Guild Wars 2

Dual.8953:

Though I fancy this idea, I’ve gotta point out one thing. The skill only deals massive damage from the back, akin to Spy’s Backstab in TF2 (minus the garunteed insta-kill), so in theory, one could spin to make it harder to line the skill up.

It’s not really just “from the back”. It seems like they just made a circle, split it in two and called it “front” and “back”.

So, sure you can spin, but the odds are really 50/50 if they are half decent and go a bit to the side. Either you will turn INTO the backstab or away from it.

Devinair.5273:

Ok i hope this message gets through to those who are working on the patch. Please keep up the good work and i know yall are doing your best to get the patch to us as quickly as possible. Im sad to see so many angry comments on here and i understand the impatience and excitement that comes along with a new game, but some of these comments are a little to mean spirited. Gamers tend to be a little on the overeacting side when things dont go their way (not all of them) and i hope Anet takes nothing personally from this patch issue. (which an issue, is all it is and it will be fixed! you can bet on that!)

Otherwise known as… real life?

Jobs have deadlines. Without deadlines, nothing would get done. Being able to accurately judge a deadline so people aren’t scrambling is an asset. Sometimes deadlines get missed. Being able to communicate this and provide updates generally goes a long way to getting people to forget that a deadline was missed.

Also, why are we still talking about this 50% nonsense?

Spec mug. Hit 5, then hit your profession skill. Voila. 50%.

Oh wait, you should have “pre-dodged” that right?

(If you aren’t below 50%, its because a bunker and thieves want you nerfed.)

Thieves aren’t getting it.

Bunkers counter thieves. You are not WINNING this war, the fact that thieves burst is broken means that you are hard countered in the meta.

You are “defending” your class to point of relegating it into king of spvp.

So uh, cool?

Problems in this thread:

1. Teoh ignores the entire aspect of positioning and infact related the Ele’s 15 second combo to “just hitting pre-determined buttons”. Of course, when your bar comes with an on demand gap closer, I’m sure it’s easy to forget about positioning.

2. Somehow, someone thought showing a post of two people using skills on a STATIONARY golem is a good comparison of heartseeker vs. any other skill….. (Do I need to elaborate further on this..? … gap closer….)

3. Thieves aren’t a problem. Just roll a mesmer or another bunker class. You see, when it comes to telling someone to L2P, it’s easy to point out their counter. Then, all these classes that just got countered come on to the forums to whine about how bunkers are ruining TPVP. This is the countering everyone told everyone else to do.

Thieves are a broken class and their damage output is being hard countered in tournies to the point that top players (who play predominantly tournies) don’t care about thieves anymore. Take away the layers of defense and they will die to good steal / cnd / backstab / heartseeker thieves by the hordes.

4. Heartseeker isn’t the only issue. I don’t know why people took this literally. But the steal, CnD, Bacsktab combo are insanely easy to land which put you immediately into “Woosh Woosh Woosh” territory. That is, the annoying sound you hear when an Assassin errr I mean Thief is trying to button 2 mash you into the ground.

5. Why do we pretend this game is all 5v5s? Let’s drop the act huh thieves? You don’t go in there with your daggers trying to get targets into the 50% and lower range. If you have your steal combo, you do it. If you don’t you engage in 2v2 fights and are on your bow until they drop lower enough. Stealth lets you pick only the battles you want to fight.

Honestly, the thief community disappoints me. Your class is broken and needs a fix. To counter, everyone runs bunkers and renders your class useless in TPVP. You can either pray that Anet goes insane and simply nerfs bunkers only to allow you to woosh woosh woosh again in tpvp, or push for real changes to your characters that make them viable in balanced team settings.

Twenynge.8520:

Always kill the Asura first. It will discourage people from picking them if they feel they get targeted more often than other races.

The fact that you changed your strategy based on their visual representation of their character is win for their team.

All guardians should roll Asuran apparently

Kalar Meadia.8439:

Oni.6841:

Again, this is irrelevant theorycrafting.

I just pointed out its a 2v2 and you COMPLETELY ignored that while I am Moa birding you, my other buddy might actually be using his skills as opposed to just standing around.

Further more, any coordinated group of two, racing in on another two will have a cc train coordinated if they know they are using moa bird.

But yes, newsflash – bad players can mis-use good skills and be easily countered. That isn’t what everyone is complaining about.

You’re the one doing irrelevant theorycrafting.

