Guild Wars 2

Yes. Took me about 5 hours split over 2 days. I suggest you read the guide for the different achievments though so you don’t miss things.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I would argue that Stealth should be a permanent tool, but you have to move slowly whilst in stealth, and have no regeneration. I would then retool the Thief completely to be more of a “Surprise! Ambush mothakitten” using stronger traps. Instead of the “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” nonsense we have now.

That would have been my preference too.

The common element most stealthing classes have in other games is once you’re out of stealth you can’t get back in. In WoW you needed vanish to get back in and it was on a long cooldown. In Shadowbane you had to hide before stealthing (hide you couldnt move, stealth you could move) but in order to hide you had to channel a skill for like 10 seconds without being hit.

The problem with this approach is the thief class right now would be nearly useless without an enormous amount of work being done. Right now too much of the Thiefs damage comes from abilities because the auto attacks are so low. The class doesn’t have any way to mitigate damage and the only other option is avoidance via stealth. Almost all healing, regen, and condition removal is handled through stealth. Etc.

It’s just a lost cause if you ask me. If the thief is the real target of this thread, I still say the main issue with it is initiative regen. The whole losing target thing is a nonissue.

Confusion was insane. Reflecting 3k burst at you every attack is just flat out broken.

Now that said, I do find conditions as a whole pretty overpowered in this game but for an entirely different reason. If you look at the state of PvP in this game you’ll find that the only truly viable builds for classes are condition based. this is because conditions require only one true stat to make them work and you’re left with 2 other stats per item to invest in (toughness, vitality, healing power being the usual targets). This has lead to the current bunker meta everyone despises.

The correct solution to conditions is to cut their damage by XX% (30% for example) across the board, but allow them to crit. This will resolve the bunker problem, the overloading of condition damage problem, and would encourage a more balanced approach to character development opening up new builds in the process.

Mathias.9657:

Yeah but rogues in WoW can’t stealth every 4 seconds, it’s more of a ocrap button to escape or CC after your initial stealth before combat. I’m sure it was the same in all those other MMOs too.

GW2 targeting is trash that’s why it has come to suggestions like this.

Oh I certainly agree with this as I find stealth to be quite bad in this game, but the targetting issue is hardly an issue worth bringing up. Every other game you need to click on your target. Tab targetting isn’t acceptable in other games, etc. Dropping target is probably intended.

Now if you want to fix the thief or mesmer independently then suggest solutions to those classes. But targetting just doesn’t seem legitimate. For example, the largest problem with the thief class right now in my opinion is initiative regen, but a nerf to that would then lead to a pretty drastic increase in auto-attack damage.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Atherakhia.4086:

Have any of you played any other games with stealthing classes? WoW for example? Rogues in WoW, Thieves and Assassins in Shadowbane, and Scouts in DAoC all dropped target. Perhaps the point is for the combat in these scenarios not to be fluid because these classes are effectively stopping the engagement and starting over?

Have you ever played any of the other games with stealthing classes? WoW for example? They’re generally overpowered as hell. Rogue especially.

They are at release, sure. The Rogue in WoW is probably the best implementation of a stealthing class currently though. Granted it took like 5 years of nerfs to get there.

Honestly, I don’t like any of the current legendaries as I prefer much more subtle looking things. What I would give for a dagger that dripped small globlets of poison or something.

Have any of you played any other games with stealthing classes? WoW for example? Rogues in WoW, Thieves and Assassins in Shadowbane, and Scouts in DAoC all dropped target. Perhaps the point is for the combat in these scenarios not to be fluid because these classes are effectively stopping the engagement and starting over?

Consider a Ranger for example… Thief comes in and opens up but is forced to stealth for some random reason (condition removal for example). The ranger now simply stands in place and spams 1 over and over until the 2 seconds of stealth drop and the thief comes out. If the thief is within 1500 yards, they’re being re-engaged without the Ranger even having to look at the screen.

I really do think dropping the target is intended and it doesn’t need to be changed. While it’s not fluid, it probably shouldn’t be when a target disappears from sight.

For all its faults, and having 5 years to fix it, the Rogue in WoW is probably the best implementation of a stealthing class in modern MMO’s right now. I think dropping the target (and nulling damage in flight) upon stealth is intended and needed.

