Guild Wars 2

noobftw.9654:

Atherakhia.4086:

Guardian, Mesmer, or Elementalist are the top 3 all around classes. Rangers and Thieves round out the top classes in this game overall, but neither the Thief or Ranger is all that valuable to larger group/zerg play. One brings a single field, the other brings the ability to blast said field. That’s where their worth in a zerg ends. One could argue the benefit zergs elsewhere by scouting out enemies (Eles can do it just as well) or by killing Dolyaks and attacking doors to throw up false swords (lol, do you really want to do this as your intended role?).

But yea, can’t go wrong with Guardian, Mesmer, or Elementalist as each are quite powerful and valuable in any situation (zerg, small group, roaming, solo).

for the complete list in my order I’d go:

Guardian
Mesmer
Elementalist
Warrior
Necromancer
Engineer
Ranger
Thief

^^ ignore that list, it lost credibility once I saw necro is not TOP 2.

The reason Necros aren’t top 2 is because, while their utility is quite strong, their damage is easily negated by 3 different classes. All 3 of which outnumber necros 2:1 individually, so a necro is looking at 6 classes to every 1 necro able to completely shut down their damage. 2 of those classes can reapply boons faster than a Necro can remove them as well.

If it was all a utility debate, I’d probably put them above Warriors. But seeing as how they’re so easily shut down it’s really subjective.

PinCushion.7390:

Atherakhia.4086:

For as powerful as you all make stealth appear to be, you’d expect the thief to be some kind of unstoppable juggernaut in this game. It’s not. In any capacity. Want to talk about good roamers? Thieves, Eles, Guardians, Mesmers, and Rangers are each equally viable despit stealth the way it is now. Want to talk about zergs? Thieves are functionally useless. Want to talk about burst? Mesmers, Warriors, and Elementalists are capable of more. Want to talk about mitigating damage? The thief can’t… it has only avoidance. Want to talk about avoidance? Elementalists and Mesmers regain vigor faster, and Thieves have less health.

So yes, stealth is powerful. But the thief class apparently isn’t gaining so much of an advantage to put it above more than half the classes out there. And you all are here thinking you’d get away with adjusting stealth in some fashion without dramatic improvements elsewhere?

The only thing that could possibly even be considered at this point is an adjustment to the leap finisher to smoke field from granting stealth to instead provide protection or aegis. I’d argue this isn’t even the problem as I see nothing wrong with perma-stealth in theory. I only see a problem with not seeing a noticeable damage reduction in exchange for the added utility being provided. And this is an issue with initiative regen (the root of all your complaints if only you all played thieves to the same level you’re playing forum warriors).

Initiative regen is my only complaint. I don’t have a problem with Thieves having permastealth as long as it’s the focus of their build. I don’t have a problem with Thieves having insane burst, as long as they’ll run out of steam at some point. I have a problem with Thieves that get effectively perma-stealth AND great burst AND great sustain at the cost of low HP/Armor. I wouldn’t mind seeing Thieves get a damage increase, as long as it was for higher burst and way worse Initiative regen.

And, honestly, if they never changed that stuff I wouldn’t even care. The Thief issue isn’t that big a deal. They gank me now and again. Sometimes they try and run away. Most of the time I’m near group members and they stay away.

And as a Thief, that is my complaint too. The only legitimate complaint people can raise about the Thief class is initiative regen is not properly balanced. Of course you can’t change it without redesigning the class from the ground up either so it’s really going to be up to ANet to dedicate the time and resources to make sure they do it right and don’t end up leaving this game with 7 classes.

Lower the caps by 15% and open up free transfers to Ferg’s Crossing, Eredon Terrace, Anvil Rock, or Henge. These appear to be the lowest populated servers as anytime these servers are paired up, the scores tend to be somewhat close. But if there are other low pop servers, open them too.

I would only open maybe 1 or 2 at a time. Or make it specific so servers X, Y, and Z can only go to server A for example.

Guardian, Mesmer, or Elementalist are the top 3 all around classes. Rangers and Thieves round out the top classes in this game overall, but neither the Thief or Ranger is all that valuable to larger group/zerg play. One brings a single field, the other brings the ability to blast said field. That’s where their worth in a zerg ends. One could argue the benefit zergs elsewhere by scouting out enemies (Eles can do it just as well) or by killing Dolyaks and attacking doors to throw up false swords (lol, do you really want to do this as your intended role?).

