Guild Wars 2

For the first time in 2.5 years i’ll be blunt :

I’ve been on hold since ~2 months waiting for them to get their kitten together and fix the game.
This patch is a failure, an utter piece of kitten completely off the slightest understanding of what’s wrong with their game.

GG Anet, i’m off ~

“Increasing both defensive and offensive” capabilities of the ranger ?
Really ?
Don’t you think druids dominate enough as it is ?

Oooh no they’re crap in group fights, might as well make the pet attacks aoe and perma prot then.

Well if there’s one thing leagues did well, it’s making those e-weeweez grow hard.

Straegen.2938:

Scapper = Block, Block, Block, Stealth, Block, Block, Block, Invuln, Invuln, Invuln, Stealth, rinse and repeat.

Bunker Scrappers at least in WvW take 3+ player to bring down and are very dangerous while doing so. Putting a reflect, lightning field that stuns, leaping attack and a block on a single weapon with range was an OP situation waiting to happen. The only thing holding them back is that there are 3+ other Elite specs that are just as bunker with more DPS/Utility.

You forgot the evade evade evade part.
Thanks, again, Grouch !

His build is actually horrible.
There are better ways to spam death blossom.

That said you almost only stack bleeds, a few confusions, poisons and torment here and there, it’s not that good against proper players really.

edit :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCdmiFOBWOB8PhFqiaO77+w37C+gtrrnCgDA-TpRAQBg4QA4hjAgA3fIaPAAAcCAITZAA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCFNhNNBGOB8PhFniiLAKgBwbEWhzbe8T/2H-TpBGAB6+AAA4EAwUZAh2fIhDBwBHBAA

The problem is synced vs solo, not their league level.
It’s safe to assume diamond vs legendary is not so different, as long as you got out of ruby (especially with 100% soloQ), mmr matchup should be enough.

Yes, venoms suck because of venom share.
And if you spec venom share you’re subpar everywhere else.

It’s a nice lose/lose situation.

Yes your role is to +1, etc
Yes this DH is a numbskull, like many

But here’s the thing.
1 DH guards far and you’re done, no matter how bad his neurons clic together there is no way you can beat a DH with a power thief unless he’s missing an arm.
Even 2v1 is a bad scenario, one missed dodge, on trap burst you failed to see and your red bar goes black before your realize it.
The best you can hope for is to outmanoeuver him a couple times to decap, but then again more than that means he’s just a zombie.
Hoping that your opponent has a brain the size of a nut is not a good strategy.

So you’re left playing on 2 nodes. At this point you’re nothing more than half a player, any other class would fill the role better.

And this is only the DH scenario. If a druid guards far, you’re done. If a reaper guards far, while you can 1v1 him it will take so long it’s not even worth it. If it’s a scrapper the best you can hope for is a tie. Bunker tempest, bunker chrono, tie. All you can do is +1 far.
Meaning there is no way you can compensate any loss from your team somewhere else on the map : the only time you may effectively do your job happens when your team already performs well.
In an ideal scenario where all ten players are good, it won’t happen. Because again, relying on the stupidity of your opponents is no tactics.

Having the best mobility =/= covering a set distance fast

The way i see it, to be on par with the tremendous power creep brought to us by HoT, it’s almost like if trickery’s essential traits had to become baseline, and the less popular but still useful options had to go into acrobatics.

But it’s not just acrobatics, the entire shadow arts line is pathetic, venoms are still completely underpowered because otherwise venom share would make it totally overpowered, so the devs figured you’d have to chose between sharing venoms and being subpar in everything, or not go into shadow arts and be a weakling condi or hybrid with insane CD on your main damage source.

Then you get critical strikes. It brings NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. The entire line is : hey you crit for more. And that’s all. Laziest of the laziest.

Anyways, even if acro or CC were buffed, who in their right mind would drop DD and trickery ?
Then you pick your choice : either play venom share which could be so great but isn’t and pick SA 3rd, or you do like almost everyone else and go for DA, because improvisation.

Sorel.4870:

muscarine.5136:

Reason : everything you do some other class does it better. Even mobility.

