Guild Wars 2

Bleet.1094:

Arganthium.5638:

Intriguing.

Perhaps you’ll like trying out my typical S/D build, found here. It’s a PvP thing that I created, and I ran it in the Guard vs Thief Consolation Match at the SOAC tournament recently. I’m not sure how much you PvP, but perhaps you’d be interested in trying it out. In the meantime, I’ll try this out and see how I like it.

I was running almost that exact same build for a few weeks its fun with endless dodge and initiative The great thing about this was I could change my armor to Condi damage Vit and Pow set + 15% bleed runes x3 then change trick line talents to Caltrops on dodge, -20% trick cool down, and initiative on heal. Then go roll for ini, caltrops, infiltrators signets. The initiative regen is amazing and the DB spam and Yoda (if asura) flipping around quite copious.

But running 20/30/0/20/0 atm the 2k SB auto attacks are addicting :P

The build is pretty fun, and flexible.

Yeah, I’ve tried out more offensive S/D builds like Jumper’s before. My main issue with them tends to be that I have a playstyle that takes small advantages as often as possible as opposed to trying to grab riskier but more rewarding advantages, so I’ve just been sticking to my build.

Pentalic.5409:

Arganthium.5638:

I don’t know of any, but I’d be willing to join in on you with one if you’re trying to create an all-thief team.

Glad to see a familiar name would be up for this kind of thing
I would love to help put something like this together, but I fear I wouldn’t be able to alone. I simply don’t know enough about managing a team and I would prove a very lackluster manager/coach or whatever you wanna call someone who organizes these things xD
If anyone would like to see this happen and WOULD do a good job with the aforementioned tasks, I would do anything in my power to help see this through.

Of course.

You won’t have to worry much about being alone in making this a reality. As for managing a team, I can help you with that. Really, the coach has three main jobs: team coordination in builds and strategy off the field, coordinating the team on the field, and organizing the team both on and off the field (in terms of setting up a teamchat, etc). It’s not that difficult to master; I figure that we could get six people on the team and have them switch out coaches based on strengths and weaknesses in a given matchup. Either way, I’ll be able to help you out with this kind of stuff, if you’re interested in it.

xmtrcv.5236:

After a couple Thief teams were fielded for the SOAC all profession tournaments, there was some further discussion of having a serious go at an all Thief team..

I would also be interested in joining. xD

Ah yes, shoulda linked you to this post. :P knew you’d be interested in this kind of a deal.

I do think the CD should have been increased, but 40 seconds was a bit ridiculous. I think 30 seconds w/o a hit might have been decent.

/sigh

20% of 60 seconds is 12 seconds.

The tooltip says that it recharges 20% faster (not “has 20% of its original CD”; 20% faster means that the trait takes away 20% of the recharge), meaning that it charges at a rate of 1-.2 = .8.

60 minus 12 is 48.

The new CD is 48 seconds.

I don’t know of any, but I’d be willing to join in on you with one if you’re trying to create an all-thief team.

Essence Snow.3194:

Eolirin.1830:

Essence Snow.3194:

That’s incomplete information, so any assumptions made from it fail to hold water unfortunately. Had it provided sales across all prices at or across a certain time frame, then we could surmise something of value.

That’s not true. When the guides call for exactly 25 dilled cream sauce, and dilled cream sauce purchases are almost entirely being made in batches of 25, it’s not at all unreasonable to draw the conclusion that the people buying dilled cream sauce are following those guides. There being high demand for dilled cream sauce drives up the demand for dill, which is used to create it, and so the price of dill spikes.

So you’re telling me, that players following guides released in January didn’t cause a spike in dill sales till mid May? I don’t buy that. If the info could show a correlation in time to a guide then it would be better, but as it stands…it remains inconclusive.

You don’t consider an exponential increase in the number of views on this guide. As more people view this guide, more people are likely to promote it. As more people promote it, more people are going to view the guide, and even more people are going to promote it than before. Essentially, if every promoter of the guide gets two other people to promote the guide, then we go from having one promoter to
1+2^5 = 33 promoters by the time we get to the fifth person in the chain of promoters.

Of course, in actuality, a model like the one above is extremely simplified, and, furthermore, the ability to produce more promoters will plateau and stabilize, meaning that there will be an X number of promoters of the guide (because, at this point, most of the people who are willing to promote the guide already have, and many people have already seen this guide anyways). However, the point is that this exponential increase in promotion of such a guide could very well be the explanation that would suggest that a guide written in January causes an effect later in May in the markets.