You assume much of your own team and little of the enemy team. You can anticipate a Moa and respond accordingly. The fact that you try to pass it off as an IWin button is telling of your inability to counter it in practice yourself.

What I am telling you is, in practice, it is the largest threat (usually the damage source) in a 2 v 2 that gets moaed. This leaves your defender (The bunker who is to assume the point when the damage roams on, the capability to defend the Moaed player.

What TYPICALLY happens is that you can burst down the Moaed target because the defender is too uncoordinated with his ally to make a move. However, an organized duo will hold CCs until the cooldown is burned or their own burst is ready. (Necro fears, Mesmer pulls/stuns, Guardian bubbles, Engi Supply drops, etc.)

But there’s no convincing your type that you can get better. You’re more of the opinion that you shouldn’t have to get better. You complain instead of adapting. It’s hiding under the meta and it’s actually a sad and common thing.

Now, should Moa get adjusted? Sure, again I’m of the opinion that Mesmer never should have had a polymorph, as it does not fit with their motif. But don’t sit here and tell me you can’t outplay a Moa. That’s just sour grapes.

Here is where you are wrong. I barely ever die in Moa because you are right, most people don’t use it right.

But gasp I am not actually a mesmer in real life, or an ele, or a guardian, or anything else. I just play this game and I can recognize a stupid mechanic when I see it. Not everything comes from my personal stake within a class.

How do I use Moa? As we assault a point, me and my partner pick who we want moa’d and who we want to kill, consider our CC’s, considering how likely they are to get a passive block etc.

And then I just go in and fight them normally, after all, I am on a mesmer, a class I think that is already strong compared to everything else. If they just die, I won’t use Moa, naturally.

If they are good, I flag that Moa is coming up for my partner and we execute, usually with moa coming out of stealth or just after the other class has already dodged something else on my bar.

And they are pretty much guaranteed to lose.

Can they dodge? Maybe. Can they block? Maybe. Can I beat them without Moa? Maybe. If I get the Moa off, can we really lose? Not really.

So what are my odds on Moa, 50%? 60%?75%?

Further to that, after they know I have Moa, how much worse are they in a battle to make sure they don’t get Moa’d?

It drives me nuts that people talk about how easy it is to counter something without actually understanding how to maximize the skill first. Supposedly, this forum is filled with pro dodgers that dodge everyone’s moa bird.

So once your reputation precedes you and I know you will dodge… why won’t I just cancel cast Moa Bird the entire time we fight? It costs me a fraction of a second while moving and you are dodging during it anyways. (Do I actually cancel cast? Not really because people can’t reliably dodge it. Can I ? Pretty easily, especially if I knew it would waste a dodge each time)

In GW1, it was “just interupt it”. And we learnt to just bury our defense in layers. Guardian/Blind covered Aegis covered Wards. Hell, Glyph of Lesser Energy just let you cancel cast.

The fact that counter exists does not balance something. Once everyone gets better, Moa just gets cancel casted until it goes through.

People are being disingenuous with the whole “you don’t see thieve in Tpvp”…. because you did use to see them.. until…..

…..everyone ran bunker builds.

Kalar Meadia.8439:

They’re typically not using Moa on the tanky type of the two of you, so yes, your ally should be able to survive the 10 seconds.

Or, he can disengage WITH you, back off from point, and simply reengage when you’re recovered. No one ever said your buddy was obligated to sit and take a beating.

Again, this is irrelevant theorycrafting.

I just pointed out its a 2v2 and you COMPLETELY ignored that while I am Moa birding you, my other buddy might actually be using his skills as opposed to just standing around.

Further more, any coordinated group of two, racing in on another two will have a cc train coordinated if they know they are using moa bird.

But yes, newsflash – bad players can mis-use good skills and be easily countered. That isn’t what everyone is complaining about.

teviko.6049:

RUN AWAY!!!!!!

yes, oddly enough, if you get moa and turn tail, 90% of teh time you will live.

Odd how that works….

Also, the run away comments are cool, as if Moa Bird is super strong 1v1….

Moa bird is strongest in team fights like 2v2s. You can either stand there and die, or abandon ship while your buddy is focused fired out and the point is lost.

But sure, tell yourself running away for 10 seconds is a “victory” for you.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Ah yes, the bruised ego resulting from dying a few times because it’s too much to ask to figure out the cast animation and dodge it.

