Guild Wars 2

subcrazy.1098:

bwillb.2165:

subcrazy.1098:

My ele has 2400 armor and gets hit for 10k+(im not even glass spec, if I was would of been 1 shot for sure.), throw up lighting shield hes stunned in stealth still, but still gets off his other attacks to kill me all in stealth.

Attacking breaks stealth. You’re running into the rendering issues which everyone agrees need to be fixed.

Ya i know, but still 10k on 1 hit is a lil silly i only have 4k hp left after that. Even the 8k hit with 3300 armor is silly. With every spvp having 5- 8 thieves a game pretty soon it will be thief wars.

This is the problem with everyone assuming that the fight starts when the first hit lands.

It doesn’t. The fight starts once you think you might be hit, and start reacting accordingly.

If you were hit first when you didn’t think you’d be hit, you should have started the fight in your head earlier.

Also this absurd bandwagon about “5-8 thieves on every pvp team” is just so ridiculously, patently false. It’s a perfect example of the groupthink going on with the malcontents that want nerfs more than they want balance. A couple images of thief teams on 4chan is not real evidence.

I’m still headdesking every time I see people complaining about Heartseeker. I don’t even use it much when fighting an opponent that isn’t a moron, because people who aren’t morons just dodge roll it and you lose 2 activations worth of initiative. It really is a perfect example of just how little thought is being put into counters when people don’t even consider the game’s universal counter mechanic.

Jrunyon.3012:

Supervillain.8617:

There’s no reason to be sarcastic or hostile. If you read my posts carefully, you might realize I never blamed “theoretical market manipulators” for anything, and that you’ve completely missed my point again. I simply asked a question, and gave my reasoning behind it. If there is a good reason why these items must be labeled as “almost legendary” then I’d really like to hear it.

Because thats what they are. They are precursors to a legendary. I dont see how this is even an issue to be honest, what does it matter what theyre labeled as?

I’m confused by this as well.

Status symbols are desirable. People will price them high.

Honestly I don’t even think that the top level gear in this game is that expensive/rare compared to other MMOs. Remember how absurdly scarce some of those Diablo 2 runes were?

sorrow.2364:

Mrbig.8019:

S/P is a perfect set, only NOOBS spam pistol whip, and only WORSE NOOBS get beaten by it.

With S/P every move is functional, and every move has its use.

This is not the case with S/D: FS basically has no use and no tactical advantage over C&D+ tactical strike if not in those situations when you want to rip off stability ( kinda funny with dagger storming thieves).

Again, the boon ripping is great. But since the rest of the move is unreliable ( evade+ damage) it’s not a solid investment to use 4 ini for it.

In order to make it viable, S/D should

1) evade more reliably (full evade like DB)
2) be faster, in order to make the second hit to, well, actually HIT.

OR

1b) be completely rehauled into something else.

Otherwise the trade off is not fair, especially since you have C&D+ tactical strike for the same cost.

It’s actually rather easy, since Swork skills and Dagger skills melt perfectly, and they would redo only the dual.

Let’s try to stay in topic. I don’t care if people who spam Pistol Whip/Backstab/Heartseeker are noobs or not, the fact is that you can be more effective than you should when relying on only one skill.

FS has lots of advantages over CnD + Tactical strike when the target has at least one boon.
Do you know what stripping one boon means? Depending on the boon stripped:
- Aegis: the attack is unblockable
- Fury: your target has -20% critical chance
- Might: your target has -35 power per stack.
- Protection: you deal 50% more damage
- Regeneration: you deal ~150 damage per second
- Retaliation: you don’t take >267 damage per hit
- Stability: you can CC your enemy which is otherwise uncontrolled.
- Swiftness: your enemy moves 25% slower
- Vigor: your enemy’s endurange regenerates 50% slower.

Now you’ll see that only one of those effects makes FS worth using over CnD + Tactical Strike at the cost of 4 initiative, also considering that is the only easy to access way for thieves to strip boons.
You shouldn’t care about the evade, which is a nice plus, or the 2nd sword attack, which is also a well accepted extra.

The evade is also a great thing. Just imagine you are in a fight against more people focusing on you and, to survive, you finished your endurance. Now imagine that a burst is coming to you, like Dragon’s Tooth or BC+HB combo. If you have 4 initiative with S/D left you can survive and manage to leave the battle. CnD won’t save your kitten in this situation, FS can.

Who cares if the second hit doesn’t land? If you are good (because it is about being good) and succed to land it, fine, if not, you invested your initiative well anyway IF you used it on a target with a boon.

CnD doesn’t cost 4 initiative. It still cost 6 initiative, but if you trait, when you stealth you gain 2 initiative. This means that if you have 4 or 5 initiative left, you can’t use CnD while you can use FS. Also, to make CnD “costs 4 initiative”, you have to invest precious trait points on Shadow Arts while FS doesn’t need it.

