Guild Wars 2

aydenunited.5729:

You won’t get it, Knyx. Facts are not valued on this board, nor do several people know what a fact is… or math.

BTW, I play Engineer and have no problem with Thieves. 1v1 I kill them much more often than they kill me. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m a mediocre to upper-mediocre player, but I’m tired of hearing that only thieves defend thieves. It’s not true… and honestly, I could care less if they get nerfed, I just hate to see an ignorant, mouthy flashmob ever get what they want.

QFT. Right now I think the actual best professions to play are engineers, mesmers, and warriors in terms of fun. Guardians are a little dull and seem turtle based, and elementalists really need some buffs or they should get weapon switching something just seems a little off on them maybe it’s that the attunements don’t vary as much as to make up the disadvantage of not having another weapon set.

Thieves are a one trick pony right now and need some changes. Rangers similar deal as I’ve found only traps and bleed builds to be very effective. Necros are bug ridden and have only two viable builds atm.

Ixal.7924:

bwookie.3807:

Ixal.7924:

Knyx.5926:

@lxal
Feel free to share and enlighten us with this “ACTUAL EVIDENCE” you claim to have.

I mean clearly you really are that ignorant to think a screenshot can show how quick someone was killed.

Clearly, you are THAT ignorant to think a video in wvwvw with all orb buffs is a basis for balance

Clearly, you are THAT ignorant not to understand even the basic mechanics and functions of a warriors frenzy to get why the hissy fit started in the first place, your just another inept troll who only saw the damage and not the frenzy on cooldown. Ahh you didn’t know that did you. I bet not, clearly you are far too new.

Or perhaps edited video suffices? Where someone can cut out the 20 times the thief died or had to run away but only kept the 1 time he killed. Silly rabbit.

With such ignorance, I am surprised Darwinism hasn’t caught up with you yet. Tis’ the world we live in.

And I am also not ignorant enough to think that a video showing spvp and tpvp gameplay from a thief downing players in seconds like for example in Jinzu’s video will change your mind.
I spend enough time on the thief board to know that most thief players will never accept any evidence that there is something odd about backstab. They always come with baseless accusations how the player downed by a thief sucks and can’t play or build glass cannon no matter his equipment.

Jinzu’s video is edited. It doesn’t include how many times he fails, or dies or whether his team ends up winning the match. If all you care about is one build and not how effective it is in actually winning games then you have a real problem with finding any balance.

Let me guess. Thief player? Like I said, no evidence is good enough…
Actually that is how classes are balanced.
According to you an ability with a 5 minute cooldown which randomly kills an enemy in the match with no way to defend against it is balanced because its not necessarily game deciding.

Chill dude. I guess you really haven’t tried a backstab thief. When it works it’s great. But it doesn’t work all the time in tPvP which is really where these kinds of balance questions matter. If it gets nerfed I really don’t care since there is nothing stopping me from playing another profession which is a strength of Anet’s PvP. But it isn’t really as gamebreaking as people make it out to be. I am more convinced of people saying burst in general needs to be toned down to slow the pace of fights, then people rabble rousing over just the thief. League of Legends has a great esports scene because there is a lot of variety to the comps even though teamfights and ganking can be decided in seconds just like Guild Wars 2 at the moment. Anet needs to figure out which direction they want to go in for esports because as it is right now it isn’t ready. Teamfights can be a chaotic looking mess right now and team comps are kind of stagnant with the whole bunker situation. You generally want more fluid action and strategy.

Ixal.7924:

Knyx.5926:

@lxal
Feel free to share and enlighten us with this “ACTUAL EVIDENCE” you claim to have.

I mean clearly you really are that ignorant to think a screenshot can show how quick someone was killed.

Clearly, you are THAT ignorant to think a video in wvwvw with all orb buffs is a basis for balance

Clearly, you are THAT ignorant not to understand even the basic mechanics and functions of a warriors frenzy to get why the hissy fit started in the first place, your just another inept troll who only saw the damage and not the frenzy on cooldown. Ahh you didn’t know that did you. I bet not, clearly you are far too new.