Nah, this is the main defense of thieves and mesmers. It should require the enemy to fire off a few brain cells in order to resume the fight. Otherwise stealth really isn’t doing anything.

Hell, the way things work right now with stealth I’d argue it should give endure pain for 1 second just so projectiles in transit don’t feed into the target after they stealth.

It’s sucks being on the receiving end of a mesmer or thief, I understand that. But until you’ve actually played these classes and seen just how fragile stealth is and how dependent the classes are on things like stealth, target dropping, and the like you simply don’t understand.

One word for you: conditions.

Any class that has access to a build that’s based off conditions is ruling this game right now because conditions only have one stat backing them up. When you only need one stat for conditions, and conditions make up 100% of your damage, you are left with little else to choose from other than toughness and vitality.

Then you factor in the Ranger’s above average healing and regen, their much more powerful condition removal, and a pet that doesn’t scale off gear at all and will always hit at max damage and you’re left with an obvious choice. This is why the Thief can’t pull off the same thing… they have a 5k hp handicap, the regen is dependent on stealth, condition removal is reliant on stealth, damage is mostly melee ranged, no supporting burst.

And this is nothing new mind you. I was running full Apothecary on my ranger 4+ months ago in WvW. Shamans and Rabid in sPvP. The only difference was Eles, Mesmers, and Guardians significantly outshined rangers. Now that Eles are nerfed (they aren’t, but people are still crying. Give it a month) Rangers are more common.

Now what can you do against these types of specs? Not much. You can try to steal the Ranger’s regen and random protection, but the ranger isn’t exactly a slow target to hit. You can try to remove condi’s quickly, but the ranger can get 8 stacks of bleed on you in about 4 seconds all while remaining very mobile and evasive. Ultimately it’s kind of a lost cause unless the ranger is a total noob and tries to face tank you.

Condition with apothecary. You won’t die.

Paradoxine.8192:

Atherakhia.4086:

Nope.

They’re easily removed because they’re easily applied.

I agree, but I think the point is that conditions need to:

1. Last longer
2. Be applied less easily
3. Be removed less easily
4. Do more damage per stack – alleviating the problem of the 25 stack limit

Currently you need multiple stacks of bleed to pose a threat to anyone. In the system I envision, having just one stack of bleed would be a cause for worry, let alone 25.

No you don’t..

Bleeds tick for 150 a stack. A ranger can maintain an 8 stack on 3 targets with relative ease. That’s 1200 dps per target. That’s a lot of damage considering you’ve completely ignored the pet, the base damage of the shot, any additional conditions, etc.

I’d sooner reduce condition damage by 30% across the board for all classes and then allow them to crit. That change alone would probably resolve the majority of bunker problems as well since the majority of bunker builds are all condition based.

Want to nerf rangers? Buff them…

Make it so all of a pet’s stats scale based off the wearer. This would be an enormous buff in some circles, but for the current meta, would actually be an enormous nerf but one that most rangers would probably welcome. If pet damage actually scaled off the Ranger’s power, crit, and dmg rating they’d do next to no damage because everyone is running Shaman’s and Rabid. Same with WvW where most run Apothecary.

Fix the longbow so it’s actually the power/crit alternative to the shortbow’s condition. At min range the longbow should still do the same dps as a shortbow, not less. At upper ranges it should hurt. While a buff outright, it would actually encourage Rangers to consider non-condition builds.

Fix the Ranger’s skills so some of the options actually deal damage at range with the bows. An ‘long shot’ skill that causes critical damage. Explosive tipped arrows. Etc. Something so a Ranger actually had a choice that wasn’t 100% useless other than lightning reflexes, signet, and flametrap/zephyr.

Part of the problem we’re seeing is nearly every single class that has a bunker build is also condition based. Since conditions are based solely on one stat it’s easy for them to ignore everything including power and crit chance in favor of toughness, vitality, and healing power.

Nerf condition damage for all classes across the board by 30% but allow them to crit and you’ve probably solved the whole bunker problem in one fell swoop.

And yes, it seems reasonable for pets to leash at 2000yards.

