Guild Wars 2

WonderfulCT.6278:

all D/P thieves suck.

I once thought about running D/P just to title a stream “Hardcore DP Action in EB”, but that plan never came to fruition.

PistolWhip.2697:

Viking Jorun.5413:

PistolWhip.2697:

Lets be frank here. No matter which race you think looks best or has the best suited attributes to warrior Human will always win out on best race. Purely because all the armor in the game has been designed with them in mind save for Cultural, and thus will always suit human proportions best from a design point of view.

That being said, Charr have in my opinion one of the best Tier 3 cultural heavies in the game.

Though I kind of like them all, Norn are like hulking barbarians, Charr are like ravenous beasts, Humans are technical and fast, Sylvari are different and original and Asurans are agile and hard to hit.

Personally? I started out with a Charr Warrior which I still love to death but I fell far more in love with Human armor. And so, here is my warrior (Will have Twilight very soon hopefully!):

Downvote for black and red.

Better than being a spiky yellow ball.

Everyone loves the huge golden charr with flowers in his wake.

I’m going to be fair here and give it an 8.5/10. The actual content is solid and I did not experience any of the bugs people are whining about, and the only reason it’s down from 10/10 is because I’ve had to listen to these people cry over spilt milk all day. Guess what? I had an intellectual conversation with several human t3 owners and have it on my mesmer myself, and I don’t feel devalued at all. The original is still just that, and the gem shop armor just doesn’t carry the same prestige. Congrats on spending $10 for your armor, everyone. I’m happy that you’re satisfied, and it doesn’t bug me one bit until we’re in some backward universe where cheaper > original, more expensive as far as “wow” factors go.

Hey all,

Many of you may know me as Quaggington from Team Queue, and recently I’ve been receiving a lot of mail, forum messages and whispers asking for my non-Condi turret decap build, so without further ado, here it goes:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmq1VxyKseRSMqApDpw+3X0jLrfH/pAdB-TkAA2CvIASBkDIDQSgsANIB

Let’s start with the breakdown of traits:

• Accelerant-Packed Turrets are the very core of this build. It’s said a lot that turrets lack the HP to be viable in any format, and I capitalize on that system to its fullest. With 4 turrets you have access to 6 CC skills at your finger tips including Thump, Electrified Net, and your 4 destroys. This is all on top of Rifle’s launch for a grand total of 7 CC skills, with Supply Crate as your creme de la creme against any and all cleave damage on-point, often allowing you to fight multiple opponents while keeping the decap and getting a cap off.

• Power Shoes also act as an integral part of this build. It’s meant for decap, meaning the faster you can get to the enemy’s point the more effective you’ll be as a player.

• Acidic Coating is a fantastic and often under appreciated trait. This allows you to stand toe-to-toe against a class plus a thief due to their tendency to heartseeker into you before going into a backstab, giving you time to throw down a turret and prevent the stab which is often the bane of any decap engineer.

• Protection Injection for obvious reasons, protection is pretty much essential in nullifying burst damage, especially from warriors who have plenty of AoE CC and cleave.

• Automated Response is hard to get used to at first, but the reason I run a Barbarian amulet is so that I have a large enough health pool as to not go above the threshold when using my healing turret blast combo when facing condition-heavy opponents. The key here, since it would appear to be this build’s weakness, is to get used to playing in that low-health range. Don’t worry: you’ve still got 6.8k health to manage with and combined with protection injection and Runes of the Grove you should have no issues staying alive in this range. In fact, when you see yourself getting bursted down by conditions and burst alike, for me anyway (having played every other class as well) it seems quite frightening at first because you say, “oh dang, I’m going down!” However it’s not uncommon now for me to survive and keep the decap for a solid half minute to a full minute, and most of the time I’m able to heal back up and continue the fight if I’m unable to be killed while my turrets are on cooldown.

• Finally, Static Discharge is at the heart of what makes this build a threat. While your damage may not be as bursty as many like, static discharge combined with near constant turret destructions via your tool belt as well as off-point immobilizes let you deal quite extreme damage when combo’d correctly and off cooldown. I’ve seen my own combat log add up to 7k damage with static discharge and tool belt skills combined in under 3 seconds. This is a very powerful adept trait when combined with the shear amount of toolbelt skills you have flying around, and due to it’s bouncing nature rangers often don’t stand a chance.