But yea, can’t go wrong with Guardian, Mesmer, or Elementalist as each are quite powerful and valuable in any situation (zerg, small group, roaming, solo).

for the complete list in my order I’d go:

Guardian
Mesmer
Elementalist
Warrior
Necromancer
Engineer
Ranger
Thief

Go down, not out:

Instanced subteranean levels to break into structures from underneath. Pillars underground could be sieged to collapse segments of wall on the surface. Various areas can be sieged to allow the enemy zerg to choose one of several locations to enter the enemy courtyard on the surface to attack more randomly.

Go up, not out:

Instanced air battles where sky ships can deliver supplies and strafe the landscape where zergs are organizing. Commanders can call in airstrikes where they increase in power depending on the number of sky ships controlled.

Go nowhere:

Simply make it impossible to claim an enemy tower unless you own all towers on your side of the map in EB. You can siege it, kill the lord, etc. But you can’t raise your flag while your own defenses are in question. Make it so you can’t take the enemies garrison unless you own SM. SM is so large but most people ignore it because it’s not worth the effort when you could attack something else. Force real strategic value behind taking enemy structures and attacking/defending your own.

Dates will never happen.

But it would be nice given how much attention Stealth has been getting if we’re going to be seeing any adjustments to it. ANet has shown in the past that their changes can be a bit shortsighted with adjustments in one area only to be reverted 4 months (or 1 month…) later.

It would nice to know if for stealth in particular, if they see a problem with it. If they see a problem with the Thief class. If they feel the Thief class is where it needs to be or is it too powerful? Is the Thief actually in need of buffs, but stealth is so powerful they can’t do it.

I mean there have been quite a few hot topics on this forum and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them comment on them until after the changes have been made, and most of those comments have been halfhearted at best.

Confusion nerf comes to mind.
Shortbow range reduction despite Axe having effectively the exact same range and skill options.
The 10+ threads on stealth this week.

For as powerful as you all make stealth appear to be, you’d expect the thief to be some kind of unstoppable juggernaut in this game. It’s not. In any capacity. Want to talk about good roamers? Thieves, Eles, Guardians, Mesmers, and Rangers are each equally viable despit stealth the way it is now. Want to talk about zergs? Thieves are functionally useless. Want to talk about burst? Mesmers, Warriors, and Elementalists are capable of more. Want to talk about mitigating damage? The thief can’t… it has only avoidance. Want to talk about avoidance? Elementalists and Mesmers regain vigor faster, and Thieves have less health.

So yes, stealth is powerful. But the thief class apparently isn’t gaining so much of an advantage to put it above more than half the classes out there. And you all are here thinking you’d get away with adjusting stealth in some fashion without dramatic improvements elsewhere?

The only thing that could possibly even be considered at this point is an adjustment to the leap finisher to smoke field from granting stealth to instead provide protection or aegis. I’d argue this isn’t even the problem as I see nothing wrong with perma-stealth in theory. I only see a problem with not seeing a noticeable damage reduction in exchange for the added utility being provided. And this is an issue with initiative regen (the root of all your complaints if only you all played thieves to the same level you’re playing forum warriors).

The Game Slayer.7632:

Kuja.2503:

If stealth gets ‘fixed’ I would delete the game in despair

threatening to quit a game because your OP class gets nerfed, if i had a nickle for everytime i heard that. lol

the only actual real problem i see with the thief if the insane amount of mobility + master of stealth + the insane amount of regen a thief can get while STILL going full berszerker. 500 health a second while in stealth while clearing conditions is pretty overpowered, by a long shot. not to mention they can reset fights at the flick of a wrist, go from 20% hp to 100% hp after some cheesy stealth healing, and still pump out 10k cnd+backstab combos. (not to mention heartseeker). if you are still defending this class after this reply, you do not have brain.

Thieves are hardly op and are so reliant on stealth that any adjustment to it without vast improvements elsewhere will result in this game only having 7 classes instead of 8.

Seriously though… Thieves are no more or less powerful than Elementalists, Mesmers, Guardians, or Rangers in overall power even with stealth and the remaining 2 classes have little difficulty beating thieves on a regular basis despite their overall handicap in WvW/PvP.

Everyone will acknowledge that Stealth is powerful. But is the Thief class as a whole? Apparently not given its ranking in sPvP and how no one wants them in the current WvW meta.

frans.8092:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s silly to expect a game that’s focused on PvP, …

Since when are dungeons considered PvP? The thread is about dungeons, or PvE, not PvP!

Try to deny it all you want, the sole driving focus of this game is PvP. The entire game is designed around it. Every class is balanced around it.

This is a bit of a misnomer. Thieves don’t need to run berserker gear. They do it because stealth is so powerful that they can get away with doing it better than most every other class in the game. The ‘tankyness’ of the Condition thief is also a lie because the Thief still can’t take any real damage. The ‘tankyness’ comes from evade spam.

