Without the technical stuff and after thoroughly investigating this issue i have found the following:
- The lags and disconnection issues only affect the game server. Chat etc, whatever runs over the login server, is not affected. Thus, i can freely write and read guild chat while the game itself still has to decide if i get thrown onto the character selection screen or if it recovers.
- The issue only affects GW2, nothing else, thus the problem is not on my end.
- The issue doesn´t affect everyone at all, nor in the same scale, thus it most likely cannot be caused by GW2 servers.
- The issue can be completly resolved by using a VPN service, e.g. Pingzpper. That is the proof that it is not a problem which ArenaNet has caused or could solve on their own, i´d say.
TL;DR, everyone who has lag, disconnects, whatever during their prime time. Try Pingzapper! You can test it 30min for free and then you´ll get a forced disconnect after which you can use it another 30minutes and so on. If Pingzapper, with server set to one located in the EU for Europeans or one located in Asia or USA for the respective people, does indeed cure your problem, then its an issue based on your traffic routing and thus nothing you or ArenaNet can fix. However, if it does not help to clear your lag issue, then your lag issue is a different one.
Link to the homepage: http://pingzapper.com/
I can´t play without it anymore, especially during prime time. With pingzapper i have absolutely no issues anymore. Of course if Pingzapper works for you then any VPN client will do the trick. Pingzapper is my choice because it only applies to games, and thus doesn´t cost as much if you choose to buy premium access for unlimited connection time.
I am in desperate need of help. This is regarding ticket 1065183. I have ping-ponged several mails already with the support team, but every try of cooperation on my behalf got blatantly ignored in the appearance of intransparency, standard text blocks and contradictionary answers regarding the reason why i filed the ticket and i even have been told to review the ToS of Guild Wars 1 while i dont even have a Guild Wars 1 account.
I have put every intel i could in the nicest way of speaking i was capable of and i am still willing to do everything you want in order to solve this issue. Please, dear Gaile Gray or Michael Henninger or whoever currently maintains this thread, if you choose to have a look into this, please – and this is very important! – let me supply you with the most recent intel on the matter beforehand. I´d prefer to not post all of this here. The issue is a bit more complicated than it seems. Since my last email already got ignored this is my only chance to get into contact with the support again as they won´t listen to any further mails on this matter. Usually that is completly fine, but in this case i am more of the cattle, not the butcher. I beg you!
Please send me an email or PM and please give me the chance to explain since i was under wrong assumptions regarding this issue for the whole time until now. I sincerely hope this does not fall on deaf ears. I do know your time is very valuable and rest assured, if i wasnt completly sure that this issue is not correctly resolved, i wouldnt be so bold to post this. I´m not a kitten after all (self censored).
Greetings from hamburg!
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
This achievement won´t be that crucuial if the boss at least did have an obvious animation. All my tries on this failed just because of instantly created sand wells right below my feet, and with little to no indication neither on the target ground nor via boss’ animation this is plain unfair and reduced to lottery instead of skillful play. I eventually got it, but as i said, i had the luck to not have sand wells placed inside my shoes.
The absence of skippable cutscenes and challenge motes did not help either. So here´s a tip, ArenaNet:
– Achievement for one specific fight? Let us start and repeat this, and only THIS particular fight from any point of progression or location using the UI. The existing motes for the Facettes were okay, but you still could not do just one achievement you wanted and you still had to beat the boss first in order to try it for the achievemtn again.
- Achievement applying to the full story instance? Okay, then create a challenge mode in which there are no cutscenes or at least make all cutscenes – and i mean ALL, be it a simple camera ride, dialogue, video or whatever – skippable. Also add a possibility to restart the instance to try again for the achievbement from any point of progression or location through the UI.
Oh, and also please, please, pretty please make more use of the nice orange telegraphs. The fight vs the plant dragon in the Omphalos Chamber was just perfect. More of those, and less non-telegraphed AoE´s. Especially AoE´s with lingering effects like the sand wells need a clearly visible red outline, at least. Maybe in combination with this draw a circle around my character´s feet to mark the hitbox. Sucks to stand outside an AoE as an Asura but still be hit by it because it either doesn´t fit its red circle or because my hitbox is still inside the AoE while my character isn´t. This is especially annoying when you have to evade clustered mini-AoE´s – think of Mai Trin and her cannon barrage.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
I´m more than happy they reverted their weird “fix” for steal. I don´t know since when though becausei took a break, but last time i had problems with steal it was because they brought a new location check in place which caused steal to not activate all its effects with the intitial teleport, but about 1/2 second later. It was meant to just prevent using Steal on targets physicly not reachable, like someone standing on top of a wall. But while fixing that was a good idea, it broke the rest of Steal. Fighting S/D thieves as S/D thief was no fun that time. 90% of time Steal just didnt work, got obstructed, or got evaded because of the activation happening after the teleport. Its working as it used to, now – including stealing from unreachable targets in range.
