(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Here you go. This will give you a good idea on what you can do for yourself and your team.
Welcome to the world of interrupting – where, as D/P trickery thief, interrupts play a critical role in nailing a kill. These are my experiences while playing a D/P Trickery thief that I ALWAYS try to look out for to interrupt:
Guardian (shelter) and warrior (healing signet) can’t be interrupted. The first includes a block and the second is never actually used. Both of these classes are very common.
The main skill you want to interrupt on a guardian support is their empowering might. It’s what gives 2.5k healing to the team, and 12 might stacks. If linked with their healing virtue, it can heal everyone in the area for about 5k health and can cleanse 3 conditions. If it’s paired with their vengeance virtue, it will give everyone a 5 second unblockable burn and 15 stacks of might instead of 12. Might empower is also what gives the guardian the most sustain in a fight. Their bubble sanctuary is also fair game for an interrupt and is also used for more sustain and body blocking.
With a warrior, aim to interrupt their combustive shot. I know that Mesmers don’t have any access to poison – which can severely cripple a warrior who can’t cleanse that poison with combustive shot – but other classes do so interrupt that combustive shot. Other than that, their warrior attack skills are very easy to interrupt if they don’t have stability on them. Another critical skill to interrupt is their signet elite skill which procs their lyssa runes and another mass condition cleanse.
Engineer depends, but healing turret is very popular and requires brilliant reflexes to catch a 1/2s cast time when you consider latency and animation clutter.
It is virtually impossible to interrupt an engineer – quite possibly the hardest class to interrupt anything worth interrupting. Definitely the hardest class my d/p trickery thief has to go up against. I will usually die to a good engie if I try to stay and fight it. The only shot I have is to stay in shortbow. One thing you can do though: If you get pulled, you can daze the crowbar. 99% of engies always use crowbar after trying to pull(ironically even if the target dodges the pull).
Thief is uninterruptable if they run withdraw, and the good ones cover HiS with blinds and other stealth.
One of the best attack skills you can interrupt on a thief is their heartseeker through blackpowder. Coming personally from many 1v1 duels with thieves, heartseeker is THE skill to interrupt to help secure the kill as long as you can quickly follow-up with a burst. For example, casting beserker phantasm right when you see the blackpowder, then interrupting the heartseeker after. The other BIG, BIG, BIG one is the hide in shadows which comes after a shadowstep. Usually what happens is a thief gets bursted down with bassi venom. This scares the thief (rightly so) into porting away with shadowstep (this gives the thief distance to get the 1 second cast on hide in shadows off). Thieves against thieves instinct-fully hit headshot the moment they see the thief port away after a spike – as it has a good chance at interrupting the hide in shadows. With other thief specs, it helps to interrupt their three skill, then immediately follow-up with a burst. This is the best example of this I have seen so far. He doesn’t actually interrupt something, but buffers his spike with a daze. Regarding Mesmers, interrupting their (usual) point-blank clusterbomb is also a huge one in order to get your heal off.
Elementalist (though rare) tend to know to cover ether renewal if they are worth anything at all. The upcoming meta may see more revert to signet heal, which also cannot be interrupted.
Elementalists might cover their heal with stab or arcane shield, but other skills are very easily interruptable. Also, with the exception of stab on earth swap, they don’t have many options on consistently covering their heal. Remember: with the change to burning speed, you can’t counter interrupt the burning speed after getting knocked down anymore since it’s getting evade frames.
The only ones you can reliably count on to interrupt are other mesmers, necromancers without blood fiend, and rangers. They all have prominent heal animations with a significant cast time for easy interrupt.
Good mesmers will cover their heal with a daze, distance via blink, diversion, or stealth. Rangers really don’t have anything to interrupt other than spirit res (which I believe can be done with a simple greatsword 5 knockback) or their sword skills. Good necros can cover their heal with their fears or blinds – for the most part.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
You can run a mesmer, but it takes a lot of team co-ordination to run one in the most effective manner possible. You can out-rotate the enemy with a mesmer.
In general you will see 1-2 warriors (for point control, cc chains, and mass burning pressure damage), a spirit ranger (for team support via 480 hps, prot on demand, and mass burning for pressure damage), a thief (far decap and burst assist), a guardian (condi removal, mass burning pressure damage, and overall might empowering support), and maybe an engineer or necro as the last slot if they don’t take an extra warrior. An engineer bombing points with nades and access to healing turret is a huge benefit to the team. They are also very mobile and can pull people off of points with toolkit. If they don’t run toolkit, they’re running bombs and, with them, trying to control outer nodes.
Running a necro requires players to push far to force the opposing team pull back, say a warrior, so that the necro can move in with scepter to bring in the condi pain. Other than that, they strip boons and turn stuff into more conditions in the hopes of overloading a target with them. Certain maps you are less likely to see a necromancer on though since their mobility is so bad.
