

Queuing up as a full condition team and running into a full anti-condition team is much better.

Guess the guys who randomly queued into a hard counter got outplayed.

Hanzo.9624:

What you’re basically saying is “Assume you know what’s going to happen and when, time your dodges perfectly with precognitive precision, hope that all he does is spam one attack because if he doesn’t, you now have no dodge left to survive off of.”

This is the logic that prevents appropriate fixes from being implemented.

If you can’t read bad players, then you deserve to die.

GW2 skill-gap is in the defense. It’s about dodging and knowing when to use abilities.

Everyone has died to hasted HS spam. So you can either learn to adapt, counter, and read bad players or come cry on the forums.

One will give you results. The other won’t.

HS spam was only broken at launch. If you’re dying to it, you need to check your spec/gear setup. Especially if you’re playing a necro. A necro just laughs at HS spamming thieves because of chill/cripple spam.

Dodge twice. Since HS is queued and he’s hasted, the thief will waste all init and can’t do anything about it because he’s spamming HS.

Chill.

Congrats. Thief wasted all his init doing nothing.

Chill reduces leap distance by 66%. Playing a necro in pubs, i would follow thieves around all game just to chill them and watch them hopelessly spam HS.

This one game, I got 25 bleeds on me, ran around in a circle, and died. Nerf bleeds.

Mufa.1326:

To ppl saying how this change promotes ‘build wars’:
What do you call constantly swapping builds (weapon sets) in the middle of the match. Oh, he has A, so I will use B to counter him, at which point B will disengage and switch to C to counter me etc. Simply nonsense! This promotes people being mediocre at all possible builds and constantly swapping to counter enemy’s build, rather than excelling at few chosen builds and learning how to maximize their use.

GW2 isn’t as you described.

A>B>C>A

By being able to constantly swap between weapons/armor and creating a trait setup that is versatile, you allow people to play off the cuff and adapt.

All this does it turn the game into a crappy version rock, paper, scissors.

Because in RPS, you can choose to throw anything. Imagine how fun RPS would be if you could only throw rock. Every. Single. Time.

Removing choice is always, always, always a bad idea. It dumbs down game play and promotes hard counters.

Being versatile is never a bad thing in any game.

bettadenu.5483:

I thought it was pretty good logic, ofcourse it works both ways i’m just making a point and you’re quoting it just to make a post.

When you represent a team in higher end PvP, you should be limited to change WHILE IN A MATCH.

Different weapon sets provide different kind of playstyles, that’s why you should think of what you pick beforehand and make a strategy using those weapons.
To me this entire thread comes off as ‘’I can’t change my stats anymore during a match so I can get the upperhand rather than tactically think on a counter’’

Once again, you can’t swap to gain the upper hand if the other team can swap as well.

Please, try and understand this.

bettadenu.5483:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say that I’m reading this thread and taking it all in. Keep it civil (don’t get yourselves banned! ) and let those ideas flow.

I know some of you are upset with the change, but really, this is something we were planning for a while. WE MAY NOT LOCK DOWN utilities down the road, so that you can still have some adjustment when out of combat, but at the same time, we do not think weapon swapping mid-match is good for the overall health of the game. Just wanted to remind you we are here, and I am watching the forums, and your ideas are being heard.

Keep it constructive (and really, overall you guys are doing a FANTASTIC JOB OF THIS!), and carry on!

Best update ever, I believe that you should go in with a fixed build as a team. And not suddenly change all that when out of combat.

It’s like playing rock, paper, scissors: you shake and then say i’m picking rock but you realize that the other person chose paper and you then suddenly switch to scissors.

So good implementation, people just have to deal with it that it wasn’t fair

Awful logic.

Assume A>B>C>A

If I run A and they run B, we wipe them, they could come back with C. Who’s to say we don’t swap to B? To finish your analogy, they see you swap to scissors and go rock.

You look at is as only one side can change things. Both sides can. It was the benefit of building traits that could be interchanged at a moments notice and change up your play style.

Limiting options is never a good idea. Ever. There are far too many key buffs required and too few of weapon sets to provide them. Not to mention completely useless weapon sets. All that’s been done is forced people into key weapon sets/utilities, and anything that isn’t perfect is tossed aside.

