Guild Wars 2

I think the weaker team should at least be informed in some way that they are about to matched up with much stronger opponents. Sometimes its fun to play top players for the lols, other times people won’t want to throw themselves against a brick wall for 5 minutes.

Well that depends on the build or class I am playing. do you not play as any kind of thief or guardian for example? Stop trying to make this personal by bolding you as if this problem was particular to me and my playstyle. This about game balance, not personal god kitten quibbles.

Tbh you just sound exactly like the person I am describing in my last post above ^

You hold the game back.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

TrOtskY.5927:

How the new trait system should have worked

> Go to map X and complete Y number of Heart quests

> Go to map Z and complete W number of Vistas

> Complete a total number heart quests across all maps

> Unlock all your tier 2 utility skills on your character

> Kill 1,000 enemies in PvE total

ETC

How it works

> Go to this obscure place and do this obscure quest

> Complete an entire specific map that is at the opposite end of the world to where your character starts

> Go to WvW and kill the absolutely huge boss that takes an entire zerg like 15 minutes to kill

Basically what I am saying is that the direction was ok, but the application was god awful.

I think your system would have been terrible too, for the record. I mean, sure, it doesn’t include the Grub from what I see but . . . still looks bad.

Hey I’m not saying I want a system at all, I would much prefer it as before, but I am saying that I can see what they were at least trying to do.
Like I said, the execution was terrible, however the idea of traits unlocks being tied to some sort of achievement is not inherently awful, by any means.

Anymras.5729:

TrOtskY.5927:

Anymras.5729:

MarkPhilips.5169:

The only engi build that needs to be downed down is the turret engi because is a toxic build for the game (spvp side)

It’s really worth noting that Turrets aren’t very good for anywhere in the game except low-tier sPvP. They’re too static for most parts of the game…but guess which one plays straight to the strengths of Turrets?

There are no tiers in spvp cos there aren’t enough peopel playing. A legendary nr1 Engi pro can be playing in the same team as a brand new player cos of the mismatch. So it affects all players.

I’m sorry, should I have said ’it’s only good against bad players?’
The idea is the same – if the people know what they’re doing, they’re going to know how to deal with Turrets. It’s not that it doesn’t affect better players…it’s that they actually figure out what to do instead of crying for nerfs the minute they blunder into a Turret nest, and then there’s not really much that the Turret Engineer can do about it but try to put the Turrets in better places.
Either way, if Turrets get nerfed because of sPvP being built around holding points, that just about kills them everywhere else in the game, where they’re already not particularly good.

It’s good against good players too, because a good player playing a certain class/spec simply knows he cannot fight the engi and is forced to go elsewhere. This is wasted time and wasted time is lost points.

There should not be a single build or class in the game that can just “own” a point like this 1v1, it leads to imbalance that spills across the whole of the map onto other nodes. How people don’t seem to realise that just shows the standard of player we are dealing with in pvp.
I see this comment a lot on forums “class/build is balanced just leave the point”. It is a worrying indication of our competitive scene I guess.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Hey Leo, thanks for the reality check I’m having a bad day, as probably anyone can see by all the posts I’ve made today LOL. I need to take a breath and let it go.

Anyway, I would really appreciate some sort of NPC-led tutorial about combos. If this is something you actually have to go to, rather than something all players are forced to do, I think that would be best. That way, vets don’t need to do it if they don’t want to or if they already know everything. But maybe a popup stating “hey, combos are a thing, visit Mr. Combo Magic in LA to find out how to use them” would not be over the top?

I wasn’t having a go, If you read all my post you would see that I actually agree that more needs to be put in to help new players learn about combos, amongst other things. I must have got to about level 75 on my Guardian (first toon) before I realised the importance of stability boon in the game.

Anymras.5729:

MarkPhilips.5169:

The only engi build that needs to be downed down is the turret engi because is a toxic build for the game (spvp side)

It’s really worth noting that Turrets aren’t very good for anywhere in the game except low-tier sPvP. They’re too static for most parts of the game…but guess which one plays straight to the strengths of Turrets?

There are no tiers in spvp cos there aren’t enough peopel playing. A legendary nr1 Engi pro can be playing in the same team as a brand new player cos of the mismatch. So it affects all players.

condi is horribly strong in small scale battles in PvP and in WvW in general, they really don’t need a buff, but they dont really need a nerf either.

They actually need to be destroyed totally and reworked from the ground up cos they just don’t work properly.

But it’s never gonna happen, so leave them as is.

I dunno, I pretty much worked out what combos were and (sort of) how to execute them within the first couple of HOURS of playing this game when I first bought it.
I’m pretty sure there was a little text box that said “you just did a combo etc etc” and then I was like “Combo?” > google gw2 combos.