No class is more mobile than thief. Mesmer can somewhat compete with Portal, but on a long CD. Whether or not mobility is sufficient to give thief a role in pvp is another matter.

This is no longer the case since many months ago unfortunately. The only slight advantage we get comes from spammable no target vertical mobility.
But the only thing that makes it slightly better than everyone else is the fact that it’s spammable, otherwise it’s not exclusive to thieves.
When it comes to horizontal mobility, we’re just on par with many others – druids and wars come to mind.
We’re still fast mind you, but if you look at it, it means reaching the destination with very low ini/endurance. So, yea, we aren’t even the best at it, and like you said, why bother bringing a thief where a proper portal mesmer can bring a lot more to the table.

Playing thief is very simple : you’re softcountered by almost everything, and hardcountered by most “meta” builds.

Don’t fool yourself, against equally or higher skilled opponents you don’t stand a chance most of the time.

Reason : everything you do some other class does it better. Even mobility.

During GW1’s golden age, every new month was something to look for with enthusiasm, because you knew they would bring you a whole new batch of updated skills.

It wasn’t perfect mind you, although it wasn’t the Izzy’s dartboard people liked to call it either, but it was alive. Every month something renewed to look for, think about and fight with.

Since the very, very beginning of GW2 it’s just stale. Waiting six months for critical tweaks once because something hot is cooking, alright. And then you realize it’s the actual balance rythm – not even renewal, BALANCE.

So what happens, people leave, come back months later. Meanwhile the game is like a wasteland where big portions of the player base succeed to one another like swarms of migrating locusts.
There’s no sense of community (or at such a small scale it doesn’t matter), no continuity, no iconic guilds/players (spare me pegi 12 helseth thanks) people will remember in the next few years because the ones who are worth it don’t even have a decent roster of opposing teams to build the legend.

Such a slow rythm was a horrible idea from the start, but it seems economically it makes more sense for them to continously refresh their player base at the loss of current customers, it has been proven times and times again.
I don’t know. But financially they probably know better than all of us.

We’re way past a pityfull 10% withdraw healing, thief doesn’t really lack burst nor healing, and even has decent sustain by itself.

We lack the proper tools to use it efficiently all the while bringing something to our teammates in the middle of a midblob fight.
Meaning not bouncing around the blind/daze/throw/launch/stun/block/immune/invulnerable/weakness/dodge/knockdown/interrupt/taunt/stealth/frozen/moa/slow/protection/fear while going on GCD because most resources were spent for nothing.
Meaning burst is negated, sustain drops to the floor, and dodging/healing only gets you so far. And again, without even bringing anything noticable to the team’s synergy.

Venom share could have been a nice answer to this but the CD and pathetic stack quantity makes 0 sense and never did. It still shines sometimes, but again, in a sea of immunity you go 30s GCD so easily, meanwhile what’s your burst is another classe’s sustain.

(sustain = sustained damage*)

Well to me it’s not so much about a top anything rather than how every single one of the most played specs is a hardcounter to a handfull played and potential builds, including most played builds.

So in a way, everything is broken.
Because hardcounters shouldn’t be a thing in the first place.

Anwyays, to answer from a thief point of view :
- Cele druid
- Scrapper
- DH (although not so much when running venom share instead of power)

Again, those aren’t an issue for some others, because hardcounters, and hardcounters need to kittening go.

PowerBottom.5796:

well, they aren’t the easiest targets to focus down for sure, but in terms of often having fairly defensive runes and traits, the fall way short of stuff like tempest and chronobunker.

But again, I really like the druids position and balance in the current metagame. It’s a very interesting dynamic to me that a team running druid would want to force 1v1 situations for the druid, while the other team would try to force the druid into teamfights. This makes IMHO interesting rotations and tactical plays.

That’s the thing though, it’s way, way too much. While they won’t bunker endlessly like a chrono or tempest, they still get insane survivability while dishing an outstanding level of burst punishment.
Again, 11-12k pet burst only while having personnal survivability almost on par with bunker tempest and chrono (which can’t kill anything by themselves) makes absolutely 0 sense.
Scrappers are on the same train, although the burst is a lot more avoidable, but their sustain is higher.