If this was a good change. If “less is more”, then remove weapon swapping all together. You can only play with one set. Can only be a GS warrior. A staff mesmer. A shortbow thief.

Sad to check in on GW2, still see no infrastructure, balance changes for whatever reason, and now no trait/weapon swapping.

KnarleyMarley.6937:

Anyone else feel like stealth stomping needs to gtfo? I mean, the state purpose of the downed system is for players to feel like they’re not out of the fight even when they go down, they still have a chance. Not to mention that it encourages smart pvp plays like reviving teammates when the benefits out weigh the costs.

I have no issues with stability stomps, mist form stomps etc… because there are still some, all though few things you or team mates can do (if you teammates are aware and paying attention). Stealth how ever gives you no one to target for your cc or the ability to check for buffs like stability before using your cc cool downs. It also means your teammates most likely won’t even know to help you, and no one can target the ‘stomper’ for dps, you just have to hope you get lucky and someone comes in with enough aoe to do the job.

Stealth is by far the strongest stomp ability in the game, and maybe it’s just me but basically negating the entire downed state just feels a little bit over the top. Thoughts?

Thief can’t stability. No need to check for it.
Spells hit for .5seconds after stealthing. All channeled abilities hit through stealth.

Which means you can stop the thief from finishing his stomp if you’re a warrior or necro. All other classes don’t have to worry about it as they either have aoe, invuln, or invis.

Stealth stomping is only useful versus people who don’t understand game mechanics.

lol.

People think removing choices somehow promotes diversity. Fascinating.

All this means is one player on your team with a universal build joins first and the rest of your teammates wait and see what he calls out and adjust accordingly.

Nothing has changed, except people won’t join games till the the timer runs out to hide their comp and gear setups. Or they’ll run some odd weapons and swap to them at the last second to confuse people.

Sounds like fun!

Begun the Build Wars has.

Fantom.9217:

Been waiting for those since the first or second Beta Weekend.

Don’t hold your breath. ArenaNet has lost their opportunity to create a competitive PVP game in my opinion.

No one is going to come back to a game that they haven’t played in a year because features that should have been implemented at launch are FINALLY in place.

If this was a few years ago I’d agree with you.

But League of Legends has been a massive curve ball to the e-Sports scene. It’s shown that even if you don’t have those things, as long as your development team gets them into the game and people are still behind you, the game will persevere.

LoL went from having none of those at launch to becoming the largest e-Sport out there. So it shows that as long as your game is fun to play, people will eventually come back. And GW2 is fun to play.

Unfortunately this probably means at least a year before the needed infrastructure to the game is implemented.

You can only spam HS because it’s a gap closer.
Remove that and you remove the spam.

Waffler.1257:

1. How are you following a target you can’t see? When I play thief and stealth, I see people running around auto-attacking that aren’t even close to me. You would have to be stupid to remain in melee range, and if you’re trying to hit a stealthed target with a random ranged auto-attack all I can say is good kittening luck.

2. Most AoEs require you to target a location, so again, how do you decide where to place the AoE? Shadow refuge is only one of many stealth skills and they can easily run out of it and be stealthed for awhile. Using AoE where the thief stealths assumes that when they go stealth they stop moving, this just does not happen.

3. Thieves can move faster than any other class plus have shadow step skills to teleport to you so you can’t get away. Telling someone to wait it out when a thief goes stealth is the worst advice I can think of, that almost guarantees they will be dead in a couple seconds.

4. As mentioned above, not every class has channeled abilities and they aren’t numeous enough to pose any kind of threat to a thief.

*and about your popular beliefs:
Skill Hide in Shadows – Vanish in stealth and gain regeneration. Cures burning, poison, and bleeding.
– Means thief will disappear and when they reappear they will have more health and conditions will be removed.
Skill Shadow Refuge – Create a pulsing refuge at the target area that heals allies and cloaks them in stealth.
– Again, another skill that heals you in stealth.
Trait Shadow Rejuvenation – Regenerate health while in stealth.
– Yet more healing while in stealth, are you seeing how easy it is for a thief to stealth and heal to full yet?
Trait Fleet Shadow – Move 33% faster while in stealth.
– Hmm, guess stealth can increase your movement speed.

I can see why you cry.

