Guild Wars 2

It’s not necessarily that longbow’s damage is lacking. It is, obviously… because a power build with shortbow is just as/more effective… but I’d be fine with the damage longbow did if the class was actually capable of doing BURST damage.

Burst is what makes a difference in a fight. Single target sustained damage doesn’t do anything. The only reason Necro’s make it work is because they’re doing more damage to everyone and not just a single target.

Burst is what this class lacks. It’s boring as all hell to play because it doesn’t have it. There’s a reason this class’ sole build right now is regen/condi spec.

Chopps.5047:

So you tested longbow in the same amount of time it takes me to eat lunch and, after your thorough testing, it simply wasn’t up to your standards?

I strongly suggest you try reading posts before responding to them. I very specifically said that hunter’s shot is new and I reserve judgement. It wasn’t ‘fun’, I know that much because after 20minutes I was done. But is it a valuable addition to the class? Remains to be seen… I said as much.

Beyond that not much else has changed with the class where you can’t simply extrapolate their impact on the class before the patch and after. It’s not going to take 100 hours to figure out how vuln on rapid fire and 300 additional yards on point blank are going to play out.

ANet needed to be told that a class designed with no mobility, escapes, or ways to stop from being trained to death is a poor choice?

While the Necromancer is no doubt powerful and has a great deal of utility, it’s exactly as Defektive has said. People train down the weak link not because they’re a threat, but because fighting with a number advantage is valuable.

A great deal of the Necro’s advantage is masked by the simple fact that conditions aren’t properly balanced in this game because they’re a single-stat source of damage. But even a novice knows the Necro and Warrior are prime targets because they can’t get away.

Simply boosting deathshroud isn’t going to be enough and adjustments to it have never been enough every time they roll out. It needs a withdraw style heal. It needs a blink/swap. It needs an AE knockback. Something…

As others have said, it’s fine. The problem is how awful some of the other elite options are. Especially for the Elementalist class. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t regret making mine a Sylvari instead of a Norn. It’s also the hardest decision when creating an alt for me these days: do I want cat form, or are this class’ elites worth a kitten ?

Thankfully most other classes in this game actually have good elite skills. Or, at the very least, they aren’t great, but better than a speed boost on a 4min cooldown.

Let me start by saying I speak solely for myself. I realize people aren’t going to necessarily agree with me, but I need to get this off my chest.

This class, more than any other class in this game, is awful. The two major gripes I have are its complexity and overall value to a group.

I realize the melee weapons are a bit more interactive and engaging, but most of us who play this class like to embrace the range in RANGEr. Why then are both the shrotbow and longbow so boring to play? All anyone does with either set is run around in circles autoattacking targets. There’s no flare, no interactivity, and no fun.

Shortbow: This weapon is very weak overall and lends itself to condition damage. It’s fast rate of fire actually makes it do better damage than the Longbow even with a power build, but the skill choices for it are redundant and ineffective. Since none of the skills do damage they just don’t feel very interactive or fun to use. It’s kind of like a dagger/dagger Elementalist where a novice can run in and just use anything when it’s off cooldown and be moderately successful.
[i]
Poison Volley provides a debuff that already has limited real value in this game. It’s effectively just another bleed and it feels like something you just use because it’s up and not because it’s actually effective at doing its job.

Quick Shot is valuable, and is the main reason I use the shortbow, but it’s also quite ineffective. It often doesn’t leap backwards nullifying its whole function. It’s on a long cooldown when contrasted against the Thief class. It’s a mobility skill on a class that lacks real mobility.

Concussive and Crippling Shot are effectively the same exact skill. They’re used primarily for the same function, in the same ways, and rarely do I care/want/need to make use of the daze/stun for anything more than a gap closer/opener.
[/i]

Longbow: This weapon suffers from much the same thing as the shortbow. Since none of the skills really do any burst damage, they all feel like ‘meh… more auto attacks’. It’s even worse because one of the skills is effectively doing just that!

[i]
Rapid fire is nothing but autoattack at a slightly faster speed. It’s still very weak and makes you wonder why I wasn’t just using shortbow instead since it hits for about half the damage, but fires 3 times as fast. Since rapid fire doesn’t really produce much burst to speak of, I’m just using it to use it.

