Guild Wars 2

nice one
#trapsshouldntbetargetable

Fivedawgs.4267:

Question: what’s your main?? And he has the point with thief… and thief can go in ( get all of your cd down) only to disengage and come back afterwards to finish you.

And we are in the condi meta not bunker. Ranger/ Druid’s might be weak to cc, but they are GOD when they go bunker ( or whatever amulet they uses) and Luke the OP says their sustain is great; However that’s not a problem imo. Their pets dmg should be tone down a bit.

Finally @OP, druids and ele having that sustain is a must at this point. So you shouldnt be able to kill a supp 1 vs 1 ( granted he went full supp)…

Teef. And its how it works, The main damage sources are AA and pulmonary impact.
PI is dangerous but wont kill anyone and AA can only be done if you actually let me stand right next to you.
If you mean: shadowstep in, ‘finish off an unaware player and disappear’, then we have, in fact a good damage output.
But in reality…lets just say I play ranger occasionally and Im far from mastering that class. But, knowing how thieves work, I can completely disable anything they do. Staying at me for even seconds is extremely dangerous due to cc and pet, if they manage to hit me I just use ‘protect me’ or
‘guard’ and the damage is gone.
On paper, thieves deal extremely high damage, so they do in pve and in the typical scenarios where you just move in to +1 and your victim will never know you hit’em.
But in reality, in a duel or a team fight, just staying at your opponent long enough to do anything is dangerous if not impossible and with all the healing and direct damage reductions out there some enemies can just eat your burst.
The only occasion where my damage is threatening is if my enemy is already half dead and on some serious cooldowns. I dont consider that ‘dangerous’

And how exactly are we not in the bunker meta? Every class has skills that automatically protect them with a passive proc. Pretty much every class can heal for their full health several times in one fight.
Eles and rnagers are bunkers. Mesmers and engies are bunkers (due to an insane uptime of damage denial), revs have three jail-escape cards.
Damage reductions and invulnerabilities are given out like candy, a teamfight mainly depends on how well your ele does, classes can skip 2v1 for a minute…
On the other hand we have excatly two classes who can play condition builds competitively. Mesmer and Necro.

Most of what you say has a point. Some has not. We have some cases of L2p issues and also some bad observations.
The mesmer is a good example. The esl’s in that one stream referred to chronophantasma as ‘the carry for solo Q’ and they were right. Mesmer is the class that doesnt loose fights. Moa and portal aside.
For the general flaws you forgot the build diversity+ the fact that somehow no class does what it is supposed to do.
(Ele=Tank)(Guard=DD)
You seem to overestimate rangers, guards and thieves quite a bit. Thieves do not deal any damage(unless you let them), and rangers are extremely vulnerable to cc.
Guardian traps are only a small inconvinience for the current bunker meta. The cc is way more annoying than the damage.

Ive spent some thought on thief weapons lately. The best solution to all related problems would be to create unique skill combinations for each weaponset.
They wouldnt even need to be vastly different. Heartseeker on two weaponsets would be completely fine, ncrs.
The total of required weapon skills would be 53(13 of them not used at all), ele posesses effectively a total of 87 weapon skills, 28 of wich triggered by utility(Warriors 51 without bursts, engi 48), so this would not be completely unrealistic.
It would instantly become easier to properly balance the weaponsets and give each of them a more unique and more clearly defined role in combat.

Oh and: if anybody does not recognize the song: shame on you.

Cant help myself. seen stranger stuff around here tho^^

Om Im.7863:

all is vain

/15 chars

I dont know but somehow I saw this coming.