Dj,
It had a damage increase, also the time it takes for the sword damage to start up has been shortened, finally there was the increase in base initiative regen.
It was viable before all of those changes, but no one played it because S/D was more easy to play. Before all these changes, to get the pistolwhip off as smoothly as possible, you needed to land an immob shot from your shortbow. Now all the S/D players shifted to S/P because it’s now easier to play than S/D ever was. S/P never required 30 in acrobatics, so the base initiative change was just a gain to them. Really, they “killed” S/P with these changes because they made it excruciatingly boring and easy to play.
So I don’t think the appeal from S/P stems from elsewhere.
You go to far for a few reasons: First and foremost, it helps to snowball the win. A simple decap can create a very large advantage for your team. Second, it forces a person at mid to come and deal with the decap. As it takes about 15 seconds to re-cap the point, this means, as an example, any squishies like a necromancer can potentially move in and deal more damage with scepter instead of sitting at range with staff. This will not be the case (or rather less of a case) if someone on their team has already died and is cued up to res – most people will not send someone back if someone is about to respawn. Finally, if you KNOW your team is going to wipe at mid, you can push far as a counter response (if it’s open) in order to split the enemy, so that your teammates can have an easier time defending home and pushing up to mid when they respawn.
If you leave mid to decap far and your party wipes in the process, then you did a bad thing. If you leave mid and they already have a home defender on point, then you’ve wasted valuable time.
One thing is for sure; don’t push far and try to 1v1 people for the entire game. This will destroy your team if you cannot take full control of the point in a swift amount of time.
If you get many kills in a row (maybe a enemy party wipe at mid) then stagger the stomps to give your team a buffer period between respawn times. This way, if you push far, they might filter into the deathfactory at their home, or at least delay them from pushing with any serious attempt.
Remember: These are all very general rules, as things will change depending on what you will be dealing with at any point in time.
Also: Thieves don’t stomp people in team fights unless, of course, in dire situations – and I do mean dire.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
No other class can claim that in the game.
Yep No other class can make that claim. Not a single class. Yep. Thieves are just tooooo stronk
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Today I saw a thief spam pistolwhip on a guardian inside his symbol of wrath, killing himself on retaliation and calling guardian OP.
Not saying it’s OP, but dps guards will not only murder thieves: They will rip out their heart and scream, “KALI MAH!” then eat it.
Dahkeus, actually it doesn’t work now when behind an object. They are changing it to remove the LoS. So you can blackpowder behind an object, heartseeker + steal to them and still gain all the goodies from that steal as long as you’re in 900 range. One of the main reasons why so many thieves bring Infiltrator signet is because it doesn’t have any Line of Sight issues. You can be on clocktower point, have someone targeted outside of the clocktower, and infiltrator signet to them. Now you will be able to do that with your steal skill and have it proc all of its boons. It’s a big change. Huge.
Everyone will be kittening about the shadow arts trait, but the steal line of sight change is HUGE. I wonder if people will actually run something other than infiltrator signet now. I doubt it though, since it has such great synergy with the steal item skills.
Well done Sonic, those points pretty much sum up everyone’s opinions on what needs to happen to improve the infrastructure of the spvp scene. Kudos to you and thank you for your post, since you’re a new player, but we’ve all seen this before.
Good post, regardless.
First, don’t get set into rotations. Thief works best when they become unpredictable. Second, take a look at this for any basic tips you might need.
Why do many people think Thief is OP? Because the general population – especially those who visit these forums – are nothing more than general WvW Killshot bait.
They refuse to learn how to play and instead go onto the forums and cry about their problems.
Fortunately, there are a few people who actually DO know how to play, and they (surprisingly) are actually playing the game and figuring stuff out. Instead of kittening on the forums about OOHHH PEEEEE and try to get all the attention because they whine like children and people laugh at them.
It’s preventing me from wanting to play. Fix your servers.
Allot of the issue is that immobilize is generally badly telegraphed so you have to rely on condi removal, allot, to deal with it. […] What immobilize ends up being is an easier to apply, better hard-CC than actual hard CCs (goes through stability and is, allot of the time, tougher to break because cover-condis and imob always being removed last)
There are other means of dealing with immobilization other than condition removal, which is the huge difference between hard cc and immob condition.
Three second blocks usually deal with any immob landing on a person, you can re-position yourself with a teleport. You can use invulnerability skills. You can use weapon evasion skills – which act much like using a 3 second block. You can do a counter knockdown or daze. There are other means to deal with immob primarily because it doesn’t prevent you from using your skills. The crazy part is when you get immobed for longer than 2 to 3 seconds without any requirement on team co-ordination.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
While i don’t think we should be able to dodge while immobed, since it’s so integral to setting up a good team spike, any individual stack of immobilization should not last for more than 2 seconds base. Regardless, all of these are really great ideas. I think signet of spite would work well if the condition duration was reduced as well. You can set up co-ordinated spikes with it instead of just pressing one button and watching things die. I think lyssa just needs an internal timer of like 60 to 90 seconds.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
I found this video. It might have been posted before, but it’s pretty good and shows you a few things. If you’re interested in the build, then you can check out the link in the description.
