Guild Wars 2

I will write about D/P after my next class. Feel free to ask questions about anything and I’ll get to them as well.

Look at this huge bug with conditions (I managed to kill it in the end).

Hi all, K pop here.

Just looking to express my opinions and vent some stress a little with PvP. If you do not have something to contribute, I am respectfully asking that you do not flame or troll my post.

I will come out and say it, I think my performance has tanked with the new expansion. Now evaluating the source is a little complex. Yeah, there are tons of new animations and tells to learn with new trait combinations, and I have not put in the dedication and time to learn them all. I can admit that straight up. Not to mention my play time has dropped off in the October November months. But I like to talk about the other aspects that have negatively affected my performance and views of the game.

GW2 used to be build wars 2. Then it became trait wars 2. Then it became trait line wars before the current form of specialization wars. Game went from partial traiting out lines to fully dedicating to lines. I must say partial traiting gave more customization and ensured that you were able to get certain aspects. But it was probably for the best to switch to trait lines to ensure that certain combinations of skills were not possible. This narrowed what they had to balance around. Unfortunately, the slow balancing pace left many classes with cookie cutter build necessary to be competitive and left many trait lines in the dark useless.

Then introduce specializations. Trait lines gone super saiyan. I really wonder if you can actually compete with a full team of non specialized players versus the new stuff. I would love to see this. Probably feel like Vegeta when Goku first went super saiyan. At the onset of the new content, all the practice of the original line combinations and class weaknesses and strengths went out the window. Specializations didn’t make classes more unique, rather it made this more the same. Class lacked a range weapon, here is one. Looking for a way to support your team, here is healing. No melee presence, have a GS. Not to mention enhanced clutter from everything AoE. My laptop is dying lol.

Now I main thief and warrior, and I have not been able to find something I enjoy post expansion. I guess its a playstyle compatibility issue, because the roles I liked were there pre patch. Recently switching to reaper didn’t seem to ease this because I feel like I am not contributing to the team well enough. Team issues another whole can of worms i will leave alone here.

Some game mechanics I just don’t understand. If the object of the game is protecting a 600 radius node, why does it seem like 60% of skills in this game blanket a 600 range area. Its all bomb and forget. Foefire middle node fights require the most skill because there is room to kite, more GW1 style. Melee struggles are serious.

So maybe I just need to find the class/build that fits me in this supercharged HoT. But at the moment, it makes me feel like a I just bought the game yesterday lol.

This post is not to shun the game, as I have enjoyed my 3+ years on it. But I guess I am having compatibility issues and need something new (class/build) to rekindle the flame.

OK, so I went back through the wiki’s archives and tried to compile a mostly chronological list of major nerfs and buffs this class has had, this brought back a lot of old memories of sad farewells to useful skills and builds. The following is an abridged summery of the changed, a mostly complete change log is found here as these are the notes I made as I researched.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KynnPQh0rOo31_eY_CUgX3I2GS4lqcTzRU8HGGe_e9c/edit?usp=sharing

Starting in 2012:
Flanking Strike is unblockable now
Pistol Whip nerfed by 15%
Heartseeker nerfed by 20%
Dancing Dagger nerfed by 50%
Tactical Strike buffed +15%, PvP split introduced
Cluster Bomb nerfed only in PvP -20%, PvP split introduced
Cloak and Dagger nerfed in PvP -33%, PvP split introduced
Scorpion Wire range increased to 1200
Ricochet chance increased to 20%
Super Speed in stealth trait buffed up to +50% speed
Pistol Mastery and Improvisation buffed to +10% damage

2013:
Venoms and Assassin’s Signet “fixed” to lose charges if attack fails
CnD fixed to make attacking walls not give stealth in WvW
Caltrops nerfed duration 15sec -> 10 sec
Flanking Strike now two skills, boon steal no longer unblockable
Mug can’t crit, can heal through
Signet’s passives doubled
Death Blossom costs 4 initiative now
Pistol Whip activates and channels faster
Signet of Malice buffed by 33%
Steal baseline reduced down to 35sec
Cluster Bomb range reduced 1200 -> 900
Larcenous Strike now costs 6 initiative total
Shadow Return no longer a stun break
—Major trait changes happen--
Steal can be trait’d to 1500 range
Destroy Shadow Trap no longer stun break
Larcenous Strike only steals 1 boon
Pistol whip is made faster again