Hunter’s Shot was awful before. Now it’s a DPS loss but provides stealth. I only used it for about 20minutes but it wasn’t as much fun as I thought it was going to be while I sat at work all day dying to get home to try it out. Since it’s new, I’m not going to pass judgement but overall it wasn’t enough to make longbow viable.

Pointblank shot is effective. Probably the best attack available for either bow. It does no real damage and probably isn’t any more or less useful as a defensive tool than quickshot.

Barrage is nice and is the saving grace of the entire weapon when you can find 4 other rangers who want to lay down the pain. It really is a good skill, just takes too long to use and its effects are too short to use outside of a supported group.
[/i]

THERE’S JUST NO EXCITEMENT ABOUT THIS CLASS! I literally do nothing but strafe in circles auto attacking things until they eventually die from boredom. This class doesn’t provide any real pressure because there’s no burst to speak of. It doesn’t provide any real peeling because the snares/stuns aren’t very long lasting. It can’t push because the skills are mostly all single target.

This class desperately needs some real burst attacks to provide pressure on the enemy. It needs to have a viable option outside of condition damage and regen builds because these builds are only effective because condition damage is a 1 stat function. If they ever get around to balancing conditions in this game, the Ranger will have nothing left.

Again these are my complaints with this class. I personally find it very monotonous and boring to play. I run full apothecary in your typical condition/regen build and do quite well. I have a typical power build and have fun when playing with a couple other rangers in a group while a zerg can act as out buffer. But it gets stale real quick.

I find the class’s complete lack of burst, interactivity, and depth just sucking the fun out of the class and game.

Again… these are my opinions. Thank you for letting me vent.

Aridia.3042:

Eley.1907:

Please, remove this stupid stealth on longbow, it stops auto-attack and is useless in PvE. Just irritates Or make as trait, so it will be possible to turn it off

How is the ability to loose aggro ever useless in PVE?

Stealth doesn’t drop agro. And you’re a pet class so it will attack your pet anyway.

Only real value offensively is to use barrage more reliably or to have a crit on demand type attack. I’m really worried that even with these changes that the longbow and RANGEr aspect of the class still won’t be improved all that much.

In PvP the only thing that matters is burst and AE. Neither of which this class does well with at range.

Yea, the longbow is still going to need to be normalized as shortbow, even in power, does better damage. Just make it do the same damage over its entire range and give it a crit damage bonus at max range.

Still not convinced this is going to work out in the long run because the class as a whole really only works with condition builds because of the extreme lack of burst available to the class in general and how most of its damage is single target only at range.

I really wish they would remove a trap or 2 and give this class an aimed/sniper shot.

I still can’t imagine rangers using this weapon. The power build available to rangers is just crap because the class as a whole lacks any real meaningful burst damage. The only way to get anything out of it is for zephyr and rapid shot. And even in a power build with 100% crit chance it’s no where near the damage other classes can do.

It’s a great buff, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not enough to make Rangers a truly dynamic class imo. Not until the class has real on demand burst options, AE options that aren’t on horrendous cooldowns, and can bring real utility to a group.

Second to last place is the home to the ranger as far as WvW is concerned.

It’s still a long bow though… does anyone even use it? With the class’ severe lack of burst, low overall damage, and lack of real AE (yes I know barrage etc) it’s not going to suddenly make every ranger choose LB.

Until the class gets a real power build option and some burst options (I can’t believe the don’t have an aimed shot skill or onUse signet abilities that do nice damage depending on weapon selected) they’ll just continue to run regen spirit builds with torch.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Maybe a heal skill that gives 25% life force.

That was where my thought process was going as well. Give 25% shroud plus an addition % for each condition consumed. Or simply grant full shroud when sacrificing.

MF is a bad idea in almost every game that comes out with the stat though. It removes the group dynamic in favor of players being selfish.

Replacing it with a boon/condition duration buff would be a good solution.

Deep down I’d almost wish they didn’t replace it with anything, at least on the all-stat gear. That way maybe the all-stat gear could get a little closer to normal gear and actually be a viable option in this game.

DevonCarver.5370:

You can get them in any of the chests from rank 6 on.