Fear not this night
You will not go astray
Though shadows fall
Still the stars find their way

Awaken from a quiet sleep
Hear the whispering of the wind
Awaken as the silence grows
In the solitude of the night

Darkness spreads through all the land
And your weary eyes open silently
Sunsets have forsaken all
The most far off horizons

Nightmares come when shadows grow
Eyes closed and heartbeats slow

Fear not this night
You will not go astray
Though shadows fall
Still the stars find their way

And you can always be strong
Lift your voice with the first light of dawn

Dawn's just a heartbeat away
Hope's just a sunrise away

Distant sounds of melodies
Darting through the night to your heart
Auroras, mists, and echoes dance
In the solitude of our life

Pleading, sighing arias
Gently grieving in captive misery
Darkness sings a forlorn song
Yet our hope can still rise up

Nightmares come when shadows roam
Lift your voice, lift your hope

Fear not this night
You will not go astray
Though shadows fall
Still the stars find their way

And though the night sky’s filled with blackness
Fear not, rise up, call out and take my hand

Fear not this night
You will not go astray
Though shadows fall
(Still the stars find their way)

Fear not this night
You will not go astray
Though shadows fall
(Still the stars find their way)

And you can always be strong
Lift your voice with the first light of dawn

Dawn's just a heartbeat away
Hope's just a sunrise away

Lemme know if you have an idea how to implement other classes or builds, power scrapper and guard in particular.

I cant believe how you can claim the moral high ground when telling others to change their class.
A good thief will swap in certain situations out of decency, the will to win or other reasons.
But if a thief player chooses to play the class the like in a game they paid for.
It is none of your business.
If someone decides to ruin your team comp and therefore their teams chances they may act selfish, but trying to dictate to other players what they should and should not play…thats just being an kitten.
I swap to my ranger to do my team a favour, not because anyone thinks I should.

Its alright. You can do open world as you wish, maguuma meta maps you will have to learn to survive, but its possible.
Im perfectly fine running my thief in fractals. I dont die, I deal damage. And if we play a 94 cliffside suddenly stealth is a thing again.
For raids you migh not be the most wanted profession, but you still deal the second highest damage and are theoretically able to take the tank role for some fights without loosing too much personal dps.
They dont want you over anything else, but you will get a place if you ask nice enough.
All in all: You can play thief for every part of pve content.
Your ‘Dps rotation’ is a little one-sided tho.

Thanks, gonna send you flowers later. Cant join tho. I grew up following a strict moral code. Genosuicide is unethical.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Asrat.2645:

Ummm…well, you know:

…… Yea, thanks….. Didn’t see that one.

^^

Ummm…well, you know:

After 1380 replies…Does anyone in here actually have anything to say that has not been said before?
Or are you all just caught in a loop and repeating every word of previous discussions again and again?
I would bet even this question has already been asked, probably around the 900.

Could you pls fix the ‘a’ in the topic title? It annoys me every time I refresh the page.

Are you successfully completing the lab event for destabilized?

Do you have a tactic which way you run in order to avoid getting your team in jeopardy with the laser?

Do you know the attack intervalls and indicators? (Like the ‘bomb’ over your head meaning you better get ready to dodge)

Do you use spirit of nature? It can be extremely helpful to pulse stability if the ‘random conditions’ instability is in effect. Ofc every source of stability and emergency stunbreaks help. Fear and immobilize should be cleansed asap.

Do you ress your team from dead state? You can ress them from just outside the knockback area. It is extremely helpful if some1 gets killed by some bullkitten in the early phases. Works especially well with low aggro or stealth ofc.

Always call out transitions and make sure everybody is prepared at the 75,50,25 thresholds. (Full health, no downed, at least one movement skill off cd)

-You can make sure and destroy the portals, but Ive never seen this cause trouble.
-The aggro probably works like with any other enemy: a mix of ‘first seen’, defense value, closeness, damage dealt…
Kinda hard to purposely make one player get the aggro, and some attacks target the entire plateau anyways. In most fights Ive seen him switching the targets once in a while.

Ah, kay. So you need only either light, medium or heavy. Told you I would have to look it up.

Are we talking about these backpacks which are, unfortunately, account bound and do not have a value assigned?

Not…quite 100.
I would have to look it up but: 5 races, each selling 3 t3 armor sets, 6 pieces each.
Every peace an average cost of 20? gold I believe.
(5*6)*3*20=30*3*20=90*2*10=180*10=1800
A friend of mine looked at the lowest tier and thought he could just ‘get that achievement’, quickly bought about 200 gold worth of cultural armor before he realised he could never finish it. Thats why im asking.