Last but not least, I take Sigil of Nullification due to Boon Removal’s inherent tendency to prioritize stability. This makes the build extremely effective against even the heartiest of regen bunkers.

Let me know if you have any questions! I was quite hesitant to share this build until now, but the number of requests for what my traits and gear look like have persuaded me to come out and finally share it.

~Quaggington, Team Queue top 500 — Pugging it all day long.

I’d like it to work exactly like Burning Speed, however the skill flips over as a second skill (the blast portion) at which point you can activate the blast early or decide to use it for the mobility to cross large distances or gap close fleeing enemies.

You would have loved GW1. You didn’t ever have a follower’s list. Anyone who added you was completely anonymous and could see every detail about you.

#StalkerWars2

I can’t wait for Quaggan to become a playable race, then we can have human backpacks too.

Hey Karl,

I just want to thank you and the rest of the balance team for taking a very level-headed approach to nerfing Pistol Whip after some of the monstrosities of suggestions in Allie’s thread, which had me worried to say the least. Thanks for deciphering the QQ and not nerfing it to the ground as many non-thieves had so hoped. This change is definitely a healthy one for the set.

The many outfits of my warrior, then my thief and mesmer! Enjoy!

Can this stupid argument end already? They’ve said time and time again that they won’t add any more tiers.

Secondly: they’ve used all 6 primary and secondary colors of the CMYK color wheel to colorized the rarities of items. There aren’t any left.

Burnfall.9573:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/favoritism

Favoritism- the practice of giving preferential treatment to a person or persons.

That’s right, it is called Favoritism

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Balance

Balance- To bring into or keep in equal or satisfying proportion or harmony

Balance?

Where ?

Balance Does Not FAVOR!!

Favoritism Is Not Balance!!

Guild Wars 2 centers around Favoritism and Imbalance

Surprise !!

Hah. Burnfall, you old troll. Have you ever played a competitive game which was perfectly balanced? Come back to the thief forums so we can keep you from posting this kind of stuff and rather argue with you on whether thieves are OP or not.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Puandro.3245:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Setun.4368:

My only question is why not sword offhand for the torment stacks?

I run shield for its defensive capabilities and the free stun. When I successfully chain “Fear Me!”, Savage Leap, Shield Bash and Flurry, the fight is very well over.

As a secondary bonus, it gives me two leap finishers to double the time my fire aura persists.

Auras don’t stack in intensity.

I’m pretty sure that isn’t what he meant at all. What he meant was that he can proc fire armor, and then after that wears off he can then proc it again if he needs to.

That and auras function like burning or immobilized. You can apply it for 3 seconds per leap finisher. Two consecutive leap finishers will double the duration of the fire aura. Try it! makes for some interesting fights against high-pressure opponents.

I popped my birthday boost as a thief, joined the karma train, equipped signet of malice and dagger storm, swapped to shortbow and spammed 1. Gained 60 ranks in 1/3 of that time.

ryan.6217:

Viking Jorun.5413:

…how is S/P cheese? I’ve been running it for months, and it was far underpowered. All of a sudden with one minor buff and a major nerf, it’s apparently cheese. Gotta love this community.

You’re right ^^ i played S/P in beta! I’m glad it’s gaining it reputation back as of late, because for a while there it went unplayable. I think for a moment al i could picture were warriors 100 blading hopelessly in front of a thief with s/p… but otherwise its in about the same boat as S/D

S/D hasn’t even been cheese since the IR nerf when LS was also increased in cost, making it so that you had to far more carefully use FS+LS. I suppose people translate Meta = Cheese, which isn’t entirely correct, not to mention the fact that there’s a difference between Meta and Viable Again, the second of which boat S/P is in. D/P trickery still remains the only top-tier meta build, with S/D on steady second. The only true cheese build out there is D/P permastealth with Shadow’s Rejuvination. Trickery D/P gives that up and frequently has to break combat to not die with it’s lack of sustained healing, meaning that it takes skill to be successful with trickery D/P, same goes for S/D and S/P.

TL;DR – Cheese means it takes little to no skill to play, like warrior. Thief takes a significant amount of skill to make itself viable in any format, and therefore only has one truly “cheese” build.