If we want to ask for improvements in the Thief’s playstyle and gearing options it’s going to have to come at the expense of Stealth uptime. I’d argue that stealth is so powerful right now, it masks the blatantly obvious issues this class already has so well that it has pigeonholed us into the above mentioned playstyles.

Without huge nerfs and a rebalancing of the class (we’d need both because any adjustment to stealth uptime will probably destroy the class), the absolute most we could ever hope for is pistol mainhand to be viable to open up a new weapon option. Beyond that you better start clenching because it will be a bumpy ride.

It’s silly to expect a game that’s focused on PvP, where the primary driving factor behind PvP is strictly DPS, to actively nerf DPS output of various classes. Especially classes (warriors) that aren’t doing well at said PvP currently.

How about we take a novel approach and make the Thief about more than DPS? Why can’t the Thief have a poison that, when allies strike the target with poison, they gain fury? Why can’t share poison be a level 5 trait and poisons be changed to actually provide something useful? I mean we have the whole poison mechanic for this class that no one ever uses because poisons flat out suck. And not only do they suck, but they’d have to be horrendously overpowered to ever be considered over things like Shadowstep, shadow refuge, blinding powder, etc.

Personally, I think asking for more damage from the Thief is just opening up other issues because we’d have to sacrifice to gain it. Right now the largest complaint against this class is stealth uptime. I could see them nerfing our stealth uptime in favor of added damage (which I’m cool with). The easist method to add damage would be to change our stealth skills (backstab, etc.) to work from the back even when out of stealth but have an internal cooldown.

For example, when striking from the back, your third attack will be a backstab instead on a 4 second cooldown (long enough so you’d only do it every other rotation) that deals 150% damage (instead of 200% from stealth).

But yea, I don’t see them nerfing any class’ damage. I don’t see them increasing our damage without equal nerfs in other areas (most likely stealth). The better solution would be to just add utility for this class so it not only has value to PvE groups, but the current WvW meta as well.

Norseman.4280:

Envy.1679:

Terrahero.9358:

Envy.1679:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth_Disruptor_Trap

fixed

Because countering a thief should totally cost 15 badges, 10 supply, exposing yourself for 4 seconds and praying to all the higher powers he actually triggers it.

Just so he then has to run away, and you can pat yourself on the back because there is no way those 15badges and 10 supply couldve been better spend….

the thing is countering a thief is completely voluntary. youre not winning any keeps and towers by roaming alone and fighting thieves. .youre the one who wants to go fight thieves in wvw. if youre off fighting thieves then you have no right to complain about needing to use your supply for something thats actually useful.

Wow way to have no logic at all…you must play a thief.

So you’re saying is that if I just zone in and I want to catch up with my zerg, I just have to deal with three thieves laying in wait, perma stealthed, for my solo self to come running by, insta-gibbing me? I have no right to complain because I am not winning any keeps at that moment?
How about when a full group or two can’t kill one thief? I mean, is your point that thieves are the only ones who should fairly be allowed to run solo and live…with insane survivability and get-away skills?
I could go on but I won’t. Your point is full of holes and self serving.

No, you shouldn’t be griefed trying to play WvW by any class. The issue is you have people who have no idea how to play the Thief class (often those who haven’t even bothered trying to make one) trying to post suggestions on how to fix a perceived problem.

Fact of the matter is that perma stealth isn’t an issue. The issue is that the build doesn’t sacrifice enough damage (next to none) for the amount of utility it gains (AE pulsing blind, increased stealth uptime which results in higher condition removal, passive regen, burst). So if we want to be fools and nerf one thing at a time, the easiest solution would be to simply remove what makes perma-stealth possible and that’s the smoke field. Since the weapon sets that use pistol offhand are considered high utility builds, then the leap finishers should be adjusted to some other form of utility… like granting aegis or protection boon.

But really, what would this solve other than quieting the masses until the next thing crops up? Once perma stealth is gone is there another area people perceive thieves to be overpowered?

It can’t be burst because Warriors and Elementalists are capable of much more.
It can’t be survivability because the Thief has none outside of stealth and when in the open they are shut down quick.
It can’t be group utility because the Thief is useless in PvE and Zergs.
It can’t be roaming because you just removed the one trump card left.

My issue with alot of the complaints about the Thief class is, even though stealth is very powerful, it doesn’t elevate the Thief class into a category all it’s own. Instead, the Thief is generally regarded as no more or less powerful than Mesmers, Guardians, Rangers, or Elementalists in overall power. And that’s with the insane initiative regen (which is the real problem behind all of this that none of you recognize because you clearly don’t play the class) the way it is now.

