Guild Wars 2

FErgusson’s Crossing would welcome you with open arms. We do have zergs, but these zergs are more a cluster of pugs and other guilds and the guilds themselves often break up to do their own things in their own BL.

No one suggests the condition build with p/d and sb?

ensoriki.5789:

Atherakhia.4086:

Mug would probably be the first place they’ll look to put the boonhate stuff in. Say steal takes all the target’s boons and you keep 2 random ones. Mug makes it so for each boon you didn’t keep, you will do +X% damage on your next strike and your next strike will put a debuff on the target so they can’t gain any new boons for 4 seconds.

Lol that already exists.
It’s called Bountiful Theft.
Actually what you are proposing is stronger than Bountiful theft which is a 20 pt trickery trait…

What I was trying to propose was the introduction of the boon hate mechanic where it dispells all boons and then puts a debuff on the target so they couldn’t reboon for 4 seconds. The stealing of boons was just fluff.

Shipwrecked Pirates where everyone wears pirate garb armed with anchors and such.

I would hope ET knew. We knew on FC that they weren’t staying for months…

Mug would probably be the first place they’ll look to put the boonhate stuff in. Say steal takes all the target’s boons and you keep 2 random ones. Mug makes it so for each boon you didn’t keep, you will do +X% damage on your next strike and your next strike will put a debuff on the target so they can’t gain any new boons for 4 seconds.

Honestly, I wish they’d introduce Robes or Haori or something of the like.

As for the char clipping, do as stated above. Introduce a fuedal japanese style flagpole that attaches to the armor

I haven’t found one yet. I usually play Mage types, but the mage in this game just isn’t a good fit for me(no long range burst, just all AE). Right now I’m working on Thief but disappointed with the class since I mostly WvW and they don’t function well in zergs. Also have Ranger and Warrior. Probably should just give up and make a Mesmer or Guardian like everyone else.

Make it a crossbow. A giant normal one that firs skulls. A smaller repeating one with tracer rounds.

stof.9341:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s all going to come down to how boon hate is implemented. If it’s implemented as a passive damage increase against a target depending on how many boons they have it will be an absolutely dreadful mechanic. All it will end up providing is another variable in the class skill coefficients where if a Thief doesn’t do enough damage against guardian’s, they’ll up the coefficient until the class is where it needs to be. They’ll then do the same thing for a different amount to Warriors, then Rangers, and so on. Terrible.

This looks so reasonable and such a great idea. I mean, it’s a simple system, it’s got great tuning potentials and will lead to the point where Thief, Warrior and Rangers are where they need to be. What is there to hate?

Atherakhia.4086:

Instead, what if boon hate was attached to skills with cooldowns (not long cooldowns as they need to be a realistic element to keep in mind and not some small niche thing you see once in awhile) and these skills would destroy all boons on the target, place a debuff on the target so they can’t get new boons for 10 seconds, and did a small damage premium (+2% damage) per boon destroyed? This way you add a whole new dynamic to the game. Classes like Elementalists, Mesmers, and Guardians would now need to coordinate with their teams better, they’d have to reserve defensive skills for defensive purposes instead of lining up damage, and you encourage classes that are already ignored in this game (Warriors and Thieves in sPvP for example) a reason to be brought along.

Now this one is such a terrible idea XD Are you really suggesting such a huge penalty for getting hit by a low cooldown skill while having a single boon?

What new dynamic you added in the game except completely destroying ANY chance of guardian and elementalists from surviving any fight by completely shutting down their whole ability to use boons?

1.) It’s a terrible idea because no one will know how boon hate works. Boon Hate trait for Warrior could give +.5% damage per boon where on a Ranger it could give +2.38% per boon. It also doesn’t do anything but boost damage. If you look at the state of things in sPvP, damage isn’t the main issue holding classes like Warriors and Thieves back.