They are two different skills useful in different situations. There are some situations where CnD + TS is better than FS and some other when FS is better than CnD + TS.
It is absolutely untrue that CnD + TS is always better.

I would argue that Bountiful Theft makes the boon stripping not that important any more. It’s nice to be able to do consistently, but how many boons is a person going to have at the start of a fight? Taking 2 off the top and giving it to yourself and all allies is all I’ve felt like I needed. The fights are usually short enough that I kill them and get out, or I decide it’s not worth it and slip away before they manage to start applying a bunch more.

The stats on the Mad King and Lyssa runes too? That’s a shame because the elite activation is so buggy already, that means the entire rune pretty much doesn’t work. What stats do you get instead of the listed ones?

Ravrohan.8231:

3) First Strike strips a boon AND is unblockable something that seems to be forgotten in this thread.

Is it truly unblockable, or rather, does it strip Aegis? There’s a difference.

Azelroth.6801:

Jrunyon.3012:

I do not want to see a legendary on every 2nd person I pass, that would completely undermine the whole point of a legendary.

You do realise in about 3-6 months this is going to happen anyway right? Legendaries are not legendary because they are rare. They’re probably called legendary due to all the materials required to make one…

I don’t think 50% of the population will get 100% map completion.

I agree with people saying that making it more skill based than grind based would be nice, but I’d argue that goes for everything prestige related in MMOs. It’s hard to design something so contrary to the average player’s expectations, and the average player expects to just be able to play X hours and end up looking like a destroyer of worlds.

bwillb.2165:

roamzero.9486:

Something that had me thinking.. would a huge nerf in backstab damage be justified if that damage was simply replaced by enough stacks of bleed over x seconds to cover the damage that was nerfed off? Maybe throw in some cripple and weakness for a few seconds as well.

Not really. In addition to slowing the damage, this would also make it require both crit and condition damage to be effective, make it ridiculously easy to avoid (beyond turning around or dodging or interrupting the ability, you could now just get rid of a large portion of it with condition removal, which, on a lot of classes, is built into the heal skill), and also kill it in PvE where bleed stack caps would have you largely kittened when other players are present (one of the reasons people run backstab is because its one of only a couple builds that doesn’t rely on the badly designed conditions mechanic).

Beat me to saying it.

Not to mention the people complaining about it are the ones who don’t really pay attention to their defensive skills to begin with. This would make it just as effective against the complainers (causing them to continue to complain) while making it useless against everyone else. It’s the worst of both worlds.

Also I strongly disagree with the idea of channelled skills being interrupted by steal. Steal being an instant cast ability is integral to way more than quick backstab combos. It would mean not being able to steal while stunned, Dagger Storming, releasing Caltrops, or a number of other avenues which make the Trickery tree desirable. It would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Signet of Forums.4397:

SFtheWolf.5179:

Signet of Forums.4397:

SFtheWolf.5179:

That would also be a reasonable thing to give level 400 crafters.

Yeah, keep dreaming. They’re not going to give a trade skill something that so directly competes with a gem shop item. Selling a one-time-use gem shop item is the reason this game had a bad cosmetic system in the first place. Compare it to Lord of the Rings Online, that simply has separate slots for your looks (and not just “town clothes”), for example. You don’t have to consume a piece of armor to keep your stats and change your appearance in the game. They do not have any cosmetic system at all for weapons, however.

Or; GW2 is gigantic and ambitious and they went with a system that was easier to implement and manage.

I’m not really as convinced of the gem store conspiracies for everything as most people.

I’ve got 15 fine transmutation stones sitting in my bank without spending a penny, and I’m only at 50% world completion.

How is it easier to implement? They already did it with town clothes, which cannot be worn in combat, just not armor.

An overriding cosmetic slot system sounds more complex to me. That said I don’t really know.

Nycthemeron.7690:

Ha! Love the two-faced Josir!

One thing that really flummoxes me is the lack of any sort of a faction/reputation system. This is a pretty basic staple of most ‘large world’ rpgs (stand alone and mmo) that is useful in ‘customizing’ your experience. It only stands to reason that if you gather a reputation as a ‘slayer of Skritt’ that even the most broad-minded Skritt out there won’t want a whole lot to do with you.

However, in Tyria in most areas the Skritt are attack-on-sight. But, in some areas they are merchants and allies. I can walk into the kill-on-sight areas and slaughter them gleefully, then walk into the merchant areas dripping with Skritt-gore and happily trade away. A little baffling.

Would you rather not be able to do certain hearts/missions with your friends because you have incompatible faction allegiances?

Also even the Skritt are diverse. It’s not like they’re all allied and all have the same motivations.

I like the individuality that comes with a really unique starter piece of equipment, but what if I regret my choice later on? My perception of my characters’ personalities has developed as I play them, why shouldn’t the clothing that represents their individuality do the same?

Not to mention some just look awful in-game compared to the icon and description (like the Determination Headband).

Also I didn’t know they were unique when I started the game, and destroyed a couple of them. I should at the very least be able to get a new copy in my home instance or something.