All depends how it will be implemented. Stealth is already quite fragile and the thief class as a whole is of questionable value in WvW. Hopefully they keep this in mind.

Perhaps they’ll introduce a way for thieves to have true perma stealth where if they aren’t in combat they can use some skill to hide so people won’t always be able to see the thief coming and anticipate the attack.

Didn’t we just have an outnumbered video right before the patch?
Are videos a pre-requisite for providing meaningful commentary or something?

I’m new to the thief class, but I’ve come here and asked numerous questions and have been given very detailed responses. I honestly have no complaint about the thief community here.

Try asking for help from the Ranger community. 9 times out of 10 their response is “you should know this without asking”

Deniara Devious.3948:

Atherakhia.4086:

This class could go with some minor burst nerfs in exchange for insane defensive buffs.

Things like:
1 second of endure pain when entering stealth.
1 second of stability when leaving stealth.
5 seconds of stability when using shadowstep.
Dancing Dagger gives protection or aegis.
X% of power is given to toughness.

What you are asking is insanely too good. Stability is already considered as the best boon in WvWvW setting. Stability counters all that knockdown locks + stun etc. Now thief would have pretty much permanent stability with just using infiltrator’s strike + shadow return. And endure pain everytime entering the stealth. That is also too much. Warriors have 90 s cooldown on that skill for a very good reason.

Shadowstep is a skill on a 50 second cooldown. 5 seconds of stability will allow the skill to be used effectively as an offensive tool instead of primarily a defensive one. I was not advocating skills with different names using a similar mechanic as granting stability.

Endure pain for 1 second when entering stealth would do nothing but reduce the damage of directed attacks at the point of stealthing to 0. How many people have had rapid fire channel into them despite stealthing for example. It would resolve this problem.

Granting stability for 1 second when leaving stealth would also have limited real value. Instead, it would act as a way to catch stray AE’s knocking the thief down and out of stealth.

Because higher tier doesn’t mean more skilled players.
Lower tiers don’t suffer from server instability and lag.
Lower tiers don’t have to worry about queues.
Lower tiers tend to offer more roaming action.

Why would I play this game if I had to wait in queue for an hour only to find talentless hacks that can’t accomplish anything outside the zerg?

Nope.

Conditions have one stat feeding them. Other attacks have 3. If you want to introduce a way for conditions to resist being removed you’ll need to introduce another stat so they can’t just collect vitality, toughness, and condition damage.

They’re easily removed because they’re easily applied. They require a single stat because the class needs the toughness and vitality to reapply the conditions and drop the target(s). Wouldn’t be fair if the damage was as high as it is, as reliable as it is, and still allowed you to avoid watering down your stats.

Uruz Six.6594:

Atherakhia.4086:

X% of power is given to toughness.

I like your other ideas. Given the current aggro system, however, I’d much rather have vitality instead.

Well we have a vitality one already. don’t need multiples. Could also just have the other trait do both, but I don’t think any class has a single trait give vitality and toughness.

I agree that either Pistol or Shortbow should be increased to 1200 range.

As others have said, it’s mostly from WvW. In WvW most terribads run in full berserkers. Thieves are able to pull this off better than most (but are still terribad) because of stealth. So when a berserker thief jumps a berserker warrior in WvW, the Warrior is 3 shot. Every other class is effectively 2 shot. Instead of fixing the problem by actually getting toughness, they complain about it.

You’ll also find that the complains tend to manifest when other classes are nerfed. ‘You nerfed confusion so now you have to nerf X to be fair’ type of arguments.

The problems of the thief class in s/tPvP are the same for the class in WvW though. Look at thieves in zerg vs zerg combat for example. When someone ask’s what the Thief’s role in a zerg is they’ll say to blast finisher and finish people once downed. That’s it. Venomshare is laughable at best. As you mentioned, the class utility is limited to small group (PvE utility is actually quite good. Blind field alone is worth bringing a thief along for example) and the class’ survivability to actually kill someone once they’ve downed them is next to impossible unless you use a cooldown (shadowrefuge to take out a commander you downed? So you mean to tell me we’re there to kill 1 player every minute?).

This class could go with some minor burst nerfs in exchange for insane defensive buffs.

