Guild Wars 2

The stealth ‘question’ has long since transcended issues of balance or class – it’s just plain bad gameplay design – since day one it’s been firmly on the list of ‘I can’t believe they actually went live with this nonsense’ things – such as Quickness (took me about five seconds of play to figure-out that needed a nerf… ), Infiltrator’s Return, or vanilla Dancing Dagger (to use some Thief examples, being the class I’ve trolled most with).

Between stealth and ‘AoE-soup’, you’ll find the reasons why GW2 earned itself a vehement ‘close-but-no-cigar’ vote from the fantasy RPG community at-large, and why future games will be practically falling over themselves to demonstrate they will not make the same errors.

kitten Xsorus… I used to respect you, back when there were only tears about how terrible Rangers were, you put in work and showed sword, axe (and off-hand variants) Rangers were top-tier WvW duelists – now you’re taking a one-way trip to scrub-town defending Pizza.

I run a very similar build to yours, Pizza is blatantly unbalanced… there’s simply no other option, you eat it. Heck, I sometimes eat it on my non-condition Thief just to give that juicy 1/2 second immob on sword 2 and pistol 2.

That ish is broken, sorry – saying ‘just eat the -40% food’ is like saying: ‘just take food out of the game altogether’.

OP +1

Interceptor.2653:

Enough with this, please. If you keep getting infracted, you’re eventually going to get banned.

And that would be bad?

Sometimes I drop squishies in WvW with one PW (mostly scrubby Thieves), sometimes – but most good players have better reactions than a training dummy. As long as they have an evade in them, they’re going to get away before you get any real damage in – S/D is a better burst set (and still inferior to dagger), for real – it’s why I have it on swap (I like to swap often for Quick Pockets/Sigils of Battle, but never lose my IR when it’s up).

You need to bait the rolls, interrupt the big attacks, hang in there until the opening comes – if you blow your load straight away you’re going to get a beat-down, or get kited to death.

But:

This set crushes all melee builds other than D/P Thief, and that’s a 50/50 fight – if you can manage the blinds you’ll probably win that too. Interrupts/blinds/immobs, out the wazoo. Your damage sucks, but if you play perfectly they shouldn’t land a hit – I lose sometimes, to good players who had a right to win, but I still always think after: ‘I could have done something differently and won’, never do I feel I didn’t have the tools to win, but that I failed to use them properly – that’s not always true on my other characters (always something on CD, not enough interrupts etc).

IMO, S/P is too predictable on it’s own – and if you want to pew-pew, roll Engi/Ranger – a good melee swap makes the build sing. I’d recommend either S/D or D/D to be able to keep up the pressure on-swap, and keep things from becoming too stale (hmm, I wonder what he’ll do… maybe PW/Mug? Again? Surprise them by using Black Powder/swap/Death Blossom/Heartseeker/Backstab, or when they squeak away from your PW swap-cancel and Heartseeker for the coup-de-gras, etc).

Kiting/condition builds kitten with your life, they’re not fools, they’ll just put a puddle of nasty AoE down and wait for you to throw yourself into it like a sucker – that’s the anti-Thief meta in a nutshell, and that’s why Scorpion Wire is your first utility slot, always – plenty of time to cast PW after you hook your fish, and they pick themselves up off the ground just in time to eat it (you’ve got so much time you can whiff the stun completely if over-zealous). Also, it’s great for educating people to not /laugh from on top of tower walls, and stomp-denial.

Jumper.9482:

Heartseeker – Increased aftercast by 30%.

Cloak and Dagger – Increased cast time by 10%. Decreased aftercast by 33%. Increased damage to the original amount up from 66% to match WvW and PvE.

Do you even know the frame data for these moves (do share)? Tinkering with numeric variables is one thing, completely re-tooling existing animations to make moves more sluggish and therefore less enjoyable to use… would be madness.

And take your proposals for Larcenous Strike – the game is already chugging badly in high-intensity moments, do we really need to add another two If/Then methods into the mix with every single LS?

You may have put seriously heavy hours into this game – but that’s a mere fraction of the time coders and animators spend to learn their craft, let alone hone it in development. Could you even write a simple algorithm for your LS ‘adjustment’?

- What on earth do you have against Scorpion Wire? 45 seconds CD?! That ish better not just work every time (ha!), but it might as well tunnel through walls too. Nobody would ever slot this.

- I’m not against reduced CD on Roll for Initiative, but any such change should be accompanied by a proportional reduction in the Initiative gained (40 seconds – 4 initiative).

- Stop trying to murder Trickery, just stop it. And leave Feline Grace alone too, “Ah – they have something good and useful – fetch the nerf-bat”. Worst list ever

Zerging would die tomorrow if they disabled AoE stacking. PvE, WvW – the train would vanish almost instantly.