Teleport overall though still sucks since then. I have issues with all of the teleporting skills. Steal, Shadowstep, even the Shadow Trap, D/P #3, S/D #2… all malfunction every now and then.
Can we stop the endless nerf wish chain now, please? Playing a thief nowadays is anything but a cakewalk, and as multiple others already have stated, spamming dodges doesn´t bring you anything other than making bad opponents fail. Good opponents know how to deal with S/D thieves properly, and S/D thieves have more than enough natural enemies.
Right now Feline Grace gives back 15% of endurance on dodge, effectively making a single dodge cost 35 endurance instead of 50. If you want to reduce that, then please make sure to finally recompensate thieves for doing so. Nerf after nerf after nerf and its still not enough – S/D builds got nerfed so many times, and now everyone jumps onto Feline Grace as the next culprit. I guess when your wish is fullfilled, you sure want to have higher ini cost on IS and IR? or how about another nerf for FS and LS?
A thief needs that much evasion to stay alive. Take some of the evasion, give something else. More swiftness on dodge from Expeditious dodger for example, like 5 seconds base instead of 2, with added vigor (2-3 seconds) on a successful evade. Or reliable access to stability. Or making IR castable during being stunned but not breaking the stun, much like Phase Retreat for mesmers works.
But if you just nerf Feline Grace, S/D is even more dependant on low Steal CD and the vigor from Bountiful Theft. I returned to 26060 in order to not play the meta anymore (sucks when anything you do suddenly is meta, just because some famous PvP thief started using it two months later and now you get accused of copying that from him). That means i do not have much access to vigor, thus Feline Grace is much more important.
Its not a bug. It works as intended, albeit it may feel irrational. Read the tooltip, it says “unblockable”. Both the poison ticks and the intitiating direct damage upon placement of the AoE are unblockable, and just like all other unblockable skills they do not trigger any on block effects. That includes removal of Aegis. It doesnt block anything, why should it be removed?
I can understand where you come from and i´d like Aegis to vanish when i use Choking Gas as well, but as far as i can tell, this ain´t a bug.
I run 4 points in SA just because of condition spammers like you, Narkodx. It just doesnt help that much.
I keep using the term " you" because i see it every other day inside Obsidian Sanctum or when roaming open world. Again, talking 1v1 here. And i dont mean just me. Our roaming and dueling community is just as upset with the meta as i am.
Thanks for the tips though, Drarnor. I´ll try to soak some advice of that, but the very first thing that comes to mind is the horrible lottery you play when using condition removes. It happens more often then not that my shadowstep removes cripple, weakness and poison when i have burning, confusion and bleeds on me as well. The same applies to the one-condition-removes.
Of course i have to make adjustments to my playstyle. Constantly. Read my signature, there its written :P
But i have come to a fullstop when facing condition builds. For 9 months now i have to run from equally skilled condition egnineers, mesmers and necros. And i tried various build / weapon compositions. I know i have to get better, but in the current meta it seems impossible for me. While my profession keeps getting nerf after nerf, lol.
Of course, dancingmonkey, exactly that needs to be done. I have to adjust more for conditioners. But the problem is – i can´t. Even when combining:
Shadow´s Embrace (1 condition every 3 seconds of stealth)
Pain Reaction (cleanse Burn, Bleed, Poison below 75% @ 30 seconds CD)
Hide in Shadows (Heal skill @ 30 seconds CD, cleanses Burn, Bleed, Poison)
Runes of the Lyssa (transforms 5 conditions every 45 seconds using Basilisk Venom) Sigil of Purity (cleanses 1 condition on critical hit @ 10 seconds CD)
Sigil of Generosity (transfers 1 condition on critical hit @ 9 seconds CD)
Signet of Agility (cleanses 1 condition on 30 second CD, 24 when traited)
Shadow Step (cleanses 3 conditions on 50 second CD, 40 seconds when traited
Infiltrators Return (cleanses one condition for total cost of 5 initiative)
Problem is that this kind of build is not able to kill anything while being vulnerable to various auto-procs (looking at you, Incendiary Powder etc) because of only getting a few hits between stealth frames.