Dodge Wars 2: Nothing needs adjustment because everything is dodgeable

There are certain have classes and certain have not classes. Have not classes apparently need to dodge everything, Illu Duelists, the Immobilization Illusion, the Warlock, shatters and Moa Bird.

Dip Dodge Duck Dive Dodge

Fun game….

The problem with the thief, is that their backstab numbers are so ridiculous, they feel the shortbow is inadaquate.

This whole “once our combo is gone, we are screwed” is nonsense. You get a pew pew shortbow that is probably better than the rangers shortbow.

I like the whole “I have no mobility”…. you know.. except for that spammable teleport on your shortbow….

Fantom.9217:

There’s nothing wrong with quickness or burst builds. So long as the enemy has an opportunity to respond and must make at least 1 mistake to die, short TTL is ideal from an esport perspective.

Short TTL means that you need high APM, great reaction time, and mistake-free decision making under pressure. Every esport AND regular sport is based on this philosophy.

Long TTL is boring, doesn’t require high APM, and allows you to recover from mistakes (i.e. sloppy play isn’t punished).

Who do you want to be at the top of your esport, DRG/MVP/MKP or Goody/Incontrol?

If you don’t like the enemy’s burst builds, copy him and use his own build against him.

That’s a pretty bold comment.

“Short TTL means that you need high APM, great reaction time, and mistake-free decision making under pressure. Every esport AND regular sport is based on this philosophy.”

And not really true at all for regular sport. You didn’t even try and give an example of how it is true in regular sport (and barely an example for e-sport).

No one watches sports to see kitten go boom, they watch to see plays develop. If we wanted bursty sports, the goaltender wouldn’t exist anywhere. The goaltender pretty much exists to cover mistakes made by the team up the field/playing surface.

So let’s go through some sports:
Basketball – A sport that has anywhere from 30-50 scores per game and one in which only an incredibly minority of scores come off the rush.
Soccer – I don’t think you can get less “bursty” than soccer which is akin to chess matches and slow methodical ball movement (and has goaltenders).
Football: Let’s get rid of offensive lines ability to block in NFL. YEAH! BURST FOOTBALL!!
Baseball: Oddly enough, this is actually the sport that is maybe closest to what you described as it is brutal on mistakes (hence the tracking of errors). It is also incredibly slow and is primarily focused on the battle between pitcher and batter. I happen to personally find this sport incredibly boring despite its harshness on mistakes.
Racing: Why race for more than one lap? Let’s just BURST it all in one lap. You make a mistake, you lose. I’m sure people will tune in for that.

For crying out loud, most professional sports have games on the order of an hour of play time and 3 hours with stoppages. How is that short TTL?!

You know what is shortest TTL? Rock Paper Scissors. If you play speed rock paper scissors, it probably has lots of APM (all that fist pumping) and if you make a mistake, you lose! (Point, isn’t getting beat by builds the quickest TTL? you lose the instant you enter the match – I wouldn’t call that fun).

In fact, most of the short TTL sports are all those that don’t generally get much coverage outside of the olympics, mainly the racing events (track, speed skating, sprint cycling) and athletic events (and even in the athletic events, they all give multiple chances PURELY to let people make mistakes)

Finally, if short TTL is what you consider ideal for esports, can you honestly tell me you think 10 thieves running around the map bursting each other would be an ideal esport you would want to watch?

The L2P crowd is becoming a joke.

It is just theorycrafting in made up land where this guy can spend 20 some second setting up a stupid stomp just to survive while no one on this other guys team comes to res him and then 2v1 this chump that is putzing around to get his stomp.

I’m willing to bet that as soon as you put a reasonable salary against your time, almost no one on this forum is going to be generating income off this game. That means people are playing for fun.

I’m sure there are ridiculous ways to counter every ridiculous thing in this game (such as the L2P crowd’s insistence that nothing in this game is broken because you can dodge it!). That doesn’t make something a good mechanic.

The heart of the problem is that there is always a group of players that just find “winning” fun. It doesn’t matter how or why, they just find it fun. The majority of the population isn’t like that and expect more out of a game than simply giving them the “opportunity” to win (by doing ridiculous stuff like playing 20 seconds of wack-a-mole that is stomping thieves or mesmers)

The thief and mesmer downed states are what I would come up with if you asked me to think of a way to grief players in an MMO. (Have them kill someone and then have to run around playing wack-a-mole). That would probably come down second to, have them kill someone, then make them play wack-a-mole while their monitor goes blank (blind IRL!).