What is the drop chance then? Because I’ve gotten like 100 chests between patch and now on various chars and haven’t had a single one. But when I run fractals about 1 in 4 has a ring (and those are infused).

McWolfy.5924:

move the call of the wild blast finisher to maul, make something with pets and spirits (or remove/change them), do something with sword1, axe 1-4(thief short bow is better from 900 range) and we will happy

Depends on your playstyle and goals. Axe does a lot more damage than shortbow, has the same range, has effectively the same first 3 attacks. If you aren’t going condition, it’s infinitely better than shortbow or longbow as far as damage is concerned. But that’s looking at strictly ranger shortbow vs axe and the idiocy of making shortbow 900 range.

Now when you compare it across classes, that’s not very fair. Obviously evasive shot is insanely useful and considering the ranger has no burst potential at all, explosive shot looks great too. But you can’t comapre other classes that easily.

While longbow will most certainly be more fun now and the added utility might actually make it good, the class as a whole still doesn’t do that well with power builds imo. Poor trait layout and a complete lack of ranged burst in addition to the mostly single target damage is still an enormous problem for this class.

We know they’re looking to remove the magic find stat. Replace it with your condition/boon duration increase stat. Or better yet, reduce condition damage by 30%, but allow them to crit and change crit damage stat to increase condition duration.

Reduce burn down to 2 bleeds instead of 6 so people stop complaining about the damage and change burn to also keep a target from stealthing. If they’re already stealthed when burn is put on them, the next revealed debuff they get will have its duration doubled.

There, now burn is more utility than damage, people stop complaining about sPvP necros, WvW people can stop crying about thieves, condi classes will no longer be the top tier bunkers they currently are, etc.

Because point control is the most boring game mode. Take a look at WoW. What BG’s have the most instances running? On every server it’s WSG. Why? Because CTF style game modes require a lot more group coordination and strategy to be good at than point control.

Lurch, for me, I find it a bit disheartening and a bit morale killer when you log on the next day to see all your hard work the night before gone to waste. While many of us log in for the fun of WvW and couldn’t care less, a lot of people out there don’t do it that regularly and I think for them, it’s hard to come back the next day when you see at what little progress was made.

Now as for removing upgrades, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind seeing walls and gates being automatically improved in some fashion as lot of the other upgrades are kinda meh to begin with and only add a little novelty and such. But the upgrades add to the whole ‘defense matters’ strategy that some people enjoy.

The coverage issue is a major problem in this game. they need to scale the PPT in some fashion to take into consideration that a keep hasn’t been claimed for awhile because no one is playing. I’m on a backwater low pop server, but we do amazing against pretty much every server we’re paired against. Our problem is consistently the 4-noon timeframe where everyone’s asleep and we lose every single point on the map.

Just make it so things give the same PPT they do now for the first hour after it’s been captured. The second hour it gives half. the third it gives 10%. The 4th and onward it gives 1%. Just something to slow things down some.

Earlier this week I went to bed and we were 3k ahead. Yesterday when I get home from work we’re 15k behind. It’s getting frustrating.

They really need to get rid of the entire mechanic. Remove the skills. A player is ‘downed’ for 10 seconds. If they’re ressed, good. If they die, anyone who can rally off them gets 15% of their bar back to increase the time they have to be ressed.

It’s a great PvE mechanic but in WvW it really has no place.

If this thread had a point, servers that are grossly outnumbered or had poor coverage would actually have a chance. Since we know this isn’t the case, apparently roaming isn’t worth squat in this game.

Nikkinella.8254:

Rangers need a buff. Everyone knows that. I miss how my snow leopard used to be. And Eles need their damage back where it was in beta. That’s why I laugh at thieves who say they got their damage nerfed. they took maybe less than 10% cut in their burst damage and complain. Eles got nerfed by over 60%. They had amazing burst builds back in beta. But thieves who stood still in the giant red circles complained and that got cut by a ridiculous amount. now they can stand in the aoe and regen what little damage we do. The only way you can deal enough damage to them with AoE to be a threat now is being glassy, which leaves you open to being 1 shotted by their insane burst, which they don’t have to sacrifice any of their defensive capabilities for.

Thief burst isn’t nearly as good as you make it out to be.