I don’t mean to single out druids mind you, everything is in such a sorry state.

PowerBottom.5796:

snip

I’m not entirely disagreeing here, but saying druids have their downs because they can die to focus in the middle of the blob fight is kinda biased. This is true for any class, and being focused also means your bunker(s) and teammates also focus around protecting you.

In which case no, druids are far from being the most sensitive to team fights focused bursts.

Oh no don’t worry druids start popping everywhere.

11-12k pet damage while standing still with a stick up your kitten throwing full heals every now and then does that to people.

Another brilliant design by ArenaNet™.

Too many cool cookies busy being carried by metabattle to actually read the map.

Hey if mindless cookie fails, let’s blame the teef instead.

Oh and even teevz talk kitten to each others, for some reason, every time i encounter another teef he’s the special snowflake who’s entitled to play teef, coz he’s the actual only greatestest.

nacario.9417:

Yes they should totally add a huttball version in gw2 lol, that was such a huge success in swtor. Have some story behind it, like dragon ball

Why do people keep referencing to Huttball as such a great SWTOR achievement ?
I was there at launch and painfully grinded my top gear through pvp back then when it was still p2p, and as far as i remember people were more like “huttball agaaaainnn please end my suffering, give us real pvp”.

Again when yoloQ, uncheck stronghold, it’s a pub stomper’s wet dream.

Oh no, it’s been like this since the very beginning.
Slow, agonizing pain.

Again, this would further ruin anything that’s left of hotjoin.

This is the entry point for the majority of the new players, and between mini WvW zerg train, multicap, beast ganking, spectator slot battle, broken maps and 4v5 99% of the time it’s already enough of a horrible tutorial as it is.

Queue time at higher levels is a real issue, but i don’t think (re)adding queue pop leavers on top of what’s detrimental to players learning in hotjoin would be a good solution.

Again, this would further ruin anything that’s left of hotjoin.

This is the entry point for the majority of the new players, and between mini WvW zerg train, multicap, beast ganking, spectator slot battle, broken maps and 4v5 99% of the time it’s already enough of a horrible tutorial as it is.

Queue time at higher levels is a real issue, but i don’t think (re)adding queue pop leavers on top of what’s detrimental to players learning in hotjoin would be a good solution.

Got to diamond 100% yolo as a venom share teef, and a handful games as staff tempest (mostly when we were 2 teevz.)

So much hate it was crazy.
Tbh i feel i need to step back before trying legend, not because balance is a mess, not because of the snoozfest meta, but because i need a break from all the braindead hate.
Funny enough, 99% of the hate occurs between 6 to 10pm, so there’s that.

Cynz.9437:

The problem is not that elites are overloaded, the problem is they can’t nerf them because your average Joe won’t be able to complete raids. So this garbage of combat we have now can only get wose.

I’m more inclined to fear a post nerf QQ overflow on the forums, with stuff like, “why did you nerf [insert broken elite build] i bought HoT i deserved it i want my money back.”

Uncheck stronghold if you yoloQ, it’s premade heaven.

Got to diamond with my teef ! Eat that, haters.

You seem to forget the occasional :

“- gg
- gg
- gj
- i carried hard noobs”

Skill activation time + ping difference, it gives the impression the channel started after you went into stealth, but in fact it started probably 0.01s before you did. (Not talking about skills which auto target nearest enemies even through stealth, e.g. lotus training)

Frustrating but not much can be done about it.

There is absolutely nothing bad with vault, like mentionned it’s even a bit too much.
Evade + gap closer + aoe + insane damage + fair initiative cost, there’s nothing wrong with the skill itself, teef issues lie somewhere else.

Thiefz.3695:

I’ve played about 120 matches and am about halfway through Sapphire. I’ve read a few posts about people who got to Diamond via Solo Q with one or two times going DuoQ. It sounds to me that most people were able to successfully soloq. Also, being a casual PvP player, I figure I will end at Diamond by the end of the season. That’s not bad since diamond was my goal.