Of course i mean smallscale and 1on1s – thats what i wrote in my very first post. Even the usual 5v5 sPvP match has various 1on1s you simply cannot win when you face a equally skilled condition tank while playing a power build (thief here, obviously). And in this very metagame – smallscale, roaming, 1on1s up to 5on5s – conditions are too strong as long as they allow you to soak that much direct damage just because of stat independence (condi damage only really needs one single stat). Sure, conditions need more time to do their magic than direct damage does. But not that much. The underlying problem is that this kind of builds is way too forgiving thanks to the unavoidable nature of auto procs and the mass of conditions being able to be dropped on you while maintaining either insane presure or insane self sustain.
So to answer the question – any conditioner gives me a hard time (besides condi ranger – thanks to steal i have acces to sufficient condition removal and can win by outskilling them).
if it has been very solidly proven that Soldier´s outdmages Dire´s in their respective builds, where is that proof? Link please.
Dranor, you obviously are either very lucky or your matchups did not turn into condition wars yet. I play on Kodash, and when i roam, at least 50% of opposing players seem to run condition builds. Almost all Engineers, Mesmers and Necros run condition builds. Half the amount of Eles run celestial or pure condition builds. Half the amount of thieves i run into are P/D condition. Most rangers now switched to LB zerker now, but previously there were a lot of condi regen bunks running around. Warriors i see are increasingly often using x/shield LB celestial. Only guardians are the ones who almost completly forego the option of conditions. But there were some dueling in Obsidian Sanctum.
COnditions need a serious reword, and no, Archon, healing and vitality aren´t the counter for conditions because they have to cover direct damage as well. Conditions would be hard countered if vitality actually reduced condition damage just like toughness reduces direct damage. Would be a great idea indeed. Eitehr that, or we simply need more cleanses. There´s way too few. Toughness itself should be left as is, though.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
So you want me to back up something which cannot be backed up by math with math? Again. Math is a helping point, but nothing you can use to absolutely prove or bust when talking PvP.
There are enough threads going on on the matter, and its always, ALWAYS a select number of people who literally force all others to use some stupid theoretical calculation where calculations are utterly pointless. maybe the term " fact" wasn´t correct, but if you insist on math i guess you´re capable of understanding that math is nothing to base arguments on when talking small scale roaming or general PvP. So – i challenge you to bring me the math backing up YOUR point then. I may not be capable of it, but if you are, okay, go on, show me your numbers. And then i´ll tell you why numbers are bullkitten in this regard. it doesnt need a genius to understand that a soldier statted character would lose against a dire statted character when the soldier statted character even struggeles to barely stay alive using zerker stats. Against conditions toughness is of no use, and the vitality only keeps you a bit longer alive while you deal even less damage.
Also, have a look at some of the very same threads spread over various forum sections.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
So a thief is not allowed to reset fights anymore just because of stealth? once again, a thief running away to actively leave combat – that is a thief you won against. When he leaves combat, so do you. Your cooldowns recharge as well as his. Your health is full as well as his. i have to accept it as well – as a S/D thief you have the same problem when facing D/x thieves., especially those with 30 pts in Shadow Arts.
Also, before someone complains about shadow´s rejuvenation, please complain about the absurd amount of self sustain on regen ranger, D/D ele or any warior build using Healing Signet as well. They all heal more then a thief does in stealth, and being stealthed means doing no damage, while all others can attack while healing up incredibly fast.
Wait what? What should i prove which is not already proven? look around! Why are so many people playing condition tanks when they´re so inferior according to your math? Its because the are not inferior. Its because they are effective vs bunkers and zerkers.
I dont need math to understand that. I invested about 3k hours into roaming and dueling. Math doesnt do kitten in such a volatile environment because its just theory, but the active combat throws way too many unknown variables into the mix. Just to be clear – i´d have to research it first. But after so long time playing i guess i can pretty much use my existing experience as an argument.
When you even see guardians (!) go condition damage, then you know somethign is seriously wrong in the balance of power vs conditions.
The system is flawed in its entirety. While Conditions are inferior to power in big group compositions and group PvE content, they get more and more effective the smaller the composition is. That needs to be changed. Smallscale conditions have to be nerfed while zerging conditioners need help. Making conditions rely on precision and critical damage won´t fix the latter. but it would balance them in 5v5 and below.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
As far as i remember his punch always 1-2 HKO´ed me if i did not have Weakness on him and had Weakness proc on his punches. Thats when i do him solo – its even scarier when he gets scaled up and you happen to be in melee range when he punches you.