I think attentive players have no problem, people who are really not paying attention probably dont know about them. In general I don’t think the game does enough to explain combos, boons, cc and conditions to new players

How the new trait system should have worked

> Go to map X and complete Y number of Heart quests

> Go to map Z and complete W number of Vistas

> Complete a total number heart quests across all maps

> Unlock all your tier 2 utility skills on your character

> Kill 1,000 enemies in PvE total

ETC

How it works

> Go to this obscure place and do this obscure quest

> Complete an entire specific map that is at the opposite end of the world to where your character starts

> Go to WvW and kill the absolutely huge boss that takes an entire zerg like 15 minutes to kill

Basically what I am saying is that the direction was ok, but the application was god awful.

Prince.7198:

TrOtskY.5927:

Guardian will never be as good and diverse as other classes until Anet FINALLY realises their mistake and decides to actually give the class some mobility.

What mistake? Guardian is a bunker class, their design is not to be very mobile. It seems like you want a GOD MODE profession, which would be lame cz everyone would then roll it.

You can’t see the forest for the trees.

lmfao triple consecration build in zergs.

Just no.

ye whatever, I bet you are thoroughly average and shrek nothing.

Dagins.5163:

BlackBeard.2873:

People’s fun on this map is entirely dependent on class. If you don’t have knockbacks/reliable pulls or a bunch of ai to do your fighting for you, you feel absolutely useless (and mostly are).

I really hope you make some changes to allow classes without these things to play as well.

Every single class in this game has some sort of pushback/launch/fear or pull. If you want to “build” yourself for Skyhammer, in 99% cases it’s all about switching one utility slot few seconds before a match started. In 1% it’s switching your secondary weapon set. And if you think, that your current build is optimalized to maximum, and swapping an utility or weapon would hurt you – you are stupid, sorry.

EVERY SINGLE CLASS MAY ACCESS TO THOSE THINGS BUT IT DOESNT MEAN THEY HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF ACCESS.
You must play engi or thief on this map and never have felt the absolute ridiculousness of it all from the other side.

hihey.1075:

Ragion.2831:

Some of you need to relax. The black powder nerf really doesnt affect d/p thieves in the slightest. NOBODY stands in the black powder longer than 1/2 a second, unless immobilized. The nerf mostly affects PvE, even then its really not that bad. The only substantial nerf is the initiative increase for FS, so it isnt as spammable, even that isn’t nearly as class breaking as some people think it is.

The only major problem with the thief class is most people’s dependence on s/d and flanking strike spams

Agreed.

Again, more rubbish. Nobody used flanking strike spam. I don’t actually believe some of what I am reading in this thread. If it was up to any good S/D thief they would drop FS completely and go straight for LS if it was possible.

hihey.1075:

TrOtskY.5927:

hihey.1075:

I think most of the thieves out there were really bad players who didn’t know how to play this class and just played thief due to Sizer’s popularity and easy build he was using.
Now that it’s a tad harder to be effective as a thief, most of these players have rerolled to other professions.

….

No. S/D is a “tad” harder. Your inability to precast LS before a fight is the reason why players like you are complaining all over the place about their “supposedly” broken build. I often play with only one weapon just to show how easy it is to play an Acro+Trickery build.
You say that “heh, I don’t do enough damage to kill people fast1111111”. I say: then stop playing Acro+Trickery and go back to Critical Strikes+Trickery or Critical Strikes+Acro.
You just cannot do insane amount of damage with ONE skill anymore. I’d say that current S/D is one of the most BALANCED sets in the game: you still do damage, but your burst is lower than before – however, your survivability is great, and your mobility is the best in the game.

I see thieves who miss steal on Guardian using Shelter. I see thieves using Steal when Blinded. I see thieves who dodge when the enemy engi is using Gear Shield.
ALL these players are bandwagoners who jump from class to class, depending on what’s “fotm” and what’s not.

Of course I don’t put “old” S/D thieves on the same plane as D/D Eles or Turret Engis or Ham/Axe Bows, as AT LEAST it required some brain power to do something with it. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the set was WAY too powerful and that the nerfs it got, even though they weren’t what I personally had changed, were done rightfully.

If YOU cannot play a spec it does not mean that the spec itself is unplayable.

IN ANY CASE, the Steal bug was a major issue that I have been fighting against since the July patch.

I’m still calling nonsense, there are now just too many builds that a S/D thief could deal with before that it cannot now, regardless of whether it runs critical strikes, etc. In fact, running critical strikes with S/D is just bad anyway, you really ought to reroll. You lose out on so many important boons from losing trickery and losing out on the daze is the biggy.