Nearly every fire skill for scepter does more damage than backstab. Warrior eviscerate and even axe auto does more than backstab.

Stealth is powerful, no one is going to deny it. But even with as powerful as stealth is, the Thief class isn’t outclassing the competition. Elementalists, Mesmers, Rangers, and even Guardians are just as good at roaming as Thieves are, but most of those at least have some functional worth outside of roaming.

Ill somewhat agree that perma stealthing is overpowered. I personally don’t mind perma stealthing existing in this game so long as it came with a sizeable damage loss (it doesn’t because initiative regen is so poorly balanced). But Thieves aren’t the unstoppable killing machines people make them out to be and they have no real value to the current WvW meta as it stands right now.

GodAmongUs.9713:

I don’t think that they have covered all the skills. What about gravitation control, changing form, light and darkness, calling magical creatures, energy prisons and more.

Mesmer and Necro can pull targets to them.
Mesmer and Ele can knock targets away.
Necro can change forms.
Norns can change form.
Ele and Necro have pets.
Ele can AE stun.

Terrahero.9358:

Drtrider.6314:

Thieves have got nothing but the nerf-bat from day one. If you’re running full zerker, or a full glass cannon build, you’re gonna get jumped by any burst build, not just thieves. Stealth is all a thief has, and if you toss a daze, knockback, blind, for anything of that nature, they can’t chain stealth. Perhaps instead of blowing up the forums with “this and that is OP” you try looking at how you’re playing, and what you have to counter each play-style.

“boohoo, my backstab crits got nerfed from 17k down to 12k” “im an engineer, my burst build got DELETED, just.. flat out gone, it doesnt exist anymore”

You know nothing of nerfs. Thieves are one of the least nerfed professions, and the most buffed professions.

At least you had a burst build. Rangers never got the chance!

Renxian,

Maybe I didn’t properly explain my point. I play a thief as a main btw, so let me get that out of the way. What I was trying to say is that Dagger/Pistol (the only real way to get perma stealth) gains an enormous amount of utility (increased stealth up time which results in condition removal and regen) and sacrifices next to no damage. The reason it doesn’t sacrifice much damage is because the initiative regen is so completely out of control in this game.

D/P kills by using backstab, but where a d/d build enters stealth via CnD for 6init, D/P must use BP+HS for 8 total init. So you would expect this to result in a larger damage reduction than it does considering the D/P set allows for the additional utility because it can stealth more reliably (don’t need to hit) and BP is a pulsing AE blind. But since initiative regen is so out of what, the 2 weapon sets do about the same damage which ends up alienating the d/d build because it no longer really has any value.

If initiative regen were balanced across the board, common sense would say D/P should do less damage because it gains the AE blind and easy access to stealth.

I had tried to quote but I messed it up

Renxian.6982:

Atherakhia.4086:

I honestly don’t understand the complaint. While I do find stealth to be powerful, it doesn’t elevate the Thief class above Rangers, Elementalists, Guardians, or Mesmers in overall roaming power as I consider each to be equally powerful.

I honestly have no problem with perma stealth in this game or any other as most games with a stealthing class actually do have perma stealth. Now clearly in this game it’s one of those things that probably wasn’t planned, but my only complaint with perma stealth the way it’s implemented in this game is really the fact that it doesn’t trade off any real damage for all the added utility perma stealth provides.

Earlier in the thread I half-heatedly mentioned replacing the leap finisher as that’s the lazy man’s choice to resolve this issue. The root of the problem is very clearly the iniatitive regen system in this game though.

But I’m concerned that a lot of people who argue for nerfing things like weapon synergy for a class simply aren’t experienced enough with the class to fully comprehend just how far reaching their changes could end up being.

Initiative regen needs to be fixed, but I’m not stupid enough to think they can do it without dramatic improvements elsewhere. It’s the same with adjusting just the stealth aspect of the class. This class is not built very well and stealth is so powerful that it hides the legitimate issues with this class.

To nerf one would need enormous buffs in other areas.

There are trade offs. In order to be able to consistently stay in stealth a thief needs to trait initiative regen. By traiting initiative regen they sacrifice condition cleansing, healing in stealth, and blind on stealth (or utility slots). Dropping all that utility for misdirection and the simple fact that instead of simply moving erratically and leaving people feel the need to blow every cooldown they have trying to hit a thief that is doing 0 damage.