2.) Shutting boons down for 10 seconds out of every 30 seconds is going to be the end of the world for Guardians and Elementalists? The same classes that can become immune for nearly 10 seconds through skill and ability use? The same classes that can move unhindered 1200 yards away? The same classes have more than one method of healing?

I’m sure they’ll manage. And if they can’t, then change the counter from 10 seconds to 4. Figure it out.

Now as for depth? We have classes right now like Warriors and Thieves that don’t bring anything to the table in sPvP. Boon Hate alone still won’t allow them to be functional classes, but at least they’d have a role to play. And anything that adds more depth to the PvP system is a good thing.

I’m convinced people who request the AE cap be removed have never played a game without an AE cap.

Remember what WoW was like at launch? Did you see what RvR was like in DAoC? The AE Cap is needed unless you fully design the game around not having it (introduce elemental resists, introduce specialized armor, introduce actual utility spells/abilities, etc.).

I’ll agree the cap could be increased so the AE damage can better overtake the beneficial buffs (offensive cap to 10 and beneficial at 5 for example), but removing it without a complete redesign of the entire PvP system and world isn’t possible.

It’s all going to come down to how boon hate is implemented. If it’s implemented as a passive damage increase against a target depending on how many boons they have it will be an absolutely dreadful mechanic. All it will end up providing is another variable in the class skill coefficients where if a Thief doesn’t do enough damage against guardian’s, they’ll up the coefficient until the class is where it needs to be. They’ll then do the same thing for a different amount to Warriors, then Rangers, and so on. Terrible.

Instead, what if boon hate was attached to skills with cooldowns (not long cooldowns as they need to be a realistic element to keep in mind and not some small niche thing you see once in awhile) and these skills would destroy all boons on the target, place a debuff on the target so they can’t get new boons for 10 seconds, and did a small damage premium (+2% damage) per boon destroyed? This way you add a whole new dynamic to the game. Classes like Elementalists, Mesmers, and Guardians would now need to coordinate with their teams better, they’d have to reserve defensive skills for defensive purposes instead of lining up damage, and you encourage classes that are already ignored in this game (Warriors and Thieves in sPvP for example) a reason to be brought along.

You would then have to take into consideration if you want this mechanic done on single target only or via AE’s and such, but at least this way you add more depth to the pvp systen,

Let me get this out of the way first… I’m new to thief and I’m certainly no master at this class. But I can’t agree with a lot of what’s said here.

For condition removal, without traiting into it, it is not much better than what most other classes are capable of. This class also has an insanely small amount of health where we’d be killed if only a few conditions remained on the class. I think if you changed the way conditions were removed, you’d have to increase the class’ base health.

I’d also add that the class’ strength against condition is offset by its almost total lack of stability. If you want to make the class weaker against conditions, you’d have t make it stronger against other things.

Now as for HS+BP, I don’t see the real concern here. While it can be abused like everything else, you sacrifice a fair amount of burst by using this combo over d/d. You benefit from having the blind field and the ability to restealth at range at a higher cost than CnD. So when all is said and done you lose almost all of the burst CnD provided in exchange for more defense. It really doesn’t seem that bad. I’d argue that if your goal was to nerf HS+BP, the target shouldn’t be HS or BP, but rather initiative regen as the regen is what gives the spec its power and compensates it for the loss of DPS in CnD and D/D.

Now as for revealed, I honestly never played the thief before the patch (look, I said in my first sentence I’m new to this class!) so I honestly haven’t had a problem coping with a 4s revealed. I’m a bit concerned that they would change it back to 3s but leave it at 4s for sPvP though as that’s a dramatic shift in abilities between systems.

Now my opinion of the class doesn’t stand for much, but I can tell you the areas I feel most concerned with are with stability, longevity after the initial burst fails, cooldown use when trying to execute someone once downed, and the class’ shortcomings in the current WvW meta.

