Guild Wars 2

Now onto this thread in general, I think if this system were to be implemented it cannot allow anyone to gain MMR in a lose condition, but minimalize their MMR lost to a very small number. That way if you performed well on an individual level, but your team lost, you’ll lose very little MMR from your current score to help keep players from dropping too fast. Whereas if you performed poorly as an individual and a lost condition happened, the system will factor that and you’ll lose whatever MMR that will help bring you to a skill level you belong the fastest.

Where as in a win condition and you did exceptional as an individual you’ll gain more then normal MMR to help boost you to where you belong. And if you did average you’ll gain normal MMR.

Now first thing is this system would be quite tricky to balance. But I think what Anet could do to help balance this system in the testing stages is take a wide range of players from ESL to just fresh sPvPers and group them by skill levels without a computer or algorithm. Just simple hand picking them and have them play a lot of matches within their skill range. Then take all the metrics from every match for each skill level and average them for a match.

So let’s say on average for a low skill tier, every player scored at 4 kills per the average of all the matches. Every player made at least 1 capture for the average of all matches. They healed XXX HP to their allies for the average of matches. They dealt XXX damage for the average. They revived XXX allies across all matches (Lord and any other NPC would not be counted to prevent abuse). And etc.

Now we roughly have an average of what a player at this skill level should be doing. If they go over the average we would have a formula to calculate what they would receive but it would have diminishing returns so doing 2X the average damage will not provide 2X the benefits. Like wise for all other metrics.

Deaths will not be factored into this unless their deaths exceed the average by a large amount. For example like 3X the average. That way players being focused will not suffer a penalty for being focused fired. This would need to be balanced to determine the number but that way players being fodder to an outnumbered situation (2v4, 1v4, and etc.) will have a larger MMR drop to attempt to place them where matches are better suited to them.

EDIT; And to add to the damage averages and healing and etc, you’ve set up a threshold to qualify for having average metrics in these so builds that deal less damage or offer less healing and etc are not left out and placed poorly for an individual performance factor. Maybe this could swing for kills, caps, decaps, and revives if the averages can accommodate a range below the average. You don’t want this range to extend to low but enough to make it so people are not penalized for their builds

Rhiannon.1726:

How do you measure individual skill? “Skill” in pvp isn’t determined by top stats.

I’ll try to make examples:

Besides you there is another necro in your team. You are more skilled.
The enemy prefers to focus you the whole time (because they know you are more dangerous, you are a Charr, or you have pink hair…).
You have to kite a lot and maybe you die several times and the other necro has it way more easier to attack the others and gets credit for dps and kills, because he is mostly ignored.
So you are skilled but because of bad luck the other necro gets rewarded?

There is a tempest and a druid in one team. The druid is more skilled. The druid is nearly always defending home against a thief and the tempest is in mid where the most fights are. The druid doesn’t heal anyone else, doesn’t kill anyone, doesn’t do the most damage and doesn’t capture any points (only close once).
The tempest is constantly healing others (by randomly spamming auras…), captures mid more than once and takes part in several kills/rezzes.
So how does the system know who is better?

On the first example;

Maybe a kill and kill assist type system. If you helped deal enough damage (determined through balancing and what Anet concludes is good) you also get credit for a kill. But if you die at any point you’re cleared of any kill assists that may have happened between your death and respawn, that way players are forced to stay alive and actively participating. That way someone can’t load up on AoEs and try to tag as many players recklessly as possible. They are challenged to stay alive even if they have to disengage a fight temporarily rather then being revive fodder to the other team.

On the second example;

Perhaps a system like WvW currently where if someone is still providing a support role like that, the team can vote after the match ends and certify that this person was doing well. We would need a set of system checks to prompt this so it can’t be abused. Like at the beginning before a match, if one person decides to patrol home and +1 when home is safe from a roamer, they can flag themselves and the team takes a party vote to agree or disagree with this person’s choice of role (It is team based so the team gets the final say). If the team agrees to this, after the match ends, before anyone can leave the instance they are prompted to vote whether this person did well or not. If you duo queue with someone, neither you or your friend may flag themselves for this role to prevent abuse. Or they may but whoever they duo queued with cannot vote for their buddy. Not a great solution but I don’t think a computer could ever really calculate or understand this situation with today’s technology. So we would have to rely on the human aspect to reward them fairly. But if they sit all match doing nothing but camping then they will not be allowed to receive any benifits of this role. If they actively show signs (determined through real world data like watching matches and setting test matches without telling anyone what the true purpose for testing so not to skew the results) then the computer will check a set of requirements like combat at least twice during a match, enemy’s average time within range of home during match, and etc (just examples) or whatever seems to accurately gauge there was a reason for this person being there. Then the vote is considered valid if a set of standards is met. If the vote is considered invalid then normal factoring will take place. Or forgo the previous vote system and factor into this players average range of home cap, opposing teams average range of your home during the match, and a few others. This way a player is not at a disadvantage for protecting a cap or home. So really it could be used for all the cap points.

Fay.2357:

Xfer, you’re making the faulty assumption that matchmaking is out to get you and is always placing you in the losing team of those matchups. The reality is quite different. You’re right that MMR matching will not produce perfect matches every time. However, you have an equal chance of being on the lucky team as you do of being on the unlucky team. Over time these average out and end up having no long term effect on your rating.

No I’m not. I have had games with great team mates and it was fun at the start till it just turned into a blow out and we literally had 3 point caps and the other team showed no effort into doing something. They’d ether respawn and be fodder, or gave up.

Now the match went from being enjoyable at the start because I had players that wanted to try and win, communicated, rotated, and did their absolute best, but the other team was awful and blowing out the opposing team isn’t really fun when you’re just waiting on 500 and killing the same guys over and over.

I’m just trying to propose something that will help the current matchmaking place people with people of similar skill quickly and hopefully create better matches. I personally don’t care too much about losing, but I get irritated when I lose and drop down farther and get even worse team mates that seem to have just started the game 5 hours ago. Yes, eventually I’ll climb out and hopefully be in a better division. But it’s going to be painful and frustrating doing so knowing it’s probably going to take 30 matches of the same thing over and over.

Faux Play.6104:

Wins are the best metric. It is simple, and the people that are the most consistent and helping their teams win will end up with the highest ratings.

Example you are on a 2v2 at home and it is neutral. You down the 1st, and both you and your teammate are in good shape health wise and the other player is 30%. It is a favorable match up 1v1 for your teammate even if the other player was at 100% health. The best play for the team would be to leave and help another fight, but you are going to miss out on a kill and a capture. What do you do if it is individual score based?

Have the system account for kill assisting and divide the solo kill performance metric by the number of teammates helping with the kill if they contributed enough damage or support via boons, auras, etc to your teammates.

Onto the capture, have the system factor in enemy range, teammates on point, and whether one player is wasting time or if there is a probable cause like an enemy in range or combat is currently active via damage being dealt. If none is of these are happening then the system will give nothing to both players. This doesn’t mean they’ll lose MMR but nothing is factored into the personal performance for a lack of anything. If someone +1 in a fight to get that point and that player leaves while one player caps that point then both will receive the merit for the capture being it was a team based captured.

Pakkazull.6894:

Xter.6271:

Anet really needs to develop an MMR system that accounts for personal performance and team performance.

I doubt ArenaNet has the expertise, time or money to develop such a system, nor do I think it’s feasible at all.

Xter.6271:

Like this guy captured the most points, killed the most players, and his team won, +47 MMR. or, this guy killed the most players, decapped the most points, but his team lost, +7 MMR.

Bad idea. None of those metrics can accurately capture the impact of a player on a game, and furthermore can be gamed which could encourage undesirable behaviour (such as several people staying on a point just to get the cap).

Xter.6271:

“If I wouldn’t of done this, and done that instead, maybe we could have won the match”

Wouldn’t have done this*. Sorry, pet peeve of mine.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sounds like they need to scrap Solo queue because it’s incompatible with the organized team gamemode known as sPvP, and implement a pure 5v5 team Queue, and a 2/3 mans team Queue as well. Boom all problems solved with matchmaker especially once they remove class stacking, queue times should never be a reason for compromised Matchmaking.

Terrible idea, you’d completely kill sPvP in one swoop. I agree that teams need a competitive venue though, but that can be handled separately from the league system.

I think some of my ideas would help. I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to balance a system like this. My +47 MMR gain was just an example. The numbers and metrics would have to be balanced.

It would be up to Anet to decide if such a system was possible and if they’d want to take the plunge. I’m just picthing an idea and hopefully or maybe they’ll get some inspiration or at the minimum decided this idea was a good try but not worth it to pursue.

I tried to elaborate some on how such a system may work in certain circumstances to reward players for doing well, while not giving them anything favorable for trying to abuse it.

Maybe my idea wouldn’t factor hugely if your team won, but factors into it if you lose so if you play well the MMR lost is to a minimum and you can’t tumble down the ratings as fast for playing well on your end, being you rely on 4 other random people.

In a team queue like 5 man premade, if we got such a thing, should be entirely based on a win/lose condition being you have plenty of team to coordinate, resources like voice comm. to help, and everyone is geared towards building a functional team at the start and coordinating themselves to adapt at the match start if need be/they choose.

I’m going to keep trying to move back up but at this point I’m frustrated my MMR is plummeting because of the teams I keep getting paired with. Yes I’m not perfect, I’m by no means a pro, and yes I know I need to L2P and get “gud”. But all I want is match ups where I feel we have a legit chance, players with the same competence as me at least, and to actually have a quality match.

When I enter a match and see 4 guys decked out in starter stuff, no guilds, no titles, and don’t seem to know how to type into the chat, all I think is “Great, here we go again. Do I switch classes and try to carry them the best I can? Do I just trust they can avoid being fodder? Am I just going to be typing into an empty team chat all match again trying to coordinate with them? Why doesn’t Anet allow tonics in sPvP, I could at least give the other team a laugh by charging as a Moa into mid and have some memorable experience of this match.”