Maybe it’s because you’re just inexperienced with the whole stealth thing. Maybe it’s because you can’t read players. Maybe it’s because you don’t understand how mechanics work.

Your auto attack will chain to the next phase if you hit something. If you’re on a class that doesn’t have an auto attack chain, you can easily follow him by watching your combat log.

I don’t know why you think an invis target is hard to follow. Invisibility has been out in games for years. Maybe it’s because I’ve played more games over my lifetime, but following stealthed targets in GW2 is extremely easy because of all the tells and limited choices you have during stealth.

A thief C&D in your face? Well it’s obvious he’s going to get behind you. Do you honestly need to see him strafe you? Or are you that incapable of understanding classes and how they function.

Are you honestly saying you have no idea where a thief is when they SR? Really? It has an animation for Christ’s sake. SR radius is only 240 as well, meaning all ground AoE covers that. No one can cover 240 distance instantly without a teleport. Doesn’t matter if you have swiftness. See a thief/mesmer use their heal/decoy? AoE on them. Preferably a slow.

Thieves don’t move faster than any other class. In fact, using the signet for movespeed is a waste of a utility spot. It should only be used when moving OOC from point to point.There are far better signets to use. Not to mention, almost all classes have easy access to Swiftness. Signet + Swiftness doesn’t stack. So I don’t understand why you think someone running at +25% is outrunning someone at +33%.

If you’re trying to run midfight and a thief uses his teleports to you with his shortbow, you should probably fight, as shortbow single target damage is significantly less than dagger auto attack, he just swapped weapons and can’t swap back, he had 900 range anyways, and he won’t have an initiative because Infil Arrow takes 6.

And the thief traits you’re complaining about, no one takes them. Because if they do, then they’re not the 30/30/0/0/10 or 25/30/0/0/15 backstab spec’s that instagib other glass cannons. There are no complaints about thieves using other specs but those two, because it’s only those two that allow you to break the barrier for 1-shot combos.

All your complaints stem from you not wanting to learn how classes work. If you’d actually take some time to learn and play the class you’re complaining about, you’d learn how to play against stealth. And you’d also learn that it’s a false sense of security when stealthing versus good players. Like how Mesmer illusions don’t really confuse anyone except players who are new to the game. In fact, they play against them because you can see the shatters coming and adjust accordingly.

Brenil.8957:

Pretty simple question that I haven’t been able to have answered clearly enough for me by searching and asking people in-game:

How do you counter stealth?

Such a question obviously leans toward Thieves as they use it the most, but I sincerely do not understand how the stealth mechanic in this game works. So if someone or some people could explain how it works and what its counters are, I’d appreciate it.

1. Auto-attack. Easiest way to follow the stealthed target. Will force a dodge roll from the player almost every time, making it so that they won’t have one when out of stealth.

2. AoE. For example, a thief using shadow refuge. Any knockbacks out of SR during the animation will break stealth. Use AoE cripple/chill where they stealth.

3. Create distance. If you can’t follow them with auto attacks and have no AoE, then you need to get away. Most stealths only lasts 3~4 seconds. Create some distance during this time and wait it out.

4. Channeled Abilities & Leaps. Leaps follow the stealthed target for half a second after using stealth. Channeled abilities will fully hit the target, although you will be seemingly firing into nothing. Also another easy way to track the stealthed target. Just follow the projectiles.

And despite popular belief, stealth does not give the player full health, movespeed increases, and immunity to damage & conditions.

Infrastructure. Infrastructure. Infrastructure.

I want you to say that word. Look up the definition. Memorize it. Because it is the single most important thing to any game.

Nothing can grow and flourish without proper infrastructure.

Right now, GW2 lacks PvP Infrastructure. You have the entry level, 8v8 zerg that allows you time to learn your class. You have target dummies to test things on.

No duels to test certain builds/skills vs friends.
No ladder system for the casual players.
No private servers for the pro players.

If a game is worth playing, and even with its faults GW2 is still a great PvP game, then the community will take hold and grow.

But they can’t without the proper Infrastructure.

This is what GW2 is lacking. This is what LoL was lacking when it was created. This is what they strived to put into their game over a year later. Now LoL is the largest e-Sport out there.

ANet needs to stop their balancing changes. This game doesn’t need perfect balance.

It needs Infrastructure.

