Guild Wars 2

R O C.6574:

Gotta love all the reflects. I was killing a P/P thief all match last night, or should i say he was killing himself XD. Ele is actually very strong if you count all the buffs and auras to teammates as part of your dps

Of course ele is strong it single handedly locked DH out of the high end meta for 3 seasons lol. Its fluff damage is also pretty high, I mean you shouldn’t be solo killing any proper DPS on the enemy team but in any fight if you under estimate the pressure of an air overload you are going to regret it.

[quote=6584878;Nickzor.2453:]

Saiyan.1704:

Nickzor.2453:

Saiyan.1704:

Necro, Rev, Ranger, Ranger, Guard
Vs
Ele, Mesmer, Necro, War, Condi Engi

You realize your comp was doomed from the very beginning right?

My condi guard can 1v3 yalls Rev/Ranger/Ranger. It’s not because I run a good condi build; it’s gimmicky, but it’s because Condi > those classes… and they had 4 Condi classes…

• Your team had 0 support for the Necro.
• Your team had 0 support vs Condi.
• Your Guard should have gone Symbolic bunker for the little support y’all had.
• One Ranger should have swapped.

We had a Yes/No Vote a while back.
A “Yes” meant we’d get class specific queueing and class specific MMR.
A “No” meant we wanted to swap classes before a game starts but it won’t be class specific MMR.
(Anet even stated they had matchmaking authority to alter how they wanted specific classes on a team, but people still voted No)

The “No” vote won by 7%, saying a comp like yours should have swapped classes… That’s what Anet and the GW2 community wants you to do… btw I was a Yes vote above.

A good power rev should win against a burn guard due to the fact that meta rev has 3 condi cleanses on a short CD, Guardian only has 1 condi.

Core Guardian has 1 condi not counting sigils but DH Burn has 2 other condi in addition to burns and sigils. Cripple and Invulnerability procs when F1 burn on hit activates, except it’s added after the burn stack, so anything less than a 3 condi cleanse tool will not remove the burns. Top it off with sigils and that’s just enough condi coverage throughout a fight vs darn near any class with the exception of Power War and DH Guardian.

I haven’t had any issues with any power revs on point

That comes back to whole being good issue. I have commented many times on other threads about peoples over zealous use of cleanses. and yes a rev can cleanse 3 condis at once but they also have the whole glint heal going on and enough evasion to handle your applications. So in other words they can cleanse 3 condis at once. glint heal your next burn burst and then cleanse 3 condis again.

The average rev swaps their legend on impulse and doesn’t take it in to account the multiple passives it triggers. I mean most revs currently don’t even know how to trigger an equilibrium burst… Much less use it to cleanse and heal.

I mean I kill meta DHs on my condi mesmer it doesn’t mean I should but the average player even in high plat is so much worse then they were just last season that its insane….. also Condi mes should be added to the list of classes who can out cleanse your burns along with druid, ele, Scrapper… Necro… oh wait…. pretty much every class. I mean when im on my necro burn guards are a real treat….. Good necros already stomped DH but burn DH is like candy…. you kill yourself faster then you kill us.

Burn DH is a condi build that thinks its a zerker. Just because you apply 2 short term non damaging condis doesn’t really change much especially since burn DH is reliant on their throw which any good player should be playing defensively until its on CD The main issue with burn DH/Guard is that it relies on stacking a single condi to a high amount by spamming through multiple CDs quickly creating a burst that is similar to zerker damage. Issue is that once you are spent you are pretty much a free kill. A normal DH functions on the same general concept but in terms of defensive CDs.

A rev especially can reliably bait and dodge your throw but it comes back to the average player is just bad now… Also just an FYI burn DH is vastly weaker then burn Guard at this current point in time due to the buffs to the base virtue.

I would imagine he is means the current state of warrior and DH. Portion of the community seems to believe these 2 classes are OP. While war is in a very high point of balance atm its still countered by enough to negate that concept…. and DH is countered by like…. half the meta.

The forums for most games are generally avoided by the majority of the pro players for said title. Helseth spent some time posting on here but he moved on to a different game because of as you said the lack of communication from ANET.

In general most of the pro players have been leaving in droves and IMO they were the last support block holding the PVP scene together. Unless ANET is willing to learn from their long standing mistakes namely their lack of transparency with the community this games PVP scene will simply continue to stagnate.

Saiyan.1704:

Necro, Rev, Ranger, Ranger, Guard
Vs
Ele, Mesmer, Necro, War, Condi Engi

You realize your comp was doomed from the very beginning right?

My condi guard can 1v3 yalls Rev/Ranger/Ranger. It’s not because I run a good condi build; it’s gimmicky, but it’s because Condi > those classes… and they had 4 Condi classes…

• Your team had 0 support for the Necro.
• Your team had 0 support vs Condi.
• Your Guard should have gone Symbolic bunker for the little support y’all had.
• One Ranger should have swapped.

We had a Yes/No Vote a while back.
A “Yes” meant we’d get class specific queueing and class specific MMR.
A “No” meant we wanted to swap classes before a game starts but it won’t be class specific MMR.
(Anet even stated they had matchmaking authority to alter how they wanted specific classes on a team, but people still voted No)

The “No” vote won by 7%, saying a comp like yours should have swapped classes… That’s what Anet and the GW2 community wants you to do… btw I was a Yes vote above.

A good power rev should win against a burn guard due to the fact that meta rev has 3 condi cleanses on a short CD, Guardian only has 1 condi. Its one of the only 1v1s I will take as a rev. That being said if he was on a team with that comp chances are he wasnt a good rev….. and there are very few left.

Trigr.6481:

Faux Play.6104:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Trigr.6481:

Crinn.7864:

The only way to make 1v1 work is to ban thieves or at least limit their trait and weapon choices. Otherwise a thief could infinitely drag out (and invariably win) any match not against other thieves.

Or you could…. I don’t know, use your brain and design it with stealth in mind, and not around it.

^ SOOOOOOOO much this. People forget to adapt to things and dont want to change, thus having them complain just like this. People really should learn to change/adapt their builds based on what they are up against or what they may be up against. Thats how to spot the difference between a player and a good player.

It isn’t really stealth. It is more that someone could put together a build that could kite the whole match.

If it’s designed correctly, the map would be small and designed in such a way that kiting would be difficult, use your imagination. It’s hard, I know.

Yes… that makes perfect sense…. Because making kiting one of the key tactics of high level play and the only defense for and against certain classes more difficult then it already is will make for amazing dueling…..

Can anyone say WARRIOR MASTER RACE? I know I sure as heck can! Because nothing says OP like a 11k arc divider to the face and no where to kite away from it. Oh wait…. I know lets have 3v3s with no where for necros to escape too….

I do agree that 2v2 and 3v3 is a good idea, one that will breathe some new life back in to the game even. I don’t think 1v1s will ever be a good idea how ever. Not even just for stealth reasons. There is too many classes that are just too powerful in 1v1s and too many that are simply at a disadvantage.