—New heal skill introduced and Initiative worth rejiggered—

2014:
Runes change
Traits start to change
Pistol Whip gains PvP split, costs more in PvP
Poison Gas nerf poison duration 5sec -> 3sec per pulse
Trait System changes completely
Ricochet gains bonus pistol range +150
Dagger Auto-attack now cleaves into a second target
Unload channels 20% faster
Flanking Strike increased to 4 initiative, larcenous reduced to 1
Venom’s baseline recharge reduce 45sec -> 40sec

2015:
Might nerfed by 15%
Traps properly buffed
Invigorating Precision buffed 8% -15% (crit dmg delt becomes life gained)
Teleports don’t activate if path can’t resolve
Backstab doesn’t reveal if it fails
—Conditions changed--
—Armour and Lv 80 Baseline stats changes—
—June balance patch, goodbye Acrobatics—
Steal becomes 1200 range as baseline
—Skill classifications mean something again—
Traps no longer cause revealed
CnD PvP split removed, dmg values averaged
Basalisk and Devourer Venom CCs nerfed
Chocking Gas nerfed again
Potent Poison buffed poison duration +10% -> +33%
Expeditious Dodger buff swiftness duration increased 2sec -> 4sec
Death Blossom evasion extended

Then Heart of Thorns
Then present day

Now you can draw accurate conclusions on how the class has changed

It all comes down to economy and psychology. I am an expert in neither, but I can use google.

Firstly, the meta is a response to the way in which the game is set up… lots of magical one shots, active mitigation, the lack of a ‘holy’ trinity. There are no ‘defined and necessary’ roles to balance around, beyond DPS. This makes all defensive stats obsolete once your own personal skill cap is raised to a certain point.

Why do people behave like this?

At what point did we start logging on to “clear content as fast as possible”?

At what point did the fun become secondary to the money we can make?

And what the kitten are we making money for? If not to play the game then what?

Your making money from speed running dungeons, to get better gear, to super speed run dungeons…. for…. what?

I often hear, “yeah, but I just don’t wanna spend all night trying to clear this.”

What they are saying is “I’d rather be doing something else with my time.”

Like what? Like playing some other aspect of this game? If you have things going on in your life…. then log off mid run. Really. It’s ok. We’ve all had random’s drop out, and we have a pretty darn good LFG tool…. its fine. You want to go live your life? Do it. You wanna play the game? Please loose this “clear it fast” mentality.

We all get to max level pretty quickly, and now, due to tomes of knowledge, writs of xp, crafting xp (which is easily fueled by gems and gold)… one can get to 80 in a week of “hobby time”

Is this a bad thing? Nope.

But what it does do is leave some people relatively clueless about how their class works in group content. Something that was worked around by giving us a tiered system of progressively higher leveled group content.

However that content, has been taken over by elitists.

These elitists have forgotten that they play a game, and have signed on for a second JOB. They clear as fast as possible without seeing that its all circular… they clear fast to get faster at clearing fast. I wonder… do they get a warm fuzzy sense of accomplishment?

“Yeah man, we all like stacked in a corner, and cced the boss so he couldn’t even like hit us and stuff, man…. then we did it again… 6 rimes in a row, man!… yea, man just under 12 gold…. I’m a super trump-rich, man.”

“Oh… err, what are you gonna do with that gold?”

“Well, man I’m like gonna buy the parts to make like, some ascended gear man! You like gotta have the best gear, man… that’s, like, what you do on games like this right, man?”

“Well…what are you gonna do when that’s done… and you have your skins… and your legendries, and your fifteen 5000 gold dyes?”

" I’m, like, gonna either quit, man, or start another toon man.. that’s just what you do. Right. man?"

“NO, It isn’t.”

I’m sorry to say, that all of you “meta” do it fast, in all ’zerk, link gear on joining, perfect speed runners…. are highly skilled players, who are wrong about why one plays a game at all.

The point is to have fun… its to get online with friends… or PUGs, and to escape into a fantasy world for while.

And ya know what? I have kittenloads of fun on this game. This game is kitten great! And I know you agree with me. If you don’t… and your wasting your life trolling a forum of a game that you think is kitten…. Then, I feel genuinely sorry for you. Go log into facebook or something.