Maybe they should make that the new ele downed mode and when everyone complains, we can theory craft more ridiculous ways that you could still win to justify it, (such as the suggestion in this thread, just cast more illusions and predict dodges)

Agreed on spvp vs. tpvp.

Effectively, if winning is the goal, you will see hyper defensive builds because defense wins. In spvp, the win bonus is so small and unreliable (you dont pick your team) that you are better off just focusing on raw points.

The points are skewed incredibly toward “cheesy” offense, burst or AOE. The goal is to get enough damage on enough people to consistently get the skirmisher, assaulter and defender bonuses.

If a huge win bonus was added in, it might go all defense like Tpvp. The way the points are now, you get the same number of points (actually, usually more) for capping and leaving as you do for bunkering/holding. In fact, I often want to leave so they can cap the point so I can come back and later and cap it again…..

Pushing someone off a point gets you no personal points (you need to actually kill them) and in 8v8 hot join, the bunker may not even be able to get enough damage on a character to get the points etc when they eventually get bursted by a sin etc.

So yes, winning is spvp isn’t actually about team score, its individual score. And the individual score is set up to promote either massive aoe or burst.

“Defense wins championships.”

Deleting monks doesn’t change that mantra. In the absence of a game mechanic that actively promotes offense, defense always comes ahead.

Sports are always having to change rules to upset whatever defensive strat emerges. After the rule change, there is a period of exciting offensive play until a new defensive trend sets in.

We saw the same thing in GW1 when Rawr spike was reigning. Anet kept nerfing their key skills, immediately following the nerfs, offensive builds would emerge but before the next nerf defense typically reigned supreme again.

The removal of the red line in hockey, the 24 second shot clock in Basketball are examples in sport. Soccer hasn’t had that and as a result, is an incredibly defensive driven game (consider formations, with generally 3-5 defenders, 3-5 midfielders and 1 or 2 attackers).

A great example of where offense is encouraged is actually RTS games that have resources spread throughout the map. This need to collect resources is what pushes those games to have an offensive element.

Forest Creatures and Guild Lords are examples, but they aren’t big enough rewards to encourage offense. Additionally, the forest creatures promote big bursts rather than true offense.

Arius.7031:

You misunderstood my post or you just manipulated it to be like you wanted.
1. I’ve never said that the problem is to find the real mesmer.
2. Shattering clones is a consequence of spamming clones. The broken thing is in the fact that Mesmers’ clones/phantasms are many, on low cooldown and most of them are incredibly powerful.
3. There is no point to play the profession to level 80, because PvE isn’t PvP. Take Necromancer for instance, in PvE it is almost unkillable but than go in PvP and feel the pain.
4. Where exactly is the micro management? Cast your phantasm and let him deal bunch of damage for you? Or the micro management is when you have to dump them to deal massive damage?

Again, sorrow, Phantasm is not the strength of the supposedly OP Mesmers. If you’re fight a build that has decent Phantasms, he is not a Shatter build, and Shatter builds are generally the ones that get called OP. Phantasms are actually really easy to kill, and Phantasms themselves are not enough to make Mesmer OP in the slightest. A Phantasmal Duelist in PvP (our hardest hitter) will hit for what? 1.5k? How is that OP? A Shatter build Mesmer can get 3 clones out, and shatter each one for 2-3k depending on the person if he crits on each (usually does). So again, you’re attacking a build that is not very OP at all, when the more OP build is almost polar opposite of the build you think is OP.

1. Fair enough, but what is your problems with clones then?
2. How does one “spam” clones? At any given time one has 1 Clone summoning ability (usually on a 6-12 second cooldown) and 1 Phantasm summoning ability (for each weapon set). The only build that can spam clones is one that has specifically taken away from their combat abilities and added the ability to roll to generate a clone.
3. I was suggesting you level to 80 then PvP. A lot of people are rolling Mesmers since word got out that we’re the secret uber ownage guys, and a lot of new forum posts are complaining about how difficult it is to be a Mesmer.
4. The micromanagement with Mesmers comes from managing Illusions and Phantasms. We have to be careful to try not to shatter Phantasms, we have to make sure that all of our Illusions are up when we decide to shatter, and we have to decide which shatter we’re going to use (generally Mind Wrack is used, but it’s not as good in some cases). All of this as well as managing normal attack skills that every other class has makes management a pain at times.