2v2s and 3v3s with no class stacking can be balanced with little change. It will require a map or 2 that have multiple levels but dont give too much of a preference to shadow step classes…… colosseum anyone…? But if you focus on hindering kiting, stealth or anything the game is already using it will only create more issues. Not less.

choovanski.5462:

if you seriously assembled that team as a 5 stack… well my god what do i say. honestly you’re running a composition that’s designed to lose.

5 stack w no ele or druid is stupid.

Agreed…. Wasnt joking that 5 thieves would be better then that… at least then you can out rotate them

Crinn.7864:

Entenkommando.5208:

In one of the leaks (so nothing exactly confirmed) I read that they are aiming for at least 25k/sec on every new elite spec which would be reasonable for pve… But Unless we get to play with 5k toughness, hell kitten no!

25k/s is low end for PvE currently. Condi Engi already parses at 35k/s

You need to realize that those numbers are assuming, 100% fury uptime, 100% 25 stacks of might uptime, 100% alacrity uptime, 100% quickness uptime, Warrior banners, GOTL stacks, Spotter, and Empower Allies buff.

Without all those buffs you’re looking at 10k dps tops.

Vuln uptime as well. And even with it doesnt mean you’re doing 25k every hit just that you are averaging 25k per second. It will go up and down as your cycle your rotation. Also keep in mind this is with pure glass ascended something that not only doesn’t exist in PVP but would be impractical.

The zerker amulet has less stats then the ascended armor so even if you run it you wont put out the same DPS on a CCd player as you would on a training dummy. Not even factoring in defensive CDs, dodges, and amulets with defensive stats,

kdaddy.5431:

BikeIsGone.8675:

Oh gee….1 bad game….Matchmaking definitely has to be broken. In all honest, I can’t hear this kitten any more. If you are so easily frustrated, then I guess leaving PvP probably is the right choice.

Leaving PvP is the right choice.

If i may add for everyones comments.

When did having the meta team comp become the necessity to winning?

Prior to HOT I could run any wacky build and be competitive and in most cases better then the opposing players that i was better then. I can understand if you come to the forum alot and see all the negative posts and say No i disagree with it because your having fun.

For me Build Diversity is the worse its ever been as well as team comp potential. In the match i was talking about I and 1 other player were winning the 1 vs 1 but could not win any team fights.

Its not about skilled play or even a unique build set up that you have to think about. If i was running hammer/mace-shield with the power trait line on warrior using condi. You would notice that any stuns/ knock downs/ cc would be the way he applies damage.

There is none of that, HOT specs are so OP compared to vanilla builds. And meta builds are so OP compared to other HOT builds. I truly dont know how anyone can defend GW2 PvP at this point, maybe i hit the breaking point.

At what point has anyone used the term meta? There is a difference between meta and just plain stupid…… If you run a 5 stack with no support you will need to play insanely well to make up for the lack of it. This is even more true when the enemy team has a support…

If you enter a dungeon in another MMO with 4 DPS and a tank…… That dungeon is going to go realllllllly badly……. The result of ANETS open builded system is that you need to change your build to meet requirements not just play what ever and then complain it goes badly….

You dont need to play meta…. I often turn off reaper and play standard power necro….. I also duel better then most DHs with vanilla power medi guard (my main alt pre HOT) Hot made a lot of things unviable but unless youre at the highest level of play there is a LOT of things still plenty useful in the right hands….. but if you dont have a single healer…… You are creating the issue for yourself.

messiah.1908:

you have death match – ppl complain
you have stringhold – ppl complain
you have cap point – ppl complain

the fact stay the same – you cant satisfy all

the problem in pvp is the lack of builds diversity, the lack of counter to meta builds, the lack of creation (2 years i see d/p thief…) the lack of change

The meta was made by the ESL players and even the builds that weren’t made by them were popularized by them. If you want counter meta builds make one since the ESL players have kind of well… left….

That being said there is plenty of issue with people lacking game knowledge making builds. There are also plenty of viable builds that aren’t meta especially in solo queue.

You need to have an understanding of your class, the other classes, the meta and the roles. The amount of times I see people using their own build talking trash to meta players just because they kill them makes my head hurt….. If you build can kill a meta build cool. But if you sacrifice everything else your class does you gain 1v1 potential but lose any other real use.

Meta builds are meta because they are flexible. Keep that in mind because with the lack of a pro scene the meta is everyones hands now.

Ashantara.8731:

BikeIsGone.8675:

Oh gee….1 bad game….Matchmaking definitely has to be broken.

Stop talking down to others just because you don’t agree. Not only is everyone entitled to their opinion, but — most importantly — the OP has a valid point there.

The fact that PvP is mainly unbalanced due to a completely awful team balance (i.e., the 100% random constallation of teams) cannot be denied, and that leads to people losing (interest, especially with the puny rewards this season).

You are basically forced to train every profession in PvP so that you can switch to another character when you see the match is doomed for your team before it has even started. This is a joke, and I am not laughing. As the screenshot shows, one Necro and one Engineer should have been swapped and we would have had a perfectly balanced match with the better coordinated team winning.

With this imbalance plus the crippled new reward system, most casual PvP players have quit playing or only poke their nose in every once in a while, which has also resulted in longer waiting times.

Simply put class stacking makes any form of real matchmaking impossible currently. If you don’t want to play 2 engies vs 2 necros you can still swap before matches like everyone else when they have your hard counter stacked…. but at the end of that day the player base is currently to low to implement such a change with out bleeding out playerbase even further,

So….. You had a 5 stack with no dedicated clear class. You had 2 rangers….. not druids…… A class that was subpar before HOT… I mean its sustained damage was bottom tier in PVE and in PVP it was a noob stomper that relied on 1 button and people to not use reflects…..
a power rev which Isn’t inherently bad just requires perfect play to really pull their own weight
a necro…. a class that is well known for being a walking target but no rez bot or healer to protect them
and a burn guard….. another noob stomper that relies on other classes to be useful do to the lack of cover condis….. I mean when I play power rev I can easily out cleanse a burn guard…. Now dont get me wrong there are a lot of issues with PVP atm… but this wasn’t a balance issue….. you just had what might be the single most imbalanced 5 stack comp I have ever seen( I mean 5 thieves would outperform that) against a condi heavy comp….
Condis heavy teams tear apart a lack of coordination…. but falls off against coordinated teams that have a dedicated condi cleanser… i mean with that comp I could have killed you all alone as a condi mesmer just by condi bombing you and then sitting on the high ground while I watch you desperately fight against the condi pressure I put out…..

