Guild Wars 2

Personally, I don’t like the idea of any change to off hand pistol that would increase its utility even more compared to off hand dagger. If you remove the necessity of using a leap or blast finisher in Black Powder, you just make off hand pistol builds even more forgiving to play.

I’m not sure if your reference to “permanent stealth thieves” is directed at the “Ghost Thief” build or not, but if it is, the easiest way to nerf that build is to simply add an insignificant amount of power based damage to each trap, so the thief will be revealed if he his target is hit by a trap.

As far as interrupting the current combos in the smoke field left behind by black powder, it’s quite easy to interrupt a thief using heartseeker through the field. If a thief is using bound to stealth in combo with the field then the thief is using a dodge as well, so there is a trade off. I think a “Press 5 and you gain stealth, an aoe blind, and leave a dark field” skill would be quite overloaded with utility, unless you made it cost quite a lot of initiative, in which case your damage potential would decrease because you’d have less initiative to use on actual damaging weapon skills.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Necro has viable utilities because none of them are too good. Shadowstep is so good that other strong utilities dont see play. It would help build diversity to nerf it

Please list the other strong utilities that Thief has access to, and why you believe those utilities are strong, otherwise this comment is meaningless.

Lukas.7159:

oh oh i got something to add

give thief only one dodge bar instead of the three, but as a compensation thief now only dodges backwards

steal now gets a bigger animation then chaotic release to make sure absolutely everybody can dodge it now

attacks now remove HP instead of initiative, that way headshot spammer kills himself

I feel so silly after reading your suggestions! Mine were way too tame! I agree totally with removing initiative and making thief us HP as a skill resource. However, I think we’ll have to modify the thief HP pool to compensate for that change. Maybe lower Thief base HP to around 5500, you know, just to be sure that the thief can’t spam his skills still. Of course each weapon skill will need to be reconfigured with HP cost, but each skill should, at a minimum, cost 2500 health.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Decent ideas nothelseth.

Something needs to be done. The time for action is now anet. Lets work together with anet and find 3 ways to nerf thief to save gw2

Alright, cool! Let’s nerf thief in three ways that the GW2 community can all agree upon!

1) Give stealth a 10 second cooldown for thief. 10 seconds of reveal whether or not the thief uses an attack to break stealth, that way the thief is much easier to track at all times.

2) Make Shadowstep a 600 range teleport without a stunbreak. Also remove the shadow return aspect of it. Shadowstep should only be a one way trip. This also means the condition removal is gone as well. Cooldown increased to 100 seconds.

3) Make Headshot cost 8 Initiative, thereby making it impossible for a thief to get multiple interrupts in quick succession. Just to be sure though, also add a 10 second ICD to Pulmonary Impact. I know, this is two nerfs, but they go hand-in-hand so well that I just couldn’t stop myself!

NeXeD.3042:

godz raiden.2631:

NeXeD.3042:

godz raiden.2631:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Now we have reached a consensus that it is OP, lets suggest ideas to nerf it. The best one is it shouldnt break stun. imo

A consensus? You must be reading from the Donald J. Trump Dictionary of Alternative Meanings if you think one person agreeing with you a consensus.

it wouldnt be the donald trump dictionary. it would be the kelly conway dictionary. good try though.

It would be the Kellyanne Conway Dictionary, good try though.

nice you added 4 letters still not donald trump.

I mean, the difference between Kelly Conway and Kellyanne Conway is equivalent to the difference between Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump, being that they are completely different people. Also, you should learn how to properly capitalize certain words in your writing, otherwise you just come across as a kitten . That’s not to suggest that being a kitten is a bad thing though, if you enjoy being a kitten , more power to you bro.

NeXeD.3042:

godz raiden.2631:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Now we have reached a consensus that it is OP, lets suggest ideas to nerf it. The best one is it shouldnt break stun. imo

A consensus? You must be reading from the Donald J. Trump Dictionary of Alternative Meanings if you think one person agreeing with you a consensus.

it wouldnt be the donald trump dictionary. it would be the kelly conway dictionary. good try though.

It would be the Kellyanne Conway Dictionary, good try though.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Now we have reached a consensus that it is OP, lets suggest ideas to nerf it. The best one is it shouldnt break stun. imo

A consensus? You must be reading from the Donald J. Trump Dictionary of Alternative Meanings if you think one person agreeing with you a consensus.

There are ways to play around a thief using Shadowstep. I notice you play a necro, Henry. Have you ever tried putting a mark or two down on the return point of the thief’s shadowstep (shadow return)? This means that he has to move even further away to use the return to cure any conditions you have ticking on him, or he will cleanse them just to soak more from your marks.

Also, as a Necro, you have access to flesh wurm, which is a shadowstep and a stun break, which I realize isn’t as good as shadowstep, but I would argue that the mobility it offers to a Necro sort of breaks with the theme of that class, so you should be grateful for it and learn to use it if you think shadowsteps are so broken.

I don’t think you can really rank traits in such a general way. Some traits are obviously the best in slot no matter what, but there are plenty of traits that gain or lose value depending on the build you’re running. For example, you give Trapper’s Respite a 7, but only give Mug a 5, but Trapper’s Respite loses value in a power compared to Mug.

I don’t think this tier list is particularly useful for newer players because how useful a trait is depends almost entirely on what type of a build they desire to play.

hobotnicax.7918:

@ godz raiden OK I understand that as you run a thief that you’d like things to stay as they are, but honestly this needs to be toned down quite a bit. If it will do away with such “troll” builds as you call it, then fantastic, it shouldn’t touch your build then at all.
Also your remark about me “raging”.. seriously? Nice try though, maybe next time.

I posted this here and titled it as I did for a reason. No profession in the game should be able to be invisible for 90%+ time of a fight. If it kills anything or not, it’s over the top when it comes to stealth. And when you have more than one of these kind of builds together then yeah, good luck cleansing that condi spam from invisible enemies and good luck placing a stealth trap mid fight.

I don’t know what else you would classify your original post as other than “raging” since you were so upset about something you recorded a video of it and posted it on the forums accompanied by a angry remark about other classes getting nerfed instead of some useless troll build. My concern with nerfing troll builds that are harmless is that the nerfs to those builds almost always impact legitimate builds as well, which hurts classes as a whole.

When it comes down to it, you’re just a person complaining about a build that is used so rarely, and with such little actual success, that there is literally no reason to even appeal to the devs to focus on “fixing” it. Rest assured, if there’s a nerf in the near future to this one particularly, useless build that you are complaining about, then the devs have wasted their time, time that could have been better served on actual balance concerns. Next time you see that thief, here’s a hint: just walk away. Congratulations, you won.

hobotnicax.7918:

Hello, OP here. Well I’m not really surprised by some of you who still think that this is harmless and one can just run away from it in every situation. The thing is, the only way I was able to counter that guy was to spend currency for a stealth trap. So using any weapon or utility skills was rendered useless. Sic Em! is also completely useless in such a case, yet is supposed to be a counter to stealth, but hey, you need a target first…

Stealth needs to be toned down, it should be situational and limited.