Lopez.7369:

Asomal.6453:

1 – More diversity (builds/amulets/traits/weapons/weapon skills/utilitiy skills)
2 – More skins
3 – A way to make gold out off PVP

The third one would make no sense because there’s no gold sink in PvP.

There’s a gold sink wherever you go to spend your gold (unless it’s in a third-party trade system). To buy off the TP, for example, you have to pay gold in the form of taxes. The buy from vendors, the gold you spend is destroyed and removed from the game. That being said, by increasing everybody’s pockets by allowing us to make gold off PvP, there will be significant inflation in the marketplace as the wealth levels of players increase (assuming you get gold directly), or significant deflation, on the other hand, could occur (i.e. if you’re able to get tons of mats and sell them off, then mats like Ectos will fall in price). Fortunately, the tax system in the TP provides an automatic stabilizer for this kind of stuff.

Even with 5 projectiles, the skill does a total of 4,375 damage, plus bounces on anybody nearby. And this is on a 30-second cooldown to supplement your other damage that you’re dealing (and the cooldown can be reduced, too). That’s some pretty good spike.

I main a thief, so I don’t have to worry about this.

Anyways, I’m not sure whether I would agree that these tactics be allowed in the JP or not.

Quarktastic.1027:

Arganthium.5638:

Personally, I think that silver/silverish-bluish Electromagnetic cultural armor that is the T3 Asura’s heavy cultural armor looks epic.

You mean like this?

Yup. c:

PyrophoricX.7540:

Ok, out of 4 different classes, no one could tank. Specifically, no one could survive more than a few hits.

The nests of spiders were especially horrible. Attacking the nest directly, we had at least 10 spiders at once. The warrior last about 2 seconds, surprisingly dps characters had more utility to actually stay alive but not for much longer.

Before you go into the dungeon, you should discuss general strategy and tactics with your group. One of the ways to do this is to discuss builds.

It helps to know some good builds to fit different for every class off the top of your head, or, assuming that you don’t, it would be a good idea to make sure your partners run builds that support their role in the dungeon. Failing that, if you’re good at coming up with innovative, creative build ideas off the top of your head, then that’s a great way to organize your team. I can’t remember very good builds off the top of my head, but in my experience, as soon as I rolled a profession, I went straight to PvP and went and BS’d my own build. It wasn’t necessarily unique or original, but it did what it had to do, so I’d probably fall into the second or third categories.

For example, here are some different thief builds that would work well in a dungeon, I think (haven’t done one in a while):

Venom Share, Team Direct Support

D/P Tanking Build (by the way, this is a build that I am certain is unique to me, I created it myself and have yet to see another person make something even remotely close to it. It’s a shame that I’m one of very few people who use this (the others being people who asked me for build advice), because it’s a very good build.

Bleeds Err’where

Personally, I think that silver/silverish-bluish Electromagnetic cultural armor that is the T3 Asura’s heavy cultural armor looks epic.

If you’re complaining that your giant, fatkitten, morbidly obese norn can’t hide behind a pebble on the ground, you should rethink everything that you’ve ever thought you knew.

Pukknub.7368:

Arganthium.5638:

Pukknub.7368:

I would say no, not vs a good mesmer.

This is entirely false, and there’s no strategic or tactical evidence to support your claim.

It’s just my opinion, no need to back up with facts or anything.

That’s fine, but the fact that you didn’t state that that was just an opinion to a player who is clearly in need of help for this matchup wasn’t entirely helpful. If I was a new Guard on these forums looking for advice, it wouldn’t be encouraging to see “no, we can’t win against good mesmers”.

The reason is that, simply put, people hate thieves. They also hate D/D eles, bunker guards, and the like, but thieves are the cornerstone profession for players to be able to QQ on. So many of the people who come here spewing random bullkitten like “lol I have 3k hours on my thief and we should be nerfed”, and then comments like “Shadow Refuge is OP” (even though it requires you to stay in a relatively small circle for an extended period of time, and, furthermore, walking outside of the circle or being pushed out automatically Reveals you) just make life a bit miserable over here. Players complain about stealth, and in spite of all of the times I have given advice to these players to help them fight against it, it seems like the waves of thief-haters just keep flinging themselves towards us. It’s really frustrating, and that may be why some of the stuff you see here is a bit kitteny, even though there are some really awesome players here.

Winds.3087:

I’m sorry, but you won’t find any build variety on mesmer.

