Guild Wars 2

timidobserver.7925:

Arganthium.5638:

KStudios.2850:

timidobserver.7925:

KStudios.2850:

timidobserver.7925:

On insta kill:
Maybe your build doesn’t insta kill people, but the thief profession is capable of it.

On stealth:
I guess you haven’t discovered the new builds since that update. The thieves I see dont’ really have an issue getting back into stealth quick enough to avoid dying unless you are attacking them with 5-10 people.

Yes, “insta-kill” is still very possible (if you can even call it that, since it takes 2-3 skills to backstab anyhow, profession depending). What the fellow you were responding to was trying to convey though is that it’s no longer practical. The glory days of the glass cannon are largely gone. Nowadays, even the most damage-specced thief, such as myself, needs a bit of extra durability if we are to survive with the new post-culling and Revealed effects.

He said “We can’t “instakill” anybody” which is different from what you are saying he said.

What he said is simply false.

Well then, he should have said, “we can only insta-kill kittens who lack defense, cause we too are offense and no defense.”

This, is true.

And no, stealth already got a nerf with post-culling. The average stealth skill now minus Refuge only lasts 3 seconds. Nerf it more, you kill the profession.

Just to clear things up here- mostly for Timid- my original response said that we couldn’t “insta-kill” anybody without suffering the huge disadvantages that thieves who play GC suffer. That’s what my response that “we can’t ‘insta-kill’ anybody” was referring to. Sure, you can, but both theoretically and practically, it is a horribly weak strategy.

" We can’t “instakill” anybody. " <~~~~Direct quote from your post.

Sure you said it. In regard to instakilling, N=none of the following words appear anywhere in your original post: without, suffering, huge, disadvantages.

IMO, the thief insta kill stuff should have been removed or at least balanced right along with 100nades.

I also said

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

To which you replied

Yes, there should be insane disadvantages for being able to insta kill people or in combat stealth over and over with little to no real cooldown.

My original comment stated that we could obtain instakill, but practically and theoretically that it was impractical. My second comment conveyed this point of view. You’re not arguing because you want to be honest, you’re arguing because you can’t accept the fact that I disagree with you. You’re making strawmen out of my arguments, and the fact that such a large proportion of the anti-thief community has to resort to these tactics in order to “show” that thieves are supposedly OP shows just how little substance this platform has.

EDIT: In fact, here’s the entirety of what I said originally:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

Culling Fixed = Less Thieves. Respect to the ones who still make it work.

This won’t really get any sympathy. I could live with no thieves at all until the profession is balanced. Instakilling and perma stealth is something I could live without entirely.

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

Followed by your saying

timidobserver.7925:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

Culling Fixed = Less Thieves. Respect to the ones who still make it work.

This won’t really get any sympathy. I could live with no thieves at all until the profession is balanced. Instakilling and perma stealth is something I could live without entirely.

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

Yes, there should be insane disadvantages for being able to insta kill people or in combat stealth over and over with little to no real cooldown. The profession is completely broken right now, so yeh I am fine with no one playing them.

So those exact words did appear (or, failing that, synonyms of those words).

KStudios.2850:

timidobserver.7925:

KStudios.2850:

timidobserver.7925:

On insta kill:
Maybe your build doesn’t insta kill people, but the thief profession is capable of it.

On stealth:
I guess you haven’t discovered the new builds since that update. The thieves I see dont’ really have an issue getting back into stealth quick enough to avoid dying unless you are attacking them with 5-10 people.

Yes, “insta-kill” is still very possible (if you can even call it that, since it takes 2-3 skills to backstab anyhow, profession depending). What the fellow you were responding to was trying to convey though is that it’s no longer practical. The glory days of the glass cannon are largely gone. Nowadays, even the most damage-specced thief, such as myself, needs a bit of extra durability if we are to survive with the new post-culling and Revealed effects.

He said “We can’t “instakill” anybody” which is different from what you are saying he said.

What he said is simply false.

Well then, he should have said, “we can only insta-kill kittens who lack defense, cause we too are offense and no defense.”

This, is true.

And no, stealth already got a nerf with post-culling. The average stealth skill now minus Refuge only lasts 3 seconds. Nerf it more, you kill the profession.

Just to clear things up here- mostly for Timid- my original response said that we couldn’t “insta-kill” anybody without suffering the huge disadvantages that thieves who play GC suffer. That’s what my response that “we can’t ‘insta-kill’ anybody” was referring to. Sure, you can, but both theoretically and practically, it is a horribly weak strategy.

timidobserver.7925:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

Culling Fixed = Less Thieves. Respect to the ones who still make it work.

This won’t really get any sympathy. I could live with no thieves at all until the profession is balanced. Instakilling and perma stealth is something I could live without entirely.

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

Yes, there should be insane disadvantages for being able to insta kill people or in combat stealth over and over with little to no real cooldown. The profession is completely broken right now, so yeh I am fine with no one playing them.

