Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why people argue about, or even waste time/mental capacity on the idea of future balance by nerfing output numbers. Why does everyone think the solution to everything is obviously to nerf/buff numbers?

What makes the C&D > Mug > Backstab combo so powerful is that it all happens at once. There’s no time to react. FORGET nerfing numbers. Just make Mug interrupt C&D.

People have time to counter. Problem solved. No more fretting over which skill gets nerfed into the ground. No more fretting over how it affects other builds.

*Edited for clarity

Ok, I can’t keep reading. I cannot believe the pure lack of understanding in many of these posts.

Stealth doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s not broken. It’s not too powerful, nor is it too weak. It rides the line, and it has MANY vulnerabilities.

That said, it is completely obvious that many of the posters do not take advantage of these vulnerabilities. Rather than countering or avoiding the stealthed thief, they’re letting the thief have their way.

Aside from culling issues, this is a L2P issue. Don’t try to “fix” something if it’s not broken. Many of you may not enjoy stealth. You may think it’s annoying. Still… annoying does not mean broken. There’s nothing to be fixed.

Accept that stealth exists, demand that culling issues be fixed, and work with the system, not against it. Beat stealth with gameplay, not with “fixes.”

This could be an absolutely fantastic idea. Very seriously. We need more reasons to press * different * buttons more often anyway. I don’t like spamming so much, but we don’t many other options at this point. Your idea could clear that up.

Could be fun, at least.

Actually, now that I think about it, if there was a cap on the number of stacks, that might keep things in check.

Edit:
Actually, just consider everything I’ve said to be off the cuff and possibly uninformed. lol I’m in a HUGE rush, but I’m interested in the topic. Also, Volrath, your idea would probably be great, as long as we could stack up the durration to something meaningful.

I agree that blind is usually not a big deal. It seem to be tricky in pve, since it’s very difficult to actually apply to bosses, etc. In PvP, attacks are so frequent, blind gets easily (and accidentally) wiped off by auto attacks, etc.

I don’t know that it’s actually weak, so much as it can be remarkably unreliable, and therefore nothing to be feared. I realize there are some situations where blind can be forced to shine, but it doesn’t always work out the way you want.

Seems like stacks of blind would be great, but it’d have to be normalized with a cooldown. Stacks limited to 1 per second, per target. Otherwise we could stack up 20 blinds in a few seconds, with a team.

While this might be fine for the prepared pvp’er, the general / average player, or just anyone without condition removals will suffer an unreasonable amount. Thieves would hear lots more cries for nerfs.

Interestingly, though, with a short application cooldown, it’s unlikely that Blind would feel much different than it does today. The difference might be that if you can keep an enemy from hitting anyone for a few seconds, you could build up a few stacks, buying you more time once they actually try to do some damage. That’s reasonably fair, I think.

Ah, now we’re getting some good feedback.

It’s true, being able to reliably stealth would be nice, and I would love to see our 5 skill changed in some meaningful way that makes it less spammy, as PopeUrban mentioned.

I do really enjoy the idea of an underwater Death Blossom.

For the sake of complete fairness, I’m going to go play more with 3 and 5 against groups, to further explore what ASP is talking about. I use them both all the time, but a little more practice and experimenting can’t hurt.

Softspoken, that sounds like an awesome idea. Honestly, it would probably even be fine to leave in the evade, but don’t let it last as long. The default length of the evade is way too much in pvp.

Death Blossom is a good comparison.

Grimwolf, I’m glad you’ve had some success with the thief, but I’m a little suspicious of your comments. I’m also suspicious of where you’ve been and what you’ve done on your thief. There are lots of situations we simply can’t deal with, period. I’m not flaming you or anything, I’m just not buying it.

Like you, I’ve had some success underwater. That’s fine, but I don’t think that’s a call to say everything is ok. From what I’ve seen, there’s a whole lot that’s not ok, but it takes being in the right situations to see it.

For instance, it’s easy to think the spear skills can make us almost invincible, until something crushes you, spear and all. That’s when you realize that even your strongest abilities aren’t enough to get you through content that other professions have no problem with.

Just needs more work.

Somewhere there’s a thieves guild already in the works. I think the title of the thread was something like “WvWvW thieves, listen up!”

If you search around, you should be able to find it. Not sure what server they decided to settle on.

Pope… dude, you are way too reasonable and rational to be playing in the forums. Well done! We need more of that.

And yeah, I think you see the situation pretty clearly all around.

Interested to see what other people think on the underwater situation/s.

Edit:
I think you’re exactly right about the speargun 2 having a bleed. It just makes sense.

PopeUrban, I’ll at least agree that our utility skills (including weapon skills) are not very compelling. There are a couple of good ones, but most are boring, and not worth their cost.

I understand your point in keeping utility and damage separate, to encourage thoughtful decisions based on initiative. Basically, “should I spend the initiative, or do I need it for something else.” That’s cool, I get that, but I think there’s an even more compelling option.

I’m very in favor of stacking multiple effects on every single weapon skill. Effects that may not even have anything to do with each other.

