Guild Wars 2

Also, it apparently fails even in small PvP….did he not kill any of you?

If not, what is the complaint? That you didn’t get to kill him?

Get used to that, thieves will always be the class that chooses when a fight is over, that is how they are designed.

Ljiona.9142:

You got to remember a couple of things. First of all, DAOC wasn’t all that. You are remembering mostly the good because it was probably your first MMO and you had tons of fun because you didn’t know anything else. If DAOC got released now days, it would have flopped with all the balance issues, CC issues it had a release, xp loss for dying, and repair costs it had at release. I mean it had 1 minute 45 second mezz and 26 second stuns that could be chained. You imagine that now days? No way anyone would put of with that. I think they eventually added a purge skills but if the timer was up, you were screwed. It came down to who could get off their mez first.

Like others have said, you need to learn WvW more. What if it was easy when you first started playing? You wouldn’t be playing it a week from now. Also consider all the servers and match-ups aren’t the same. You might be in one where the enemy is blowing everyone away and your side isn’t even playing WvW. I would try to find an even match tier. When you have 3 evenly matched servers fighting each other, it is fun as heck.

It probably would flop today, but gamers expect a spoon feeding more today than they were then. People no longer view games as a “challenge” to be overcome. They simply view them as a “passtime” where they feel they should not have to work to earn any meaningful progress.

This is mostly due to game no longer being strictly for the hardcore gamer but are targeted now at a much more general populace. My advice is to keep your DAoC account open for when you get tired of dealing with carebearness and play this on the side when you don’t want to be truly engaged in anything atm.

Hoyvin.3241:

Can someone explain the attraction of this? I’m not looking down on you if that’s what you want to play, it’s a semi-free world, after all, but why would you pick a class generally known as a ranged class and then want to play melee?

For myself I play longbow/shortbow. I started out longbow/greatsword, but found that I very rarely used the greatsword, and liked some of the crowd control/condition damage (sorry I hate acronyms on forums I generally have no idea what the refer to) aspects of the shortbow.

I have a guildie that pretty much thinks the same way. Again, you paid yer fitty bucks for the game and you can play it any kitten way you please.

There are no “ranged” or “melee” classes in this game per design. Every class has equally viable ranged and melee compared to other classes. Ranged in general compared to melee, regardless of the class fails in small scale pvp (1v1, 1v2, etc). Tired of getting ganked by thieves? go Sword/Dagger and kick thief kitten This is the reason more and more rangers are going melee.

While this is true, most do not associate player ability with ability to build a strong character. They think of “skill” in the twitchy reactionary sense of first person shooters. Mostly due to the fact that they are copy/paste builds they found on some site rather than actually learning how to create a custom build.

For the record, though, I totally agree 100%.

Actually, the tier a server is in is DIRECTLY correlated to their active WvW population. I know there isn’t a static ratio across all servers of WvW players to PvE/sPvPers, but the discrepancy can’t be so much as to completely negate the validity of that statement.

There is no “skilled” server vs “unskilled”. Players are generally equally “skilled” within their gameplay meta.

Sure, comparing a duelist/solo roamer to a zergling in single combat would make things seem to indicate one server was more skilled than the other; but name one server that doesn’t have both zerglings and roamers.

It’s not so much a question of “play” better. But more “build” better. You can be the most awesome glass cannon ever, but the moment you meet content that requires some defense, you are SoL. This applies to PvE and even moreso to PvP.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guesting-is-coming/

Info is in there on this.

Actually, no quite the opposite. ANet encourages guilds to transfer off of higher population (high tier) severs to lower ones. This will be further reinforced once paid transfers start as it will be cheaper to transfer to a lower pop server than to a high pop server.

Frenk.5917:

Incurafy.6329:

14,095 with full Berserker gear and no extra Vitality.

Screen, or I won’t believe you.
Base HP = 10800

Berserker has no vitality stat and even if you maxed acrobatics you get +3k hp.

Of course ou could have the wvwvw bonus, but what kind of berserker thief would max ACROBATICS?