1. We can’t “instakill” anybody. As a thief that primarily plays “bunker” or “balanced” thieves, I’ve run up against glass cannon noobs plenty of times before. Simply stun break, stealth, heal, and mince them up if you’re like me, because GC thieves have such little defense. Of course, not everybody can stealth, but they also tend to have more healing and defense than thieves do anyways, so as long as they can stunbreak and roll away quickly from an initial attack by a GC/“instakill” thief, then you’re golden. You should have no issues slicing the thief to pieces.

2. Revealed. We can’t attack from stealth without getting it, and it lasts long enough to get in a lot of attacks on a thief; often times, more than half of their health or more can be depleted while a thief is revealed. We don’t have a lot of ways to access stealth; our only utilities for getting it are HiS, BP, and SR. All have long cooldowns on them, or long enough that they can’t really be abused. BP, also, really only comes with a blind and a stealth, and that’s it, so even that isn’t that great. As for attacks, it’s very difficult to maintain stealth simply via our attacks and combos. CnD is easily avoidable, has only a very short stealth, does little damage, and very little else outside of that. It also uses up 50% of our base initiative (40% if you have Trickery 15). The combo with D/P is also very costly, and somewhat inefficient.

The point is that the first of these two “problems” comes with virtually no defense, and the second with virtually no offense.

Atherakhia.4086:

Disappointed so little has been done to encourage different styles of play other than zerging.

I’m disappointed so little effort is spent actually balancing the game and making other classes more viable. There’s a reason everyone has a ele, mesmer and guardian alt at this point.

Disappointed the little roaming that was left has all but disappeared. If you find small groups to skirmish with they’re almost always up leveled and not worth the time.

Just going to go back to my Elementalist I think. Haven’t played it in so long because I was really hoping things would change and all classes would have equal chance in WvW. But nothing has even suggested WvW will change anytime in the near future.

Roamer and scouter here! Can’t bear zergs, not for long anyways. I usually go solo, and try to spot out enemy zergs. One of my favorite things to do is jump into a battle between two other servers, and just reap all of the loot bags that drop.

That, or I’ll shadow an enemy zerg where they go. Did that yesterday, actually, before FC attacked Durios. I gave my allies some scouting info to watch out for FC, and then watched them closely. Eventually FC pulled some catas on Durs and there was a fight between a small group of us ETs and a much, much larger zerg of Fergs. My allies attacked from one side of the field while I weaved through their ranks and spread chaos near the back of their army. It was great fun.

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

Culling Fixed = Less Thieves. Respect to the ones who still make it work.

This won’t really get any sympathy. I could live with no thieves at all until the profession is balanced. Instakilling and perma stealth is something I could live without entirely.

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

“Don’t play WvW, it gives 0 WXP. Let others do it for you”

^ Pretty much what I was thinking while reading the OP, lol.

This actually sounds pretty interesting, gotta tell you. We’d need a larger initiative pool/base regeneration in order for this to work, though.

… Anyhow, no matter your build, the tradeoff tends to be between offense and defense. We tend to have, initially, a very large offensive pool of resources that we can pull from, but a very poor pool of defensive resources. Of course, we don’t want to be strictly defensive, or even defensive in general, but in order to accomplish our objectives we do need some amount of defense, otherwise good play by an opponent will allow them to counter us and eventually run a thief over.

So, the tradeoff, when theorycrafting, is determining how much you’re going to draw out from your pool of offensive resources to give more resources to your defensive pool. Draw too little, and you’ll do a ton of damage, but good counterplay by the enemy will result in your death. Draw too much, and you’ll be too defensive to do anything useful anyways.

HELLruler.4820:

- Thieves have the worst defense
- Warriors have the best defense
- Warriors have stomping attacks since they can invest in power freely without losing defense

In general, Warriors are supposed to do a lot better in PvE than thieves. I know, that’s unfair, but it happens. ANet still tries to balance PvE PvP and WvW together

They have good defense.

Guards have the best defense.

mursie.3681:

It isn’t that his statement is untrue… You have just asked the wrong question nilgoow. The better question to ask is “what class are you playing kheops?”

I would wager a thief. Thiefs are utterly useless against guardians and they will feel overpowered when you fight them. Further, a thief with no condition clear will fall over to even the tiniest condition dot.

We can assume from the post that the OP is not playing a warrior (which by the way is terrible also), a guardian, an ele, or an engy. That leaves thief, mesmer, necro, and ranger.

The only class out of that which struggles is a thief.

So kheops… what class do you play? if its thief…try rerolling any other class but warrior and see if your situation against the classes you speak of doesnt improve.

Actually, a thief, when spec’d right, is a very formidable competitor against guards. Regular Backstab bursters tend to fail against guards because their high toughness overcomes the fact that bursters need to kill their enemies as quickly as possible. However, condi thieves and bunker thieves tend to be able to put up good fights against guards. Just sayin’.

XII.9401:

Kupinoodle.7194:

Apolo.5942:

Chaith.8256:

This is a Guild Wars 2 Elementalist, not a Dungeons & Dragons Wizard.

Given the massive failure of this games pvp, specially considering its a sequel to GW1, i would not be too proud of that. Doing something different, makes it different, not good.

Chaith.8256:

I think the real problem is Elementalist & Warrior are the only professions that have viable and semi-viable full time melee options, respectively.

Warrior viable melee builds? i take it you dont pvp much?