But it wont happen, because you guys know you love it really.

frans.8092:

Docherty.8372:

Following? My Thief can HS through BP for enough stealth to regenerate enough initiative to do it again for nearly as long without even taking the master-trait or utility

Paint us your picture then. As I see it you get 3 seconds of stealth, for 3 initiative regen, per HS, which costs 3 initiative, but you spend 6 initiative on Black Powder, which is not regenerated in that time. Even if you get the master trait for 4 seconds of stealth and 1 upon entering (assuming you also got hte adept trait) you only get 3+1=4 initiative back – as you can only get BP + 3 HS out of your base 12 initiative: 12 + 4 + 1 = 17 < 6 + 4*3

Did I miss something?

Trickery, Quick Pockets, Smokescreen, Roll for Initiative… and more – optimal passive regen with QP and a swap – about 16 per 10 secs (no Infusion, Opportunist, etc), 15 base – so you can stack four stealths to start – use BP then 3xHS from your base, thanks to increased regen you can slip another one in (for beginners: pan the camera directly overhead, the HS travels a much shorter distance like this – game’s tight yo!) before the smoke clears (4 seconds pulsing, you’ll regen 4 init in that frame, your first load uses 18 init total for 12 seconds stealth), as discussed, during that period you can regen the initiative spent, if you’re so inclined – not saying it’s a good idea, just that it’s an idea – throw Smokescreen and Roll for Initiative in there I’d be surprised if you couldn’t maintain a good 30-40 seconds

If it looks like permastealth, and smells like permastealth…

But it’s all academic, such a function is worse than useless these days. For the practical combat purposes of your day-to-day Thief it’s redundant in the extreme – he just wants to know how many more BP/HS/backstabs he gets – well, about 40% more, if he plays his cards right. Thanks to +40% base regen, very simple logic, IMO. (D/P not being hurt much by Opportunist nerf, since he never really got enough hits in to make it matter)

p.s. You mods are out of control – I can only shrug at my post you killed here… nice work if you can get it eh? Why don’t you just sit there and imagine what I’d say to you if it wasn’t all to be transmogrified into ‘kitten’. Out.

TheGuy.3568:

If your complaint is about the stealth you cna simply interrupt the HS.

So long as you scrubbed the Blind (BP does that… don’t ya know?), or your interrupts, if they’re fast enough (very rare, if you even have any even!), aren’t on cooldown… sure, I run S/P – I got interrupts to spare, but I’m a Thief, and a unique snowflake who gets to spam them as much as he likes.

So many counter-Thief techniques do somewhat seem to rely on the Thief being functionally brain-dead.

But, like I tell new Thieves – bait the rolls, dodge the interrupts – they can’t keep it up forever – they’re playing with cooldowns, you’re not. It’s not rocket-surgery, you still need basic dueling skills to win against switched-on players.

Zero Day.2594:

Well, I surrender, at first there was one, now there’s two…

It’s not about how many there are… but whether their arguments make sense… you give up because 1+1=2 and all you got is gibberish like “lolwut” (it wasn’t cool or funny ten years ago, nothing changed – incoherence is incoherence).

A Thief with off-hand pistol can STILL (this time without taking Infusion of Shadows, which requires sacrifice of a little DPS) stack enough stealth to regenerate enough initiative to stack more stealth to do virtually anything except contest a point for minutes at a time (which they can’t do anymore anyway).

Following? My Thief can HS through BP for enough stealth to regenerate enough initiative to do it again for nearly as long without even taking the master-trait or utility (haven’t even tried with Smokescreen – I’d estimate I could wring at least a full 20 seconds out of it) – no, I can’t quite achieve 100% up-time… just 80-90%-ish… don’t need it, I use sword and fight honorably.

Zero Day.2594:

Docherty.8372:

…
and the increased base initiative regen has only enabled a higher degree of stealth spam during combat.

?
lolowut
?

Yeah, by increasing the base intitiative regeneration by approximately 40% allows the Thief to enter stealth via Heartseeker/Clusterbomb more often – I’d estimate by about 40% – is there something about this you’re having difficulty understanding, with the mathematics?

I’m amazed that you actually edited that in there… seek help

You guys ever played D/P vs D/P? Yeah… don’t bother, it is quite literally pointless – might as well flip a coin – at least there’s some hope of resolution.

Perma-stealth only was a problem when you could contest in stealth, now it’s useless. D/P still gives a breezy 9 seconds using only your initiative, more than enough time to… do whatever you want without giving anything up whatsoever – you can’t do anything with genuine perma-stealth (in fact, it’s just setting you up for your most powerful offensive tool – if for some unknown reason you need more time, that can be arranged), other than contest a point vs zerg long enough for your own blob to reply – and the increased base initiative regen has only enabled a higher degree of stealth spam during combat.