No one is denying that stealth is inherently powerful, but it’s not the end all be all of wvw roaming and it’s not even the easiest way to reset a fight. I reset fights all the time on my ranger and it’s all of lvl 35. If anything my ranger is better at it because it a can tank a ton of damage and regen mid fight on top of being able to reset at will. Hell I play my ranger the same way I play my thief. Dip in and out, reset till I win.

Oh I know there are trade offs, I’m just saying they aren’t enough The typical 0/30/30/10 build has the regen capable of perma stealthing and is extremely strong. You’d expect the class when trading CnD for 5 init in favor of needing to BP+HS for 7 would sacrifice more damage then it does. My argument is that it should, but the reason it doesn’t is because initiative regen isn’t properly balanced for the class as a whole regardless of spec.

But like I said, I’m not stupid enough to think you can adjust skills and traits to remove the initiative regen and expect the class to still be playable without dramatic improvements elsewhere. I just don’t want to see knee jerk changes to player complaints when all that will do is move them over to the next thing to complain about instead of just resolving the root problem.

Rawr.5930:

First, thieves useless in wvw?

Is this some kind of joke?

Thief meet yak.

Dead yak.

Against a proper good thief, even 5 escorts may not be enough.

That said, as much as stealth is broken, thieves really are pigeonholed into stealth heavy builds kitten much of the class synergy is built around stealth, it’s more a blame the game not the player situation.

I don’t know if I’m biased because my other characters are an Ele and Ranger, but I’ve never had a problem killing yaks or taking camps solo. ever.

And even if you had a point, do you really expect people to be proud that they play a MMO with large scale warfare and sieging and all they do is kill cows all day and attack a gate on an unguarded keep? These are tasks you send the uplevels to do. This isn’t something you’d design a class’ sole role in groups to be.

Rawr.5930:

People will defend their crutches to the death when their egos depend on it.

Until it hits anet in the pocketbook they arent going to bother.

When thieves complain about no roamers and endless zerging, they only need to look at themselves.

And the whole spiel about useless in wvw?

What an utter load of tripe, supply is incredibly important in wvw, and there is NO class better at sniping yaks than thieves.

A really good thief can only be stopped by an excess of 5 players or in many cases more, this is exacerbated by the plethora of neutral and AMBIENT mobs near yak paths.

It’s utterly ridiculous.

How can a class be worse at killing yaks… You target a yak, you attack. If you kill the yak the escorts despawn and every class can soak up the damage. But even if they can’t, Rangers and Mesmers are still infinitely better at taking camps.

And do you really expect players that play a game built around siege warfare to get enjoyment out of killing cows and triggering swords on unguarded keeps as their sole value to a group in this game?

I understand people hate thieves, but don’t be naive…

Since we know ascended gear is coming and the reports on how we obtain it seem like they aren’t very well fleshed out, I’d strongly suggest just holding on to things unless you need a trinket or new armor at this point.

But I use them to gear alts mostly or try out new armor sets for different builds.

I honestly don’t understand the complaint. While I do find stealth to be powerful, it doesn’t elevate the Thief class above Rangers, Elementalists, Guardians, or Mesmers in overall roaming power as I consider each to be equally powerful.

I honestly have no problem with perma stealth in this game or any other as most games with a stealthing class actually do have perma stealth. Now clearly in this game it’s one of those things that probably wasn’t planned, but my only complaint with perma stealth the way it’s implemented in this game is really the fact that it doesn’t trade off any real damage for all the added utility perma stealth provides.

Earlier in the thread I half-heatedly mentioned replacing the leap finisher as that’s the lazy man’s choice to resolve this issue. The root of the problem is very clearly the iniatitive regen system in this game though.

But I’m concerned that a lot of people who argue for nerfing things like weapon synergy for a class simply aren’t experienced enough with the class to fully comprehend just how far reaching their changes could end up being.

Initiative regen needs to be fixed, but I’m not stupid enough to think they can do it without dramatic improvements elsewhere. It’s the same with adjusting just the stealth aspect of the class. This class is not built very well and stealth is so powerful that it hides the legitimate issues with this class.