But it is a different good. The concept is awesome.
You like a class and you can chose a variety of play styles.
The problem is the numbers, not the class concept.

The concept of having broken classes such as thief is ‘Awesome!’?

The concept of having OP classes is ‘Awesome’?

Wish I could filter out certain players’ posts.

lol…

Yes, the thief is so OP, we have some of the worst defense in the game, can be downed (if we make a single mistake, mind you) in seconds, and we have… STEALTH OMG OPOPOPOP SOOOO OP. Even though you can lay down traps and marks, use AoE, or infinitely many other methods to damage thieves that are stealthed.

Chaith.8256:

silentnight warrior.2714:

The best duelist professions in the game are not melee. That says a lot.

D/D elementalist

^ This.

Also, about 99% of thieves.

It depends on your build. Mind letting us take a look at it?

Khisanth.2948:

They haven’t for GW2 but they did for GW1. On the other hand you can infer it from some of their responses on the forum. One of Gaile and Mike’s recent post looks like it in a thread for people who got caught by accident in a mass ban.

Thanks, I was interested in seeing whether or not this was the case.

There’s a reason that I’m posting this here, and for those of you that know at least a little about economics, you’ll understand why.

Anyhow, does ANet release when they go off to ban another wave of bots? Or do they keep that information confidential?

Thanks.

Gasoline.2570:

John Smith.4610:

I see no current issues with the exchange, it’s functioning very well. Remember for every opinion on which way should be “favored” there is at least one opinion for the opposite.

PS please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

The inflations aren’t user based, the spikes are way too straight for that to be the case, literally. Someone at anet/nexon pushes a button and gem prices go where they want them to go. So what you see is a set price, all the time, instead of this gimmicky reply of “users dictate it”.

PS please stop posting and go back to work… on whatever you do, which I don’t know if is anything.

Pps. my name is john doe

LOL

Tell me then, Gas, where are these spikes? I’d be very much interested in seeing them. After all, you seem to know a great deal about them. So where are they?

Also, John works as one of the head economists for the BLTC. Because of him, you don’t see such huge inflation that slabs of red meat cost 1g or whatever. Because of him, you don’t see ectos valued at 1s, either.

No. I think the ballista missile should go straight through characters for an insta-kill. When it hits players, it now impales itself in its target. Players hit by ballista missiles spend their last few seconds kicking and screaming in a pool of blood.

^ I get that, and it’s totally correct. Unfortunately, not everybody reads those forums, or they come to these forums more often. Also, I want ANet to be aware of our… Friend on the chat.

Amins.3710:

I love the class, I love people who play the class in a group setting, I just don’t like the Stealth Mechanics of this game… there is ~no~ downside to Stealth: Movement isn’t impaired while stealthed, there’s no chance to see / reveal based on proximity & the re-stealth timer is ridiculously low.

Every mechanic in every MMO, which made stealth ~not~ OP, was removed and no counter was added: there’s no ability that allows people to see stealth (boon/ability) or reveal stealth (on dmg) etc.

That’s the gripe.

Not the damage.

The downside is lower survivability. Ever hit a thief who wasn’t stealthed before? Exactly. Although, being a guardian, your DPS is probably low anyways, soooo…

There are a lot of tricks for pulling people out of stealth, primarily consisting of pushes and pulls. Also, you can hit thieves in stealth easily, particularly when they have only just entered stealth. Most of our stealths don’t last very long either, like the BP+HS combo.

What’s even OP about stealth? You say at the end of your post that it isn’t the damage… So what? The running away? Because that’s what it sounds like from your other posts. Recall, then, that PvP/WvW isn’t based on killing enemies, it’s based on capping objectives. As soon as a thief flees, you’ve won. If they stay and fight, then stealth can’t be OP because you can damage them very easily even when they’re in stealth. Or, when they Reveal, just burst them into oblivion. Unfortunately, we don’t have perma-stealth, kiddo. Eventually we run out of initiative or stealth utilities, and then it’s just a flat-out skirmish until you can bring up stealth again.

About an hour or so ago, I was asked to do some scouting for you guys, spying on FC’s and GoM’s zergs. I agreed, and went off on my course. About half an hour later, I’m watching my allies die in a massacre right outside of the ogre camp by a massive FC zerg. I, fortunately, managed to escape away only to see pure chaos break out between FC and a smaller group of GoMs. Unsurprisingly, due to their massive forces (and the fact that this battle was occuring on their side of the map), FC won. This is where our little problem started to settle in.

As FC finished mopping up enemies outside of their tower, the went south to flip the ogre camp. I gave you all a good heads-up about their arrival, and I had hoped that, by the time FC had cleaved through the camp and swept up Umberglade Woods (since it was as good as theirs anyways), that we would have amassed a large enough force to counterattack at Durios. About three minutes after I issued my warning, and our pseudo-commander (didn’t have the blue chip over his head, but he was serving as command anyhow since nobody else was their) had repeated something along the lines of ten separate times that ‘we need to stack at Durios’, FC finally struck, hitting Durs hard. Fortunately, my warning had managed to save Durios and eradicate the FC zerg. Right?