It is harmless though. You literally witnessed how harmless it was as he was unable to down you for the duration of your video. You could have just walked away. It’s not like he’s going to kill anybody other than a complete noob with that build, and he poses no risk on his own to any of your objectives. If this thief’s build makes you rage this hard, I can only assume if you fought a condi PU mesmer you would smash your computer into a million pieces.

But sure you guys keep asking for nerfs to thief and stealth based on troll builds that are barely more harmful than an ambient creature. In my opinion, if anything needs to be toned down in this game right now it’s the ridiculous amount of CC being spammed, boons being easily spammed, and conditions being applied so often through passive means that it equates to burst.

Sommazzatore.8367:

All these kitten morons ‘Your q spot is not more important than mine" wahwahwah. Like, come on. That’s not what this is about and if you didn’t have the reading comprehension of a 7 year old you’d know you are just being asked to go to OS so that your play style doesn’t hamper MANY other people. OS dueling means no one interrupting your dueling, no long runs back to your dueling spot, and no mistaking a solo person or duo passing by as duelers. Stop being so sensitive and closed off to such a simple suggestion that assists everyone in playing more efficiently. You are seriously children if this is too difficult.

Is your first sentence really a complaint about roamers/duelers saying everyone has an equal right to a spot in queue for a WvW map? Haha that’s kittening hilarious that you think you’re entitled to something over others. If anything is childish, it’s that mentality. Hop off your high horse and realize you’re nothing special.

In my experience, most players that engage in duels do not do so for lengthy periods of time if they’re on a map like EBG. They may find themselves dueling someone from time to time, but those are also the players who are running around solo capping camps, killing dolyaks, and capping sentry points. They also gank enemies trying to get to their zerg and into their structures. To think that those activities are somehow less valuable to your server simply because they aren’t blobbing around with the rest of you dolts is pure stupidity. No ifs. No ands. No buts. That is a stupid opinion to hold.

Lastly, you’re calling us roamers/duelers the sensitive ones? You’re the ones who keep making threads and posts complaining about other people playing a game. Holy kitten man, if anyone is a child here it’s you: “Someone else is playing with this toy, so I can’t play with it at the moment. I deserve to play with it more than he does because I know how to play with it right!”

gloflop.3510:

RESPECT not accept! You dont have to take it as yours. Especially not attack me for my opinion as you did with the words “grow up”. There you are attacking my dignity.

Ok, let me describe the setting better. I run from my keep, an enemy stands at the side. He is at the normal duel position. Shall I regard him as a dueller or roamer? I get closer, close to my guards and it is vitually impossible to get me down before Im in. Then he attacks lightly. Then he wants to push me into a duel. Of course the player is bored but Im not there to entertain him! From a strategic perspective, his action makes no sense.

I know how to fight. As I pointed out before, I have played a number of PvP matches with some success. I just dont think such fights belong to WvW! There needs to be some strategic value, some likelihood of getting me down. I experience it so many times that this is not given. It is a bored dueller waiting for an opponent.

Im not saying that it is against the game mechanics. Im just saying that I dont like it and I dont want to get attacked or insulted because I state an opinion others may not agree with (as some here did).

Opinions deserve to be mocked, rejected, and attacked when they are ridiculous, foolish, or otherwise harmful in some regard. You don’t even understand what dueling is judging by what you just typed, so please forgive us roamers and those of us who duel from time to time if we reject your opinion and mock it openly.

The setting you described is absurd. What does “pushing you into a duel” mean? Do you even understand the unwritten customs of duelists? Did he use the /bow emote directed at you before jumping on you? Didn’t seem like it from the little anecdote you shared. That’s not a duelist. That’s a roamer trying to gank you and stop you from getting safely into your keep.

There is strategic value in a roamer ganking you and sending you back to spawn. If you can’t realize that, you’re beyond help at this point. Your opinion is immediately invalidated since you don’t understand your corpse represents one less player that will be an immediate threat to your opponents server. If I gank an Ele running into SM to defend it from my home server’s zerg that’s currently fighting in the lord’s room, that’s one less meteor shower my guys have to worry about, a couple less water fields to worry about, one less static field to worry about, etc. Do you understand how that’s valuable? Or are you going to continue thinking the only way to play this game mode is to run from tower to tower and smack gates and walls with siege?

And so what if a dueler gets bored and goes out searching for something to kill? Welcome to sand box large scale PvP.

I’m going to go ahead and let you reread the last part of that horrendous post you just blessed our eyes with:

“Im not saying that it is against the game mechanics/rules. Im just saying that I dont like it and I dont want to get attacked or insulted because I state an opinion others may not agree with (as some here did).” -gloflop 2016

What this actually says:

“I know the game allows for anybody to randomly attack anybody in WvW, but that makes me frustrated when it happens to me so I think it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.” – Every carebear who ever got ganked running to their zerg August 28, 2012 – April 28, 2016

You are not entitled to the safety that walls provide in WvW. If you make inside your keep before a roamer takes you down, good for you. If not, respawn, dust yourself off, and try again. But don’t for a second come on here telling us roamers that we’re the problem because we annoy you. If anything is annoying it’s your ridiculous opinion that has no place in a game mode like WvW.

gloflop.3510:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Btw, why don’t you ignore duelers? You can just pretend they are not there and they won’t annoy you anymore, right?

They dont leave me alone. I suddenly get attacked right in front of sm (we hold it). Of course I can just walk straight forward and get inside. Does it annoy me anyway? yes!

That’s not what is classified as a dueler, that would be a roamer. Roamers are players who moving around the map and when they see a player that looks like a vulnerable, easy kill, they jump on that target.

Congratulations, roamers see you as easy prey. Get over it. Roamers don’t care if you’re having fun dying to them. They don’t care if it annoys you. You drop a loot bag, and sometimes, if the roamer is lucky, you’ll put up a decent fight instead of running to the nearest door.

Learn to fight against players that jump on you out in the open, or sit in a tower all day afraid to come out and play, it’s up to you. But roamers aren’t going to suddenly change what they’re doing just because your fee fees got hurt.

gloflop.3510:

General remark: I stated my opinion. I stated my perception and beliefs. I originate from a country which still applies the freedom of speech. I expect that you respect my opinion.

As an American who believes wholeheartedly in the concept of freedom of speech, you have no idea what that term means. Freedom of speech means you are allowed to have and share whatever opinion you want, it does not disallow for criticism of you opinion.

If I hold the opinion that the clouds in the sky are made of bubblegum flavored unicorns, that’s my right, but that doesn’t mean others have to accept my opinion as reality.

You come across as sheltered, overly sensitive, and entitled, just so you know. And to be fair you are entitled to your opinion, but just because you’re emotional and sensitive about it doesn’t make your opinion right. Stop throwing around things like freedom of speech and how your opinion is valid simply because it’s your opinion. Grow up.

dubstax.9102:

Hurts. I don’t care that there are other exits. I don’t care what reasoning behind encouraging it exists. These two weeks with Maguuma have really turned me off from WvW. I just don’t care anymore. I’ve seen what goes on now first hand at the top tiers and to be honest if that’s the way WvW is supposed to go down I don’t want to bother with it. I’ll stick with more fun and more rewarding alternatives.