He was referring to the sPvP berserker which does have vitality. Yet another reason I dislike sPvP, the builds don’t really transfer from WvW to sPvP.

zen.6091:

I would strongly caution against the outmanned buff being too good, because it may encourage more 5 man gank squads than actual objective taking. The problem is more with what a small group of 5-10 players realistically can do other than camp raid…and on the higher tier servers, they are often very good at squashing even that as a means to generate a few ppt and annoyance.

5-man squads would love to fight other 5-man squads. This is the most enjoyable form of PvP in this meta for many of us.

CrassBippy.4619:

Esoteric.5490:

Tekren.4580:

They won’t do that just like how daoc added titles people that had a million kills didn’t get there points grandfathered in. They had to start from 0 like everyone else. Which in my opinion is the right thing to do.

I disagree. Players who have busted their tail for months would be on the same level as someone who abandoned the game or has never WvW’d before. That’s nonsense. I spend countless hours in WvW daily and all of us would have nothing to show for that. ANet would have to add it retroactively if it isn’t original design because I promise you that there would be an uproar.

You have badges, everyone should start at 0. Can’t complain since you were wvwin for fun right?

This assumes that badges will not be outdated currency with the changes.

Yeah, currently, our easiest to play build is P/D. Personally, I find it incredibly boring, but there are many who enjoy it. All you can do is try it out. I much prefer S/D to it though.

brunohstein.9038:

Any class running full glass canon will be bad at FotM, specially thieves.

And thieves love to run glass canon.

SOME thieves love to run GC builds…… Experienced thieves generally do not.

To be fair, he didn’t specify one way or the other.

KwayZee.5742:

GuardianOMS.8067:

KwayZee.5742:

You know at first I had respect for Maguuma, but seeing the amount of spies they is ridiculous.. I mean even after winning by so MUCH. You resort to spies to still make the game easy.. thats crazy…

Spies are not something you use only when you’re losing. While the majority of our mumble community frowns upon it, it’s a valid tactic regardless of what place you’re in. We’ve been spied on numerous times, and yes, even while losing. We know what to say when we want to keep something secret, we know who to PM and talk to when we’re on a secret mission.

Honestly, at this point, I would guess the spies are there out of boredom. If anyone really cared to resort to spies to win even harder, then they’re the 1%.

KwayZee.5742:

I mean WaR, ILL, SM, GOON all these guilds and outnumbering us at least 4 to 1. Yet they know where we are, when to hit, where we placed our siege. I mean at least fake it and pretend to not to know..

GOON does not outnumber you. Don’t lie. It’s not hard to know what to hit when it’s the ONLY thing on the map with swords. We also have roamers and scouts everywhere and we communicate to each other when we find enemies. Shocking, I know.

I’m not saying GOON outnumbers us, but you guys were there. Also to have a 90% accuracy to know where we built everything and for 90% of your people to go straight to that location… I mean come on.. When you guys just took the Garrison I saw this happen. And I dont care how coordinated you are, unless you have a spy telling you, you will not have a 90% accuracy on that.

You just run straight there and wipe it, while the 5 random nubs were going to the Lord.

And the giant boulders arcing through the sky that you can see from across the map isn’t enough of a clue? Honestly, no one needs spies to find siege weaponry.

What amazes me is how many people assume they need a target to do attacks….. Yes even ranged can you just have to pan your camera down to a dead horizon sine you shoot at the angle your camera is set to.

To be perfectly honest……I prefer to be on the “losing” server. It provides better roaming for me.

All I know is I can kill them in 2 auto attack chains with my sword in fully tank thief build if I force them to drain initiative. Why would anyone do that to themselves…….

Burst tank to half health with their backstab + init dump….woohoo! Then tank punches em in the face and they go down.

It’s like putting a varsity boxer in with Tyson…..

Oh, and if I can get over 3k armor rating on a THIEF no other class aside maybe the ele can complain.

Brutalistik.6473:

Adaneshade.2409:

I’ll tell you other thieves the same thing I tell to every other class that QQs about being bursted down….get some toughness, glass cannons have no meaningful place in PvP.