The FC zerg had about 50 or so people in it. By the time they had gotten to Durs, with me shadowing them, we had something along the lines of 8 to 15 people.

Guys. Commmmeeee onnnnnn.

I know that we can all point our fingers at a lot of different things, but I think that some of the problems that we’re having, here on ET, include:

- Lack of cooperation. Guys, when somebody reports “30+ at QL, need backup ASAP” and a commander says “everybody to QL!”, this is not your queue to go and try to capture some obscure, unknown supply camp in the far north single handedly. I think that it would help a lot if we actually, y’know, got our forces to where they needed to be. I know that we could’ve saved ourselves from the attack by FC if some of y’all had cooperated. I know that we had the numbers on our map to do that, too.

- Lack of command. Personally, I blame it on a lot of you guys. Mostly because when you don’t cooperate (see above) then our command gets frustrated and leaves. Like it did today. Can’t say I blamed the commander for it, though.

- Dissension. I think that we all know the one troll in our chat in WvW that is ruining the game for us. Personally, I’m shocked that ANet hasn’t chosen to ban his access to chat by now. If ANet used the same policy for chat as they did for these forums, the troll would have been banned multiple times over by now.

My point is that we all need to start working as a team and pull our act together. Right now, it feels like a very large proportion of us are kittening around simply because we can.

Love,

Arctu

Don’t have time to say much, but here’s what I have to say:
Lotsa inconsistency within the build. For example, you run a bunch of stealth traits, and yet only have 1 stealth utility, SR. I might get it because you’re able to use BP/HS for stealth, but that doesn’t grant you two init, and its stealth is too short for it to be any use for SA IV. Then you run Signet traits, yet only run two Signets. Then you have SW thrown in their for… Well, I honestly have no idea.

So, for now, I’ll just have to suggest swapping utilities and some traits so you have more of a clear purpose, rather than try to use a bunch of unconnected utilities that interfere with one another.

Giratiina.8124:

Well yes, technically your argument is flawed.
If I really was wanting to rip someone off, which I don’t because that isn’t what I do, I would try my hardest to scam them; but I don’t know how to because I don’t want to know how. Logic.

Lol wat.

Yes, “logic” indeed.

And in your entire comment, you did not put up even a single reason why we should actually trust you.

I guess so. The problem will be when you run into a class/build that can avoid your first wave of attacks. Then you’re pretty screwed over.

penatbater.4710:

John Smith.4610:

I see no current issues with the exchange, it’s functioning very well. Remember for every opinion on which way should be “favored” there is at least one opinion for the opposite.

PS please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

This inflation issue is inflating beyond reason!!! :O

The value of these inflation jokes is hyperinflating!

While I was stealth stomping a player once…
“The coward is strong in you”

Lolllll…

Seryi.7936:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

My comment was directed towards people who don’t want/like to play mesmer.

It was saying that, sure, DE is strong, but it’s able to be countered.

Then you asked me why I would suggest that you swap professions.

And I’m pretty sure your comment about being delusional was directed towards me.

Wat.

To clarify, I’m not calling you delusional, it was more a general statement about how Mesmers are in a good state of balance at the moment. If anything, my comment was directed more towards anyone who defends Mesmers and kittens on players of other professions who complain despite said other professions not always being on remotely the same tier as Mesmers.

Oh.

Personally, I find all professions to be on about the same tier right now. Except that maybe Rangers and Necros could use very slight buffs. That’s about it though.

Probably because, to some extent, their tactics work. They’re very poor tactics, but (if you know anything about chess, I’ll be going off on a slight tangent) so is the so-called “Scholar’s Mate” in chess. They work against very new, nooby players, but eventually not only do they not work, they actually create a disadvantage for the players that run them.

But hey, look on the bright side. As long as warrs like that are around, we might as well label them “Free Kills”.

Giratiina.8124:

I assume none of you have ever gone to a bank for a personal loan then?

The idea makes you want to stab your eyes out? Hmm maybe the forums aren’t mature enough for the idea that there are honest people in the world.

Yes, except that in the world outside of GW2 there’s this thing called “the law” that, if nothing else, at least gives banks a large amount of compensation for their loans. No such thing in GW2.

Ohz noz, there are honest people in this world? My argument = destroyed.

Seriously though, we know absolutely nothing about you. At least in real life you can view somebody’s credit record. You can’t in GW2. And the amount of g required for a precursor like Colossus is so much… Even if you are generally trustworthy, there is zero reason to believe that you could ever pay it back.

We don’t know that you’re honest, and we can’t guarantee that you will be. So why would we trust you?

Seryi.7936:

Arganthium.5638:

Either way, I for one don’t think that DE should be nerfed. If you really can’t counter a mes who’s running it, go play a mes in PvP yourself. Learn it. Live it. Love it. And then go back to your other class and use what you learned to counter DE.

Why would I go back to any other profession besides an Elementalist or Guardian after playing a Mesmer?

Mesmers are in a very good place now, balance wise. That’s not to say they should be nerfed, but other professions should be brought up. If you genuinely think otherwise, you’re just being delusional.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.

My comment was directed towards people who don’t want/like to play mesmer.

It was saying that, sure, DE is strong, but it’s able to be countered.

