Guild Wars 2

I’m finding it easier to see enemies and harder to damage them than previously. That is worse.

Before I could lock onto an enemy and autoattack them even though I could not see them. It’s like they are stealthed rather than unrendered. It is definitely worse IMO, but with some minor changes it has the potential to be so much better.

I strongly disagree with those find it worse that they can’t see their allies. If you need to see your allies their relative positions and numbers are still on the minimap. Seeing enemy players is significantly more important.

It’s extremely frustrating to be surrounded by player enemies you want to attack and tab has you targeting a wolf nowhere in range, or the fortified wall that you can’t possibly damage.

Kurow.6973:

Listen! If you are running a build specifically to stealth (D/P traited for maximum stealth & initiative regen), you’re useless in a fight!

“Useless in a fight?”
You are NEVER useless in a fight where you are able to do damage but never take it. It’s not a fast 2 shot, but it’s a hell of a lot safer. And you will win any fight where you take no damage when the other guy is taking damage and can’t run away.

That kind of build is crazy powerful at any control node.

The swamp fractal is a wonderful concept and well made, but deeply deeply flawed to the point where it’s been wrecked. Kind of like a beautiful cake with a kitten on top.

The problem is the walls. And that they are random. You run at a clear path and it suddenly becomes a wall. You run to the next clear path and it too becomes a wall as you arrive. That’s not fun or interesting gameplay. It’s just frustrating. The minimap is no help, but it could and should be. You can’t get better at a random maze.

Yes you can go over some of the walls, but not all of them and you don’t have time to do that. Jumping over a wall isn’t a quick process. You have to really work at it for a few seconds and you don’t have those seconds to spend. Jumping over is not an option for every player that attempted the Mad King’s Tower, but never finished. (I’m sure you have stats on that.)

If the walls had a set pattern you could learn then bingo… fun instance. If the walls could be destroyed then you could have 2 people blowing them up to clear the way. If the walls had switches.. then yes. If you could make a wall despawn permanently each time a champion died… then again more interesting play. Anything that gives players a choice with both pros and cons to weigh becomes interesting gameplay. But not random. That’s what wrecks it.

BTW the bosses at the end of the water fractal and the swamp fractal aren’t too tough or too easy… they are just a bit boring. They could do with a decrease to their hp and an increase to their abilities. (Not necessarily dmg output.)

Rauphz.2869:

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

So.. ? What’s prove? Nothing. Where SS to see the buffs in the Thief?
In SPvP, my team stack might, and I can do 10k+ BS easy in players with that armor or more.

The thief’s buffs don’t matter at all. He could have every single buff imaginable. It should not be possible for any profession. You even say so yourself, it’s easy to do that. And I agree, it is easy. It shouldn’t be easy at all.

5 guys vs 1… sure. 2sec kills are fine.
1 guy with 5 guys buffs? No. Should not be possible.

Kurow.6973:

@ Reiven.2543:

Stealth in GW2 is PERFECTLY fine as is. In fact, it’s the best set-up of stealth I’ve seen.

What needs to be fixed is culling issues in WvW. There’s ABSOLUTE NOTHING wrong with stealth skills…just players who fail to adapt and identify the weaknesses of certain skills.

I have seen many thieves with much higher uptime on stealth than that. Look around at some thief videos for ideas on how to maximize (abuse) stealth durations.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Okay, so the skill you’re crying about reflecting your attacks is called “Dagger Storm”, that’s important ‘cause when you see people talking about being mad “Dancing Dagger” got nerfed we don’t want you thinking about the wrong skill. And, Dagger Storm is our big Antirange Elite – that’s what it does, then it goes on a nice long cool down.

And I wanna know who’s auto healing to full when they stealth so I can copy that build.

Fine Dagger Storm. But I’m not saying that skill is overpowered. It’s a mesmer/ranger killer when those professions don’t have a chance anyway. I am saying it doesn’t give enough info to attackers. If you don’t see the spin… like if there’s clipping (and good thieves know how to abuse that bug.) then the attacker has no idea that ability is being used. It should not be necessary to memorize every single skill off the wiki. The info given to hostile players must be clear.

To Thief players…
Name one other profession that can kill a player in under 2 seconds.

Certain thief skills may need buffing/reworking but that doesn’t negate the fact that there is an overpower problem where thieves are concerned.

Thieves are completely unbalanced because a well played thief can go 1v4 and consistently win. Why? Stealth. Stealth is basically 100% immunity if played correctly.

Up-time on stealth + evades = 100% immunity.

Yes, thieves can still be hit by aoe. But aoe is either short range like a sword swing or ground placement which includes a red do-not-stand-here circle. Both are easily avoided but extremely hard to place and normally have too long a cooldown for random “I hope he’s there” spam.

Ranged based characters have nothing that can hit a thief. Target is lost every time they stealth. Reacquiring a target to even fire again requires you to find them and click on them, or a tab press that finds a target… which in either case is likely NOT the thief. You cannot even shoot blind and hope you hit. For some crazy reason if you shoot without a target you automatically shoot 2ft into the ground in front of you. That’s not where the thief is going to be.

A thief can use stealth to drop combat, heal to full automatically, then reengage before their target can drop combat. Even allowing for a brand new weapon to be equipped that’s perfect vs that target. So it’s a free reset for the thief but not for their target.

A thief can do damage and stay stealthed. If the thief does this properly the target will not realize where the damage is coming from until it’s too late. You can never really know if you are being killed by a stealthed thief or just by an unrendered source. So you cannot simply think “I’m taking damage must be a thief” and respond accordingly because if it’s just the clipping bug then you are equally screwed. (But if you are dead in under 2sec… ya it was a thief.)

You cannot run away from a thief. It is impossible. The only thing you can hope for is that the thief doesn’t follow you for some reason. They can engage combat at the farthest range by a very large margin. They out-range and out run everything with proper use of shadowstep + other skills.

Abilities like Dancing Dagger even provide immunity. DD reflects range damage. The thief takes none of it, the source takes all of it. That’s not how Retaliation works. Dancing Dagger’s is far better. And that doesn’t show up the thief’s buffs when you look at them. The only way you find out that the spinning animation is causing you to kill yourself is either by playing a thief yourself, or by checking the combat log and then looking up the spell. It should not be necessary to look up that info when it could be displayed as a boon. (Not like you’d have time to read it but at least it’s there.)

Rangers are hard countered by Thieves. They literally have nothing that they can do against them. A ranger can design a build specifically to counter thieves and then the ranger has a chance against a mediocre thief… but not unless they do exactly that. I checked online for videos and info on rangers vs thieves. There isn’t even one youtube video where the ranger wins. (Excluding videos where the thief is totally incompetent and never stealths.)

I agree with others here about certain other skills being overpowered. Anything that kills another player in under 2 seconds is not balanced and not fun. I don’t care if the target has no defensive stats. If they are at full hp it should not be possible to die/kill that fast.

Obviously thieves should get stealth. And obviously nobody wants the clipping issue. I haven’t suggested any ways to fix this because I don’t know how to do that without unfairly destroying the class. But the first thing that should happen to all classes is that if you do not have a target you automatically fire to max range along the plane of the ground. Anything else is ridiculous as it means you simply cannot hit a target that is strafe running regardless of if they are stealthed or not. (Because you can’t lead the target otherwise.) Maybe let players see damage numbers on screen vs stealthed targets? idk.

I strongly encourage developers to google and find random videos of Thieves vs whatever. Or whatever vs Thieves. See what good players are doing vs thieves and good thieves are doing vs other players. A good thief can literally take on 4 others and win. You cannot damage something you cannot target.