Lamuness.3570:

Speaking from experience, why is Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 still a game that everyone gravitates towards, even though the game’s flawed, random, and has a lower skill cap than a game like, Virtua Fighter with its deep gameplay, punishes you for mistakes, and is overall totally balanced where tiers are so close together?

Because UMvC3 has the ability to let new players in with broken teams that are easy to play. A bad player vs. a bad player w/ these teams will net a ton of wins, with people crying for nerfs and OPness. A good player will blow through these teams. Also, VF has no one playing it anymore despite it being the most balanced game ever.

I like this post, probably because I’m nuts for Marvel vs Capcom – but I remember
a couple of years back anchor Wesker was indomitable, now the true mercenaries run Vergil – but every other week I’ll tune-in to a tourny stream and some cat will be crushing people with Rocket Raccoon or Shuma.

It’s not remotely balanced, but it’s thrilling – and pulls better Twitch numbers than GW2 (just saying…).

For the OP? Once a guy gets below 50% nothing wrong with a bit of 2 spam – can’t argue with the numbers – it gets the job done.

Way back, 2 spam really was for noob Thieves – because 4 spam was far better – that Dancing Dagger… really tore kitten up, I’d post-up on a point, drop Caltrops – 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 – whole teams dropping like flies.

Things changed for Thieves – but the spam remains the same.

I’d just like to point-out, that for dice-rollers, 5% is huge – on a D20 scale that’s a whole ’nother number.

D&D players sacrifice their first-born to Lucifer in order to get an extra 5% critical-threat, don’t be too relaxed about the power-creep Ascended gear truly represents – it is quite meaningful statistically.

Auesis.7301:

Docherty.8372:

Reikou.7068:

Docherty.8372:

this is supposed to be a competitive game!

And in the competitive format of the game, stealth is fine.

No it’s not. It will never be fine in PvP combat, because most of us have better things to do than sit there and twiddle thumbs for 50% of every combat – like wash the dishes, or walk the dog, in fact – there is some drying paint I need to go watch.

I can tell you have literally never set foot in non-hotjoin sPvP with another Thief in the lobby. Ever.

Stealth is beyond worthless as a mechanic in sPvP. Any Thief that takes traits for it and uses it to even a slight amount doesn’t deserve to be in tournaments for any reason.

My… utter hatred of the stealth mechanic has nothing to do with being ‘OP’, or particularly effective in sPvP (I’d agree, Thieves are effectively useless in tPvP – would even take my Ranger into tournys before my Thief), my beef is that it’s a super-tedious mechanic that detracts from what is otherwise, a pretty enjoyable and dynamic combat system.

It’s that simple – stealth is not FUN. Nobody particularly enjoys fighting Thieves or Mesmers, it’s a CHORE which one can’t avoid if one decides to play a competitive mode – my mains are Thief and Mesmer, they got no tricks I didn’t discover (or invent) myself many moons ago.

I don’t fear them, just avoid them if possible, because I don’t care for kittened whack-a-mole gameplay – genuinely, if Anet wants me playing this game, instead of starting-up yet another game of Civ or XCOM (Firaxis be on-point, these guys actually put some thought into their gameplay) then they need to make some changes, or get used to being another has-been game.

Your call guys, it ain’t my game (if it was, I’d be cleaning house, no doubt – middle management is clearly idea-free, the top-notch artists and animators are being squandered here) – but forget it right? Just give them a hamster wheel (ascended, legendary etc) to run in and forget about it.

To re-iterate, in a competitive game both players need to play, but in this game, stealth simply denies the other player the chance to play, and that’s a cardinal sin. Fix it – make some counterplay, and simply making them take some otherwise-useless utility (Sic ’Em) or consumable (stealth traps) is not good enough.

Reikou.7068:

Docherty.8372:

this is supposed to be a competitive game!

And in the competitive format of the game, stealth is fine.

No it’s not. It will never be fine in PvP combat, because most of us have better things to do than sit there and twiddle thumbs for 50% of every combat – like wash the dishes, or walk the dog, in fact – there is some drying paint I need to go watch.

Stealth isn’t exactly OP, just extremely tedious. It’s just not fun, the stealther can effectively deny their opponent the opportunity to even play the game, that’s the crime – this is supposed to be a competitive game! Who exactly green-lighted this atrociously naive mechanic? Is this your first PvP game? Be honest…

GW2 will be used as an example in years to come, of how not to design counter-play: “I know what would be cool, if the Thief’s opponent just spent half the fight running around wildly swinging at thin air, or just looking out the window at some birds or something, yeah – it’ll work great, everyone will love it – they’ll put this kitten in the next Olympics!”

Me, I like to spend the downtime daydreaming about better games – when they said Anet changed, they weren’t joking. Some joker’s drawing a salary, and sitting around nerfing Thief sword and somehow managing to make Rangers even worse – talk about wasted money – you’re paying someone to drive away the few players you’ve managed to retain this long! Now that’s trolling!