You say drop Acro. Dropping Acro is not good for a S/D, we NEED feline grace. We NEED vigorous healing.
Dropping trickery is more possible, but you lose out on SO much good stuff (including practically the only team support a thief can bring for goodness sake) and don’t really gain any DoT, and infact lose the ability to apply pressure for longer periods of time due to the loss of vigor and perma swiftness. I would argue that the DoT for critical strikes thief over trickery thief is actually significantly less in practical circumstances against decent (not even good) players.

I say this because I play medi guard as my other main. I can now handle 2-3 thieves AT ONCE when before a single S/D was always an exciting fight.

Thief is a joke class now, no doubt. But if you say you are able to run around with just a sword and still do stuff, then I really don’t believe you whatsoever. If you are going to draw on your experience from low level hotjoin and WvW then I am really not interested in what you have to say…
It’s not a tad harder, its a LOT harder and that’s just a fact because this patch was a major nerf to thief whilst many other classes and builds got some form of buff, and very few got nerfs that directly affected their ability to deal with S/D itself.

Medi Guard > Renewed focus buff, more effective HP to break through. Can’t break through preloaded aegis anymore without having to either waste initiative or start off in SB which is just asking to get destroyed if he has any ports off cooldown.

Engi > Don’t think I need to mention this

Ranger > Same

Warrior > Adrenaline nerf definitely helped thief, but there was no real nerf to the warriors ability to mititage thief damage. The loss of on-demand combustive shot is the real loss to the warrior. Warrior is probably the only class that fares worse than before, but Axe/Shield builds are still almost just as effective as before.

Necro > Doesn’t matter, any good necro will wtfpwn a thief no matter what.

Mesmer > More condis. PU got a nerf but that’s irrelevant really. Mesmer was always favourable to the thief, so I don’t mind the changes here

Elementalist > no real change, I guess buffed signets help a little for whoever likes to run those (nobody???). Otherwise a thief should not be taking on an d/d ele.

When you play a build that suddenly finds itself weaker 1v1 against almost every other class in the game, it has a cumulative effect that makes team fights an absolute nightmare.

So I am sorry I have to disagree that the thief nerf just made it a “tad” harder.

You can use the portal still, it’s just a pointless change to discourage brand new players from doing something that they wouldn’t have done in the first place.

um no they aren’t

Oh god not this again.

Why not just join in on the farm, it will be greatly more rewarding than the pathetic living story rewards you get. Trus’

P.S any event does not reward you more for failing it, but it simply lets you repeat it multiple times. I feel this is quite a significant difference.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

TrOtskY.5927:

Are you kidding with that stuff? Anet control supply, hence they can modify drop rates…with ease I might add. That means not only can they increase the drop rates of all precursors, they can increase the drop rates of ANYTHING, that includes all necessary crafting materials.

You point out “bugs” and whatnot as a reason for not fixing this. Stop moving the goalposts. The same bugs and problems have plagued the game for YEARS.
Bugs and gameplay issues have nothing to do with this stuff. Features? Content? Are you even playing this game?

smh

All it shows is that either Anet does not care, or they see it as healthy and “working” or that they are actually incapable of fixing this issue because they lack peopel with the necessary skills and knowledge.
At this point, I’m opting for the latter.

And I’m noting you decided to not address his post much at all other than to reiterate what he responded to with his post detailing at least some of the issues with just turning the drop rate up without thinking on it.

I can’t even understand this sentence. What? Please use grammar.

*edit, I was going to make another post but I don’t feel like spamming the forum too much.

I just want to make 1 more point. If we add in a “precursor system” then we will deflate the economy no matter what. There is no way around that. So we either get it and they fix the system so it’s not so built around a horrendous amount of grinding and farming, or they don’t.

It’s as simple as that. If you want more easily accesssible legendaries, then I am afraid you are gonna have to deal with that. If not, then you won’t. Do I think it’s fair? Not in the slightest. The inflation at the moment is making people have to spend more and more gold as time goes on if they want to “buy” their legendary. This is an effective punishment for arriving late to the game. The interesting thing I see is that we are seeing inflation on precursors at the >100% level but we aren’t seeing the Gem>Gold ratio change at the same rate whatsoever.

Again this is a serious problem and something we can only adress by increasing drop rates.

IDK what else to say, but I don’t get why people are defending this. It’s bad for new players and punishes new players over older players for literally no reason, in effect punishing them in mathematicall squared fashion > less time total played = less gold and arriving later in the game = more inflation = your gold is worth less.