Things like:
1 second of endure pain when entering stealth.
1 second of stability when leaving stealth.
5 seconds of stability when using shadowstep.
Dancing Dagger gives protection or aegis.
X% of power is given to toughness.

Need to do something for rams otherwise they’ll never be used against gates again. In medieval times we would attach housings to the rams so the 10 men controlling the ram wouldn’t be hit by tar pits and arrows from above.

Why can’t Rams give a buff to the controller and 4 other players to make them take 50% less damage from siege for X seconds on a Y cooldown. Say 5 and 15. This way you’d need 3 rams to provide the buff to 15 people which still isn’t enough for a zerg to stay huddled by the door blasting fields, but would at least give rams a use at a gate.

Lots of problems here.

For starters, condition damage only has one attribute behind it unlike normal attacks which have 3.

Secondly, the regen on the ranger is quite high and their healing well is very powerful even with only 1 blast finisher available to the class.

Lastly, Apothecary gear gives you reasonable condition with toughness being the secondary stat and healing power.

A condition Ranger running in Apothecary could probably face tank 2 glass thieves with little real effort all the while maintaining 1200dps on up to 3 targets with relative ease. And that’s before you even factor in the pet.

For starters, they should all be instant cast, they should all do damage (the same damage), and they should only consume a charge if the target isn’t already poisoned. No reason to dump all 5 charges into the same target for example.

Perhaps back in the day basilisk venom was op when cast instantly, but I can’t imagine it’s significant anymore. An on demand stun isn’t going to change anything.

Both are weak choices.

Ranger con is the pet.
Thief con is melee range.

I’d just stick to the Warrior for PvE and play a Ranger or Thief for PvP.

Now that all said, and you’re determined to make one for PvE anyway, I’d suggest ranger for no other reason than the gameplay may be a little different. Ranger is still VERY boring though (90% of what you’ll do is auto-attack from the side). Thief is still just stabbystabby from the back like a Warrior unless you go condition with pistol or something.

Einlanzer.1627:

Atherakhia.4086:

I still don’t understand this at all…

You don’t see Rangers complaining anymore about longbow or shortbow missing. Both have the same projectile speed as the Thief’s shortbow. They have longer range which means an increased chance of missing.

You guys are making too much of this issue.

If you want to complain about something, complain about how evasive shot doesn’t actually leap backwards 1/3rd of the time.

Well, not exactly.

a.) Crossfire has a much, much faster attack speed than Trick Shot without being much weaker. This is a key difference.

b.) Long Range Shot is as broken as Trick Shot, and people complain endlessly about the Longbow, they just often aren’t bright enough to realize that Long Range Shot is the biggest actual problem with the Longbow.

People aren’t complaining about the rate of fire though. they’re complaining about the projectile speed. The rate of fire hasn’t changed. And you’re right, shortbow for ranger does shoot about twice as fast. It also doesn’t bounce between 3 targets though and doesn’t need a trait to do it.

And people complain about the longbow’s damage, not it missing. It makes no sense for the longbow to actually do less damage than a shortbow at shorter range. It missing has more to do with the 1500+ effective range it has. Shortbow is about half that.

I still don’t understand this at all…

You don’t see Rangers complaining anymore about longbow or shortbow missing. Both have the same projectile speed as the Thief’s shortbow. They have longer range which means an increased chance of missing.

You guys are making too much of this issue.

If you want to complain about something, complain about how evasive shot doesn’t actually leap backwards 1/3rd of the time.

No one cares about points or badges. Zergers by now have entire banks full of the things. WXP has no real functional use to the game either. These things aren’t the driving force behind zerging. Zergs are here because the game doesn’t have anything to disuade against them. The entire buffing and healing part of the game forces zerg gameplay. The capture and forget method to siege warfare rewards zerg gameplay.

This game simply has nothing to do other than zerg. And no, removing the AE cap won’t resolve anything. People will simply be killed quicker via retaliation and confusion and certain classes like Necromancers and Eles will completely overshadow every other class in the game to the point no one would ever play anything but ranged casters again.

The only way to fix zergs is to design the game to not encourage their use.