Not if you look on these forums that give useless advice like this…

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone else have a first image of a cannon firing dolyaks at people?

That is exactly what I thought I was about to see when I clicked on this post. :P

Intriguing.

Perhaps you’ll like trying out my typical S/D build, found here. It’s a PvP thing that I created, and I ran it in the Guard vs Thief Consolation Match at the SOAC tournament recently. I’m not sure how much you PvP, but perhaps you’d be interested in trying it out. In the meantime, I’ll try this out and see how I like it.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Calvin.5380:

lol so nobody was ready to pay for your transfers, and you came on forums to save face? People can differentiate between in-game skill and forum skill, you know. lol!

Yep, you figured it out! Good job, Calvin. Great detective, this guy.

“… And we would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”

The skill does provide some team support, being a vuln-applying skill. It would be useful in dungeons against bosses, where everybody is focusing their fire and far more than 2k DPS is being dealt.

First, fear doesn’t tick, it’s a constant effect. Either way, I see what you’re trying to say.

Yes, you need 100% condition duration, assuming that the fear lasts a base 1 second.

Weakness is actually a seriously underestimated condition that really is only bad if the opponent has a high crit chance. However, realize that bleed and burn aren’t very good if the enemy has high vits, for example; also realize that, if nothing else, this does provide a very good source of reducing endurance regen.

MaXi.3642:

less RNG = better imo

and this condition is affected by 2 RNGs (crit chance and glancing chance), thats way too much…

Less rng does not mean that something is better. If the chance of not getting a glancing blow was .0001%, and a person’s crit chance was .0001%, would you still say that the condition is bad because it’s affected by 2 rngs? Hopefully not.

The reason is that, without this, weakness would be insanely awesome, and maybe a bit OP.

Let’s put it this way: weakness is what I’d refer to as an “uncommon” condition, meaning that you can throw it down on players with ease relative to some conditions, but it’s more difficult relative to other conditions. For example, poison and bleed would be “common” conditions, while fear and chill are probably “rare” conditions. The same goes for boons: there are more common ones (might, vigor, fury, swiftness), uncommon ones (possibly aegis, retaliation), and rare ones (protection, possibly aegis, stability). Knowing this, let us continue.

Assuming that crits did not affect whether or not something an attack would be a glancing blow, we can say that, by the definition of the condition, 50% of attacks would do 50% damage, while the other 50% would do 100% damage. Thus, on average, the amount of damage a player would do would be

.5 * .5 + .5 * 1 = .75, or 75% of their regular damage on average.

In other words, weakness, an uncommon condition, would have almost the same effects as a rare boon, protection, and would also reduce endurance regeneration by 50% on top of that. That’s pretty kittening strong.

However, because of the negation of glancing blows based on crits, the formula for the total average amount of damage done would be

CC * CD + (1-CC)/2 * .5 + (1-CC)/2 * 1, where CC is Critical Chance and CD is critical damage. This equates to CC * CD + 3(1-CC)/4, which is a significant reduction in damage lost to glancing blows. Still, however, there is the issue of -50% endurance regen.

So that’s why it’s like that.

Thank you for telling us that stealth is “OP”, just like hundreds of other people have.

… Now, would you mind explaining how it is OP?

There really aren’t any circumstances under which you would use it.

First of all, it hardly scales any better with power than does the autoattack. Its skill-specific coefficient, I believe, is 0.5, meaning that a +1 increase in power increases damage by a mere 0.5. In other words, with 3000 power, you would be dealing 600 damage, which, in all honesty, isn’t that impressive. So, it can’t really be used for pure damage output.

So what about the vuln, then? At 5 stacks for 6 seconds, that’s okay, right? Well, assuming you lay down 2000 DPS as a base (which is pretty high, but let’s just assume that), then your overall DPS is going to increase by 5%, or 100 damage. In other words, this attack, assuming high DPS, basically gives you an increased 600 damage over the period of 6 seconds. In other words, assuming that you can get high levels of DPS, this skill becomes decent; essentially, with 2000 base DPS (from yourself and allies), this skill deals its base damage plus an extra 600 damage per turn. However, realize that 2000 is probably somewhat unrealistically high (unless you’re running P/P burst).

Really, it all varies based on your build. The higher your other damage output, the better the skill becomes.

Kasama.8941:

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

As Aphroditë said, perhaps ANet should make us play with two fingers and a thumb, just to make it fair, amirite?