In their respective capital cities.
The icon is about the same as for normal vendors, but you can easily make them out cause there are three of them in one place.
You realise that achievement is pretty expensive?

You should be careful. If I joined you there would still be a 70% chance im just infiltrating your organization. Im a thief after all. Thats kinda…what I do.

You do. But our lovely mods have removed for less ^^

Thats it. Im done talking to you.
I truly tried to reason with you and I believe unlike most people I have been nice and tried to be supportive and I always tried to change your point of view, not to disencourage you from balancing in general.
But you just dont listen. At all. You are so convinced of your own supremacy and your view is so biased…whatever qualifications you may posses, they dont apply to guild wars 2.

This changes would be op on a currently underpowered class. But what they would do to the elementalist…
I wish you all the best and I hope you have fun at what you are doing, but you are not in a position to suggest changes.
I hope when you still play the game in half a year you can laugh about all this. ^^

I see. Error of judgement on my side then. Should be careful tho. Usually revolutionaries get…you know…beheaded ’n stuff.

(Retrospectively viewed this could be taken as a direct threat. It is not, but hard to make that clear on a forum. So: Im just having fun here)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect

I remember when we strated discussing you were open for reason. You even agreed with some points I made.
However the more people come in here and try to convince you that you might actually be wrong (not possible, I know), the more you start to bunker yourself and the more convinced of your own ideas you become.
Coincidence?
Oh and: Try to find 10 PvP players on this forum who think of themselves as ‘casuals’

Weapons for leveling are usually Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol. Blackpowder helps a lot with trash mobs.
Shortbow will probably be your second choice. Just for movement. Infiltrators arrow is convenience at its peak.
I would start with critical strikes I guess, getting Invigorating precision asap. But it wont matter too much, you can do open world content fairly easily.
In general you will probably be wanting CS, DA and Trick.
Shadow arts and acrobatics are semi-optimal for pve.
Your skillbar will consist of Withdraw (without IvP) or signet of malice (with IvP)
Probably a combination of signets and deceptions and either daggerstrom or thieves guild.
But I’d recommend you to give everything a fair try. We dont heavily depend on our utilities, so you can basically just run whatever you like and just see how it plays.
Try to view every mob as a dodge training. The faster you adapt to evading every attack, the better.
The first few elvels I remember to be really hard. Some centaurs told me to hold on to my endurance the hard way.
But later on you will have a relatively easy time soloing champs or elites that are a high threat to others.

Now who let you back in here?
You didnt post for 15 days so I guess the last time resulted in a two-week ban?^^

Anari.2137:

Did you guys stop to wonder why i said Piercing, but then mentioned unblockables?

The whole conversation went something like this

“you and i both know there is piercing attacks that go through the shields, so it wont be open”
“omgzomglol Pierce dont go through”

If you guys want to misunderstand what i want then play “semantics” around that knock yourself out, but the point still rests, You can go through those protection bubbles, call it piercing, Unblockables or other wise.

the real discussion, not personal attacks

Trap Stacking is not op? Are you kidding me? I sit in games killing 4-5 people at a time. It’s all about paying attention to rolls.

I will break it down in a simple way to understand, by defining what “op” is to me.

OP (overpowered) abilities are ones that defy the aspect of the target livability rates of a class. If all classes are targeted to have between 20-30 seconds in battle before death, then any class (or abilities) killing faster then that is to strong, and anyone killing lower then that is to fast.

Balance of the game does not rest in the soul opinions of players, but in the collective outcry of the player base specifically the casual players.

The way you know pvp is broken in your game is because of the effects that come from match’s.

- Excessive amounts of toxic game play
- Very unstable matching (meaning you destroy in one game, and utterly fail in another)
- games should all be about equal, a very close match When they are not its a sign something is off.