Simply put you had a comp of 5 pure offense DPS builds against a decent comp. They had a mesmer so they beat you on mobility and 1v1 potential,
they had condi war so they beat you on sustain and battles of attrition,
they had a necro and an ele so their team fight carry could reliably last long enough to systematically tear your team apart.
and they had a condi engie so they beat your entire team combined in terms of reliable burst.

I mean what do you expect to happen if you run 5 glass builds 3 of which are awful?

On top of that im not saying you need to run meta….. I mean condi engie is anything but meta but if your team works with you it can produce a ton of pressure and has good ganking potential.

If you’re going to run a 5 stack in unranked it will put you against another 5 stack or something like it…. if you run a comp and builds that make zero sense alone much less together it only takes on good player to pick you apart

I managed to read that block of text…. sort of…. but the answer to your question isn’t static.

It depends on not only you class/build pick but both your and your enemy team comp.

Enemy team have a mesmer, necro, a well known condi rev player?(yes they exist) Avoid demolisher like the plague.

Enemy team have 1 likely condi candidate but you have a tempest? then it comes down to you persona; ability to manage condis and likeliness of being stuck alone with said condi candidate.

Choices like this are not as cut and dry as people tend to make them. Depending on your class a rune change can protect you from condis as much as the extra health did. Lyssa on a class with a low CD elite can be incredibly powerful with demolisher. Using rune passive to mitigate condis and using the extra mitigation from the amulet to deal with power.

Just look at the broader picture and go with a case by case basis. Changing your runes,amulet and even individual traits based on what each match can be a huge difference in some matches.

The “Duo” part of the solo duo queue was the the issue. It only takes 2 skilled players with voice coms and synergy to carry as a result it nullified what the playerbase who asked for solo queue wanted.

That being said its actual effect on the state of PVP was minimal. The game is bleeding out due to the lack of the top players. Despite popular belief the highest end of the playerbase is a very important part of the community. This is especially true in a game like this with a small community in comparison to PVP titles.

Simply put…. ANET’s poor communication knocked down the last pillar of support the game mode had. Until a new support pillar is added changing the amount of people who can queue together will have zero effect.

This is why season 5 had a healthy playerbase even though many people weren’t happy with the queue changes in one way or another but season 6 was a ghost town with no changes to the actual system. Many ESL teams disbanded and other players stated they were either going on hiatus (as a solo player or with their team) due to ANET’s lack of transparency, or simply leaving the game all together.

This entire concept is what has been bleeding this games integrity dry for years…. In every other MMO anything of value was only available to those who put effort in to it. Top end raid gear went to those who had cleared the raid. If you weren’t good enough to do said raid you had to work at it until you could prove to a raiding guild you were worth taking. Same was true for PVP titles and gear. Cutting edge achievements, titles mounts went to the first to secure the kills.

This games has been trying to cater to everyone for so long that its quality has been degrading. If you want something of value the entire concept of an MMORPG is that you have to earn it. They removed the value of everything and now we have PVErs whining they can’t get AP from PVP achievements or wings from PVP and as a result they are toned down for them. We have PVPers who want raid gear….. so they will likely end up doing the same thing….. The more we bleed out the worth of what made doing hard content or polishing our PVP skills or what ever worth doing the more this game and every game to follow will lose what made this genre so fun for such long hours. Its fine to be a casuaL MMO, but this game is becoming less and less of a casual MMO and more of a friggin online babysitting service…… the problem is the baby sitter is quite obviously over worked and is just buying new toys for the kids because they are too kitten ed tired to teach them to friggin share.

Asur.9178:

The problem is not their damage alone…the problem is their sustain ALONG with their damage.

This applies to multiple classes, not just DH.

…wut sustain….? Dh is paper hiding behind CDs….. They melt under focus fire and are fodder if you play defensively until you force them to burn their CDs. I know L2P gets tossed around a lot…. but DHs have been hanging by a thread in the pro scene since day 1. They are no joke countered by dodging key skills along with half the actual meta………. and if they trap bomb you with judges intervention….. Unless they run dragons maw which is an ongoing joke….. you should be able to disengage, heal and still get the kill. If they run DM….. well they might kill you but a DH without their elite Mediation is like a walking shoot me sign…. second you notice them maw up tell your team…. they are pretty much a free kill….

Daishi.6027:

I’m not sure if high sustain to the level of druid and similar builds, is enough of a counter to be considered balanced. When you take into account the role, and how DH rotates it seems a bit to strong vs what it would push off point, or even chase down and kill.

This is not an issue in high end pvp because it’s actively played around and covered, but frankly creating a status quo where half the things people want to play are not supposed to engage, on such a short roaster, is why pvp balance sucks and is so exclusionary.

Spear of justice change made it a bit more fair for 1v1s but I don’t think it’s enough when you consider the meta of conquest.

So background information and context: If only HoT classes are viable across the board, I think we need to balance around them being in every build primarily. Even if core has to take a hit in PvP. (honestly elite specs just need to be made f2p at least in pvp at this point. I would also argue that elite specs should change the functionality of some core skills; possibly even nerfing them. But that’s a topic for another time.)

With that in mind I think the biggest issue still remaining is DH’s ability to chase. If you add more play there, it can still push roamers off point if need be, but with no added pressure of being shut down. It would also mean it suffers a bit more against the vertical axis, giving a little bit more leeway to what DH counters, thus evening the matchup.

With this in mind I suggest a change in how “Judges Intervention” functions. Either by giving it a cast time with an animation. Or changing the functionality to something like a stun projectile with a travel time, followed by a port.

“Symbol of Blades” could be changed to a standard leap, or given a cast time like the above, or have the symbol be a chained second part to the skill needing to be actively cast, with the blind being moved to the first pulse of the symbol that you actively need to drop.

High sustain isn’t what counters DH, which is why a power rev can still win that 1v1. DH’s traps are only a real problem if they can drag you through them on repeat. The reason that Druid counters them is they they can reliably avoid their CC and have projectile denial, same with Scrapper, Rev’s can absorb the DH’s burst and out evade their CC and projectiles. Dh’s are incredibly relient on a small amount of skills being landed in order to force combos. There is a reason that very few DHs run more then test of faith and their heal trap. They lose a lot of sustain for a very weak increase in damage since well… you just avoid their control skills and dont stand on them…..

It comes down to an issue of class stacking and a lack of understanding of how DHs get kills. I main condi mes which means DH hard counters me…. yet the amount of DHs I see as an actual threat are few and far between. DH is a very low skill floor class and as a result people equate that to OP, but to actually make it work against people who understand the class you need to play a large amount of min d games, bait enemy CDs and save your own for as long as humanly possible….. Simply put… STOP SUICIDE BOMBING THEM and learn to count CDs…

iKeostuKen.2738:

Crinn.7864:

Seriously?

The entire game’s combat system is and was designed around PvP. Do you really think that PvE is why we have active dodge mechanics, downstate, stunbreak and mobility skills?

Like seriously half the traits and 4/5ths of the utility skills are literally pointless in PvE and are only used in PvP.