NinjaEd.3946:

So you killed someone who didn’t understand confusion mechanics, that doesn’t make throw gunk 100% effective. Also you had to use an elite skill in combo with it to make it all all worthwhile.

Everyone in T2 WvW understands Confusion mechanics, few ever expect it to come from some Thief.

And while I mentioned Daggerstorm, Dancing Dagger is the ideal choice – every Confusion spammer comes to understand you need to ‘seal’ a stack by placing a longer-lasting condition on with it, the DD cripple stacks for big big duration and will have to be cleared before the Confusion can be shed, if you can throw a Mug in there for the Poison, even better.

I mentioned the Ranger because thanks to their pet they tend to eat every bounce, with a power build and two targets 5 DDs is good for ~10k damage per target, and 10 stacks of Confusion for each of them to hold (for dueling a solo Engi – halve it, ) – very easy in the forum to say “I totally understand Confusion – just stop attacking and cleanse”, in the heat of battle it tends to be a bit more complicated.

If it doesn’t work, don’t worry – it’s not the cornerstone of your build, just another arrow in the quiver.

I kill people like this every time I hit the field (49 on my first session this month, as a solo roamer – one every five minutes or so on average, 8k+ kills in WvW as a duelist in the top tiers says I know what the hell it is I’m talking about), like I said – you don’t have to take my advice – no skin off my nose, just trying to help.

NinjaEd.3946:

Confusion on a power build is useless.

No, it isn’t. Confusion is never, ever, useless. Five Dancing Daggers (optimal) is good for 20 shared stacks with bounces, you think that’s of no value in a group fight? I dropped 9 stacks on a Ranger and his pet yesterday, should have seen him melt – I don’t even need the damage, I just need him to stop pressing buttons for a few seconds

So you’re a power build, great – that means you’ve got extra duration, bonus.

I’m trying to uplift you guys, give you an education in advanced Thievery, but fine, don’t use it – just throw it away, then come to the forum and whine about you got beat by some condi-spam Engi (ask them how much they enjoy having 5+ stacks while a full-DPS Thief is wailing on them) – I’m sure that’s a much better option.

p.s. you can totally still move while applying your finishers, the projectiles only have to travel through the gunk, not originate in it – use your noggin.

Brode.7689:

where are you, we are roaming. I want to jump on your body

Aww, do you demand satisfaction little guy? I was in MBL for hours – ships passing in the night and all that.

You missed your opportunity – we (a gaggle of PUGs) broke into Hills, only for the Taco-head to take the entire blob back to the camp, leaving me there on the steps inside fighting ~10 Mags all alone… GOOD TIMES. Needless to say I got murdered, the door got closed – though my cadaver was respected.

Dear Commander (that will remain nameless) – you’re lucky I’m not King of the Server, because I’d have you shot for desertion after that kitten-up.

/vent

Brode.7689:

Docherty.8372:

Brode.7689:

Lies all lies. We never have a full group.

I started dueling a warrior down in the camp, who always ran off to hide under the Supervisor’s skirts when I started winning, so I decided to go and murder your Dolyak on it’s way to Hills – then the [VR] Ele & Mes duo showed up, then you and your Necro friend piled-on for good measure. Sound familiar? The TC blob was inside GL and I was alone… sniff.

I know it was you! How many corpse-humping Asura Guards can one server have?

Now we all see the lies, you said we 5v1’d you, now we only had 4?!?! ha. Caught in your own web of lies.

You didn’t count the Warrior – I covered my bases :P

Brode.7689:

Lies all lies. We never have a full group.

I started dueling a warrior down in the camp, who always ran off to hide under the Supervisor’s skirts when I started winning, so I decided to go and murder your Dolyak on it’s way to Hills – then the [VR] Ele & Mes duo showed up, then you and your Necro friend piled-on for good measure. Sound familiar? The TC blob was inside GL and I was alone… sniff.

I know it was you! How many corpse-humping Asura Guards can one server have?

Nothing wrong with Toss Gunk – throw it at your feet and spam Dancing Dagger (Daggerstorm/Sneak Attack works good too) – bootleg AoE confusion, very powerful in 2v1 or in team fights on a point. Coincidentally (or not), pretty good to impede Engineer kit-spam.

OP, you’re on Mag? I’m pretty sure you killed me the other night (blue-haired TC sword Thief) when I interrupted a fight between you and some FA in MBL (I just see a Mesmer and can’t help myself – with 95% boon duration Plasma Globules are more addictive than crack). If it was you – I want it to be known I blew my stun-break on the Magic Bullet! I want a rematch

If it wasn’t you, I’d like a duel anyway!

Interceptor.2653:

I’d love to do something like this, but running S/P means that I need my shortbow for actual combat.

As a fellow S/P devotee, may I ask why? I can understand it is useful sometimes (towers, zergs etc), but in a duel I’d consider it totally useless (with the exception of Rangers, whose pets assure that they eat double damage from the AA bounce).