I really dont want to get into that stupid piercing deabte. That has nothing to do with me. But your inital claim was unrightful because you had insufficient understanding of a game mechanic.

Anyways: back to the issue of trap stacking. Putting all your traps at one point is literally the worst thing you can do with them. If anyone gets killed by them it truly is their own fault.

Im not interested in you as a person. But as soon as you make suggestions about changes, these suggestions are heavily related to the qualifications you may or may not have. If you make very questionable suggestions that most people disagree on your personal qualification is the only thing that can back those suggestions up.
If you make a claim that is obviously the truth it should not relate to you as a person. But if you make a ridiculous claim you have to back it up to prove its the truth.
The only way to prove whether your view is biased or anybody else’s is, is by proving you, as a person, know what you are talking about.

I guess that means no?

Personally I would not doubt your knowledge of the industry, since a lot of what you say is mathematically reasonable and makes sense from a professional point of view.
But now here is the problem: You seem to have little knowledge of gw2 as a game, especially pvp. Your first ‘review’ came ~1 month ago. I will suppose this is about the time where you started playing it. Even with 5-6 hours a day that is not much. Next to nothing actually. Add the poor knowlegde of the more uncommon game mechanics (referring to piercing debate for example) and the mentioned low amount of Ap you are likely a relatively inexperienced player.
You second topic proved you know what you are doing as a designer and have knowledge some other contributors might lack.
Your first topic however proves you were not yet in the position to balance the game. ‘Trap stacking=op’? (its the most dumb thing a guard can do) The lifeforce bar should be removed cause it ‘is a balance issue’? (its the only thing preventing necros from getting melted on sight)
Now we generally disagree on several aspects of the balance approach (power creep vs nerf hammer) (competitive vs casual), but that would be alright, different opinions are important.
What im concerned with is your look at the game itself. If im remembering what I thought to be op just a few months ago…

So, from a professional perspective you are certainly capable of setting up a game balance, but a lot of your threads have proven your personal experience with guild wars 2 is insuffiecient.
That would be fine unless you seem to not take feedback from more experienced players and dont listen to reason as much as you should.
Just because you have a theoretically greater knowledge, doesnt mean youre right.
Actually I would dare to ask you for a couple of duels. Not for a ‘1v1 me noob’ reason, I would just like to get the chance to find out, whether im maybe just biased towards your ideas because they are too ‘cheesy’ and underestimate the positive impact they could have.
Maybe you actually know what you are talking about and I just cant see it. However if it should turn out you are in fact only suffering from ‘l2p’ issues as some here suggested, it might help you to take some time and understand the game before you make another approach on its balance.

Its extremely dangerous for the tho.
Last time they announced they wanted to make thief damage ‘extremely dangerous’ and the disappointement at the auto attack buff was even more severe.
Like Mike said. They are trying to make us happy with the content they deliver, not with what they promise to deliver.
Thats generally the right approach, but dem patch better be kitten good.
They should either share the entirety of all upcoming changes for us to give feedback, or give no hints at all. And they decided to take the second path.
I will just wait and see what they deliver. No reason to worry about it before you have anything to base your concerns on.

Cant really comment on this due to no gameplay vid, but skipping definetely is a thing.
If you can hold out for a while and draw more than one player constantly its skipping.
If you just sit at far and they train you after they won mid its dumb.
Either way: I f one of your teamates decided to skip, was unsuccessful and continued, its a sad statement on legendary.
If one of your teammate s decides to skip and the enemy team repeatedly falls for it it is also a sad statement on legendary.

‘cough’ skill tooltip ‘cough’

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Asrat.2645:

Depends on what specific problem you are talking about, there are two I know of:
-Cant advertise the party at all. Usually at least one of your party members can. If not it should work if you leave fotm and do it from lions arch.
-Cant change the description. Have to advertise the party first, then change it. If people join a fresh 4-man 77,67,56 without waiting a few seconds, its their own fault.

There are also parties in the lfg that are advertised, but you cant join. I dont know where that comes from, if it still exists or how you can fix it.