Then you asked me why I would suggest that you swap professions.

And I’m pretty sure your comment about being delusional was directed towards me.

Wat.

John Smith.4610:

I see no current issues with the exchange, it’s functioning very well. Remember for every opinion on which way should be “favored” there is at least one opinion for the opposite.

PS please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

John Smith.4610:

PS please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

John Smith.4610:

please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

^ This.

cmking.2391:

^^

Thanks for the detailed and very helpful response

No problem.

Stability: hardly need it. We have stealth stomps, which make it a lot easier for us to stomp. On the other hand, somebody with stability won’t get interrupted, but is susceptible to damage. We also have blinds. For guards, necros, warrs, rangers, and engis, I just lay down Black Powder on top of a downed opponent, HS through it for stealth, and then proceed to stomp. Safe and sound.

Anybody can pull a bad thief from stealth easily. A good thief will be gone before you can even try to pull them.

Thieves can do far more damage than eles, can tank easily (via the style of builds that I run), apply conditions far better than eles can (Caltrops, venoms, CB, etc), and provide support, not through boons, but by, y’know, actually killing enemies.

It matters if an ele is noticeable because it’s more easy to kite that ele, as well as avoid attacks from that ele.

1v1 is not useless, particularly when you’re like me and you rush to the back of an enemy army, pull one weak player away from the rest of the groups, and then slaughter them. Then you move to the next easy picking from the back of the group.

I’ll rez allies for various reasons:
-you won’t realize that I’m there because I stealthed prior to coming to save my downed ally
-you’ll pursue your stereotypical “LOL TOUCH A THIEF AND HE DIES” perspective, which will be completely wrong due to my high vitality and toughness, as well as my healing in stealth
-in the chaos of battle, you’ll be more concerned about stomping my friend than about the SR that I just layed down nearby

Either way, I’ve done this multiple times before, which (whether you like it or not) stands as a testament to just how easy this is to do.

Darek.1836:

thieves: die in 2-3 hits unless specced for toughness in which they won’t be doing any damage anyway, and are thus deemed worthless. also what’s your aoe? none. what’s your actual support? none. stability? nope. thieves can be murdered after they use their teleports and get pulled from stealth insanely easily. Honestly not sure how it’s even possible to think thieves are better than eles. Eles can tank and do damage and apply condis and do mass CC while still being able to run away and give tons of support to allies.

for your points
why does it matter if the ele is noticeable? it means he will be attacked and likely won’t die still
1v1s are useless in WvW
please tell me how youre going to Rez allies in stealth while we just put down 2 aoes on you then move along since we know you’re dead

Lol. You haven’t played against any of my thief builds before, obviously. I’m part of the thief camp that focuses on 0/0/X/X/X builds- the thief build category that goes by the name “balanced” or “bunker”, and for good reasons. I can also tell you that a good bunker thief is like a guardian on steroids; insane survival, but also amazing DPS. We have all of the mobility, DPS, and stealth that a bunker guard wishes they have, and we have insane survivability, like they do, via evades, high toughness and vitality, great healing, stealth, and teleports.

AoE: Shortbow. Sure, cluster bomb moves a little slowly, but it has never failed me in doing the damage I want for it to do. And it hits like a truck. And we can use it multiple times in a row.

Our “actual” support: To quote myself (since this is something I write about often),

…We don’t have any direct support (as in boons for allies), but we do have a lot of what I call “offensive support”, meaning that we can take down weakened enemies with ease, deal massive damage to a ton of enemies in bursts before stealthing away, and generally softening up foes before our allies get to them. We can also- as Wyld mentioned- scout via stealth, which has been useful for us on more than one occasion.

and

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

ShiftSide.3645:

Arganthium.5638:

Darek.1836:

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Eles:
Can heal allies, and choose between doing a lot of damage for little survivability, a medium amount of damage for a medium amount of survivability, or a small amount of damage for a large amount of survivability.

Have mobility via one of their utilities and RTL, as well as some degree of swiftness.
Can’t safely rez allies.
Are as noticeable as an elephant walking through a kitchen.
Don’t have the greatest 1v1 options, relative to thieves.
Aren’t able to escape as easily as thieves.
Don’t do as much damage as thieves.
Have cooldowns on attunement swaps and weapon skills.

Thieves:
Can’t heal allies very well, but has great self-healing. Does a lot of damage regardless of whether you choose to go light survivability (D/D GC builds), medium survivability (pretty much any sword build), or high survivability (D/P bunker builds). Can also apply conditions better than eles.

Have the best mobility in the game, via Shadowstep, IS, IA, tons of dodges, and other weaponset-specific attacks including sShot and sStrike.
Able to safely rez allies.
Are extremely difficult to notice, when spec’d right.
Have stealth, allowing them to switch from the offensive to the defensive (or vice versa) in an instant.
Can 1v1 better than any other class, due to blinds, disabling conditions, high damage, stealth, and self-healing.
Can 1vX very well, simply because they can do a lot of damage in a hit-and-run kind of fashion. With ele, once you get into the fray, you’re not leaving any time soon.
Can escape easily via shadowsteps and stealth.
Hit like a truck.
Are more flexible with weapon skills, due to the init system which gives them the ability to use their favorite skills multiple times in a row.