Gaidax.7835:

Arganthium.5638:

As a thief, here’s my view for fighting these builds as a thief.

For one thing, this is one of the very, very few situations where I approve of the D/D weapon combo, which, personally, I have always despised. Actually, anything with /D is decent here, as CnD is very good against illusions, particularly if they stay out for a long period of time.

Furthermore, burst is an absolute essential; there’s no doubt about it whatsoever. You have to be extremely aggressive against a phanta mesmer and try to burst them down as quickly as possible, in order to prevent them from destroying you with their phantasms. What the phantasm mesmer lacks in some areas, like toughness or aggression, it makes up for multiple times with its phantasms.

So, the solution? Be extremely aggressive.

That is probably the best shot here at phantasm mesmer – getting a full glass cannon thief with a balls to the wall uber ROFLburst spec AND (important) Basilisk Venom elite… then try and burst the mes down right away ASAP right frikkin NAO!

If you fail – you either run away or die, but overall I’d say that anything less than that is auto-loss anyway, so it’s a good shot at that.

I mean, I wasn’t necessarily referring to a 100% GC build- you still need to be able to survive if a single phantasm is pulled out :P – but the idea is simply “bust me down before I set up an impenetrable fortress”. How you go about doing that varies based on how you want to play.

The idea was very simple: lay down pressure by using the flexibility given to me by my defensive spec that allowed me to be particularly aggressive. The trait points, however, were very bad indicators of just what the build was like; while you might expect a turtle that did nothing but noob off others’ kills in battle from this build, I did the exact opposite: I was a front-line fighter with excellent scouting and soloing opportunities. I offset any offensive weaknesses that I had by patching together some aggressive gear from a variety of different areas- mostly zerker gear. Soon enough, I owned the battlefield. This was the only build that I would recommend people, at the time; it was far superior in terms of strategy and tactics to any other build you might find out there. More aggressive builds, like the GC D/D or D/P build I think you were referring to typically require the sacrifice of some long-term advantage in exchange for many short-term advantages; however, a good player learns how to grab onto the long-term advantages while neutralizing all of the short-term ones that you have, and thus the GC idea eventually falls apart. However, this tanking build didn’t require the giving up of an advantage early on in the fight; instead, it sought to use complicated strategy and tactics to gain a small advantage on an opponent, and then use that advantage as leverage to gain an increasingly larger and larger advantage. The strategy worked so beautifully, I brought the build over to PvP, where I gave it some Zerker stats and the like.

If you really think you know everything there is about D/P then, that you’ve magically “proven” that 25/30/0/0/15 is the best build out there, then you are horribly mistaken. You’ve jumped over hundreds if not thousands of ideas that buildcrafters like myself have developed; you can’t say that something is the “best” without knowing anything about the alternatives.

Silferas.3841:

RedSpectrum.1975:

…
There isn’t one DP build, just like there isnt one DD build

In pvp, there is only one DP build, as well as only one DD build. Coincidentally, they are the same. They have been played from the launch, tested endlessly and proven to be the best. Now if you are basing your argumentation on WvW, let me stop you. WvW is a game mode that is in it’s core based on abuse of principles, that were supposed to make PvE better for the people playing the game, like ridiculous maximum critical damage, fully geared players being put against newbs and similar disgusting things.

This is horrendously untrue, in multiple regards. Lemme give you some background, first.

I was a WvW veteran that came over to PvP after the server that I had transferred to, Eredon Terrace, was beginning to show signs of falling apart, being damaged irreversibly. I was faced with situations where I would have to function as pseudo-commander for a giant group of pugs while being forced to negotiate agreements with a commander from FC, whilst expecting they would break their end of the agreement when most convenient for them. Eventually, the stress and countless losses became too much for me, so I quit.

You are correct, then, that WvW is based on the abuse of principles that, if implemented in PvP, would work horrendously for teams. However, in WvW, you don’t have the luxury of being guaranteed with having equal resources relative to what your opponents have. This results in crazy imbalances, but they’re very good learning experiences. I have had to fight against players with better gear than me on more than one occasion (I’m very poor), and have had to learn to use non-optimal gear to fit my build. I’ve had to learn how to play cheaply, and play efficiently. I had to learn how to craft builds that could make up for my lack of money, that could fulfill the purposes I needed for them to do while still remaining competitive. I also had to learn many tactical and strategic ideas in order to survive; I’ve faced groups of 20 or so by myself before, acting as harassment while our “armies” came in to give assistance. The point is that you shouldn’t be treating WvW without respect; I can promise you that you experience none of these kinds of things in PvP whatsoever.

