Guild Wars 2

Did you take the ranking for the one guy before or after that game? I’m guessing you got it from after the game; in which case, do you have any proof that he wasn’t previously ranked under 1000 as a product of decay? I recently played a solo q match the other day and went from the 1000s to rank 8 or so.

Past that (and the afk’er which always sucks :/), I don’t see anything too crazy going on here. Both teams’ mean elo looks about the same. Idk, maybe I’m just accustomed to the craziness that the matchmaking system can produce, but this seems pretty tame compared to some of the kitten I used to see.

To clarify, this is not to make light of the system’s problems. It can definitely be terrible at times. I’m just offering my best guess as to how this game came about.

style.6173:

Bart Weird.9671:

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Because they don’t just port in, autoattack and port out. They do use PW; they just don’t spam it.

Personally, I’m fine with the damage of PW. It just needs to lose either the stun or the evade.

If it loses the stun, it loses dmg. If it it loses the evade, it’s a worthless skill.

I like how blue team showed no mercy.

I think the real question is what does the other 50% of the PvP population, that only Allie knows about, think of this skill? As we have seen in the past, in regard to the Trollhammer map, their opinion is weighted the heaviest, so it’d be nice to hear their view. :P

Lordrosicky.5813:

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

Warriors make warriors look bad.

Allie, THIS IS A SERIOUS POST

This guy obviously is either a troll or has some vendetta against thieves. As seen by his previous post, he thinks that anyone with a different opinion than him is a noob. He’s obviously never played a thief or is just angry that thief right now is one of the only classes that can somewhat counter his hambow warrior.
Please don’t listen to people like this. This game has already been messed up enough because Anet has in the past.

Erzian.5218:

S/P: pw stun vs head shot daze -> pw stun part should be removed -> only the flurry part remains + either change the evade so that it only evades (or blocks) attacks from the front, or deals greatly reduced damage to downed people (so you cannot efficiently abuse it to cleave on downed people). Might as well just rework it completely, just don’t limit yourself to tweaking numbers because this is very unlikely to do trick.

edit: I main thief.

I don’t think the stun is all that bad in pistol whip… Pistol whip needs to have some sort of root if it is expected to do any sort of dmg at all. Maybe it’d be better if they broke the skill into two parts and had the first part of pistol whip shoot an Immob out (500 units or so) for .5s (same as stun) and the second part be the dmging/evade part. This way no one would have to worry about their skills being interrupted by it and it would give more reason to use Headshot in the build.

And I don’t know why you’d use it to cleave downed states when you have Choking Gas and Cluster Bomb in your second weapon set. Pistol whips dmg is already about the same as auto attack.

Bazzoong.7145:

Grim.4795:

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Basically you did it wrong as wrong as you can do it: Decoy, dodge backwards: Steal and 1st PW wasted clones up to soak damage thief loses target and you got time to get 1st phantasm while he is rooted by his own skil, you can swap weapon and get 2nd phantasm here if you want, when you come out of inv he will use infiltrators signet or sword 2 and PW you counter with blurred frenzy then dodge, if he now blows everything useing infiltrators signet or respectively sword 2 and PW you blink. 0 damage taken phants and clones up each of his moves countered.

If he`d used S/D I`d understand your troubles but S/P….

What you said sounds logical and makes it sound like if you die to Pistol whip, it’s sometimes a L2P issue and not a scrub wtf OP build…
GTFO of the forums!

Anastasis.7258:

If you compare it with warrior’s Flurry and Hundred Blade, it’s obviously overpowered. If we are talking about balance here, you should either nerf Pistol Whip or Thief’s initiative regain, or buff all the melee channeling skills.

Regards.

If we are talking about balance here, why are Hundred Blade and Flurry even brought up? Hundred blade is a terrible ability to begin with and flurry is more for condi specs… Two completely different skills for a completely different class. Honestly, who let this guy in here?

Phaeton.9582:

It’s strange because IG every thief I’ve spoken too says it’s OP for the rewards it grants, also describing the build as ‘dumb’ or ‘virgin’.

I think the point is it’s a bit more powerful than other builds, it face rolls instantly anything without damage mitigation (which sucks for ele), and it’s stupendously easy to play, which irritates committed players.

Because all other classes are so hard to play in this game right? You’ve obviously never played thief (or played one against competent players). I do agree that it does shutdown most other zerker specs but then again… So does every other thief spec.

Sword dagger is better than s/p and easier. Who have you been talking to? D/p thieves that think the way they press 5 then 2 followed by a series of 1 and the occasional 3 gap closer is skillful?
S/p has barely changed at all over the course of this game. Oh they sped up the after cast of the animation? Well they also toned the stun down from 1s to .5s. What’s changed is amount of ppl playing the build. Pls do the math.

…

If this skill gets nerfed before hambow and decap fix and else’s buff, just…
A dmg nerf? You all realize right that the sword AA chain does more dps if all three strikes crit right?

The only reason you all want this nerfed is because you are seeing it so much. Evade everything s/d thieves are so much more fun to fight against; those skillful random dodges AMIRITE? The trickery version of this build does kitten for dmg to anything not glass cannon.