You think toughness is the answer? Any glass cannon can blow through toughness with ease no matter how high it is. If anything you won’t be 2shotted instead…you’ll be 3shotted. Don’t believe me Adaneshade.2409? try it out yourself and see if I’m lying here. I guarantee you’ll be disappointed being 3shotted by glass cannon even having over 3k armor.

Have over 3k armor, never get 3 shot by anything. not even close. Either you’re outright lying, or just trying to troll.

PS – As a side note, maybe you should actually read someones post before going all nerd rage on them. I was poking fun at a thief, of all classes, complaining about dying to burst.

I’ll tell you other thieves the same thing I tell to every other class that QQs about being bursted down….get some toughness, glass cannons have no meaningful place in PvP.

Pro Tip: A stealthed thief will be trying to get behind you. Make him work his kitten kitten to get there.

arrownin.3128:

With no way to really detect people in stealth, besides swinging randomly, stealth really is just an invincibility bubble, rather than a stealth mechanic. There’s no real risk or sneakiness to being in stealth, since you can just reactivate it 3 seconds later. I think we really need to remove the aspect of stealth being just another Shadow Form, and making it an actual stealth mechanic.

Funny stuff as over half the thieves I kill I do so while they are in stealth.

Aeneasx.1589:

I encourage everyone to come to mags tonight, should be fun. Can anyone ask Zastari (irez) if he’ll be down

He primarily reps kitten now. I think I’m the only member primarily repping [iRez] at this point in time.

P/D is the most ez-mode build a thief can have. Once they are ready to take the training wheels off, they move to Sword builds or at least something like D/P.

He said the Yak should get it while the guards are still up.

Cactus.2710:

Ashanae.9362:

MMOs are supposed to be balanced around team play not 1v1 duels.

It staggers me that so many players are incapable of understanding this. It’s even more astounding to me that players complain they can’t get good 5v5 battles in WvW when sPvP and arenas are available and were specifically designed for such play styles.

So wrong…..sPvP is about holding points, not deathmatches. The people complaining about a lack of 5v5 would not complain so much of a deathmatch mode were implemented in sPvP.

Of course, even with that, people from the DAoC might still prefer a roaming 5v5 style similar to what they had in the past to being lumped up in a cage. No way to use extending tactics there. I know I am one of that group.

Yeah, on my thief even, I can just outright tank the guards and kill the yak. Don’t even have to use burst and stealth, just tank and autoattack em down. Really sad……

Ruby orbs will probably get ya farther than any rune set will for raw dps. Might want to consider Emerald orbs though to add a little toughness to the build. As a general rule, though orbs are better than runes unless you have a very specific 6th set bonus you need from runes.

Detargeting, 180 sword 2 then 180 retarget sword 2 again will close quite a gap. Takes a little practice to pull off though.

Yeah, don’t think I’ve used keyboard turning since playing descent in DOS……

S/D and D/D are both more “entertaining” but also more challenging. I prefer S/D myself in both PvP and PvE, but only because I love the playstyle.

I’d have to state, (coming from a DAoC mindset mind you), that anything greater than 1 full party is a zerg.

Sword/Pistol is by far the easiest. Combined with signet of malice.

Not that we don’t “like” to. But there are many with the same mindset I have and that’s I couldn’t care less. Some of us don’t even bother to so much as take a supply camp unless it has enemies inside to kill. We play for the DAoC style roaming PvP.

In this game, melee build trumps ranged build nearly every time in PvP. Just accept that and move on.
No class is as competitive with their ranged builds as they are with their melee; this stems from the lack of kiting ability. Melee builds have more gap closers than ranged have escapes.

GC vs GC the thief usually wins. GC thief has real issue with a well played defensive build though. I stress well played as the thief class, regardless of build kills noobs without any difficulty, but even a well played thief is a toss up vs a well played defensive build.

The “thief is OP” bit is really just a misconception. Our best ally is confusing the opponent as to where we actually are. This does not work vs mobs. Thief will be the most challenging experience in PvE you will have; but it’ll make you a stronger player, just stick with it and good luck ^.^

Oh just noticed the paraylization / mesmer runes question. This is normally recommended if you go glass to provide more of a stunlock (works in WvW still but not in sPvP afaik).
My build is about dmg absorption and health regen. Main difference is I don’t really rely on a rotation of C&D + tactical strike to survive, freeing up some visible time to use Flanking Strike vs bunker classes to strip off their boon stacking.