Or perhaps edited video suffices? Where someone can cut out the 20 times the thief died or had to run away but only kept the 1 time he killed. Silly rabbit.

With such ignorance, I am surprised Darwinism hasn’t caught up with you yet. Tis’ the world we live in.

And I am also not ignorant enough to think that a video showing spvp and tpvp gameplay from a thief downing players in seconds like for example in Jinzu’s video will change your mind.
I spend enough time on the thief board to know that most thief players will never accept any evidence that there is something odd about backstab. They always come with baseless accusations how the player downed by a thief sucks and can’t play or build glass cannon no matter his equipment.

Jinzu’s video is edited. It doesn’t include how many times he fails, or dies or whether his team ends up winning the match. If all you care about is one build and not how effective it is in actually winning games then you have a real problem with finding any balance. Following that logic and it just becomes whack a mole with a fotm build getting nerfed every week. Which is way worse for the whole e-sports thing. League of Legends is successful because they have a lot of different viable team comps. What Anet should be doing is giving a lot of the professions more ways to win matches to increase the variety of team comps. This is done through either widespread changes or class rebalancing. Not the tweaking we’re seeing now which will only change the fotm.

Ifrit.7296:

bwookie.3807:

Jordan.9132:

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

No more timing than is necessary to dodge a specific blow. Avoiding steal and cloak and dagger is more difficult. If you toughness is not 0 then you should only be taking about 5k damage from the steal and cloak and dagger combo MAX. All the people who quote ridiculous numbers for the backstab combo are either 0 toughness or got hit in WvW or are warriors who had frenzy up.

Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.

Wow you are claiming steal+cloak/dagger+backstab = 5k dmg in total?
I know on my ranger i run ~1800 toughness and still get hit for EACH of those for >4K.

On crits with glass cannon build, yes. On non crits that’s the damage it does. A lot of thief builds use steal w/mug and cloak/dagger. I’m not counting backstab which can do anywhere from 6-10k. With some outliers. But average combo is around 15-17k damage. If you have more health, or have protection boon you’re not going to be downed and can heal after the burst negating a lot of it. Nerfing mug or cloak/dagger isn’t really targetting backstab. If Anet wants to nerf backstab all they have to do is tone down assassin’s signet.

10% damage on 10-12k backstabs, 5k steals, 5k cloak and dagger. You do the math. 10% is a significant boost. Then you can get another 10% from runes of scholar. 5% from Sigil of Force.

How else do you explain 15k backstabs from backstab that does 2k base?

Parakeet.6083:

Zsymon.8457:

I see a lot of wildly exaggerated claims flying around about thief damage.. whenever someone actually tests it and gets hard numbers, the damage is like 3x lower than what people claim they get killed by.

There are plenty of screenshots showing the high end of thief damage at round 15k, and it is average to hit for 10k.

Higher than 10k is usually due to superior bloodlust sigil which should be nerfed. It just snowballs too quickly.

Yeah, well they decided to make stealth bursty in nature. It’s why thief attacks are best coming out of stealth. It’s how we stack bleeds with pistol, backstabbing, daze with the sword. The short cooldown is central to thief getting any kind of dps on par with other classes. Stealth isn’t about positioning, it’s about using it to get our best attacks out. Anet’s design choice for rogue class instead of making stealth last longer for position and ambush. Instead we get shadowstep abilities for that.

That’s because it really doesn’t matter. Being a glass cannon and dying from full to 0 or being at 75% health and getting killed by a nerfed backstab combo there is very little difference. People want to be able to have these nice 30 second fights solo but also want to be glass cannons. The answer is to roll a bunker for long fights and roll a glass cannon and stay with a buddy if you want to prevent dying to backstab thieves.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

bwookie.3807:

Please show me this 6-8k damage from Mug that is not a crit and why would you waste assassin’s signet on Mug when it has a fixed damage rate versus the best weapon coefficient of a stealthed backstab?