How is it their fault? Often fracts parties are filled so fast that waiting few seconds gets me nowhere. Quite a few parties don’t even bother changing the description.

Well. Actually its Anets fault. But if you are joining a party with a bugged lfg so hastely they didnt get a chance to change it, you can hardly blame the party, can you?

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

“Necro
Minion master
Sry, but this is a necro. Cheesy at it is, this build belongs to the class.
It would be cool to create a more active build tho. For example one that makes minion summoning a tactical choice, not just: get all you can get.”

It is. When I can see trapper guards or trapper builds I will swap traits to support shouts on necro and take RISE utility.

When you approach a trapper target, use rise and 2 minions (minimum) will spawn and head directly towards your target. They will also trigger any hidden traps they’re currently standing on.

The same also works for necro marks that they place around side nodes.

The same also applies to Aoe casts from ele that have a max target limit.

The same applies for mesmer clones. In this case it will spawn the maximum number of minions and inadvertently body block mesmer clones from shattering directly on you.

The same applies for power based sword revenants.

This is a tactical minion skill that can be used thoughtfully when the opposition team composition allows it.

Yoiu are talking about swapping utility pre match. But im pretty sure you still call all your minions to your side before entering combat.
What im talking about is maybe summon a couple of initial minions and others later in the fight.
So you have a smaller general uptime, but are able to benefit from it.
I think the build is cool by concept but lame to play. There should be deeper, tactical aspects that allow you to adapt to the flow of combat. Therefore making the build a little weaker for facerolling and more rewarding smart gameplay.

I was thinking: Hey a reasonable approach on balancing, not loosing iteslf in too much detail and narrowing dwon some core issues.
Then: ‘Elementalist/Tempest can stay the way it is’
Cant take it serious now, as good as some other points you make are.
Ele is in an awful state. Painfully op to fight against and painfully boring and unrewarding to play.
Its probaly the most mindless build Ive ever seen and a disgrace to everyone who enjoyed builds like fresh air.
However. In general you are right: either these changes, or a full rework from the ground up. And the small changes can obviously be deployed faster and arent potentially breaking the game in another way.
Problems like general aoe spam and hard cc spam should still be adressed, but not asap.

‘They do a great job’
‘They one of my favourite builds unplayable’
Makes perfect sense.
Why would we stop? Ofc noone is actually expecting to ever see proposed changes on the live servers, but this work we do is an important feedback.
How do you want to develop a game if your players just quietly accept every change you make and never tell you if they liked it or not. The forums are here for a reason.
If you wish something would become part of the game or you are unhappy you share those feelings with people who can make it happen.
And if you reason well enough, provide math, evidence, if other support you idea and back you up, if you present it in a convincing way, it eventually happens.
You have to see this as a source of inspiration.
(Thankfully) No dev will ever add ‘permanet protection’ to the guardian class (even tho they indirectly did it for revs) but the idea behind it: that melee guards lack sustain and should be able to stay in combat for longer might catch on and lead to another, better solution of the problem.

Heh, I will not be commenting on things like ‘premanent protection’. I believe we had a very extensive discussion and know where we stand. ^^
Instead I will just make some general statements on builds that should be out there and are not.
I will not try to say how they could be accomplished, since this involves a very complex construction of nerfs, buffs and changes and can not be expressed without a full spreadsheet.

Warrior

True tank
Main-hand + shield. Relatively slow, some offensive support (might)
Doesnt live from healings but smart damage migation (conditional damage negation and short-term blocks)
Is stronger in defensive scenarios, and on equal team numbers, melts if outnumbered (Yes, I know how I would make that happen)
Vulnerable to conditions.

Blademaster
A more mobile, hard hitting, but still somewhat tanky version. Strong in burst but in danger of being outplayed.
Using dual-wielded weapons and benefits from many weapon swaps.

Revenant

This one is sorta complicated, but I believe all possible builds should directly refelct their invocations.
So a rev invocating mallyx should benefit from a series of very strong effects augmenting that invocation, that are not active in the shiro form and vice versa.