Make it so you can’t take enemy structures in their own side of the map (Eternal Borderlands) unless you have all of your structures. This way the enemy zerg will need to defend their own area. The defending zerg will be encouraged to split up to take the unprotected enemy towers so their structure can’t be captured (it can still be sieged and all walls destroyed, just the flag can’t be raised).

This alone would solve most of the problems aside for when you’re outmanned. Solution to that? Outmanned now gives an unremovable protection boon. If 33% less damage + the new arrow carts aren’t enough to defend yourselves then server transfers should be open.

Why not just make it so you turn in 250 badges to get a laurel and laurels are used to buy ascended gear like it is now?

You could then make guild commendations be turned in for 2 laurels each.

We could get some guild events in WvW (take a tower in 30mins or kill 100 invaders kinda thing).

Most of the things I don’t care about because they’re borderline worthless. The whole WXP thing has no real value at all. They can’t make it too good because players who are new to the game will be at an extreme disadvantage, which is fine, but there really isn’t any reason to bother with it. I check my rank maybe once a week. I still haven’t spent a single point.

The siege timers I somewhat agree with and somewhat dont. I feel that some siege (like the insanely powerful arrowcarts we have today) should actually be player controlled hard points on structures. This way they will always be difficult to counter, but at least a possibilty for the attackers unlike now where arrow carts on the ground behind walls can’t be destroyed. I also find it quite stupid that siege placed in a tower can be used to attack a keep (or the other way around). The whole point behind siege is to defend a keep or give the attackers a way to lure defenders out. It shouldn’t be to lay siege to the next structure in a line.

This all ties to your defensive structures not being defensive. Honestly, sieging any structure should be a near impossible task. You should have to bleed the defenders of resources and slowly take them apart. Even with arrow carts, the attackers tend to have every advantage. Why don’t the walls provide defenders added range and protection? Why aren’t players given protection for 6 seconds after leaving a structure’s door? Why can’t tower defenders send out a wave of guards to help push enemies back? Why is the outmanned buff so worthless? etc etc.

My gripes with WvW are as follows:

Zergs.
WvW map offering no strategic gameplay.
No tiered sieging system where you have to take one structure before you take the next.
Players can even hurt gates. They should be required to put on siege weapons to do this.
Horrific class balance and design.
All classes designed to do DPS first and most designed to do nothing second.
Siege within a structure being used to siege another structure.
Arrowcarts (Rams now need a move to give 5 players near by immunity to arrow carts and protection so players actually need to have a role in defending a structure, not just siege. But I’m still 100% behind the arrow cart change, it was just done in a very kitten manner)

Daeqar.8965:

Atherakhia.4086:

Well after playing with it some I can’t understand the complaints.

The speed of the projectile is the same for rangers.
The weapon should never have had heatseaking.
The damage didn’t change.
The bouncing attacks still auto hit.

Shortbow now works exactly like all other bows in the game. Seems reasonable to me.

The Ranger analog of Thief Shortbow is AXE, not bows. And Ranger bows do not have the same projectile velocity as Thief Shortbow, as you say. Ranger Axe is still heatseeking.

I lined up next to a ranger and fired at the same time. They move at the same speed.
I will test your axe theory when I’m home from work.

Zikory.6871:

Humorless.1573:

Including food and bloodlust stacks in any build is idiotic.

Any one trying in min/max their build with take into account food and bloodlust. Its very common for people to build around the food buffs.

to be fair, they usually tell you base stats on their doll before 30mins of PvP and just tell you the food they’re using

Suralin.3947:

Agonoize.4021:

Divinity/Scholar/Lyssa/Beryl Orb/Ruby Orb/Pack

All depends on what you want from your thief and if you do WvW what your guild wants.

I play a thief as main in a guild that focuses on WvW mostly.

Stats : 19,5k Life,2800 Armor,3250 attack,55% chance,88 CD

A full Zerker thief cant provide that much and will not last in a sustained fight.
And being a free rally for the enemy is never a good thing.

What’s your build? I suspect at least 30 in SA.

I too would like to know this as it doesn’t seem feasible. When I do the math I can’t break 15k hp or 2600 armor to maintain the 50% crit and 100% cd.

Well after playing with it some I can’t understand the complaints.