Read the OP, it should be clear. You are making claims I didn’t. I would show you, but I don’t have my western digital 1TB storage yet, when I do I will make vids

A screenshot will do. You state in the OP 5k on crit for mug which is about right. Which is based on crit chance and crit damage. A glass cannon build. Now you’re saying 6-8k which doesn’t jive. Unless you’re talking about WvW. You’re overstating your numbers with every post.

Please show me this 6-8k damage from Mug that is not a crit and why would you waste assassin’s signet on Mug when it has a fixed damage rate versus the best weapon coefficient of a stealthed backstab?

Please show me this 4-6k damage on Steal on a balanced geared opponent. On all the golems in Heart of the Mists on a non-crit mug does around 1-2k. So for every thief build that isn’t rolling heavy crit chance and crit damage – Steal w/mug does appropriate damage for a trait. Just because a glass cannon thief can do 4-6k on a 45 second cooldown on a crit doesn’t mean it’s OP. You nerf mug and you just force every thief to be a glass cannon to do decent mug damage.

XII.9401:

To sum it up:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes

No. They can 4 button (turn on the computer, launch the game, login, queue, etc., Apply venom, hit 5, hit F1, hit assassin’s signet, get behind the target hit 1 ) down people, but they still need to be finished. A lot of classes can 4 button down people. Only the thief can do it from stealth…scary I know.

Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes

What does this even mean? Stealth lasts 2 seconds most of the time, 3 seconds if traited. If you can close gaps without being seen in 3 seconds most classes can do it to with proper positioning. In other words L2P.

Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes

No. Immobilize and stuns kill thieves like everyone else even when they stealth since they still don’t move. If they use infiltrator’s arrow it’s the same as another class using a blink or teleport.

Can thieves Restealth?yes

This is the most annoying part of the whining that goes on from people who don’t understand thief game mechanics. You can only restealth if you don’t break stealth with an attack. Otherwise you have to wait three seconds because you get the revealed debuff. This is by design. Everytime you see a thief seem to immediately restealth it is because they didn’t attack while stealthed.

Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.

Any action breaking stealth is just silly and would make the point of actually being in stealth fairly pointless.

The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.

It is L2P. You’re complaining about game mechanics you don’t fully understand.

Jordan.9132:

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

No more timing than is necessary to dodge a specific blow. Avoiding steal and cloak and dagger is more difficult. If you toughness is not 0 then you should only be taking about 5k damage from the steal and cloak and dagger combo MAX. All the people who quote ridiculous numbers for the backstab combo are either 0 toughness or got hit in WvW or are warriors who had frenzy up.

Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.

Just hit endure pain when he steals to you and let him waste his backstab combo. Then fight as normal with half his utility skills on cooldown. If you still lose it’s a l2p issue.

If we believe that score is mostly dependant on timezone coverage than transfers definitely impact the scores and therefore the ratings and thus the matchups. So transfers are precisely what is messing up Anet’s GLICKO system. There is no settling of ratings if people can up and leave every 24 hours to servers with different ratings.

Free transfers definitely messes up the matchmaking system. Just take this matchup for instance. SoS is clearly not a T4 server anymore with the new transfers. Right there is a perfect illustration of how free transfers messes up the GLICKO ratings. People left HOD and now it’s getting clowned. Transfers are messing up the ratings.

Guts.3514:

I have way better survivability than any mesmer I face. Their downed state is really simple to deal with. A lot of people don’t seem to know that you can tell the difference between the mesmer and his clones by the giant red down arrow above the mesmer when he’s downed. His clones won’t have this.