They’ll clap I’m sure as it’s icing on the cake for them to see somebody they were able to frustrate enough to boot off of WvW. So be it…

No, we won’t clap and be happy about you leaving. Instead of quitting after getting stuck in your spawn we wish that more of you would try to change your builds, playstyle, or try to improve so you can fight back more efficiently. You keep acting like everyone on Mag is just some kitten who enjoys watching you suffer, but there are plenty of us on the server who actually want you on DH to put better fights.

You’re too pessimistic in your perception of getting spawn camped to improve yourself so it doesn’t continue to happen. We want you to come out and fight. We don’t want you taking your keep, spending all day and night placing siege in it, and then fighting us only when you have AC fire, Trebs, cannons, and ballistas raining down on us. You’re in Tier 3 now. It’s not Tier 1 or Tier 2. It’s not that bad, however, we’re not playing this game mode to make things a walk through the park for you. If you can’t develop a willingness to fix whatever problems is causing your server to fail consistently enough to be spawn camped day-in, day-out, I suggest you tank and go back to Tier 4.

I think my main issue here with all these anti-Mag arguments, is that they seem to making a mountain out of a mole hill. It honestly comes across as players who are unable to compete with Mag right now taking out their frustrations and trying to claim that at least they have some sort of superiority in the realm of morality, and then those same people act humble and state that they don’t believe they’re superior after making judgments of morality.

And the worst part is, that sort of complaining only further encourages the Mag players that do act in the ways that people like Arius complain about. It’s as though these people have absolutely no experience with the anonymity of the internet, or online gaming communities in particular. Some people are trolls. There’s a reason the phrase “don’t feed the troll” exists. It’s because the more attention you give to these people, the more they’re gonna disrespect you. I’m not saying they’re right to do that, but I’m saying by giving a kitten about them doing it and letting it affect you on a personal level, you’re just exacerbating the problem. Some people are just mean in this game, sure, but ignoring them is the best thing you can do, because there are no real consequences for unsportsmanlike behavior in WvW. Crying about it on the forums and trying to tell everyone how awful a certain server is will not change the bad apples on that server, it will rally those people together to troll you even harder.

You guys are just showing a fundamental ignorance of how the anonymity of the internet impacts certain personality types, and pretending as though the things you say will change that. It won’t. Get over it. Sorry.

Alright Arius, let me get this straight, you don’t play, but you know that a disproportionately large amount of Mag’s population disrespects DH players… ok. And nobody is complaining about being killed? Hah! Puck just stated he gets whispers from DH players frequently after killing them, and I’m certain he’s not the only one.

You know what the problem is with you guys on DH that are complaining about this? It’s the fact that you’re not getting upset about getting killed. You’re okay with coming out of your spawn and getting slaughtered, but it’s when some idiot throws a ballista blueprint on you when you realize you’re insulted. Oh what a tragedy! If you guys got more upset with getting killed and changed what you were doing in response you wouldn’t have this feeling of disrespect. I’m not trying to “victim blame,” but this is a PvP game mode, so learn how to PvP. If that’s too hard for you, go to PvE and kill NPCs.

Wow you really think you’re stuck in your spawn because Mag is keeping you there? That’s ignorance. There are three exists to every spawn in EBG, Maguuma is camping one of yours. If you’re already losing the week in PPT, there’s no reason to focus on your keep in the first place. Go out a different exit, find a different objective somewhere else on the map that will draw attention away from your spawn. I suggest attacked a Tier 3 tower on Mag’s side of the map, unless you’d rather avoid a fight without your spawn behind you to cower back into. Spread that bit of advice to your friends, you know since you don’t play anymore anyway.

As for taking my word for it… well I ask the same question of you. Why should I take your word that the majority of Mag is acting in the manner that you claim? You’ve shown no evidence that this is happening as frequently as you make it seem. You’re just throwing accusations around left and right, acting like you’re somehow in a position to judge others in a video game. And just because you claim that Maguuma does these awful things more, does not mean that Maguuma actually does it more. All of your arguments work against you as well, if you haven’t noticed. If you’re going to make the claim that Maguuma is the most toxic server in WvW, I suggest you start posting every bit of evidence you have, immediately. Otherwise, you have no ground to stand on. That burden of proof is on you.

The fact is you ARE suggesting that you believe you are better people than us, simply because you disagree with how some people are playing a stupid video game. “Oh no we’re just saying you guys act more disrespectful from time to time, not that we’re better than you. Now please observe as I go on a diatribe comparing the average Maguuma player to a murderer.” Sure. That’s not acting morally superiority. Not at all. It’s like you spew a bunch of garbage onto your screen, hit post reply, and forget exactly what you said.

You can’t see how an analogy comparing video game activity to the real world is absurd? Are you of the belief that Grand Theft Auto encourages kids to become criminals? If not, then I believe you realize why your analogy was absurd. I was giving you that benefit of the doubt, but clearly YOUR critical thinking skills are the ones that are sub-par here. By the way, there are such things as weak analogies. The analogies you are using are incredibly weak, as they are grossly hyperbolic, that’s why I refuse to accept them as anything but absurdities and illogical reasoning. Setting a piece of siege down on your character’s dead body is not analogous to genocide or murder of any degree, nor will it ever be. Severity is actually relevant to analogies by the way, because exaggerated analogy takes away from the point you’re trying to make, anybody who has ever debated a kitten thing in their life knows this. If you seem like you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill with your analogy, the point is lost on your audience, just FYI.

And no, you’re not wrong because I say you’re wrong. You’re because you’re making sweeping generalizations without evidence supporting them. You make the claim that most of Maguuma is being disrespectful, but show nothing to prove it. You think it’s alright to say “Well you’re just making assertions,” while you make even more targeted assertions. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the defense here. You’re the one making the claims, I’m trying to give you counter arguments to help you see why your reasoning is flawed, yet you think somehow you’re not the one with the burden of proof.

I know you don’t think I’m a bad person individually, if you did think that you would be insanely wrong. But when you lump together every Maguuma player in a generalization, then yes, you are speaking about me, just on a broader scale. And for the record, I don’t mean to target you specifically either. You may believe I’m wrong, that is your right, but until you can prove that you’re right, it doesn’t matter. Not a single bit of evidence has been shown that the majority of players on my server are disrespecting DH players. I will agree that there are Mag players that do behave with poor sportmanship, but I will not agree with you that it’s a large portion of the population here until you show evidence of it, and that’s on you to prove, not me to disprove.

Arius.7031:

Morality does not cease existing because you’re in a video game. If you verbally abused a clinically depressed person to his face or online it’d still be bad or wrong (basic technical difference but I doubt you understand it without googling it anyways so shouldn’t pose any issue to the discussion). The guy who just got home from a 12 hour shift and is trying to have duels that you just interrupted, then corpse jumped, then siege buried, then mailed salty messages to is a human being too. It really is sad if you act that way just because it amuses you, and yes it is wrong even if you’re not physically breaking his arm.

IoW, if you try to upset people for no good reason in a video game, you’re being a sucky person. If you try to upset people at work for no good reason, you’re being a sucky person. Sucky behavior doesn’t stop being sucky because you’re not face to face. This is a simple concept that only a MagcusBad player would fail to understand, but alas, the educational system of insert your country here is not what it used to be.