If I felt I really had to have a ranged option I use P/D – which has some useful transition combos, such as P2/swap/S2 – which immobs long enough to connect a meaty P/W, makes vulnerable, gap-closes; just swapping from sword in melee and hitting 3 makes for a very fast escape (they added this Torment thingy to it while I was gone, it seems ok?). You get to leverage that condition damage from Trickery effectively too.

I use S/P, S/D – since I love sword so much. They may have nerfed IR into the ground since release (I feel partly to blame), but IS is still amazingly good.

Interceptor.2653:

Deep Acro/Trickery for perma Might/Vigor sounds nice, but I don’t know what weaponset would be able to leverage both sides of it. D/D? It’d be a very slippery build, but you’d have to work hard to get damage out it.

Don’t forget Fury and Swiftness – players are reluctant to give up their CS traits, but tend to not perceive that ultimately the boon-stacker is not surrendering DPS at all, and indeed has higher potential the longer they sustain combat – this is the kicker though – you’re more a slow-burner, it can take 20-30 seconds to build the Might stacks needed to breach the toughest opponents – I think you can choose any weapons, so long as you have an off-hand pistol to interrupt channeled heals/hurty-stuff.

I like: D/P+P/D (arguably bestest, but I like sword better than dagger, or pistol), S/P+S/D, S/P+D/D, S/P+P/D – these are sets which I feel offer really good swap-combos, sustainable combat utility, and enough variety to keep your opponent guessing – for instance: when you roll D/P+P/D, when you go into stealth the opponent will not know whether you will Backstab or Sneak Attack – he can offer a defense against one or the other, but not both. For a swap-combo something like P/D 2 (vuln, immob), swap, D/P 3 (gap-closer, blind), (5, 2, 1 for truckloads of damage which is hard to avoid/counter with the blinds and high-class gap-closers – your higher init pool and burst regen with Quick Pockets enables this high expenditure [sometimes!]).

Being predictable is bad, people have had a long time to figure Thieves out – IMO, if you’re carrying a weapon which you’re reluctant to switch-to in combat you should re-think why it is you’re carrying it around anyway, if it’s such a liability.

Finally, I feel after the nerfs to Quickness and Opportunist (the biggest worst nerf of all, they gutted it like a fish) I can’t find any interest in Critical Strikes, the traits are no good for dueling anymore, and in WvW we build for the traits, not the stats – however much I’d like the extra crit damage.

Arganthium.5638:

Quick Pockets is only good when you’re using the same or very nearly the same (ie D/D and D/P) weapon sets as your primary and secondary. Otherwise, there’s a large incentive conflict where you either have to swap to an inferior weapon set for a given situation or you’ll waste at least 5 trait points that you spent to get a GM major trait. That’s why QP is good for Jumper’s build, but not for Lady Nag Nag’s or my own.

Good point. Without being argumentative about it (I dunno about these builds you mention), I’d suggest it’s very very strong, good enough Thieves everywhere should think carefully about whether they could gain from putting that shortbow into the backpack and manually switching it back in when it might become useful again – like tower defense, or dungeons.

The synergy with on-swap Sigils is delicious, particularly Sigils of Battle – did you guys know, that for a 30 Acro with 95% boon duration (with runes+food), the Might stacks last 39 seconds? Three every ten seconds (+3 init), with Power of Inertia (29 seconds) you can cap stacks and sustain them… if you got perma-Vigor by going deep into Trickery, gravy.

Just food for thought, since people were talking about Might stacks.

On second thought – let’s go back to ignoring Quick Pockets, before I get nerfed again.

Nobody ever mentions Quick Pockets… it’s only an effective +30% init regen, I suppose, and they nerfed the only other decent init regen traits into worthless POS, forget-about-it.

It couldn’t possibly be that good… then the never-go→15 Acro dogma would be false, and those preaching it noobs. No way.

Before, 15 points in Acro was a no-brainer – now, it’s still a no-brainer. Yes, it is true – if you want the best roll-recharge in the game you’ll need to sacrifice some front-end firepower, the meta changed slightly – the value of the boon-stacking survival Thief has increased, while the stock of the front-loaded gank-merchant has decreased (I repeat, slightly).

No point going on about other classes, calling their 5 seconds on-crit ‘perma-vigor’, because in practical terms, without heavy investment in both boon duration and precision they will be suffering significant downtime – sometimes people dodge, sometimes attacking is unwise… 2-3 seconds delay (normal with no boon duration) in re-upping your Vigor via crit is 40-60% downtime.

And they don’t have Feline Grace – so unless you’re ready to give that away, leave them out of it.