Anet really needs to develop an MMR system that accounts for personal performance and team performance. Like this guy captured the most points, killed the most players, and his team won, +47 MMR. or, this guy killed the most players, decapped the most points, but his team lost, +7 MMR.

A system that rates you most actively for participation to winning conditions. If your team won, but you performed poorly (AKA; Died the most, didn’t kill anyone or help kill anyone, captured no points and decapped no points) you should gain little MMR or none, maybe even lose, to place you with players of equal skill. Let’s say you, performed average compared to your team mates, the match was close, but you lost. You should lose very little MMR because it means you’re around your skill level. Or you were exceptional compared to your team mates, you did way more, and your team won, you should gain a lot of MMR to propel you towards players of equal rating.

A system set up like this would be less frustrating for everyone because even in a losing condition team wise, you can still move up towards players around your skill level if you played well on a personal level. Players that perform poorly will move up very slowly and should fall back to their tier fast if they don’t self improve.

The biggest issue with the current system is “your” personal MMR is impacted by your team. Whether they are worse then you, better then you, or equal skill wise. In a system that is random, you control no variables too outside of duo queuing with someone you trust, the worst thing is to affect everyone’s MMR on the losing team due to 1 player ruining it, or 4.

My best suggestion is to move to a system that rates personal performance, and team performance to help move everyone where they should be respectively and attempt to provide everyone with better match up qualities. We don’t need everyone to have constant win streaks, but we need to make the losing streaks to a fairer match so we can at least walk away from defeat and say “If I wouldn’t of done this, and done that instead, maybe we could have won the match” and therefore hopefully provide everyone with a better experience and better insight on what to do next time.

Sincerely,
X

As much as I’d love to rant about the matchmaking, I’ll do something more constructive to vent my frustrations.

What is the issue with current matchmaking? Plenty. Are some people receiving the quality match ups they want? Yes. Are some people receiving match ups that are blow outs/no fun/frustrating as hell? Yes.

The current MMR system is based on team performance. It’s no secret and no surprise. You gain MMR if your team wins and lose MMR if your team loses.

Now the matchmaking has a large range it seems to draw from for MMR due to population, that way Queue times are to a minimum. You can find evidence for this on the forum and by conducting your own research. The problem is the matchmaking seems to draw from a too wide of range at times (noticeably off hours) to make fast queues.

Now this shouldn’t be an issue right? Faster queues, more games, more balanced MMRs across the board. Well the issue arrives in that the matchmaking seems to at times to stack teams (again, forum/reddit research, and you can conduct research yourself). As long as the average MMR of both teams is relatively the same, the matchmaking will pair all 10 players.

Now the huge problem in this, is that the one team can have 2 great players, 3 almost average players, matched against 5 average players.

Let’s say Team Red has; 1400, 1350, 1150, 1100, and 1100
Team Blue has; 1250, 1250, 1200, 1200, and an 1100

Red has an average of 1220 and Blue has an average of 1200. Seems like it would be a quality match up right? Well Red also has 2 players that are a great deal better. while having 1 player roughly equal to Blue’s best player and 2 players equal to Blue’s worst.

Lets say those two great players carry Red to a win, maybe even a blow out because they rotate and manage better while the other 3 guys just zerg, In theory we should be able to say the least that Blue will learn from Red’s win and pick up a few things and Red’s 3 other guys should have first hand experience of proper tactics for a win in conquest. Except that communication is often minimum before, during and after a match. That’s no secret, many people QQ in game, on the forums, and on reddit about team members not listening or responding.

You could say “Well, look. Red had a slight advantage, but blue was equally as good but just didn’t do what they should have. They should of rotated more, disengaged a losing fight, and know when to +1 and when to try another point.”

Fair enough, but let me point you to this for the lower divisions.

Team Red; 1050, 900, 900, 850, 700
Team Blue; 850, 850, 850, 750, 750

Red’s Average is 880
Blue’s Average is 810

These numbers are well within the matchmaking MMR’s limits. (Forum research, reddit, and do your own if you want again).

But this match up is destined to be a blow out for Blue. Why? Well Red has 4 players that are equal or greater then Blue’s best player(s). Red will only have to carry 1 player and Blue will have 2 to carry, plus Blue will be at a disadvantage due to having 1 player on Red being equal and 3 players better then Blue’s best 3 players.

Here lies the huge problem. In Bronze it’s easier for a team comp to be within the average limits yet still having one team stacked. And when you sum up your MMR gains or loses due to Team performance, some people literally can be stuck where they don’t belong. The system does not factor in what you as the individual has done during the match. It just looks at the fact that your team ether won or lost. Clean cut and dry. This issue can arise in other divisions because again, the MMR averages can be within the threshold but still stack teams.

I’m not going to lie, I started Silver T2 and suddenly just dropped to Bronze T3. I seem to start climbing back to my original ranking and then plummeted to Bronze T2 and I’m becoming extremely frustrated with almost every one of my teammates I’ve had. They’re not rotating, not calling targets, not +1 at critical fights, being meat fodder to the other team, double capping home at start, trying to 2v4 at Mid, not regrouping, no communication on what’s happening where, trying to fight away from points, camping at points when they could be used better else where, and some just not being able to play their class at all.

I think it’s apparent that I’m not a pro PvPer, but being I been on and off sPvP and mostly a WvW solo roamer for 3 years, I think I could at least have better match ups then this…

And what’s with being paired with all emeralds and the other team has 2 sapphires in the mix? I’m not far enough into the pip range to be teamed against 2 sapphires, only T4 Amber and it’s just getting painful with these blow out matches.

Ether MM is broken, or the game thinks my MMR is through the roof to be carrying a team like this against stacked odds…

My team went Mid, wiped, then ran around like chickens getting zerged. I was the ONLY one who would go and try to decap a point… The others fought off point and didn’t even bother trying to take home back or anything. It ended up my team gave up and they killed our lord and ended the game.

warbignime.4610:

Xter.6271:

I sympathize with you.

I was on a nice winning streak at the start and since then it’s mostly been hardcore loses.

I keep getting paired with teammates that don’t communicate, fight off point, chase one thief around the whole map for no reason, won’t and don’t rotate, zerg mid and home and end up dying anyways, and think they need three and four people at the start to cap home.

I’m no pro league here but after 3 years on and off sPvP, I think I am decent enough to not get team mates like this due to MMR. Instead I keep getting teams like this SoloQing. Most of my wins came from when I duoed with another guy. And we had a win streak going on easy.

Now? I lost 9 games in a row tonight, all blow outs, and gave up tonight on it.

This matchmaking did not get any better, instead it’s just giving lopsided matches. I won 4 games in a row at the start, then started my losing streak, duoed, won a few more and now just lose games straight because this MMR puts me with people who have never sPvPed and don’t do anything but run around like chickens.

And the MMR tanking theory for S3 doesn’t work. I proved that unintentionally. Once you hit a losing streak, be prepared to ride it out for a long time.

The thing is OP is in start of amber, like really now. People talk about enemy have higher mmr but since this is amber, how high can enemy mmr be? If OP lose this much even in start of amber then there is something fundamentally wrong with the way he plays.

Yes he is, but let’s look at this. He keeps losing and his MMR keeps going down. The game is trying to create a “balanced” match based on MMR and division. The game is now thinking he’s complete noob and pairs him up with as many people around the same MMR. But the system is having a hard time finding players who are in his division and that MMR so it expands its search into the Pip range, eventually the MM will settle with what it has to work with and create a lopsided match pairing him with low MMRs and filling the opposing team with players MMRs that are close but higher then his team’s MMR because it tries to keep “equal” skilled players grouped together. Suddenly he is grouped with players that have no idea what’s going on and the enemy team will at least have a clue what they’re doing and easily stomp his team.

I’d really be curious on how the OP’s queue times are on average. Ive generally find really long queue times means the MM gave up and settled with what it has to work with at the time. I’m not saying queue time represents this as I’ve had 30 second queue times that turned into bad games. But I do think it shows where the MM is having difficulty creating this 50/50 MMR team where one team isn’t highly favored over another and the chance to win is at least reasonable and the matches are much closer.

I sympathize with you.

I was on a nice winning streak at the start and since then it’s mostly been hardcore loses.

I keep getting paired with teammates that don’t communicate, fight off point, chase one thief around the whole map for no reason, won’t and don’t rotate, zerg mid and home and end up dying anyways, and think they need three and four people at the start to cap home.

I’m no pro league here but after 3 years on and off sPvP, I think I am decent enough to not get team mates like this due to MMR. Instead I keep getting teams like this SoloQing. Most of my wins came from when I duoed with another guy. And we had a win streak going on easy.

Now? I lost 9 games in a row tonight, all blow outs, and gave up tonight on it.

This matchmaking did not get any better, instead it’s just giving lopsided matches. I won 4 games in a row at the start, then started my losing streak, duoed, won a few more and now just lose games straight because this MMR puts me with people who have never sPvPed and don’t do anything but run around like chickens.

And the MMR tanking theory for S3 doesn’t work. I proved that unintentionally. Once you hit a losing streak, be prepared to ride it out for a long time.

Yo mama is so fat, not even Arena-Net can keep her on the table™.

I hate to sound like a downer but good luck informing players. Since the no AoE thing started, almost everyone in game is convinced of it.

I was even yelled at for killing the bubbles before they reached Copper because “they grant health to husk when destroyed no matter what!”. All the way across the room they can now heal Copper according to some.

Heck, they’re even now shouting no AoE at Thrasher because it causes it to teleport.

The mechanics were vague at first and now rumor has become “fact” because very few wanted to sort through the fiction.

darkace.8925:

Caithe’s secret is that she murdered a bunch of innocent, peaceful centaurs.

Nope because Scarlet stated that Caithe’s secret was something even Faolin didn’t know in the Twilight Arbor path. Kinda hard for Faolin to not know when she was there?