And ya know what, ‘meta’ players? You are the loud minority.

Let me tell you how you got that way. Noobs.

I’m not saying that you are noobs… not at all actually. I’m saying that noobs look up to you.

Jay Random noob hits 80, and goes kitten , what do I need to become ‘good at this game’ now that I’m at max level? So he hops on the fourms, and checks out youtube… he then idealizes those that he perceives to be great, and becomes a ‘follower’. This same phenomena is why I know who David Beckham is, and I have never sat through a whole game if soccer in my life.

They learn that the ‘only’ way to get good… is to be you. And what happened to your ego? it balloons up like crazy! Is that wrong? NO. Because you have followers. Most folks with a following have an ego.

So… these ‘noobs’ watch these videos and take the advice on this forum, and pop onto metabattle, and they go and spend hard earned gold and sometimes real money getting hugely overpriced zerk gear… then the get in random pugs, and the DIE REPEATEDLY. Why? Because doing what the ‘meta’ does takes lots of skill. And you need voicechat and regular practice, repeated times trying to clear content until you get it down pat. (And if it came easy for you, congratulations on your natural aptitude, which not all of us have.)

Then the rest of us, the non-followers, we get upset, because your passing down high skill level play and calling it the only way. You attack everyone who isn’t doing it your way… you come on these forums and chew up and spit out anyone who thinks that your way is “lazy” or “un-fun” or “cheap”, even folks trying to propose alternatives without insult. You spend time chastising people who want to have fun. (when you could be speed running dungeons)

And you know what? It makes having fun harder.

The more you speak up about how those of us in nomad gear, or sentinels, or settlers, or hell… even rampager’s, are all NOOBS. (Some of the kinder of your ilk will point out that, you can “play what you want, even though its sub optimal…” which comes off as “Noob! get out of our club…. who let you in here anyway?”)

So… then guys like me, post up “hey… what could we do to change this?” and the only responses we get are angry ‘meta’ players who don’t want things to change, so they can keep their ‘cool kid status’… that way they can have rights to be the authority. So the can have public sanction to talk down to others. And what does this do? It makes all the noobs who looked to you initially decide to try repeatedly to get into your club, they wont try something else, because they spent money on that overpriced zerk gear. And now they feel invested, and changing their mind would be a loss. They cant stand the idea that you don’t need to be a cool kid to be good at this game. And you don’t need to solo Lupi in your underwear to have FUN

We, as a community, need to make it clear that the glorification of these recto-cranialy inverted, circular logic users is hurting the community of long time veteran players who see through their crap. It is also hurting the community of new players who come to this game and look to the ‘meta’ to find out what’s ‘good’.

We need to glorify the talent not the build and the gear. we need to understand that having a group healer does increase dps… because the ‘zerker’ everyman dies all the time! Having one guy sacrifice dps does increase the uptime of everyone else…. 5 “super pros”? no….. 5 regular dudes? yep. definitely.

Does it matter if you do 5000dps vs 2675 dps? no… so long as you are making up the difference making sure that everyone else is doing better. It’s called altruism people.

Does it matter if a dungeon takes 45 min vs 15? NO because were all here to have fun!

Does it matter if we wipe 8 times on Mai Trin? NO! It’s a challenging fight, with good mechanics, and failing on it is keeping you from what again exactly? Your life? Bail! Go live your life! No one is stopping you! If its keeping you from some other part of the game remind yourself that your already playing the game and buckle up.

Ya know what I do when my group is wiping on Mai Trin? I go get a ranger in full zealot gear, clerics trinkets, and “search and rescue”. Then, suddenly, we stop wiping. not cause I’m super good…. but because none of us were good enough without support.

Being good at support is every bit as good at being good at DPS, except that its a job that’s not all about YOU.