For guardians you got the most desireable builds. Only I miss spirit weapons, they are fun and deserve some attention. And burn guard sustain is far from bad. I played the build pre hot and you can easily heal for twice your health during a fight.
That might not be much now, but its already about 120% more than a damage dealer build should have.

Ranger

Marksman
A build that focusses entirely on ranged play. Its a ranger after all. Basically an evolution of the pew-pew ranger.
Strong in range but you better watch out they dont get to you.
You know what happens if snipers get caught in rl warfare?

Skirmisher
Shortbow, Sd, traps. Hide and seek, run and return. Exactly what comes out if a ranger and a thief spend a hot night together.
Must be cautious of enemies defending postions if they can just eat your condi up.

Thief

Hidden killer
Stealth, shadowstep, aaand gone. A build focussing on strong initial burst, decption, high damage but no sustain and trying to not get seen.
A certain death when trying to enter teamfights, but extremely dangerous to unaware players wandering the woods at night. You have dagger in your main hand, who the hell needs offhand weapons if you got a dagger?

Agile duelist
The other typical thief role. Now mainly represented by the daredevil.
Again very low sustain and strong burst, but instead of stealth, movement and dodges are used to avoid death. Sd or staff.

Engineer

Turret camper
A nice night out in the wilds, just you and your turrets on a point and your good’ol rifle by your side.
All you need now is something to make a campfire with, but whats is that on the horizon?
Defensive build, you dont want to attack a point with this, but they dont want to attack you either.

Kiteneer
We all now em. The keyboard engies. You have 25 buttons to press, but if you press them in the right order, you get a reward.
This used to be extremely powerful in the right hands if I remember correctly, but at least it awards skill and not spamming hammer2, hammer3, hammer4…

Necro

Minion master
Sry, but this is a necro. Cheesy at it is, this build belongs to the class.
It would be cool to create a more active build tho. For example one that makes minion summoning a tactical choice, not just: get all you can get.

Mesmer

Harlequin
Stealth, deception, movement. Swords in the dark. Did I say thief?
No, srsly. It would be nice to have a mesmer played the way the class should be instead with mindless mind wrack, condition spam, moas and mass illusion generation.
A quick, ellusive fighter that manipulates combat.

Burst shatter
This was one of the more fun mesmer builds. The burst was easy to set up, but hard to set up without your opponent seeing it coming last year.
This time a fighter with extremely high burst potential and a couple of key skills to make it actually happen.

Elementalist

Warlock
Offensive and fast ele, mainly using fire and air, potentially earth for more cc.
Relatively squishy, but fast enough and enough pressure to outplay your opponent.

Stone tides
Quite the contrary. Usually ranged, attuned to water or earth. Support and healing.
Not a healbot support bunker tho. Ele in general should still feel like a fast-paced class.

I actually have three builds/class that I definetly want to see, but these are my personal favourites. Rev is the only exeption, each combination of invocations should be unique and open up a whole new field of combat.
The main thing here is to make sure each build has definitive counters, but try to avoid making a whole class counter another class. Its kinda unavoidable, but should be regulated.

Now the question is: How do all these people get to ruby (or even higher) in the first place.
Thats what the league system does wrong: If you suck, you can still advance, either by grind, luck or if there is anyone who sucks even harder.
Maybe its just me, but theoretically the lower bracket of the top 50% should be in ruby. Theoretically, if the devisions woked like they should. And if they removed that silly rules of no pip loss.
So most players in ruby would supposed to be above average.
Soo…if this is above average, who is below it?
I like the casual friendly approach they did on the league system, but since it messes up the value of the divisions completely and ruins everyones good time, they may have to rethink it.

Urejt.5648:

NorthernRedStar.3054:

Thief should not be able to beat Druids, Dragonhunters, Mesmers, Necromancers or Scrappers in a fair 1v1 duel. Unless the gap between the players’ skill is vast.

Thiefs excel at flanking unsuspecting players and taking down people who have used their cooldowns beforehand. Thief is not a class for fair 1v1 duels.