At first yeah, PvE was actually challenging and then over the years it became easy as hell. There were mobs in the low level areas that would one shot and require a ton of players in order to beat certain bosses and even do events. The game wasnt made with PvP in mind but more for PvE and WvW. PvP seemed as though it was the last thing on the list but the devs wanted to be esport so bad that they bet all their cards on a mode that was destined to fail by design of the game itself. This is easily shown is a lot of skills that havent ever been in working condition for PvP.

I honestly hope the devs smarten up about the future and ditch PvP all together, SPvP should honestly get hosed for a year or 2 so they can work on more stuff and put full focus into reviving all the other aspects of the game and even introducing a ton more skills with zero regard for balance, just make skills for fun like the game should have been in the first place, limit them to PvE if you need to. So much potential wasted on such a fail mode is sad to see and I spent all my gw2 years on pvp, I myself see that PvP has really brought this game down from what it could have been.

PVE… challenging? When? At what point in time? The hardest content I have seen is the 100 or what ever fracs…. and even they aren’t that hard…. and before you go off on me with the “pre hot” generic reply….. I made the fortune I have been expanding via trading post via selling Arah the first 1-2 years of the games release…. this games actual content is slightly harder then launch… but its PVE is just too simple for the level of depth the combat has. A good player who understands their class running zerk can solo anything short of a raid and that hasn’t changed since the first month of the game.

That being said this game’s balance issues are being blown way out of proportion. Im still lost as to how people are calling for DH nerfs….. The class that has been hanging on by a thread since it was released….. The class is a classic noob stomper…. in no game have the ever balanced a class that is only OP at the lower level of play for the people who have issues fighting them. The class itself is hard countered by no joke half the meta…. They are only really a problem when they are stacked against uncoordinated teams and even then there is a thresh hold where their poor mobility will allow a single thief to counter their inability to rotate quick enough. 3 in solo queue sucks to fight but 1 or 4-5 is a joke.

Similar issue is there with condi. A single condi user alone isn’t OP, they can have a huge impact if they play well but their actual damage output is generally going to be lower then their power counterparts. The main issue comes from heavily stacked condi teams and a lack of understanding of how to fight condis. The result of this is people claim OP when they really just cleansed the warriors bleeds instead of saving it for the condi bomb by the necro 2 feet away.

Majority of balance issues are a L2P issue that due to the average understanding of the player gets labeled as OP. Now there are legitimate balance problems but they are no where near as bad as other PVP focused games. The real problem are core implementation issues such as class stacking and matchmaking issues.

messiah.1908:

Naurgalen.2374:

Rev may be better at healing but you are totally underestimating auras, specially for small teams / PvP with powefull aura:

- Frost aura is -10% incoming damage + 40% of protection!!!! (sadly probably only 40% for team)Thats some really nice mitigation… + health ,regen, vigor & swiftness! And eles have 2 auto-procs + flash freeze and overload

- Shoking aura is IMHO the strongest and can totally win melee fights for your team with its proc in air-dagger on decent cd (25seg)+ the rebound (Im sad they gave us a useless long superspeed instead of a 3rd proc) ofc + health ,regen, vigor & swiftness

- Ele has BEASTLY ranged protection: personal magnetic wave reflec, magnetic aura reflect for ALL the team with overload & aftershok + Projectile destroy with Swirling winds (And ofc with the ult, but best use it when needed / in air) – I know 2 are skills, but the interactions are really strong and needed to be explained

- 3 meh fire auras (I know they are the worst and the damage is minimal but its a little more might + 3 procs of health ,regen, vigor & swiftness)

Except fire, wich you can spam, they are really strong and used in the right moments can change the flow of the battle. Sometimes even more than just healing.

dont get me wrong. iam not saying ele is less useful
ele is strong as condi cleanse where rev at healing
yes ele got frost aura with 10% dmg mitigation where rev got blind aoe which is also dmg mitigation
ele need to spam his skills with bigger cd where revenant has lower cd
if ele taking focus he needs to use his cd and after that he is bit useless for several seconds where revenant isnt

the big problem with revenant is the micromanaging but all in all its fun with nice tricks which does the job.

rev can aoe torment, poison, burning stack on point and rip boons in team fight when not taking focus fire.

ele will still be the choice as it more easy and friendly to use. rev is another option if you know how to play it

also powerful aura is not taken rather cleansing water if PA taken than your cleanse ability is less than the revenant.

The issue with your general logic is healing is only a very small portion of the support role. There is a reason druid and scrapper are both technically considered support and share a role in 5 mans. Rev probably has the highest pure sustained healing but with proper focus fire they aren’t out healing the kind of damage this game has.

On top of that revs boons are pulse based which is pretty much saying to enemy necros TIME FOR ME TO CARRY.

Rev only brings CC that their offensive counterpart can out do, healing which while top notch isn’t enough to turn the tides of a real fight and boons that are difficult to control correctly.

Ele’s bring enough projectile denial to have locked DH out of the meta in the pro scene for 3 seasons, AOE pressure (sure they wont kill a whole lot by them selves but if you under estimate their offensive overloads in a team fight it will cost you) Multiple forms of damage reduction, decent general sustained damage (once again not getting kills on their own but the more damage going out the easier it will be for your bursty DPS to find a target and mow them down) multiple unblockable CC, best condi cleanser atm, and shocking aura which in team fights is beyond brutal.

Druids have insane burst healing, stealth, second best rez bot, burst condi clear, insane CC chain potential, good damage for a support if you might stack correctly and a signet of stone .

Scrapper has good area denial, good CC, good burst heal on a short CD, stealth/reveal or tornado(amazing area denial skill)/Jug which is high enough pressure to secure kills, force a disengage or give openings to your DPS, great stall potential, GOD TIER rez bot.

As it currently stands a rev’s support needs to be rethought dramatically before it will be a viable sideload to the other options. With the amount of sustained healing it does with some tweaks I can see it being a sideload to ele but It doesnt offer enough rez both or dueling potential to ever take the off support role.

Erzian.5218:

the numbers on the leaderboards actually do lie because people are smurfing. Smurfing on the other hand is only logical, when you are in a comfortable spot on the leaderboards because once your rating is high enough, the risk of losing a match is not worth the reward of winning a match. If you are rank 1 there is no reason to play more than the minimum games. If you are 2nd you could try to get rank 1, but when you have to win 3-5 matches to make up for 1 loss, you are probably better off being just 2nd.

Nonetheless overall numbers have certainly decreased.

Smurfing yet we had what… one player in legend this season? Match manipulation and smurfing claims running rampant yet only one person can get to legend? Even if smurfing and match manipulation was as rampant as the forum posts claims (I personally can’t weigh in on either side as I personally haven’t witnessed it) we have a single person…. (who could probably have gotten to legend while watching TV considering the people I saw in high gold and plat this season)….. sitting in legend….I don’t think its as big an issue as its made out to be.