So I guess, I don’t know where this rant is going, but I think there are a lot of us who feel the way I feel about the elitist community, and about their volume relative to their size…

I’m sure that the next 100 posts will be short, brainless responses tearing me down, cause I hit way to close to home. But ya know what? I hope that some percentage of them see what they did, and go post a LFG saying all classes welcome, bring support please and watch how the groups that they get change. watch what happens when you have a group with a rabid, a sinister, a zerker, a soldier and a nomad player. Will it clear content faster than the zerker super pro team.?… No. Will it clear faster than a group of every man ’zerkers? Kitten yes it will, and they will have FUN doing it… which is the kitten point!

kittendragon.1832:

I get whisper rage after beating people in PvP

I get whisper rage after beating people in WvW

Consider those a compliment because they are, no matter how they are expressed. The appropriate way to say thank you to them is, LOL! Repeat as often as needed.

She’s terrified because someone (read: you and the biconics) brought her into hostile territory when she should be in the safety of Rata Sum like other asuran children. She’s terrified because in her immaturity and selfishness she ran off on her own in hostile territory without any thought to her own safety or the inconvenience chasing after her would cause important people with better things to do who now have to do the same. Seriously, people are dieing, Mordremoth is destroying forts and threatening the whole world. We just did a field trip through the desert – risking out lives – because Taimi doesn’t want to hand over her device?

If someone like Taimi, with no background on waypoint knowledge was able to identify a solution to the problem the moment she was made aware of the problem, I’m sure the asura that created the waypoints, that maintain them every day, that construct them or find ways to make them more efficient, I’m sure they could have solved this problem. Taimi might be a genius, but so is her entire race.

No.

Alright seriously… it’s “thieves” not “thiefs.” Why is that not a single anti-thief post on this forum can get the plural word for thief right? It’s as if the people who complain about thieves are actually inferior in terms of intelligence or something… ooooooooh waaaaaait

I am currently setting my traits after having a short gaming break and being too lazy to think about traits.
While doing this I found out that one thing which would be really good to have would be the possibility to save 3-4 sets/builds of traits for different occassions (maybe the same could go for skills?). I may for instance like to have different traits depending on if I play alone or in a group and it’s quite a fuss to reset them all individually – and I’d have to remember exactly what they were! (which is probably the hardest part)

The ability to save builds was also one of the really good aspects of Guild Wars 1. It was a fast way to adapt to different things you wanted to do. As resetting traits became easier now, I think it would also be a good addition to Guild Wars 2. Being able to easily share builds with others was very nice too, of course, but the ability to just save them would already make a big difference.

If they were added to the gemstore I’d have bought like 2. Since it’s another RNG game, no gems will be bought nor spent for this from me…

Long post incoming

Seriously feels like a day doesn’t go by unless 2-3 complaints threads are made or necro’d.
It’s always been like this since day 1, but lately it feels like it has gotten worse.
And for almost 2 years now you hear almost everything complained about.
-Stealth, all the benefits it gives you
-initiative,
-chill
-shadow steps
- BS, HS, C&D, PW, PDSD, kitten unload of all things
-evades
-traits, sigils, runes( krait rune takes the cake)

I got to ask, do people making threads just throw dart at a board, or is there a grand list on what to make next the thread on?

Yes , initiative lets a thief spam his skills. Not only was it design to give versatility in combat by using what ever skills they want at any point, but to allow a thief spend all this resource to burst his target. Which usually requires the most efficient skill to do damage with. If you allow yourself to get to low health in front of a thief, your kitten right he should HS his initiative away.
The drawbacks for initiative being low skill usage overall compared to other class, shared initiative pool between weapon sets, the need to sacrifice the little utility thieves have in their weapon sets over damage (want to headshot? might need to forget about using black powder into HS for a bs).
But of course no other class sees this, the resource management every thieves needs to be mindful of, and knows how much it sucks when you miss a c&d or other high cost skill. If I spam HS and don’t end up killing you, well that was bad play of me, and I might die now.
For those that play thief, love or hate stealth or other “toxic” abilities, doesn’t the resource management and freedom of skill usage offer so much depth to the class?
Don’t know about anyone else, but it’s still the reason why I call it a main.

Thieves have shadow step, evades and stealth, because where are their stabilities, protection and health? A thief that doesn’t use these is as good as dead, just as much as any other profession that doesn’t use their defensive abilities.
And you know what?
They are amazing, not only can I use them all of them for defence, but use them offensively as well, and boy are they offensive.
Gain buffs, remove conditions, attack, heal. Imagine a guardian healing while gaining boons, or warrior removing conditions while attacking, if only right? ( inb4 people feel the need to tell me the difference :p)
Sure, you can’t target a thief in stealth, but you can still hit him, people do it all the time, some thieves can actually c&d off a cloaked target. Crazy.
If a thief really wanted to, will he get away 100% of the time? I would like to say maybe 80%ish of the time. Does it require to be lucky/ better then him/built a certain way. Yes, but to kill any other profession, wouldn’t you need to expect the same?