In the trailer Wynn an Caithe are seen presumably alone in a vast cave with Wynn terrified and clutching onto Caithe. Next it shows the Shadow of the Dragon emerging and giving off a roar as if it just found an intruder. Faolin is no where to be seen in the trailer in there so assuming only Caithe went in after Wynn, that now qualifies as something Faolin wouldn’t know. Plus Wynn would not share with Faolin what she knew about the Slyvari and why she was at the centaur camp (a centaur camp that is located right outside of Modremoth’s influence and far from where Ventari placed his tablet).

Now Scarlet was obviously connected to Modremoth to begin with, from her insane ramblings, toxic husks, image of a dragon of her secret hideouts roof, to her leyline study for awakening Modremoth. So would it be surprising that Scarlet being so wrapped up with Modremoth would know that Caithe’s secret is knowing about Modremoth before anyone else? I think the Trailer just released presents a valid reasoning for my conclusion with past events in the living world.

Caithe’s secret is she knew about Modremoth all along.

They encountered The Shadow of the Dragon behind the sealed door.

Why hasn’t it attacked or been seen till the attack on the pale tree? It was sealed away and with Modremoth now awake, it can get out.

TLDR; play as Caithe; fight SotD;

Tinfoil suit is now fully engaged!

I see that a program like this could be good for the community but only if implemented right with the right people.

A big question spurred into my mind was that a person(s) could not reveal, present, or communicate any inside information they obtain from Arenanet. Does this mean that Forum Specialists will receive information and they then will target discussion and collect data on the overall community’s opinion and want on certain aspect/mechanics of the game that may be implemented, improved, removed or otherwise?

If no, what is a Forum Specialist’s objective as an unofficial Arenanet representative? Are they to be more focused on creating discussion about any idea that is possible and collecting that data and any other data that may prove useful to Arenanet’s assets for improving the game.

How will these Forum Specialists be treated as individuals by the Arenanet staff and the community members. As we’ve seen before on the forums, forum members tend to harass developers when they post. Even though those persons can and often will be infactured for those type of posts, what is to prevent those individuals from being harassed in game by their user name on the forums? Will Forum Specialists have a safety guard against those that will harass them? In a perfect world this wouldn’t be an issue, but the internet can bring the worst of our behaviors out. This here would be a major concern when signing up.

How will these specialists be chosen? Even though it is based on an area of expertise, how do you ensure an individual is experienced in a certain area? Though some forum postings may show an intellect of a subject, a few forum posts, as stated by the requirements, in no way can show a full expertise of an area. And how do we determine community engagement? Some topics have been covered multiple times and constantly reappear. Does self choosing of not joining these repeated topics affect one’s standing?

Sincerely,
Xter

PeterFries.1057:

Xter.6271:

Did you take part in Wintersday’s Warming Grawnk’s Heart? It was funny how the bloodstone food appeared for it. The only real thing I can complain about is that we couldn’t give the ornaments back to the orphans. I felt bad about keeping them.

I believe that content was designed by Kevin Millard and written by Elan Stimmel. The orphans would have wanted you to keep those ornaments. Their orphanage will probably burn down soon anyway.

Xter.6271:

Happy holidays to you and all Arenanet employees!

<3

Back at you!

Lol! I can see it now, Destroyers next Wintersday swarm from beneath the orphanage, set everything ablaze! Dwarves swarm into Divinty’s Reach and use the magic snowballs to fight the Destroyers and use candy cane shaped ice sculptures to put the fires out and cool the lava pits! Dwarves recruit our help to douse the flames and lava and save trapped orphans! After enough Destroyers and pits are toast, The Great Destroyer arises again to combat us.

And so began The Great Destroyer Snowball Wars!

PeterFries.1057:

Xter.6271:

I really feel disheartened by this 6 week break now.

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me. It may not seem like it at times to you (bearing in mind that we’re working ahead), but are we doing our best to make course-corrections to address your concerns.

I wish you (and all our fans) a great holiday season as well. Thank you for nearly two and a half years of your support, strong feelings, and constructive criticism. You guys are the best!

One other thing…

Stramatus.5219:

First, I want to high light this portion of Peter’s post, IMO, this points out that what we’ve been seeing up till now was already set in stone before Ms. Hoyer joined A.net and she had no effect on it what so ever, but that in the future, perhaps beginning with Ep. 8 more likely Season 3 we’ll begin to see what kind of input she’s had and the direction the LW is moving towards.

While it’s true that Leah joined us while we were well into developing our latest releases, I can assure you that she jumped right in and began giving us her input from the moment she arrived. She had plenty of positive effect on this part of our season and she’ll continue to help us improve our story delivery. Any of the parts you didn’t like were almost certainly my fault.

Thank you Peter and I don’t mean to sound like a downer. I understand how business works and unfortunately everyone thinks this works like McDonalds, place your order and get it a minute later. A lot of work and time goes into any business trade. I am very happy to see you taking suggestions and seeing you make notes of suggestions. The interaction is very great and this is what I and others in the community love.

Did you take part in Wintersday’s Warming Grawnk’s Heart? It was funny how the bloodstone food appeared for it. The only real thing I can complain about is that we couldn’t give the ornaments back to the orphans. I felt bad about keeping them.

And thank you for being a part of the Guild Wars franchise! Happy holidays to you and all Arenanet employees!

Sincerely,
Xter

Abaric Battleheart.1026:

Is it just a rumor or will we be seeing an expansion soon? I’m hoping to hear something positive.

It’s mostly speculation/rumor. Until Arenanet makes an official announcement that they’re developing an expansion or releasing one, it’s just speculation and rumor.

PeterFries.1057:

Let us know how we did, when you get there.

As for how we’re doing along the way, keep giving us your feedback.

Thanks!

I don’t get on the forums much, and I’m sorry if this seems very whiney… But,

I really feel disheartened by this 6 week break now. I understand there is vacation time, and employees leaving to see family, travel, and do what they do on their holidays and they deserve their breaks.

The one thing I know that is going to hurt me as a player, and other gamers in the Guild Wars 2 franchise is that we had this sudden build up. We are attacked at the summit by a Modrem champion, the pale tree is in very poor health, we get confirmation that it’s Glint’s Egg, we find the Master of Peace and he dies before he finishes what he is saying, Caithe seemingly turns on us and steals the egg, and we start to learn Caithe’s past and get to a magically sealed door that is between us and potentially wrapping up why she did what she did and have to wait now. There was a lot of momentum in the story going up until now, and honestly after the Wintersday patch and on January 13th, no matter how great the patch may be, the momentum was ruined. Unfortunately this is the way things work at times but the release timing should of been better planned. The story is great but the momentum was lost now.

Another thing that is disheartening is that Rytlock’s side plot was seemingly lost and the teaser pictures put out on Twitter didn’t help. (Any of the teasers put out lately have not been helpful but rather disheartening as we get them and think of how long till we get back to this or find out what it means [Teasers images should of been released according to next update.].) I understand you don’t want us to forget about Rytlock but releasing a teaser image of him in the blindfold then no word or sighting of him in the patch really was disheartening. Even if it was just some message he left us or just a small side plot in an episode after the teaser would of been a lot better then nothing but a random teaser getting hopes up.

All I can really say is I hope the next release is as exciting as it’s being made out to be and we really are shocked by it, because the momentum is lost and I’m losing hope on Season 2 of the Living World.

Have a good Christmas and Happy New Years!

Sincerely,
Xter

style.6173:

LR is a lifesaver if used correctly.

No it isn’t at all because there are too many variables during a fight to make it useful. Anyone good at any PvP will test a thief before they hit 25% to see of they’re traited in shadow arts and purposely make it proc when it’s too late to stop your current attack so you get revealed and no way to get away.

Some builds burst too fast and too much to control when Last refuge will proc. In sPvP it’s an even worst trait to rely on due to no stealth captures.

Depending on where you tend to play a build that relies on Last refuge as a get away, I wouldn’t suggest relying on Last refuge in any application except PvE where damage is very predictable.

In WvW if you want a stealth that procs with no active combat from you, take descent of shadows. At least you control when that procs and can be used for a free get of jail card when things are sour. Even more so since there’s a lot of places in WvW where you can drag the fight to your advantage with descent of shadows.

The biggest problem to controlling Last refuge is the fact when it’s about to proc, you have to stop attacking and lose DPS or get revealed and at 25% health or below, I would not want revealed to ram it’s ugly head into the fight because you lose many defensive moves without stealth.

In short, do not rely on Last refuge as a get away or game changer because 90% of the time, it’ll make you lose against anyone who knows what you’re traited into, or knows how to control their bursts. One good timed burst and you have revealed.

First I just want to say I find the new living story very entertaining. It is a fresh and great start to our new story arch.

Now to the topic, I really enjoy the way the story is told and we are getting a look from Scarlet’s perspective and finally seeing why she was a villain. And I’m happy that Tiami’s fan girl obsession played a role. If she was so obsessive she wouldn’t of rushed in and saved her and seen what Scarlet saw through Omadd’s machine. I never expected to see the vision she did, or even engage in the actual machine (Even if by accident).

I feel in season one with Scarlet the problem was we never saw why she was like she was. In turn if something happened, we all just knew to blame Scarlet because she was this unbelievable character that just showed up (literally, conducting things that made no sense at the time and just a mess with all the things happening).

Now though that we’re seeing more and the plot thickens, I feel we’ll get answers as to why the Tower of Nightmares was erected, more on why the toxin was being developed, if Scarlet was acting according to the dragon or her own insane whim, and why some of her mismatched actions were vital. We have some insight as to what may have happened, why, and for what. But I feel we are going to get a very deep story that portrays Scarlet’s backstory and what her ultimate goal was and what this dragon is truly capable of and a great finale to finish the story arch of Modremoth.

I think in terms of perspective, with our allies we will see more of Tiami’s and see where this adventure takes her the most. I feel as this story progresses, it’ll become more focused on her because of dialogue and the importance she has played so far.