The issue is a numbers issue first. All the other issues start there and multiply because a lot of the fixes to other issues rely on numbers. The PVP scene is bleeding out and as a result the quality is going further and further down hill. Despite all the hate pointed towards the ESL concept high level players who create content are a vital part of keeping any games “competitive scene” alive. No matter how big, small, hardcore, or casual it is they helped build this games PVP and were instrumental in keeping it alive. Anets lack of communication with no only the general playerbase but a portion of the playerbase that singlehandedly acted as a support pillar for this game mode caused them to leave. Now we are facing the mass exodus of players that are following them leaving the game mode a mess.

Muy.3170:

Let’s be honest, Gw2 totally takes the grind for gear and turns it into a grind for cosmetic. Good or Bad it’s the only reward we got. In my opinion, it is bad. Economics in this game so important I betcha a typical player would never get anything done in the game without the market. Bad design that could be fixed if unique skins had separate unique ways of earning them and had achievement titles mixed with them. How cool would it be to earn the sword Infinite light through a collection and add it permanently to your celestial or hellfire armor sets to pull and be put on any skin you want from achievements! I think it’s dumb some credit card pro swiper could come out more glossy and shiny than a 5yr veteran who spends 90% of their time in the game with their friends.

While yes this game is a huge grind for cosmetics the overbearing prices are due to massive inflation of the game being out 4 years and change. On top of that there are large amounts of money producers but no actual money sinks.

Part of the reason most MMOs have repair systems, minor upgrade costs and the like is the help regulate the economy. This game needs almost nothing once you’re geared on top of that there is no gear tredmill so once you’re geared you will produce money and not have any legitimate reason to spend it on anything but cosmetics and maybe food?

In my opinion the playerbase is so divided in every single game format that it doesnt even matter what they want. The devs go back and forth between catering to a certain group and going over the top to allow everyone to have everything.

Anytime any accomplishment is added its very quickly made accessible to everyone. Being a top PVP, being a top raider, being a top anything should be rewarded. PVErs complaining about PVPers getting PVP achievements…? I get this game is as casual as it gets but there is a difference between being a casual game and handing everything you should work for to everyone on a friggin silver platter.
This game has bled out all its depth due to playing this constant game of who do we cater to roulette. There is no transparency with the player base, no follow through, no playbase testing…. like there is a reason PTR’s exist in every MMO since the dawn of time, there is too much back peddling and there is a pretty obvious lack of a real plan.

If you want something like shiny wings from one game mode don’t make it a grind make it something of value. If you want a cosmetic that is only available to one game mode well then put in the effort to earn it? If you want achievements from PVP learn PVP or accept its something you cant have.

And end rant.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Nickzor.2453:

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

Your second point is spot on though IMHO. Their lack of real transparency and inability to properly test as well as engage the community in testing is largely to blame for their insane balancing extremes.

Well if conquest is “too complicated” then I’d hate to see you try Smite, LoL, DoTA, any of the other actual PvP games. The tactics, counter play, and on the fly adaptation, needed to play those in just their casual matches makes GW2’s version of Ranked conquest. Just looks like some brain dead child who don’t even realize, it even exist.

GW2 conquest is just interesting, because you can play with characters “YOU MADE”. If not for that. I bet no one would even give it a second thought. Sorry I always have a good laugh when people say GW2’s conquest is “complicated”. It’s one of the most simple forms of PvP outside of team death match in other games. It’s one dimensional, all you do is just worry about siting on a point. You don’t even have to worry about counter building mid match, or gold/min, or getting out leveled, having to farm to catch up in levels or gold, defending your towers while pushing the enemy’s towers.

This is what’s called a biased response. LOL is just the toned downed version of DOTA 2 (im aware which came first don’t worry) They share the same source material but DOTA 2 is generally agreed to be the more competitive option. (this is an opinion I personally agree with but its just that)

That being said I played a large amount of DOTA 2 and while I never made it to top 100 mr MMR was generally around 5000 range depending on how many classes I felt like taking.

Judging by your assessment of GW2 you have only served to hinder your own point. “It’s one dimensional, all you do is just worry about siting on a point.” This level of understanding is exactly what I was talking about. Unlike DOTA 2 which is a very basic game in terms of raw concepts and mechanics its got growing depth the further you get in to the game and rank. GW2 doesn’t have that baby step level of play unless you count simply sitting on point. Which I suppose is part of the issue. The expanded level of depth is only viewable with coordinated teams due to anets poor handling of the PVP community. That being said… simply because all you see is a 3 points doesn’t mean thats all there is.

I never once used the term complicated and this was never a competition to which game had more depth but in the same way the depth of MOBAs comes from the way players chose to interact with each other based upon the limits of the game the same is true with GW2.

I mean…. if you look at a MOBA at its base level is one of the most simple minded game modes humanly possible. Simplicity generally speaking lends for more room for depth. Conquest and MOBAs both have a lose set of rules and a simple objective neither are inherently complex its the players that create real complexity with the evolving levels of skill, game knowledge and changes within the meta

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

Your second point is spot on though IMHO. Their lack of real transparency and inability to properly test as well as engage the community in testing is largely to blame for their insane balancing extremes.

castlemanic.3198:

They’ve also made it so that future elite specialisations can double up on previous elite specialisation weapons, so like two mesmer elite specs can, in the future, use shields with different shield skills for each one, depending on the theme of the elite specs.

Have they changed this? Last i looked the system was entirely designed to make this impossible. Thats the reason the elite spec can only be placed in to the bottom trait line. The elite spec overides many classes core systems so not doing this would be even more then power creep it would be just plain impossible to do anything without breaking the core instruments the elite specs added.

Shaogin.2679:

Faux Play.6104:

Nova.3817:

Faux Play.6104:

Team arenas in guild wars 1 is a great example of how popular sPvP would become if you were forced to 5man queue. The only reason it had people in it was because if you won 10 in a row in randoms you would get put there. 80% of the population didn’t want it in the poll. If that is implemented the top 250 in NA will be silver/bronze.

Most people want to play, not waste a bunch of time getting a team together.

thats super inaccurate…. if you played gw1 then you’d know the reason Random arena was way more popular is because the skill curve for team play was much higher… so people would stick to RA for a easier go.. it has nothing to do with the fact people didnt want to play together thus RA syncing was born…

The reason people want mixed queue now is the same as syncing. They want an easy way to win. They want to be able to queue as a team vs disorganized pugs. I guarantee you if ranked was team queue only, the population would die. As for skill cap, it takes a lot more skill to win as a random team than as a premade. I had plenty of 20+ streaks starting in randoms. it is way more convenient to have teams auto generated then waste hours putting together teams. I can at least get some practice time in on a bad auto generated team vs. Spamming the lobby for a team.