I’ve come to terms that stability is the limiting factor for this class and it’s intended for us to struggle with it. I’m trying to convince myself that even though I can kill someone, my inability to down them without the use of skills/abilities is just my lack of understanding of the class. WvW though, especially since the whole game revolves around nothing but Zerg v. Zerg? That area I feel is something this class will never be able to compete in without drastic class changes.

Do something to disperse the zergs and these issues will resolve themselves.

Dovgan.8605:

Most rangers think that they are Robin Hood too, prancing around in tights wearing a feathered cap and plinking away on a little bow. I like dropping them as much as a thief does.

My ranger’s in a trenchcoat, tights, a feathered hat, and in lime green

Rangers tend to stand outside of the pack alone due to their range. They tend to not use melee weapons well as most use greatsword for swoop and evade and nothing else. They are easier to stick to because most run around with movement signet, lightning reflexes, and zephyr instead of traps and the thief has enough movement skills to counter these. Most run condition builds, something the thief can counter.

Now that said, these same condition builds are also the insane toughness and healing power/regen builds making it near impossible for a thief to kill anyway since so much of the thief’s burst is front loaded and if you can avoid the opening salvo you’ve pretty much beaten the thief.

Well it would seem ANet agrees with the OP moreso than the people claiming thieves are fine because Thief and Warrior are the only 2 classes repeatedly brought up when talking about boon hate.

Even when bunkered, they aren’t comparable to other bunkers. Their damage while bunkered isn’t comparable to other true DPS classes. The utility the class offers is quite limited. They don’t compliment other classes well or provide much to the individual roles in s/tPVP.

But I’m new and I hope to grow into the class over the next couple weeks/month and hope my opinion changes. But for right now I def see where the OP is coming from.

Scrolling Combat Text. If I could just have that, I’d be set.

While it doesn’t fit, I would like to see the class given a staff or scepter and turn it into a shadowcaster of sorts.

Off-hand sword or a whip could also be fun. Gun not so much as I have a ranger too and would much rather see the ranged stealthy sniper type given to that class

Straegen.2938:

IMO the fix is to remove the control limit but not the AoE limit. If a stun effects everyone in an area without limit, those skills make stacking very dangerous. This causes players to spread out and AoE to be more effective without introducing a probable title wave of skill lag if the AoE limit is removed. I would even go so far as to say skill lag would be reduced with this system since more players would be stunned, dazed, etc in large scale fights thus spamming less skills.

Hard to do when the overwhelming majority of AE utility in this game is also attached to damage. Unless you’re planning to some how hame the damage from the AE limited to 5 targets but the stun/blind/chill/poison spread to everyone? Not sure that’s possible from a technical standpoint.

Your idea is flawed as the moment the new items arrive the prices will spike…

Get stuff in the middle of next week when it’s the lowest.

Any mention of what the rewards in the dungeon will be? Will this be ascended weapons? New armor set (still no cavalier stuff out there)? Ascended armor? More trinkets?

VOLKON.1290:

CHIPS.6018:

Slightly off topic, but the lack of gvg is killing this game.

The whole 24/7 around to clock system is also flawed. The system is burning everyone out.

I am seeing it with my own eyes that people are quitting this game left and right.

Killing the game or something you personally miss? There’s a difference.

So… you don’t like the around the clock system… which part of the world do you want to tell can’t play WvW during the times they’re home from work and still awake? Which of this planets communities do you want to isolate from the game and tell they’re not worthy of prime time? That’s what would happen, you know, if they shut down WvW during a certain time of day… you’d be screwing over the area of the world where that’s their prime time.

That’s certainly not a decision I’m worthy of or qualified to make. You?

There are ways to fix around the clock issues where people who can’t fight their way out of wet paper bag somehow manage to win week after week because they take 95% of the map for 10 hours out of the day while people are working or at school.

For example, bonus XP should be given for capturing a point and holding it for the second hourly tally. Beyond that it should give no real value to the score because you’re not defending it and people aren’t attacking it. Scores should also be an average where the highest and lowest scores are thrown out. Buildings that are captured and aren’t reclaimed after the third tally could become locked for an additional 2 hours giving the defenders the option to reinforce, build siege, and gather supplies for the attack that’s sure to come.