Can’t nerf stealth because the Thief barely holds on as it is. You can’t nerf intiative regen for the same reason unless you’re prepared to increase other areas of the class at the same time. The only thing you can do is change the leap finishers on smoke fields which will remove an entire build option from the class which already has about 2 total options to choose from after the last patch.

akjb.8372:

There’s no counter to stealth.

A pet should be able to attack a thief in and out of stealth (they have good smell) .

At the moment there’s no risk for thiefs, if they’re losing a fight, they just run away. It’s impossible to kill one.

It’s not only a troll class, it takes the fun out of the game.

Rangers, Elementalists, and Warriors can run away just as effectively in smaller engagements involving 10 or fewer players. No reason to talk about larger engagements because Thieves are useless for those. No reason to talk about duels because the only class that can’t beat a thief in a duel is a necro.

Sword+Torch/Greatsword as guard. You have a lot of blinds. You have great conditions. You have reasonable burst. You can escape and engage at will.

Thieves are no more or less powerful than Mesmers, Guardians, Rangers, or Elementalists. All of these classes are more valuable to a group. I’m sorry, but if you play one of these classes your complaints are null and void.

While stealth is powerful, it’s all the thief class has to hold it together and any adjustment to stealth (or initiative regen which is the real problem if you actually knew anything about the class) would require enormous boosts in nearly every other aspect of the class as a whole.

Change leap finishers through smoke fields to give Aegis to everyone and call it a day so we can move onto the next thief complaint until we finally get around to fixing it.

Initiative is very obviously the problem with this class.

The whole point behind pistol offhand is to exchange damage for utility. However, since initiative regen is so out of what, you lose next to no damage and gain an enormous amount of utility in exchange.

Now that said, you can’t simply nerf initiative regen without enormous buffs in other areas. When you look at the Thief class in comparison to other classes, it’s not blowing them out of the water. Even at roaming, the thief is hardly in its own league. Mesmers, Guardians, Rangers, Elementalists, and Thieves are all in the same general area when it comes to overall balance (offensively anyway) for roaming.

Taking without giving in equal or great proportion will do nothing but destroy the entire class. So while initiative is very obviously the problem, fixing it will be a near impossible task and a waste of time so long as the thief is no better or worse than half the other classes out there.

I consider the problem with this class wholely related to initiative regen. This means I don’t think the class can be fixed by ignoring the traits and skills and simply changing the mechanics of a skill.

Now that said, and if I wanted to approach the complaint of the day by nerfing D/P in particular, the obvious target is the smoke combo field like you said.

I think the best way to do it is simply change leap finishers for the field entirely though as simply giving them 2 seconds of stealth instead of 3 doesn’t resolve anything. While it’s nice to imagine that people have a gripe with perma stealth, their real issue is the damage and time in stealth while in combat. Leaving stealth attached to the leap finisher isn’t going to resolve this.

Instead, since pistol is more of a defensive weapon, why not just change the leap finisher to provide protection or aegis?

The whole point behind D/P was to trade damage for utility. Of course it doesn’t work that way because of initiative regen the way it is, but that was the intention. All burst from d/P comes from backstab and heartseeker.

You then took this premise a step further by trading off even more burst in favor of faster initiative regen (something I don’t think you’ll need because infusion from shadow should provide enough excess initiative to maintain reasonable damage (I am not sure if it will provide enough to perma stealth too, I don’t run d/P)

I would suggest you do what Josh suggested and go with the more typical 10/30/30 or 0/30/30/10 build until you get a handle on things.

Stealth isn’t the problem. Initiative regen is. You mention a thief in your sig, but do you play it with any regularity? I’m guessing not because even if we pretend stealthing is the problem, you’re nerfing the burst build far more heavily than the stealth builds.

No, initiative regen is the problem. Perma stealth is only possible with the Dagger + Pistol combo and specific skill choices. But at face value, there’s nothing wrong with perma stealth because it should come with a significant drop in damage. You’d expect it to because of the loss of CnD’s damage + vulnerability, but the simple fact of the matter is it doesn’t. Why doesn’t it? Because initiative regen can be elevated to such a degree that losing CnD+vuln in favor of blackpowder+heartseeker+backstab doesn’t result in a net drop in damage despite the significantly higher initiative cost, significantly higher utility, significantly higher regen/condition removal.

You then go on to try to nerf skills and traits (one that no one even uses btw) that most would consider mandatory additions to the thief class. This leads me to believe that you don’t really play the thief class because if any of your changes went through without ENORMOUS buffs in other areas, the entire class would be dead in the water.

Initiative regen is the problem. Remove all the excess regen from all skills and traits. Leave a trait to give initiative on crit with a cooldown and a trait to increase the initiative cap. All other methods of initiative regen can be removed.