Signet of Forums.4397:

SFtheWolf.5179:

That would also be a reasonable thing to give level 400 crafters.

Yeah, keep dreaming. They’re not going to give a trade skill something that so directly competes with a gem shop item. Selling a one-time-use gem shop item is the reason this game had a bad cosmetic system in the first place. Compare it to Lord of the Rings Online, that simply has separate slots for your looks (and not just “town clothes”), for example. You don’t have to consume a piece of armor to keep your stats and change your appearance in the game. They do not have any cosmetic system at all for weapons, however.

Or; GW2 is gigantic and ambitious and they went with a system that was easier to implement and manage.

I’m not really as convinced of the gem store conspiracies for everything as most people.

I’ve got 15 fine transmutation stones sitting in my bank without spending a penny, and I’m only at 50% world completion.

FalconDance.1637:

FalconDance.1637:

…ankittenep hoping it gets better. …

Ok, that’s weird. Somehow the filters kicked in and what I see in the post is “ankitten” when what I said was (without the apparently offending words), “and I continue hoping it gets better”. Since when is the word (k e e p) a curse word?

YOU COULDN’T KITTEN THE KITTEN

sorrow.2364:

SFtheWolf.5179:

Where did I say I didn’t play Guild Wars 1? I did, a lot.

In fact I’m surprised you don’t remember Smiter’s Boon, or smiting at all, or Shroud of Silence getting a dramatic nerf when it was already laughably bad, or touch rangers. There were plenty of really bizarre balance decisions.

Not that I’m saying they’re not devoted to long-term balance. I wouldn’t question their sincerity on that for a second considering the support they’ve given the first game. They’re pretty much the anti-Capcom that way.

I remember those build, but I also remember bspike, iway, palm strike, seeping wound, backbreaker and so on.
Guild Wars was a really hard game to balance consider the huge amount of skills and the unexpected combinations that would grow popular on a skill change, but still they have done a great job.
I don’t think they will do bad balancing on a game which is that easy to balance like Guild Wars 2 is.

Definitely, I’d agree with you there.

I think one major element of the issue at hand here (excluding the people who are just raging) is the matter of where to place our balancing point of reference.

I personally think that GW2 is unbelievably balanced for a game of its scope that has only been out 3 months. The changes I see being needed are primarily related to enabling greater build variety (which is fortunately a priority in Anet’s books, according to the upcoming Ranger changes).

I genuinely don’t see anything as being overpowered in this game. The easiest of easy mode combos are way way simpler to counter than in most competitive games I play. Sure I got stomped by daze into 100b the first few times, but I learned from it and I don’t any more, and I’d argue for keeping that as potent as it is right now as well.

I’m much more in favour of empowering or redesigning the underutilized tools in the game, rather than smothering strategies which happen to stick out as flavours of the moment.

Stiv.1820:

My money is on a general spike damage nerf across all professions not just a back-stab nerf. My hope is it will also come with some sort of PvP downed state nerf, maybe half the starting health in downed state for PvP.

I bet thieves will still have top notch burst relative to all other classes.

If it’s genuinely across the board I would be fine with that (though I don’t think it necessary), so long as the damage doesn’t get too too low. I really enjoy playing the role of a predator culling the herd and want that to remain viable in group situations.

sorrow.2364:

SFtheWolf.5179:

Your form of argument is begging the question. You’re basically saying “my premise is correct therefore my premise is correct”. Repeating your opinion that backstab is overpowered doesn’t add any weight to your case.

Also people keep assuming I build Pistol Whip or Backstab and that’s why I have something invested in this. I don’t. I just hate seeing mob rule and appeals to popular opinion winning the day. It makes me concerned for the future.

As for Pistol Whip’s ongoing viability, all I can say is I bring one stun break and every single Pistol Whip thief I fight in PvP completely falls apart. Maybe I just haven’t fought a good one yet.

You know this reminds me of the constant complaints about the Spy in TF2. Despite being just about the worst class in the game now, people are still enraged by its mere existence. Casuals (a factual statement, regardless of if it’s derogatory) refused to modify their gameplay to take into account the basic counters required to prevent one from instakilling you. In response, Valve has made it so that you can consistently hear one uncloaking behind you (and I’m not talking about the Dead Ringer).

As a result, it’s extremely rare for anyone worth their salt to be killed by a spy any more, ever. If you have headphones on and do the occasional 180 visual check, you simply will not be ambushed by one.

It’s a perfect example of the casual demographic’s demands ruining a class that takes a deliberate action or two to counter. It happens in nearly every game that has one, and I don’t want to see it happen again here.

I believe if Backstab gets outright nerfed, it will be a decisive step in that direction.