While some people have gamed the system for more rewards/faster run to Diamond, I think it worked out fairly reasonably. We still have a few more weeks to go. If there have been 24 days, that means I played about 5 games a day to get to Sapphire. Which equates to about 1.25 hrs of play time a day. Not bad for the time investment.

Thoughts?

I burnt through the first 3 divs within 3 days, and i’ve been stucked playing yoyo with the last ruby tier for days then, you’ll see what people mean once you’re there too.

I just had the same, 4v5 since the beginning, except the guy eventually logs although the enemy team is like 300 points ahead, i lost 2 pips.

Next game we win, we earn no pip.

This is maddening.

edit : Also, i would love to know who in their right mind would think, hey let’s make it so sometimes you win but earn NOTHING ! IMA GENIUS !

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Good list. Spectator mode needs to enable us to watch all the past ESL matches in-game client, and also record specific matches of our own to watch for team review. Streaming gives one perspective or even worse some high level perspective that’s just a fireworks show… Being able to switch perspectives on demand in game client playback is a whole different thing… We had this back with GW1.

Watching GvG’s in game in GW1 was nice

XGhoul.7426:

• Being able to do something while waiting in queue.

At least: Play hotjoins/custom arenas
At most: Anything in the game

While i know hotjoin is considered like a kind of playground, it’s already broken enough with scrubs playing red blue musical chairs without adding people leaving for queue on top of that, tho.

ActionRadius.3792:

If some one don’t understand why thief is bad, and why team is flame you – problem still in you and not in team.
GW2 – will be always Flower of the month game and not a play to get good at it.

I heard tulips were meta

What i meant by unreliable, is that you actually need to interrupt your target to benefit from the pulmonary impact, it’s not just about spamming stuns, KD and daze.
The good side is, pulmonary impacts do stack, so it’s possible to get a nice burst supplement, but most decent players won’t let that happen, and then there’s stability spam.

Nocta.5274:

It’s not exactly intended but it’s something arenanet knows. Karl explained it’s tied to how the engine works and they can’t really change that. You just gotta time it so it doesn’t hit in those few invincibility frames.

Yes, but they could maybe make it so that it’s recognized that you hit through invulnerability, and reload finishing blow, like it happens when you just wiff.

Yea, can’t tell you how many time someone got lucky and i missed an important kill because of this.

Relying on impacting disruption for your burst is a good idea on paper, but live it becomes very unreliable, which is a shame since there are quite a few ways to pack a decent amount of interrupts on a thief build.

There are many possible builds for any given class actually, in a way build diversity is there in the background.
It’s just they get utterly facerolled by the current fot(6)m, so much that it’s basically a question of what hardcounters what, individually and team wise.

So yea, letting hardcounters be a thing is the worst offender toward diversity imho.
And this trend started way before HoT.

Yea, builds are braindead easy to use, but it was never really a challenge to begin with.

Aside from the glaring balance issues, skill comes mostly with mini map reading abilities, positioning, rotating, creating strategical/numerical advantages, and it’s a giant frustrating experience to be constantly teammed up with drones with the attention span of a fly, following any red dot they see next without the slightest beginning of thought out tactics at any given moment.
And the fact that some post HoT builds are so rewarding from just facerolling over your keyboard won’t educate people into doing a bit more than zerg spam till it dies, and get absolutely recked when it fails.

Oh i assure you, you don’t want to open that heartseeker gate.

I’ve used this already, but i guess it’s time to use it again :

GW2 PvP

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I have not played rune of the DD, but i dont like relying on dodges to crit things with, i understand what that build does.

I currently use this

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl0MhSnY3Tw8Jw/ELwEmXY4M0Gm7glwWoWCIAsbA-TpBFABCcBAEvMQDHBg73fYhDBAAPAAA

Tbh my issue with DD rune is toughness.
I just don’t get it. It’s obviously the perfect rune for a valkyrie amu, but it seems like they made it with soldier amu in mind. Not sure what’s the point of dodge crit if you end up critting like a half baked noodle anyway.
I mean, look at the scrapper rune : perfect synergie between stat boost and (6).