I mean tons of ways to handle it.

Jscull.2514:

I wish someone from Anet could explain to me why 98% of their game ONLY wants to hit doors/protect NPC camps/build seige ? Why is there 2 % that actually want thr adrenaline of killing other skilled well equipped players? Killing a player is 98% more challenging than what zergers do so why is this the opposite of what occurs?

I can explain to you why I personally don’t like structured.

I can’t play with who I want to play.
I can’t use gear I worked hard to get.
If I do a group queue I’m playing the most boring map available.
If I do a group queue I’m playing the most boring game mode available.

I honestly don’t think I’m alone in these concerns either. sPvP is easier to balance when it’s completley isolated. But it’s also much less enjoyable too. And then when you remove the MMO side of things in favor of trying to pretend it will ever have eSport potential? In a combat system as 1-dimmensional as this? I’m sorry, but it’s just not fun.

Darek.1836:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I play a near bunker guard
That said:
HS>c&d>bs>flame blast > stomp

literally instantly dead if I didn’t have aegis up, has happened multiple times now

Wait till boonhate next patch where steal will steal all your boons and makes it so you can’t reboon for 10 seconds. then add Mug that now does +2% damage per boon stolen.

Note: This is only how I hope boon hate works

The only way to discourage zerging is to make players need to split up the zerg. Simply removing the AE cap won’t have the impact many of you all think it will. DAoC still had zerging and it had no AE cap. WoW still had zerging and it had no AE cap originally. It would simply make certain classes even more useless while other even more overpowered (and coincidenty, it would make the same overpowered classes even more so and the same underpowered ones even more so).

If you couldn’t take SM without first controlling all of your towers in your section of the map, the zerg would need to split up to defend these points. The enemy would also be encouraged to split up to attack these other points.

If this game had more utility oriented AE (AE chills, ranged AE blinds, ranged AE weakness etc etc) instead of everything being about l337 d33p5 we wouldn’t be in the scenario we’re at now. Just like if AE was actually kept in mind when designing the classes so you wouldn’t have classes like Ele’s with tons and Guardians with next to none. If this game actually had the same amount of value with fields offensively as it did defensively imagine how much better this game would be. Imagine Necros putting conditions on targets that made poison damage deal double damage and then thieves dropping poison fields for other classes to projectile finish for example.

The map is designed in such a way where there’s little reason not to zerg. The buffing system is designed in a way where there’s little reason not to zerg. The healing system is designed in a way where there’s little reason not to zerg. This on top of the combat system in this game having no real depth whatsoever and you’re left exactly where we are now. Players using mindless zerg tactics because the game downright encourages you to do it.

Ruprect.7260:

fishergrip.4082:

Confusion is the most broken thing in WvW now that culling and stealth have been addressed. Damage on skill use is a just a bad mechanic in general, but it make no sense for it to do as much damage as it does.

The best solution imo, is to change it so that it stacks duration instead of intensity and boost the damage a bit to compensate. The reason this is the best solution is because otherwise mass confusion stacking using mesmer spam and epidemic becomes absurdly powerful in big fights. Losing 5-10k hp on 1 skill use simply should not be possible.

The easiest and most likely solution is simply to make WvW confusion damage match sPvP damage.

Stealth is being reverted lol, be prepared to see thieves everywhere again. Also it takes a long time to get more than 4 stack of confusion on someone. You also have to be very coordinated to get 10+ stacks and an epidemic off. Confusion is fine.

I’m not sure the change to stealth is going to have that large an impact. I think it’s just the meta to zerg on zerg is becoming that much more common that thieves simply don’t have a functional use anymore. This more than anything explains their decline.

And it really doesn’t take much time at all for a Mesmer to stack confusion. Maybe take awhile for a Warrior or Ranger or something. But not a Mesmer.