To nerf one would need enormous buffs in other areas.

Jamais vu.5284:

Atherakhia.4086:

is it safe to assume the class will gain some real group value in the future?

You’re a bad player and that is okay – it’s the default state of any player.
But don’t pretend to have knowledge where you don’t, which you just proved.

The bottom 3 classes for group play are in this order..

Thief: Because they bring blast finishers and nothing more.
Rangers: Because they bring water fields and nothing more.
Engineers: Because they bring more blast and actual utility but aren’t a great class.

Now if you don’t agree with this ranking for the 3 least useful players to the current WvW meta, then you’re the baddie and you should try to defend your argument with something because the majority of people list these 3 classes as bottom rung for zergs and large group combat.

As I said in my OP, it’s nice to pretend killing Dolyaks and triggering swords to distract is a fun and rewarding aspect of WvW, but it isn’t. No one wants their class’ sole role in WvW to be a cow killer and to shoot a gate from 900 yards.

Now if you want to go to the extreme and pretend Thieves are awesome because they can solo camps, which of the other 4 classes I mentioned in my OP can’t? Because I’ve had no problem with any of them.

I’m sorry, but the WvW value of a Thief is limited to their blast finishers and that’s it.

Now if you want more fodder, here’s my complete list of class value for the current WvW meta

Guardian
Mesmer
Elementalist
Warrior*
Necro*
Engineer
Ranger
Thief
*These classes are the only ones I’ve seen people disagree with and it’s because I don’t value Necros highly because they’re so easily shut down. Their utility is amazing, but I find Hammer Warriors more valuable with the blast finisher (auto attack 3, AE stun, etc.)

A 5% increase in stats won’t have any impact on anything given how diminished returns work.

No seriously… the complaints about the class are somewhat justified, I realize that. But even with stealth being as powerful as it is, the Thief class still doesn’t outshine Elementalists, Mesmers, Guardians, or Rangers in small group roaming. But if we were to pretend the Thief was somehow over the top at roaming, the very clear issue is with initiative regen.

Now with all that out of the way, this is the WvW forum… and the current name of the game in WvW is zerging. Isn’t always large 50+ battles on each side, but even just 15+ would be considered zerging. But in this area, despite the Thief’s strength (and in my opinion it’s overstated) at roaming, it is the undisputed worst class for everything that is WvW currently.

With the recent diary on the main page implying classes will be getting new skills, is it safe to assume the class will gain some real group value in the future? Am I missing something about the class? That it fits some niche that is actually fun and valuable to the WvW meta? I mean sure they can kill dolyaks and take camps, but so can every class. Sure they can trigger swords. But these aren’t real tasks or roles… they’re chores.

Is the supposed strength in roaming ANet’s excuse for Thief class offering nothing in any other aspect of this game? I’m concerned that with every post on this forum being nothing about random complaints about stealth and shadow fields the reality of the situation with the class is being ignored or missed.

Will anything change?

This class is still just as awful as it has always been. But now even more so.

I especially loved the shortbow nerf. It is now effectively the same as axe mainhand, but much weaker in exchange for bleeds and no AE.

This class still doesn’t have a competetive power build leaving most to use condition builds (many of which don’t even use shortbow).

The class still has horrible skill choices that all help improve defense and leaving no real offensive options to choose from outside of condition damage from traps.

Pets still don’t scale with gear properly and they’re always on the chopping block for nerfs because of it.

Playing a ranger isn’t interactive at all because so much time is spent just auto-attacking and running in circles. It’s the reason people use longbow in my opinion. Longbow is a horrible weapon compared to short bow, but people use it because it’s more ‘fun’. It’s more fun because it’s skills actually ‘do’ something. Shortbow skills don’t make numbers pop up… you simply shoot a simple AE poison, a no damage daze, or snare.

Any change to put the range back in ranger at this point would be welcome. Anything that would make the class feel like you’re doing more than auto-attacking with it all day while you run in circles around the enemy would be great.

Leap finishers to smoke fields change to grant aegis or protection.

Utility? As in value to a group?

The ranger has only one thing… healing well. the only class with less to offer a group is the thief. The next best is an engineer rounding out the bottom 3 classes for zerg play.