The beta login screen :/

I think right now, the ranger’s most valuable asset in tPvP is the extremely long water field, group buffs with spirits, and most notably our class has the only access to Revealed as a skill. It’s a thief’s job to turn the tides in team fights and roaming, and when I’m running an organized comp and the other team has one or more thieves, it’s my job to keep them in line and off of my team. The ranger also has some of the best mobility in the game when skills are used properly, which makes it a fantastic roamer.

I do have to say, I haven’t played ranger as long as I’ve played warrior, thief, or mesmer. I have, however, been through every class trying to find my niche and the ranger is by far the hardest class to master. With no clear goal in mind with the trait lines, it’s up to you as a player to decide what you want to do, and the utilities aren’t nearly as straightforward as other classes. I feel that this also results in a lot of very bad rangers who want to play the class like they would in a typical MMO: Ranged DPS while your pet tanks. It’s just not how you play ranger in any competitive format.

So, while rangers don’t boast the best DPS, or the best defense, the best mobility, the best team support or the best healing, the class offers a bit of everything, and mastering it all takes time and dedication. You’ve got to want to play it well, otherwise you’ll fall into the trap that gives the class a bad name.

LHound.8964:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Gehenna.3625:

Wukunlin.8461:

you really raging over a trailer? also the chinese voice acting is terrible.

The English voice acting in the game is also terrible, so no difference there.

The trailer by itself looks pretty awesome though. Sadly, the game isn’t actually quite that, but that’s my personal opinion of course.

I do think though that GW2 was made with Asia in the back of their minds. I wouldn’t be surprised if it would prove to be a bigger hit there than here. And since the financial report already showed that the income for GW2 has gone down considerably (which happens to pretty much ever MMO so this is not meant as a stab), the timing is right.

It does make me wonder though if the West wasn’t the big beta so they could get the game ready for the China release, but hey, that’s tin foil hat stuff of course

Ah, conspiracies! NCSoft is a North Korean company, but they aren’t the publisher for the Chinese release.

North Korea have gaming companies?

I meant South Korea << >>

Leon Derge.5239:

AcidicVision.5498:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Red Tree.1936:

a race option that (believe it or not) many people actually like.

Well, not really..

I was going to post that same image in response to the quoted post. Its a legit thread as much as Red may disagree. Charr are the least popular race and the OP was asking why that was the case.

For some people there are lore reasons. For some people it has to do with armor and clipping. For others that could overlook those, the animations themselves caused issues.

As far as players go, Charr are just about a dead race. Consider that out of that 13%, X of those are alts made by players that want one of each race, but don’t play or care for it.

I’m a pretty avid Charr Player, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Heck, I just rerolled my Human Guardian into a Charr Guardian. If they were to do something like redesign the Charr simply for the majority I’m pretty sure I’d honestly stop playing Guild Wars 2.

Anyway, while I am still an avid Charr player there is still one big thing that bugs me and I’m sure is a big reason a lot of people don’t play Charr. Armor clipping.

It’s pretty frustrating to see most of the leggings in this game clip with the Charr tail. What makes it worse? That a lot of the longcoat style leggings are stretched out to accommodate for the tail, and it still clips.

If they fixed tail clipping, I’d be a very happy Charr indeed, and I do think many of the people who don’t play the Charr currently would at least give the Charr a shot.

Contrary to Avid’s statement, I main a charr and have 5 human alts that I never play. I don’t think the average human has 5 charr alts. Just saying.

I wonder who designed the new legendaries since Kekei is no longer with ANet?

Warkupo.1025:

“Please change this thing that counters my meta-build so that I can be all of the meta, all of the time”

“gladly, but only after we nerf your meta build”

I feel like my signature applies here.

I tell this bit of advice to everyone who wants a tag:

Just because you have 100g doesn’t mean you have nothing else to spend it on. There are a multitude of things you can go for rather than a commander tag. I’ll list a few:
– craft level alts
– convert to gems and buy bank space/inventory slots
– buy rare skins
– progress toward your legendary
– buy new gear sets to have a multitude of builds
…just to name a few.

The tag is NOT a convenience item to let people know where you are on the map. The tag is your responsibility.

Just because you have an icon does not mean that you’re a commander. Being a commander means earning the respect of your server by working hard to lead them as best you can.

A commander’s icon will recieve you a lot of attention. How you use it will depend on whether or not the attention is good or bad.