“But Ath, even with these changes the Thief would be dead on arrival too!?” — Well yes, of course it would.

So the question then becomes how do you improve it?

Well for starters, you could give it the same health as Rangers. You mentioned the condition removal is high (it is…) but you completely fail to recognize that the thief class has the lowest health in the game and the least amount of regen out of stealth of any class. There’s a reason condition removal is so strong…. because a single burn will deal 50% of a Thief’s health.

Given the enormous drop in burst potential due to the loss of stealth (which means hidden killer, backstab, etc become much less valuable) you could increase auto attack damage and/or introduce a third state for stealth moves where if they’re used from the back they deal 50% more damage (in stealth they deal 100% more) and can be used without stealth (like in WoW).

You get the idea. The point I’m trying to make is that if your focus is stealth and not the root of the problem all you’re doing is quieting the QQ and they’ll simply move to another topic. The vast majority of complaints aimed at the Thief aren’t warranted. Burst isn’t that great because many classes can do more for less effort. They have no mitigation, only avoidance, outside of toughness/armor. They have no real stability option. They have no where near the best regen in the game.

The only legitimate complaint is how much utility they gain from pistol off-hand over dagger with no appreciable loss in damage or mobility.

Remake WvW, it is boring…

Seriously though, I don’t know if I simply had lower standards back in the day, but something about Shadowbane was immensly fun but when I think of what I do in WvW all day, something about it sucks.

Part of it is how shallow the character development is, and another part is how basic the PvP system is. But I still feel like they missed the ball with the WvW system. There’s simply nothing to do all day but zerg, many of the classes don’t have anything to do in a zerg but spam one or two buttons. Theres no real strategy or tactics necessary.

I really don’t think a simple map change would cut it at this point. We’ve had the same thing for 8 months now or more and simply playing on a new rug isn’t going to make up for the lack of new toys.

There isn’t a ceiling. Arrows go up. Arrows go down.

Now the question is why do they work inside tunnels and structures?! Perhaps there they should do 25% damage since the arrow has to be fired at low force not to hit the roof!

Ahh physics, how we miss you!

mcarswell.3768:

Atherakhia.4086:

The map is the least of my concerns. The game itself is stale and the entire WvW ruleset doesn’t lend itself to strategic play, variety, or ‘fun’. While a great deal of the issues we’re seeing with zerging and stale gameplay is a result of the maps themselves, any new map will be boring within a few months too if something isn’t done to make WvW exciting again.

2 things i think would help with this:

1) the maps need to be waaaaay bigger. this would make it so zergs couldn’t dominate the map. the maps need to be at least big enough so that you couldn’t treb a keep/tower from the safety of another keep/tower. something like 10 minutes to run from edge to edge rather than 2 would be good imo.

2) WXP rewards need to be a set amount divided among the number of people capturing the objective (or killing the player). this would encourage smaller group action because smaller groups would get more wxp per player than larger ones for the same objective.

With bigger maps comes the need to transport players from one location to another. Now I personally would love to see siege tanks and humvees and such, I’m not sure it’s within ANet’s ability to introduce fun things like this.

Now as for WXP, I find the whole mechanic worthless regardless. Same with grouping as all you need to do is keep the blue dorrito within site and you’re fine.

Some reason to group and something for groups to do would be my first objective when trying to add things to WvW. But general issues like population and coverage imbalance, nothing but zerg combat being rewarded and encouraged, and a complete lack of things to do during a siege but auto-attack a door would be high on my list.

Necro would be my choice between those 2 then. Warriors are fun and I have one myself. But their problems are both obvious and difficult to fix. Necromancers on the other hand improve patch after patch dramatically and are certainly top tier right now but still have room for improvement and ANet seems capable at fixing them.

PvE

Really need something fresh to revitalize WvW and get people who may never have tried it to give it a shot! Introduce something like Ascended Weapons that can only be achieved in WvW for a month just to get people interested! ANYTHING!

Thanks

While I somewhat agree with Aeros in that the Necro has a lot of utility and is moderately fun to play, their value to the zerg is limited greatly by the number of guardians and mesmers on the opposing side simply because of the nature of condition damage. In equal numbers the Necro will be wrecked and since Mesmers are probably the single strongest class in the game and Guardians one of the strongest in both PvE and PvP, their numbers aren’t exactly low.

Guardian
Mesmer
Elementalist
Warrior
Necomancer
Engineer
Ranger
Thief

That is how I’d rank classes from most useful to least useful to a zerg. The top 6 classes can change a little bit depending on who you ask. the bottom 2 won’t as neither has any real utility or worth to large group combat other than their singular field or singular blast finisher.