I’d suggest looking elsewhere if you’re serious about a utility class.

Not every class is useful to a zerg.

Thieves offer nothing.
Rangers offer next to nothing.
Necros suffer because of the insane amounts of condition cleansing.
Engineers are boring.

You then run into the lag problem.
The fact that no other form of play is rewarded nearly as much.
There’s no other strategy or tactic in this game other than zerging.
There’s no anti-zerg option even when defending something like garrison.

It’s just boring. And while every other MMO out there has had zerging in one form or another, the other games offered other options to it and rewarded more than it. WvW is a bust in this game. It was stale 6 months ago. Nothing of value has been added since and nothing has changed as far as tactics or strategy since the game launched.

People aren’t doing this for loot. Reducing their badges or loot will have no real impact on anything.

Just make this game require some element of strategy in WvW. Like you can’t take SM unless you have 75% of your borderland. You can’t take enemy towers on their side of EB unless you have your garrison. You can only claim neighboring structures. You can still siege whatever you want. You can still kill the lords in each structure. You just can’t take it over unless the lord in your neighboring area is still alive and your chain of neighboring lords are all still alive going all the way back to your garrison.

This way people actually need to defend their stuff. If you’re being zerged and can’t win, take your zerg to their land and kill a random lord in some random tower so they can’t take your stuff until they go back and push you out.

This gives you time to regroup, push them out of your structure when they circle back. etc etc.

Another thing that must be done is remove the ability for players to harm gates. Siege should be the name of the game and without it, you’re not doing anything. Introduce handheld siege weapons that deal 10% damage to gates, 10% damage to walls, and 10% damage to players. This way if players want to harm gates and such, they need to equip actual siege weapons and run the risk of being engaged by the defenders with the weapons still equipped and unable to fight back.

The complete lack of depth to the PvP system in this game is the reason there isn’t anything to do but duel by windmills and zerg with the occasional roaming thief griefing uplevels as they try to catch up to the zerg they died with.

Easiest way to do it is to introduce a new structure upgrade call barracks. The barracks can have up to 10 NPC’s that a commander can call for assistance. They spawn next to the lord, walk to the front of the keep. Then go through the portal.

For every ally within 2000 yards, they lose 2% of their overall stats. When given the outnumbered debuff, their stats increased by 200%. Each has stability and they’re semi intelligent enough to assist each other when targeting.

Games without AE caps and games with much larger AE caps had zerging too.

The zerg exists because there is no depth to the pvp system. Tactics and strategy mean nothing in this game and there’s no tactic to employ other than zerging.

What’s truly laughable about this thread is it’s written by a necro. The second most complained about class that is threatening to overtake thieves in most QQ possible. Wait till they actually do something to smoke field and then the hate will be aimed squarely at necros until they’re nerfed.

Seriously though, the thief isn’t the best at anything currently. As powerful as stealth is, Guardians, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Rangers each make equally powerful roamers. And most of those classes have viable roles outside of roaming too.

So Thieves aren’t anywhere near overpowered in the sole role they have in the current WvW meta, and we’re seriously getting another thread on top of the 5 current ones on the front page?

The thief is a one man army and yet the army wants nothing to do with them. Look at the current meta in WvW. Thieves have no place in any of it outside of killing dolyaks and triggering keep doors. They are great roamers, no doubt about it. But better roamers than Elementalists, Guardians, Mesmers, or Rangers? Nah.

As powerful as stealth is, the thief class some how isn’t any better off than half the class out there in overall power. And certainly no where near the other classes when it comes time to actually earning a spot in a group.

Didn’t we just have this thread?

On a side note, I wonder, does the pass-through mechanic of a Ranger’s arrow have the same target cap as beam weapons? Or even a 5 target cap? Im curious if a Ranger could target people at the back of a zerg and the arrow would pass through 20+ people.

Dahkeus.8243:

Atherakhia.4086:

The overwhelming majority of players choose to do WvW and not sPvP.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but honestly that sounds like more reason for sPvP to get some love so that it stays active and alive. WvW seems to be doing just fine relatively.

Cater to the minority so the majority suffer and quit?

If they wanted more people to play sPvP they’d introduce a new game mode like everyone has been begging for.