Nor should morality cease existing in a video game, yet the anonymity of the internet encourages people to push the boundaries of morality, and that’s just the way it is right now. Got a problem with people making fun of you? The internet is definitely not going to be a safe space for you. If you need positive reinforcement, I suggest staying away from multiplayer games, or muting and reporting people that do harass you.

How am I supposed to know that the person who laugh spammed me from a tower who I ended up killing a few moments later, and then maybe jumped on their corpse once, is clinically depressed? I personally don’t interrupt duels, and I know many players on Mag who don’t, but to those people who do, and then proceed to siege shame and what not, that’s just part of the game. It happens. WvW is a sandbox PvP game mode, it was not designed for duels. Find a better place to have them next time, or just brush it off and try again. You don’t have develop some superiority complex over it and think “They only did that because they’re morally bankrupt and I’m a better person.” Maybe that person who interrupted your duel just got home from a funeral for a loved one and doesn’t really care about the rules anymore. I can play that game too, making up hypothetical scenarios to justify my argument. It doesn’t make it any better, and it doesn’t make yours any better either, so stop.

I agree with you to some extent, that if your goal is to simply make people angry on a video game, that does make you sucky, but it doesn’t make you a sucky person. A person is not defined by what they do on a video game. According to the implication of your logic, if I donated all of my money cancer research charities, gave a kid a kidney, and volunteered at a soup kitchen every week, but then acted a little immature in a video game that encourages me to kill enemies, that I’m a sucky person? See, here’s the problem with all of your arguments: You’re narrowing down every Mag player to only their GW2 WvW actions and making sweeping assumptions about their character based on those assumptions.

But maybe you’re right. Maybe only Maguuma deserves to be singled out for corpse jumping, spawn camping, siege shaming, and whispering salty messages. I know I’ve never witnessed any of that stuff on any other server!

Just kidding, you all do it too. Or you would if you could even make it out of spawn. You need to realize that just because someone acts foolish in a video game, does not give YOU the right to demean them to a terrible person analogous to a murderer. Although I guess within the context of this game Maguuma does look a lot like kitten Germany, what with the genocide forced upon DH the past week. (That’s called a joke, please don’t get kitten about it, pleeeeeaaaase).

@ Arius

So you think that because a few people on Maguuma act mean towards you that you are justified in generalizing that most people on Maguuma are just as mean spirited as those select few? That’s absurd.

“Because regardless of how dramatic I make things, making the world a less happy place for more people for the sole purpose that you get off on it is… terrible… and since you’re a human being… that makes you a terrible human being?”

Wow. That’s… hilarious. You think being killed a couple times in a video game, in a game mode that is all about killing your enemies, makes the world a less happy place for you and your server mates? Dude, you take the cake on drama. If this game affects you that much, I suggest you stop playing. Seriously. It’s not worth fretting over this much and in this manner.

Just because some Mag players have boasted about punishing your server for your pugs using siege, does not mean every Mag player on the server is spawn camping you for the same reason. I’ve already told you why you’re really getting spawn camped. It’s because that’s where you are. If most of your players are in your spawn trying to get out of the front gate, most of our players are going to be at your spawn killing you, unless you go and do something somewhere else on the map. That’s not punishment, that’s how player vs player works. Step 1) Go to where enemies are located. Step 2) Fight them.

Once again, I’m forced to reiterate that Maguuma is far from the only server that has players that corpse jump, siege shame, spam emotes, etc. That argument does not work. Stop using a complaint that makes you look thin skinned; no one pities you.

You’re being abnormally sensitive is a personal issue. So keep it to yourself and stop projecting your emotions into a video game. I am not a terrible person for telling you to cease with the dramatic accusations of poor sportmanship. I’m trying to help you if anything. You claim you don’t even really play, and that you don’t really care. Everyone here knows you’re lying. You might not play, but for some reason you care, and you care too much for some who doesn’t play.

You and Sirbeaumerdier are just the pinnacles of morality aren’t you? Equating my comments of “hey you play how you want to play, and I’ll play how I want to play” to saying that I think it’s alright for would-be murderers to do whatever they please because everyone can just do whatever they want. That statement is the true absurdity here, and anybody with a rational thought in their brain can see that. I realize the point of analogies, and you need to realize analogies fail when there is no place for an analogy to be made. This is a video game. Throwing siege on a dead enemy is not analogous, in anyway, shape or form, to a man shooting an innocent woman. The fact that you finished that line if ridiculous thinking with “the logic of what you’re saying is equal to the logic of what the murderer is saying.” just shows you have a fundamental inability to separates a virtual world from reality.

But please, tell me how I’m a bad person some more. Tell every Maguuma player how awful they are. I’m sure none of us have ever donated blood, or donated to a charity. I personally enjoy slamming doors in the faces of children. Jumping on corpses in a video game, and slamming doors in children’s faces. That’s me!

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Well, I tried. Have a nice day.

Yeah, you tried. But just as the average DH tries to reach the gate of their keep, you failed. Keep thinking you’re morally superior to me. I’ll keep playing a video game and having my fun. Come cap Maguuma’s keep on EBG and camp us, I don’t care. Jump on my corpse if you kill me, I don’t care. Post about it all over every forum you can find, I don’t care. I’ll keep coming out to fight, and I won’t come to this forum and try to argue that your behavior is somehow immoral, because I’m not a buffoon. If you don’t like it here in T3 with us, tank yourself back to T4 and send us some new toys to play with. Or keep acting like a doormat up here, I don’t care.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Yes, the ingame behavior of many pvp players can upset me. Why does it bother you? If I understand you correctly, and feel free to correct me on this, when something is commonplace it’s ok?

I don’t want to put words in Xev’s mouth, but I highly doubt he believes something is alright just because it’s commonplace. But that has nothing to do with this, as morality is not in question here. Stop acting as though it is. You look ridiculous and as though you put your gaming experience on equal ground as reality. This game is not real life. Grievances you have in the game, will not impact your well-being, unless for some reason you have a mental disorder that makes you believe me jumping on your corpse is somehow affecting you outside of the game.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I will give a few no more:

“Comparing players who gank in WvW to the bottom barrel of humanity?”

I didn’t do that. The act of ganking, among many other, was not my target. The motive behind was. Ganking to remove a foe and protect your assets is one thing. Doing the same to illicit a reaction is quite another matter.

“According to you getting killed while trying to run to your zerg is some sort of cardinal sin”.

I never said or allude anything like that (specially not while running to any zerg). I also made a distinction about the motivation behind the killing. One I clearly say I have no problem with (I qualify it of legitimate), the other leaving me perplexed. Yet, you decided to wrap it up like that? No thank you.

“_I’m better than you at being a human, so I shouldn’t have to deal with being killed near my spawn._”

That isn’t what I said nor implied at any moment. This is how you perceived my reply but not what it meant. I’ve said repeatedly that my problem was having big difficulties understanding the apparent contradiction between what many say is important for them in the game and what they did. If I had a problem with getting killed I’d have quit the game a long time ago or at least stop solo roaming on a backline build and accepting duel.