After what? 6-7 months after the last balance update and countless threads, the only thing they nerf the thief on was PW in Spvp, shortbow #3, and some poison.
Nothing on stealth, BS, chill or any complaint during that time, BS and HS hasn’t been touch really since launch, and few nerfs to easy perma stealthing and evades, but they are still there. BS can still hit like a truck in the right situations, they can walk into an enemy Zerg and walk right out if they know what they are doing, and turn any 1v1 into a 2 v dead pretty fast. And the complaint are still going. At this point one would think this is ok with anet
In fact, there was an anet stream awhile back where one of the devs (izzy) looked at an enemy thief trolling a group of players, and he said to them " leave him alone….. Your not going to kill him" :O that was beautiful!!
My biggest wish for this game is not Cantha,(that’s saying a lot) new weapons, or the removal of ascended gear. But for Karl to come out and say " Yeah, this is how we made the thief…deal with it" because you know it’s what they are thinking.

Summary/ TL:DR

For all that it worth, thieves will spam, stealth, hit like a truck, run away, come back for round 10, and you might not be able to do anything about. And if that wasn’t the devs vision for the thief they would have changed it a long time ago.

This thread has one of 3 outcomes, locked, forgotten in the pages of old, or a flame fest of epic proportions ( kinda just hoping for one of the first 2). I’m just venting atm with all the dumb kitten I see.
Who am I you ask? Just some random wannabe.
What I ask is really simple, and it something I hope people take to heart next complaint thread that they want to make, not only for the thief but with any class really.

Deal with it!

I wish this discussion were a bit more civil, but they all do have a point. Here’s a question: Why do they offer Berserker – or indeed collectively “glass” – amulets to everyone if it’s so written in stone that Thieves “deserve” to roll face over other glass players?

A lot of Thief proponents seem to conveniently forget that it’s a player on the other end too. With the merits presented in these kinds of threads in defense of mechanics like these is that Rock-Paper-Scissors is totally okay balance. I don’t think anybody has a problem with Thieves being bursty, if there was some kind of indicator that they have set up and can deal a sizable amount of damage now. Certain other game does this by combo points and another by placing a debuff on you. More specifically, there is often zero warning that you get jumped by a thief, especially if you’re already engaged in a fight. This is the problem that people have. It is really bad design, because it is easy to do and requires quite a bit of skill from the person in the receiving end. Oh, you have a latency spike when you get attacked, or your game stutters when you about face? Tough luck, you just lost because fighting a Thief is an arbitrary reaction check. My point is that a Berserker Thief deals too much damage in general over a short period of time, and any latency or frame lag issues exacerbate the problem. This can happen at any time depending on overall system load, or if there happens to be congestion in the data center.

Skilled players can do much, but not everybody who wants to PvP has the twitch reflexes or sub 100 ms connection to enjoy it. The burst happens too fast and despite some people seeing Thieves just filling their niche, it certainly drives away people from PvP. I don’t personally have a lot of sympathy for them. It’s a hated playstyle and appeals to certain type of player. I do hope more discussion took place and that A.net would ultimately level the playing field, especially when the game engine and the networking cannot offer the kind of framework needed to have a consistent experience. Until that happens, I don’t think “L2P” is very valid nor reasonable. I don’t play Engineer for similar reasons anymore. I used to, and it has flown under the radar for way too long. Certain mechanics leave little room for opponent to make a mistake, and it feels exactly like fighting a Thief; frustrating and insurmountable to someone not having spent hundreds of hours in practising just against that. Some people just want to play for fun. If that cannot be a part of the design considerations in PvP, then maybe, just maybe contemplating the possible meanings of “It’s windy at the top” is in order.