The problem with mesmer downstate is that it’s the best by far in 1v1. If you get downed after my mesmer I will win because their Phantom Rogue downstate skill does tremendous damage which will allow me to rally. They can also do 20/20/0/0/30 and just wtfbbq with shatters every 15 secs doing 8-9k aoe damage on the capture point. Additionally timewarp and moa is just way too powerful in a teamfight.

Kolache.3964:

bwookie.3807:

Kolache.3964:

bwookie.3807:

Thief mobility is exaggerated. It is the best because no cooldown, but other classes all have good escape skills. Warriors can use their Bull’s Charge and Sword Leap with swiftness to escape just as easily 90% of the time. Elementalist can use Ride the Lightning and Blink. Mesmers can cloak just like thieves and blink as well. It’s not like you have to stay and fight with the other classes.

How many classes have a short cooldown or no cooldown on:
Runspeed and
Blink and
Vanish?

Uh initiative is a cooldown system. It’s just a global cooldown that we have to also share between weapons. So the tradeoff is we can spam skills but we can’t swap weaponsets to get all new cooldowns like other classes.

Runspeed is a waste of a utility slot for sPvP. You should be relying on swiftness.
Blink is superior than infiltrator’s arrow because it’s also stunbreak.
Vanish, I guess you mean stealth which is kind of what makes the thief different. It isn’t better than block in most cases. You can’t cap points while in stealth, player’s pets can still see you in stealth and follow you around leading people to wherever you are hiding.

I like how you make initiative sound like a compromising system since you are only able to effectively spam your single skill instead of being able to (or having to) weapon swap to get the job done.

So stealth doesn’t count because “I’m a thief lol”, teleport doesn’t count because it doesn’t include a stun breaker, and runspeed doesn’t count because you shouldn’t use it. Yeah, I guess you’re right under those circumstances thieves don’t have superior mobility.

Initiative is a design choice Anet made. It just seems people seem to think it’s some godly thing when it’s just cooldown through a different mechanism.

Stealth is just stealth there isn’t anything special about it. It’s part of the class and was probably integral to the design of the class in the first place. There is no removing it without fundamentally changing the class. As for the rest of your examples I was just illustrating other classes get similar abilities. Runspeed of 25% isn’t all that great in sPvP. I’m not sure what’s controversial about that. Thieves have the best mobility (non-combat) but not necessarily are the best at escaping a fight. All the classes have skills to do that.

Kolache.3964:

bwookie.3807:

Thief mobility is exaggerated. It is the best because no cooldown, but other classes all have good escape skills. Warriors can use their Bull’s Charge and Sword Leap with swiftness to escape just as easily 90% of the time. Elementalist can use Ride the Lightning and Blink. Mesmers can cloak just like thieves and blink as well. It’s not like you have to stay and fight with the other classes.

How many classes have a short cooldown or no cooldown on:
Runspeed and
Blink and
Vanish?

Uh initiative is a cooldown system. It’s just a global cooldown that we have to also share between weapons. So the tradeoff is we can spam skills but we can’t swap weaponsets to get all new cooldowns like other classes.

Runspeed is a waste of a utility slot for sPvP. You should be relying on swiftness.
Blink is superior than infiltrator’s arrow because it’s also stunbreak.
Vanish, I guess you mean stealth which is kind of what makes the thief different. It isn’t better than block in most cases. You can’t cap points while in stealth, player’s pets can still see you in stealth and follow you around leading people to wherever you are hiding.

The main problem with thief is that burst is about all we can do. So can a lot of other classes. Hundred blades is vastly underrated. Bull’s rush isn’t as easily avoided if you use it short range as well as Bolas. We can’t build bunker, so we’re relegated to being roamers. All classes can escape fights almost as well as a thief. Really the one overpowered class right now is mesmer. They have the best downstate. They have portal. Their elites are awesome. Guardians also need to be looked at as they are pretty much guaranteed being able to revive people properly built. 2 bunker Guardians can pretty much hold graveyard against all comers.