Also, if you are a PPT guild and not one priding itself with any of what I discuss why do you feel targeted by what I said when I took the precaution to use words like “some”, “many” but never “all”? If you do all this for ppt than honestly kuddos to you because it works. You should not feel touched by what i say. If however your inner goal is to make others gaming experience miserable… The means can be the same but the motives drastically different and it shows in the game whether you want it or not. Now it’s up to you to see if the hat fits…

But all that being said, trying to excuse all behaviors on the back of competition or because you can is just sad. That there are laws or not is trivial on the matter. There are tons of things that are not acceptable despite being out of the reach of the law.

(this might or not be of interest to you or anyone really and is not meant as an insult: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development)

1) So you now possess the omnipotence required to understand when players are and are not ganking an enemy player for moral or immoral reasons, those cases of morality of course determined by your opinion on the matter. You paint all of Mag under a broad brush stroke of some type of immorality because a vocal minority of us happen to post silly stupid trolly videos that mock you.

2) First of all, a big part of “ganking” is killing players who are alone, or in small groups, running to a larger group. I made an assumption about what you were implying, to be fair, but that is a valid assumption as that is part of the ganking playstyle. You did state, “You might get use to it and just run back like I’m use to since a long time ago but there is no way this experience is fun for the victim or not disruptive for the gaming experience,” in reference to ganking. When I’m out roaming, it is quite common that I “gank” people who are running back to their zerg which is attacking an objective. Fun Fact: I agree, being on the receiving end of this isn’t fun. It also shouldn’t be.

3) You didn’t imply that you aren’t somehow morally superior than Mag players? You continuously bring up the topic of empathy, even going to far as to compare Mag style of ganking to those at the “bottom of the barrel of humanity” to try create a point of some sort. At this point, you’re just pretending to be humble while coming across as some self-righteous, holier-than-though preacher.

4) Who’s making assumptions now? Never did I say I was part of a PPT guild, nor did I say I was part of a fight guild. I’m a roamer. Want to know why I argue with you, even though you don’t say “all” Mag players are bad people? Because what you’re saying is suggesting that even those who aren’t busy spawn camping you, or jumping on your corpses, are somehow implicit in the matter. You paint with a broad brush, there’s no denying that, and if you do, I suggest you look at other players from Mag who have posted here in response to you. They may or may not be part of whatever sleight against you that you’ve perceived, yet they feel prideful enough of Maguuma to come here and defend the server and make a mockery of your statements. If I came on here and said “Well not all, but most DH are just walking loot bags who all keyboard turn and don’t know right from left,” I’m sure a fair number of you would take the time to respond. It’s called empathy, remember that word? I can understand how other Mag players must feel being painted as inferior to a server we’re currently beating the living crap out of.

5) I don’t feel “touched” by what you say. I feel like you have no idea that you’re playing a video game. You’re playing a game mode that is all about encountering enemies and killing them, or dying while you try to accomplish that goal. Once again, you mention motives, as if you have a lens that lets you see into the mind of Mag players. But you possess no such omnipotence. You’re just some random guy on a multiplayer video game, bitter that his server is on the receiving end of perceived immoral behavior in a video game where not such morality exists.

Fine, I’ll stop excusing this behavior on the back of competition, and blame it on the lack of competition. Sit in your spawn every day for however many weeks you’re stuck in a matchup with Maguuma. I don’t care. That’s your choice. It has nothing to do with Mag players lacing empathy, or mocking you, or jumping on your corpses. It has everything to do with your lack of competitive spirit. Some of you have it, most of you don’t. And for the love of rationality, stop bringing of morality in your arguments, this is a video game, this isn’t a Middle Eastern village that is trying to decide if it’s alright to marry off 13 year old girls to 50 year old men.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

godz raiden.2631:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I suppose it was to be expected. Read again what is said as opposed to what you say was said and when you can avoid using cheap logical fallacies I’ll continue the discussion.

Oh sweet, the best logical fallacy of all, the fallacy fallacy! Good work using a fallacy to call my fallacies without actually pointing out my fallacies!

What am I supposed to do?

All I’m asking is for you to answer to what I said rather than what you say I said. If it’s too much just don’t but don’t expect me to put any more efforts in replying.

Do you mind specifically pointing out where I put words I your mouth?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I suppose it was to be expected. Read again what is said as opposed to what you say was said and when you can avoid using cheap logical fallacies I’ll continue the discussion.

Oh sweet, the best logical fallacy of all, the fallacy fallacy! Good work using a fallacy to call my fallacies without actually pointing out my fallacies!

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

All I see are excuses. And cheap ones at that.

Personally, I no longer really care about how you lot decide to get your fun out of this game. Like you say, I do my thing, you do yours. However, if you still have the ability to place yourself in others shoes, specially newer players, it shouldn’t be too hard to get what the problem is with what motivate some of you to play and the effect it might have on some players.

Beside, even if you do have the mental fortitude to deal with the bottom of the barrel of humanity it is pretty hard to “ignore” ppl ganking you for example. You might get use to it and just run back like I’m use to since a long time ago but there is no way this experience is fun for the victim or not disruptive for the gaming experience. And then there is getting killed because your opponent want to protect his objective, witch is perfectly legitimate and understandable, and getting killed because the opponent is trying to get a reaction out of you and hope he get forum material to show his fellow trolls. For ppl with even average empathy, this is hard to “ignore”.

I wont ever say only players on Mag behave like this. It would be a monumental joke to pretend such a thing. But at the same time, sadly, Mag seem to have a pretty huge amount of these gaming psychopaths. Having spent 2 years on Mag and 1 year+ on SoR, as well as on the opposite side of the mirror like this week and the previous one, really highlight just how much different the player community is in this regard. I refer to SoR because the contrast was extreme for me. Same game, very different ppl.

The bulk of players tend to play the puck/ball on most other servers while many on Mag aim for other players legs if you will. Yes, it work to get a win but you will have to deal with ppl reacting to you aiming for their leg. Like now…

Personally, what I don’t get from you guys is the discrepancy between what you say you want and like in this game and what you factually do more often than not. Many on the server pride themselves on fights, quality over quantity, not caring about PPT and not hiding behind acs. But when we look at how you play, you kill all fighting opportunities, make sure less and less ppl want to fight you, blob like crazy, PPT like their lives depend on it and engage in cheap tactics that demonstrate 0 skill whatsoever. I’m confused. And on top of it, too many are behaving like kittenty human beings that might have been kitten on in real life and use the game to kitten back on others when they log in. Even trying to have an honest chat with many feels like pulling teeth.

You say it’s just a game, but the ones I see taking it VERY seriously are mostly on your side…

Yes, you don’t care about what we do, you know except for caring enough to write paragraphs complaining about how Mag is playing. But you don’t care. I don’t have to have empathy for the situation DH is currently in as I’ve been in that situation personally. If I was tired of being spawn camped I left from a different exit. What I did not do was whine on a forum, or quit the game.