EDIT: I don’t think tweaking Backstab or Stealth fixes anything. This is something that has been done against the manifesto. Furthermore they should have understood the limitations of their engine by now. Imitating features from MOBAs without understanding the importance of steady graphical and network performance at all costs inevitably takes a toll on the gameplay. As a result, we get these threads that mean well derailed on a daily basis by crowds who all ultimately want the same thing: A consistent and competitive playing field. Oh, and nobody wants to give up their advantages either.

RULES: Keep this thread civilised no kittens no doggies and definitely no quaggans

In this thread lets hear your opinions about this.

Necro
1. Fear Duration
2. Deathshroud
3. Dhuumfire
4. Signet of Spite
5. Corrupt Boon

Elementalist
1. Diamond Skin
2. Written in stone
3. Stone heart
4. Signet of restoration

Warrior
1. Healing signet

Engineer
1.Inciendery powder (THE BURNING)
2.Inciendery ammo

What I think about it..
Fear OP
Deathshroud OP (needs nerf)
Dhuumfire OP (needs nerf)
Signet of Spite OP (Needs nerf like runes of lyssa)
Corrupt boon OP (needs nerf like runes of lyssa)
Diamon Skin kind of OP (needs nerf)
Written in stone (well it is OP) (needs nerf)
Stone heart it is OP (needs nerf)
Signet of restoration, pretty much OP (needs minimal nerf)
Healing signet still kind of OP (well… we all know it)
Inciendery powder. HOLY MOTHER OF TYRIA IT IS OP ( definitely needs mega ultra nerf)
Inciendery ammo, its OP(nerf it)

I still see plenty of spamgineers roaming in WvW. They’ are still a major pain, despite the nerfs to perplexity.

It’s not impenetrable. Elementalists have incredibly weak passive defenses, so it should be easy to do 1.5k damage to them.

I mean, if you want to talk about completely overpowered, let’s go back to those engineers.

Burnfall.9573:

In support of my thief guild members; they want to remind everyone that, thieves will remain Op with their Perma-stealths for a very very very long time in this game.
.

And we the community must face the reality and move on to other stealth challenging and class balancing mmo’s who values their community concerns.

(2 years of false hope and deception is enough for me to tale that Great Opportunity).

why not!!

Be gone Deceiver!

We have witnessed the true nature of the the real oppressors

Those who would play a class that has access to godmode condi-evasion are the same who would suppress the voices of the poor thief when they try to expose them for the phonies they are!

Honest rangers admit they’re OP

The rangers in my guild laugh over vent when a “stupid thief” tries to fight or run.

You, sir, must look in the mirror and witness the vitriol and bile which you spew at the weak!

As the saying goes “he who points their fingers at others should first point the finger at themselves”

I feel sorry for you.

I have never seen so much blind hatred toward a single class until I got to these forums about a week ago. Before switching MMOs, I witnessed plenty of profession hate. The best example is WoW with Rouges and Hunters that were supposedly bad. Then I come here and it’s like almost as bad as a religious inquisition when I looked at the thief forums.

That is the main reason why I started thief in the first place. Some players were over-the-top complaining about it talking about some really far fetched characteristics that I just had to see. I figured that once I felt ready for pvp that I would already know something about this overpowered class enough to at least survive one.

So I make one and started off playing really poorly. The transition from cooldowns to a universal skill pool took a few days to adjust. So to speed up the process I got onto the thief forums and I come to find that thieves are kinda in a war against some of the other players. Regardless, I scanned the topics in search for some players who seemed like they have great experience with the thief. There were a few and all of them were just as aggressive as the next.

I managed to read one of their (really long) post lists and immediately decided to contact them in game. Now at first, I thought he was going to turn me away seeing as how most of his posts were harsh which told me he was an kitten . However when I told him I wanted to learn about thieves, he snatched me up and took me to an arena real quickly.

I spent the next few days with him talking about everything about the thief. He never gave me specific builds I should be using at certain points in the game but he did break down every trait, weapon set skill and utility down so well that I knew exactly what I wanted to run.