Without a good game mode for solo queueing and rating players, you won’t be able to support a forced team queue mode.

Except people don’t want mix queue, they want a pure team queue, so that old weak argument is pretty much invalid. As for team queue killing the population, that has already happened in case you haven’t noticed. As for more skill being required in solo queue than team queue, that is debatable. I suppose you could argue that despite facing more organized opponents, fighting with your own organized team is easier than fighting with random disorganized pugs, but that isn’t a point in favor of solo queue. Hell if you want to handicap yourself like that you could still do that in a team queue. Just make a lfg requesting teammates to afk on your team for you. Also not sure why you feel you’d need to waste hours finding a team. Just create a lfg, team up, and then queue as much as you want with your newfound group.

Its more like people don’t want duo queue. I personally don’t have any desire to play team queue if they don’t add the next step. If they are going to add team (Only) queue but just leave it at that it will bleed what ever population is left in this games PVP playerbase. If you require 4 other people to play who can play at your level at any given time queues will be unreal. So if they do add forced 5 man stacking they need to add something like automated tournaments, regularly scheduled tournaments or something of real value. Simply adding forced 5 man is just extending queue times.

If they wont go all the way they need to strip duo queue and go to solo queue only or just say F it and go back to mixed.

Muchacho.2390:

Vitali.5039:

Muchacho.2390:

Vitali.5039:

It’s only that unlike mesmers necro lack survivability skills and necro’s wells are mostly offensive.

Really? 3 of 5 necro wells are defensive/support and dont offer anything offensive. Only well of suffering and well of corruption are offensive and they are also the only wells that are used more commonly.

Yes, cause Suffering deals damage, Corruption deals damage and convert boons and Well of Darkness was only picked to proc Chilling Darkness, if you look at the healing skill of course it’s defensive/support.
The only true support necro’s well it’s Well of Power.

No well of darkness is a defensive skill even if it is terrible at its job. It doesnt matter what it is picked for. The idea of the skill was always protecing you and your allies with pulsing blinds.

I wouldn’t say it does a terrible job of it. It can produce enough blind that many classes will miss every 2nd or third attack if they are stuck fighting in it. Its main drag is that when you drop wells generally speaking people start to scatter. The 2 main offensive wells produce enough in the first couple pulses to give them value where as well of darkness really requires nearly its full duration for you to get the same value of different skill. On top of that if you can force the enemy team to fight in it they will likely be under some form of CC so that blinds power is diminished.

Rukia.9860:

Nickzor.2453:

Why the heck do you need protection on a necros well? Necros entire goal is to position in aa way that they are hard to focus. I run the power boonstrip with corrupt boon and double well meaning yes…. no Stun breaker….. and the one thing I can say for certain is where I place my wells is generally as far away from me as I can be….. okay other way around… I place myself as far away as I can from my wells. You dont ever want to be near your wells until you have full shroud and even then you want to be back out of the fight before you completely run out.

A side note…. double well is the only build I reliably out damage power warriors in every match…. their damage is insane if you are running marauder…I have single handedly wiped teams with them.

I can tell you’re lower ranked because you don’t have a thief riding your weiner.

It ain that ez playing necro bro and that’s coming form a teef main. P4 demolishes your ability to do anything.

And what rank might you be that you haven’t learned anti thief kite locations? Thieves wreck necro in 1v1 but at what point are in ever 1v1 as a necro who is actually looking at the map? Your entire job is focused around decimating team fights. If you are caught out of position on a thief thats on you not an inherent problem with the class itself.

The vast majority of necros dont understand positioning so a thief who hasn’t lost their thumbs will just demolish them by spamming 4. just an FYI I have been legend every season but this one. I got bored after being placed in high gold and went to play OW. The amount of vet players who even logged in this season was too painful I came back at the last week and played 10 games but simply put… the entire top tier community is gone. No reason to play when my win rate is 80% while watching TV

Just a side note I fear Whispering Illusions when im on my necro far more then I fear any of the ESL thieves like KAT and Toker that I would get placed against daily. A thief is generally a minor annoyance I can use my team as human shields to force them to back off. A good mesmer will moa demolish me instantly if Im not ready for it.

Anti SJW.8207:

Master Ketsu.4569:

Warriors counter is kiting. Their mobility is weak considering it’s a melee class.

With so much mobility and stuns etc. which makes “kiting” impossible. The warrior will still attack you and land hits while you are trying to run in circles. The whole “lol just kite gitgud” excuse is getting really old…

I dont think you understand how kiting works… their mobility is bottom tier for a melee class. This is why necros at the highest tier tear warriors apart but at lower tiers get wrecked by them. the average player has zero understanding of what kiting is. Its not just run away…. its a mixture of using your terrain, movement, dodges and class based skills to create a situation where they have issues pressuring you. If you just run in a straight line then yeah… they will likely catch up…. The only time a warrior can catch any other meta build is in WVW where there are a lot more flat open areas. There is not a single area in any PVP map (besides the bases on foe fire maybe) where you will not be able to disengage from them if you have a fundamental understanding of your class and the current maps terrain advantages.

roamzero.9486:

Master Ketsu.4569:

Warriors counter is kiting. Their mobility is weak considering it’s a melee class.

If anet wants to nerf their survivability they will need to buff their dexterity, otherwise the class will become non-viable in higher play.

It’s kind of a “gitgud” issue to be honest. Players who understand what the cooldowns are on the few mobility skills warrior has can plan around them and easily kite. The only classes that really can’t permakite a warrior are guardian,engie, and necro.

Good luck kiting in a capture point game mode.

This is why people lose…. They think fighting on point is more important then winning the fight…. I know my perspective as a mesmer since pre HOT is skewed… but if you contest the point only to die…. dont you think giving them the point for a tiny bit so you can win the fight is a much better choice?

If you weren’t around PRE HOT shatter mesmers were a class that entirely revolved around forcing people to play to their tune. Aka…. they would kite and give up the point because the risk of allowing them to free cast while you got the cap wasn’t worth it.

There are still plenty of classes that benefit from this necros included. The amount of times I hear the phrase “FIGHT ON POINT” like it was copy and pasted right out of the bronze handbook when the situation calls for you to kite makes me want to start smashing my against the nearest wall.

Epidemix Revenge.4862:

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Sizer.2654:

i spam the ability

I think I found your issues with being successful in GW2.

Sizer has had success in tearing the kitten out of a lot of ppl

Didn’t Sizer play in TCG for awhile? I would call that Successful in GW2.

Hasn’t Sizer yah know…. Won money in this here game?

cyn.2157:

Good discussion – I just want to point out that “+1’ing” is not a counter – that’s good tactics, but not a counter. Countering is specifically talking about beating out in a 1v1, or at least chasing them off point and decapping/capping the point.