DD should give ferocity or heck, even vitality would have been better. Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but to sigh at the balance designs.

I think you can’t, the game will automatically assign set 1’s off hand to set 2’s off hand if the latter is empty.

I made this :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVn0MBFPh9OBGOBkmiFtiyrB6gMorAauAYe5j+sH-TpBFABUVGohjAQ87PQwJAYhDBAAPAAA

Tips :
Always be checking your minimap, count your opponents, you’re super fast so go ahead and create +1s, quickly decap whenever you may do so without leaving your team in a harmfull inferiority.
Don’t stay and die when you know it’s lost.
Ask your teammates not to hug far, it’s your job unless some bunker / DH settled there.
Avoid confrontations with DH, it’s simply impossible unless he’s an utter scrub.
Scrappers are bad for you too though if you’re comfortable with the build you may for example keep a point contested forever against one if needed.

You’re a cap/decap and +1 machine, some duels you can win but always prefer creating numerical advantages, better 1 foe dead and an ally alive rather than winning your duel at the cost of a teammates life.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I honestly think there’s a bug in pip loss. Everytime I go against a full 5 man premade that is on the top 10 guild list, I always lose 2 pips. According to the chart posted on Reddit, the losers should only lose 1 pip at most.

Yea, it’s not only this, i had a game where a rev stayed afk 90% of the time and eventually disconnected, i lost two kitten pips.

Iknew i was going to get stucked in ruby, but losing 2 entire tiers in consecutive loss plus having to deal with that kind of punishment is a bit too much of an emotional rollercoaster for me.

Huun. You won’t get it, don’t try.
Again, thank you for illustrating my point.

fumcheg.1936:

muscarine.5136:

Kaliny.8265:

Urejt.5648:

thief is bad. u must accept that. What i dont accept is giving up at the begining just becouse of thief

Yes, and still a very good theif player is better than an average another class imo.

Actually ive seem some very good thief players that carry games viciously from time to time… problem is, they are less than 10% of the thiefs, so if you ask some thief to reroll, you have likely more than 90% chance of beeing right.

That frustrates thiefs that are good enough to pull off, and imo ANY person that has very good awareness and decent thief skills can carry low rank games.

Imo below ruby division no one loses because of a thief… they lose because someone, maybe the thief, and others on the team, are bad (not unskilled but don’t know how to make their team win, just don’t know what to do or how to do it)

They often get 2 points, attempt to capture far, lose a fight there by overcommiting and snowball that losing mid, than they start to suicide on mid and far splitting forces until the enemy team gets 500. After that they blame the thief.

Typical game.
Also, you forgot the usual slow kitten necro (or whatever but in the case of a necro it’s even more laughable) who for some reason decided it’d be in his team’s best interest to spent 75% of his time crawling to far, 15% of his time dying there, and 10% respawning, while stealing one of the thief’s main job which is to rotate and decap far soon as the pressure allows him to.

I’m so freaking tired of having to explain such basic things, 90% of my games as a thief, to people who then complain useless teef because they basically destroyed my role in the team comp and have absolutely 0 idea of how they’re supposed to synergise with a thief in their team. Ok that’s probably too much to ask, since to begin with they can’t understand respawn snowball.

So you suppose other ppl must care and build their game around you just because you don’t want to switch to a normal class (most probably because you don’t know how to play other classes)? Well you DO deserve the attitude you get.

Normal class = ball mid and shower aoe coz i don’t know how to play otherwise
Thanks for proving my point, you’re the exact kind of braindead needed to illustrate the example.

Yes, flash news, you’re supposed to adapt to the team comp you get, brainless fotm zerg will only get you so far. Strangely enough, it’s part of what makes a good player.

Oh hey, someone looking at scrappers for what they are.
People too focused on more obvious issue to realise, there’s something wrong with being that tanky while running perma 18+ stacks of might on marauder amulet.
But as usual they will go through the nerf net without a scratch and probably even a handfull more buffs.