ArkAngel.7940:

How offensive to two servers. ET and FC are both good servers. To say they “wallow in their own filth” is an absolutely disgusting comment.

ET recently started getting more people, at least last week they fielded a lot of people. Stick with ET for a bit, the last thing they need is for people to jump ship.

The server rankings are mostly defined by size of fight. The lower the tier, the smaller the scale of fights are. So if you like to fight with small scales, stay, if you want to casually stroll with big zergs, go to a mid-tier server. If you’re looking for a more intensive and bigger fight, go to the top tier servers. Just be aware the higher you go, the more chance for a queue, and for server wide skill lag

I’m a Ferg. I can asure you I [censored] where I eat and [censored] where I sleep because ANet hasn’t approached the server transfer issue in a logical or productive manner.

The trinity doesn’t exist because groups aren’t being optimized to fit a specific format.

Did you play WoW back in the 40 man raid days? Remember trying to kill Patchwerk for the first time? You couldn’t do it with more then 5 healers because it was a DPS check at the front of the instance where no one had enough gear from that instance yet. We don’t see that going on here where guilds are running with X of Class A, Y of Class B, etc.

All the zerg is doing currently is optimizing the classes that it has available to fill the most valuable role they can. It has little to do with tanking or healing because the zerg wouldn’t be calling the night because no warriors logged on for example. They’d simply work without them.

So while this game may still have the min/max approach to gaming, it certainly doesn’t have the holy trinity stacked ontop of it imo.

Another way to find out if the game has the holy trinity is if after an hour of group PvP you still have that empty feeling in your heart because you didn’t do anything productive. That’s a sign that the PvP system is boring and shallow and often times a direct result of no trinity at work.

Personally, I’m a bit disappointed.

While I do feel the Thief is more rewarding and engaging than the other classes I have played (80 Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist), I’m disappointed at the Thief’s current place in the game.

While I would argue the Thief is mildly overpowered (I’ve complained about Initiative regen numerous times), it’s not at the point where it’s in a different league than more than half the classes in this game. I wouldn’t say the Thief is any more or less overpowered than Elementalists, Rangers, Guardians, or Mesmers. But when you consider what this class can actually do, I find I get bored with WvW very quickly because aside from roaming I really don’t contribute anything of any real value with the class to the server.

They really need to make the Thief more ‘thiefy’ and dramatically increase the class’ utility and worth to the current WvW meta.

You’ll have to list the skills.

I haven’t noticed any new skills with the issues you’re describing. But many skills are not very APM friendly. Especially with the short bow and dagger main hand.

The map is the least of my concerns. The game itself is stale and the entire WvW ruleset doesn’t lend itself to strategic play, variety, or ‘fun’. While a great deal of the issues we’re seeing with zerging and stale gameplay is a result of the maps themselves, any new map will be boring within a few months too if something isn’t done to make WvW exciting again.

The lowest ranked server to my understanding. ET has the same problem FC has where they simply don’t have the coverage to compete while also already being outnumbered the majority of the time.

I would suggest, if you’re planning to play on a moderate server with more balanced teams, avoid Fergusson’s Crossing and Eredon Terrace. These 2 servers have been left to wallow in their own filth by ANet for the past 6 months.

Even if overall server population were level, coverage still remains a problem. They need to find a better way to reward servers during their respective prime times while not necessarily alienating the players who work at night and play during the day.

There’s nothing wrong with stealth stacking. In fact, I’d argue if stealth didn’t stack the way it does and Shadow Refuge just gave an instant 10 seconds of stealth, that skill just became wildly overpowered. But last I checked there was a cap on stealth duration so 2 thieves can’t just sit there blasting the field and gain 5mins of stealth for example. Can’t recall the cap off hand, but I want to say it was 11 seconds?

I also can’t agree with the whole ‘anytime you leave stealth you gain revealed’ argument because there are times when you enter stealth and the oppurtunity to use an attack doesn’t present itself. The target was already given a 4 second repreive of taking 0 damage. they don’t need another 3 seconds without threat of burst.

Honestly, the whole issue revolves around the initiative regen system. Remove all the initiative regen from skills and abilities. Leave in the trait to increase the initiative regen cap and the trait to give initiative on crit and call it a day.

Once they have a baseline that all Thieves will have in common they can worry about boosting areas that need improvement (removing so much regen and condi removal will probably need to see the Thief’s base HP increased to be more in line with Rangers for example).

DanH.5879:

Atherakhia.4086:

ANet will have to adjust it if they feel it’s overpowered. The larger problem is initiative regen and not the finishers for shadow fields. But the easiest solution would be to make leap finishers in shadowfields do something else. Like give Aegis or Protection.

yeah, but let’s not forget blast finishers+smoke fields…

Nothing wrong with blast finishing a smoke field. Stealth has a duration cap last I tried it and the blast finishers are AE’s so if you hit someone when blast finishing you’re out of stealth. The other issue with smoke fields relates to the prior issue I mentioned of initiative regen.