Dp cant fight 1v1 in most cases but staff automaticly wins every duel exept condi mes.

No it does not.
It wins against every nab. Even some dragonhunters. But a good guard, rev, thief, ranger(only the best), engi, mesmer
Is very capable of forcing you to disengage. You can deny most bursts due to insane amount of dodges, but the passive pressure is by far enough to send you running.
And you best damage skill its so telegraphed they can see it coming even if you are still on shortbow.

I belive you confused inter with intra here, but I get what you mean.
God class was right, it was pretty much what thieves told me about themselves after three-hitting me in BV.
Saying ‘I purposely played a non-lamer build, so the class itself was not op’ is a little…odd.^^
The new trait system led to a dicrease in build diversity, but that process can be reversed whilst keeping the traits the way they are.
If they get rid of the power creep they also get rid of the need for traits to do as much as possible. Each trait could be a exclusive, narrow enchantement of specific skills, weapons or mechanics instead of reinforcing the class as whole.
They would augment your playstyle in a direction you want, but not dictate it.
Fro example a significant buff to stealth could be op on an on-demand access set like d/p, thats why its dangerous to give us one. But limiting that buff to d/d, where your main access to stealth is via a dangerous, hard to hit skill on high costs could potentially be in order.

Jana.6831:

Asrat.2645:

And glad we agree on that. I dont wish to go back to the 1v1 god class we used to be, but I’d much appreciate to beat 50% of all classes on equal skill and 90% on higher skill level.

That is maybe applying to D/P (if played right), oh and P/D – but not to thief in general – it wasn’t “the class” that was “gods in 1 vs 1” it was certain builds.

The contrary is the case i believe. The class itself used to be good, certain builds were not.
I respect you for running power dd, its undoubtly the coolest build for a thief to use (and im pretty sure it used to be op too for cndbs combo)
But single or few weaponsets not being viable is something completely different unfortunately.
And even if only dp was playable: Inter-class balance is more important than intra-class.
If we have leveled the playing field we can and we should start working towards build diversity. The first goal should be to create a competitive enviroment, not to make everyone happy.
And its not like this problem was thief exclusive. Talk to dd eles, hammer warriors, trapper rangers…
Our problem is the clarity of purpose. Death blossom should finally be replaced with a power based attack.
And ofc I want second shadow and caithe’s auto-attack chain.

Casual.9260:

Asrat.2645:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCdmiFmCGOBkmiFYCrrwkEqCzhwSYLULBEAKAA-TJRAQBTsMAD3fAAnAAD8AAAA

I’ve found much more use with Dagger Training than Mug. With it, your Death Blossom has a chance to apply poison to all of your targets. It’s far more damage than Mug if you can spare Mug’s negligible heal—esspecially when you consider all the other poison augmentations you’re running.

True. Mug has saved my life many times back then, but ofc its much less effective if steal isnt traited for recharge.

Dahkeus.8243:

@ Asrat: The role of +1 is in the pro leagues. It’s just done by revs because they can also contribute more to team fights and can bring unblockable CC.

However, I do agree that the thief class should be balanced to be able to handle actual deep combat better since the +1 and decap role isn’t enough right now.

Well. I watched the matches yesterday. I did not see any thieves. There was one in the first week (they lost)
However im generally against the proleague being the measurement of all.
The problem is just that it devalidates all ‘you need skill to play thief’ or ‘you need organized teams to play thief’ statements we are usually confronted with.
If thief got viable beyond a certain skill level or with good coordination it would become a pro class. I would be fine with that.
But unfortunately skill alone seems not to be enough.
The thiefs strenght depends not on you being good, but on your opponents being bad.

And glad we agree on that. I dont wish to go back to the 1v1 god class we used to be, but I’d much appreciate to beat 50% of all classes on equal skill and 90% on higher skill level.

Dahkeus.8243:

Jana.6831:

Dahkeus.8243:

It’s not about whether a thief can win a 1 v 1. It’s about whether a thief should spend time in a 1 v 1 instead of +1ing or decapping.