Crazy stupid example, to help illustrate what it does to your thought process: (Headshot)

What if Head Shot did as much damage as Heartseeker but only at 25% health, interrupts spell casting for 1 full second, and removes a boon, but it costs 9 initiative?

-If all you want is damage, you’ll use Heartseeker x3, not Headshot.
-If you want a finisher, but they’re out of Heartseeker range, you might pay for Headshot. But what if you’ve got another player on your tail? Do you need to save the initiative to deal with him?
-If you NEED to remove a boon, is Headshot worth it? Maybe… But if they’re not casting a spell and/or below 25%, it’s a hefty initiative price to pay for a boon removal. You’ll have to decide if it’s the right for the situation.

If you can line up a Headshot where all three effects will activate, GREAT. That’s why the initiative cost is so high. But if you only need one or two effects, you have a lot of decision making to do.

This allows us to use more of our skills more often. Right now Headshot barely gets any use, and even it it was an AWESOME interrupt, it would still only get used as an interrupt. We need more reasons to press more buttons.

Honestly, I didn’t even have to do more than skim your post. You’re about condition damage, and there’s none for you underwater. It’s a valid concern.

That said, seriously, thief underwater combat as a whole is one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in a game. It is broken, period, so while your pursuit for condition damage should definitely be addressed, a lot of other things need to be addressed too.

In short, they built thieves around high mobility underwater, with lots of evasion. The problem is evasion never makes up for what actually happens underwater.

1) Single target damage is far too low. Things respawn before we can make any progress.
2) There’s virtually no aoe, and they’re both short range and too weak.
3) No serious option for condition damage. No aoe condition damage.
4) Even having evades built right in to half the skills isn’t enough to deal with many situations. Signet of Malice and spear is often required, because our damage is too low, enemy damage is too high, and enemy HP pools are too high. You have to block/heal tank many situations, or you’ll just get gunned down. Ever tried to fight ranged vs ranged underwater? No tools. Nothing.

Doing almost anything underwater around the east side of Orr is literally impossible. Not even joking, impossible. 5 or 6 enemies swarm, automatically, and there’s no way to survive it. You can’t evade every attack, and there’s no way we can absorb it, even with Signet of Malice. Then there’s that Sharktooth temple thing….

We need a lot of underwater redesign. They can start by not counting on built in evades to do 100% of the work. Need more options. I’m sure condition thieves feel the hurt far more than I do.

P.S.
I love underwater. It’s just that thieves don’t have the tools.

kenshinakh.3672:

(PS: There’s something interesting they teach in the gaming industry that I heard about. Listen to what the players say, but do it with a grain of salt. They’re not the designers and they don’t see the big picture and see what they want to see or are limited to seeing).

This is very true. The developers often have long term, foundational goals. Players will try to “fix” things to get them where they “should” be, but the developers are often aiming toward a different set of goals that will work better in the long run.

With melee weapons, I like to steal from outside melee distance. If I’m too close, I dodge roll away, and steal.

With ranged weapons, like arrows, I turn my character away from my target (auto attack stops faster that way), wait a second, and then steal while I’m still turned away.

Both of these methods will ensure stealth works.

The initiative system is not the problem, peroid, end of story.

People spam 1 or 2 abilities because they are the only abilities worth using, at all, most of the time. If you want damage, you spam the damage ability, and we all have to do damage.

The REAL problem is that there’s not enough utility or damage on our other weapon skills to make them attractive. I’d press a lot more buttons if they had better uses functionality, but they don’t.

Take the ranged interrupt, for instance. Sure, it interrupts a spell, but it only locks out spell casting for 1/4 of a second, and it hits like a spit wad. It costs so much initiative to use, that it’s not worth it. I’d rather eat what ever spell is coming, and just blast somebody.

See the problem there? The gains aren’t worth the initiative cost 90% of the time. So, we spam the damage skills, and nothing else.

Initiative is fine. Weapon design is flawed.

God Sealer, I understand where you’re coming from, but it seems like you may have drawn some fallacious conclusions.

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying stealth is wrong for the game, because you can’t “dodge” away from what you can’t see. I think you’re saying that pairing stealth and burst damage together is for games with big heals to help you recover. (A dedicated healer, for instance.) Part of the holy trinity. You can correct me if you need to.

While that makes sense, from your perspective, I think the developers (and myself, and many other players) have a different way of looking at it…. Stealth does not last very long in this game. (I love that, btw.) All but one of our stealths have 2-5 second durations. Very short, so it’s very easy to simply not be where the thief wants you to be, when they stealth. Basic stealth attacks are incredibly avoidable, but people have to be of a mind to avoid them in the first place. A thief wants your back, so simply don’t give it to them. (Seriously, run away if you have to. It’ll only be 5 seconds.)

So, you see, nobody needs a healer, just because thieves can stealth.

On that same line of thinking, there are dozens and dozens of ways to not only avoid stealth damage, but to actually kill a thief while stealthed. It can be quite easy.