Now on to some personal speculation, I feel the reason we saw what Scarlet saw and didn’t become insane is because we were pulled from the machine before what the green orb could show us. I think seeing into it was what drove Scarlet to insanity and possibly introduced her to the corruption. Just as other plays have speculated, these orbs in the cutscene were representations of the dragons. Another note of key interest is dialogue in the episode where Majory points to Scarlet and Aerin were acting on Modremoth’s behalf. Even though it isn’t directly stated, it was enough to pick up on. And there is a Priory explorer by the centaur camp that talks about what they thought the slyvari were incorruptible. I’m gonna go back later and get the full dialogue.

Then my only question is, did anyone find anything interesting or more backstory at the centaur camp? I chatted to all the NPCs I could but found nothing to give more detail to the Scarlet story. But the centaur lore that is there is interesting and I’m surprised that Ventari is not related to this centaurs and they don’t know much if anything about him besides he shared their thoughts and custom on peace. I was fully expecting a Guild Wars 1 throwback. But at least the Nicholas The Traveler book and the mention of Yakkington on the way but a huge smile on my face.

Morsus.5106:

Fuin.8361:

This is not an expansion, it’s free.
That’s where it differs I think.

I’ll happily pay for content that keeps me busy. I beat the LS in about forty minutes to an hour, and I don’t plan on replaying for achievements. That’s two weeks between logins. If they want to do LS they need to be able to release content in a timely enough manner to keep me logging on. The original Guild Wars released a campaign every year, adding two new classes, around 350 new skills and multiple new zones. One year of living story and we don’t have nearly that.

There’s a big difference between Guild wars 2 and the original. I played the original since a month after release and Guild Wars 2 since head start.

In Guild Wars it was easier to implement new classes. They used basically the same model for creating the new animations as we only played as a human. In Guild Wars 2 there are five races to do then. Then two more for each race because of gender. The counter argument is that with small variety of skills compared to guild wars, it should be easy. But each one has a variety of weapons with their own unique animations so adding that up with 10 models, 2 for each race, it can be quite daunting with all that. So maybe they are in the process of (a) new class(es). They just want it to be right when it hits and wait for the right time. Why would a new class suddenly hit when we haven’t advanced anywhere in game so far? Maybe later in LS2 we’ll get a surprise. Then it can be implemented more smoothly then a new class suddenly popping up. They are trying their best to stay in lore it seems. And like I said before, after the LS1 season and the bickering here, they don’t want to rush or release content too early now in fear of bugs and a community back lash.

The LS has added 2 maps (one small and the other uninviting), one WvW map, and one dungeon with the temp. holiday stuff and other changes. Even though it’s not impressive, it shows they have more behind the scenes going on then we know. Somewhere a dev said they can do a map in about 6 months. So looking at the WvW map and it’s size and mechanics, I think I can safely say that new frontiers will be added in LS2 but in chunks that make sense and build their story up. There’s more to the dry top map then the world map shows. But you gotta glitch out the map and there’s some mysterious characters and random npcs and stuff outside where we are suppose to be in Dry Top.

And to address the skills Guild Wars had added, unfortunately we will not see mass amounts of skills in Guild Wars 2 due to the devs objective of having a simple balance of classes. Understandable due to the imbalance in Guild Wars with all the skills. But it is sad, one reason I loved Guild Wars.

All I can really say is just play when you want and catch the updates. Guild Wars 2 is nice in the aspect it’s all been free and you can hop back whenever. Even nicer there’s no power creep or anything you have to grind towards to complete the game. The grind is there if you choose so. So don’t stress much over not liking Guild Wars 2 much or being online everyday. You can hop back in whenever.

Honestly I see the nerf stealth threads mute. I use to main a thief before I went onto an elementalist. Thieves are fine and after maining a thief since head start it’s very easy to counter a thief in stealth. You just need to observe your opponent and decide when to make your move. I crush thieves on my elementalist, if they stealth typically wait a second then ether port, block, or use a skill that will put distance from where you’re at or use one that negates melee damage. This prevents the thief from landing his most potent skill. Yeah he can retry again but it’s your duty through active play to prevent him from getting the advantage and getting into stealth or landing that skill.

If you see a thief will dual pistols, he’s not a threat and even if he runs venom share with thief guild and pirate runes to do a mass condition bomb, just wait for the venoms to be used then cleanse. No more conditions then and the venoms have a long recharge along with the thieves guild. And P/P has no stealth outside of a weapon swap/utilities and he can only really spam #3 or auto attack.

Shortbow is used more for distance and running away then fighting with thieves typically. Ether let him spam his evade and his initiative is out then close the gap or keep the gap closed the whole time.

Sword/dagger is tricky and is normally more on an evade build. You’ll have to read and observe your opponent’s attack pattern and when he busts out those evades and time it right. Rarely will these thieves use stealth and if he does, like before put distance or use a skill that negates melee skills. The next feat is countering the thieves gap closing with #2. Watch where he ported from with it and drag the fight back to where he originally used it. No gap closing needed and puts him/her in more danger if they decide to disengage.

Sword/pistol is easy. Avoid the pistol whips, and the blinding powder. If you need keep some gap to prevent those.

If you see a thief use shadow refuge, then ether unload some AoE or auto attack and watch to see if you hit the second skill in the auto chain, if a thief uses shadow refuge they are trying to disengage because they’re low on health or the fight is mute. Chances are it’s because he’s low on health and just a few simple attack will down him and then it’s about making sure he can’t resurrect himself. All you gotta do when he’s downed is land an attack on him while he’s in stealth so bandage won’t work and you negate his regeneration in stealth if he has it traited so.

The only trickery set up is a well played P/D thief. But just outplay him as above and as long as you manage your skills and health you’ll outlast him and beat him.

If you’re doing WvWvW roaming, then expect thieves to get away unless you duel there. There’s a lot of directions he can go and critters to stealth off of. A thief that runs, lost. Even though you don’t get loot for his defeat, consider it a show of skill that you beat him. But chances are you would only get a spike for his death and not a precursor so really don’t worry about the loot.

Thieves are not an issue, stealth is not an issue, the issue is people wanting an easy button. You people don’t complain about me stacking my boons through my own combo fields while I damage you and become more of a threat as the fight progresses. The simple solution is to just prevent what is causing the issues from happening and as the old saying goes. “The simplest solution is the best solution”.

Regards,
Xter

Boneheart.3561:

I am absolutely appalled by ArenaNet’s wanton behavior with my subscription monies. When I walk into a small, convenience store that I’ve purchased a 75 cent oatmeal creme pie from in the past, I expect the store owner to be on hand when I assert that the inventory needs to change and the aisles rearranged. That’s just basic economy and ArenaNet is just clearly not operating with all their marbles.

I may consider the possibility of thinking about the chance of cancelling my subscription. What do you have to say to that, TrashNet?

I like the sarcasm, but it was to blatantly obvious. Please try to make it more angry and realistic while maintaining the sarcasm.

On another note, been patiently waiting and kinda would like the vendor to be at least open. Why enable the option menu to view the rewards but not be able to view the reward menu? I get the ticket thing with people not having the right amount, but why enable us to view the option of selecting the rewards menu when we cannot view it? Kinda teasing?

But unfortunately I don’t see this issue being resolved soon because of the way season one went. And if we’re going to keep the policy of “No one gets the rewards if some cannot”, may we just delete the tickets from the database and start a new if the problem gets fixed. They’re taking up space in my inventory and I don’t want to hold on to these things for forever hoping it gets fixed. Then again, don’t do that. Cause then everyone who didn’t get a chest will get one and there will be a bug causing those who did get a chest to not get the new currency. In my honest opinion, can we just enable the vendor already?

Well that’s my thoughts, guess it’s a free bump. One of the very few times I’ve logged into the forums to say anything.

Rahar.9872:

Xter.6271:

Rahar.9872:

Just the fact that you have to resort to making an entire build to even think about killing a Warrior speaks volumes.

Nah, I’m sure this would do well against other builds too. Just the Meta Hammer Warrior build was the target since everyone says their brother and dog use it.

All builds have a counter(s), just like all builds have their pitfalls. No one build can destroy everything out there, unless something is seriously drastically out of balance.

You’re right, but you also missed the point of my post. Having to resort to making a special build to even think about standing toe-to-toe with warriors, as opposed to simply learning to fight them, is the core problem and a sign that the profession is getting out of hand.

And as it stands right now, a Warrior condi build with LB + S/S can destroy everything out there.

Well as I see it too, you need to resort to a condition cleansing build to deal with most necros. Or be really fast with the take down. Rangers I generally need more gap closing and stealth to deal with one that can play well. Bunker Guardians I’m resorting to S/D with more offense then defense. And so on, so on. The Warrior seems to be the Meta right now according to the forums and some in game chat. Well, countering the meta includes adapting to it too, and I’m sure there are people who have and people who decided to adapt to the counter meta. Just choose what you want to play and enjoy it. If everyone is so intent on killing these meta warriors, which everyone and their dog plays, why not counter it and enjoy more kills because the meta is the most popular and more people play the meta.

(Hint: This thread is some what serious, and some what sarcasm at people QQing about Warriors.)

Rahar.9872:

Just the fact that you have to resort to making an entire build to even think about killing a Warrior speaks volumes.

Nah, I’m sure this would do well against other builds too. Just the Meta Hammer Warrior build was the target since everyone says their brother and dog use it.

All builds have a counter(s), just like all builds have their pitfalls. No one build can destroy everything out there, unless something is seriously drastically out of balance.

Ok, so some people have been complaining about these Hammer/Mace Shield wielding warriors.

Oh my, they’re scary. And we poor thieves with no way to get stability except an elite and stealing it.

10/0/0/30/30

Ok, so trait Mug on your Deadly Arts.

In Acrobatics you need

1. Vigorous Recovery
2. Pain Response or Quick Recovery, I don’t care what you choose.
3. Hard to Catch

In Trickery
1. Uncatchable
2. Initial Strike
3. Hastened Replenish or Sleight of Hand, again I don’t care which.

Go with berserker armor mixed with knights. Whatever you feel more comfortable with. Even soldiers if you want. Honestly I don’t care.