Really? Comparing players who gank in WvW to the bottom barrel of humanity? TIL Maguuma is filled with violent criminals in real life? If it’s not fun for you to get killed over and over and have to run back, then I suggest ummm… not dying. Seriously. That’s blunt, I know, but if you don’t get killed, you don’t have to respawn. According to you getting killed while trying to run to your zerg is some sort of cardinal sin. How dare people gank you! How dare they kill you when you’re not assaulting an objective or defending one! The sandbox that is WvW has rules! Oh wait… not really. I can’t speak for every player on Mag, but personally I don’t kill people on your server just to get troll material. I’ve never posted a youtube clip or anything like that. If I kill you, it’s because I wanted to fight you, and you lost, not because I dislike you and think you deserve to suffer in some capacity. I know for a fact, though, that yes, there are people, on every server, that will record their WvW experiences and will not shy away from using that material to mock those who cry about getting killed by them. Welcome to the internet.

Yeah, yeah, Mag has a comparative advantage on mean players. Sure. If that’s true, as you believe, then I can hypothesize that DH must have a comparative advantage on unskilled players, or maybe masochists since they like getting farmed at their spawn so much.

I’m not really sure how your sports analogy works in this case, since there are rules in sports, and there aren’t really rules in WvW. It’s a sandbox player vs player game mode. There are no gear restrictions, and everything available to the player your fighting is available to you, including the strategies being used. If you’re getting trebbed in your spawn, well guess what, you can do the same to your opponent! You may have to break out of spawn first, but you can do it too. You may get hit below the waist sometimes, but you can do the same right back. Refusing to fight your opponents because you hold yourself to some sort of moral superiority, in a video game o all things, is just silly, and it’s an excuse. The worst excuses. “I’m better than you at being a human, so I shouldn’t have to deal with being killed near my spawn.” Yeah… ok.

You talk about this discrepancy between what you see Mag players do, and what we claim to want. Fun fact: Not every guild on Mag is a fight guild! I know, hard to believe, because the most outspoken Mag players are usually part of guilds that claim to be looking for fights. There are actually pugmanders and even some guilds on Mag that PPT! Weird, I know, that a server like Mag, filled with mean spirited folks, such as myself, has a more diverse WvW player community than you claim it does, but sorry, it does. I guess we “PPT like our lives depend on it,” if you consider defending an enemy keep PPT tryharding. I guess we could just let you take your keep back on EBG, and then let you siege it up, and then fight your zergs in treb fire all night, which is what happens when your guilds do come out to play. I’m not hating on you for that though, it makes sense. If we’re at your doorstep, it makes sense for you to fight there. It makes sense for us to fight there too, because we want those fights. If we happen to own your keep, and you’re only fighting at spawn, we’ll be there too. Deal with it.

And yes, we take it so seriously! So seriously that we come on a forum and label anyone who is beating us up at our spawn as psychopaths incapable of empathy. Oh wait, that’s you. That’s you being that over dramatic and serious. That’s what taking a game too serious is. You’re the one labeling others are morally deficient human beings, simply because they kill you outside of your spawn.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I’m sorry but too many do behave like terrible human beings. Maybe they aren’t in real life, I hope so at least, but the fact remain way too many do derive pleasure in making others gaming experience miserable. Apparently, it’s there “raison d’être” in this game. Let’s call thing as they are.

Using the excuse that it is a competitive environment to behave as such is pure idiocy. We all evolve under the same game mode but are far from all behaving like several of these ppl or using such lame excuses to try and justify bullying. Heck, if at least you were paid for playing as a pro you might say you are no worse than some pro sport players but you aren’t and that wouldn’t change the fact of the behavior anyway.

TL;DR: You don’t like being labelled a bully? Stop behaving like one.

I think the thing that a lot of us on Mag are struggling to understand, is why you think we’re the ones making your gaming experience miserable. You are the ones who complain about being spawn camped, yet refuse to take other routes out of spawn. You’re the ones who stay as one large group hiding away in your keep, instead of breaking off into smaller sized groups and splitting Mag’s forces. If you all sit at your spawn looking at Mag players and coming out to become a loot bag on occasion, don’t be surprised when a large number of Mag players camp you. And don’t say something like “there’s another server you can attack too blah blah” because SoS has barely any players showing up at all it seems.

If you don’t have the mental fortitude to ignore players who are “terrible human beings” then I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a sense of anonymity in WvW since your enemies can’t see your actual character name too, so of course it’s going to be more toxic. Your players act that way too by the way, you just don’t see it because they don’t do it to you. If you argue that not a single player on DH has jumped on a corpse or spawn camped before, then everyone in this thread can label you a liar. You guys come in here acting like you’re high and mighty; that you’r somehow better human beings because you’re stuck in a spawn in a video game. It’s just a bit ridiculous.

TL;DR: You don’t like being labelled a doormat? Stop behaving like one.

Arius.7031:

Much as I sympathize, don’t think Mag cares fora second. Most (not all) pride themselves on generally being terrible human beings and will most likely quote and mock your post in game. In fact they’ll probably wear the fact that your friend quit as a badge of honor, sad as it is.

Hope your future gaming experiences against other wvw communities are more pleasant.

That’s some serious over exaggeration if I’ve ever seen it. Pride ourselves on being terrible human beings? Do you really think Mag players wake up in the morning, put their pants on in someway that is evil compared to the rest of you, and then plot the best way to starve children in Africa? Terrible human beings… for playing a competitive game mode. Statements like yours are why Mag players laugh at the plight that you are all complaining about. You make it so dramatic, so why should we care? It’s a game mode that revolves around killing your opponents, if your opponents outnumber you, or out skill you, it’s on you to find a way to deal with that. It’s not on Mag to change what we’re doing if it’s working. We’re winning on the scoreboard in every regard to my knowledge at the moment. If you guys think Mag blobs too hard, then recruit guilds to your server, pay them to come to you and encourage them to fight Mag’s guild groups on open field. Put up a fight in the game, instead of coming to the forum and talking about how bad it is to have your corpse jumped on. Guess what? That stuff happens. It’s happened to all of us, and it will in the future. I’ve been on five different servers, and each and every one of them, and the servers I’ve been matched with, have players that behave in “toxic” ways. Get over it. Those people exist, and you whining about it will never change it.

I doubt anywhere will remember that guy’s friend quitting the game, and that whole story says more about his friend than it does about Mag. If I got my feelings hurt enough to quit this game over a competitive game mode every time my corpse got jumped on by an enemy zerg, then I would have quit this game years ago when I started on NSP.

TL;DR: Stop being so melodramatic, just play the game your way, we’ll play the game ours.

Ogre.3124:

All I see are low Kdr

Lol I was thinking the same thing. We’re probably getting just as many bags as players on TC, and we don’t have to sit in queues. Win – Win. Oh, and the fights are much more even in numbers too.

Firebird.8324:

With added autoattack damage they need to be able to stand in the fight more and may NOT need the ferocity, we will see. Just imagine the evade spam WITH a tanky ammy, kittening broken.

I can’t see many thieves standing around auto attacking when CC is tossed around left and right and aoes blanket points almost incessantly. Also an evade spamming thief with a tanky amulet isn’t doing damage, even with auto attacks. I really don’t understand the point you’re trying to make lol.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I can’t not imagine a thief running paladin unless he wants to try and be some kind of bunker.

I agree. Thief kind of needs ferocity in most builds to do any meaningful damage to their targets, so I’m not sure why people are suggesting thieves will use paladin. None of the new amulets even have ferocity on them either, so I doubt thieves will switch to any of them unless some weird build is discovered the can make use of power and condition damage without melting in 2 seconds to aoe and CC pressure.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Chaith.8256:

A cooldown taking over twice as long would be a >100% recharge increase. Chill is currently at 66% recharge increase.