EatThisShoe.5136:

I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

Best analysis of GW2 pvp right here.

GankSinatra.2653:

Sprawl.3891:

the fundamental flaw with thieves and why you can’t compare them to games like LoL is thief takes ZERO skill to put out massive damage. In games that are actually e-sports that balance around that, it takes high level skill to play the class at a high level (shocker) thus leaving casuals balanced since they can’t do the same thing the pros are doing. In GW2 it’s like push 3 buttons and insta-gib anyone that doesn’t have defensive CDs up. it’s dumb.

Why you cant compare them is because a game like Lol has an entire early game which directly affects how strong the ‘Thief’ will be. A carry doesnt start out being at full power, he starts out super weak and then earns his late game ownage by playing well. This isnt in GW2. It takes 5 minutes to make a thief at full strength, and you cannot counter OP heros by making their life hell early game.

A carry earns the right to press buttons and blow up people.
A thief just presses buttons and blows up people.

And someone else presses buttons and lives.
And someone else presses buttons and does condition damage.
And someone else presses buttons and knocks someone back.

Two different games bud. Comparing the two, especially the way you’re doing it, is not a good idea.

Anyways, as more people stack protection and in general learn to play against a GC thief, the class will loose it’s strength.

This is GW2. You can play any class. You can swap to any comp before the game starts. You should be running a thief to hunt down their GC burst classes, as that’s what the thief is best at. You still do 20k damage to other GC’s.

Or you know…you can always just sit and wait till someone is at 75% before going in.

Xom.9264:

Really, 1 defensive cooldown is all it takes to kill a thief or get away from one? LOL you are the worlds worst gamer if thats all it takes for you to lose on a thief.

In reality 1 defensive cooldown followed by perfect skill rotations of multiple buttons weapons swaps utilities etc… and you might get away from a thief or kill one (perspective of a necro).

If you dont have a defensive cooldown you are dead.

If you’re dying to a thief after they waste all their utility skills, their elite skill, and half their initiative bar, while you only used 1 ability, then by definition you’re a bad player.

I mean, he just used like….6 or 7 total abilities. You only need 1 to counter it!

Ez. Pz.

Sprawl.3891:

the fundamental flaw with thieves and why you can’t compare them to games like LoL is thief takes ZERO skill to put out massive damage. In games that are actually e-sports that balance around that, it takes high level skill to play the class at a high level (shocker) thus leaving casuals balanced since they can’t do the same thing the pros are doing. In GW2 it’s like push 3 buttons and insta-gib anyone that doesn’t have defensive CDs up. it’s dumb.

By that logic it takes less skill to survive a thief.

A thief has to use 3 buttons to kill you.
You have to have 1 defensive cooldown.

1 < 3

I like it.

Just daze/stuns. Won’t change knockdown duration.

Balance changes. For what?

This game has no middle ground for players.
This game has no competitive ground for players.

There is no spectator system. There are no ladders for the casual players. There are no private servers. There are no leagues.

There’s…. nothing.

This game doesn’t need balance changes, especially when everyone can play the most op broken specs out there.

No. GW2 PvP needs fracking infrastructure.

khadorian.6417:

I use the pets as my fire storm since thats what i got, and now i dont even have that since it will fail to do anything.

Mesmer phantasms aren’t a ground AoE. If so, then they should never move past their cast point and only attack players within a 240 radius like every other ground AoE in the game.

No. They’re targeted. And all targeted abilities could be blocked/blinded/dodged and required LoS. Except Mesmers. Now they do. It’s a great fix to stop the fire & forget mechanics of the class.

Don’t ever compare phantasms to ground targeted AoE. They aren’t even close.

I laugh when people say you used dancing dagger as a team fight. You only used DD in teamfights because it was bugged. Your 4k crit on a glass cannon could crit for 14k on the 4th hit. It increased in damage exponentially and only ate 1 charge of Sin Signet. Not to mention it was a projectile, which would miss half the time if someone was strafing.

If you wanted teamfight AoE you used shortbow. Cluster bomb hits more people, does more damage, you have an AoE poison that lasts for 10+ seconds, and any blast finishers apply weakness. Not to mention you could do this all from range and not have to risk a random swap/focus without being able to see it coming from a mile away.