Equip Traveler’s Runes, 6/6. You want that 25% movement speed for WvW and to be a a bit more mobile.

For your healing skill you want Withdrawal. This is a mostly nonstealth build.

Your Utilities should be
1. Shadowstep
2. Roll for Initiative
3. Spider Venom

Your main weapon set should be P/P. Your second one can be whatever. S/D be best for in your face if you can dodge stun skills well. Again, I don’t care. SB if you want range and evades with easy poison and swap Spider Venom for Assassin’s Signet or whatever you want.

Now, engage Hammer Warrior. Keep your distance by timing your dodges and using your dodge trops to your advantage. Use body shot to immobilize and keep warrior at bay. Keep popping Pistol one to keep condition pressure up and make warrior waste any cleansing he may have active. Passive ones, just time it. Pop Spider venom when you’re ready to start your mini burst. After you pop it, unleash an unload from hell, but putting a body shot inbetween them may help you from him just dodging. After all is said and done, pop a steal then roll for initiative. Now whenever you have him in a certain threshold of health, let him come to you. Perferably when Spider Venom is ready. Have poison on and some bleeds on him. Let him get close, pop blinding powder and unleash your bundle of axe spinning. Maybe you’ll down him, maybe not. If not, get distance and keep him at bay again, keep it up. You can shadow step and pop a blinding powder too for easy get away then.

Hard to Catch will give you one free “stun break”. As in you’ll teleport away and wait it out safely mostly. Shadow Step is your back up/tool to distance/gap closing. Roll is for initiative mostly but can be timed for an evade and initiative or just an evade. Withdrawal is your distance gainer and heal. Simple, yes?

There’s my half kitten attempt at a counter. Stop QQing and deal with it till future change happens.

Sincerely,
Another thief

phabby.8945:

So whats your wish for wvw????

I know mine is

1) stop the one hit on keep doors to contest them
2) Buff to Thief’s Stealth
3) new bigger maps

hope you all share your wish list maybe the devs might add some of them into the game in the near future

cheers

My only question is when you say 2. Do you mean buff as in we don’t need to stealth as much to be “good”? I know there are good non-stealth builds for thief but the meta is more focused on stealthing.

I main a thief and I think we need ways to put stealth more on the backburner even though it’s our class mechanic. I’m not saying we kill stealth, but make more viable options instead so we can still have our class mechanic, but spice it up a bit more. I don’t know how to execute such a thing and have no suggestions except lets not touch the current stealth mechanics but maybe tweak stupid things and add other options for healing/condition cleansing.

The only other things I want to see is;
1). Less Zerging
2). Siege upgrades/new siege
3). More WvW Abilities
4). Maybe another map
5). WvWvW to not be linked to map completion. I got my map completion but I feel the pain of other people stuck in tiers where they can’t get footing on a map. I was lucky when I was a hardcore WvWer and Ebay had control over every map a while back.
6). Maybe a holiday/special day event related to WvW to make it maybe comical/more engaging for other players that do not WvW as often. The special finishers always gave me a chuckle with some of them. Nothing big but the little things can make you motivated to do something new.
7). Commanders have better options of organizing and directing their squads.

That’s about it for me lol.

And the QQing to stop about Retal. Nothing wrong with it, just play smarter and you’ll be fine. I’ve never died from Retal or been hit for massive amounts of damage at once. Like 4-6k at the most because I just went willy nilly and then stepped back and went “Oh my, I better stop and think…”

Send some to me (: It’d help with my legendary lol. All I need is lodestones and clovers/gifts of might and magic…

Yamsandjams.3267:

I still think they should just remove chain stealthing entirely… not stealth stacking, just the immediate restealth on unstealth.

They already have. It’s a debuff called revealed. Whenever you deal damage in stealth you are revealed for 4 seconds, soon to be reverted back to 3 seconds.

Doomdesire.9365

Shadow shot while spamming backstab before the second attack of shadow shot completes.

Instant 900 range teleport gap closer that gives a backstab. Any good D/P thief would do that.

Oh my, I believe you are refering to my 2 suggested class counters. Welp, you’re wrong. Sorry.

If a necro feared you while you were stealthed and gained some distance, chances are, by the time you are in range and use the skill, you’re already unstealthed. If he was smarter he’d lay wells on top of himself too. Very not great to be in that position.

If a mesmer pulled you from your BP with his Temporal Curtain, he better be smart enough to pull you a good bit. And even then, by the time you get up and get back in range of the BP, you MIGHT get one HS over it. If he knocked you back during your HS with Greatsword #5, you don’t have the time to get up, and Shadow shot him. You gotta remember the skill activation times too. If that mesmer was smart too he gain some distance to be out of range.

And every class with a crowd control can do this. Hell even on my thief I could lay that knockdown trap, take 4 steps back and laugh when he goes right into my trap. Wasted his stealth, I can stealth off him, and wait till he pops and pop an unload and maybe something else. Hell I could even Scorpion Wire him out of BP.

Be creative.

Travlane.5948:

gotta understand ….they complainersa bout nerfing MUG are NOT the d/d or the d/p players…..its the s/d players….its the p/d players the ones that go mixed dmg and want mug to really help round off that dmg. .

I’m a P/D and I have no reason to spec for mug the majority of time. In fact I don’t because it’s more useless then anything for me to be honest. I don’t need that damage to help with killing someone. My base damage alone along with the annoying bleeds and my unloads from stealth take out targets quite fine. I don’t have major issues facing anyone with it, just the occasional bunker Guardian or bunker Ele at which point I decide if I want to continue an almost pointless fight or disengage and let them be.

With this “nerf” to mug with a buff in healing, I might drop the 3 initiave on steal I get from trickery and respec it into mug. 2k healing > 3 initiave on a skill I barely use right now. Then I might have a better reason to utilize one of our class mechanics and the same goes for a lot of thieves.

Yes some thieves use it as a gap closer to get to targets, they’ll have to decide though if they really want that gap closer or they want to save it for the heal. That is just planning your best tatics. Do you really need that heal or that gap closer? We can’t have our cake and eating it too. If we could, we’d all have OP builds and OP classes.

Funny that someone mentioned the revealed debuff in this thread. It was changed to 4s because of the Culling issue. Did it change anything really? No. Did it make our class feel clunkier? Yes. Did it help stop the QQing of people on the “perma stealth” thief. Very little. You have to realize that Arenanet has to take the vast majority, or what seems like it from a very vocal minority, player base’s wants. We can’t all have our wants. Did they admit it was a mistake though and are going to revert with this patch? Yes. They even buffed Flanking Strike. If you say it might be worse, the evade might be, get over it. Not everything is perfect off the bat. And we can tell (like the Ranger class and Engineer’s issue). They plan to work on it, so be happy we thieves are seeing some more positive changes. If you just want them to release everything when it’s dead perfect, we’d be waiting for a long time. They have a prioty list and things they need to do, but they also have to have meetings and discussion on what is the best route. They can’t just change things on the spot.

Rome was not built in a day, nor by one man.

I’m just going to laugh at this. D/P seems effective and I have tried it and played against D/Pers. The same QQers are the same that can’t handle most other thief builds. You see a D/Per getting set up for his move, ether evade out of range and give him a reason not to chase you down in stealth then unleash hell in that 4 soon to be 3 second gap (You have longer though because of set up.) or just let him do his thing, let him HS you. Then evade out of the way, for a thief it’s easier with shadowsteps but you can do it. He loses his BS and now will ether stealth again with BP+HS and waste more initiave to try again or burn a utility/heal.

D/P can be annoying but with patience in a fight you can burn them down to where they wasted their utilities and initiave and heal to try and get you, or they run off and save you both time.

Necros, have you tried to look for the animation of BP and then evade the intial shot that blinds you, then try fearing when they do HS. You just wasted precious stealth time for them to BS you.

Mesmers, have you tried using Temporal curtain as soon as they fire BP? You can pull them right out of their BP. BP+HS Stealth only works if there’s a BP field close enough for them to HS through and if they waste a HS to get close then a HS to stealth, you wasted initiave. Keep that up and hell, even use GS #5 when they HS at you from BP.

Just keep doing that. Engineers, just pop a net turret. That’ll screw them up enough if they don’t take it out.

And even if you can’t be bothered to learn or time a counter, just run away. Or run long enough they burn a few HSers. Most thieves will chase you down when you run because you appear to be easy or intimediated/scaried. Let them burn those for a gap closer and once they do, turn around and give hell. He won’t be able to pop BP+HS and will be forced to burn a utility or heal. If you are good enough and can time things, you can prevent that from happening and get them.

Yes, I am happy for this “nerf”. We now have another form of healing. Personally I might use steal more often then a way to finish someone off fast in emergency or to get a skill (Fear, Whirling Axe, Mesmer Boon thing [Whatever that is called], and Healing Seed) that may turn things more in favor for me or to change the tide of battle.

Yes your thief burst build may be hurt a little, but stop QQing. It’s for the better of the community. Find a new build or find how to make your burst just as viable, I hope this does cut down on bursters a little cause I’m sick of a thief running up striaght in front of me then Stealing and I CnD before they do, gain some distance between us and go Pew Pew with my pistol main hand and a few seconds later they fall dead or shadow refugee and I play spam the SB poison and blast finishers for damage, poison, and weakness and then wait for them to pop back up but downed and not doing well.

My opinion is that this bursting then getting the hell out of dodge play was not intended as much as it is used. That is why people hate thieves and why I hate facing other thieves because they bust in, go bursting, then they ether killed someone or they go “Oh crap, better skate” and they run off and try it again. Yes I’m venting but anyways.

I will enjoy this small buff as it makes
-F1 even more usable to us non-bursters.
-Promises similar buffs in the future to help us stay alive and heal without stealthing as much
-Will cut down the QQ on thieves because a few of them burst with it
-Adds to the benefits of certain stolen skills and with trickery increases its usefulness. (Stealing Healing Seed and the healing bonus it gives with Mug and the damage it does. Yay.)