Textbook usage of exaggerated hyperbole

Check your math.
5 seconds / 40% = 12.5 seconds.
It’s over half.

Then again, it’s very unclear how it contributes to the formula. Is it *66%? /66%? /40%? /40%?
Either way, it scales way to high for skills that have longer cooldown.

Wouldn’t the formula be more like: 5 + (5 × 0.66) = 8.3?

Heartseeker spam is your go to analogy? That’s sad. Heartseeker spammers only were issues for inexperienced players. Also, I’m pretty sure the evade frame on vault isn’t throughout the entire skill, you can actually CC a thief at certain points during the animation, I know I’ve had it happen to me and I’ve done it to other thieves before at least. Like facing a heartseeker spammer, the less skilled a player is, the more punishing vault spam will be against them. That doesn’t mean we should nerf something, especially a skill as telegraphed and initiative draining as vault.

Since I main thief I’ll respond to your suggestions about thief.

1) Vault spam isn’t that much of a problem imo. Yes, it hits hard, but it’s also extremely obvious and easy to dodge or block. Additionally, any thief who is spamming this skill will run out initiative almost instantly, leaving that thief vulnerable to counter attack. Block/dodge the vaults, then go hard on the offensive because the thief doesn’t have initiative left. Vault isn’t a problem currently.

2) Bounding dodge cannot be compared to reckless dodge as the first is a grandmaster and the latter is an adept minor trait. Bounding dodger should absolutely deal more damage than reckless dodge, unless they add bounding dodger into the package of minor traits in the Daredevil traitline, which I think most players would dislike. As it stands most thieves make the choice between better defense (unhindered combatant) or more offensive power (bounding dodger). Nerfing bounding dodger’s damage could make unhindered combatant much more useful than it, leading to less build diversity, which is already an issue on thief. Bad idea.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Since the trait changes in June, mesmer could deal with thieves just fine …

Btw, rev has much more unblockable attacks and are way stronger than thieves (at least for now). Why don’t you cry about those?

“Because revenants can’t stealth on demand so they’re not OP!” That’s what they’re going to say. Also, do these mesmers realize there is a trait that makes every mark a necro places unblockable that plenty of necros use at the moment? Personally when I play my necro and I see a mesmer using the shield block, I start dumping conditions all over them, including being able to fear them out of the block and screw them over even harder. I think being covered in conditions while being feared is a lot harder deal with, because even if you stun break the fear with decoy or blink, you’re still covered in conditions lol.

I think a lot of the changes are an attempt to make the game more fast paced and generally more rewarding than it was in this most recent meta. If you watched even ESL game you would know what I’m talking about. Seeing two organized teams fight for 7 minutes without even getting so much as one point cap, sometimes not even a kill in that time, is the most boring thing you can see in a competitive game mode.

They might be going a bit overboard with some of the nerfs and buffs though, but that’s just Anet’s M.O. at this point, which is made all the worse by the long periods of time between balance patches. That’s the real reason so many players are nervous about these changes, because they know if they cause even more imbalance than it will be some time before Anet addresses those properly. If this game was balanced every couple of weeks instead of with months between patches, then people would be as hesitant to play out changes like this.

Ithilwen.1529:

My first main was thief. I continue to play it in dungeon and pve regularly. You fail to note that with the damage increase, a zerk thief can very likely down me in a single shot. This is not a l2p issue.

I play a thief and I know very well that Mesmer is now an easy kill: steal-> black powder -> heartseeker.. dead. and the bassy venom makea ALL OF THOSE ATTACKS UNBLOCKABLE if you listened to what was actually said on the stream.

You seem to be forgetting a zerk thief can also be downed instantly, especially in PvP where aoe spam and boon spam run rampant. Did you complain about thieves being able to be easily one shot by mesmers after the 6/23 patch? You know, when mesmer could press 2 on greatsword out of stealth and then his mind wrack, instantly removing all hp from a class with the lowest health pool? I doubt it.

Basilisk Venom makes 2 attacks unblockable… Still able to stun to break and move away, or dodge those attacks to begin with, you just have to be skill enough to notice when a thief is nearby and when they have used basilisk venom (Pretty sure there’s an obvious animation that you can even see unless thief is in stealth).

You might play thief, but you clearly have zero understanding of the class. If you think two unblockable attacks will completely destroy you, then I don’t know how you haven’t complained about Shadow Shot yet, because that’s an unblockable gap closing blind that only has a cooldown related to initiative use.

I’m not saying they might overbuff thief in the patch and have to scale back some damage, but to be this upset over a now underused thief elite becoming a competitive skill in the slot tells me that you were never a thief main, or at least stopped being one because you don’t understand the class.

I think I agree with just about all you said. I would especially like to see Steal actually steal 1 boon as baseline. With all the power creep in the game, particularly the application of boons, I think there needs to be more ways to remove boons from enemies available, or Anet needs to just reduce the number of skills that boons apply or how and when they can be applied.

Also in regard to the gunk you steal from Engi, not only does it require your enemy to stand in it for it be useful, but if they do you can’t use stealth abilities or you get revealed because it’s pulsing damage. If I’m on my engi fighting a thief that’s relying on stealth and he throws gunk, I’ll gladly just stand on it and screw up his rotations lol.

Ithilwen.1529:

According to the blog post you’ll get your wish, at least partly. Thief AA is specifically mentioned for a buff.

Well the funny thing is about Thief AA, myself and other thieves never really asked for that outside of pistol AA, but Karl specifically mentioned in the blog post a focus on thief melee AAs, “In the first quarter of this year, we’ll be looking to drastically improve thief melee autoattacks until their overall sustained damage when coupled with initiative use is extremely dangerous.”

While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s not exactly what the thief class needs. The problem isn’t that thief melee attacks don’t do enough damage, it’s that thief can’t survive in the current state of balance with CC is thrown out as a result of mindless skill rotations and aoes blanket the ground on and surrounding every contested point. Every class other than thief and warrior has too much access to defensive boons/condition cleanses/healing at the moment, that’s the biggest issue. For example, I can almost instantly burst an engineer with thief, but it will cost me some initiative to frontload the damage required to do it. But it doesn’t matter because ever engineer runs a trait that auto procs Elixir S and they can’t be instantly killed by a thief who approaches from the right position and takes the engineer by surprise. After the Elixir S fades the engineer can throw aoes and crowd controls all around them and heal up to full hp while applying protection to his or herself (I know this because I mostly play engineer in PvP these days).

At least they said they’ll be looking at acrobatics, so hopefully that trait line becomes something other than just a weaker version of Daredevil traits.

Ithilwen.1529:

I watched Grouch himself do this on twitch. He lost to a Mesmer on thief. It wasn’t because he got outplayed.. it must have been that the Mesmer was OP. BTW the build that beat him was completely removed from the game in the very next patch.

You’ve mentioned this several times now, and since I don’t really ever watch Grouch on twitch or remember this happening, I’m curious as to which Mesmer build he was complaining about, and which patch it was on. If it was after the 6/23 patch then it was because Anet did in fact make thief worse off than other classes, particularly mesmer. That patch actually managed to shift the advantage that thief used to have in 1v1 mesmer and give mesmer the edge on most builds (provided equal player skill).