Stooperdale.3560:

The mystic forge is actually a balance for the market. If items at one tier are cheap and items at the next tier are expensive then players can try convert the cheap into the expensive through the forge. This prevents excess inflation at the top tier. It also takes items out of the game so that the endless supply doesn’t create deflation.

Again, this is another point I feel I have to make.

In a game where you have a source of guaranteed income (DUNGEON RUNS, which also happens to be the best source of income outside of TP flipping I might add) deflation is NOT a problem. Deflation is only a problem when income fluctuates. If we lived in a world where we could guarantee an income of resources no matter what, we would actually run economies with as much deflation as possible.

I can’t help but feel that there aren’t a lot of people on this forum who don’t really understand this stuff. Fair enough, it’s fairly complicated. But it’s also grounded in logical thinking, something which many people seem to lack. If you don’t understand it, for the love of god don’t DEFEND it. It’s not helpful.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

TrOtskY.5927:

Anet doesn’t care at all about this, or else they would have definitely acted upon it already. As far as I know, they actually consider this situation to be “healthy”.

I believe that misstates their position.

• They consider the economics of precursors to be healthy.
• They have, at times, expressed concerns with the availability of precursors.
• They have, at times, expressed an interest in developing alternatives.
• The situation isn’t simple to resolve:
  • Increasing the number of precursors available will put intense pressure on T6 (and other) mats to rise in price; this could result in higher costs to forge a legend.
  • Making it easier to get legendaries tends to make those who already have them feel as if their accomplishment was diminished.
  • The fraction of players affected by precursor prices is small relative to those affected by other issues, whether bugs, features, or content.

tl;dr regardless of what ANet thinks, there’s no easy way to address the situation. Therefore, I don’t think we can draw any conclusions about ANet’s thoughts on the topic.

Are you kidding with that stuff? Anet control supply, hence they can modify drop rates…with ease I might add. That means not only can they increase the drop rates of all precursors, they can increase the drop rates of ANYTHING, that includes all necessary crafting materials.

I also hasten to add that having to gather so many T6 materials is a joke in iteself, it is just there to add to the grind and gently nudges impatient players towards Gem>Gold conversion, better known as GIMMME YO MONEY tactics.

You point out “bugs” and whatnot as a reason for not fixing this. Stop moving the goalposts. The same bugs and problems have plagued the game for YEARS.
Bugs and gameplay issues have nothing to do with this stuff. Features? Content? Are you even playing this game?

smh

All it shows is that either Anet does not care, or they see it as healthy and “working” or that they are actually incapable of fixing this issue because they lack peopel with the necessary skills and knowledge.
At this point, I’m opting for the latter.

ONE LAST EDIT***********

You say making precursors easier to aquire undermines the effort of those who went before them. You do realise poeple could easily acquire precursors for less than 1/10th of the price people are paying now? I am not saying make precursors free, I am saying return them to cheaper level, as they were in the past.

Secondly, nobody cares about the feelings of some random people and their QQ over “acheivements” aka grinding. There is no value in grinding, it is literally a waste of your life and nothing you will remember with fondness, or at all, in 10-20 years time. I am dead serious.

warriorjrd.8695:

TrOtskY.5927:

true, but I thought we were talking about rapid fire rangers. Condi is pretty strong (I don’t rate it as much as you do though) and BM I just find more of a nuisance than particularly amazing at 1v1.

“rapid fire” rangers isn’t even a proper build. It’s scrubs hopping on the class using a LB and throwing all their utilities towards one attack. Of course that won’t excel at 1v1, but if you think that’s all rangers have to offer than you need to get yourself better acquainted with the class.

Rangers are still bad bro

Anet doesn’t care at all about this, or else they would have definitely acted upon it already. As far as I know, they actually consider this situation to be “healthy”.

We are talking about price inflation of somewhere around 1,000% since launch on precursor value.
Yeah. The problem with comparing a game economy and the real world economy is that in the real word, the profits made from things are often used to reinvest into the procuring of said resource/material in order to make gathering said resource/material cheaper, faster and more reliable.
No such thing exists in MMOs, hence endless inflation.

The sad thing is they have actual economists working for them who don’t seem to realise this. But living in the real world over the past 10 years this shouldn’t surprise you. Economists very rarely actually know what they are doing.

true, but I thought we were talking about rapid fire rangers. Condi is pretty strong (I don’t rate it as much as you do though) and BM I just find more of a nuisance than particularly amazing at 1v1.

Guardian will never be as good and diverse as other classes until Anet FINALLY realises their mistake and decides to actually give the class some mobility.

hihey.1075:

I think most of the thieves out there were really bad players who didn’t know how to play this class and just played thief due to Sizer’s popularity and easy build he was using.
Now that it’s a tad harder to be effective as a thief, most of these players have rerolled to other professions.