The whole mesmer fix was entirely needed. They were the ONLY class in the game that didn’t play by the rules.
Every other class needed LOS. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blinded. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blocked. Not mesmers.
It was a complete fire and forget class. Now the mesmer has to actually pay attention. Any well-timed dodges/blocks will shut down a shatter mesmer. It’s going to be much more difficult to get off a shatter combo outside of spamming dodge for illusions.

But let’s talk about the biggest change. You can no longer DS Moa. Why? Because in ANets mind Mesmers would go “Oh watch out! That Necro is in DS! Holy crap I need to MOA him now and stop his massive damage output!”.

Removing healers did no such thing.

You wouldn’t even need DPS classes, as Conquest is about point control. You’d just play 3x tank 2x healer with knockbacks and roots. Once a point is yours, it’s not going away.

All your complaining stems from how Conquest is designed to favor extremities rather than more balanced specs.

Since it’s a thief and he was downed by a necro

Most likely downed state +50% damage and all the other +% damage thieves get.

Haven’t seen 13k yet, but I’ve killed a glass mesmer with a 9k crit while downed.

If private servers come out Nov 15th, then it will have taken them 2.5 months to implement one of the many stages required of an e-Sport.

So going to go with too early to tell.

When LoL came out, if you told me it would eventually grow into the largest e-Sport in the world I would have laughed.

CakeOrDeath.4859:

The responses / counters posted on these forums to thieves being over the top are always hilarious. They always boil down to:

a) don’t play the spec you want to play, play the spec you’re forced into playing to deal with one ridiculous class/build combo

I want to play a low hp, high armor, high healing class, with no condition removals. Yet condition classes really hurt. Especially ones with poison that lower my healing by 33%. Nerf conditions. They shouldn’t bypass armor. Poison shouldn’t reduce healing.

No I don’t want to run condition removal. I should be able to play the spec I want. Not be forced into playing something to deal with those ridiculous conditions

pedrst.3127:

Correct me if i’m wrong but.. as the OP/thread suggest. Is toning down BOTH burst and bunkers, and to “bunker” something you need alot of control (such as Guardian’s knock-backs and chain stuns), so we would get that toned down too.

I don’t see why you guys are arguing.

He didn’t say tone down bunkers. He said tone down protection.

Protection is only needed because of burst classes. To keep you above the threshold of being globaled. If his wish came true and all burst classes in the game we’re nerfed to the ground, then there is no point to protection. It’s just a nice benefit. But nerfing something that has become irrelevant to the game is hardly a nerf.

Imagine if only one class in the game had a knockback. How relevant would stability be?

Fellknight.4820:

Here’s my thief, first match I ran with him didn’t know half the buttons I used. Didn’t die once and managed to watch Laurie die during the second sadest Walking Dead episode since Sophia.

Lotta skill there you’ve convinced me there fine lol. I guess if your a terrible pvp player you would think it takes alot of skill to do this but I often watch TV while rolling people with my thief, never dying, and coming in #1.

Don’t fool yourself thieves are the Number 1 reason players are leaving I know because on all the pvp guilds thieves and mesmer’s were listed as the Number 1 reason they hate the game. No one wants to esport a game that takes zero skill in pvp.

I like how you managed to troll your own thread.

You started off with saying nerf burst, protection, and haste.

Now you’re crying about thieves/mesmers, how they’re making people leave the game, and posting random SS of you in sPvP games, and how that’s justification for nerfing a class.

Well done sir.

labotimy.2439:

why do you think daays happens to be one of the most vocal supporters of burst in its current state, because he is using it as a crutch.

Because I see what will happen once burst is removed.

That Conquest is about point control. And with the ability to kill people quickly removed, the game will turn into mass tanks with KB’s and roots.

There’s already teams that run 4 bunkers with mass KB’s on Kyhlo. It’s extremely difficult to play against. It’s also extremely annoying. That they don’t even attempt to kill you. Just keep you off point and live.

Find it odd you talk about crutches, where the biggest crutch in any game is a tank class that doesn’t require fast reflexes or decision making. There’s a reason why everyone in this game can play a bunker guardian. There’s also a reason why very few people enjoy playing one.

labotimy.2439:

not to keep this war discussion going or anything, but if that were the case why were sorcs also considered OP when they lacked the majority of the utility you just named? oh yea the insanely high burst whether it was ST or aoe.

war is a perfect example of class balance gone wrong, same thing with rift and the pyromancer/sab/champion fiasco at release. certain classes were killing each other in seconds, and absolutely dominating the field of play. if you dont find this relevant to gw2 in regards to class balance, im not sure what would be.