Iniative regen nerf, I can somewhat get behind. Sb 3 spam evade, for the love of kittening god I can get behind. Pistol whip nerf, no.

Wait .5 walk out of range. Don’t blow your burst into the evade animation either and be careful doing right after cuz sometimes we dodge afterwards. Profit.

Pyriall.5027:

If the balance patches are so infrequent, you cannot maintain a “shaving” philosophy. Let’s take a look at where we are currently. It will close to 8+ months, since the last major patch, and when the feature patch is released. With the pacing being this slow, this feature patch will have to have MAJOR changes to professions. You’re talking about huge changes that would essentially be equal to that of a major content patch/expansion from other MMO’s (being that’s what they wanted to mirror). So far, those “previews” are not major changes.

I don’t think they have the resources to pull off a major change (or what most of the community would consider major) in such a short amount of time.

At the very least though, I expect the major Problems to be solved.

Guild Wars 2 PvP hasn’t had a decent cut or trim in so long that it’s now a tangled and knotted mess. And instead of grabbing their razor max 2000 and diving straight in to fix this mess, Anet is simply choosing to wash and condition it with reward changes and a little maintenance patch. Sure, this might give PvP a little bit of shine again, but it won’t fix the real problems. Give it two weeks and those changes will begin to lose their fresh sparkle and people will once more see PvP for the greasy unkempt mess it really is.

TainoFuerte.8136:

This ability is pretty dumb. I was amazed when they buffed the aftercast some time ago in the first place.

Even if you don’t play the game all it takes is watching good streamers to see how stupid it is now.

I much preferred it when the ability required genuine setup to get the damage portion in.

Now, “3,3,3,3,3” isn’t that much of an exaggeration. To paraphrase Phanta’s moments of suffering on stream “Time to deal damage? Pistolwhip. I’m getting focused? Pistolwhip. Downed guy? Pistolwhip. He’s healing? Pistolwhip.”

What a joke.

And what my good sir should we do instead? Black powder and auto attack? LOL! I’m sure you would find that enjoyable. You want something to complain about because… I don’t know… That’s just the kind of person you are? Complain about Lyssa runes… aegis and stability on a 45 sec cd with mass condi clear? Wtf anet!? Complain about sb 3 evade. I main thief and I say we need a kittening after cast or something on this ability! It’s too strong. I’m tired of outplaying other thieves just to have them sb 3 stall until their heal comes up and they run away…

Pistol whip is fine.

Oh yes the magical pistol whip build… Are we all talking about the one that uses no signets, no set up; no secondary weapon; and the 1, 2, 4, and 5 skills are all blank and NEVER used? I’ve seen a few thieves using this build, and I promptly kitten on them.

OP, if you’re losing to this build as a necro then either practice against it and learn to counter it, or accept that you’re bad and leave these forums; Anet devs have been mislead enough. The trickery version of pistol whip puts out crap for dmg against you (if you’re playing standard dhuumfire).

As long as there are multiple classes in this game, your class will have a direct a counter. I don’t come on here and cry about how engi’s standing inside their bombs is unfair to melee classes NERF NERF NERF! I just shouldn’t have been dumb enough to stay on point that long with SS down. That being said, thief =\= direct counter to necros.

Can someone confirm that PvE is being affected as well? That way Anet will actually do something about it.

I say they should make a map where the ground is nothing but breakable glass panels. Staying too long on one spot causes you to fall to your death… perhaps into lava??

This map could function as the first straight slayer-styled Deathmatch for the game; or it could be made with the CtP play style in mind. Mid point would serve as the only piece of steady land on the map. However, the secondary objective would be a mechanism that operates a gigantic fan behind the midpoint that blows undodgeable wind at all enemy players on midpoint shooting them off the point back onto the glass.

Dirame.8521:

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What this guy said. ^

I mean honestly if you can’t figure out how to actively time hitting F1 and 3 simultaneously to reliably get off a Dhuumfire proc you might as well switch to the Minion Mancer build or another class in general…
Might I suggest Sprit ranger or Hambow warr? I hear they have a playstyle similar to what you’re looking for.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

yes, conquest mode is not newbie friendly.

i remember MrBig said it before.

or at least could we have a larger map catered for hotjoin 8 vs 8 or 10 vs 10 people to enjoy it?

the current maps are designed for 5 vs 5 arena tournament play and not really 8 vs 8 or 10 vs 10.

The solution to this has been stated many times by many people. Anet should just do away entirely with the 8v8 format and make all hot joins 5v5. This would get rid of a lot of the mindless zerging as well as better prepare hot joiners for tournament play. Maybe then ppl will start to realize that if someone on their team is already standing on a point that also standing on it with them doesn’t make the point cap any faster.

Some sort of veto system would definitely be really nice for solo Q… Will we ever see one get implemented? Probably not.

The easiest thing to do would be to just send it the way of RoC and make it hot join only. You would think that, with the amount of gimmicky kitten that happens on Skyhammer and the amount of ppl that complain about it everyday, this would be an easy decision. My theory is that someone high up in Anet had a hand in designing or theorizing this map and no one wants to hurt his feewings.