Ele:

-Staff ele brings fire/water fields for combo finisher equaling big group heals, group might, or area swiftness.

-Scepter Eles for dragon tooth- clearing siege with no line of sight, something other classes can’t do.

-Swirling winds: ability to protect your siege, or whatever it may be from enemy catapults, trebuchets or whatever projectile.

1. That’s only half of the deal. You can’t have a combo without both a combo field and a finisher. Staff eles are limited almost completely to the field, and not the finisher. On the other hand, other classes can create both fields and finishers. My favorite is stealing from a ranger, laying down the AoE healing field, and then HS through it for awesome healing. I feel indestructible when I’m in the field. Anyways, we also have access to dark fields, smoke fields, and poison fields, too.

2. Pretty sure Scepter requires LoS just like any other weapon. I’ve tried to use Flame Strike on enemies that were on higher ground than I was, with a very small barrier between us before (ex. Raid on the Capricorn: at the dock, there’s a small platform near the spawning point for blue team where you can leap down to land on the dock. Surrounding the platform is a very, very small wall). The attack missed because it was “obstructed”. Not sure why DT should be any different. Also, you still have to get pretty close to the siege in order to do this, so you’re not any less vulnerable than before. Either way, CB on the thief’s SB has practically the same effect, due to its projectile movement, except that it also includes an aimed AoE instead of the automatic AoE provided by DT.

3. Focus OH has very long cool downs, and makes dagger or scepter much less mobile. SW doesn’t last particularly long, either. Sure, it’s a decent attack, but you have to give up a lot if you want to use it.

I don’t know why a lot of thieves are complaining, 4s reveal wasn’t that big a deal and culling… Eh. Never even knew it was a thing until a couple of weeks before its patch. :P

I’m still mauling enemies on my thief, and I won’t be changing that any time soon.

sostronk.8167:

Mark my words, Eles will be the next “OMG need to nerf class”, as soon as eles get good at the game.

Most of them are good. Generally speaking, I find them annoying as a thief, but little else. Staff eles are only any good in a group; get them alone, and they’re dead. D/D eles have a lot of survivability, but they’re far too predictable for me. Anything else is basically just a mix of the pros for staves vs D/D and the cons for these two weaponsets.

I don’t think they should be nerfed. They’re a class that’s getting nerfed into the ground because of noobs who don’t know how to counter them.

Darek.1836:

Despite what you guys say thieves are not nearly as versatile as eles.

Eles:
Can heal allies, and choose between doing a lot of damage for little survivability, a medium amount of damage for a medium amount of survivability, or a small amount of damage for a large amount of survivability.

Have mobility via one of their utilities and RTL, as well as some degree of swiftness.
Can’t safely rez allies.
Are as noticeable as an elephant walking through a kitchen.
Don’t have the greatest 1v1 options, relative to thieves.
Aren’t able to escape as easily as thieves.
Don’t do as much damage as thieves.
Have cooldowns on attunement swaps and weapon skills.

Thieves:
Can’t heal allies very well, but has great self-healing. Does a lot of damage regardless of whether you choose to go light survivability (D/D GC builds), medium survivability (pretty much any sword build), or high survivability (D/P bunker builds). Can also apply conditions better than eles.

Have the best mobility in the game, via Shadowstep, IS, IA, tons of dodges, and other weaponset-specific attacks including sShot and sStrike.
Able to safely rez allies.
Are extremely difficult to notice, when spec’d right.
Have stealth, allowing them to switch from the offensive to the defensive (or vice versa) in an instant.
Can 1v1 better than any other class, due to blinds, disabling conditions, high damage, stealth, and self-healing.
Can 1vX very well, simply because they can do a lot of damage in a hit-and-run kind of fashion. With ele, once you get into the fray, you’re not leaving any time soon.
Can escape easily via shadowsteps and stealth.
Hit like a truck.
Are more flexible with weapon skills, due to the init system which gives them the ability to use their favorite skills multiple times in a row.

Synda Raines.1836:

Thanks for the replies.

My main concern though, and that’s why i asked, is not for me possibly loosing my gold but, if i find that kind enough person, is that they do not get into trouble if the gold transfers are getting big and it gets on Anets radar. Though Anet can easily monitor the transactions between us and see what i do with the money and how the other person got the gold in the first place. Off course it could be the other way round and the person turns out to be a cog in the goldseller business, but i still have enough faith in humanity left to not see a hungry bear around every corner.

Eh. I doubt they’d ban you, it’s not like you’re cheating or anything. Actually, flipping creates something of a positive effect on the market, by adjusting supply and demand to the point where they are in equilibrium. You’re simply making money off of setting markets to equilibrium. That’s important.

So, to answer your concern, as long as you aren’t botting or anything, I see no reason why ANet should ban you, in all honesty.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Giratiina.8124:

If possible, this could reap long term rewards for you, personally I am after the Legendary Weapon, the Juggernaut. The biggest hassle I have is making or finding the bloody precursor weapon. I’m fed up with feeding my gold down the drain to that stinking mystic toilet; so I have a proposition.