Now, onwards. While learning to play the thief, leveling up, and learning the mechanics of WvW, I developed many of my own builds; first it was S/D, then, for a long period of time, S/P, and then some meddling in S/D again; however, I finally came upon a very new weaponset that I liked: D/P. However, because survivability is such an important part of the WvW strategy that I used (and continue to use whenever I dip my toe back into WvW again), and my gear was so varied, I had to rely upon my build choice to provide me with the survivability that I wanted. It took a long time, but eventually, I came up with what may look to be the most crazy stupid and yet somehow self-consistent build you’ll ever be lucky enough to see: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiP3eS6E95EB3Dna0m6fAs9MuqVB

As a thief, here’s my view for fighting these builds as a thief.

For one thing, this is one of the very, very few situations where I approve of the D/D weapon combo, which, personally, I have always despised. Actually, anything with /D is decent here, as CnD is very good against illusions, particularly if they stay out for a long period of time.

Furthermore, burst is an absolute essential; there’s no doubt about it whatsoever. You have to be extremely aggressive against a phanta mesmer and try to burst them down as quickly as possible, in order to prevent them from destroying you with their phantasms. What the phantasm mesmer lacks in some areas, like toughness or aggression, it makes up for multiple times with its phantasms.

So, the solution? Be extremely aggressive.

BlackBeard.2873:

I know it wasn’t mentioned, but if you want to be able to do ANYTHING with your class, try a mesmer. They really do have tons of variety and options due to very powerful class mechanics, awesome traits in every direction, and a wide variety in skills. Mesmer’s are one of the best roaming classes, do well buffing teams in smaller groups, and have some useful utilities in large groups, although they aren’t as useful as ele’s in disorganized zerg v zerg.

Like the guy above me said, mes actually isn’t that great for the OP’s requests, unfortunately, in spite of the mesmer’s pure awesomeness. As a matter of fact, both ele and thief have very broad ranges of skills and/or builds that allow them to be flexible and able to do “anything”. In the ele’s case, there are few very good viable builds, but many/all of them allow for fast healing, buffing allies, bunkering- whatever, making eles very good at swapping roles in battle, but are overall less flexible with all of the roles that they can fulfill. On the other hand, the thief can fulfill almost every single role out there, excluding boon support to allies, although even that could be said to be false (as thieves do have the venom share build, if you call putting venoms on allies as putting boons on them). For example, thieves have access to:

-The best glass cannon builds (not saying that that means that they’re actually good)
-The best bursting builds
-The best scouting builds
-Some of the best condition builds (really, only the necro can surpass the thief in this regard, I think. Maybe engi, but that’s about it)
-The best hit-and-run builds
-Some of the best skirmishing builds (I’d say thakitten ’s right up there with the ele here)
-Some very, very good tanking builds
-By far the best boon stripping builds, if not the only boon stripping builds in the game
-Two unique forms of defense: stealth defense (everything in SA) and evade defense (take a look at Jumper X’s build, for example)
-Some of the best blind/control builds
-The best builds for finishing off weakened enemies
-The best 1v(more than 1) builds (this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to win, but it gives you a higher chance of winning and surviving than most other professions provide. Even guard; they have rather bad damage, and their high armor happens to be just a bit too high in exchange for damage for them to be particularly tough in the long run)
-The best mobility builds
-Whatever I’ve forgotten to add

Which might make you think “great, the thief is so flexible!” The issue, however, is that you can usually only have a very, very small selection of these (1-3 tops) at any given time. For example, venom share builds provide good control and condition opportunities, but that’s about it; they lack the best elements of all of these other types of builds. The point? On the battlefield, the ele can fulfill more rolls than the thief can. However, prior to battles, thieves have a much wider selection of rolls they want to fulfill than the ele has. So, it depends on how you want to play: do you want to play with a predetermined role (thief), or with the role given to you on the battlefield (ele)?

Pukknub.7368:

I would say no, not vs a good mesmer.

This is entirely false, and there’s no strategic or tactical evidence to support your claim.

ensoriki.5789:

Unload is lethal if you get a glass cannon who sits still doesn’t use any skills, and has no teammates helping him.

Headshot is also a particularly dangerous skill when used in this regard.

NERF TEH PIZTOL

I would suggest a D/P build; it’s survivable, the blinds are useful, the interrupts are useful, and overall a very solid weapon set for these game modes.