Iruwen.3164:

LordByron.8369:

so if you can apply confusion to a zerg with just 5 players and all zerg have to stop attacking/evading….

You can’t, at least not as a mesmer and not a relevant amount of stacks, unless the enemies are stupid to a degree that should be considered intentional.

Atherakhia.4086:

Confusion is beyond broken in this game. It’s supposed to be the condition equivilent to retaliation so why isn’t it about equivilent?

It’s supposed to be the equivalent to interrupts in GW1, which also have been a major mesmer mechanic.

Personally, I’d just change it to match sPvP in WvW.

There’s several reasons why confusion had to be buffed in WvW (it’s quite obvious in PvE). There’s a lot more AE cleanse going on and there’s more players in general, so enemies can easily retreat behind the frontline or fortifications which doesn’t help with conditions like burning. In sPvP, it’s much easier to apply 10+ stacks of confusion since you can be more focused, which would make it possible to completely lock down capture points.

I didn’t play GW1 so I can’t comment on any similarities betweeen this game and the last.

The prevelance of cleanse in WvW is not a reason to make something overpowered. It could be a reason to introduce a trait that makes it so you have a 30% chance for your conditions to resist being cleansed though.

Now as for PvE value, I don’t know. For leveling the Mesmer is already considered one of the most difficult classes to level right now, but running a condition build is rarely ideal for leveling (no overloading of condition possible until the higher levels). For bosses in dungeons the condition is inconsequential. For trash, it would have next to no real value either. So I’m not convinced PvE is a legitimate excuse either. But I haven’t hit that level 40 threshhold for mesmers and I honestly can’t stand playing the class.

I will also say that avoiding confusion isn’t that difficult, but that doesn’t mean the effects are somehow balanced if people would just play the game properly. There are tons of things that can’t be controlled in WvW (random Ae, heals, etc) that confusion shouldn’t be triggering but it does.

I still feel the coefficient adjustment or changing it to a on-hit consume type deal is best

Confusion is beyond broken in this game. It’s supposed to be the condition equivilent to retaliation so why isn’t it about equivilent?

There’s two realistic ways to fix it imo. Either change the coefficient to match Retaliation (just like they did in sPvP) or change it to a “on next strike” kind of condition where once you’ve hit someone and reflected back 5k damage due to a 10 stack, it’s gone and needs to be reapplied.

Personally, I’d just change it to match sPvP in WvW.

Arganthium.5638:

Atherakhia.4086:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s funny is you and I probably crossed paths as I often just scout with Zanzer (Ranger in a green and purple trenchcoat and pirate hat) on FC doign exactly what you just mentioned.

I’ve personally found the need to scout reduced some now with culling and the swords giving most of the work away. But yea, in my Shadowbane days I was actually a scout for the guild keeping tabs on enemy positions until we engaged when I switched to my Mage Assassin for offense and my Wizard for defense.

But yea, I’m finding very little out there as far as roaming goes in T8 these days. If I run into small groups they’re either up leveled or in packs of 10+.

Too similar to the necromancer mechanic IMO.

Is the reason for the change because you feel stealth is too powerful? Or because you feel the mechanics of it are too clunky?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with stealth in this game. It’s quite a fragile mechanic with too many ways to enter it. I’d rather it be made more reliable but make the ways to re-enter it much more limited.

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

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

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

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

I’d also like something to be done with the way things are captured and the points they provide. It’s silly for the servers that can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag to continually outrank other servers simply because they can control 95% of all BL’s on offhours. Something more needs to be done about this.

Say you capture a tower you get a large number of points and maintain the tower for a second hour you get another large number of points. But beyond that, you get next to no real benefit for holding on to it unless you’re actively defending it.

There’s tons of reasons for things being the way they are.

The map is designed horribly removing any real defensible positions outside of keeps.
Defenders are at a distinct disadvantage verse the attackers which doesn’t make sense.
Attackers don’t even need to use siege weapons to get into keeps if they have the numbers.
There’s no value in defense once the tally is taken.