No.

You sir, are perhaps the most skilled interlocutor I have encountered. Your counter-argument, so full of reasoning, critical analytics, and bereft of logical fallacy, is indeed beyond reproach.

She is right tho.
Creating a competitive PvP game and effectively removing the fighting role from one class is bad design.
If ‘+1ing’ was enough for the thief to be viable we would see them in the pro leagues.
I know its dangerous to make thief viable in 1v1 since we can choose our opponents, but in response to that restricting us from that role entirely is a lazy decision from development.

MadRabbit.3179:

Getting hit with a ranged attack in stealth means they targeted you and started the projectile attack before you engaged stealth. Stealth makes you invisible, not bullet proof.

The same applies to melee attacks and any melee attack with a cleave component will always still hit you. You can force an attack even without a target; you just can’t complete auto attack chains.

I believe this was more about channeled skills tracking you.
But still: its annoying, sure, but it has been so yesterday and the day before that. Its not like you couldnt just dodge. There are ways to deal with this and most people simply learned to adapt. Usually the channeled skills are also not the ones that will just kill you. Its just something you have to deal with, changing it would also mean a fundamental change to the game mechanics, and the issue is not severe enought to be worth that. Partially its even intended.

3. No, quite the contrary: we should be vulnerable to being catched off-guard/by guards (sry, couldnt help it)
2 Is debatable. These passive defenses should be removed from the game altogether, but not for thieves specifically. Most of them are probably meant to counter one-hit thieves.
1 I would suggest a different approach: Weapon swap on 2-3 sec cooldown+initiative cost.
No cooldown at all would make things too easy and initiative refill would be op.
Ini cost however would even punish you more for burning your initiative too much, because it would become a little harder to change to shortbow and run.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8lCdmiFmCGOBkmiFYCrrwkEqCzhwSYLULBEAKAA-TJRAQBTsMAD3fAAnAAD8AAAA
This is what I used at the start of the season, im on staff now, but it used to work pretty well.
It is a lot more defensive and enables infinite kiting of single or even duo players without leaving the point.(Unless they are getting too good that is) The damage is ok to kill some people and its not as easy to outplay as a lotus build.
I find assassins reward a lot more reliable heal, and I couldnt say I ever missed the initiative.
Ive tried the usual ‘all in’ condi build with uncatchable, dagger training, lotus training, and I have never felt so helpless. So immobile and unable to control my own fate.
Rather use a suboptimal build before I have to experience that again.

Generally not too bad. At least not op, and the choices are reasonable and useful at the same time.
However trickery is also the most mandatory traitline next to daredevil.
If buffs happen, I would like to see it to other specialisations. Shadow arts, acrobatics most noticeably.

Rodzynald.5897:

Asrat.2645:

Rodzynald.5897:

Shroomer.8645:

Let’s make a build!

The alternative for people who don’t need AoE cleanses is meditations! With permanent protection and really low cool down heals from traited meditatons, I’ll never die!

Wait what… since when meditations grant perma protection? Perhaps you meant fury, and even then it is not permanent.

‘Stalwart Defender: Protection is now Permanent for you. 20% Reduction to Shield Abilities.’

Not the meditations, but this trait.

It is: “Stalwart Defender: Gain additional toughness while wielding a shield. Shield ability recharge is reduced.”

I looked it up in the game a while ago. Though perma damage reduction while wielding a shield instead of toughness would be much, much better.

Did you read the op? ^^
and I dont think anybody want permanent protection. Plain damage reduction is the laziest way to create a tank possible. Even worse than healing.

Rodzynald.5897:

Shroomer.8645:

Let’s make a build!

The alternative for people who don’t need AoE cleanses is meditations! With permanent protection and really low cool down heals from traited meditatons, I’ll never die!

Wait what… since when meditations grant perma protection? Perhaps you meant fury, and even then it is not permanent.

‘Stalwart Defender: Protection is now Permanent for you. 20% Reduction to Shield Abilities.’

Not the meditations, but this trait.