Nonsense.

You clearly don’t play thief, or at least didn’t play it prior to the patch.
They played the build because it was good at what is it was doing. Now the S/D has been nerfed into oblivion and is HUGELY more difficult. It’s not a tad harder to be as effective as before….. It’s impossible to be as effective as before. It’s not because thief attracted noobs (certainly not more than any other class, there are TONNES of easier classes and builds to play effectively than S/D for goodness sake..any warrior, d/d ele, turret engi, MM Necro, Bunker Guard, Spirit Ranger etc etc are all much easier builds to play and are more popular than S/D ever was)

I think the fact that the top players in the world are not using Thief anymore just shows the class is kittened beyond recognition these days.

killshot was pure stupdity anyway, and required practically the whole team to be built around it for it to be any use in t-queue.

WvW idc, it’s a rubbish game mode.

rangers ARE pretty much useless in 1v1 against any enemy that has a gap closer. They are much more deadly than before at sitting off points and pew pewing than before, that’s about all they got in terms of buffs. To say they “excel” in 1v1 is just not true at all. They don’t really excel in anything….except pew pew

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

GW2 is not about grinding and farming.
It’s about exploring and doing many different content with friends.

Getting gold is suppose to naturally happen.
So yes, I hope they nerf this…

what is wrong with people like you, seriously? That is an actual question, I want to know the answer. Were you dropped on your head as a baby?

I have to agree that it seems to be getting worse. The problem is that we have stupid builds that promote the worst playstyles and you get half the forum going “well it’s not good anyway so it doesn’t matter”. I’m sorry to tell these guys that they are just being pig ignorant and that these AI builds have a serious impact on all but high level and/or organised play.

If you aren’t on an organised team, super-heavy AI builds and their ilk are a SERIOUS problem in both game modes. The thing is, more and more peopel are realising this and rerolling AI builds/classes. Guild Wars 2 is rapidly becoming Pet Wars 2, and the latest patches would suggest that ANet is happy with this as they enjoy providing crutches to bad players. What’s worse is when a GOOD player uses these builds. Have you ever tried to 1v1 a really GOOD turret engi user on a side node? If you take anything other than a direct hard counter, you will NOT be winning that fight and instead wasting your time.

I think the worst counter argument I see is “well just rotate to another point”.

This is a game about points kitten . If someone can freely cap and sit on a point by themselves for most of the game without fear of losing it then that team is almost certainly going to win, I would say at least 80% of the time, if not more. Turret engies are not tied down to a point anywhere near as much as people make out as well.

I know I am attacking turrets a lot, but they are just an example. Turrets are by far the most effective AI build going at the moment. If turrets were easier to read then fair enough but it doesn’t work as is.

> You can’t predict when a turret user is going to explode his turret and knockback. There is no indication from either the turret user or the turret itself that it’s about to blow. I think there should be a strong and obvious visual indicator and cast time on turret explosions. If the turret blinked red light rapidly for a second before it was about to blow. I really think there should be a delay of at least a second between the turret being F1-F4’d and it actually blowing. I’m not asking for it be made into a channel, just for a delay from the cast to the actual explosion. Turrets that KB upon being destroyed is fair enough.

> Turrets are extremely easy to place. Considering it’s supposed to be a defensve installation, I don’t see why summoning them should have basically zero cast time. They should take a good couple of seconds MINIMUM to create.

I think both the changes above would make turrets much more balanced, true to their role and less spammy. But I doubt ANet cares about this or other similar problems

:(

Rating is meaningless when any old player, who has never played engineer before can roll the class, run turrets and climb relatively high on solo queue within the same day. Leaderboards are a serious problem that are really just an amalgamation of class imbalance, poor matchmaking, the inability to look at an individuals performance at opposed to the team as a whole and a system that favours those who purposefully play to win, as opposed to those who play to play. You know, cos they enjoy the game.

I mean, look at hotjoin. People are so desperate to win on an UNRANKED and MEANINGLESS gametype, they will stack teams, stack cheese builds and go into spec or quit the game as soon as they think they are gonna lose.