You WILL regret having spent 100g on something that has so little real value. I’ve commanded commanders, and near single-handedly brought one of my previous servers, one I hold dearly, 3 tiers up by organizing them and teaching them my tactics brought over from The Professionals and the Titan Alliance. I can recall on many occasions when I wish I could have my 100g back when a new release comes out.

A commander tag is not for the money lovers. You’re expected to purchase keep and tower upgrades and maintain your own supply of siege to place. Your zerg will not place siege for you.

Just a few words from the wise. Being a commander is by no means easy, and if you have any doubts I advise you not to buy a tag. We all know someone with a commander tag who’s infamous on the server for standing around Lion’s Arch, trolling in map chat and never helping their server in W3. If you’re in it for the benefits, spend your gold elsewhere.

That is all.

This would be fantastic if they cost ~10 skill points each, making it a reliable alternative to leveling alts.

Scourge.4317:

I also had a problem with how my Charr theif looked. It was my very first character and i ended up rerolling human after pleading with customer support for some kind of race change ( i was that desperate ). I went back and played some original Guild Wars and was reminded that there are Charr that stand tall like a human with huge manes and then there are the ones we have now.

Why weren’t we given both body types? To me it seems like a lot of the armor would look so much better on this body type since they stand upright like a human.

The lore behind that is that, back in GW1 most charr were casters, and standing tall was commonplace, but due to the secession from the Flame Legion and advancement in science, the charr discovered that a crouched, more ready-to-pounce position was more effective in battle (most likely because their enemies are so short). Charr casters still stand tall when casting their staves, so it’s nice that the lore of it was taken into account when animating models.

Furajir.3815:

Bow to the master race!

The horns imply that he wants to be charr.

Otaking.4675:

If they would reverse sword 2’s directions and take out all the delay from it and speed up sword 1 a bit it would be an exceptional weapon.

You could burst an enemy with it from point blank AND leap back instantly after with sword 2 and also execute dodges in the middle of sword 1 chains.

Instead of telegraphing that you’re leaping back with a huge delay, and then a second telegraph if you want to get back in their face.

You could use it for mobility a heck of a lot better too.

Reversing the direction on the sword 2 chain is a horrible idea. You can still use it for mobility with either a macro to 180* your character or by simply flicking your camera 180 degrees, and it’s important that the backward leap is on the primary attack, as it’s meant for a gap-maker, to give you a break and choose either to get back into the action or swap to your ranged option and kite.

It’s been this way since the dragon bash and has only gotten worse as the living story’s progressed. ArenaNet either needs to reduce the bandwidth these events take or get a better ISP/plan. I ran a speed test to Austin, Seattle and New York and on average got 45.6mbps down and 14.3 up, so I highly doubt that it’s me. I’ve also sent my GW2 diagnostic to the lag help thread with no avail.

Janhyua.8130:

I got a Sunrise on May 2013 and its boring after a month and i got to say the remarks i get from player are.

10% – nice Sunrise, give it to me!, i am so jealous :[, give me gold~~.

30%- Using your daddy money is bad you know, Using your credit card to buy is so stupid, I dont even give a F.

60%- Oh you got a Sunrise? well go farm your own server tranfer, lend you gold? but you have a sunrise, china farmer, you have alot of time to farm thats all, you got no skill you just good in cof p1 farming, i bet you are a noob and only know how to farm.

I am not really a noob really maybe i do when i was 2 months old on my warrior but i am able to lead party in fotm 20,30,40 and also able to lead any dungeon in the game, but i am just not the guy that go wvw unless i have to by my guild leader and officer.

My warrior is 8 months old now :]

Yeah, generally people dispise those with legendaries out of jealousy. I tend to get less flak in that aspect however with Kudzu on my charr warrior, and most of the ridicule ends up being somewhere along the lines of “how manly”, which isn’t nearly as bad. All the females love mah flowers though. :P

skyz.7321:

They can also teleport under the map to leave combat and heal.

Thieves do this the most.

You down them with a big hitting skill, which triggers their 10% auto stealth, you auto attack them (they’re invis still), all of us a sudden, you stop hitting, they never reappear, 10-15 sec later they’re running around near you on full hp again.