And this isn’t even talking about how you remove healers from the game and replace them with the need to use healing fields. You don’t spread the AE around so every class has something meaingful to offer. You have no real ranged AE utility in the game. Many classes have no functional worth to a zerg. etc.

Remove the ability for siege in one tower to hit another tower.
Remove the ability for players to melee gates unless they use special weapons.
Make it so defenders in a keep gain a range advantage for standing on the wall and are given protection when going out of the keep entrance for 5 seconds.
Introduce a tiered sieging system so you actually need to defend what you take in order to encroach further into enemy territory.
If siege equipment goes unused for 1 minute, anyone can use it.
Increase harmful AE cap to 10 while leaving beneficial AE cap to 5.
Spread the WvW love to other classes (what does a thief offer a zerg? Other than water field, what use is a Ranger? With 3 out of every 5 players being a guardian or mesmer, what chance does a necro, condition ranger, or thief have? etc.)

I personally love the playstyle behind sword/dagger. Playing it on my ranger was the main reason I decided to switch to Thief instead of stick to the Ranger. But I find the whole stealth mechanic with the weapon set kind of clunky. You don’t deal any real burst with it. Even with 100% crit chance from stealth, you can’t really find anything that’s worth using. It really needs a burst move of its own.

I never played the thief before the last patch so I’m not familiar with the impact changing the stealth mechanic from 3 seconds to 4 seconds did. But that said, it is a terrible idea to have something like stealth, the very foundation of the class, work one way in WvW and another way in sPvP.

The way the thief class works right now, their value in WvW is already at an all-time low due to how everything is Zerg v Zerg now and the only people roaming are all upleveled. Any change to stealth will have no real impact on their status in the current meta, but for those of us who play both, transitioning from one to the other will be quite difficult when your whole rhythm is thrown out of whack.

There has to be a better option (I’d sooner leave 4seconds in place) than splitting the 2 systems in this fashion.

It’s not a fair trade comparing any class in PvE to the Warrior. Warriors have been known to be the kings of PvE for months now.

Compare your progress farming to other classes like Eles and Rangers and you’ll find you’re not nearly as bad off as you think.

I’m far more concerned with the status of the thief class in WvW given how the game has devolved into nothing more than zerg on zerg combat. The only roaming groups you run into are all upleveled and harldy worth your time. In zergs, the thief brings absolutely nothing.

I would just like to see handheld siege weapons so we can remove the abilities for players to attack gates. If a player wants to siege a location without using real siege equipment, there should be something in place so there’s some risk to doing it.

If players had to equip siege weapons to hurt structures and were caught with them still on when the enemy showed up, they’d be at a huge disadvantage and would require zergs to start investing in siege instead of just piling 100 people on a gate and blasting healing fields.

Stealth in this game doesn’t really lend itself to a thief getting into the enemy zerg and being able to pull anything off unfortunately. Just doesn’t have the duration in most situations. As for GW1, I never played it. And if I did, I’d have been a ranged class anyway (GW2 is first game I’ve played a non-Mage character).

1200 range on bow would be nice, but will steal some of the Ranger’s thunder. Was surprised to see rifle go beyond 900 range for Warriors. And warrior get a trait to increase range on bow.

I strongly suggest going condition for leveling like many of the others. It was dreadful leveling as a thief because the damage is so low, the likelyhood of attacking more than one opponent at a time is high, and the heal on hit stuff doesn’t work at all. Just go with withdraw for your heal, and focus on the condition damage gear and get the caltrop trait. You’ll have more fun and you will level faster.

Never played the thief until after the nerf, so I’m not feeling the same pain as the rest of you (since I’m accustomed to the 4s). But for no other reason than avoiding a mechanic split between PvE and PvP, I’d say the change should either be reverted or not done at all(which I know no one here approves of).