The speed of the projectile is the same for rangers.
The weapon should never have had heatseaking.
The damage didn’t change.
The bouncing attacks still auto hit.

Shortbow now works exactly like all other bows in the game. Seems reasonable to me.

The only legitimate problem this weapon has now is how the evasive shot sometimes misfires (which is the same problem as Rangers) and perhaps the projectile speed of explosive shot and poison shot. Explosives is clearly done so you can’t init dump 20k on their head. Poison should be quicker though.

I’m surprised by these lists…

Thieves #1? They don’t offer anything to the zerg (and that’s all WvW is these days). They make reasonably good scouts, but no better than Rangers (unless you honestly think a 100% stealth thief is scouting in stealth at a snails pace). Really outside of roaming the thief doesn’t do much of anything except take small camps or keep swords up on gates which the Ranger can do just as well.

Mesmers are downranked? I know confusion was nerfed and all, but do you find most mesmers running confusion builds outside of when they’re roaming and dueling? Most I run into are running full tank non-condition builds or shatter.

And Eles are somehow downranked when 99.9% of them ran staff in zergs? They still bring all the fields which zergs rely on.

I’d expect the list to look closer to this:

Guardian
Ele
Mesmer
Necro
Warrior
Ranger
Thief
Engineer

Warrior and Ranger value is kind of dependent if you put more value in AE stuns or Water field I suppose. Engineers are hard to kill and provide blasts but little else but they could swap with thief too.

I presume this is all tested and we’re not just assuming it works this way? You would expect percentage things to be multiplicative. Granted that is still an enormous reduction in effectiveness, but it’s still not 2%.

But yea, you’d think something like this would be capped at 33%. That way a class could use the trait instead of food to open up other options. Kind of like how movement skills are capped at 33% but classes like Ele’s still sometimes choose to run signet for 25% as opposed to buffing for 33%.

Vayra.3290:

Atherakhia.4086:

Vayra.3290:

MaXi.3642:

i agree with the change suggestion, this could bring focus into the game and make offhand dagger more CC oriented (as it already is CC oriented with Earthquake, Updraft, partially Frost Aura)

anyway, i dont agree with RTL 1500 range and 15sec CD, its just too much… 1200 range is what all other profs got, its reasonable, CD 20sec would be ok…

Ranger got 1200 range on 12s cd. So RTL should not be almost twice that. (and certainly not over 3 times as it currently is)

Warrior’s Rush is 1200 at 20s and it’s affected by movement debuffs.
End result? Warriors and Rangers aren’t Ele’s.

The 40 second thing is excessive, but their tests must have shown that on 20 seconds it was still too short. If you use it as an engage it worked just like it did before. If you use it to get away, you need to actually disengage and not come back to the same fight. That’s what they wanted to fix, and it seems like this was a reasonable way to fix it. The mistform change and cleansing wave change seem reasonable too.

If it turns out to be too much, I’m sure they’ll adjust it just like they did with the skills of other classes.

Except if the enemy dodges, blinds you, uses aegis or an invul skill you get slapped with a 40s cooldown, no matter that you used it as a charge and in 2 of the cases actually hit your opponent.

If the enemy dodges you were out played, no way around that.
If you get blinded, I’d love to know how at 1200 yards away.
Aegis is a legitimate concern, but other classes rely on it being a miss. Everyone can’t be a winner all the time.

I’m sorry, but I think after a week or 2 and all the drama settles down people will fall back into their routine and everything will work itself out. I do feel the 40 second cooldown is excessive and I would have sooner made it so movement skills affected RTL so it wasn’t so useful as an escape. But I’m not a game designer. The other changes seem more than reasonable.

I played with it some last night and I don’t know what the issue is.

It should never have been able to home just like no other bow homes.
The projectile speed is the same as the Ranger’s shortbow and longbow, it’s just the rate of fire is slow like the longbows.
The bouncing attacks can’t miss.
The damage is the same.

Now with luck they’ll change the other attacks that were previously mentioned like staff skills for various classes so long as their projectile speed is increased to match.