I’ve certainly killed DH’s as thief in 1v1- though every time I do it I assume it’s because they were really bad DHs. The fights are just normally too prolonged to be worth it, or I’m squished quickly. If I see a DH camping a point without a teammate around, I get back over to the other two points, because I should be +1’ing the fights there.

Is he countered if I run up and immediately run away? The only winning move is not to play? Maybe… Maybe.

I want to disagree with this since the counter to necro since pre HOT days was focus fire I would argue +1ing as a priority is a viable means of being a true counter. But Im just splitting hairs I guess.

Shaogin.2679:

Oh look, the Bronze players opened up yet another condi QQ thread. How cute.

Sadly I was in legend every season but this one (took a break to go play a game that didnt want me to throw crap) and the average legend player still thinks condi is OP…. Basic game knowledge is lost on the majority of people who are vocal.

Why the heck do you need protection on a necros well? Necros entire goal is to position in aa way that they are hard to focus. I run the power boonstrip with corrupt boon and double well meaning yes…. no Stun breaker….. and the one thing I can say for certain is where I place my wells is generally as far away from me as I can be….. okay other way around… I place myself as far away as I can from my wells. You dont ever want to be near your wells until you have full shroud and even then you want to be back out of the fight before you completely run out.

A side note…. double well is the only build I reliably out damage power warriors in every match…. their damage is insane if you are running marauder…I have single handedly wiped teams with them.

Animism.9803:

Abelisk.4527:

Good luck dueling a Sword/Torch or Shield + Scepter/Shield or Torch condi mes

I have a guildmate who plays this and the only way I can beat him is if I use necro and condi transfer everything back to him, or if I play DH and kite around corners and LOS him to death.

Otherwise he just stays invis the entire time as 10 stacks of torment, bleed, and confusion tick away my life.

This just hurst my head so much…. Mesmers only real strength is 1v1ing, moa and portal

That being said this build is so much worse then the meta it hurts…. on top of that Mesmer hard counters reaper so bad that when I lose to a reaper I without fail praise them for it.

DH hard counters mesmer so hard I cant see why you would need to kite them….. Mesmer only wins that duel if they can force you to play their game… if they put you on defense as a DH there is a serious missplay going on there.

Condi mesmer is hte only pure meta build atm. There are 2 “off meta” builds that in or against the right team comp can shine (procmancer and condi war)

Condi is labled OP because the vast majority of players don’t understand how to manage cleanses. The amount of time I have seen people insta cleanse the first condis toget thrown on them is baffling. I was in a 2v2 the other day as a mesmer(me) team mate was a thief. Awful 2v2… thief applies poison with auto attack…. instant cleanse…. I no joke was having a field day… they wasted a cleanse on marauder thiefs poision when there was a condi mesmer right there…. didnt even have to moa or f5…. shield 5d and melted them creating a 1v2….

Stuff like that is so common place it makes condis feel over tuned…. buts its a very basic lack of game knowledge.

You’re actually correct I wasn’t aware blizzard had started hyping Arena esports in the last 2-3 years. I always found arena to be incredibly dull so I didn’t pay attention to it a whole lot. But by your own example esports does in no way negatively impact MMO PVP after all 30 seconds on google makes it clear that WoW PVP activity is at an all time high ( in the last 4-5 years that is.

shagwell.1349:

Esports kills every MMORPGs pvp. MMORPG aren’t good for esports. It won’t ever work until you completely build a new game inside your game.
If you want to go that way you need a big development team that focuses on the esports part, a separate balancing, separate skill design, etc. You don’t want an esports with “rock, paper, scissor”, you want equal chances for any class participating so player skill (not armor, class or weapons) matters.

What MMO had esports besides this? Blade and Soul? Only one i can think of with a proper espoprts scene and it single handedly held it up in korea for 3 years with no new content.

jihm.2315:

the answer is esports.
the game took a moba direction instead of a mmo direction.
lets hope with the removal of esports that the game will take different path.

this game should of had more combat uptime than wow , not less, it would of made fights seem epic and even produce better youtube videos to attract new people.

how are people gonna be interested in the game when they see fights lasting 5 seconds and have no idea what is happening?

also wvw could be a lot more interesting but it was all about the zerk.

gw2 should take examples from games like dragons nest if they want to make pvp mmo style in my opinion,
its not bad to steal ideas from other mmos , blizzard does it all the time.

i think arena net is a good company but unfortunately they fell to the esports trend trap.

Which is why when the esports community got tired of the lack of communication and left PVP died?

Whether or not you supported the esports community it was only beneficial. Pro playerbases bring in more people and help retain others.

What killed PVP is the devs lack of communication and general lack of a plan.

They just did stuff with no real warning and didn’t communicate enough with the playerbase.

This thread is still going?

The reason they wont nerf DH is because above LOL tier its only viable in bulk or in the hands of someone who can position correctly.

And no its not a low skill cap class its a low skill floor class. Anyone can pick it up and kill stuff but there are very few people who can play it at a level that a half decent player cant casually walk over and melt them.

They are also countered by more then any class I can think of. they are pretty much the bastion of GW2 melts noobs but any half decent play can hop on genji and remove them.
Rev can 1v1 them with ease, Tempest, druid, necro Scrapper and power war all mewlt them

this was closer to the original system it was changed because people with high ranks often had to wait an hour + to get a game off peak hours. It created a system where you earned legend then instantly left to unranked.

So it comes down to either having somewhat even matches and wait 6 years or have 2ish minute queues and don’t wait.

As a legend player almost every season I can assure hour wait times were not abnormal…. This system is a direct result of the current player pool.

I would suggest you learn why you’re losing. While there will always be games that simply put are uncarriable they are a lot rarer then people think. I have watched VODs of people who claim its on and on that its their teams fault but its very rare that people who lose less 50%+ aren’t the issue.

Im not saying your a mechanically bad player but mechanical skill is only a small portion of this games PVP. I have run in to the same thief 3 times today and he is mechanically amazing… but he is a salty kid who goes off and duels…… Now dont get me wrong im impressed with him coming out on top 1v1 against a half decent DH….. but simply put our druid would have done it much faster with half the effort.

The result was I have never seen him win….. With his mechanical skill he could have been carrying if he was +1ing and rotating right but because he chose to 1v1 on far all match the game was pretty much a 4v5 because he could never hold the point.

From those screenshots your stats aren’t really carry level. You have to keep in mind that with the way the game works multiple people on your team may very likely not be meant to do top anything.

Generally speaking top stats… medals…. anything of the sort rarely has any real influence on how much you actually did for the team. There are rare freak examples like when I out heal my teams tempest as a condi mesmer…. Or when i out damage a meta power war…. Certain classes can slam their face on the keyboard and achieve top damage… top healing…. From those screenshots you may be top but unless all 5 of your team were glass builds your % of damage wasn’t very high On an average game on condi mesmer I do 15% of my teams total damage because my class is tailored to high condi bursts and out sustaining 1v1s or 1v2s. But if I play a power war I can easily get 50% of my teams damage because Im a lot less cool down reliant and much higher cleave.