If you ever get a thief low, and have a strong feeling he should be downed, then reappears on near full or full health, he’s using ‘midnight’ or w.e that hack is called.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow's_Rejuvenation

It scales unbelievably well with Healing Power, and is in a tree with both Healing and Toughness. This isn’t a hack, it’s by design. :P

Latorn.4209:

It’s because there’s no tangible rewards outside of the sPvP realm. Heck, I’d hop into sPvP quite a bit if I could change glory into karma or gold.. Or even if I could transfer it into exp so I could level alts through sPvP.

By the gods! This needs to happen!

I’d like to know if reflecting Hunters Shot will give us stealth instead.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Zanshin.5379:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Conncept.7638:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Let me take a guess. GEM STORE 800gems.

Better than

RNG CHEST,120 gems, 0.00000001% drop rate

yes, but what about adding it to the game and no gems involved? You know, how it used to be in gw1? Why is it that every time an armor is added its automatically has to do something with gems? wtf

Buy 800 gems with gold. There, acquired only through pve. No need to thank me.

every single time i bought gems was with in game gold and not dollars. Do you have any idea how much gold 800 gems would be? that would be close to 30g and all i want is chest/leg piece. Don’t want to spend 30g for two armor pieces

I bought the primeval set just for the pants. I’m sure you can do the same for this. You can do it!

Why are we complaining about a mechanic that’s easy to avoid and is completely bypassed by conditions?

I tell people the points you’ve put up there all the time, and some agree, some disagree. If it’s an organized guild that frequents combo fields and GvG, they’ll want thieves. If it’s a zerg who doesn’t know anything but being sheep, they’ll laugh at a thief zerging.

It’s hard not to make this seem like a “L2P” post, but honestly, I play a warrior and thieves are no trouble to me. I’ve played every profession and have 50 tourny wins with each using the most used builds for each of them as well as extensive research into each class. There are so many ways to counter thieves and mitigate their bursts it isn’t even funny.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity was attempting the same thing over and over expecting a different result. If you go into a fight with a thief without the know how to best them, you’re going to fall flat on your face.

I main a warrior, and I don’t know what you play, but here are a tips from my personal playstyle:

I generally start any thief fight by throwing down my longbow burst fire field combined with pin down when the thief reveals themselves. I follow that up with my burst AoE, and when that rotation is on cooldown and the thief stealths, I dodge after a second or so and follow it up with endure pain since the thief is guaranteed to use backstab within that time. By that point I can use eviscerate and my whirl attacks timed right to mess up a backstab again.

The key to beating burst thieves is simple. Negate their backstab and all they’re left with are auto attack and cooldowns. Generally they’ll never use anything but heartseeker and autoattack. As for heartseeker, if you’re hit by the first one, dodge twice in quick succession and the thief will perform 4-5 heartseeker a due to the sensitivity of spamming the attack, something every burst thief will do.

And honestly, despite all of that, rolling a thief as an alt to educate yourself is the best decision you can make if you want to learn to exploit their weaknesses and mitigate their strengths. This goes with any class you have trouble with.

“Running Droks! 5p each!”

…Sound familiar? I remember how great shadow form was when Factions came out for running. Never get hit, ever.

Hey guys, Ferrum here. I’ve got a new build and I’m happy to see what you all think of it. Thus far, I’ve used it to take home 1st place in the Kaineng/TC/FA Open World Duels tournament, and the sustain is pretty amazing.

Things to note:

1. It is a condition build. Expect to hit like a wet noodle.
2. It utilizes Lyssa runes to maintain 20% uptime of all boons.
3. Managing your skills correctly, you can maintain 100% uptime of swiftness, fury and 6-12 stacks of might at all times.

Here’s the build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIIQNAseTjcONvJPWPMRCEkCN8KOFSCVB7I94MQj0A-j0yAIOioRKAAtAkagRCgIPI5xioxWFLiGremIqWdjZuLiWtQALWDA-w

Leave any feedback. Up until now I’ve kept this build in the dark, but I think it’s ready for the warrior community.

Before it comes up, I do swap my Corruption shield for Paralyzation once I reach 25 stacks.

I don’t get all of the trap bashing. Sure, Ambush and Needle Trap are kitten, but Shadow Trap is fantastic both offensively and defensively, and can prevent home point decaps in PvP when you’re all the way on far point. Tripwire is an AoE 2 second knockdown that can stop a backstab better than any other utility, and is also fantastic for on-point fights in PvP.