Everyone approves of having cake, few volunteer to harvest the wheat and mill the flour – I don’t enjoy being smacked around with the nerf-bat any more than y’all, but Vigorous Renewal, like IR, always had a whiff of too-good-to-be-true about it – now it’s no longer ‘enjoy it while it lasts’, but ‘those were the good old days’.

Firstly: there are alternatives to Traveller runes for the +15% if you’re not keen on dropping 20g – Water Runes (25s last I looked) and Monk Runes (AC dungeon vendor) do the same job – true boon-fiends can get two of each for a cool +45%, before traits or food (Omnom cake for +20%).

Secondly: 30 in Acro is not necessary unless you want it, 15 points and you can still manage +80% with runes & food, +65% without a single point in Acro – that’s 18-16.5 seconds of Vigor every 21.5 second steal.

Thirdly: 30 Trickery (for Sleight of Hand+Bountiful Theft+Thrill of the Crime), while a bit painful for sword Thieves who don’t do a lick of condition damage, is not a waste – it takes your Mug down to 21.5 seconds from 35 – which steals two boons, is an interrupt, grants initiative, shadowsteps, gives you an item (which are all great), heals you, damages them, poisons them, grants Fury Swiftness Vigor (don’t forget perma-Swiftness and a very high Fury uptime, it’s not all for the Vigor).

It’s very simple in practice: trait&gear up, press F1.

frans.8092:

Docherty.8372:

frans.8092:

There’s no perma vigor for thieves

If only there was a way to slash your Mug cooldown and further increase boon duration… nah, not possible – right?

Your saying using up 60 trait points and blowing heal and steal on cooldown to maximise Vigor uptime is a good strategy?

You don’t?

Oh well, I can honestly say: I could not care less. Perma-Vigor is a thing, contrary to what you said, each Thief will just have to decide whether it’s worth it for themselves (personal hint: double the standard evasion-time is a good thing).

frans.8092:

There’s no perma vigor for thieves

If only there was a way to slash your Mug cooldown and further increase boon duration… nah, not possible – right?

The game is already incapable of crunching the numbers in big fights – ever been in one of those big keep 3-ways?

It’s not strictly a balance issue – the engine is already creaking when pushed, and you want to increase the load exponentially. Don’t hold yer breath.

Welcome to GW2 WvW.

It is not unusual to see the bullets from a Thief’s sneak attack well before he re-renders (he is supposed to render before the first bullet fires). In a busy area he may never render for you at all.

Are you not entertained?

Plok.6145:

LOL Skale venom OP, that’s just hilarious.

That some halfwit allowed a buff that gives Weakness on-crit into a competitive mode? Yeah. HAHAHA.

Yeah, I been running around in the middle of nowhere and not seeing people I had every right to see till they’re right on top of me.

Better? Worse? I don’t know, it’s discouraging and pretty much laughable either way. Sick of it, sick of zergs and stealthers abusing it.

Count me as worse, ‘cause it sure ain’t any better.

If axe 4 was some kind of interrupt… yeah, I think a lot of people could find room for off-hand axe. The mere existence of Mesmer focus (since their 5 is basically the same thing, their 4 is a godlike multi-target pull/swiftness/cripple) demonstrates that Ranger off-hand axe is a bit lame.

Just puttin it out there… all existing Ranger interrupts are on two-handed weapons. Maybe a reflect trait thrown in there too, mindful of Mesmer focus…

ninjambo.3784:

thanks for letting my guildies give us your position by repping DOLY and using tonics

Thanks for showing up early and allowing us to put all the party-poopers to the sword before the parade even started. I guess someone has to play the moustache-twirling villain or it wouldn’t be as much fun.

Was nice to hang out with the cool reds and do a Ruminant lap at their side. Cross-server party at fallen FA garrison afterward was the unexpected and almost surreal icing on the cake.

Dolyak parades never seem to disappoint.

Adaneshade.2409:

Beyondthelol.9504:

I swear that every person who defends the thiefs blatant overpoweredness does so because they themselves play a thief.

How about we have a new rule – if you play a thief you are not allowed to comment on if they are OP or not

Conversely, no one that QQs about them has ever actually played one seriously enough to really learn what the strengths and weaknesses are. Instead you get the mobile, bursty, tanky, regenerating, permastealth build posts where people insist on picking mutally exclusive traits and lumping into one “OP THIEF” thread.

Hi – main Thief here, first toon rolled, love it, still play it every day – stealth is stupidly effective and downright bad design, the initiative system is broken and needs to be looked at very carefully. C&D needs to be downright removed and replaced with a skill which doesn’t ruin the game for everyone else.

It’s a bit like that satirical video ‘elementalist PvP exploit’ where the guy deletes his toon and rolls Thief – it doesn’t really matter what you do with your trait points/gear/whatever, if you take D/D, D/P and spam stealth in WvW you will dominate with next to no effort. So, you don’t like being told your class/playstyle is scrub-city? Too bad, the truth is out there.