Things I will not enjoy about this buff
-Nothing. Hell even Flanking Strike gets better!

I think we are seeing a turning point in nerfs and we will get more buffs to help us out and make our game play styles more enjoyable.

Now just to buff P/P and S/P please? I miss using S/P in WvW but now it’s just my occasional weapon swap for finishers (Dazing a target with low health that’s about to heal and downing them).

~Sincerely, a happier thief.

What’s your two’s playstyle? Different proffesions have different playstyles. To be honest.

try the mail box. If I remember correct that’s where you’ll find it. Or check the wiki to see where it is.

They needto seperate WvW and PvE in some aspects to be honest.

Keep the condition stack cap in WvW because face it. In the current zerg-fest WvW is, 25 bleeds is enough to take you out in seconds once you run out of condition removal. I been in situations on my thief that conditions have killed me far more then that zerker warrior or that zerker ele blasting into my face has. Zerker is only great for bursts there, I’m guilty of being a “Zerker Thief” but I have a few pieces to up my Vit and Toughness. Not a true glass cannon but playing smart and patient in fights for my moments to strike downs far more people then me blasting in with a Mug, BS, Heartseeker to death. I’m not even traited for mug, mostly Shadow Arts and Arobatics with a few in trickery and a few in Critical Strikes. This is all personal choice though, it’s a game and do what makes you happy.

In PvE I think they should remove the condition caps. And all armor in aspects (PvE, WvW, SPvP, tPvP) should recieve a small buff to condition damage, healing power, and etc to make them more optiomal. Maybe world bosses like Teq, Shatterer, and Claw of Jormag should have a condition cap where ever is more balanced. Because in those situations, they could easily have 250+ stacks of bleeding with all the people. The healing would be better in dungeons and other instances because not all of us are on the same “Skill level”. More “lower skilled” players might need more healing then some of us and other “skill levels” might want it to ensure they are staying up and giving team support so no one drops like flies.

From what I seen, this game does not favor any trinity with support. There are skills that go well and combo finishers, but who really uses these tatics? It’s more common to see in PuGs that there will be so much to combo off and no one uses it. I’ve been in a few PuGs where I see all these combo fields and I just switch to my Short Bow and blast finish them all for Might, Ret, Protection for the team, and then I do it to apply burning, chill, etc with my blast finishers damage to enemies. Often times I get questioned what I’m doing and once I got kicked for utilizing the combo fields. I’m not saying everyone ignores these, because I see in some PvE and A LOT of it used in WvW but they are generally very well organized groups of people that have aimed for these effects, in PvE with PuGs, it’s more of just striaght DPS all the time.

That’s just my opinion and some things point more to players not utilizing it, and some to suggestions to the Devs. Take my opinion as you will because I’m not going to argue with anyone about it. And some of it was off topic very well, but it relates to my main idea of “Some fault is the players, and some the Devs”. I’m not targetting the A-Net team ether of bad designs. I’ve played Guild Wars 1 since launch and GW2 since headstart and I love both games very much. I’m just stating what I think will make other aspects better then everyone looking and choosing one aspect because it’s the meta by both players and some design.

I Support this!

viperior.2461:

Wow, Xter! Thank you for your incredibly detailed response! That’s exactly the type of info I was looking for. That makes sense that the Mystic Forge would have a lower min / greater max potential earnings than salvaging.

I don’t really care how much money I make from this, since I’m doing it for the sake of knowledge and confirming existing theories with well-documented, hard data. I will be Fraps-ing the entire process and will compile the data into a spreadsheet to produce conclusions and graph the information.

The ultimate question, then, is which approach would be more helpful to improving knowledge in the community? Confirming ecto drop rates or documenting Mystic Forge results?

Well, I’d say the Mystic Forge would be a better experiment for the community’s sake. You could help document and confirm what exotics the forge may return, and help verify the rate of returns. In edition you may make your money back with a precursor return to help fund more samples or for personal sakes.

Another thing if you did do another sample, try doing the first all at once, then the second in small segments. That’ll help test if the forge has diminishing returns too like the anti-farming mechanics in the game. The exotic yelid may be higher in segments compared to doing it all at once like many of us do. That’d help explain why some players toss 500+ rares in without many exotic yelids/precursors yet some of us (I being guilty of this) throw in 3-5g and get a precursor and nice exotics.

A sample size of 1,000 is not big enough though to help confirm a DR, but it’s a step in the direction and hopefully more players will contribute their yelids in similar fashion to obtain a true average of what the Mystic Forge rate of returns are and mechanics such as diminishing returns.

Keba.8930:

That has been a very interesting reading Xter. I just want to share my experiment with the Mystic Forge. Two weeks ago I managed to store a large quantity of rares in bank to use in the Mystic Forge because I wanted to know it was better to sell them. I had collected 54 yellow items (level 76+) that I valued at 12 gold. I also put in the Forge all of the rares that it gave me back.
Results: 4 exotic items
- Deathwish ~ 8 g
- Ruinmaker ~ 4 g
- A piece of armor ~ 3g
- A torch ~ 1g
Total ~ 16 g
It’s true that I had an effective gain of 4 gold compared to the 12g if I had sold them but this is to me the proof that the Mystic Forge shouldn’t be used.
The gain comes from the Deathwish, what if I had got another weapon worth 4 gold less that it?

Thank you.

Are you sure it was 54 rares? 100% sure? If so we can throw your results in the sample even though it was a very small sample, everything helps.

Are you sure those were your returns also? If so then find out the other names of the two exotics. Depending how detailed the OP wants to be, he can also compile the rate of returns of exotics. I assumed he wanted to throw in all weapons which was my fault, but if we are using a mix of armor and weapons then the results of the item returned are bigger.

So there’s another question for you OP. Are you using only weapons/trinkets/armor or are you planning to use a mix of two or three? If you want to be detailed detailed then you need to decide. I would suggest only one type like all weapons and see the rate of return of different exotics. That’ll help find the Mystic Forge’s rate of returns of precurors which so many players seem to be after.

Well you need controls and all that. The level shouldn’t matter too much, but to be safe for accurate results, all rares should be the same level. Everything else on the rare is trivial for ectos sake.

Next you need to decide what kit. Master Salvage kit has a rough rate of .9 ectos per item. Black Lion Salvage Kit has a 1.25 ectos per item. Obiviously the BLSK is best. But most people use a Master Salvage kit so I’d choose that one for this experiment.

If you’re going to Mystic Forge a 1,000 rares, you don’t need a heavy control of level. 75-80 is good being the forge will promote it to 80 anyways if you mix 75s with 77s and 78s. The Mystic Forge has a rough rate of 20% of promoting rares to exotics. So with the left over rares you did forge, are you going to throw them back in? Or no? If so, for how many times? Till you run out, or only reuse the left overs once, twice, thrice?

I’ll do the basic math here though.

Salvaging 1,000 rares with a Master Salvage kit would be 1,000×.9= 900 ectos about. depends on RNG. Ectos are worth 25s about. So 900×.25 (25s is 1/4 of 1G) = 225G

Mystic Forging 1,000 rares with a 20% exotic turn over rate. So 1,000/4 (It takes 4 rares to get 1 item back) = 250 items left over. 250×.20 (250 items returned times the 20% exotic return rate) is 50 exotics. Leaving you 200 rares left over about. All this is in theory of the current statics. 50 exotics can be 50G-1,000G depending on the price and what you get. Precursor being the best, 1G exotic the worst.

So now you have 200 rares left over from Mystic Forging, are you reusing them, or salvaging them?

Salvaging will yelid about 180 ectos and be about 45G.

Mystic Forging will yelid 200/4 = 50 items returned. 50×.20 = 10 exotics with 40 rares.

40/4 = 10 items returned. 10×.20 = 2 exotics with 8 rares.

8/4 = 2 items returned. 2×.20= .4 exotics and 1.6 rares. Being we can’t have decimals you can get 2 exotics, 1 of each back, or 2 rares. We’ll say rares due to RNG being at 20%.

50 exotics first run + 10 exotics second run + 2 exotics third run = 62 exotics returned out of 250 attempts first time + 50 attempts second time +10 attempts third time + 2 attempts fourth time = 312 attempts total

62/312 = 19.871795% of success. But remember I did not add 2 exotics the last time. So lets add them in so 64/312 = 20.512821% of success. Now lets range the data a hair for a better min and max. One test yelids lets say 55/312 and the second yelids 71/312.

55/312 = 17.628205% of success
71/312 = 22.75641% of success

So our average is between 19.871795% to 20.512821% and our min is 17.628205% and the max is 22.75641% of success.

In the end, if the player collected statics are accurate, salvaging is a more reliable way of recieving the hard earned money of those rares, while Mystic Forge can potentionally yelid more depending on the rate of success (About 20%) and what exotic is returned, which is a variable we can not statically find right now. So if you like gambles, Mystic forge your rares and potentionally recieve great exotics/precursor or if you want it “safer”, Salvage all your rares.

EDIT: I forgot Trading Post tax, which is 15% correct? I do not remember it off the top my head, but take 85% times net income to get total balance after tax.

A lot of you don’t know Guild Wars 1 lore at all which tells you. I’m just going to quote the wiki here because I’m to lazy to type it. It explains everything.

“Despite the serpents’ retreat, the gods never halted their work creating the world, and with the benevolence of indulgent parents, they decided to create magic. It was to be a gift to all the intelligent creatures—meant to ease a life of toil and make survival a less arduous task. When they had finished creating their gift, they presented it to the humans and the Charr, the Tengu and the dwarves, the minotaurs and the imps, and all the races of the land.

But the gods had not counted upon one thing—greed.

Wars broke out immediately as the magical races fought for dominance. So much destruction was wrought that humans found themselves at the edge of extinction. When all seemed lost, it was King Doric, the leader of the united human tribes himself, who made the long trek to Arah, the city of the gods, on the Orrian peninsula. He gained an audience with the creators and begged them to help, to stop the wars and bring peace to the land once again.