Thieves need other choices other than just focusing on damage. Right now there aren’t any even venomous aura (Anet needs to buff the range on the aura too 300 is really small) is weak compared to other support builds like ele’s, engi’s, mesmers, and guardians.

QSpec.4298:

@bwookie

Bunker builds are there to specifically counter thieves.

Once thieves get brought down a tiny bit and other classes get buffed a tiny bit, I think you’ll see less mando bunker builds designed to 100% counter the roaming thief.

Bunker builds are meant to hold points versus all comers till help comes. With retaliation and protection able to be up near 100% one guardian can hold off a team of 3-4 vs 1 if they are good at what they do. Especially on specific points like clocktower and the side nodes on the first two maps. Thieves really aren’t necessary for the current meta. We can burst down one but after that we’re nothing special. With the down state mechanics our burst doesn’t need to be nerfed. If you aren’t alone and you are on a decent team they can prevent you from being finished and revive. Only baddies who are solo will lose to burst thieves.

Nerfing damage of thieves really does nothing for balance as our only role right now is damage. Our support abilities are lackluster compared to other comps you can run.
All you need is a cc breaker to counter backstab right now and a pbaoe fear, stun, block, blindness, knockdown, launch, teleport or daze which will cause a thief to miss their combo and be forced on a 45 sec cooldown with half their utility skills gone and being squishy. The problems with backstab are just people panic and just sit there and eat damage then come onto the boards and whine.

Thief mobility is exaggerated. It is the best because no cooldown, but other classes all have good escape skills. Warriors can use their Bull’s Charge and Sword Leap with swiftness to escape just as easily 90% of the time. Elementalist can use Ride the Lightning and Blink. Mesmers can cloak just like thieves and blink as well. It’s not like you have to stay and fight with the other classes.

The problems with Thief is that they are very role specific. We are essentially roamers who when built to burst are useful to their teams. But we aren’t necessary to team comps like bunker builds. Our combo field choices are poor (shadow refuge is our only good one), poison is just a weak condition compared to the other two, our traps are really poor, and our weapon selection is very sparse considering we’re a class that should have more choices at least equal to the ranger in terms of perspective with other non-magic classes.

And the biggest pet peeve of all is that stealth has no effect on spirit weapons, pets, and clones. It would be nice if it would make them drop target as well in stealth because right now a smart player can use them to basically obviate 50% of the advantage of stealth, which is not knowing where we are.

This is a big issue. People who don’t have SSDs seem to sometimes just hang and get kicked off the borderland because of it. My server has no one on that map because half the people who respawn have issues with that south western spawn point.

Truth is that all of the servers are High or Full most of the day and night. It’s jumping into WvW that is dependant on winning and losing. Which is probably why morale is such a big decision maker. Maguuma being ahead through the weekend made the PvE and sPvP players come in to either get some map locations or skill points and help out. Which ends up winning the match. Ehmry and Yak’s should try to get the rest of their server to login to WvW and show them a good time which will improve their performance in the next match. The people are there, no need to recruit from outside the server. Best of luck to everyone in the next match.

ThaOwner.7560:

sorry maguuma its hard to hear you up here. dont think we’ll be playing you, we actually move up

Wait, what about the alliance?

Stick to the plan.

Only a few people even bother putting guild/server tags in their posts so you’re talking about maybe 4-5 posters? As for rudeness you can’t crosstalk in game so really it’s limited to this trolly forum where all sides seem to be either boasting/whining/white knighting depending on the day of the week.

The truth is that at our tier it’s down to morale more than anything that wins matches. Ehmry Bay is not helping themselves by constantly being negative in map chat/team and in these forums. I think Ehmry has some good players and some terrible ones much like every server.