These players who can’t take a loss are a kitten in any gaming community. GW2 is my first (and probably last) MMO. I don’t know if this is an MMO problem in particular but it seems to be worse in GW2 than in any other game I have played online in the past. FPS games I have played at a highly competitive level in the past such as Q3A and RTCW/RTCW:ET never really had this “who is better” type of situation. Certain people were amazingly good and if they were better than you it was just down to the fact they had better skill. It was just accepted if someone was owning you over and over that they were just a better player. You couldn’t blame it on class disparity or anything of the sort.
I guess because the game is so imbalanced and there are so many factors that decide the outcome of a fight that any player can basically mask his/her own failures with “well it wasn’t my fault….it was cos build x/y/z is OP and teammates are bad etc etc”

All this leads to a bad pvp community. And I mean bad, because the pvp community in this game is completely at odds with the PvE community that is otherwise much more friendly, open to suggestions and criticism with regards to builds. There is of course the exception of dungeon elitisits, but those guys are just….well I don’t want to get into it too much but you often find these guys don’t PvP. If you don’t PvP, you sure as hell don’t get the right to go around with an elitist “i’m better than you” attitude. It’s laughable imo.

There are some other pretty serious issues when it comes to ladders of course.
First and foremost, the TPVP ladder makes no sense whatsoever, in concept and in practical application. It’s a TEAM queue. Why are TEAMS not ranked? Why is there no option to sign GUILDS up to the ladder? Why is it just a list of individuals? Why is this so at odds with ANets design philosophy (i.e. that team fights are the focus of PVP, not 1v1s)

I’m just sitting here, typing this up and the more I think about it the more stuff I have to type, so I better just stop myself cos I could go on and on.

meh, their burst is not OP in team fights whatsoever. In team fights, spirit ranger is still far superior tbh.

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Literally Perma evade, really? If you honestly think S/D prior to this patch could “perma evade”, you’re not qualified to be talking about it, because you’re spreading falsehoods.

You could evade a whole hell of a alot if you were intent on being nigh-useless, but there wasn’t much gain in that. Go try double S/D with Quick pockets and energy runes – you’ll be dancing all around the battlefield…and do the kind of damage that regen could negate.

I never had a problem facing other S/D evade heavy thieves when I was playing. Perhaps it’s because I played the class and knew when my target was vulnerable. I guess a little bit of effort goes along way. It’s the same reason I don’t kitten about classes I don’t understand – I could just go roll one, try the spec, and see it’s vulnerable points, and if I don’t that’s on me.

If you want thieves to have even slightly less dodges, they’re going to need some access to the sustain tools other classes get – protection, better regen uptime on practically designed skills (lawl Pain Response), stability that can actually be used (lawl Assassin’s Equilibrium), maybe a block or something like that, and while I’m at it maybe Anet could stop kittening with our blinds (though thats a different weaponset) because as it stands a thief needs to avoid the majority of another players attacks (including their AA) to survive long enough to win a fight as S/D.

Literally perma evade within the rotation, yes. A good 10+ second window of being basically invulnerable whilst dishing out damage against melee classes. If you fight protracted, then you are doing it wrong. It does not take long for a thief to be able to get back into the “perma dodge” cycle once out of it. A thief merely needs to wait about 5-10 seconds outside of the enemy range then re-engage, and it is able to basically perma evade constantly if it plays the rotation properly.

We have blinds on S/D.
If you never (and you do claim, NEVER) have a problem facing S/D thieves as S/D, then please explain me how as to how you make one of the most laughably ridiculous 1v1 situations in the game a surefire win. Steal can be used at any time as a dual stun breaker and daze proc. It’s purely down to who hits who with dazes and who is lucky enough to be in evading steals and IS, who gets crits and who gets procs on sigils, it’s a horribly sweaty, almost skill-less, just spammy as HELL contest. Watching a S/D vs S/D as an example for GW2 combat is actually quite embarassing, it looks stupid and it is stupid. Thiefs teleporting all over the place, back and forwards, barely landing hit son each other and burning through their steals and gap closers at any given oppurtunity because trying to “wait out” the opponent on S/D is practically suicide. The rotation cycles for S/D evade last too long. There is almost no opening on the old builds, as long as the thief played smart. They tried to force an opening by making FS>LS more dependent on successive hits. It’s not a good fix.

I’m not saying this stuff as thief basher, I play thief for goodness sakes. We need to take a REAL look at this and not go around pretending that certain facets of certain builds aren’t a bit silly. The problem is they went about nerfing S/D in the completely wrong way. Semi-Perma evade within skill rotatiosn is actually totally impossible for any other melee build of any class to deal with. The only melee class/build I think that has a chance to deal with it is medi guard, but the thief can still take the initiative in the fight and if they are skilled a medi guard (prior to the patch remember) was still a relatively easy fight once you forced it to waste through the port cooldown and aegis.
I am saying all this because I WANT them to revert the changes, not because I dislike S/D.
Trust me, we are on the same team, you just gotta concede that S/D was way too good at what it was good at…. If you get me.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

TrOtskY.5927:

Does anybody ever seem to find that HK just simply doesn’t proc at times?