Your concern about the future is completely unfounded.
First, ArenaNet isn’t a newborn software house, neither they have no experience at all with balancing.
They have proved many times that they don’t balance around what people say in the forums, they just balance about what they think it is right. If a whole community say “hey, PW is overpowered” they don’t nerf it without thinking, they usually test the skill to figure out if it is really overpowered, test possible modified skill and finally makes the right choice in their opinion.
If you had played Guild Wars, you’ll figure out that they made really great work balancing a game which is way, way harder to balance when compared to Guild Wars 2. Right now every profession has its place, both in PvP and in PvE and there is no outstanding profession at all. Assassins, in Guild Wars, was what we can consider as the Thief precursors. They were nerfed several times, of course, but they also recived buffs when it was needed.
Also Thieves have received buffs in the BWE, probably buffs were too much and now they needs to be toned down a bit, but I don’t see the reason to worry about the future of the profession, seriously.

If now Pistol Whip as a counter, it is fine. High burst builds have to be easily countered. If they were not easy to counter (like backstab is now), they would be overpowered.
The more damage you deal with a skill, the easier it should be countered.

Where did I say I didn’t play Guild Wars 1? I did, a lot.

In fact I’m surprised you don’t remember Smiter’s Boon, or smiting at all, or Shroud of Silence getting a dramatic nerf when it was already laughably bad, or touch rangers. There were plenty of really bizarre balance decisions.

Not that I’m saying they’re not devoted to long-term balance. I wouldn’t question their sincerity on that for a second considering the support they’ve given the first game. They’re pretty much the anti-Capcom that way.

Drede.4701:

While I agree completely with everyone here and hate Trahearne with a passion, I do find it kinda funny people on the PvE forums are convinced ANet only cares about PvP while people on the WvW forums think ANet only cares about PvE. At least here in PvE we are getting content updates and bug fixes. WvW devs might as well be ghosts with the numerous unanswered problems over there.

Really? I thought they’d made quite a number of fairly drastic changes to a rather delicate system already (Removal of orbs, addition of sentries, and significant point/reward rebalancing come to mind).

I mean there’s annoying glitchy stuff right now like catapults being the best form of gate defence (just like in medieval times!) and breaking out of the spawn being too hard, but I can’t really think of much else fundamentally wrong with WvW.

Portal bombs are easily/hilariously counterable and don’t count.

This is getting quite repetitive quite rapidly.

All I see are people on one side trying to make rational arguments, give build/strategy advice, and provide technical information their opponents can’t be bothered to research.

On the other side are emotional people with entitlement complexes that are convinced their playstyle is perfect and simply ignore every post that gives them good advice or objectively contradicts their ridiculous hypotheticals.

This goes for every class argument I’ve seen, not just the Thiefs’.

If the arguments presented in this thread about the Guardian’s complete lack of responses to rudimentary Thief tactics were valid, it would mean that Guardian is easily the worst profession in the game, because every other matchup would be able to exploit these (fabricated) weaknesses just as easily.

I think we’re wasting our time on people whose minds are already made up. It comes down to ArenaNet now. They’re at a crossroads where they have to decide whether they balance the game around players who enjoy adapting and learning, or players desperate for a convenient villain.

I really, really hope they pick the right one, because one of those groups will never be happy.

What would be really nice is if fine transmutation stones could change the stats on a weapon, but not the number values.

That would also be a reasonable thing to give level 400 crafters.

Elitist and pointless.

Personally I enjoyed the level 80 Mad King labyrinth a lot, in the way it scaled my character up even for what was essentially a PvE area. I could do reasonably well with my alts so long as I stayed on my toes.

I don’t need an artificial metric of progress to tell me whether I’m having fun, though I know that’s important for a lot of people coming from other MMOs.

I like GW2 because it has less grind than everything else. I would prefer if it had zero.

Also if we’re going to talk about realism; A moa shouldn’t be able to 1 shot a war veteran Blood Legionnaire, period. This can happen under the current level system.

SteepledHat.1345:

I’m sure there will be.

But, they will probably require you to provide previous legendarys as mystic forge components and there will be chance you only get an exotic as the result.

Endgame, gotta make it last.

What’s with everyone deciding the legendaries are the endgame.

Maybe there’s just a game and you play it and have fun right from level 1. Sure there are some long term goals but that doesn’t mean everything along the way is filler.

The endgame is when you stop playing.

Enenion.8127:

The problem with Flanking Strike is that it is so unreliable. It only really hits stationary enemies and when the enemy is moving the evade may send you in the completely opposite direction you want to go. The skill itself is pretty nice for it’s cost, it removes a boon, does evade and deals comparative damage to C&D for less initiative but that is only if both parts of the skill hit.

The solution to this problem is to improve the likelyhood that the skill hits. For this reason I think they should split the skill into a chain skill. Make the first skill in the chain the first attack that does the smaller hit + evade and the second skill the more damaging sword strike. Naturally the initiative cost would be split between the skills, either in a 2-2 or 3-1 split. This makes the skill much more useful because:

• You become much more likely to hit with the second attack regardless of where the evade takes you since you control if or when the second strike happens.
• If your first attack misses, you are not locked into a useless animation that takes up more time since you aren’t forced to use the second attack if the evade moved you out of range.
• It gives the thief more control over the skill itself. It allows the thief to use the skill more for the evade or for just the boon removal if they want to save initiative or for more damage with the complete chain.