Vayra.3290:

MaXi.3642:

i agree with the change suggestion, this could bring focus into the game and make offhand dagger more CC oriented (as it already is CC oriented with Earthquake, Updraft, partially Frost Aura)

anyway, i dont agree with RTL 1500 range and 15sec CD, its just too much… 1200 range is what all other profs got, its reasonable, CD 20sec would be ok…

Ranger got 1200 range on 12s cd. So RTL should not be almost twice that. (and certainly not over 3 times as it currently is)

Warrior’s Rush is 1200 at 20s and it’s affected by movement debuffs.
End result? Warriors and Rangers aren’t Ele’s.

The 40 second thing is excessive, but their tests must have shown that on 20 seconds it was still too short. If you use it as an engage it worked just like it did before. If you use it to get away, you need to actually disengage and not come back to the same fight. That’s what they wanted to fix, and it seems like this was a reasonable way to fix it. The mistform change and cleansing wave change seem reasonable too.

If it turns out to be too much, I’m sure they’ll adjust it just like they did with the skills of other classes.

This is a terrible idea and will cause a lot of people to quit the game. Do you honestly think servers will end up in a different place than they are now? They won’t. It will just kitten people off playing one sided battles for 6 months while the servers settle back into the exact same pairings.

I’d sooner give everyone a free server transfer they can all use to move to wherever they want and all new players who join the game after this date will simply have the same free transfer option waiting for them in their mailbox to be used.

While this is also just as awful an idea, the reprecussions won’t take 6 months to level out. Things will be fixed in about a month.

I haven’t played the patch yet.

But if the projectile speed doesn’t match that of the Ranger’s bows, then it should be increased to match it. It should never have been homing.

awge.3852:

If a fix is going to come it will go like this: Scepter, Longbow, Shortbow… all accross the board not just thiefs. Staff should be at least 50% faster projectile because it is way too slow for pvp and wvw combat situations.

However I think straffing should be allowed against any ranged weapon, it’s more realistic to force you to manually dodge them. It also does force you to be more clever on how you decide to shoot enemies from a distance, besides thiefs have like a gazillion other ways of raining down hell on enemies.

Ranger projectile speed was increased about 4 months ago.
Elementalist projectile speed was increased about 2 months ago.
Hopefully it doesn’t take this long to fix Thief projectile speed.

Just increase the projectile speed to match that of the other bows in the game. It should never have been heat seaking to begin with.

If it’s already moving at the same speed as Ranger bows then it’s balanced. I haven’t had time to log in to test out the patch yet.

Why? We already have class forums. If it’s a class specific issue, talk about it in the class specific forum.

If it’s a general sPv kitten ue, post it here.
If it’s a general WvW issue, post it in WvW.

Shortbow now works like other bows in the game. Ranger attacks aren’t homing and if you played a ranger you’d know this. You’d also know that they had the exact same problem 4 months ago and the solution to this was to increase projectile speed for their bows.

That is what you should be asking for… the projectile speed to be increased to match that of all other bows in the game. I’m honestly surprised ANet didn’t do this to begin with.

And if they did, and the projectile speed does match those of the Ranger, well then it’s balanced.

I haven’t logged on to play my thief so I dont know how it is.

Jackie.1829:

Counterplay? This is just delusional. Even if it were possible, I do not want to sit at my pc for 6 hours entertaining those following me as we all sit there and watch the 1 guy we have on siege charging shots so that we may or may not take down their siege, then repeat it in the hopes that we do it faster than the enemy rebuilding etc etc bla bla bla bla bla

PvP. Have you ever heard of it? Do you know what it is? There are like no wvw guilds that are interested in sitting here playing counter siege wars regardless of what you OR anet believes wvw is. (P.S sorry, your 5 man havoc squad is and was insignificant, regardless of what you may believe).

Im sorry, im not going to play some trash where we sit and fire trebuchets at each other and pretend like there is something tactical in that kitten. You are all deluded honestly. Well, I hope when wvw dies that the 20 players on the map really enjoy firing treb shots at each other.

Then this isn’t the game for you and you’re not cut out to play a siege based mmo. the other players have it right and this is a positive thing. I wouldn’t have had a blanket increase to arrowcart damage, but it’s still a positive change to the game. Sieging a structure should take time and effort. There should be more to this game then camp flipping.