Lately I’ve seen some posts in the forum discussing a possible rework for tPvP matchmaking that would create fair and balanced teams on a more regular basis. While keeping in mind that changes like this probably won’t be seen until later this year or early the next, I was hoping that a rework to leaderboards might also be coupled with this new matchmaking’s implementation.

Currently, the biggest problem that the leaderboards contain is that they encourage high ranking players to simply not play. There has been multiple discussions in this forum on possible fixes, one of which is an increase to the rate of ranking decay. This seems like it would definitely be a good way to solve the problem of player inactivity (i.e. punish them for it); however, there is one fundamental problem that prevents this problem from being an actual fix. The problem is that even if a player’s rank begins to decay, all they have to do is play a single game and their status is instantly promoted back up to the point where they initially left off before decay. If you follow the leaderboards like I do then you have seen a few cases where this has happened. In other words, it’s like decay didn’t really affect them at all. Sure, it encouraged them to play, but only a single game. They are then set for another month (which is what I guess is the time for decay to kick in) before they are forced to play another single game.

This is what should happen. If a player is inactive long enough for decay to kick in and is dropped in rank, instead of being able to bump themselves right back up to the top after a single game, the player should have to now work their way back up to their original spot and prove that they still know what they are doing after their period of inactivity.

[quick aside] All this being said, I can’t bring myself to blame the players that take advantage of this system because it’s not their fault that it works. It’s a safe and easy way to remain on top. However, I will say that I have much more respect for the players who have achieved top ranks by playing more than say 20 tPvP games. :P

Another thing that could possibly stand a slight fix is the algorithm that the rating system uses. Take for example, a comparison of Player 1 vs Player 2. If Player 1 were to play say 16 games against top ranked people and win maybee 15 of those and lose 1, then the rating system would promote this person above a Player 2 who has played say around 800 games and won maybee 600 and lost 200 (just some random numbers :P ). Using some cognition, I believe this to be tricky problem with the mmr formula. I understand that the rating of the team Player 1 beats plays a crucial part in his/her ranking, but at some point playing 800 games in soloQ like made-up Player 2 has and keeping a 3.0 W/L ratio becomes much more impressive to me than going simply 15-1. The tricky part is finding exactly where the point that Player 2 trumps Player 1 is, and how to quantify it into numbers.

Anyway, these are just some things that I’ve noticed with the leaderboards that I thought could stand to use some more attention. Seeing as how problem 2 is a lot more tricky than problem 1, I’d honestly just be happy with a fix for decay which would in turn cause more game play which might also solve problem 2 on its own. Or maybe increasing the amount of games before getting a rank to 21 instead of 11 might help? I don’t know. Which is why now I’d like to open this thread to some constructive feedback from the community and devs alike and here some of your ideas.

Thanks for reading!

All character models get downsized so that the Asura race isn’t Op anymore.

Skyhammer gets added to the teamQ tPVP rotation with an added breakable glass in the middle of each point to encourage better “positional” play.

Most of the “OP” Warrior builds that are being played right now involve cc’ing opponents in the form of stuns and knockbacks/downs, so adding a little extra stability into your build on any class can go a long way in a fight against them.

Non-Greatsword Warriors lack a whole lot of escape utilities so once you get ahead of them in a fight it’s generally over, especially if you can prevent their cc.

This has been happening to me as well a lot quite recently. Randomly in tourneys or just running around in the mist the game will just stop responding and kick me out. My computer is fine and my Internet is not dropping out as I’m not disconnected from Skype calls with my friends when the issue occurs. Something’s bugging with GW

…and winners

Sinoctis you should just conform and go d/p until Anet buffs s/d like I did. :P It’s wayyyy easier than what you’re used to playing with. It has far less weaknesses and requires much less skill. Bonus quickness isn’t needed to ball over everyone either!! So Conformmmmmmmmm XD

I think this thread really needs a bump and am unsure why it was overlooked so quickly as it highlights some of the main problems the Thief class currently contains.

Flanking Strike, Dancing Dagger, and Body Shot (especially) all need a rework. The trait Last Refuge, although the idea has merit, typically does not work as intended and ends up causing me to die.

The only other thing I would like to see, is the number 3 Stealth ability on downed-state reworked to include some kind of damage so that it can be brought up to par with other classes 3rd downed-state ability. Engineers have a bomb that damages and interrupts stomp; Elementalists have an immobilize that damages and prevents ppl from getting to them to stomp; Mesmers have the heart seeker phantasm that eats up all glasscannons trying to stomp; and Warriors have the OP Vengeance skill that makes them the supreme winner of all downed fights.
Nowadays, I don’t even use the thief stealth ability unless a teammate is trying to rez me because a downed thief is about as troublesome as a baby that doesnt want to eat his cheerios and most smart tourny players will just leave me to bleed out; I figure maybe if I press my 1 key enough times he’ll get annoyed enough to just finish the job. If its a guardian letting me bleed out… gg, I just strike up a conversation while I’m waiting.