His comparison to broken classes is not why people left those games. They left because of faulty game design. Not class balance.

Class balance means even less in GW2, when the barrier to entry is removed. Thieves OP? Roll a thief and play. Mesmers required? Learn a mesmer. That massive time investment of leveling/gearing up is gone for this game. Want to see who’s better? Play a mirror match.

The reason why people will/are leaving GW2 is two-fold:

One is because the current game mode of Conquest rewards extreme specs because of how you take control of points. You either need to be super tanky with control to survive long enough for backup to arrive. Or be super bursty so that you can quickly capture a point and neutralize defenders.

The second is because of competitive game design. Barrier to entry is gone, but that middle ground in which the majority of the player base floats does not exist. There is no way to practice to get better vs teams of equal skill level. You either queue as an organized team and stomp free tournies/PUGS or queue into paids and lose the first round to top teams. As such, people see they can’t advance and will just leave. You can only pubstomp so much until you’re bored.

Fellknight.4820:

@DAAYS

Agian great delsuional thief defender that shows zero logic and uses even less facts this stealth is worse than stealth in any other pvp game.
.

Zero logic?

Telling people they should learn mechanics of other classes, so that when engaged, they know what those abilities do, its strengths/weaknesses, and how to fight is now considered illogical? Developing a battleplan is illogical now?

Less facts?

Stealth in GW2 is timed. That’s a fact. It will only last for a certain period based on what skill is used. And no where did I say that stealth was more powerful or weaker in GW2 compared to other MMORPG’s.

You seem to be very good at being very bad at reading comprehension.

Wish they didn’t limit us to one class per account.

If we could only create new ones, with no time investment. Just create, pick up your gear from a vendor, and play. That would be sweet. Also, if there would be some sort of locker in which to store all our cosmetic collectable gear.

Suctum.6912:

The difference between GW2 and other games is that Thieves are not all that squishy. Even full dps they can have respectable hit points and toughness/armor. The baseline damage coeffecients for some of their abilities are so high they don’t need to spec as heavy into power/precision as other classes may.

The problem with them is that there is no balance to risk vs. reward. There is really no counter to a stealth insta-gib unless you just get lucky and have enough HP to survive the intitial busrt and react with CC/CC break fast enough. Even if you do, that Theif just hit you for 8-12k, you are effectively limited to CC and healing, the other team if coordinated, will FF and you will be dead. Even if your team jumps on that Theif, he at least traded a kill, at most will stealth up/heal, and do it again.

Any class that gives guaraunteed kills as long as you do X even if it’s 1 kill per death needs looking at…there should always be risk for being bad.

You do realize when you say “There is no counter unless….” then that means there is a counter and you’ve just debunked your own theory.

Stealth, unlike stealth in pretty much every other MMORPG, is timed. You can’t sit in it forever. Do you honestly have trouble counting to 3(4) or 10(11)? Let alone, and I cannot stress this enough, you cannot burst someone from stealth. That’s not how it works.

Your entire post is shown to have absolutely no knowledge of a class. You sound like the same people who cry about shatter mesmers and 100b warriors. You don’t want to learn how to counter them, you just want it nerfed so you actually don’t have to pay attention. Just run around in a circle dropping bombs and dodging with perma swift/vigor.

A thief is guaranteed a kill vs others if they either don’t know how to fight 1v1 or don’t pay attention. Just as how a shatter mesmer and 100b warrior is guaranteed a kill. If your team isn’t paying attention a shatter mesmer and 100b warrior can down more than one person. In fact, a guardian GS pull into a shatter/100b can spell death for your entire team. A thief, unfortunately, doesn’t have that advantage.

But if they only added something in this game to prevent you from taking high burst damage. Something that reduced it by say….33%? And even went a step further that when you lose 100% of your HP, you go into this…“downed state” in which you’re still able to fight and be res’d. That way, even if some random glass cannon blows you up, you can be healed up and get back in the fight.