Toughness is fine as it is. Problem is the way people think stats do work. Going conditions allows you to be tanky and do lots of damage. And please, guys – its a matter of FACT they do too much damage in too short time for their tankyness. Keep equations out of the way, they simply dont reflect what happens in real environment. And thats what matters. There´s a reason why smallscale is dominated by conditions.
So Guyver is right in some part. Its not toughness which is in need of a change. Its condition damage. Reduce their damage, make them able to crit in order to force a conditioner to be squishy for the amount of damage he can dish out. Or introduce more frequently usable cleanses and update existing ones to account for the stupidly increased amount of conditions flying around including the new one.
Vitality itself ain´t a counter for conditions because vitality also has to cover direct damage. Also, if you stack vitality, you have to forgo damage output, which in turn means you won´t bring down any bunker or condition tank. The current system is flawed.
It was totally clear something would be the next to moan about. So now after the most recent nerfs we already have people moaning about stealth in general (again / as always, really), Feline Grace, now Shadow Refuge… whats next – Trickery line too powerful, eh?
I´m sick of it.
I support this as well. Especially if you play without the AoE marker circles you often misclick when engaging max range.
Please, either implement a range limit for the AoE-circle so you can easily cast maximum range without having to point at the border between in range and out of range / make targetted skills cast at their maximum possible range when trying to be casted out of range.
Make this a tickbox option like the rest so people who dont löike it can simply leave it deactivated.
Pretty please?
Well, looking at it from far seems to give you one clear winner.
Map Caps hurt the high population servers too much, because the target should not to not let people play.
Teams make WvW organisation hard and their balancing is neigh impossible, also destroys server pride as a minor argument.
Time Slice matches would be fine if some servers didnt have a spread out population of various time zones.
Handicap system is the easiest to implement and the easiest to adjust afterwards, and looks like its the most balanced. All people can play as usual, servers stay servers, and correctly set up this has the potential to make PPT account for actual effort instead of easymode nightcapping or winning because of outmanning.
“Scale PPT according to the people on the map on each side of the server.
Been saying it for over a year now.
Red – 1 player
Blue – 10 players
Green – 5 players"
While that is a really nice idea (was about to wright that just now but got ninja´d), it will introduce several problems, like a) toxic behaviour of WvW veterans vs WvW newbies and b) causing servers to mass log out right before a tick in order to increase their PPT coefficient.
You can eliminate the latter by calculating this coefficient using the coverage during the last two ticks. The former will exist regardless of which system gets introduced in order to prevent night capping.
What is needed, is a hybrid system. PPT needs to factor in active coverage on all three sides while generally all objectives have their own coefficient based on total population (all thee sides combined). What i mean is the following:
A server outmannig both other sides gets a PPT penalty based on how much they outman their opponents. Just as Nick said, this should be based on the server with the lowest active coverage. Numbers to be tweaked of course. Adn then we have the individual coefficient for the various objectives. The amount of points gained during a tick should be based on how many people are actively playing WvW on all three sides. This means Stonemist may earn you 100ppt during Primetime, but only as low as 20ppt during hours of lowest activity – before calculating your server´s PPT penalty. Based on those numbers, Keeping Stonemist during primetime while being outmanned may make it earn you 150ppt, while keeping it during low total coverage and while outmanning your opponents will only net you 10ppt.
This will give Nightcapping less of an impact on the match outcome while increasing the necessity of successfull WvW play during Primetime.
Yes, this may be uncool for oceanic players who play on servers whose Primetime is not theirs. Also it will be uncool for people with unusual working timeframes for their own region. But as far as i´m concerned and as far as i can think about it, this seems the most balanced possible solution.
I say no to population caps because that just introduces horibly long waiting times during Primetime and additionally will drasticly increase the amount of elitism because of newbs stealing the slot of veterans.