It’s more likely they’re just clamoring for anything new to come out at this point and it’s obviously quicker to release a sPvP map over a new WvW map. This thread may come off as trollish because we ignore the difficulty involved. But this game has been out for what, 10 months or more now? That’s a long time to go with nothing to show for it.

ANet considered the WvW abilities as new content and they probably feel it’s enough to keep players occupied for another month instead of providing real substantive content for players to enjoy.

The overwhelming majority of players choose to do WvW and not sPvP. WvW is bleeding players right now because there hasn’t been anything new since launch. The only way I’ve kept interest is to rotate to another character.

I’ll be crafting my 5th 80 today when I get home and I don’t expect the class to keep my interest for long. I wonder if I’ll run out of classes to make before anything of value is added to WvW.

Terrahero.9358:

shadowraith.9124:

Most popular and successful mmo of all time has had perma stealth since release and has kept it across 4 expansions.

I think we can end these discussions now.

While in Stealth a Rogue moves slower, unless specced for stealth speed. A Thief runs just as fast as everyone else, if specced for stealth speed he’ll be faster then anything.

A Rogue takes damage, even from a DoT, and his stealth will be broken. A Thief doesnt not exit Stealth when taking damage. Even getting downed doesnt cause a Thief to lose Stealth.

Re-stealthing for a Rogue meant leaving combat or blowing lengthy cooldowns. Restealthing for a Thief comes on abilities with no cooldown and a cost low enough to resealth everytime Revealed fades. Abilities with a cooldown are still much lower by comparison.

A Rogue has limited gapclosers, either they need to be specced for or they come with a lenghty cooldown, or both. A Thief has a multitude of gapclosers on low cooldown or no cooldown at all.

Looks like a Rogue in “the most popular MMO ever” has quite a few drawbacks just to get perma-stealth. Drawbacks the perma-stealthing Thief does not have.

A bit biased aren’t you?

A rogue purges all DOTS when stealthing in combat.
A rogue cancels all channeled spells on it when stealthing in combat.
Rogues in WoW had stuns. Tons of them.
Rogues in WoW had difficult to remove snares.
Rogues had high sustained damage and effective burst dumping options.
Rogues had activated defensive options outside of stealth.

Lets face it, the thief and rogue are simply too different in two entirely different mmos. If you’re going to try and compare classes between games, at least try to find one more closely related. Shadowbane for example.

makku.2508:

Atherakhia.4086:

I’d argue this isn’t even the problem as I see nothing wrong with perma-stealth in theory.

Before you continue defending your favorite griefing class & favorite broken mechanic with made-up arguments, I’d suggest you do some googling to find forum posts, blog posts & articles from leading game designers of the world’s most successful online games explaining why long term stealth mechanics (still a weaker mechanic than the on-demand perma-stealth our GW2 Thief has access to) are detrimental to gameplay.
I have this gut feeling these guys invested a lot more time than you thinking about stealth mechanics, and for some strange reason all of them come to the same conclusion: You shall not implement long duration stealth mechanics in your game. A lot even go as far as saying, in hindsight, they should have never implemented any kind of stealth at all in their game.

Why in the world would I go through all the effort when common sense can prevail? There’s nothing wrong with permanent stealth in a game where the class is balanced in a way to allow it. That’s not the case here and you’d know that was my opinion all along if you actually read anything I wrote beyond the one line you quoted.

There isn’t anything wrong with perma stealth in GW2 in theory. Just like you quoted. The problem (which you ignored for some reason) is that you gain the added utility but sacrifice nothing for it.

If you actually read anything I wrote in this or any other thread you’d see that even though I play a thief, I feel it is overpowered. But unlike you and many others, I’d sooner resolve the root problem then keep chipping away at the edges by nerfing everyone’s complaint of the week.

Can’t go wrong with thief, ranger, elementalist, guardian, or mesmer for small groups and roaming.

If you plan to be functional in large groups or do heavy zerg contribution, scratch the first 2 off the list.

If I could organize 10-15 people to all reroll a roaming group right now I’d have to say mesmers. Nothing would be cooler than 10-15 mesmers all identical in looks each with 3 clones each. Name yourselves after pokemon or something.

Give Thieves staff so they can become shadow mages.