That would be a good idea.

labotimy.2439:

i guess your knowledge of war shows when you started playing. if you started in beta you would know first of all that forts were unshakable for probably the first 2 years of the games life. second what city sieges? they didnt happen till half the population died and servers were consolidated and patches went through. in the beginning no one took forts, no one got to city, everyone was capped at invader gear, and yes people left because of BW’s.

I started playing when everyone else did. At launch. I left when everyone else did. 3 months later.

And you still think BW’s were broken cause of damage? They were broken because on top of the high aoe/st damage, they had a 50% heal debuff on the target & healer, damaged whoever healed them, had a 5 second disarm, and a silence. Their damage alone was fine if that’s all the class had. Add in all that other crap and it’s just flat out ridiculous.

Why are we even talking about WAR? Congrats. You’re a WAR mastermind knowitall. You win.

Fellknight.4820:

Your not telling the truth, your saying burst is fine and looking for ways to angle the conversation because you play a theif anyone who checks your one of the worst offenders of the “learn to play” mentality on this forum.

Every single one of your posts is telling players learn to play and theives are fine. No matter how you disguise it with clever rhetoric.

How can I debate someone who will ignore the fact’s.

Answer me this one question do you believe taking 75% of someone’s life in under 1.5 seconds or with a single strike is ok?

No where in my post have I said L2P. I’ve simply explained that with all burst specs nerfed into the ground, that control will take over. And two classes will be completely removed because they don’t have control abilities or access to stability.

I don’t know how you failed to notice that. It’s basically been my entire point. That if conquest was changed to a team-cap system, in which the team with the most players on point controls that point, then you would remove the need for extremes in this game.

The only fact is that you’ve somehow managed to miss all this and changed your stance from “nerf burst, nerf protection, nerf haste” to “nerf thief burst damage”.

labotimy.2439:

you just dont get it. fell was pointing out the FACT that other games with overpowered burst mechanics bit the dust. obviously your the one with reading comprehension issues. this is not up for debate, IT IS A FACT. overpowered burst mechanics leads to dead games, keep defending it though.

You honestly think WAR died because of burst classes? Not their terribly designed keep raid system rewarding offense? Not that flipping a zone required mass amounts of PQ’s? Not their terrible random loot system? Not that their biggest highlight of all, assaulting the Capitol City, could not actually function. The servers would crash. You would get 1 FPS.

His post was nothing more then a copy+paste job he’s been wanting to post for a while now. It’s quite obvious when it had nothing to do with my post.

Fellknight.4820:

There’s no argueing with you I’ve seen your type in every game, you’ll ruthlessly defend what it is obviously an extreme balance problem in pvp.

It’s pve players like yourself that join into quick easy pvp systems, find an op spec and then try to say that the easy mindless button mashing tactics take skill and are needed for that class to be around.

It’s that type of thinking that is an albatross on modern pvp and contributes greatly to the death of many games.

Player’s said bright wizards in Warhammer were fine, Dev’s let the issue go far too long due to player misinformation game died.

Player’s in Rift said Pyromancer one shotting was fine game died.

Player’s in Swtor said Bounty hunter uber healing, insane dmg burst and tank armor was fine, game died.

I could go on all day with this, But right now the game’s pvp community is dwindling and your saying everything is ok, it’s not ok bro, you’d really rather keep your class OP even when there will be no one left to play with, all the hardcore pvp guilds are already gone.

And alot of classes burst is not ok it’s too high, fights are too short and only a mesmer and theif would say it’s fine because there the only two classes that can escape this zergfest setup.

You few players saying it’s ok are handing the dev’s nails to but the coffin lid on this game and if yea don’t basically shut up and tell the truth, this game won’t last till christmas.

What are you even babbling about?

You respond “lol thief burst insane check this spvp pic”? And now you’re talking about players in RIFT and SWTOR and WAR? Then finish with the end of the world speech?

I addressed your post, your thoughts, and outlined that while you may have good intentions, the game will turn into mass bunker spec’s with control abilities, because that’s how you gain points in conquest. Of course there’s no arguing with me. You’re not even arguing the point I’m making. That by nerfing burst, you shift the game to purely about control. Classes without control will be benched for classes with them.

Why are you even responding again? Can you please get the slightest bit of reading comprehension and stay on your own topic.