There was another post like this not too long ago, here’s what I said:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m not a guardian player, so don’t take what I say too seriously, but my view would be that Guardians (being a melee-oriented class) have access to a decent bit of AoE via hammer (as mentioned by Zen) and the Greatsword. Other options are the staff (which I think is a kittening fun weapon for guards, although it doesn’t do well with range, unfortunately) or Smite on Scepter.

The other thing is that Guardians can (and should) be staying right on top of mesmers with their abilities. I know that, as a thief, one of the best ways to counter mes is to get right up in their face and blow their brains out. That’s really the best method I could give you for countering mes. A good mes will be able to escape from you, but even then they’ll be under immense pressure. Don’t get me wrong, mes has good melee options, but… Not as good as a guard.

Your disadvantages are going to be in your lack of range and the fact that you aren’t quite as mobile as mes, so you’ll have to make up for that. If you run a meditation build with Judge’s Intervention, you can stay on top of the mes by teleporting to them. With sword, #2 is a great way to keep up with the mes. GS 3 and 5 either drag the mesmer to you, or you to it. Hammer 5 locks them up (but be careful, because mes can teleport out of the circle. I’ve done this more than enough times on my thief). Scepter 3 also helps lock down opponents.

tl;dr: stay on top of the mes with whatever mobility you can muster; don’t let them out from underneath you hulking greatsword (or whatever). Doing this will put a ton of pressure on them, making the mes more susceptible to mistakes. This isn’t a formula for auto-win, but it’s definitely a very, very powerful strategy.

D/D ele is perfectly viable, and an ele’s viability relative to a thief’s varies based on what your playstyle is. A thief can totally hold its own against a D/D ele- IMO, D/D, while practically useful, isn’t particularly good theoretically, so I would have to say that a very well-played thief does have a slight edge over a D/D ele, but that’s assuming that the thief has a good build as well.

Really, it depends on which playstyle you prefer. You should definitely stick to ele if you prefer it.

nakoda.4213:

what is obscure about saying that statistics are meaningless without context, and that statistical manipulation is how they are made meaningful?

Why should I reply to this when you refuse to reply to almost all of the other things that I say? Maybe if you, y’know, read my post, and actually understood that everything lacks context until given one, and that there’s absolutely nothing about statistical manipulation (given the definition we’ve been using) that harms the accuracy of the statistic, making your mention of the subject completely irrelevant… Maybe then I’ll consider whether your questions actually have any value to them.

Wolfey.3407:

If prices get kittened up, then they will have to eat the 15% fee of their greed to take that item back off the market to try to re-sell it at a competitive price.

^ What he said. Realistically speaking, very few people are going to buy a Tiny Totem for 1g, given current income values. Eventually, people who decide to overprice will have to lower their prices, as they realize thakitten ’s more profitable not to wait years for a single item to be sold, and instead sell at a price that buyers can afford.

Furthermore, your arguments have been absolutely ridiculous. Your only actual relevant argument has been that statistics cannot numerically measure skill. I asked you why, and you replied by saying something obscure about them lacking context and having been “manipulated”. I then wrote an entire post in response to this, and you suddenly said that you weren’t going to bother reading what I wrote- a post which you later deleted. This is getting hilarious. Please, show us how much more kitten dishonesty you can pull off while still holding onto some remnant of dignity.

nakoda.4213:

please, oh great Arga, show me how you know that I never read what you wrote.

please.

it strikes me as funny that someone who agrees with me is “one of those”. did they not read what you wrote either?

ell oh ell.

LOL… Dude, you deleted your own post. Cos honesty. Fortunately, I later quoted it, and here’s what you said:

nakoda.4213:

i clearly said that manipulate was NOT meant to be seen as a taboo thing, it is just a verb: to manipulate.

with that in mind, i didn’t bother reading the rest of what you said, because you haven’t bothered to read what i’ve said.

discussion over. good bye.

Which was ridiculous, you had absolutely no idea what I was saying in the context of what I read, but you said it anyways. Now you delete your own post because you can’t face up to your own dishonesty.

You explicitly stated that you didn’t read what I said.

nakoda.4213:

that does not say that the manipulated stat is inaccurate.

i t says that statistics != skill. which is what we are debating here.

reading comprehension ftw.

and, again, statistics are a meaningless numerical relationships without manipulation to put them in to context and give them meaning.

this fact has not changed. there is an entire branch of science devoted to this very practice. it is called … statistics.

statistics mean nothing until you interpret them. they are just relational numbers.