For WvW, how do you guys get toughness? Do you find you just don’t want/need it? I was planning to go full Valk armor, serker weapons, and Cavalier everything else with accuracy on offhand and full rubies to help with the low crit chance.

This will give about 15k hp, 2.5k armor, same power, and 35% crit chance (30 traits) or pretty close to that.

Just trying not to waste my laurels and such if it turns out full serkers is the better option.

I’d much rather see a trait that reduced the duration of conditions and a nerf to confusion over anything else really. We know boon hates coming, so that should solve your protection/retaliation issue.

What the thief needs is something that can benefit a zerg. A ranged AE pulsing blind for example. A ranged weakness. Allow dagger storm to reflect shots that go near it and not just ones that specifically target the thief (so the class can walk infront of the zerg a few steps and reflect incomming ranged).

I mostly WvW and with ANet doing nothing to slow down zerg on zerg combat, there’s nothing left to do. And thieves are one of the weakest classes when it comes to zerging.

I can’t see it for thieves, I’m sorry. The scouting can be done by rangers better and with culling done, there’s little value in real scouting unless you’re shadowing a zerg. But even then, most zergs are competent enough not to be distracted by 1 class.

They don’t have good AE compared to many classes due to the slow travel time of their shot. Their ranged damage is mostly crap compared to other classes.

They have low health and armor naturally which forces them to skimp on toughness to raise their health to the 15+ range (leaving only about 2k armor which isn’t awful mind you).

Their mobility is often over stated because it’s designed more for allowing them to control a fight than actually get around. Thieves that run tend to die. thieves that stay to fight often can’t be caught for example.

They’re great roamers and valuable for small groups. But since the WvW meta has shifted to zerg on zerg and little else, I can’t see thieves providing much but blast finishers and venomshare (which gimps the rogue in return and given the way buffs work the venoms always end up on the wrong classes. Basalisk on another thief instead of a Ranger with longbow for example).

I have to agree with the above. The role of the thief in larger scale conflict is quite low. They don’t have the health to go in, their ranged damage is mediocre, and the stelath mechanics in this game have never really lended themselves to picking people off from the sides because you’ll be seen coming.

I think it’s just a result of the meta overall now pushing so far in favor of zergs that there’s simply nothing left for some classes to offer. It’s a shame too because the thief is honestly built pretty well for a class overall in a game filled with horribly designed classes. But they just weren’t given any tools to contribute much real substance to a zerg.

No one else feels siege inside a tower/keep is an issue in and of itself? I’m fine with arrow carts as they tend to be more defensive in nature. Even catapults and balista to a lesser extent. But trebs?

One of the major problems I have with the way WvW works right now is how you can effectively siege surrounding structures from within the walls of another. There’s no real risk involved. Same with meleeing gates. Why allow weaposn to hurt gates at all? Why not have hand-held siege weapons that do like 10% damage to players and gates. That way if you want to siege a structure with players, you run the risk of being caught without real weapons equiped and you’ll suffer for it.

I know it’s not related to the main problem being discussed, but I find WvW pretty one-note in this game mostly because the risk vs reward elements don’t seem to be on par with one another.

This is why I spend almost all my time scouting for groups or roaming with my clique.

Why not just make unload drop a fire field at your feet? With all those shot something’s bound to catch fire. This way it does condition damage in addition to physical.

And is P/P good in PvP/WvW? I see a lot of these p/p threads but they all focus on PvE. I’m just curious as I’ve never tried P/P for anything and the image of a cowboy with 2 pistols is stuck in my head now.

The more important question…

Teabagging, a new emote?

Try apothecary with a condition build. Tanky as all getup. Tons of condition damage to melt face (no physical damage or crit though). Still all the great mobility.

Better solution would be to just change siege to have no master. If you build siege to attack something, you should have to tear it down to avoid the enemy from using it to get right back in. Want to defend the siege against invaders? Don’t ball up on the door to stack your fields. Want to heal people on the rams while they’re being pelted by arrow carts? Use actual heal skills instead of blast finishers.