Fellknight.4820:

Cmon man that doesn’t even make any sense, why did nerfing 12k backstabs suddenly become dropping dmg to the floor.

The only reason everyone is running bunker/tank build’s is because the dmg is set to insanity. Most players don’t want to be tanks they just don’t have any other options who wants to die 75 times a match.

Theif is the only class viable as a glass cannon because with invis they don’t die like every other class. So we basically have a billion tanks and theives, two roles in game, it’s a death sentence to this game.

Here’s a pic of my first run with a theif, didn’t know what half the buttons are and my pts are five lower then the highest in the match from a guy with 10 glory ranks on me.
I didn’t die once, not a single time the entire match. I don’t think anyone should pick up a class and perform like that it’s silly, and it proves how skill-less it is

I multi-class all classes. Just play a thief because the people who I play with have other spots filled.

You honestly believe thief is the only viable glass cannon? That those teams running GS warriors aren’t glass? That shatter mesmers aren’t glass? Do you honestly not see those classes in tPvP? Maybe not warrior as much, but 9/10 mesmers I run into are shatter spec. All of those are viable. It’s why I listed them in my example or nerfing all burst damage classes into the ground.

Are you honestly complaining about stealth? You’re not immune to damage. Going stealth doesn’t break roots. It doesn’t stop the AoE damage being thrown on top you of. You can easily track stealthed players with auto attacks. The majority of the time you stealth you’re required to dodge roll or the good players will easily follow you for those 3 seconds.

Your initial post wasn’t about thieves. It was about burst classes. Unless you only think thief is the only burst class (tbh I feel you do). You say tune down burst, then tune down protection, yet you fail to realize that the only benefit to protection is against burst. So if burst is tuned down, then you don’t need protection to survive. That Weakness will be the best form of mitigation. Hence my entire post.

I don’t even know why you’re responding. It’s like you completely did a 180 on your initial failed changes and have all of a sudden started crying about thieves as if they’re the only burst class in the game.

Was simply informing you that by nerfing burst into the ground, people will swap to control specs. Which just happen to be bunker specs. And classes without control effects, aka thieves and rangers, will be completely useless.

And you even failed to address the whole point of downed state. You know, the direct counter to being bursted. A thief can’t finish someone alone. And a thief can’t win 1v1’s in a down-state fight because their 3 ability isn’t a heal nor a DPS move.

Hate to be ThatGuy but…

WorldofRoguecraft was made because of all the rogues crying that after the SS nerf, they were no longer viable in PvP. How can they kill if they can’t SS 5 times, then evis. In the video, you see how much control a rogue had in Vanilla over certain enemies and how evis being a flat damage, you don’t actually need weapons. There was nothing his victims could do in that video.

This isn’t the case with Thieves in GW2. Dodge rolling alone gives all classes the ability to mitigate incoming burst. Protection will let you survive versus the incoming thief wombo combo. All classes have a way to survive, whether it be traits, weapons skills, armor sigils, or amulets.

If you choose to play a glass cannon, then I suggest learning how to play against BS thieves. Have fast reflexes and know how to engage and react when engaged upon.

Also, a thief cannot do his wombo combo from stealth. The damage from mug will apply the revealed debuff.

@Rickshaw

Where’s your sin signet?
When you pop devo venom + sin signet + basilisk venom + steal you’ll have 10 stacks of might.

Plenty to hit a standard 20/20/0/0/30 glass shatter mesmer with 3 vuln stacks for 13.2k. Keep in mind daggers have a damage range. So you might get a few 12k+ crits before that 13.2k.

Also, dont’ use 2x force. Not worth the damage loss of Air rune.

rickshaw.5279:

The only time you’re getting backstabbed for 12k+ is if you’re a glass cannon under geared noob running around in WvW.

In sPvP with double force, full crit, full power and a set of scholar you’re not coming even remotely close to 12k backstabs on even the mini golems. This backstab whining is getting old. The lesson to learn here is level up, get exotics, don’t run glass or STAY OUT OF WvW.

My highest record so far has been on a Mesmer named Milty.

Crit him for 13.2k with backstab.

It’s very easy to reach those numbers vs other glass cannons playing 30/30/0/0/10.
As this spec, against most thieves my mug + c&d combo will crit for 14.2k, leaving them dead before I can even backstab.