I also say no to merged servers or WvW battlegroups because either way organisation is even harder, balance is neigh impossible (even more than now – and just look at EotM where its often one group dominating the others) and you lose the last reason why you even chose a server to begin with.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
There would be so many easy solutions for this.
a) Make Last Refuge work like Mist Form. Go stealth, block all damaging skills from usage for its duration. This stealth is unbreakable until damaging skills are availiable again. This will prevent abusing unbreakable stealth while preventing you from accidently exiting stealth and geting revealed because LR procced right inbetween attacks or when Throw Gunk´s AoE hurts someone or an arrow from the Shortbow is still flying and will bounce inevitably. It needs to not give you revealed when some projectile or cast is already on its way. Also, it needs to ignore current revealed status in order to properly work. May reset the CD back to 90secs then.
b) Rework Last Refuge into some kind of evade, much like Distortion. Maybe add superspeed into the mix. 2 or 3 seconds duration, CD again reverted to 90secs.
c) Rework Last Refuge into a condition cleanse. Seeing that conditions are spammed all over the place, this might be useful. May cleanse 5 conditions on 90secs CD.
d) Rework Last Refuge into a fast pulsing blind PBAoE like you dropped a bunch of mini smoke bombs. 3 seconds duration, 6 pulses @ 1 second of blindness. 90seconds ICD.
e) Remove Last Refuge and put nothing into its place. Would be better than this one, really.
Now that are some basic ideas one could think of, and all won´t require sorcery to become true. make it happen, ArenaNet. Please! Its about time this kitten minor trait gets removed or turned into something less dangerous for yourself.
Counter-Question. Why would you want to bring traps on a thief when doing a dungeon? They´re highly underused because they´re even less useful than a ranger´s traps while having much higher cooldowns, and they´re next to useless in dungeons.
Of course you can use this build anywhere besides PvP because the runes don’t exist there.
And even if we could set traps while stunned – the wiki misleads you. all this rune does, is giving you the buff Superspeed, which does just what it describes, giving you +100% Movement speed. This is not to be puzzled with the engineer skill called super speed, which upon activation causes a stunbreak as listed on its description, and gives you the buff called superspeed. The buff itself isnt a stunbreaker, only the skill which gives you the buff.
WvW traps have a much higher target limit than Thief traps do. Thief traps have a limit of 5 targets while WvW traps can affect up to 50 people i think within the trap´s 1200 units effect radius once its tripped.
Totally dead? You obviously dont play on an active server, do you? OS is packed with gankers from Desolation and Seafarer (mostly Desolation though). I´m on Kodash, and we´re tired of how dull it is to not being able to duel anymore. Instead we have to kill any member of specific Desolation guilds on sight, because once they´re outmanning us, they start to lose their manners. Even Riverside, Elona, Aurora Glade, Augury Rock and Jade Sea were regularily there when we had those in our matchups.
I gladly exchange your server vs Desolation. May be quiet in OS then, but at least not full of ganking trolls even camping and killing everything in the GvG arena whenever they have the chance.
Shortbow indeed is your friend, but only for weakening up i´d say. I solo camps with S/D all day, you have to kill the ranged mobs first. Get them near each other utilizing line of sight. Now dance around the ranged mobs while not caring for the melees at all. Once ranged are down, kill the melees. And in case of a fully upgraded camp yóu´ll have to try and pull 1/3 of the mobs inside. If they all come after you, you´ll get wrecked.
CnD and then Tac Strike helps shutting down one of the ranged mobs, then wail on them just using auto attack. Flanking Strike only when in need of an evade to save ini for CnD. the incoming damage should be managable through evades and heal.
Nope. It has always been just an animation bug. The stealth buff stayed up all the time, just the way you and your allies / group members see your character went from transparent to solid. The enemy could not see you at all.
You can still use HS+Steal or FS+Steal. You just have to activate steal earlier than you´re probably used to, which of course may enable the enemy to dodge it easier. From what i have observed, CnD + Steal isnt impacted. If you teleport at all, that is… lost count of how many times steal actually does not even teleport or ports me, fails, and zaps me right back where i came from. Seriously ArenaNet, revert the change! Please.
When mug doesnt trigger it seems to be related to the recent introduced Steal bug. Any skill that moves you will make steal fail to activate its effects other than the teleport because of “out of range”. This is probably related to the stupid position check which they introduced three patches ago in order to prevent stealing from a target in range but physically not reachable (platforms, keep walls etc).
it will only work now if you steal right after activating such a skill. Activate steal when Heartseeker or Flanking Strike or infiltrators Strike casted halfway, then steal will fail. activate it even later and the skill will fail to connect as well.
@meryn: That bug has been fixed a long time ago, at least i cannot remember losing my stealthed texture while being stealthed after teleporting with Infiltrators Arrow, Steal or Shadow Step for a long long time now.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
wait what – i´m maining thief since ever o.O i have no clue about playing a ranger, seriously. Where did you get that from?
I´m trying it right now and wil post results.