This is the exact reason warriors can’t tank, and you only see viable builds involving some sort of DPS and/or condition stats. We only have one heal on a very slow cooldown, cannot give ourselves protection without there being some randomness factor, and we only have 2 condition removals, one of which is a heal. Our class isn’t built to last long fights like these above mentioned classes. I do think you’re forgetting heal-based guardians as well.

All in all, my biggest point is that in that minute that those other classes are able to heal for that amount and a warrior is not, our only option is damage or die. Build variety, people.

I find it hilarious running a no-stealth build, to simply start running at a group of roamers who immediately start running the other way. It’s also funny when I kill said group of roamers, without the crutch of stealth, to get a party invite where I’m called a “no-skill perma-stealthing noob thief” by angry bads.

I use SoM on my condition thief that deals kitten for damage this would be a horrible nerf.

I’m going to get a lot of fire for this, but you should try a warrior. I main a warrior and while I do play /more/ for damage, my build is a hybrid where I maintain 50% crit chance (my build relies on pricing crit-based conditions, so don’t tell me that 42% is ideal. I know.), 1400 toughness to be able to maintain myself in a fight whereas a full zerker warrior will have 900 and be unable to sustain a fight, 450 condition damage without food (600 with) to give you an edge against bunkers who only have to out-heal and out last you to win, and 89% critical damage when swapped to axes (70% when longbow is equipped). I run most WvW with my guild of generally 5-man havoc nights and more often than not groups of 2-3 when we aren’t at our prime time, and I’ve been thanked time and time again for providing a valuable and versatile range of possibility for my team in a fight.

On a side note, I wish I could have recorded it, but a group of 8 lowbies and one properly leveled player found me alone 3 months ago north of our spawn in our home borderlands. I came out of that fight with 9 bags, thanks to Vengeance and the trait which allows you to have 100% chance to rally when you get a kill in vengeance.

Try a warrior, please. Play with finding a balance between stats rather than minmaxing like most warriors do, and I think you’ll find that we aren’t the underdog of PvP/WvW everyone assumes us to be.

How much of this actually contributes to ArenaNet’s actual gem store sales? As a build I’ holic I can’t see bringing myself to buy these at the absurd cost, and would much rather pay 2000-4000 gems for a permanent one which acts more like the copper fed salvage-I-matic, and wouldn’t mind paying upwards of 20s per trait change. The items in their current state simply aren’t worth it in my opinion. Let me know what you guys think about them.

Hey guys,

So I’ve got another build and just wanted to have fun with it in light of the upcoming changes, and so today I bring you a build which combines everything the forums say is kitten about the thief, or broken (in a bad way) or just plain won’t work, and put them all into one single build – and it’s magical. I present kitten ’d.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqa6alYmCO3aS0E/5EyWBgi7hFCVPV3jryq0KA-jkCBYfJDbcQ0UgBi+I0EIJL5rIasVRFRjVVjIqWlEzcuIa1SBYuwI-w

It’s wonky, but an extremely cool build to play when timing your venoms correctly, and with December 10th coming this build will gain an additional 33% initiative regeneration and increased healing potential from Assassin’s Reward. Go ahead and try it out! I’ll try to get a video done within the next few weeks, once I grab the ascended weapons (darn time gating).

EDIT: Awe, it censors the build’s name… just infer it from the title "-.-

EDIT 2: Keep in mind this is meant as a team build. I pity the fool who thinks they can roam with it, and I’d knight the fool who could actually do it.

EDIT 3: This build also avoids every nerf coming December 10th. Where’s my gold star?

Josh Davis.6015:

Drakh.3128:

aaaand he’s gone.

Not quite!

I’m still getting acclimated to the WvW team, and most recently I’ve been working with the balance team on the livestream we’ll be running tomorrow. (Which you’ll of course be watching, right?)

The thief forum will be listening intently!

I like to think “changes to crit damage” don’t translate to nerfs like everyone assumes.. Please don’t prove me wrong :/

The forum consists of two types of people: Negative Nancy’s and Fanboys, according to the majority of the forumites. You’re getting a very limited point of view only polling forum-goers, whereas I’m sure the majority of people in the game right now have a different overall perspective.