By the end of his lesson, I quickly came to realize that thief is broken but not the “super overpowered death machine” type of broke. He even let me test everything out and helped me with all the math I could possibly need. Just to list everything that happened within the past few days…

I learned that thief:

• s/p is best for tanking
• SB is best for kiting followed closely by p/d
• SB has best AoE for power builds (I actually like it above the rest of the weaponsets)
• d/d is THE bread&butter for this class, good for pure spike damage and AoE bleeding (apparently the best in game)
• d/d is the best chase weaponset thieves have next to SB (if you do it right).
• Doesn’t have as much condition removal as it should. During our duels he used a condition based d/d build and pretty much killed me every time. The amount of bleeds and cripple were way too much to keep up with even with maxed condition cleanse and in the end he would just down me with a facestab.
• There are alot of traits that could use a buff. For example, 5% is so-so. With a full glass build I calced it at ~50-500 across all attacks. That just seems like a waste to use unless you are literally trying to min/max.
• Maxed out Critical Strikes is almost mandatory for power builds.
• Venomshare is great with a coordinated group. Otherwise don’t go so heavy into the traits and use Ambush and Thieves’ Guild.
• The original keybinds suck. (will be tweeking them later)
• Initiative also sucks when you run out.
• Hard To Catch will kill you (found that out myself) and is a waste of trait space.
• Healing power doesn’t do a kitten thing.
• Clicking skills is a nogo period. I am having WAY more control using skills with one hand and controlling movement and camera with the other.

But most importantly…

• Most of what other players are saying about thieves is misinformed (intentionally or not) or just plain ignorant.

So again, I feel sorry for you guys. Coming from a fresh newbie, everything that is happening to this community is complete bull and I hope it stops in the future.

Sincerely,
yolo

P.S. Also a special thanks to Red Spectrum and Zacchary for teaching me how thieves work. Never knew I would learn so much so quickly until they offered helped.

Ok I know this is going to get a lot of snarky responses but imo Engineers are the single most overpowered class in this game.

They are somewhat flying under the radar though because their imbalances aren’t as obvious as with other classes. The exception being sPvP which they have already turned into a mockery.

Unlike with other imbalances like Warrior Healing Signet + Adrenal Healing it’s hard to pin-point exactly what makes Engineers so OP.

In my book it’s the ability to passively deal damage while kiting combined with lots of knock-backs, CC and Blinds. It’s not an individual trait or skill that makes them OP, but rather their entire kitten nal and the lack of trade-offs they have to make.

Yes, Engineers don’t have amazing crit-videos where they show off their PvE DPS and no they aren’t very popular but mark my words, in a few months time this problem will become much more apparent.

Pro roamers and PvP heroes have already caught on to this for a while and most have rerolled Engineer at this point.

Combo breaker!

Either that or Scarlet remembered to waypoint after defeat.

I am, and will always be, opposed to this.

I like that classes have some sort of logical and visual “identity” that makes a reasonable amount of sense. I like that light armor looks light, heavy armor looks heavy, ect. I like that thieves aren’t doing insane acrobatics in plate mail while heavily armored warriors run around in cloth bikinis. I know people will always say “Its fantasy, screw realism and logic!” but I enjoy my fantasy to have at least some amount of reason and logic to it.

Tikitaka.1340:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Tikitaka.1340:

Red, this shealt is the automatic in art shadown

Yeah I know, I was making a point of how for once it did its job and not got you killed

??

What he means is, that often (especially as a D/D-Thief) this trait will put you into stealth while you’re attacking someone (usually with autoattacks). Because you are attacking, it will give you the revealed-debuff and thus you can’t stealth when you actually would have wanted to stealth… depending on the situation, this can get you killed. This time (in the video) however, it worked as intended and did save a life instead of taking it.

You know they have a whole playable race that comes with free cat tails?

GigaRoc.2057:

Cat Tail
Dog/Wolf Tail
Bunny Tail
Monkey Tail

U son are into some wierd kitten lmao

Reikou.7068:

People like to pretend they can play thief. The truth is that most of these players cannot.

Glass thief is a build with one of the highest skill floors in the game.

This is also why you simply see permastealth crap in WvW. Because these players cannot play thief if it wasn’t for SA and Shadow’s Rejuvenation carrying them.

Its also why I’m a huge proponent of nerfing/removing Shadow Arts/Shadow’s Rejuvenation, just like how good mesmers are in favor of nerfing/removing Prismatic Understanding, and good Engineers are in favor of nerfing/removing Automated Response. They’re all broken and cheesy traits that carry far too many bad players.

kitten , so many self proclaimed “good players” throwing mocarellas left and right.