TC has good morale, which is why they had good attendance last week and which is most of the reason why they won their matchup. We should all take a page from their book and try to play to have fun. It’s getting a bit ludicrous in here with all the trolling when you can’t crosstalk; you can’t even see other player’s names beyond generic invader/defender and guild tags. WvW is a server effort trying to single out anybody is a bit silly. Especially in this no holds barred 24/7 design. You need lots of people logging in often around the clock to win your matchup. That’s what everyone should be trying to accomplish.

You know lightning can destroy orbs. Randomly. It’s something Anet should fix.

Why would TC want to go fight stronger servers? I don’t think a single server that won last week is winning their matchup now. Except for HOD.

Your suggestion is a short term solution. It isn’t really morale that is effecting player dropoff. It’s just people are smart enough to know that a match has been lost intuitively so decide to wait till next week. Human beings are great at figuring out cost benefit. It’s why economics works. It may work the first week but when the score does eventually pop up it will reinforce their views and they’ll make assessments not even seeing a score the next time and may even hasten player dropoff if they predict wrongly.

Really ArenaNet should put a surrender vote in so that people can move on to the next match instead of having to wait till a global reset. Keep counting the scores but allow servers to majority vote to reset and restart tallying. Then still have the global reset each week or two weeks.

celeron.3469:

DB here, we went from 9th to 6th against teams with the same rating at the time. I don’t believe we will drop that much considering JQ is rated 200 points higher than both of us. We are going to either not move at all or go down to 7th at most. If I knew IoJ or SoS’s rating before the ET match we could probably solve this more easily, but they didn’t seem to move much anyway. So TC shouldn’t be worried imo.

I don’t want it to happen either.

Edit: I found it. IoJ dropped 26 points and SoS dropped 50 something. They got a beating too, so we shouldn’t drop much.

Yeah but you went up a lot of points. It really depends on where TC finishes. If TC ends up with 300k score as well then they’ll jump up 3 spots and be number 8 on the list. Ehmry Bay ended up with us because they won huge the last round. TC and Maguuma lost and pretty much stayed where they were. Most likely EB and Maguuma will be taking on whoever is beating the crap out of the lower tiers.

That’s the problem with the score right now in skewing the current ladder system. Uncontested overnight points end up adding huge to a server’s score and so you get a lot of movement to the servers that win their matchups. Last week pretty much every match ended with 100k pts lead or more by the winner.

There aren’t negative points for a loss is what I’m saying. You just gain less points. So your point total determines your rank. If you guys are 6 but not getting a lot of points you will be passed by whoever is winning big in the two tiers below you (they will be the new 5 and 6) if the tiers are fairly close together and they are. Only the top 4 servers went into these one week matchups with a significant point difference.

Rhyis.7058:

DBs way up the list from our last pairing (probably because they stomped Mag and TC so hard). TC will probably be up against 1st and 2nd place finishers in the Blackgate/ Gate of Madness/Yak’s Bend match up. And Mag/EB will probably fight 3rd place.

Doesn’t matter. DB is getting spanked right now I believe, and they jumped up that high from winning one match. It’s possible TC will be paired up with them again.

Sharpclaw.7510:

bwookie.3807:

What’ll be funny is TC will not be laughing if they go up a tier. Most likely TC will be facing Dragonbrand again. We’ll see you guys the week after that.

Shockingly, I’d welcome it. If anything, that match up taught us a lot. Would we win? I don’t know; especially judging from queue data and the fact that they’re also very smart players or, rather, there’s a lot of good guild coordination on that side. But we learned a lot from that match so, if anything else it’d be fun because it’d be interesting.

What it comes down to is logging in and playing at all times. The only times people dominate the map and pull down mega points is when they are unopposed. Has nothing to do with skill. When the servers are full point spreads are very close. Just from design of the maps; how easy it is to take keeps and towers and how hard it is to defend when you have most of the map and a full team of two opponents attacking points closest to their spawn.