The gods heard his pleas, and they intervened.

The forging of the world was complete. As their final act, the gods gathered back their gift of magic from all the races and trapped it inside a tall stone. They smashed the stone into five parts—four equal but opposing stones of magic, and one keystone. Without the keystone, the other four couldn’t be reassembled.

Each of the first four stones was the embodiment of a specific school of magic: preservation, destruction, aggression, and denial. Magic would still exist in the world, but the devastating power of all four types together would never again be at the command of one single creature. Those who accepted the gift would have to cooperate if they intended to use it to its fullest.

The gods told King Doric that since he had asked for peace, he and his descendants must carry the burden of protecting the stones. As an additional precaution, they used a drop of King Doric’s blood to seal each of the stones.

Then the stones were dropped, one by one, into the volcano off the southern shore of the Kingdom of Kryta, and the gods left this world forever, confident that they had balanced out their gift and circumvented greed."

That’s explains why they were called the Bloodstones and everything and why the Gods left the world. They never came back but still listened to the people until we hit GW2 lore where even contact with the Gods was gone.

So in topic of this thread, The Humans would have a HARD time fighting any other race without their Gods. They could put up a good fight (Let’s hope there’s not another Foefire somehow lol) but in the end, without aid somewhere, it’s only a matter of time for them.

Going on the past, The Charr would have a rough time getting their troops to bid their will perfectly. There are no Gods anymore to keep them fighting, so there has to be another motivation. But the Charr could probably come up with something.

The Asura would have a ROUGH time getting together based on their Guild Wars 1 traits and modern traits. They tend to disagree a lot, only Bookahs seem to get them straight lol (GW1 reference to your playable character). If the Asura did manage to agree, there would be a tough line of technology to get through, and from the 250 years from GW1, I’m sure they have a lot more to offer to the battle field if pushed.

The Norn would have the roughest time gathering a military force. As seen in Guild Wars 1, it toke an almost armageddon to rally the Norn to fight the Destroyers. But once they get going they fight to the death. One of the Norn’s greatest hero’s toke out Jormag’s tooth with a single attack and it is now in Hoelbrek. That’s a little scary right? They’re biggest problem is rallying because they are normadic by nature.

The Sylvari would probably not get involved unless it was a threat the Pale Tree. From their teaching and the centaur who orignally planted the Pale Tree, they are not fighters and avoid conflict unless they are in danger or the Pale tree is. But from some hearts quests, this seems to only apply to plant life so they might be more willing then I said above.

All in all, each race faces great problems to wage an effcient war.

I see a lot of posts forgetting/neglecting Guild Wars 1 lore.

Someone said the “Charr killed their own gods”. False, that’s just the opening line in the Charr creation story. The Charr never had true gods. In Guild Wars 1, Pho to be excat, the Charr actually worshipped the Titans. Why? Because a Shaman found them and had got a cauldron (Which caused the Searing [Destroyed the Great Wall and allowed invasion into Ascalon]). The Charr themselves NEVER knew they were following false promises. The Shaman leader had betrayed their race for gain. How? If you played Nightfall and roamed the Realm of Torment there was a Charr there who said he did “great deeds” for the Charr gods and did not understand why he was there when he died until later he realized he was decieved. The titans later were defeated by the Humans (with the help of the Shining Blade [Human], the Vizer [Caused Orr to sink with one powerful spell], A Seer [Help the Humans fight the Muursat by Infusing their armor to prevent Spectral Agongy from killing them instantly {He was also an ancient being that the Muursat once raged war on with his race and he is the ONLY one seen in GW1, so we can assume he was the last one left, but he seeked revenge and gladly helped the Humans for this purpose.}], The Dwarves [King Jalis faction to be specfic, The deldimor, who helped the Humans in the far Shiverpeaks and in return the Humans helped him take back their fort.], and Glint [The first dragon ever meant, She had forseen the Flameseeker Pho. and guided the Human heros]. The Undead Lich controlled the Titans. He seeked to conquer Tyria in the first Guild Wars game but failed needless to say. Later in the Eye of the North expansion, the Charr are realized to have “New Gods” AKA the Destroyers. The Charr used them to give their soliders the morale to fight, but the destroyers actually killed the Charr who thought they could control them in the one mission. That is where Pyre (A Hero in GW1) said that the charr should pass this message on “The Charr have no gods” because the leaders used that to control their troops and give them morale.

Someone else also said that the Humans would because they overcame crsis after crsis. I would have to disagree because they ALWAYS had help from other races or beings. I covered Pho. already. In Factions you had the help of the two factions (Kurzick and Luxon [Both Human] but you also had assistance by supernatural beings (Kirin anyone? He helped cleanse the one mission in Shing Jea, showed up later too) and Kuunavang (The second dragon ever meant [Not the Saltspray dragons even though she is one too, they are not counted because they were not friendly and not a major NPC or character.] She helped defeat Shiro but giving the human heros celestial skills. The Tengu also helped but were not a MAJOR story factor later.

In Nightfall we had the aid of the centaur, Joko who showed us how to cross the desert, and Dehjah who helped defeat the drought. Can’t forget we also had the aid of the Gods in the Realm of Torment defeating the Lich Lord and Shiro again (Statues that when cleansed, the Gods gave you buffs, but you had to do it while fighting the Lich and Shiro! The Lich was easy, Shiro always got you and was HARD without those buffs in HM.)

In Eye of the North we had the help of the Dwarves again who turned themselves to Stone to help repel the Destroyer forces so you could face the Great Destroyer. We also had the aid of the Asura, Norn, and one Charr (Hero Pyre) to defeat him and to even advance to him.

I missed A LOT OF other lore in game that shows humans always had help with their tasks, but I got the main squeeze of it.

Thought I’d share (: I got Spark early today with level 80 rares. third try too!

I’ll agree that it SUCKS facing a server that just steamrolls every BL and just conquers EB in a few hours. Last week, on Emhry, I remember facing Kaing. It sucked, but a lot of us from FTF and a few from Soul were still in WvW.

The Karma was GREAT capping supply camps constantly. Then the commanders were zerging forts by us (To no real aveil, but we were trying even outmatched!) which created a lot of distractions for our 5-10 man groups capping supply camps.

I remember getting spawned camped by Kaing. What did we do? Picked them off, one by one. I was on my main (a thief) and there was 2 eles, about 3 or 5 warriors, 2 guardains, and a ranger going at them. The eles and warriors would burst one of them and a C&D/Backstabbed the guy on seige and bursted him to death while everyone else was focusing on the others. Then I’d slowly take the seige out, stealth and retreat to the safe spot and the others would follow. We’d let our CDs finish, heal, and plan who is next and do it again.

Yeah it sucked and we died a few times outside our own safe spot, but hey, we got way more kills then they did sitting there.

When we didn’t get spawn camped, we roamed/got supply camps and got stragglers. Even did the JPs a few times while some of the Kaing were nice enough to let us do it.

This whole thing may not be fun to you, I understand, but hey, why not make the best out of a bad situation? I know I sure did and felt proud that even though we were not competitive, I was still taking names and doing something to help my server.

Hopefully soon we see an improvement in tiers, but hey, till then, lets just try to enjoy what we can? Or atleast move on till everything sorted itself.

[/quote]

I agree with you, silly goose. lol I was being sarcastic.

I was saying that you require people to think and I was being ironic in my initial response.[/quote]

Haha ok, hard to tell over the internet!

People don’t think, that’s the problem. They try killing a thief, who has to use dodge, stealth, and evades to survive, by standing still and duking it out.

Cactus.2710:

Xter.6271:

Honestly i’m sick of seeing the whole thieves are overpowered thing. I play as a thief and I love my thief but we are not that overpowered. We are real squishy in a fight so we have to always be moving and dodging. Yeah, honestly the stealth thing is annoying when trying to kill us, I’ll admit it having 1v1 many thieves. But there is a solution.

Think what a thief does when low on health, he’s going to stealth and retreat, right? Well what’s the first place he’s going to go? Far away from you, in the opposite direction, and if he was a smart thief, he’d use Shadow Refuge for around 10-12 seconds of stealth depending on their traits. Before he gets that 12 seconds of stealth, he has to stay in that circle for roughly 4 seconds or he gets a debuff called revealed. Means he is forced out of stealth. So he is trapped in his little circle for about 4 seconds right? As a thief, I switch to my shortbow and using the Choking Gas, Poisons the thief there. Then I can spam my #2 skill which is an exploding arrow. So two things happen. #1 I kill the hiding thief because he was low on health and used that as an escape with almost any health or #2 He runs away is revealed and I kill him, or my conditions do. Either way, he never gets far.

That’s actually not quite the way Shadow Refuge (or the revealed debuff) works. Shadow Refuge is a pulsing ability that gives the thief (and anyone else in the circle) 3 seconds of invisibility for each of 5 pulses. The first pulse is instantaneous so the five pulses are complete in 4 seconds. Invisibility stacks in duration, so if the thief stays in the circle for the full 4 seconds he gets a total of 15 seconds of invisibility (4 in the circle and 11 out of it). If he leaves after 3 seconds he has 12 seconds of invisibility, etc. Leaving the circle before the full 4 seconds are up does NOT make him immediately visible … it merely means he will become visible before 15 seconds expire. There is, of course, a trait that can extend all of that for 1 second.

The revealed debuff does not, in spite of what the official Wiki says, turn the player visible. What it does is prevent the player from going invisible again for the duration of the debuff.

Most thieves, if they are really planning to escape, will try to use as much of the invisibility offered by Shadow Refuge as possible, which means they will probably hang around for most of that four seconds. As you say, AoE is the way to go, but surprisingly few enemies use that against me and the ones that do usually quit way before the four seconds are up. If I get caught in a zerg that’s throwing down lots of AoE, though, I’ll often be dead before I ever leave the circle.

No the revealed debuff forces you out of stealth and if you leave Shadow Refuge before the four seconds you get revealed. I know, done it before.