JaredKincade.9761:

You cannot starve supply. They port to their keep in EBG and get it there. Or start siege razer on another map and get supply there. You CANNOT STARVE SUPPLY. The trebs your building cost 100 supply each, their mortars that you cant see to hit are FREE.

What both of these changes together means is there are now no options of taking a fully upgraded keep UNLESS IT IS EMPTY.

Everyone who is saying “L2P and try different strats” go try them yourself. Flip that tag on, give it a shot.

This change encourages large zergs (to hold the supply for the 4 trebs you need in hopes of killing their treb/mortars first), and encourages PVD (taking the points at night when no one is in the tower and you can build 4 AC to keep anyone from getting in the door (Except of course keeps with a waypoint, aka, free access to supply from another map).

The most thought provoking aspects of this game (fighting thinking people) have been diminished in this patch. Now we just wait out the other team to see who leaves their towers first.

How do you get back in? The enemy is outside blocking your way. The waypoint is locked.

There’s nothing.
Just like there’s no real benefit to being in an actual guild in this game.

I’ve played a ton of PvP MMO’s as well and while I agree that zergs will always exist regardless of change, very rarely is zerging the only available tactic to employ.

Lets take map design for example.

Imagine if Eternal Battlegrounds was Y shaped. In the center was SM. If you want to take SM, you must first control everything in your lane of the Y. If you want to deal full damage to SM, you must control all of your structures. The defenders would then want to make sure you don’t take SM, but instead of keeping 100 people in SM to fight off 100 enemy zergs, they would be encouraged to take some of them and take a weakly guarded tower in the middle of your lane so you couldn’t take SM until you had the tower(you could still siege it and kill the lord, but you couldn’t ‘plant your flag’ until you had your tower back). If you want to attack SM you’ll need to split up the zerg to keep your structures or you’ll be there all day because your siege is now doing 75% damage because you lost a tower. Same with defending… if you lose a tower, now your siege you were using to defend SM is doing 75% damage.

This alone forces attackers to spread out and to relocate to defend lost areas if they want to progress. It forces defenders to maintain some level of defense on their towers or risk not being able to adequately defend SM.

Now I know most people aren’t a fan of PvE in their PvP, but imagine there were waves of guards to help push people out of your lane. Say every 10 minutes a wave of 20 guards moved from your spawn point and walked to the next structure in your line. When they get there, 10 guards move out to the next structure. From there, 5 move out to the next one. And from there 1 moves out to SM. this way you have NPC guards to help push the enemy out of your lane if you get in trouble.

Now imagine the outnumbered buff gave players protection and also dramatically improved the power of these guards. This way a few people could push an enemy zerg back to the point where they can do more than dance at their spawn point. The guards wont be enough to allow them to get SM, but they’ll be enough so they can keep the enemy back.

I don’t know who out there played WoW (I imagine everyone), but the funnest I ever had in WoW after they introduced battlegrounds which destroyed world PvP was in Alterac Valley when it first came out before all the nerfs turned it into a 2 min speed run. There were games of AV that were up for 20 hours or more before someone eventually won and that’s because the map had a good layout with a lot of natural bottlenecks, NPC’s to help push the tide in your favor, and coordinated groups could legitimately make a difference.

There’s really nothing in WvW for people who play outside the zerg other than to be minor speed bumps to the enemy zerg when it happens upon them.

Because something is easy to avoid or easily countered is not cause to make it blatantly overpowered to compensate for it. Plus it was this way to begin with I do believe and was increased to help Mesmers in PvE leveling/dungeons moreso than WvW?

But anyway, the change was needed and warranted. Mesmers will have to move to another build if this is what ANet wants. If ANet decides they want Mesmers to have a legitimate condition build (which they should imo) the better solution would be to give mesmers access to something like burning as opposed to readjusting confusion.

The confusion change is warranted and welcome. While the damage was easy to avoid, that’s not an excuse for making something insanely overpowered. If the class is legitimately harmed by the nerf, and ANet feels they want the mesmer to have a viable condition build, the solution would be to give the class more condition based spells. Remove confusion from ether bolt and give it burning for example.

But no, confusion needed the change and I would hope it’s never reverted (re-reverted? since it was this way to begin with….)