TC has had very good attendance so far this week but my guess is it’s by 30% (from extrapolating from ArenaNet’s 30% of the playerbase has tried WvW; it might even be a much smaller percentage) of their server and doing that week after week is not possible. People will just get tired. The only ones who will be at the top tier are the servers where the WvW players flocked to. Which is not surprisingly HOD, and the other top score servers that got that rank from the round of 24 hour matches. All you can hope for is that your server gets better tactically and strategically which is where the real fun is. Trying to match the efforts of the top tier servers with a population that just isn’t as interested in WvW just isn’t going to work long haul.

What’ll be funny is TC will not be laughing if they go up a tier. Most likely TC will be facing Dragonbrand again. We’ll see you guys the week after that. There is really no point bragging about anyone’s prowess in WvW – among our three servers our point totals from the pinned thread put us within spitting distance in terms of ranking. We’re probably all evenly matched it comes down to who logs in most and at the wee hours of NA morning. Anyone who is trying to brag is just fooling themselves. We’re where we are because that’s where the scoring system put us and it’s probably more accurate than people saying, “On our best day…we are really top tier”

I had doubts about ArenaNet’s ELO system but if we get good matchups like this within only the first two weeks the future looks pretty bright. Brofists all around.

The Skinny

Tarnish Coast spymaster, Mittens, walked into the dive off Lion’s Arch known simply as “The Dive” gripping his cloak around him mysteriously. His eyes looked askance at the great GOON general and approached him with dread.

“Good Evening, Sir.”

“And who might you be?” Thundered, GOON general, Jerk Jerk, as he gripped his mug of ale and peeked at Mittens quailing in his boots.

“I’m but a humble messenger, of the residents of Tarnished Coast. We have a proposal of pppp-r—rr—rropitious proportions, my lord. We ask of you to refrain from attacking our keeps and towers so we may win this weekly battle of the mists.”

“WHAT!!?!” bellowed, mighty Jerk Jerk as he threw his mug into the hearth with a crash. “What perfidy is this? You ask for us to join with you in this scurrilous undertaking. Ask the mighty GOON forces to serve your cause?!? Inconceivable!?!?”

The bar suddenly grew still at the crash and only the sounds of the creaking of chairs and the noise of the street could be heard as all talk quieted. Mittens could be heard exhaling sharply in a gasp as his eyes darted nervously from the sudden attention of all eyes and ears.

“B-b-b-bbbut, my lord, it would be advantageous for us to join together. We are but weak during the nocturnal hours of the moon and Ehmry Bay is strong with the drink of Mountain Dew and cheetos. We do not ask it freely but offer you a thousand badges of honor for each keep and tower you take from Ehmry Bay.” Mittens reached into his cloak and retrieved a large bag which clinked with a metallic solidity as he laid it onto the table.

“A thousand badges of honor you say?”, said fat General Jerk Jerk as he leaned his bulk into the back of his chair with a bemused expression. His chubby fingers pulled at the short hairs of his beard as he scratched the underbelly of his neckbeard. “A thousand badges of honor sounds like a fine sum indeed. Perhaps we do indeed, can do business. Serious business.” He looked at the bag at the table and swept it up in his mighty hamfist and tucked it under his belt.

“Myy-y-y-y lord?” quailed, Mittens as his fingers nervously plucked at his cloak strings.

“Very well! My good man! We shall be your huckleberrys in this dastardly deed.” The awesome GOON General rose to his feet with the floorboards creaking ominously under the enormous weight of a goon in armor. “I shall summon a CONCLAVE of my goon brothers and we shall plan for this early mornings assault on Ehmry Bay. By tonight you will have won through the weight of our forces.” He held out a meaty hand and Mittens did all he could to grasp but a meaty forefinger in his tiny delicate hands.

“Th-h-t-ht-h-ank you, my lord. I will make haste to my masters and tell them that the GOONs are with Tarnished Coast!” Mittens could not take his leave quickly enough and could not wait to be out of the dusty and grimy bar. He hurried out of the bar and into the night.