If you purchase me 1 ‘The Collossuss’ off of the BLTC, I would be willing to pay back a steady payment, the time period between each payment, the amount per payment and the interest rate is totally up to you (although I wouldn’t be cheap, I wouldnt like to be ripped off and you seem like an intelligent and humble person from what I’ve read). I play regularly enough that I can earn enough gold each day that will hopefully satisfy your ideal rate. Will be slower than investing in specific materials, but long term It will be rewarding. Thankyou for your time

(P.S: I’m not even sure what I’m asking is legal or not; forgive me if I crossed a line!)

Yours Sincerely
The Dawnbreakerr (Ehrmy Bay)

Did you really just post that?

Lollll… I think you’ll have to poke my eyes out with stakes now, having read this.

Nobody is that stupid, Gir. Just sayin’.

Yeah, that was one of the wimpiest zergs that I’ve ever seen, lol.

Like Wyld said, thieves do make really great multi-role classes. We do a ton of damage, but with our high mobility and initiative system…. While that is true for some builds, it isn’t for all. I, for one, belong to the thief system of thought that focuses on building “balanced” or “bunker” builds for thieves, and… They’re impressive, to say the least. I was wreaking havoc with my (secret! :P) bunker build in WvW today on T8… Ferg decided to try and take Umber, and although they were successful, I spent the entire time weaving through them, smashing them, then stealthing before they had the slightest idea as to what was happening.

The point is, though, that thieves are pretty flexible too, when you want them to be. We have some of the best rez’ing for allies via stealth. Throw down SR, then heal them from stealth. We also have a nice ranged interrupt for stompers, via Headshot. We don’t have any direct support (as in boons for allies), but we do have a lot of what I call “offensive support”, meaning that we can take down weakened enemies with ease, deal massive damage to a ton of enemies in bursts before stealthing away, and generally softening up foes before our allies get to them. We can also- as Wyld mentioned- scout via stealth, which has been useful for us on more than one occasion.

The point is that being multi-role is more than about just swapping attunements, it’s about what you actually do. The only thing that the guy in the video seemed to do was AoE enemies and provide a little healing for allies. Any class can do that. What matters is how you use what resources you have to your advantage. That’s what makes you multi-role.

jportell.2197:

Arganthium.5638:

jportell.2197:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Lets say one day Deceptive Evasion is nerfed to the following, “Create a clone at your current position when you dodge (cooldown 10 seconds)”. Would that make your rage quit the class or the whole game?

Whole game… I don’t think anyone has their on dodge trait with a cooldown regardless of what it does… And Guards can heal for quite a lot with theirs… Thieves have 3 separate on dodge traits that are quite powerful (if they do it right) and ele Evasive Arcana is more OP than DE… SO yes that would make me ragequit considering the bonuses that some other classes get from their on dodge traits, WITH no cooldown.

Actually, thief acro VII has a cooldown on it.

true… But caltrops, might, and swiftness do not… Mesmer has ONE on dodge trait…

Indeed, although the swiftness is… Well, pathetically short, lol.

Either way, I for one don’t think that DE should be nerfed. If you really can’t counter a mes who’s running it, go play a mes in PvP yourself. Learn it. Live it. Love it. And then go back to your other class and use what you learned to counter DE.

Arekai.5698:

Thief needs to get nerfed.
Still able to be perma invisible and burst 6k crits without needing skill.

Can’t burst for 6K without Backstab.

Can’t Backstab unless you’re in stealth.

Can’t attack from stealth without getting Revealed.

Can’t be permanently invisible if you’re under the effects of Revealed.

Your statement is self-defeating.

Rafahil.2857:

I’ll advocate any buffs to thiefs, but did 15% really make that much of a difference? I’d be better if they buffed the evade on it and decreased the delay between the initial attack and the flurry, otherwise the auto attack chain is still the way to go.

There are traits that cost 20 points that boost damage on a single weapon by… 5%.

There is a commonly used trait in Critical Strikes that boosts damage overall to enemies who have less than 50% health by 20%. It costs 30 points.

Yes, I think it does make a very, very large difference.

cmking.2391:

Hey guys. I’ve been trying to choose between ranger and thief for a while now and haven’t gotten too many responses.

I really love playing ranged classes. I really wanted to know how viable thief is as a ranged class?

I know the short bow is pretty awesome, and you have the option to do dual pistols. When you use sword/pistol or d/d, how much time do you spend in melee? Can someone give me an idea of how a typical fight goes against multiple enemies?

It would really make my decision a lot easier, as I’m leaning more towards the thief at this point. Happy hunting.

Ok.

The thief is able to do a sort of melee-ranged style, meaning that we can teleport to our targets in seconds, easily. For example, an easy combo to pull off might be

Shadowstep→Infiltrator’s Arrow→(Another IA?)→Steal

Which, with two IAs, has a range of 3000. You can also increase steal’s range, making a grand total of teleporting to your target (with a few button presses) that is 3,300 units away from you.

That being said, recall that the thief has to get up-close and personal in order for this to be of any use, anyways. That means that you’re now vulnerable to both ranged attacks by enemies as well as melee attacks, while staying at range limits the damage that is done to you by only including ranged attacks, and not melee.