If you wait until the very last second of stealth before you backstab, you don’t get the bonus because you actually make the hit as you’re visible.

I see, I never even thought of that.
Cheers for clearing that up.

this wouldnt even be remotely a problem is the ports weren’t so buggy right now.
As I mentioned in a post in another thread that got deleted, a thief can port like 2-3K unit range INSTANTLY which is WAY longer distance than RF.
Once you are ontop of them they are dead.

Woaden.9425:

evilapprentice.6379:

What it did was kill [S/D] damage

I agree. S/D damage was already iffy damage wise, not because the raw numbers aren’t there, but because of the slow attacks. That is fine for sustain and general pressure, though I land my third AA much less vs practiced players, but it doesnt allow for any spike, and without any spike, you can’t get over the top of many enemies HP before they react or have time to heal. This leads to long protracted fights.

We found ways to spike with different combos, like “preloading LS”, but otherwise, all our spike options (mug, sigs, i guess.. haste?) were also available to other weapon sets which did it better, so what was the point?

Sword makes a good control set, but since it’s not a damaging condi set, it really doesn’t work well (at least as S/D, maybe it does as S/P with poisons would) in a condi/power build – but again, dagger MH would do better, pistol MH even better.

So what is it’s place? Evasion troll? Clutch interrupts? I love both of those things, but occasionally I’d like to down someone.

To answer OP:

How would I have fixed S/D? I’d leave trait-ed evades alone. Messing with traits has collateral damage for other weaponsets/builds. To fix S/D, I would increase ini cost of FS, as they did, but also increase it’s damage. I would reduce the damage of LS significantly, and make it more of a utility skill, so restore it to 2 boonrips, for instance, or maybe apply a non-damaging condition, or maybe even gasp clear a condi so we don’t have to keep going in to SA!

Edit: Or, screw it — I’d increase Ini on FS, increase damage on FS, and I’d remove attack damage from LS, and rename it from LS to SP (Soul Parry). As is now the case, SP would need you to successfully land a FS, if FS is blocked it would not allow SP.

SP would life leach a small amount and transfer 1 condi from myself, to the opponent. Now with Infil Strike and SP, this would be our anti condi, non-stealth set.

Well it’s interesting, I can’t see how S/D would work without the LS damage spike tho.(which isn’t actually THAT high but oh well)

Pretty much all the kills on thief in 1v1 relies on applying so much consistent, unavoidable pressure that gets your oppoent in a tizz, making them auto attack whiff at nothing but air and getting them to waste weapon skills and utilities in a “panic” of sorts.

S/D functions largely as before with the exception of facing classes that have access to block, which is like half the classes in the game. Medi Guard? Forget it, you have to play absolutely flawlessly just for a VERY slim chance at winning.
Engi? It was bad before, now…..ermagerd.
Bunk Guard? Was nigh on impossible before, and now it’s even worse.
Warrior? Not so bad, the 4s block is pretty annoying. The problem was the sheer amount of time it took to kill a decent soldier warrior before, which was also made ridiculously difficult by their ability to camp in preloaded combustive shot fields. Of course with this nerf, they are not so dangerous, but with OUR nerf coming in conjunction, its just resulted in a real trade off that hasn’t particularly favoured either class.
Mesmer? I would say this is a biggie, before we could fairly reliably kill them, but now if they take PU trait it can be really difficult to break through with all the AoE and condi damage flying around. If not, it’s basically the same as before.
Rangers are still food. Necros are still dangerous as hell if the opponent is decent OR any old noob can wtfpwn u with fearmancer build.

IDK if removing spike damage from LS would work, but if you are suggesting FS becomes powerful ENOUGH to compensate, then I dunno, it might just make FS ridiculously OP as well.

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Also, you act like Stealth was not used in S/D, when in fact it is used fairly often, just not as often as in other builds. CnD > Auto from pretty much any direction (front or behind both work well tbh) totally messes with any melee class that doesnt have a lot of stability/stunbreak.

Please re-read the thread properly and make some suggestions. I’m not saying it should not have been able to dodge a lot. I’m saying it should not have been able to dodge ever so slightly as much as before.

Does anybody ever seem to find that HK just simply doesn’t proc at times?

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

Atalas.4965:

Most thieves relied way too much on stealth, meaning they were in stealth about 90% of the time in any battle.
When changes came and that’s good they came, now you need a bit more skill and timing to do the same thing.