Very good analysis, I agree in general.

Having a 2 stage shadow step chain (and a fix to the flank moves in general) also sounds good.

Tulisin.6945:

swinsk.6410:

If BS gets nerfed I will either quit or try Sword/Dagger.

I really like the backstab thing. I don’t think it needs any kind of nerf. People just need to L2P.

I can kill noobs really easy and quick but fighting people with exotics and level 80 is pretty even unless they screw up during the fight.

I don’t like backstab, but not because it is broken or overpowered, it is just boring and un-synergized. All of the other attack-from-stealth abilities have some neat things going for them, backstab is just very bland and hard to build off of short of stacking a bunch of raw damage.

In short, back stab, regardless of how powerful it is, is a bad ability. Players need to learn to differentiate between an ability that is good because it is strong and an ability that is good because it is well designed, synergistic, and rewarding.

I would totally get behind a Backstab redesign that made it more nuanced and cerebral.

The only problem is then it would require even more thinking to properly counter, and it’s been established that zero is the amount that people are willing to commit to such a task.

I feel like most of the personal story feels like some teenager wrote Guild Wars universe fanfiction (complete with Mary Sue protagonist and side characters that exist only to call him great and then die) and then somehow tricked Arenanet into building a gorgeous world and combat system around it.

They presumably took out all the pornographic scenes as well.

Maybe the one time world changing event in Lost Shores is actually the Mad King breaking back out of his seal.

Everyone is forced to play a game of Mad King Says where he tells us to correctly pronounce the word “claw”.

The loser gets torn limb from limb, whoever that is.

sorrow.2364:

SFtheWolf.5179:

Don’t insult other people’s skill level and then make out like Heartseeker spam is somehow difficult to avoid.

Also I still don’t see why thieves having the best single target damage in the game is a problem. I’d call it a problem if they didn’t.

Furthermore; You’re only seeing what you want to if you think this is about “one skill”. For one, backstab is the focal point of a large number of assassination builds (which should be a totally valid option). For another, the whining about thieves has ruined skills that already weren’t fantastic for anything but pubstomping in the past (Pistol Whip). If Backstab gets ruined, it’s logical to predict the whining will move onto something else, and the cycle will just continue until thieves are useless.

You should have at least have read the context of what I said.
I’ve stated that thieves have the highest single-target DPS in the game to answer Rukia who said Thieves are bad in dungeons and will get even more bad, when almost all the action in that part of game is based on single target engagements with bosses, in which thieves excels.

Pistol Whip, right it is now, is still very viable.
Pigiaduroitastini (Seba Z), Italian as I am, is a great thief player and runs PW in tPvP also after the nerf with great results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaYsl9CxNdA&feature=plcp

Pistol Whip, before the nerf, was just overpowered, now is is well balanced.
You feel it as weak because you compare it to Backstab, which is another op build on the thief. When Backstab will get a nerf too, you’ll realize that all builds are effective the same and they are all viable, unless another op build will stand out and start to monopolize all the thieves again. When you feel that all builds are equally viable, you’ll know that there is balance but till that point, there is no balance.

Other thief’s builds aren’t weak, they are just weaker in comparison with backstab, that’s all. There is no reason to run them over backstab but it isn’t that other builds are all weak, it is just backstab which is stronger than it should.

Your form of argument is begging the question. You’re basically saying “my premise is correct therefore my premise is correct”. Repeating your opinion that backstab is overpowered doesn’t add any weight to your case.

Also people keep assuming I build Pistol Whip or Backstab and that’s why I have something invested in this. I don’t. I just hate seeing mob rule and appeals to popular opinion winning the day. It makes me concerned for the future.

As for Pistol Whip’s ongoing viability, all I can say is I bring one stun break and every single Pistol Whip thief I fight in PvP completely falls apart. Maybe I just haven’t fought a good one yet.

You know this reminds me of the constant complaints about the Spy in TF2. Despite being just about the worst class in the game now, people are still enraged by its mere existence. Casuals (a factual statement, regardless of if it’s derogatory) refused to modify their gameplay to take into account the basic counters required to prevent one from instakilling you. In response, Valve has made it so that you can consistently hear one uncloaking behind you (and I’m not talking about the Dead Ringer).

As a result, it’s extremely rare for anyone worth their salt to be killed by a spy any more, ever. If you have headphones on and do the occasional 180 visual check, you simply will not be ambushed by one.

It’s a perfect example of the casual demographic’s demands ruining a class that takes a deliberate action or two to counter. It happens in nearly every game that has one, and I don’t want to see it happen again here.

I believe if Backstab gets outright nerfed, it will be a decisive step in that direction.