Also, the thief is the only profession without a weapon that has an autoattack with 1200 range, excluding Engi (Rifles go 1000 range, and can be specced to increase range further). This gives thieves a serious disadvantage in things like attacking towers in WvW, or in large-scale battles where range is necessary. On the other hand, Rangers can shoot for up to 1500 range with their longbow. That’s a lot.

So, from a strictly projectile-based point of view, Ranger > Thief with ranged attacks.

However, this does not automatically declare ranger to be the winner. For one thing, the Thief SB (which is almost certainly the ranged weapon you would choose, because P/P is mostly inviable currently) is one of the greatest all-around utility weapons in the game. It has a bouncing autoattack, an insanely powerful #2 attack (in spite of the fact that the projectile for it moves rather slowly), a Poison combo field, a free evade, a ridiculously invaluable shadowstep, and both a Blast Combo Finisher and a Projectile Combo Finisher. This makes the thief’s SB a very, very powerful weapon. The autoattack itself doesn’t do a lot of damage, but its bounce is pretty useful, especially in WvW where you can shoot a cannon, hit the person operating it via bounce, and then see the arrow bounce back and damage the cannon again. Again, it doesn’t hit for a ton, but it does, at the very least, decent damage, and, with bounce, a kitten load of damage for a simple autoattack with a rapid rate of fire.

Cluster Bomb, while somewhat slow moving, is our only 1200 ranged attack on a weapon (Scorpion Wire, a utility, also has 1200 range). It also hits like a truck. This is an attack that you have to learn pretty well, actually; blow up a Cluster Bomb too soon, and you’ll do suboptimal damage. Blow it up too late, and you’ll heal for less if you run SoM, and will have to wait longer between consecutive CBs. Not to mention that, again, you’ll be doing less damage than you could be.

Disabling Shot is a free evade with a cripple that’s great for getting away from enemies, or kiting. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Choking gas is a wonderful combo field that does damage, lasts a decent while, and mitigates enemy healing. Stand inside the field for its entire duration, and you could find yourself with a heck load of poison on you. It also is useful for bouncing more poison around via auto/DS with their finishers, or creating Weakness with CB.

Infiltrator’s Arrow… Not enough can be said about this wonderful skill. It allows you to teleport up particular ledges, which is, of course, cool, but has also given me the opportunity to surprise enemies as well as save my rear end on many an occasion. This attack also provides a blind, which might not seem particularly useful at first, but what I’ll often do is IA to an enemy’s position, switch to melee, and slice them up. The IA then provides damage mitigation. I mean… IA is so useful for mobility, which is one of the things our class relies on, that it makes the SB a truly fantastic weapon, even without the other four attacks.

So, if you go Thief, you get “ranged melee”, as well as SB. With Ranger, you get more pure ranged attacks, but you don’t get as nice a weapon as Thief’s SB. So. Your pick.

Time to start keeping this thread bumped up. /yawn

I still find it funny how the mods haven’t stickied this yet, but there’s no use in whining about it, I suppose.

Still need to work on those edits, too.

@OP: Headshot is extremely useful as an interrupt. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve saved teammates by interrupting an enemy stomp via Headshot.

Body shot, on the other hand… (or vuln in general, for that matter)

I remember when Kaineng was kicking the kitten out of my old server, GoM, back when they started their rise to fame. It was Kain/GoM/HoD, and since we were getting our kittens whooped, particular HoD and GoM members decided to quit fighting and hang out.

I remember one particularly interesting incident when I was dancing with a few HoD nearby their spawn. Then a sylvari from Kain showed up, and started trying to dance as well. I put up a /threaten emote, and got us all to annihilate the sylvari.

That was fun.

Articluna.4509:

If someone is good at this TP game, (s)he most likely has enough capital by now to keep doing it.

Er… The thing is, I play the TP a lot, and I’ve made stacks of gold doing it. Actually, I would certainly be willing to flip for somebody else in return for gold. Perhaps I’m being naive, but I think that I fall under the category of being “good at the TP game”.

That being said, I have a very bad tendency to have very little gold on me. :c I’ll usually start building up a decent bit, and the next thing you know, I burn it up with a purchase on a single exotic. Currently, in purely liquidable currency, I own something along the lines of an impressive amount of 2g. I’m not even fully exotic yet, lol.

The point is that, while I have made a decent bit of money flipping on the TP with very small starting amounts- 1g, for example- I still make more profit and, quite honestly, have more fun farming for gold. So this statement isn’t completely true.

Solo.9027:

Ooshi.8607:

Free trial weekend coming up…. Copper definitely not gonna get cheaper….

So an increased supplier base will decrease supply? New people are more likely to just mine than to craft, mining is 1 button while crafting seems daunting to most new players.

you also seem to be forgetting the wildly popular infinite use mining pick that gives people more incentive to mine copper and other low tier metals and not worry about wasting resources.

I predict a surplus coming.

^ I’m going to agree with this. I realize that there are new players that are going to be crafting w/ copper, but I don’t think that enough copper will be used up to equalize for all of the copper that will be pumped into the economy.

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.