No, just no. 90%? Do you pull these numbers from where the sun don’t shine? A d/p thief will spend about 50% MAX of any fight in stealth (this is only the case if the fight is over very quick, if the fight lasts longer than a couple of successfully landed backstabs then this stealth uptime starts to scale off very drastically due to how “expensive” it is for a thief to get into stealth.

S/D is way less.

S/P even less than that

P/P + P/D are terrible in pvp, so idc about those, and I don’t play enough wvw these days to know how much stealth the thieves are getting with these builds but I imagine it’s no more than D/P.

D/D absolutely relies on stealth totally and is extremely difficult to use against good players, so it’s kind of moot on that one. Getting into stealth on D/D is also much more dangerous than on any other build.

Anyway, you are wrong about stealth uptime.

Also, thief is really bad now. REALLY bad. Worst class imo. I’m not playing thief again until they admit they screwed up on FS>LS and they fix the copious amounts of teleport bugs that have materialised recently.

umm how would that be fun for anybody except the thief? lol

nope, happened to me too.

A cynical person might suggest that this is to force you to open up your finishers tab, and be all like “oooh maybe i will buy a new finisher now” rather than just carrying on with the one you already use…..
Of course, nobody is that cynical ¬_¬

the lag spike lasts about 5 seconds, how is that possible?

babazhook.6805:

>> Heck, a thief can engage from way further away and deal better burst, but they’re not overpowered

Can you describe how? The thief can trait for a long range steal and that is about it. All of the other teleports have a lower range then ranger LB.

Now the issue here of course is bugs and the terrain problems with those teleports. The longer the range the greater the chance they fail.

Quite frankly I think the trait “assassins equilibrium” should also/or give that stability after a teleport.

As to rangers on that rapid fire. I am finding I can avoid that with a dodge but the AA hits hard as well. As I am specced pistol/pistol its often a matter of who gets that first shot in. A teleport skill like shadowshot is essential in dealing with them but it HAS to work.

Em a thief can get in anybodys face from ridiculous range

Steal 900, use last cos it doesnt proc unless it can close the gap.

So.

Open with infiltrators signet > 900 range

Chain it into Sword 2 > 1500 range total

Chain it into steal > 2400 range total

When wvwing I sometimes carry shadowstep as well to add another 1200 range, which is a total of 3600 range INSTANTLY.

Here, a pillow for your blown mind.

This ranger hype makes me smile, they are barely any more powerful than they were before (spirit ranger is still CLEARLY more useful than power ranger).

When the hype dies down and the dust settles, we will all realise ranger is still actually pretty bad. The good thing is that so many people are using it at the moment that it’s making my S/TPVP games a lot easier to win. The problem right now is poeple aren’t immediately gap closing and getting in the rangers face. Once people learn to do that instantly (rather than ignoring them, like before) the ranger will go as fast as it came tbh.

100 blades is a million times better at applying downstate cleave, wtf is this stupid comparison between a skill on a longbow ranger and a skill on a gs warrior anyway.

A warrior in any form is still way more useful on a point than a lb ranger.

Oh god, what is worrying me is that a dev response only JUST case a day ago, whilst this problem has been going on for well over a month and is totally pandemic.

It boggles my mind that they are not aware of this!

HandOfKane.5409:

TrOtskY.5927:

pdavis.8031:

TrOtskY.5927:

wow do people actually take these threads seriously? OP is probably about 14 years old anyway.

A 14 year old with a 6 year old son? They were 8 when they became a parent? Not likely. The point of the thread, is that the OP is unhappy with the NPE changes, and many of us are as well.

No, my point is that the “son” is entirely fictitious, the OP is probably about 14 and has made this thread in an attempt to undermine/expose how patronising some of these new gameplay changes are.
How or what I feel about the update aside, this sort of behaviour is ridiculous and rather immature, and actually undermines the feedback of people based upon real experience.

Can you show where in the thread it specifally states this?

I don’t need to, it is obvious from both the style of writing the content within that the OP is most definitely not a parent.

Sorry man, life must be difficult when you are so gullible.

pdavis.8031:

TrOtskY.5927:

wow do people actually take these threads seriously? OP is probably about 14 years old anyway.

A 14 year old with a 6 year old son? They were 8 when they became a parent? Not likely. The point of the thread, is that the OP is unhappy with the NPE changes, and many of us are as well.

No, my point is that the “son” is entirely fictitious, the OP is probably about 14 and has made this thread in an attempt to undermine/expose how patronising some of these new gameplay changes are.
How or what I feel about the update aside, this sort of behaviour is ridiculous and rather immature, and actually undermines the feedback of people based upon real experience.

wow do people actually take these threads seriously? OP is probably about 14 years old anyway.