EasymodeX.4062:

Anyone not specifically built for duelling should be disadvantaged in this context by design.

It’s fine for Thieves to have a general class advantage in 1v1. It’s not fine for Thieves to instantly kill almost any 1v1 opponent they find in WvW when they look at them from 900 range.

Except that’s a slanted perspective.

You’re taking a specific subset of thieves (People who have built for assassination, have a plan they intend to carry out, and are likely geared for it) and pitting them against a random target from the general population (likely not level 80, likely not geared, likely doesn’t have a plan, likely has their PvE traits equipped and is just there to zerg).

Play out this matchup with any other profession and you’ll get the same result. I’ve carved through swaths of unprepared players in WvW with a lot more professions than just thief. I’ve burst down stragglers 1v1 and 1v2 as more professions than just thief.

If you changed your hypothetical to involve some totally random thief player versus some totally random target, the odds would even out quite rapidly.

SKuDDer.1860:

Me me me guardian guardian me

My arguments were general and neither meant purely for the guardian class nor purely for you personally.

Tangentially I’m amazed how many people are missing the key detail that guardian is (typically) a team-centric support class, and the thief is (typically) a class about killing people who stray from the pack. Anyone not specifically built for duelling should be disadvantaged in this context by design.

I mean, every single anti-thief argument I’ve read here assumes that you have 0 teammates near you. Maybe that’s their first problem.

sorrow.2364:

I only see thieves prophesying the apocalypse of the thief class based on the possible nerf of just one skill. This is a clear indication of how you guys are the ones who can’t adapt to changes and that you are the whiny kids and casual players.
It is clear to any hardcore and high-level PvP player that thieves, right now, needs some work. Now if you aren’t that kind of pubstomper kids, you’ll know that backstab nerf doesn’t hurt at all any thief capability, both in PvE and in tPvP. The only ones who this possible nerf is hurting are people who likes to roam around WvWvW and sPvP killing random guys and enjoying their easy wins.

STRanger.5120:

sorrow.2364:

Thieves have the best single target damage out of this game by far.

Care to clarify this? I didn´t know of any DPS measuring option for this game so far…

Initiative.
Thieves can use their highest damage skill over and over till the initiative is over, dealing massive damage.
Other professions are locked to a cooldown and can’t do this, but thieves can just focus on their high-damage output skill on their skillbar ignoring any utility, while other professions are forced to cycle their skills till the high-damage skill is rechared or to use autoattack and save utilities for better situations.

Don’t insult other people’s skill level and then make out like Heartseeker spam is somehow difficult to avoid.

Also I still don’t see why thieves having the best single target damage in the game is a problem. I’d call it a problem if they didn’t.

Furthermore; You’re only seeing what you want to if you think this is about “one skill”. For one, backstab is the focal point of a large number of assassination builds (which should be a totally valid option). For another, the whining about thieves has ruined skills that already weren’t fantastic for anything but pubstomping in the past (Pistol Whip). If Backstab gets ruined, it’s logical to predict the whining will move onto something else, and the cycle will just continue until thieves are useless.

I really hope Anet realizes that pandering to the bottom of the barrel players is an unwinnable battle. The only long term solution is to balance the game around people who actually learn counters and how the game mechanics work. Casuals will always complain sooner than adapt, so trying to placate them is wasted time, and ruins the experience for the rest of us.

Denial Of Service.5732:

To me, Stealth mechanic its pretty broken since there is no way to counter it

Inb4: “AoE damage” have luck in a 3D environment guessing in your 400 AoE range where the thieve is, while he is recharging initiative to try to burst you down yet again while your CDs are on.

Guess I’m crazy lucky because I have no problem doing that.

You can, you know, immobilize them. They’ll probably still be in that spot regardless of if you can see them.

So P/P is really cool, I was excited about using it on release.

Problem is it’s not very good. You can stack crits and a lot of initiative to spam Unload with, but you basically end up being a worse shortbow ranger. You’re forced into a couple trait lines with no build variety if you want to even have a chance of making it work.

Also, thief is meant to be a very mobile, kinetic class, and the channel time on Unload actively discourages you from playing this way. You end up just circle-strafing at max range, not really doing anything “thiefy”.

I think that simply making it do more damage wouldn’t address the underlying issues, and would of course start yet more reactionary crying about the class’s damage output. Giving it more conditions wouldn’t really do much to make it stand out from other weapon sets, and might make it feel redundant with engineer pistols.

My suggestion: Implement a profession-wide mechanic that allows thieves to use pistol skills during dodge rolls

Aside from the idea of tumbling through a fight guns akimbo blazing being totally kitten, this would open a wealth of strategic and tactical options which would have a high skill ceiling, be useful for duelist builds, and finally provide a really viable ranged harassment alternative to the shortbow.

Consider an opponent firing a stream of projectiles, and being able to dodge the first few while simultaneously interrupting the skill with Head Shot. Consider being able to fire Unload at every opportunity without your well-timed dodge skills causing you to lose your damage and initiative for no good reason.