The Thief is playing a different game to everyone else, that’s probably why I enjoy it so much. If I was stuck with the cooldown classes I would have packed it in months ago.

Esoteric.5490:

Thieves are not OP, people literally just don’t think how to kill them. If you stun or knockdown a thief, they are dead. I’m not sure they have a single stun break, at least not that is worth bringing.

Shadowstep.

Roll for Initiative.

Infiltrator’s Signet.

Haste.

Infiltrator’s Strike/Return – spammable teleport (no cooldown), breaks stun, scrubs condition, immobilizes opponent…

I carry three of these at all times on my Thief; if I’m holding a sword your control abilities are worthless, as I’ll hit return on IS and be back riding your nuts in under 1/2 a second.

Why do people keep defending Thieves… when they apparently know jack spit about what Thieves are even capable of?

Not sure what effect lifting AoE cap will have – in principle I support it fully (with a caveat I will divulge below), secretly I suspect it would be catastrophic for performance.

If you want to break the mindless zerg’s dominance on the battlefield, disable AoE/combo-field stacking.

By disable I mean make it more interesting – nobody knows what’s going on in the middle of a 100-man battle, never mind culling – it’s an incomprehensible cluster-kitten of effects which destroys anyone practically instantly… unless you bunch up, then only five of you will bite it.

Let us nullify opponent’s combo-fields with our own combo fields of an opposing element (air>smoke, fire>ice, water>fire etc); make stacked friendly combo-fields either cancel each other out, or perhaps combine to create new combo-fields in their place (water+fire=smoke, for example). It’s not a particularly radical design concept, and we might have a clue about what’s going on in the big battles.

Such a tedious metagame (no surprise, like OP I’m a dueling-focused player) of 50-man ‘lawnmower’ zergs rushing about, jockeying to be the ones who abuse culling better than the other and sweep over the top of their opponents like a steamroller, before they ever even render on their victim’s clients.

The stacking of AoE enables zerglings by making them as effective as the amount of people they can surround themselves with, all spamming the same kitten as them at the same time in the same place. Disabling AoE stacking does the opposite, in that the more people you surround yourself with, the less personally effective you become (due to people scrubbing all your stuff by placing their own on top of it), and you become more vulnerable to dueling builds who are bold enough to get up in the mix.

My point being that it will promote small-unit tactics, counterplay, dueling, and render the mindless/skill-less masses impotent. Do it Anet, people were telling you before release it needed remedy, and despite some vague mumblings about toning-down the effects (still can’t see anything in the average cluster-kitten) ain’t nothing happened.

Well, that certainly tempered my expectations!

Sounds a big pile of daily-cheevos/titles/ranks… do I come across as unimpressed so far? I hope so, I hope this is a big practical joke and it (the update) drops with new battlefields, more character-building, fixed exploits and a monumental improvement in the back-end architecture and game-engine optimization.

Yeah right! I was joking about the WvW update in-game just the other day, saying all it would be is a new set of progress-bars for the barely-sentient to fill every day; actually I wasn’t joking – I don’t have much faith in your top-level designers.

Sorry, I’m sure you’re great people who don’t really deserve my scorn at all – I hope you have better luck making a believer of me next time ’round.

Chaosx.2471:

I wish CD the best of luck in the future, but gossipingbackstabbing players such as yourself are part of the problem in the community

Ugh, this patronizing and contradictory nonsense irritates me as much as your routine tantrums and outbursts against pugs in CDBL – as if running down people’s morale in-game wasn’t enough for you, now you try to encourage the remnants of the server to cannibalize itself with a thread on the forums?

Show some class for once, former comrade. Move on and hold your tongue.

As one of FA’s most bitter opponents, I have to say that anyone shifting there looking for a great WvW experience will not be disappointed. They’re really well organized and putting in work across all timezones.

I’ve been able to tell how hungry y’all are over the last week, undoubtedly a server that’s going places in WvW. Props where it’s due fellas, kill ya later.

Fierce battle for Lowlands just concluded, shout-outs to everyone involved – CD looking down for the count but coming up swingin; it was a small achievement in a pretty bad night, but y’all were animals out there – the fire’s still burning.

Epidemiology.8496:

It would seem CD is now resorting to exploiting for objectives.

Shrug, perhaps it could be said FA set the tone when one of their brand new guild groups repeatedly glitched into Lowlands while our backs were turned on reset’s eve (trying to ninja while their main force fought us at the towers)… but nah, we countered/reported it and moved on, rather than besmirch the good names of the many FA players who are categorically good and fair players.

Unless you wanna play it like that? We can just call everyone else on that server cheaters regardless of how little they had to do with said cheating… you want that?

Maniac.5163:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Hexxed.7023:

I kinda gotta ask, did something happen to CD? I know us in Fort Aspenwood got a bunch of transfers from IoJ, but I doubt it would make it this unbalanced between the servers.