To which I asked you to bring up evidence why skill cannot be numerically represented, and you replied that statistics lack context and that they are manipulated as “evidence”. Now you’re just saying that manipulation doesn’t equal inaccuracy, but come back to your original argument of “well, stats can’t be represented numerically”, to which you used the aforementioned “evidence”. Circular logic?

I went into great depth about “statistics lacking context” later as well, but apparently you decided to skip my entire post. This is getting ridiculous; you still haven’t replied to any part of either of my arguments at all, and now you decide to make snide remarks like

this fact has not changed. there is an entire branch of science devoted to this very practice. it is called … statistics.

In spite of the fact that you never read what I actually wrote. Seriously?

Julius.1094:

Ranks and points are fine, rank reflects time played, not how well that time was played or good you are at tpvp, but that’s what leaderboard is for. Points during matches don’t mean anything, and only noobs think they do, you don’t get any real advantage with things you buy with glory in this game so it’s just not a big deal. The only real problem atm is that the leaderboards between solo and premade queues aren’t split and the leaderboard does not have a proper decay feature. Those two things are elementary and need to be fixed before the leaderboards really reflects the players and teams, but adding a bunch of complex system measure individual players? Terrible use of development time.

Joy, another one of these.

Did you not read my post? I know what rank and points reflect, and I explicitly stated that they do not reflect skill. Or are you being redundant?

Then you completely missed out on the point behind half of my leaderboard discussion: the idea is to rate players based on different areas of skill, not just an overall rank. And, again, as I explained in my OP and in one of my later comments, there are issues with using the leaderboard anyways. But I’m not sure I should even have to requote those.

You finish by asking why ANet would waste development time on this algorithm, but you fail to recognize that the point behind my post wasn’t to convince ANet to implement this system, it was for players to create the ranking system.

Aveneo.2068:

Wow, I never knew thief players had such a condescending attitude towards people playing another class. Someone asks for advice in dealing with a particular build and you demean others while preaching your L2P-mantra.

How can he/she learn if you refuse to offer assistance? Or is there no assistance because stealth is indeed a broken mechanic without a true counter and you just tell others ‘L2P’ because you wouldn’t know how to counter it either?

This irks me for multiple reasons. For one thing, we’ve gone to countless other forums over and over and over again giving people advice, and yet people keep coming to us asking the exact same things over and over again. It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry if we seemed condescending to you, but understand that after people have labeled the thief as “broken” or “OP”, and the only visibly apparent way to keep ANet from nerfing us into oblivion is to keep helping noobs so that they can counter us, we get really tired really quickly of answering questions like this.

For example, some advice to countering I’ve given out in the past:

Today in the Mes forum

A few days ago on the ele forum

Helping out in the Guards forum about a week ago

Countering SR

I mean, I cannot actually think of a single other profession that does this. There was even this not too long ago, where people were actually cheering on Robert Hrouda for giving people advice about how to counter them.

So, I’m sorry you didn’t get the answer you wanted, and perhaps when I get the time I can answer your question better, but please understand that if you’re going to come here and cry “OP”, or, in this case, “broken mechanic”, then realize that people are going to get angry.

As a community, we’re just really mad that this is what we have to do in order to survive.

The only difference I see in builds is theoretical correctness and how whiny people are.

Also, thief’s Shadow Refuge: I never even touch it any more. Perhaps it’s a bug, but whenever you step out of SR for any reason, you get slammed with a 4s reveal that usually results in your death. If you get pulled, pushed, whatever- dead. It’s ridiculous at this point.

nakoda.4213:

Arganthium.5638:

nakoda.4213:

i clearly said that manipulate was NOT meant to be seen as a taboo thing, it is just a verb: to manipulate.

with that in mind, i didn’t bother reading the rest of what you said, because you haven’t bothered to read what i’ve said.

discussion over. good bye.

It’s funny that you say this, because then you went on to describe how apparently by being manipulated the statistic is inaccurate.

and where did i say that?

no numerical tally system will ever accurately reflect skill, because skill is not numerical.

and part of your reasoning was that

all you will ever have on any stat sheet is a relational representation of time spent doing something.

To which, when asked for evidence, you replied that

nakoda.4213:

Arganthium.5638:

You make the claims, you better bring up the evidence.