Better than that, consider the possibilities of adding traits which encourage this play style;

Heat of the Moment: Increased crit chance during dodge rolls.
Angular Velocity: Pistol shots pierce during dodge rolls.
Bullets Like Raindrops: Gain health for every projectile evaded while channelling a skill.
Bullet Time: Create a Time Warp field at your location if you dodge X projectiles while landing at least one. (Or maybe gain Distortion instead)

And naturally these would synergize nicely with the entire Acrobatics line.

Just a thought anyway. If anyone has related ideas post them here!

SKuDDer.1860:

1. Glass cannon does not exist in guardian. There is only hybrid builds that are roughly 50% defensively specced with some kind of damage. There is no burst with guardian.

All the more reason it’s asinine how so many guardians complain that thieves do more damage than them.

The guardian(s) in question built with ridiculously little health, so they’re glass regardless of if they’re cannon.

SKuDDer.1860:

1. How does one learn to dodge roll what one cannot see? Thief steals 900 range or uses shortbow teleport / CND in that time, you do not render them in WvWvW. They position behind you, it takes all of .01s to side step once, backstab… dead or close to death.

You dodge roll by anticipating when they’re near you. Everyone has attack patterns and they can be observed and used against them. It’s easy to notice an enemy thief telegraphing their moves in subtle ways over the course of a single PvP match. Maybe it’s just because I play fighting games, but that doesn’t make the point any less valid.

The render bug is a bug and will be fixed. It’s not appropriate as a long term balance argument.

This is aside from the fact that there is such a wealth of counters in this game which are designed to combat burst attacks. There are invuln moves, aegis, smoke fields, stealth, dodge, stun breaks, all of which counter a correctly anticipated burst attack. This applies to 100 blades warriors just as well, which I rarely die to either.

Also one correct anticipation versus an all-or-nothing burst thief means you get a free kill. If they slip away after truly going all-out then it’s your fault for failing to CC them properly.

Another obvious counter is to just get swiftness (and/or cripple them) and run around. If they shadow step up (and you’ll already be forcing them to use it when they possibly don’t want to) then try and face them when the backstab comes. Half their biggest attack’s damage gone just because you pointed your character the right way.

SKuDDer.1860:

The thing that is the problem, is say the thief doesn’t kill the target and realizes they aren’t going to win, they just CND, and run away easily. There is no draw back to this high burst build. Glass cannon usually means you die when you don’t win, this is not the case at all with thieves. But its fine, keep justifying the High damage, low risk.

So hit them while they’re stealthed. Immobilize them. Pull them. Players are not PvE mobs. They’ve essentially got their whole bar on cooldown and if they hasted they can’t even dodge roll. They probably only have a single avenue of exit. If they have multiple ways out, then it’s your fault for putting yourself in a really bad tactical position.

If you leave yourself vulnerable to someone coming up behind you and bursting you down, in a place where they have their choice of many confusing routes of escape, then a thief 100% deserves to be able to attempt to kill you 1v1 and have a relatively high chance of getting out. That is what they do.

That is also far from the only context that fights come up in, despite what emotional players would have everyone believe.

jayem.2630:

Being a thief essentially means have an unfair advantage on every “Dodge or die” mechanic in dungeons. And they are everywhere.

I’m getting really sick of the community equating “this class has a specialization” to “unfair”.

I think it’d be good if they just sped it up.

Keep in mind stability is a boon and it can be removed. Boon rip and then daze steal someone out of an “uninterruptable” elite for good times.

bwillb.2165:

Mandra Madador.1709:

Crawford.4135:

I’ve said it once, and I’ll continue to say it:

Bad players get Good players Nerfed in MMORPGs

I figure once they nerf out class into the ground, I’ll be onto another game hopefully. Least I enjoyed the long awaited GW2 (and massively delayed) to come to this

Bad players only stay bad, good players started bad and only got better.

A good player will never be nerfed, they’ll take on every challenge thrown at them.

The best baseball player in the world will still strike out if you give him a limp feather instead of a bat.

Exactly.

Also I like playing thief. It fits my playstyle. I shouldn’t have to “adapt” by totally giving up on it just because casuals refuse to learn to roll.

This is the same pattern I see with everyone complaining about thief, or really any profession.

Player A builds themselves glass cannon. Player B is also built glass cannon and manages to burst them down.

Player A has predetermined that they are the only one in the universe allowed to go high risk/high reward and demands that Player B’s profession/build be nerfed into uselessness.

And if backstab did any less damage, it would be useless.

Learn to dodge roll, learn to anticipate sneak attacks, learn about stun breaks, learn to build with some actual health, and most importantly learn to fight different classes differently. You’re not supposed to be able to flowchart every fight the same way.

Firstly I want to say that I loved the Hallowe’en event. You guys outdid yourselves. Don’t listen to the screaming and crying from people with gambling addictions on Guru.