The actual stats and your placement are only really important if you are outperforming people you have no reason to be and even then that’s situational. If I can make an entire game 3v4 because I create a situation where they need to 2v1 me or give me the point because neither of them can 1v1 me my stats are going to suck but every time I do this the other team is vocal about my part in the match.

If you want to win you need to focus less on numbers and more on an actual understanding of the game mode.

In general what has been said here is right. Thieves are a high skill requirement and cap class that can be very hard for a new player to get in to. They also do poorly in many 1v1s situations.

Where they excel is in fighting unfairly and using their mobility to constantly be in the right place at the right time. You want to find 1v1s or uncontested nodes and use your extreme mobility to control them.

Have a warrior and a DH 1v1ing home go show up and back stab the enemy and end it instantly. +1ing is where a thief really excels in terms of combat. Every time you join a 1v1 and end it instantly you gain momentum for your team. Your team mate can take the point and then you can move in to the mid fight with a numeric advantage.

The strongest skill you can have as a thief is awareness. You need to constantly know where your team and the enemy team and make the correct decsion with that knowledge.
As Its been said thief has a very steep learning curve but If you truly enjoy the playstyle sticking with it can be rewarding as long as you are willing to accept that you will need to put in a lot of work before you are really rewarded.
I would suggest watching some Sindrenner gameplay he is one of if not the top thief in the game.

Best of luck

As a WSG fan from WOW I wholeheartedly support this concept but I feel for it to really be successful it would need a larger then 5 person team size. I honestly feel that adding multiple BG style maps would help create a middle ground for PVPers and WVWers and to a lesser extent PVErs that would allow for people in other player groups a form of PVP that appeals to them without retracting anything from their core game modes.
My time in GW1 was short lived but one of my favorite portions of it was the larger instanced pvp systems. I love conquest and gw2s PVP gameplay in general but I often feel its distinct game modes are a strength when the game is doing well but cause fracturing when things are not ideal. Everyone feels their game mode is neglected or mismanaged when one game mode is the core focus of an update. Things like overzealous rewards for PVP brought in a large portion of players that in the end would likely farm rewards then go back to their gamemode of choice I think adding middle ground like this would really be a step in the right direction for all of the game modes rather then trying to bribe people in to player a game mode they weren’t interested from the start.
Sorry that was a bit more long winded then I intended it

Okay… so I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re not trolling with that…. since no thief with a semblance of understanding of their role would take that a super gimmicky “crutch:” skill like smoke screen to stealth them self to stealth vault on to point….

There is a reason Smoke screen has pretty much never been used in PVP besides in super niche situations where the projectile denial become mandatory due to an enemy team comp or the like. Blinding powder would do the same job much more efficiently and has more practical uses….. I mean smoke screen is a blast finisher for PVE and is used to cheese certain bosses…. In PVP you just walk around it…

Using it as a blast finisher in pvp is just silly…. You should hear someone doing that if you intent to gank them 1v1 in a team fight you can accomplish the same thing using LOS and steal…. BTW signet of agility removes condis per ally near you…. and if Im understanding it correctly its 3 per ally near you…. Its your strongest condi cleanse, gives you endurance (your main sustain as a thief) and increases precision….

All that aside using staff to pretend you’re a D/P thief only to get a crappier burst is just silly…. You will do more damage and have a kit more suited to stealth ganks using d/p steal, Heartseeker, backstab cancel.
Trying to mimic that with staff is just impractical and gimmicky

A year or 2 ago I would have said NA and EU were pretty close in terms of the average player, i personally would probably have been a tad biased because Im a mesmer main and well…. You know….
But before taking a break this season I spent some time on an EU account for the first time in awhile…. My Eu account was bought and made like 3 years ago I dunno… its been there for awhile. I had around a friendslist of around 50 people that were pvpers all of them were still active in PVP. Now my NA account has a friendslist that passed up 200 people a long time ago.(not people I followed confirmed friends I played with daily) over half of them being decent PVPers I was lucky on a good day to see it break 15 people online. Now of course this is a small sample size and both regions have seen a huge flux of top players jumping ship but I feel the average player who played for the enjoyment of PVP in its self stayed longer in EU giving more players who have a general understanding of the gamemode.
While the lower tier players were a similar mechanical skill level I noticed a lot more flexibility in the few dozen or so games I played over there…..That and a lot less bronze players insisting they were Legend tier gods who were just there because their team mates sucked. There were of course the people who insisted on staying thief when we had 3 of them and the general pain but there felt to be a higher count of “team players” in EU as well as a healthier player pool.
And for those who recognize my username from the last few seasons and are wondering how a degenerate troll like me has a friends list of over 200 people…. I wasn’t always like this…

The system was abolished due to the dwindling player base. I mean in season 3 I remember waiting hours while solo queuing from legend to find a game when it wasn’t at peak hours, if they added back a separate queue 5 man games would suffer the same fate. I think automated tournaments or some actual dev feedback about the direction of the game mode would go a lot further then adding a queue mode that will likely only cause more frustration then people currently realize.

I wouldn’t mind a “classic” Skyhammer map for unranked but even with the questionable competitive state gimmick deaths with zero counterplay are something that really don’t have a place in a mode that in theory should exist for people who wish to play for the sake of improvement.

Dragon Hunters aren’t in any way an issue by themself. Before the ESL scene found a ship to jump off they were barely in the meta and were shoved out of the meta for a long period of time. Dragons Hunters in solo queue how ever a far larger issue the reason being isn’t a l2p issue or an issue with their existence alone…. its class stacking. DHs become more and more problematic the more there are. They require a level of coordination to deal with 2-3 of them that often is just not in solo queue. As a condi mes main DHs are one of my hardest counter and alone I rarely have issues with them. But when mid has 3 sets of DH traps on it its very difficult for most classes to deal with that without backing off the point.
FYI DHs are pretty much the new power necro pre HOT…. They have weak escape, aoe zone lock out and high single target burst…. you deal with them more or less the same way…. call target and blow them up.
@justice you shouldn’t be required to kill them yourself you should just be the nail in the coffin. DHs melt under focus fire and even medi trap is on the squishy end, DHs have the bottom base HP tier and don’t run toughness based amulets, its pretty much a matter of push them through their virtue shield-> elite meditation->virtue shield after that they are free kills. You can kill them as a meta bunker tempest once they have lost those CDs.
Same thing applies to power warriors, their sustain is entirely CD based, they run off an overwhelming pressure system, they push on to you with CDs up and try to kill you before their CDs are gone. Once they are without them they will melt faster then your average thief.
Most classes that get called OP these days are classes with strong CDs that are more or less free kills without them.
I would advise backing up and counting CDs. It only takes one person paying attention to the CDs of high pressure classes and passing that info to your team for you to lock them out.