EDIT: and no, it doesnt destealth me. neither Infiltrator´s Strike, nor Steal (if using without mug), Infiltrator´s Signet, Shadow Step, Heartseeker or Flanking Strike. You probably have exited your own or a friendly Shadow Refuge, or you got stealthed from a mesmer – when that wears of before your own stealth ends or vice versa, you get “visible” as in you lose the stealth texture, but the stealth buff still stays and your enemy still cannot see you.
(edited by TheBandicoot.5294)
If you damage your target with said skill of course it´ll unveil you. Thats how it always have been.
presenting them tons of direct evidence doesnt do kitten, seriously. I tried it. multiple times. The response is always the same: Its my hardware, its not their fault, or they don´t see any problems in their metrics.
There is a reson why Deutsche Telekom has the nickname Drosselkom: they actively throttle down stuff which causes too much traffic or because the company which brings the content which causes the traffic doesnt want to pay. YouTube is one of them. i don´t know though why in hell GW2 gets throttled as well. Fact is, there is nothing one can do about it besides changing their ISP – and where i live, only Deutsche Telekom and resellers offer DSL connections.
Its a sad fact that its indeed a problem tied to specific ISP´s, at least those who manage those important connection nodes / routers. Here in germany, if you have the Deutsche Telekom as your ISP, sometimes every other day GW2 will lag during prime time. i KNOW for a fact its related to this ISP because all the lag is gone if i use a VPN / proxy service to reroute or “stealth” my traffic. the same happens with youTube and video loading speed. Without using a VPN / proxy, sometimes i cannot even watch 360p videos without buffering, but if i use VPN / proxy, 1080p loads faster than i can watch. Interestingly though, advertisements dont load slow. And when chatting with the Deutsche Telekom, they say it´s not their fault but my hardware.
Anyways, i can only suppose the following to anyone who have a laggy experience from time to time but their connection itself is in a healthy state: look up “Pingzapper”. Free to use as long as you accept to have a connection reset every 60 minutes (which is better for me than random DC´s or heavy lag spikes during battles and duels). If Pingzapper resolves your problem, its definitely a problem tied to your ISP or the one who manages certain connection nodes / routers. if Pingzapper does not resolve your problem, then its most likely a problem tied to your connection quality or ArenaNet´s servers are going wonky.
Another thing people permanently forget about is that skills, both weapon- and utility-wise are balanced around initiative. The only thing initiative does is giving the thief as only class a greater choice about what to use when. Thats what all classes do, but a thief can decide the “how often” as long as he has the initiative for it.
Do i really need to repost the brilliant breakdown Platanos posted? Well, there you go: —→ https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-combat-mobility-is-too-much/4291709 <-—
That said it all. A thief spamming 2 on S/D isnt doing damage. A thief spamming 3 on S/D does damage, but has clear vulnerability windows instead and is foreseeable. A thief spamming 4 on any weapon set has yet to kill anyone, and 5 spam didnt kill anyone as well. Spamming 2 on D/x only really hurts when target below 25% health. And 3 on D/p is too expensive to spam, while 3 on D/D is easily avoided by stepping 50 units aside.
You guys clearly need to learn what it means to play thief properly without relying on spamming skills or cheesy builds. Take combat mobility from thief, then what is left? This profession and several weapon sets have been geting nerf after nerf after nerf now, and yet it still is not enough?
Yes sure, because if you avoided one IS, FS, LS, SS or whatever the thief gets back the initiative spent in the process, right. Gosh, how can people be so blind? A thief fuels his attacks with initiative which is a global unified countdown system across ALL weapon sets!! if he spends initiative on one skill, he literally makes all skills go on a cooldown. And if you manage to avoid a skill which costs iniative, you successfully made the thief spend initative for nothing.
While we all know ArenaNet, at least for me this is too much of a buzz to simply ignore. if ArenaNet doesn´t even react, well then thats a pretty kitten sure sign that they don´t care even if players unite both ingame and on the forums jzst to bring somethign back which has been played for the fun of it and not for the rewards primarily.
ArenaNet PLEASE react! Once you´re out of bed, that is – currently you guys sleep deep in dreams :P
Do you really need an explanation for that? Going condition damage allows you to build defensive while dishing out almost as much damage as a 4/5 glass cannon! There is something wrong in the game when even guardians start to use condition builds.