Archonis.7249:

Xter.6271:

Archonis.7249:

FourTwenty.4268:

Archonis.7249:

The last two comments just make me sad as a gamer.

Let’s take out the core mechanic of a class because I think that it is too hard and the removal makes it easier for ME.

dont let the bads get to you. i have faith that anet will work on culling before they touch stealth. then they can assess the actual situation.

however, I dont think they’re balancing classes based around WvWvW, and I dont every hear anyone say thieves are OP in spvp or tpvp or even pve. So I think the thieves are safe for now.

It just gets so annoying. Every day I log in and see Thief is OP, OMGERD nerf them!

If it isn’t Stealth, then it is Backstab, Heartseeker, Cloak and Dagger, Dancing Dagger, Pistol Whip, Black Powder, Daggerstorm, Basilisk Venom, Thieves Guild, Blinding Powder, Shadow’s Refuge, Scorpion Wire and even our auto attacks.

Everyone complains about every ability we had, it almost seems that if every non-Thief had their way. We would be absolutely useless and in most cases it is simply L2P, Have Stun Breaker or Condition Removal. Every other profession can make an extremely balanced build (you can be tanky and have respectable damage or do good damage and have a decent amount of survivability), but as a Thief you can’t. You either become tanky (using the term loosely) by using Stealth and stacking Toughness and Vitality, in which it takes forever to kill someone 1v1 or you can make a High damage build that has very little survivability.

I agree with you, that I don’t think that the game is being balanced around WvW. IF they did, PvE would be out of control and not challenging in the slightest. I think that the balance changes that we see are based around how the professions perform in PvE and SPvP.

I agree with you fully that everyone complains about everything. If thieves get nerfed like everyone wants, then what are we suppose to do? Be a 2 second body shield?

The simple solution is what I posted above. Because everyone whines about stealth but no one seems to use common sense about our stealth abilities. Hate CnD? Kite with a ranged weapon. Hate Shadow Refuge? Do what I said above, we trap ourselves in a small circle for 4 seconds. Hate thieves with a dagger in general? Or even a melee weapon? Learn to kite better.

I love seeing the responses on here about thieves needing a complete nerf on stealth. Reroll as a thief and DO NOT ever use stealth in WvW. See how much it will hinder a thief all together. You people just need to learn a small hammer will break a glass cannon.

What you mean think? Oh dear lord, we can’t have that.

It is hilarious. I had like 10 people last night chasing me around in WvW. A lot of them had green arrows on them. I ended up killing two of them (before people say ZOMG SEE NERF THEIF, they were wearing their starter armor) before I had gtfo of Dodge. When a Thief goes stealth, it is so funny because people act like you just aren’t there anymore to them Stealth is equal to Alt+F4. I literally was standing in front of someone and he just stood there until my stealth wore off and this Warrior was full exotics, so there shouldn’t be an excuse of not knowing how to play. IF I was a BS thief, not a P/D he would of got blown the kitten up.

Seems like WvW is full of terrible players lately. I am thinking that people are just doing WvW because it is so much quicker to level when running around in a zerg capping kitten, than to play PvE and Story in order to learn your profession. Better yet, hop into some SPvP and get a little more intimate with your knowledge of your profession.

Wow that was hostile. Clearly you didn’t read my posts. Or you’re just trolling now. I play a thief, I do NOT think we need a major nerf. Just one that takes us out of stealth when we take damage during stealth, or condition damage while in stealth that was NOT prior to stealthing. Would solve a lot of issue. The problem is that no one will try and take down a thief the logical way. They stand in one place and auto attack and face roll their keyboard.

I’ve had my fair share of moments in WvW where I was outnumbered and have killed groups of 3-4 people. Did I abuse my stealth? No. Did I kite, dodge, and use my skill bar to optimize my evades and DPS? Sure did. Doesn’t mean I’m abusing my class mechanics, means I’m using them to the fullest while everyone against me stands almost completely still trying to faceroll the keyboard.

Besides the whole unstealthing when taking damage, thieves are perfectly fine.

Archonis.7249:

FourTwenty.4268:

Archonis.7249:

The last two comments just make me sad as a gamer.

Let’s take out the core mechanic of a class because I think that it is too hard and the removal makes it easier for ME.

dont let the bads get to you. i have faith that anet will work on culling before they touch stealth. then they can assess the actual situation.

however, I dont think they’re balancing classes based around WvWvW, and I dont every hear anyone say thieves are OP in spvp or tpvp or even pve. So I think the thieves are safe for now.

It just gets so annoying. Every day I log in and see Thief is OP, OMGERD nerf them!

If it isn’t Stealth, then it is Backstab, Heartseeker, Cloak and Dagger, Dancing Dagger, Pistol Whip, Black Powder, Daggerstorm, Basilisk Venom, Thieves Guild, Blinding Powder, Shadow’s Refuge, Scorpion Wire and even our auto attacks.

Everyone complains about every ability we had, it almost seems that if every non-Thief had their way. We would be absolutely useless and in most cases it is simply L2P, Have Stun Breaker or Condition Removal. Every other profession can make an extremely balanced build (you can be tanky and have respectable damage or do good damage and have a decent amount of survivability), but as a Thief you can’t. You either become tanky (using the term loosely) by using Stealth and stacking Toughness and Vitality, in which it takes forever to kill someone 1v1 or you can make a High damage build that has very little survivability.

I agree with you, that I don’t think that the game is being balanced around WvW. IF they did, PvE would be out of control and not challenging in the slightest. I think that the balance changes that we see are based around how the professions perform in PvE and SPvP.

I agree with you fully that everyone complains about everything. If thieves get nerfed like everyone wants, then what are we suppose to do? Be a 2 second body shield?

The simple solution is what I posted above. Because everyone whines about stealth but no one seems to use common sense about our stealth abilities. Hate CnD? Kite with a ranged weapon. Hate Shadow Refuge? Do what I said above, we trap ourselves in a small circle for 4 seconds. Hate thieves with a dagger in general? Or even a melee weapon? Learn to kite better.

I love seeing the responses on here about thieves needing a complete nerf on stealth. Reroll as a thief and DO NOT ever use stealth in WvW. See how much it will hinder a thief all together. You people just need to learn a small hammer will break a glass cannon.

Fiorrello.8126:

Xter.6271:

As a thief, I switch to my shortbow and using the Choking Gas, Poisons the thief there. Then I can spam my #2 skill which is an exploding arrow. So two things happen. #1 I kill the hiding thief because he was low on health and used that as an escape with almost any health or #2 He runs away is revealed and I kill him, or my conditions do. Ethier way, he never gets far

the problem with thieves is two fold (you have heard this before, but probably just conveniently forgotten); the stealth mechanic denies your opponent information, you don’t know where they are going you only know where you would go. so for the duration of the stealth you have to act with no feedback on what your actions are doing if anything.

and the second problem is that thieves are the fastest class in the game. it seems to me that arena net is unaware of what a problem this is and how incredibly powerful mobility is to allow this to happen. what this means is that stealth completely aside a thief can get away from a fight if they so choose and with stealth they can get away from ANY fight AND initiate any fight.

this allows the thief to build for glass cannon specks that are denied to other classes because they have a built in safety net to their class mechanic that no other class comes close to matching. while this may have some innate balance in pve, in pvp it makes for a completely broken class.

the thief puts every other class on notice in WvW, forces us to gear ourselves with the threat of a thief in mind and adopt tactics based on the assumption of a thief being present at all times. after talking to guild mates who main thieves i’ve come to learn that the best possible hard counter to a thief is another thief, something that your post hints at collaborating.

this is why the thief needs a severe nerf, or the future of guild wars 2 and WvW will find itself populated by nothing but thieves.

I will admit the stealth is a little unbalanced but that’s the tatic for now. I really think they should implement a mechanic that makes it so if they are hit (Melee/Range/AoE) by anything in stealth, they are forced out of stealth. Even if it’s just an AoE condition they get hit by, but all condition damage prior to stealth doesn’t force them out.

And I have to disagree with the worst enemy for a thief, is a thief. I can kill thieves easily, because they all use the same tatic, glass cannons, or just terrible at other mechanics of the class. My worst enemy is a warrior or guardain. I’m not specced as a glass cannon where I can do super high DPS to kill their health pool, but I’m not specced as a tank/conditioner who can handle them for prolonged peroids. I’m inbetween so I can fight them and keep them distracted without using cheap stealth tricks and the same tatics, but I can’t output my DPS enough to overcome their healing. So in those situations I can ethier keep them distracted so they contribute nothing to their server, I get some back up to help, they get back up, or one of us gets bored/tired and runs off.

Honestly i’m sick of seeing the whole thieves are overpowered thing. I play as a thief and I love my thief but we are not that overpowered. We are real squishy in a fight so we have to always be moving and dodging. Yeah, honestly the stealth thing is annoying when trying to kill us, I’ll admit it having 1v1 many thieves. But there is a solution.

Think what a thief does when low on health, he’s going to stealth and retreat, right? Well what’s the first place he’s going to go? Far away from you, in the oppoite direction, and if he was a smart thief, he’d use Shadow Refuge for around 10-12 seconds of stealth depending on their traits. Before he gets that 12 seconds of stealth, he has to stay in that circle for roughly 4 seconds or he gets a debuff called revealed. Means he is forced out of stealth. So he is trapped in his little circle for about 4 seconds right? As a thief, I switch to my shortbow and using the Choking Gas, Poisons the thief there. Then I can spam my #2 skill which is an exploding arrow. So two things happen. #1 I kill the hiding thief because he was low on health and used that as an escape with almost any health or #2 He runs away is revealed and I kill him, or my conditions do. Ethier way, he never gets far.

You just have to understand and think about what skills they are going to use. I use less stealth but admittely I will stealth to get away when I need too. Besides 1v1 and maybe 2v1 fights with a thief, in the zergs or anywhere else on the battle field, besides killing Doylaks, they don’t have many run options, and die fast.

If you really want to complain about OP, complain about the Golem armies built with supplies from other maps. They can get annoying.