I do still use tactical strike, don’t get me wrong, but as an interrupt more than a “lockdown”.

Well I only have one stacking sigil, the crit one, others not stacking. as far as my traits……

Deadly Arts: 0
Critical Strikes: 30 (VI, VIII, XI majors)
Shadow Arts: 30 (III, IV, XI majors)
Acrobatics: 10 (VI major)
Trickery: 0

It’s a mesmer, trust me I know them lol. And you don’t need to use glitchy mechanics like shadowstep bugs. Just good old fashiond space bar pressing.

crouze.3078:

Adaneshade.2409:

crouze.3078:

Adaneshade.2409:

While the OP is a well thought out post. I must disagree with the survivability argument. It is possible with sword builds to make an outright tank yet still do pretty good dps, enough to blow up all the silly glass cannons that roll around anyway.

What build are you talking about exactly?
I know some pistol whip thiefs using the evasion.
But in my opion its only average survivability and dmg.

But maybe you can prove me the opposite

I posted a build in the forums here just recently, take a look.

i remember this one. one of the better builds on this forum.

but i dont like the 2 utility skills for stealth when you have a dagger offhand.

instead of blinding powder i would take 1 of these:

• Shadowstep
• Caltrops
• Tripwire
• Ambush

as i wrote “tripwire” i thought about the idea of charges for it.
or a duration after someone stepped on it before it vanish.
but tha may be to strong so forget about that for now

I used to run utilities similar to what you prefer. However, in the dueling circuits, I’ve been running into more and more people who are nearly impossible to land C&D on. They are just too kitten good at dodging it. They are basically now my “oh kitten” buttons for when i need a quick condition purge or some hp regen.

Yeah, but he’s like a treed raccoon up there lol. Just spam some aoe and watch him melt.

Yendorion.2381:

It’s around 1400 as Distaste and should be kept that way while the projectile speed should be increased, which is where I don’t see the point of your complaint since as it is even a Dolyak could easily dodge them.

P.S. Erroneous tooltips always an indication of the state of neglect for any class in any MMO.

Actually the tooltips are correct, auto attack will not trigger beyond the stated range. You have to spam the button beyond that and at that point the physics engine takes over. Higher the elevation, the farther the projectile will go.

LoL I know that mesmer >.<

And it’s not against the rules, he jumped up there legitimately, though it’s extremely hard to do.

crouze.3078:

Adaneshade.2409:

While the OP is a well thought out post. I must disagree with the survivability argument. It is possible with sword builds to make an outright tank yet still do pretty good dps, enough to blow up all the silly glass cannons that roll around anyway.

What build are you talking about exactly?
I know some pistol whip thiefs using the evasion.
But in my opion its only average survivability and dmg.

But maybe you can prove me the opposite

I posted a build in the forums here just recently, take a look.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Adaneshade.2409:

No class can build glass cannon and defeat defensive builds. Glass cannon is for PvE, no place in PvP.

You are obviously a pver, any real pvper knows glass cannons have a huge place in pvp, and fyi, I beat defensive builds all the time with my glass cannon build. Its not hard since defensive builds lack almost any form of damage.

Pit any class glass vs defensive in single combat and see who wins. I’ll pit any glass cannon build you can come up with on any class vs my tank in 1v1. We’ll see just how “weak” my damage is against your paper thin build.

The fact that they are stun breakers makes them instantly not “garbage”.

While the OP is a well thought out post. I must disagree with the survivability argument. It is possible with sword builds to make an outright tank yet still do pretty good dps, enough to blow up all the silly glass cannons that roll around anyway.

Catisa.6507:

Shaad.1706:

But its our game and we’ll play it how we want, YOU DONT PAY OUR SUBS! :P

A. No one pays a sub
B. just remember that attitude when your little sideshow carnivals get run over.

How can you run over something you don’t know the location of? :-P It’s not like we hold these on the usual zerg routes.