Ithilwen.1529:

As to passive condi cleanse; “Diamond Skin Ele.” Need I say more?

While I think Diamond Skin does need some changes now just due to how well some of the new Ele traits complement DS, I think it’s important to realize that DS is not actually a condition cleanse, but condition immunity. I don’t think it’s fair to compare a grandmaster trait that an Ele has to choose to a minor grandmaster that mesmer gets passively just from taking the elite spec traits either.

Also keep in mind, Time Marches On applies at all times regardless of the mesmer’s health, while DS ends the moment an Ele falls below 90% HP. There are ways to get around DS, and there are ways to get around Time Marches On. The issue with DS, imo, is the ease of which Ele can heal currently. I have no problem condi bursting a DS ele in PvP on a carrion necro once the DS threshold is broken, but it does usually mean I need to have another player help deal with that before my burst is usable (although I have managed to break DS on bad eles on my own quite often as well).

I just believe that instead of adding more baseline traits and mechanics to classes, the balance in this game should move away from passive combat to more active and skill based play styles. I would like to see players more rewarded for dodging an aoe chill field than simply walk through it without a care in the world knowing that they have a baseline trait that will handle the issue for them.

Well in regards to Time Catches Up, I’m not even entirely sold on that becoming baseline actually. I think there are worse things than superspeed on clones of course, and they’re easy enough to dodge even with that trait, so I guess I’m rather apathetic about that lol. The one issue I could see happening if Time Catches Up was made baseline is that the trait makes shatter skills easier to land and more reliable, so if those skills prove harder to avoid taking damage from, then the damage coefficients on them will probably be nerfed at some point to compensate for the change, meaning it will take mesmers more successful shatters to kill an opponent than before.

In terms of Mesmer Auto Attack? I don’t main mesmer, so I don’t know the extent of the issues with Mesmer AA. I guess it would depend on what weapon we’re talking about. I’m sure some Mesmer AAs could definitely use a bit of tuning, but every class has weapons that need AA tuning. For example, Thief pistol is one of the most pathetic AAs in the game. I would like to see Anet take a look at every underused mainhand weapon for each class and think of a way to change the AAs on them to make them more desirable.

Aomine.5012:

I feel like all these arguments are way off topic at this point.

It literally has NOTHING to do with it.

I don’t know about others, but I voice my opinion by my actual experience in high MMR fights, and base my point entirely on the experience I faces in the match.
No other stereotypical personal preference is involved.

And this is how opinions should be formed, via what the players experience, especially in high MMR matches. And I think if the data used from the highest tier of PvP, then it would be painfully obvious that chrono-bunker, revenant, and cele tempest are a bit too strong compared to other builds and classes at the moment.

Two broad solutions exist to deal with that problem. 1)Nerf builds and classes that are too strong to help diversity builds, or 2)buff other classes and builds to a degree in which they compete with top builds. I think number 2 should be off the table for Anet at the moment because power creep has gotten a bit out of control since the 6/23 balance patch, and was further exacerbated by the release of HoT.

Just because a class is bad at something doesn’t mean it should have passive baseline ways in which to deal with those flaws. Thief has, arguably, worse condition cleansing than mesmer, and struggles just as much, if not more, when faced with control impairing conditions being spammed. Should thief get this sort of buff as well? Or how about warriors, who die in a matter of seconds after berserker stance turns off to condition spam in the current meta? There are other ways to deal with conditions that passive traits, such as dodging skills that apply strong conditions and not walking through aoes that pulse conditions.

I think it would be a smarter decision for anet to take a look at conditions and maybe scale back the application numbers on them slightly for some skills. I’m biased against power creep though, so I don’t know.

Ithilwen.1529:

OK, you’re probably right. I stand by my point that many posters reflexively ask for Mesmer ( and thief ) nerfs because the mechanics are different and because both classes prevent easy face roll kills.

I don’t think chrono bunker mechanics are difficult enough to manage for the reward of playing the build at the moment. The reason why nerfs and buffs to builds in this game have such a negative impact is because of the balance patch schedule that Anet uses, at least imo. What do we get, 2 big balance patches a year? The ideal way to change broken specs like chrono bunker and the current revenant builds is to give them small nerfs over time until they fall into a spot where they are still viable, but not so weak as to make those builds/classes undesirable.

Chrono-bunker needs a nerf, yes, but I really hope Anet gets it right (as a thief player I have no confidence that they will), and doesn’t cause mesmer to fall completely out of viability in high end pvp.

Only if they buff other classes with base line improvements that are just as strong. You’re basically asking for Anet to make a situation that has been created by insane power creep even worse with more power creep. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Time Catches Up wouldn’t be so bad as baseline I guess, but Mesmer’s definitely shouldn’t have Time Marches On baseline. No class should have reduced duration on control impairing conditions as a baseline, that’s honestly an awful idea.

Ithilwen.1529:

Your personal attack is off topic. My point was and is that Mesmer bruises egos for two reasons; It has an image that isn’t hyper aggressive masculine.

Tell that to my bearded norn mesmer. But in all seriousness, I don’t understand this point that you keep trying to make. Is it because mesmer skills have a lot of purple/pink color to them or something? I consider mesmers hyper aggressive as a class, particularly on power shatter builds where the mesmer effectively wants to spawn clones as fast as possible for strong mind wracks, which usually leads to the mesmer using a lot of skills very quickly (also known as hyper aggressively).

Anyway, stop trying to make this about gender somehow. Keep that crap on tumblr.

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

they won’t punish players cause they made a mistake… it would be non sens

I’m pretty sure there have been cases where Anet punished players for exploiting dev mistakes before. If I’m not mistaken, a long time ago there was some karma gear salvage bug or something that a fair number of players used to make lots of gold, and some of them were suspended/banned for it.

aspry.6975:

you’re joking right?

I feel pretty bad for you right now lol. Not only did the current league system itself screw you over pretty bad, but now you’ve had to respond to several people here who apparently have no clue how to read the end game scoreboard.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Re: #3, I don’t think that “slap in the face to X class because that is their mechanic” is a valid reason for scrapping an interesting concept for another.

Re: #2, I disagree for the same reason you shared. Thieves have an initiative pool, which makes all of their skill usage restricted even without the weapon swap CD. I see that Swap/SB5 away is probably going to be an issue with this proposal, but I wouldn’t say the same about spam. The drain each skill has on ini would probably add another layer of complexity to thief instead coupled with this change. Thieves may be more cautious to not attack all out because they know they may have an option to bail if they have misread the opponent.

Re: #1, I agree with this.

Honestly, I agree to you to some extent about both my 2nd and 3rd reasons. I think for both of those reasons I listed, I’m thinking more from a place of caution knowing that Anet loves to nerf thief, and a change like this would definitely give some extra power to thief which would probably see us nerfed pretty harshly. Sure, just because warriors would complain doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get it, but if enough of them complain loud enough, and Anet listens (like they tend to do when people complain about thief), I would expect a nerf along the lines of initiative costs increasing or our damage coefficients being lowered.