If you want to nerf the problem, initiative regen is where the problem is. If you want to silence the crying as quickly as possible, you keep addressing the skills individually. Past experience from every MMO I’ve ever played with a stealth class says once you nerf one thing people jump on the bandwagon for the next skill though. It won’t end until the root problem is fixed.

Why should Thieves lose stealth when Mesmer Clones aren’t destroyed when they go in for the stomp? When Warrior’s Endure Pain? When Elementalists Mist Form? When Guardians invuln or gain protection? When other classes stealth? When Necros use cloak?

The thief isn’t built to take punishment. Earlier it was mentioned that Ele’s have similar health as a Thief and go in for the stomp. When you go in for the stomp, you’re often at near full health because of the numerous healing options available. You often have stability/protection. You have shield up. You have a dozen other options to defend yourself.

The thief has stealth. Has no healing/condition removal outside of stealth. Has no stability option.

There’s nothing wrong with a thief stealth stomping. Use your energy signing the petition to remove downed state from the game in general. It may be more productive.

Traps will never be viable. In order for a trap to ever be considered they’d first have to be more valuable than competing skills. For the thief this means more valuable than Shadow Reguge, Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, etc. It’s just not possible given the class’ current design.

Now that said, if I were going to adjust traps I’d try to just add a new mechanic to traps in general since they’re bad for every class.

For example, traps laid on siege would cause that siege equipment to take 2x damage for 30 seconds. If the trap is triggered on siege, the siege can’t fire for 4 seconds.

ANet will have to adjust it if they feel it’s overpowered. The larger problem is initiative regen and not the finishers for shadow fields. But the easiest solution would be to make leap finishers in shadowfields do something else. Like give Aegis or Protection.

I’d rather they just made the skill actually work like it’s supposed to. 1/3rd the time I use it, I don’t do anything but jump in place.

As a side note, it would be nice if Withdraw and Roll for Initiative used the same logic so they would always roll away from the selected target.

The problem with conditions in this game is how you effectively need to have enough condition duration to get to the next second for it to have any impact on anything. They need to make the overflow trigger on the first tick of a condition as the only condition this could even be overpowered on would be burn, but the only skill I can think of that applies burn that can be spammed is scepter +1 for eles which is dreadful anyway.

But keep in mind also with conditions that they’re also quite powerful because they have only one primary stat feeding into them. This is what makes Rangers so overpowered right now because they can stack condition, healing, and toughness and be brick walls that no amount of damage can get through while still dishing out 150+/tick bleeds that stack to 15 without much effort on 3+ targets.

I think they should add a second stat for condition classes to collect to bring the stat as a whole into balance with the other stats. Then maybe we could get things improved with duration reduction and the like.

You can’t play with a terrible build and expect people to take your complaints on class balance seriously.

Fact of the matter is, if you play anything but a Necromancer or Warrior, your opinion on class balance is null and void because every other class is on par with everyone else. They may not be great at everything, but their strengths in one area offset their weaknesses in another.

Oil + Candied Dragon Roll.

If we’re talking unopposed straight line running, nothing is going faster than a Warrior. Thief isn’t even remotely close. The thief’s advantage is his speed comes from common weapon set items whereas the Warrior needs sword+warhorn/greatsword with bull’s charge as mentioned above.

And again, in a straight line contest… Ranger is pretty much even with a thief since Swoop has a 12 second recast time now.

And you know how I know this? Because I actually have these 3 classes at 80 and know what I’m talking about.

Now if we’re talking maneuverability in combat, thief is clearly at the top of the pack (as intended mind you).

Yea, it’s aggravating. Especially when you play a class that can’t down other targets because the class has low health or you play a class with terrible downed state options.

They should just remove it from WvW and PvP and instead make it so your corpse has a buff for 20 seconds. If someone tries to res you while you’re buffed, you heal for a higher amount (just like when in downed state, you heal quicker).

This way if you take the time to res someone, nothing changes. If players are downed, they stay down unless actually res’d. Everyone now has balanced downstate spells to choose from (none!).

Forming a single blob isn’t effective because of movement speed. It’s effective because this whole game is balanced around little circles we stand in for buffs and heals. It’s balanced around sieging and protecting siege. It’s balanced around singular structures. It’s balanced around AE instead of DD.

No, movement speed isn’t something we should be putting on the list to try and get WvW to be less zergy.

Remove the gold incentive and people will upgrade them.