Your example lacks. That car racer won because he was the most skilled. But, for example, a PU condi mesmer winds because its a PU condi mesmer. You have to fight the build more than the player behind it, which introduces the so called build wars. Most condition builds allow bad players to play godlike simply because they are either too forgiving or too strong, or both. Now what happens if good players use such builds? Take a look at Call of Duty for example. The ever-hated noob tube (underslung grenqade launcher) was used by almost everyone once one person started to use it simply because its the most effective way to get kills. But its as cheap as nothing else… a power build at least has to have skill in this game when facing power or condi builds. a condition build has to have more condition cleanse than opposing conditioners, or has to have more conditions than the opponent has condition cleanses. That wacks balance out of shape and it gets worse every day.
No? Funny because a terrormancer rips me apart in ~10 to 15 seconds if i cannot manage to escape the fear chain, and a fight won´t last longer than a minute because the necro easily outsustains me even when packing all the condi remove i can get ahold of.
But that ain´t the point, either. I won´t say its unfair because a thief lacks condi remove, i´d rather say its unfair because condition builds are stupidly OP, just look at condi P/D or D/D thief.
If you get backstabbed for 10k on 3k armor, the thief doing so has blown all cooldowns and is more or less defenseless. Nothing to do there, a single, swift sneeze will make him cry. But that ain´t the point as well, right…
Currently a thief can be very mobile in combat (S/D), but i´d say its perfectly fine because a thief is not able to stay onpoint. Mr Silentnight Warrior should rather complain about warrior´s mobility because they can be mobile and stay onpoint.
Well, there are none – for a reason. Conditon builds are more OP the smaller the amount of participating players is. So in a 1v1, conditions are most effective. Go roaming with power necro. that shows courage, skill and then you may get some more fights because a pwer necro actually has to think what he does.
The problem with condition builds is the damage they can dish out fast while being tanky, the very same problem current warrior power builds have. And regarding conditions thats caused by ignoring armor and only relying on one and a half stat.
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Taking condition builds into the equation is nuts because conditions currently throw any balancing out of the window the smaller the amount of participating players is in sPvP and WvW.
While the necro isnt inherently fast, it has the tools to slow down its prey instead. Condition necroes only need few attack combos and target is dead or will be few seconds later, and power necroes hit like a truck. Staying near both equates suicide most of the time. I agree open WvW roaming on a necro can become dull when your opponent flees, but then again personally i count those fights as victory. Even as a thief its pointless to chase most warriors and, to some extend, elementalists.
So you successfully eliminated a thief´s squishyness by sacrificing damage AND mobility, which is part of attition. outside of a duel anyone would walk away.
And who actually cares? The problem is that you defend the warrior just as vigorously as you attacked the thief in this thread. And that is the pefect example of being delusional. How can it be that someone defending warriors is upset about the combat mobility a thief has? Its not like the general seen warrior cannot sit in someone´s face because of outstanding mobility skills and near-soft-CC-immunity, right…
Poor sustain is accurate, because being a thief means gtfo asap when you get focused.
The mobility a thief has in combat has been nerfed over the time. S/x #2 lost its stunbreaking ability and got a cast time. The Shadow Trap got a cast time as well. SB #5 is hella expensive, and Steal / Infiltrators Signet / Shadowstep / Withdraw / Roll For Initiative have more uses than just gap closing or creating and are on reasonable cooldowns. Heartseeker and to some extend Flanking Strike may close gaps, but spamming them is neither advisable nor does it look good.
A thief´s mobility is offset by his squishyness. A warrior doesnt share this offset and still is mobile. If a thief wants to be tanky, he has to give up on damage. A warrior does not.
A truckload of +1 to Platanos. His (or her´s) wall of text hits all the nails on their heads. You should stick that onto the “thief initiative neads a rework”-thread where someone moans about chill not affecting thief weapon skill CDs while a thief actually has the longer cooldown system.
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No, i mean they said it. They mentioned Cleansing ire not triggering when adrenaline is spend but no target is hit.
Nope, Cleansing Ire does require you to hit your target. if they changed how it works with longbow F1 remains to be seen though.
S/D is easy and unforgiving? No way. S/D is the hardest set to play (after D/D of course). if you die to someone spamming their evades, you need to have a better look at how S/d actually works. Every FS has a window of opportunity which is not an evade. That is as long as the actual evade portion. And once FS is used, a thief has LS up, thus cannot FS again. Do you even realize how many build/class compositions out there actually make dogfood stew out of S/D? The set received nerf after nerf after nerf and yet its still not enough? S/D is anything but forgiving. You sure have a ton of evades, but the are needed. You kitten up once, and its mostly over. And regarding your suggestion, Dagins – if a thief has to evade something with FS in order to proc LS, then you have to make it activate instantly. Currently you cannot time it properly because of cast / aftercast priorities.
a shame they rely on nerfing thieves again when there are so many specs you cannot touch as a S/D acrobatics thief. great stuff. maybe i should go for cheesemode PU mesmer or Axe/shield GS warrior as well. THEY are forgiving. S/D is not.