A little note from a 3D character artist who’s been around:

People seem to think that ArenaNet artists have to model all 30 sets to release a single set for the public, however this is a false notion. They start out with a base male and female model, then design the 3 armor sets off of those – often reusing assets from the first model (usually male). In this case, from scratch, they’re most often only modeling 3 armor sets with select separate meshes, taking about the time it would take for 4-5 sets. This may take anywhere from 18 hours to 48 hours depending on time allotted and the amount of detail your goal is set for. The hard part is over, and now the 6 armor sets are soft transformed and stretched/compressed to fit both the race, sex and 6 to 10 body types which may take another 4 hours. All in all, when creating game assets for a larger client it takes around 30 hours of pure work time to finish an armor set with the same requirements ArenaNet has, purely for one armor set. That’s 4 days of a full-time job for one set of armor for each armor tier, and that’s entirely too much time to spend on one armor set. I’m not sure where I was going with this, just giving some insight on the process I suppose, but I hope you guys see why they reuse assets rather than creating entirely new ones from scratch. Texturing is the easy part once you’ve got your mesh modeled and unwrapped (GODS BE DREADED UNWRAPPING — this takes the longest, unless you’re a pro and use zBrush magic or UVLayout), so ‘reskinning’ armor is a much quicker alternative when your publisher is pushing for a new armor set every 2 weeks in the gem store while your character artists are also designing new creatures, props, weapons and more.

It hits for more than Backstab, sure, but the windup animation is also one of the biggest tells in the game. I think the damage is appropriate – there isn’t even an evade frame on the leap, which leaves you vulnerable. Any thief running offhand pistol or Distracting Daggers will have the ability to shut you down mid-vault, and a necro can flash Shroud and instantly fear you out of it – that’s just one example among many, many other class options to counter it. With Backstab, the counterplay is much lower. Vault is a higher risk skill mid-combat and the damage should scale accordingly.

Elbegast.6970:

Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

Let me direct you to ArcheAge.

Deified.7520:

Thieves are borderline overpowered in combat. Many say they’re not as powerful in ranked pvp because they’re lack luster in the teamfights. However, if we ever see a deathmatch/tdm mode appear thief will be the most played class.

Reasons this stealthing system sucks.

No direct counter. The current counter depends heavily on the players ability to predict another. This is a huge skill requirement to fight one class. No other class requires this level of prediction. Sure fighting them does require prediction, but thief requires the most because of stealthing.

First strike advantage constantly during fights. In any PvP gaming have the first strike advantage is insanely good. Being able to have it multiple times during one fight is insanely good.

You got bonus stuff! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fought a thief and he goes stealth and appears without conditions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a thief down to 10%, he spams stealth, appears with full hp, get him down again, uses heal, rinse and repeat. So you get all these buffs to an already impressive thing to have in PvP.

You control the fight as a stealther. You want to reset your HP? Not much they can do to stop you. 90% of the thieves I fought had controlled the fight. If they wanted to escape a fight, they would. If they wanted to run, there are very few classes that were able to stop them alone. Other thieves and thats about it. I’ve seen instances where a thief would engage in a fight in the middle of 10 people in WvW. Then as we all chase him, he escapes. That level of forgiveness and fight control should never be in the hands of one person. No class should be able to escape the CC, condition damage, and damage of 10 people.

I have never seen any sort of MMO or MLG pvp game with a similar stealth system. Mobas for example. They have sentrys that anyone can buy , some classes have skills that can directly counter stealth, ontop of this none of the stealth skills offer amazing healing ability. Previous MMOs never had this sort of none counterable stealth.

They can’t just remove stealthing now however, I recognize how deeply thieves rely on this to survive. They need to find a way to buff your survivability without having you rely on such an overpowered concept of the stealth system. If they keep the current system, they need to reduce your ability to go stealth by about 1/4-1/2 of its current ability.

Solution: play a ranger, use Sic ’Em. Reveals all stealthed enemies and your pet deals extra damage for a short time.

CMstorm.8679:

Daecollo.9578:

CMstorm.8679:

I like the idea of the trait. Its a little lackluster as a GM trait though. gaining 5 secs of retaliation once every 15 seconds if struck by a critical hit is such a short duration.
Should either be increased to 10 seconds or keep at 5 seconds and add weakness or vulnerability to your attacker every time you’re struck.

Should also add 5 seconds of protection.

Dangit, Daecollo! Stop asking for protection on warriors! it’d be way overkill.

That’s why I run Lyssa runes on my condition tank ;3 20% protection, retal, regen, and every other boon with the amount of boon duration I get from traits.