So in the end, I think you’ll best understand what I’m talking about once you’ve rolled an 80 Mesmer. While I’m open to a discussion about how OP we are, I think it best if we save that discussion for when you’re extremely experienced with our class in PvP.

Though, I’ll go right out and say it, a certain build of Mesmer is OP to 90% of the classes it fights. However, it is countered by Engineers who are really tough (don’t know what the build is called), Guardians, and Warriors.

It is ridiculous that people defend builds, by effectively arguing that their untraited builds with no utility skills are weak.

No kidding??!

Thieves are paralyzed by initiative issues, apparently mesmers has fits trying to get up clones etc all based on an untraited build….

Let’s stop ignoring traits, its ridiculous and is disingenuous. Also, I have no idea what the level to 80 comments mean. This is a pvp forum. Who cares about leveling?

I’m so tired of hearing how “squishy” poor thieves are. I get it, if you don’t know how to weaponswap and leeroy into a middle of the mob for your backstab, you go boom.

Good thieves can pew pew with their shortbow from far away and do incredible damage and not be squishy. Once a character drops below 60%, they perform their instajib with daggers or sword or whatever the want and are back out with their very mobile and very effective shortbow, especially when paired with stealth.

Finally, beyond OP, can we just talk about fun? People love talking about the ways to counter stealth, but I want to ask the question of: is it fun?

For me, casting AOE on the ground randomly, isn’t fun. Nor is standing with my finger hovering over my stun break / defense for when buddy pops up. Is it imba? Sometimes, it doesn’t matter, it’s just not fun. Neither is fighting a long fight only to find out that someone’s thieves guild just recharged….. Just like Moa, is it imba? I don’t know. Is it fun? No!

It’d be like giving someone a triple thieves guild (spits out 6 thieves) but it has a 500 second recharge. Maybe the “recharge” balances it. But regardless of the recharge, that skill isn’t “fun”.

If we are all going to treat this like a job, fine. Jobs have things that aren’t fun and we suck it up. Games? Non-fun mechanics in games generally don’t turn out well.

It’s lots of fun for thieves. For whatever reason, more than anything else, people love run around like assassins, esp when everyone else isn’t assassins. The instajib on unsuspecting players is fun.

Getting instajibbed? Not fun. Playing hot join and having to always “watch” (or better yet, feel, as lots of thieves will stealth before coming over a hill etc.) for the thief that can instajib you? Not fun.

The excuses for why thieves are ok are poor. Initiative is often quoted, but ignores all the way they can get around it, and more importantly, the benefits of it compared to cool downs.

The squishy is for thieves that can’t position and don’t understand how to use the shortbow or other ranged damage.

I haven’t played my thief in a while (makes me feel dirty!), but I remember lots of 1.5k-2.5K trick shots bouncing off three people (1.5-7.5K per button click? Sign me up)…. for an auto attack. Not too shabby, complete with an evade shot and a teleport shot. All in the same weapon….

I get the re-speccing bit. This doesn’t always happen, half the time someone is out fighting for fun and hasn’t hit ready.

My solution: Don’t let characters move until they hit the ready button. Re-speccing doesn’t need motion and not being able to move will quickly remind players to hit the ready button.

Comparing stealth to stability is flawed.

When someone uses stability, a team has to react accordingly. When someone hits stealth, you have to start reacting to POSSIBILITIES.

People assume that it is KNOWN that a stealth stomp / res is happening. Good teams won’t do this. They will abuse the fact that you have to prepare for multiple unknown possibilities. (I might stomp, I might not)

Generally when a thief stealths, teams will act defensively. When they stealth near a downed player, what do they do? Spam AOE interupts and other shut down around the downed player? There is no guarantee the thief is even trying to stomp. In fact, if the thief isn’t the stomper, it leaves the team down interrupts when the real stomper shows up.

Stealth always functions by making teams have to react to possibilities. In this case, it is incredibly powerful for very little skill. At best, the opposition uses skills very well to deny the stomp and it breaks out even.

At worse, they react to the wrong situation and are incredibly hard done by (someone getting backstab jumped while they blow interrupts to stop a thief that isn’t stomping).

When you ask people to react to situations they cannot see, you run the risk of imbalance. When this involves sending players back to waypoints, it’s quite broken in the hands of good players.