Secondly I don’t know if this is the right place to be posting, since the Hallowe’en forum is now archived and none of the other forums seemed appropriate.

Now to the point: I was really excited when I first saw the Mad King runes. The gimmick ability of crow swarm on elite activation sounded fantastic. I had this mental image of building my thief around Dagger Storm and shadow stepping into groups of vulnerable WvW players for a Fiddlesticks-style Crowstorm that would be both effective, and a fun prestige thing from a cosmetic perspective.

I had plans for building around all the different ways the crows might work, like if they remained as summons, if they were a PBAoE field that functioned like a Locust Swarm, if they were like the crows the Mad King summons that caused fear at the same time…all had really exciting possibilities.

I did not plan for there being no crows.

Imagine my disappointment when I go up to some training dummies and Dagger Storm. I spin for several seconds, the move completes, nothing happens and I’m left standing there confused. Eventually 3 groups of generic ranger hawks do the warhorn attack.

Hawks are not crows.

8 to 9 seconds after you activate an elite is not “when you activate an elite”.

Concerning the lazy cosmetic effect; I’m really surprised the generic hawks are being used considering there are already assets for crows with attack animations in the game.

Concerning the broken functionality; This is part of a larger bug with runes activated by skills, which is a pretty serious one I’d like to see addressed soon. It seems that any channelled skill will not trigger runes until after the channelling is finished (sometimes as much as a full second after). Transforms have it even worse; They won’t trigger the “crows” (or things like Rune of Lyssa) at all.

This is compounded by the fact that the “crows” seem to be choosing their targets earlier than when they actually appear. The already pitiful maximum of 3 targets is nerfed further when some or all of the groups choose to attack targets that died in the Dagger Storm itself.

I had generally poor luck with the labyrinth chests and had to spend a lot of gold to make this set, so the fact that it doesn’t work as described (or even look good) stings a fair bit. If someone from Anet could confirm whether there are planned changes to this rune set I would really appreciate it, as that will affect whether I start investing in something else.

I consider the personal story difficulty unacceptably low. I’m constantly making characters interrupt their own lines because I’m doing damage too fast for them to keep up with the dialogue triggers.

I don’t kite, I don’t use special farming builds, I don’t play just one profession with an easy-mode combo, I just trait sensibly and learn to use the effing dodge roll.

I find the constant introduction of disposable characters, and the unlikeable pseudo-protagonist butting in every time you just want to be paying attention to the character you actually care about, reminds me a great deal of the “story” in all of the 3d Sonic the Hedgehog games.

I was doubly reminded of this when Trahearne would not shut up with his intelligence-insulting tutorial lines during the battle on “Clawr” Island. Echoes of “IT’S USING AN ARM ATTACK” rang in my ears.

I can appreciate that something of this scale will never have the polish/acting quality of a AAA single player game, but whoever was in charge of the plot for the personal story simply does not know how to write, and the Trahearne actor simply does not know how to act (or had horrible direction). Neither should return in the future of this game.

I agree the personal story was generally awful.

I personally really enjoyed the Charr story level 1-30, and like everyone else I liked Tybalt’s character, but the second that emotionless nitwit Trahearne elbows his way into my player character’s role the only way you can survive the dialogue is to laugh all the way through.

It’s strange too because the script for non-cutscene dialogue (talking to NPCs etc.) is generally very well done, as are the story scenes in dungeons.

I agree with the sentiment that no personal story mode would have been better than this personal story mode. It was and is not release ready.

This is the kind of person that perpetuates the idea that thief is OP.

The kind of person who can’t even figure out that the first step in attacking something is facing toward it

and initiates combat with Heartseeker.

I second every point of this. To clarify, we played it with two level 80s the first time as well.

It worries me to see this drastic nerf to difficulty, as it implies that the people who want to mindlessly content grind without actually learning to play the game are going to be the target demographic for missions like this in the future.

I suffer from this as well and it’s quite severe. The framerate will drop so much that I can’t even dodge roll slow projectiles in some fights due to the enormous input lag.

It’s happening for me with all particle effects, not just explosions (flamethrowers, weather effects, the snowy Norn cutscene background, etc.), and it’s worse the closer to the camera they are. During the dramatic zoom into to the vines with the water splashing around them in the Cleansing of Orr story mission, my framerate goes as low as 5 fps.

Changing the video settings doesn’t seem to help. Lower resolutions make surprisingly little difference, and my iMac is powerful enough that I can run most areas with few particle effects at 30-60 fps in 1440p at high settings.

A quick and unscientific check of the Windows resource monitor shows my CPU usage spiking to 100% when this is happening. Are particle systems simply not being deferred to the GPU at all?

It’s really really affecting my enjoyment of the game and I would honestly be more excited by a fix for this than I would be for the next big content update.

Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6900M
Bootcamp Windows 7 64 bit
8 GB RAM

I’m using the latest Catalyst beta drivers (12.11) and Windows is up to date.