What really needs to happen, is the stealth bugs need to get fixed, and I think more people will see, stealth isn’t dangerous unless you put yourself where the thief wants you.

As for the FotM thing…. People do the FotM thing for classes that are easiest to win with. I need to make a distinction here, though. “Easiest to win” doesn’t mean most powerful. A lot of times it’s simply easier to play / control in general. Simplicity draws bad players and opportunists, so where ever people can find a way to make winning simpler or dumbed down, that’s what they’ll play.

Sometimes things aren’t legitimately OP, they’re just favored, because some people don’t like to work too hard at anything. Good thieves play far differently than the FotM people.

P.S.

I definitely hope Anet sees this idea, and takes a serious look at it. Even if it doesn’t properly serve their design goals for the thief, it’s a very good adjustment to this style of resource system. Not something to just pass over without consideration.

Kallis, I’m not going to say I support your idea, because I’m not sure if it would actually be a positive or negative change. HOWEVER…. I do really enjoy the general idea itself. It’s super cool, from a basic design perspective. * salute * I live for game design, and sometimes the little things just thrill me.

Again, I’m not sure if I support your proposition for sure, but an up side does come to mind…. right now our utility (weapon) abilities have no useful damage attached. It severely limits how often we’re allowed to change up the skills we use, and some just get flat out ignored. Spamming ensues. Moving on, I truly, very seriously do not think our resource system needs to be changed in order to safely buff up the damage on other skills. That said, your addition to the initiative system would make it a little easier to get away with. I think it’s definitely something to consider.

*Edited for clarity.

Backstab, without tons of trait support actually rides the line of being too weak to risk attempting. If anything goes wrong, the thief is brutally punished for it.

It is indeed “fine.” Something goes amiss with traits, though. It’s probably not even the damage from traits, but the way it combos. Sigil > C&D > Steal > Mug > Backstab are pretty much all one move, not a sequence. Rather than hitting multiple times, over a couple of seconds, you just blast it all at once. I’d say THAT might be the issue.

That brings another question to the table, though…. do we want Steal to interrupt C&D? My gut says yes. I think there’s still more to consider, though; lots more.

As for stealth, it doesn’t need to be nerfed, period. It’s not overpowered, and it’s easy to deal with a stealthed thief, if you know how. The stealth bugs are what need to be fixed.

This game has some of the best voice acting one can hope for, in a game with such a massive amount of it. It’s seriously amazing, compared to most games out there.

It’s not perfect, sure, but it’s still astoundingly good compared to many other games. I feel lucky.

Equally the dialogue itself is written better than most games. Again, it’s not perfect, but there’s tons and tons of it, and most of it is far more interesting than the swill you’ll see in other games.

Hit up the Charr starting area, especially near the auction house guys, and some dude cooking something that never seems to be finished. I’ve never heard sound loop so quickly in any game…. ever.

It’s literally like there’s no pause at all, just constant repeat.

I’ve got a huge problem with this.

Channels should definitely continue to channel, but they should not track a stealthed target.

If a channeled spell is tracking, it’s not just doing damage, it’s showing the other player where the thief is. It’s too much. I’ve even killed stealthed players because I could still see bleed numbers flying over their location. This kind of thing just shouldn’t happen.

Edit: Post deleted. I posted in the wrong window.

If you wind up on Sanctum of Rall, count me in. This sounds fun.

@TeoH

Yup. I ran the same test after I made my post. I assumed that the provided information was factual. However, it’s not. In fact, the longer I fact check all this stuff, the more I’m realized almost nothing here is true.

I’m moving on to better threads.

Stin… I don’t even know what to say to that. You’ve completely 100% missed the point.

I think you’re pushing it too far, Knyx, and maybe underestimating the dev’s ability to keep things fun yet fair. They’re smart people.

I’m also not sure what you mean by a “check and cap on all stats.” My suggestion only checks on health pools. Any single incoming strike (burst, not condition) can’t exceed 25% of a player’s maximum health pool. It simply ignores damage above that number, which would be different for every player.

Player’s with tiny health pools won’t be killed in 1 shot, but they’ll still be easier to kill than player’s with huge health pools. All it does is ensure that no player can die in less than 4 hits.

Stin: Thanks for the post.

I haven’t done any WvW yet. Things seem mostly reasonable in in sPvP, though.

Sounds like maybe this game needs some kind of special pvp damage mitigation. Maybe like a permanent boon that caps how hard you can be hit in a single strike, based on health percent, or something?

Say like, no single hit can take more than 25% of another player’s health?

Something like that would make it so Anet don’t even have to rebalance professions too much. The PvP boon would keep a lot of things in check.

OP: You’re completely missing the point.

If HS really is killing people through pure HS spam, then the problem is absolutely NOT that it’s spamable. The problem is that it’s doing too much damage when people are at high health. It doesn’t scale right.

That said, your post is questionable at best. I’m going to pretend you’re not trolling.

If it’s meant to be a gap closer and fight starter… great. Let it do lower damage on higher health pools.

If it’s meant to be an execute at low health… great. Let it do so.

Problem solved.