Guild Wars 2

Just got this one again after my very first fight for the day. Got it regularly yesterday. The problem is growing into absolutely unacceptable territory. Especially since this is a well known problem, not only for sPvP.

As i said before, the developers policy to “bugfix” on such a large scale is bound to introduce more problems than actual solutions.

In this case, it should be an absolute priority for a fix and to tell the truth i’m more than disappointed that this hasn’t been fixed already. Like i said, infinite lloading screens have been around since beta and are well documented.

It’s far better to take it out of PvP entirely. The only thing downed state is good for is causing grief and promoting Zerg mentality. Zerg is being rewarded in a game that is supposedly (not even slightly to be honest) balanced. Take out downed state, balance all professions and implement proper cons to outrageous pros.

GW1 is infinitely better than GW2 in terms of PvP. Even when it was still vanilla back then. GW2 PvP feels like a prototype build. A failed experiment, whereas GW1 PvP, with all its flaws, is still the superior experience that actually involves and promotes skill over spam and zerg.

Hell. I’m very tempted to drop PvP entirely til the next expansion. It’s simply too boring and unrewarding as it is. WvWvW is too monotonous/repetitive but it’s still a viable past-time every now and then.

Too bad. A couple of weeks into the game and it already feels washed out. GW1 never lost its fascination for all those years. The only thing i’m looking forward to now are expansions. Whenever they might arrive, it can’t be too soon.

@Webley

I happen to play tournaments and they don’t magically take away the very real OP problems with thieves. Nerfing PW was a good start. Fixing the stealth issues would be the next logical and needed step.

BTW, this is hardly a matter of L2P. Even burst damage should not result in a 3 second death in a game that is supposed to be fair and competitive. A thief has to suffer from choice and consequence, where the choice is to gamble a burst assault and suffer from retaliation. However, retaliation is seriously hampered by bugged stealth and over the top condition removal, quickness/haste, evade. You name it. 2v1 with a thief among them is a death sentence since you will completely use up your entire defensive arsenal on that one alone. Even if you manage to down both or even one of them, you’ll just be shredded by the downed attacks.

But yeah, i do understand why people would like to argue in favour of a cheesy profession. After all, who would like to get their nukes taken from them? Mesmers and Guardians have taken a huge hit recently. And those profession weren’t nearly as much under criticism.

As the topic header states, I have no clue what you did to the game with that last update but since then i get regular “infinite loading screens”, hang-ups freezes, lagging render, invisible characters etc etc. Nothing of which happened before. Not on this scale at least.

Geez. Maybe you should concentrate your updating efforts at one point at a time and make them more frequent again. Right now, the game is bugging itself to a slow death.
Not to mention that the most important balancing issues haven’t even been tackled yet. Not by a long shot.

@Wolfe

Yes, utterly OP, you read that part right. I stand by what i said and i do not feel the need to comment any further on something that so many people readily agree upon. As i said, i don’t care WHAT they change about the Thief to tone him down into fair and square territory. That class has advantage over advantage piled upon advantage over other classes. Have you ever seen “sPvP” against a whole team of Thieves? I have. Too many in fact and it’s one of the most ugly things in recent time.

I play a Thief myself as an Alt and i’m the first to agree that the term “glass cannon” doesn’t apply to a Thief at all. It doesn’t die faster than other classes at all. In fact, it dies a lot harder. Plus it has that ridiculous condition/damage burst with the graciously long escape into the shadows heal.

I had some really intriguing fights with my Ranger against other classes that were really thrilling and it didn’t feel like either side had an unfair advantage over the other. Fights with Thieves are never like that.

Other than that, you can take your condescending attitude elsewhere. I stated what i felt wrong with Thieves. Which is what this thread is about. Thankfully, you also seem to realize that they need to be nerfed regardless, however much you want to downplay on it.

About the downed state. If it wasn’t too clear from my previous line of thought i would rather have it trashed for PvP. As such, i strongly feel that those skills are lame, as in, why should a defeated player still deal damage, quite disproportionate damage even, after being defeated. That problem was already brought up so many times. It makes 2v1 or any other multiple matches undesirable because it doesn’t cater to skill but rather to spams and number crunches. More and more players adopt a policy to let the downed player bleed out instead of killing him because of the net gain in time and control. The downed state works well enough for PvE but it creates too much interference for enjoyable PvP matches.

The interrupts are still superflous even if they do what they do, namely interrupt. There’s no point to interrupt the finisher animation if the other guy can immediately resume the strike. Maybe you gain 2 more seconds “alive” in downed state. Which amounts to nothing in a chaotic match. It doesn’t help you get a rez and even IF it magically should happen sometimes, it’s so rare and unlikely that you can easily put that thought on hold.
Other classes have many more skills that make it hard for other players to actually kill them in downed state. That IS an unfair advantage. I took the Ranger because his downed skills are so ridiculous compared to those of a Thief or Mesmer for example.

As for those ominous 45 seconds. This is the point where i have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and even if it is just about the activation time for Pain Response (which is just ONE of a wide variety for a Thieves multi-condition removals). I have never seen ANY Thief who was incapacitated for that long in any conceivable way. Not even after firing off a full burst and the subsequent stealth phase with their Backstab build.

By the way, maybe (just maybe) there is a reason why there’s such a large nerf herd? Just saying.

Thieves NEED to be rebalanced. They are utterly OP as it is. Since the game is still fresh, i was willing to look over this for quite some time but PvP is now flooded with cheap Imba-Thieves and you can’t really tell anyone that is fun any longer.

I don’t care what they nerf about them as long as they take SOMETHING away. We all know they are about burst-damage. Okay fine. But then make them actually vulnerably instead of granting them an untouchable shadow state. Take their cheap anti-condition skills from them. A Ranger has a bloody hard time to circumvent many conditions whereas Thieves can just poof them away with basic skills.

Also, the downed state mechanic is broken for all classes but Thieves especially. It feels like other players have to kill the same rotten Thief 3 times over. Not to mention how they get a stealth kill on players in downed state. Well, as i said, downed state is completely and utterly ridiculous for PvP. Generally speaking. And it isn’t all that fun all around. There are classes with a downright unfair advantage through their downed skills.

Take a Rangers downed skills. A lame dirt throw; a lame interrupt (which is completely superflous because the enemy can IMMEDIATLY resume his death strike); Pet healing with a way too long CD and the general healing. Useless.

It’s really hard to tell what kind of parts you’d want to have in your PC. As you can see, there are problems all over place.

For example, I’m running this game on a very trusty and solid 8800GT, which has never let me down on any game over the last few years, with a Q6600 Quad and 4GB RAM. Running everything on medium at 1080 resolution. This nets me around 40-60 FPS in most outdoors locations, while I’m usually at 25-40 (sometimes 60) in towns.

The problem I have witnessed the most seem to be serious memory leaks across the maps. Like I said, I can have up to 60 FPS outside, but sometimes, if I take a step into a certain direction they would fall down out of the blue, without an obvious reason. Taking a few steps back and everything is back to normal. But in any case, there is never a serious lag, even with seemingly low FPS. The game feels a bit “slower” but never to the point where it is unplayable or can no longer be enjoyed.

Talking about “lag”, I did have that SFX/Attack animation lag once or twice. Where the attack sounds are out of sync. But that vanishes over time or as soon as i relog.

So yes, I would agree that this game still needs optimization. Memory leaks, particle effects/lighting on foggy areas and all that can cause drops in FPS and it can affect even high-end PCs. Not to mention the world-boss events when “hundreds” of people fire off everything they have and the screen is just a blurry blot of twirls and colors. I do think that is something where everyone can feel a serious break-down in performance.