Come up with 10 different upgrades and make it so towers can have 3, garrisons can have 6, and SM can have 9.

Convert some of the PPT into guild experience and guild merrits.

Introduce more things for guilds to buy (like housing….) and do (any reason to group at all would be nice….).

This way guilds will be encouraged to take things, they will be encouraged to defend things, and guilds will be rewarded for playing as a guild.

noobftw.9654:

Rising Dusk.2408:

This thread, instead, should be titled:

Not a Thief? Whine About Them

I am a thief. I play a incredible cheap one wvw roamer for a long time. I also play a dd ele roamer, Condi engi Zerg fighter, a BM ranger roamer and other all 8 profs. I started as a thief and spent 5 month exclusively on her. It’s not until any thief player start to main other prof so they can admit thief is ridiculously op in wvw roaming. What make the community more frustrated is while anet nerfs down the pillar mechanism of other profs such as cantrip for ele and pet for ranger, it intends to keep the most abused stealth where it is while adding more mobility to the class. It’s funny 1 year after launch the CnD on wall still works while rangers still don’t have a single reliable counter to immobilize.

Oh , but let me be clear, thief is not op in pvp and wvw Zerg fight.

What’s funny is I can say the exact opposite about Rangers, Eles, and Mesmers as I consider each to be far more faceroll than the Thief is and no less powerful in roaming scenarios.

Stealth is very clearly a powerful mechanic. Probably the most powerful skill for roaming in general. But do I consider the Thief to be on a different playing field than half the other classes in the game? Absolutely not. Or at least not before this patch as I haven’t played anything but my Thief since the last patch.

I do feel that the implemenetation of the thief class in this game is the worst implementation of the thief/rogue/assassin type class I’ve ever seen in any MMO, but I don’t consider stealth in general to be overpowered. What’s overpowered is the initiative system behind it. But I’m also not an idiot… I know that the Thief class would be completely unplayable if the system was adjusted and I have such a low opinion of ANet that I don’t think they’ll be able to change it and rebalance the class to the point where it would even be playable for at least 6 months.

But yea, I’m sorry… if you play an Elementalist, Mesmer, Guardian, or Ranger you really shouldn’t be in this thread complaining about anything because even though stealth is very powerful, the thief class as a whole is no better or worse off than the above. And if we talk about class vs class comparisons and not just roaming in general, I’d add Warriors and Necromancers to the list as well.

They should make all traps in the game cause siege weapons within range to take double damage. Thief traps should also cause siege weapons deal half damage. Woot!

Maxrebo.2470:

Anytime a thief complains about another class its funny.
The only time I really have fun with mist form from downed is watching how many goofy people will take the time too spike someone in the middle of a zerg battle were they are getting aoed too death then popping up at the last second making them chase you back into the aoes.

The same can be said of Elementalists, Mesmers, Guardians, and Rangers.

Really, the only classes in this game that have a legitimate complaint are Engineers and Warriors. And even Warriors it’s more an issue with sPvP than anywhere else.

noobftw.9654:

Atherakhia.4086:

So we went from thieves being overpowered to being pretty meh but able to run away. I’m sorry, but stealth is a powerful mechanic. The class as a whole compensates for the great power in stealth by having no real damage mitigation. Just like the thief gives up stability in favor of mobility.

There are only 2 legitimate complaints people can raise with the thief class.

1.) Initiative regen isn’t properly balanced.
2.) Movement skills for all classes can be used when incapacitated.

For 1, if you actually played a thief, you’d know that any changes to initiative regen would need to be offset with enormous boosts in other areas because the class simply doesn’t have the tools to stand toe to toe with others for long and its burst potential outside of stealth is limited.

For 2, it’s a global problem and if you’re going to change it for the thief you’re going to have to change it for everyone.

But seriously, the thief is a strong roamer, but hardly better than Guardians, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Rangers offensively. Defensively the only complaint is the ability to run away. Which the class apparently bought by being useless in groups as opposed to the other classes.

no real damage mitigation? lol, how about spammable dodge, spammable teleport (that breaks stun and cleanse)?

Players seem to underestimate what reliable escape can do for wvw roamers. I can kinda agree with you if it’s spvp. But in wvw a reliable escape is the business, only when you know how to play a wvw roamer thief you can understand why though.

There’s a difference between mitigation and avoidance. Mitigation can be used to increase your effective hitpoints. Avoidance mechanics can’t be measured.

I’m not trying to say stealth probably isn’t the single strongest skill when it comes to roaming. I’m trying to say that even with it, the thief is hardly the single strongest roaming class.

How can you hope to maintain the thief’s role as a competetive roamer if you remove the only tool available to it to properly defend itself?