Such as? What evidence is needed for a statement like that? Statistics are relational. That’s just what they are, a relation. They are valueless until manipulated and presented in a meaningful way. (MANIPULATE IS A VERB, NOT A NEGATIVE ACTION so don’t bother with some irrelevant argument about how stats aren’t manipulated. For example, tallying a RBI ratio is, technically, manipulation of statistics for meaningful presentation. Runs batted in over a period of time.) Statistics lack context.

So, again, you are faced with a decision: choose between showing yourself to be redundant, misleading, and irrelevant to the conversation, or show yourself to be a lying. Either way, you said what you said, and it can only be interpreted one way.

Lopez.7369:

People higher ranked in the leaderboards are definitely better players. People who solo queue do not get into the top 1,000 without being better than most players. People who queue in teams do not get to top 100 without being better than most players. Obviously, there’s a difference in threshold between those who solo queue and those who queue in groups, but leaderboards do properly gauge consistently better performances in the long term.

Yes and no.

I see where you’re coming from, and I understand that some level of skill must factor in here in order to make a player find themselves in the top 1000 whilst solo queuing. Here’s the thing though.

This says absolutely nothing about play style or areas of strength and weakness. For example, perhaps I run a direct boon support build, but my allies don’t know how to accommodate me on the team. So, I lose match after match after match, even though my build is theoretically correct, and I could potentially be one of the strongest team players in the game. The issue is simply that my build doesn’t fit with others’ playstyles.

Or maybe I’m a thief with a GC build. Perhaps I got into the top 1000 because the majority of players don’t know how to counter my thief’s GC build, in spite of its theoretical inaccuracy. However, my build doesn’t require any special team cooperation, and I’m able to get very highly ranked because most tourney players aren’t pros, they’re just casual players.

So, yes, the leaderboard is some indicator of skill. Certainly, if I was evaluating players one by one, I would check the Leaderboard before I checked anywhere else. However, there are so many things that the leaderboard doesn’t factor into its measurements (other factors might be that a player buckles under pressure in a streamed tourney, is too command-oriented to be able to cooperate with players successfully, trying to force them to do things they have absolutely no desire to do; having a lack of build knowledge, having an inability to formulate good builds to fit the situation, being unable to work well over team chat, not being used to specific situations, like being on an all-thief team, etc.), and the leaderboard doesn’t evaluate certain skill areas, so I would suggest a different ranking system be created for this purpose.

Dahkeus.8243:

Arganthium.5638:

People have already stated the main reasons, here’s my response in a nutshell:
D/D can only use, at most, 3 of its 5 attacks. D/P uses all 5.
D/D’s CnD requires a target, and must hit; also, it can’t be used in stealth. B/P+HS does not require a target, and does not have to hit anything; furthermore, it can be used to stack stealth.
D/D has only one thing going for it, burst. D/P has four: burst, gap closing, ranged interrupts, and blinds (many at range and many more at melee distance).

D/D takes only 1 skill to stealth (6 initiative with 1/2 sec cast time), whereas D/P takes 2 (9 initiative with 1 & 1/4 sec cast time). D/D also has some gap closing with HS and even though it’s not as effective as Shadow Shot, it does also have a cripple, which is something that D/P doesn’t have. Also, you can get the AoE blind effect to an extent with D/D through taking Cloaked in Shadow.

I’m not saying that D/D is better, but simply that your argument to justify D/P is overlooking a lot.

I get that it only takes one skill, that is (to some degree) what I was hoping to get at with the whole initiative-cost thing. You also have to realize that there are some practical time constraints on CnD- you have to get up close to your enemy, make sure they’re not evading, and be in perfect range for CnD, so I think that any time differences between the two stealths are fairly negligible in many circumstances (the one major exception is stationary targets). D/D has the same gap closer as D/P but lacks another one, which is why I stated D/P as having better gap-closing potential. There is indeed a cripple on D/D, but, like LDB in most D/D builds, it’s impractical and inefficient, and DD has been inefficient for a very long time. The only thing it’s ok at is starting a fight, but even that is inferior to D/P’s less costly Shadow Shot that also comes with a Shadowstep to your enemy as well as, essentially, a free block.

Getting AoE blind with D/D requires a rather hilariously large amount of sacrifice.

nakoda.4213:

i clearly said that manipulate was NOT meant to be seen as a taboo thing, it is just a verb: to manipulate.

with that in mind, i didn’t bother reading the rest of what you said, because you haven’t bothered to read what i’ve said.

discussion over. good bye.

It’s funny that you say this, because then you went on to describe how apparently by being manipulated the statistic is inaccurate.