Amonatory, i feel your pain. As someone who started the game with S/D (remember those good times where you actually got laughed at for doing so…) its a shame to see S/D becoming more and more of a joke. but lets see the good side. if the Meta shifts again, it shifts away from us. I still just rofl at anyone telling me i´m just copycatting Sizer or whoever gets credit for “inventing” 20066 S/D while i experimented with it right after the changes to the trickery line. That was a time where 26060 still was meta set in stone. Don´t give up yet, Amonatory!
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Total balance is impossible to achive. There will alwas be some rock paper scissors left. But it can get way better than now if they´d just think for one second, fix all bugs, tweak numbers and overhaul some mechanics. Still a long way to go, but its possible when they are willing to do it. Currently they don´t even seem to listen. Many professions have bugs which exist since release and well, for example seeing how conditions work its totally clear why they are highly OP in small group and solo WvW / sPvP and why they are so underwhelming in PvE / zergfight WvW. I´m not even a developer and i can think of half a dozen ways to make them worthwile in PvE and zergfight WvW while cutting them down in small groups / solo WvW / sPvP to bring them in line with power based builds.
Olba, its not the lack of evades. The problem is that a warrior still does more damage inbetween those evades to me than i do to him. I never complain about lack of evades when i have Feline Grace and Vigor most of the time. But going conditions… well, i´d rather uninstall the game before i touch condition builds. Those are cheap seeing how conditions rule small group and solo Meta.
And Narkodx – special snowflake, eh? Not meant as an offense, but players like you are the reason everyone and their grandma lost all fighting honor and instead fighting honorable with good sportsmanship people rather play cheap to ensure an easy kill. And that is highly disappointing.
Tomorrow we´ll see how much ArenaNet understands from “their job and theirs only”.
L2P and mostly learn when to dodge.
Most useless comment ever. Go and try harder. That was just as kitten as all the thieves telling “L2P” a year ago when thief was OP.
@Narkodx – its mostly the player behind the build, but some builds have a big impact on the battle. That said, i won´t go so far and call Axe/Shield and GS a cheesebuild. Its just the composition of stuff and the way Eviscerate, Healing Signet etc work which makes it throw balance out of the window —→ NO L2P issue. I´m fine if a better player beats me. Thats L2P, right? but if i more or less have to fight the build or have to play cheese myself, then something must be wrong.
Is that so? how, then? After 3k hours of playing thief… enlighten me Narkodx. What build and gear allow you to destroy every single warr you meet in WvW? Then there must be something i do horribly wrong. Of course thats highly possible since, you know, i´m not a professional. But nobody was able to tell me HOW and simply told me thief vs warr is skewed alot towards warrior. Which, according to my impressions, is true regarding Eviscerate and such. or they replied with “kite” which, as i already stated, is nearly impossible.
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This must be a bad dream.
Literally half of my playtime (closing in on 4.5k hours) went into 1v1s inside Obsidian Sanctum and sPvP. And i didnt say i never beat axe/x GS warriors. But, and you cannot be seriously ignoring it, the effort it takes to kill such a warrior as a thief is about ten times the effort said warrior has to put into beating the thief, and that should not be the case. It should be equal or maybe like 1.2 times, but the gap currently is as big as the gap between poor and rich in India.
Why do i skill not get a serious answer on what justifies a warrior being tanky, mobile and powerful at once? Of course i would like to understand it, but since nobody has given a good reason yet i have to keep my point of view.
And why do people think i´d have a problem with the animations? i DO see Eviscerate coming. I DO see shield bash. Pin Down. Final Thrust. Whatever. The only class i have problems with animation-wise is Necromancer. The problem with warriors is the frequency those skills come and what huge amount of damage a warrior dishes out even when just auto attacking while the same warrior gets hit for much less from a target with much less Hp and armor. That simply is unbalanced no matter how you turn it. If i lose to a shatter mesmer, then its because he outplayed me. If i lose to another thief of my kind, then thats because he outplayed me. If i lose to a ranger, then its because he outplayed me. But warriors? No need to put in much effort, eventually Eviscerate will land and thats it.
And before someone goes with the “But the game isnt 1v1 balanced” argument – i KNOW it, kitten . Thats till doesnt prevent 1v1s, and even in group fights you happen to have a small duel from time to time.