You actually got a ton of people on during our server downtime when most of our population isn’t on…I think that’s what happened. You’re winning because you people on all the time, and we well…don’t. That’s it in a nutshell I think. I’d love to have some clarification from somebody on during that time.

I feel like [EsF] [KH] [LaZY] [NAGA] [VaL] [MDMW] just haven’t been out in the numbers they have been previously. These are all guilds that used to give us trouble out there! I don’t know why this is. Overall militia participation on CD has dropped though for sure, I think their morale is probably down a bit unfortunately.

We know KH is gone, last night in in CDBL Lex told us VaL has five members… or was it four? Safe to say at this point, at least outside NA primetime, that there is no organized WvW presence on CD at all.

As someone who watched CDBL go from fully upgraded to burned-to-the-ground last night, here’s the rub:

When the kitten hit the fan we had no more than 12 active players on the whole map, in the space of half an hour there were three FA zergs numbering approx 70-80 players total – all guild groups, attacking both northern towers and hills/garrison simultaneously.

There was nothing much to be done about it, it was a PvDoor extravaganza – when DB showed up with ~50 guys and started capping FA melted away without a trace, we had gotten about 20-25 guys at this point, and the fiasco resumed but with DB riding the karma train around the map for a while.

Just want to point out that it ain’t anything new – IOJ was doing the same thing to us three weeks ago, population is not particularly lower than it was then, if they wanna gather by the hundred and beat up defenseless doors all night that’s their prerogative.

No fault of any of the CD players, the two-dozen odd who were logged across all maps when FA decided to have it’s giant circle-jerk. Life goes on, plenty of karma there to be had capping all that stuff back.

p.s. uA, your PvP is hella weak, after ~25 of your guys being repeatedly run-off and routed by 6-8 puggers you need some remedial work. When we lost Garrison we all looked at the map and were like “they still haven’t taken Sunny?”.

Dolores.5471:

7- IOJ mass transfers to FA, something that was obviously caused by CD forum warriors, who should petition Anet for the “You sunk the Island of Janthir” achievement.

You’re onto something here – and an in-game title for my character: Supreme Forum Warrior. The campaign will have to wait until my ‘middle-finger-salute emote’ push finally succeeds (priorities).

Andy.9137:

I can vouch there must have been over 30 CD camping the top ganking anyone who came up and only around 10 FA and very few DB.

Yo, disgraceful. I have noticed number of puzzle-generals (tags in the puzz, not something our regular commanders do, and when they forget they are openly mocked in chat) in the last week or two.

Where does this worthless garbage come from and how do we dispose of it once and for all?

Err… happy to be the plucky/confused Underdogs again, I do my best work while on the back foot – winning by unassailable margin got old fast. No shortage of action in the last few days.

Wonder how the remaining IOJs felt when they logged in the day before reset to find their old brothers-in-arms going berserk in Red clothes, clearing them off the map – sending em down a tier with a knee to the groin and fistful of dust in the eyes.

Very Mercenary, but no-one is mistaking this for the age of chivalry – I applaud the formation of this Evil Empire.

We should change our marketing strategy – “CD – generating astonishing amounts of bum-soreness amongst it’s enemies”.

That’s what’s up – save your cheap-shots for the battlefield, kittens.

JPSnow.8296:

we already beat them 80% of the time when numbers are even

Delicious – IOJ whining about being the underdog… the worm turned folks.

Y’all keep telling yourselves that, make every excuse under the sun. CD massive knows it was done without any numbers advantage, just the hardest-fighting basterds in Tyria.

Substance E.4852:

Could everyone here thinking people want Orr to be easier please stop sucking at reading comprehension?

Annoying =/= hard.

Dealing with rush hour traffic is annoying as hell but it is in no way hard.

People don’t like Orr because it is bland, repetitive, lacks any reward and is just plain not fun. People won’t play a game aspect that isn’t fun or rewarding regardless of how easy or hard it is. It’s that simple.

It really is that simple – I have 100% Orr completion on all my characters, I did 90% of it alone, and the rest with no more than a couple of pals (excluding Balth, but that’s really the one place you can scrape together more than a couple of participants – but most temple events can be done with a just a few gun players).

All my characters can solo the maze skillpoint in Cursed Shore – i.e. I’m not incompetent and I can man-handle Risen with some ease.

When I died it was through boredom – couldn’t be bothered fighting yet another pull (you walk five steps: “COME” walk another five steps: “COME”) and aggroed too many mobs trying to run on to wherever I was going, get chain-CC’d into the ground (gather enough acolytes in one spot and you will never be able to move again). (honorable mention to the death-drops from several vistas from which I plummeted from occasionally)

It’s not L2P, it’s “be bothered to play”, mostly I say “nah, I’d rather not”. It’s a resoundingly common attitude, and pretty much why these zones are as good as deserted most of the time.