Yep, only beginner thieves in spvp think their role is to 1v1. Thieves’ real role is hard to catch burst in team fights. Basically they go into any size fight and down someone who has already blown a few cooldowns. They do run far point but only to decap it when it’s empty.
They thrive best when people aren’t paying attention to them. They live in that world. It’s what gives the thief profession its flavor.
Thieves are ‘OP’ 1v1 because that is broadly the role of the class.
They are largely useless in conquest because nubs who like to feel pro in duels run stealth/escape builds that can’t even prevent a decap.
No that’s not the role of the thief. In fact, what you described is the primary reason why people hate having more than one thief on their team and hope to god that, if a thief is on their team, they won’t be doing what you described. Not because some run perma stealth builds.
Personally, I played a lot of Team Arenas – which is probably why I still play spvp. I loved the 4v4, first team to go down, aspect of Team Arenas. Usually you would have 1 or 2 damage dealers (usually warriors) a support character (like a cripshot ranger – which was my favorite build of all time) and a healer (which had to be a monk). Sometimes you would run with another support character in place of the second damage dealer (I personally loved the spirit weapon ritualist healer).
It’s kind-of funny that the same ridiculous topics pop up even now. Everyone complained about how Warriors in gw1 was so dominant as THE go-to damage dealer. Naturally, since Izzy was the head-honcho on the balance team, he played warrior so everyone accused him of making the Warriors so prevalent. It’s funny to see the same stupid topics being brought up today. Especially since Warrior in gw1 was so incredibly balanced, and had the capability to do much more than just line up spikes.
During the end of the years, with more classes joining the fold, the game became more and more cheezy. Usually in GW1, anything that was a one-trick-pony was deemed a cheese strat. There was lighting orb spikes, which about 4 eles would try and spike people down with lighting orbs. Orbs did about 150 damage, and the average amount of health any player would have is around 400 to 500 health so yeah. There was also ranger longbow spikes where the rangers would place down nature spirits and spike people down – one trick pony. Or IWAY in which a virtually all warrior 8-man team would equip ranger pets to generate the most clutter possible on screen. The entire Assassin class was a one-trick-pony. Same can be said for most ritualist, and paragon builds. At its best state, the ritualist was the flag kitten runner.
Personally, it’s sad to see the same thing happening to my favorite class in this game – the thief. So many of the builds being played today are one-trick-ponies. Only one spec, in my opinion, isn’t this way and it’s d/p trickery.
Sigh.
Se la vie with games.
War Machine [WM] continued for a bit in WvW, but I think they quit. War Machine was actually pretty good at WvW, and I think they were one of the first guilds to actually try and establish some type of strategy beyond just plain zerging. You should see the veil lineups they accomplished, or how they might empowered, and blasted ONLY water fields while doing it, during a massive battle (instead of pulling back and empowering) – very mobile and organized. Idiot Savants [iQ] used to do some tPvP, but again they quit. Team Quitter [QQ] took one step into GW2 and said, “nope.”
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Oh man don’t take my FGS away from me. Bassi venom + rush + steal = sex. Don’t take sex away from me plz anet. I might actually break out an old 25/30/0/0/15 spec just so I can get improvisation for the deeeps
Glaphen,
You make a good point.
Swagg,
Oh you righteous messiah of game devlopment, you. Go make your own game already so you can play it.
If i get a plethora of squishies, I usually try and go for side nodes and hope people keep filtering in onto their home node.
Stop complaining and use team speak. Its so easy.
That should really have started and ended in /rage post.
This is about soloque – not teamque.
Oh man, I so hope this becomes a thing. A mesmer spec that has some resemblance to the old gw1 mesmer? Are you kidding me!? YES PLEASE. Can you imagine stopping that Earthshaker hambow warrior with an interrupt then counter spiking him down with your team? It makes all the panties wet.
Inb4 all the noobs cry “oohh peeee, all you gotta do is spam interrupts”. Learn2play, scrubs. Bait out the interrupts, then interrupt the mantra. Good mesmers will interrupt key skills and not blow all their interrupts. More control specs outside of warrior hammer needs to be a thing as it will stop most of the spam. GG Anet.
If the mes brings torch, he gets a crappy phantasm, if the mes brings decoy or signet instead of portal, then he’s playing selfish and not contributing the most he can to his team. It’s great! I’m loving this. So down to clown.
The only problems I see is the prevalence of stability in a teamfight, so it needs to be removed before doing anything productive, which is a pain. Also condis still hurt the mesmer bad – but whatever. Also shatter spike damage isn’t nearly as high, or as reliable as it is with an IP mes.
DISCUSS!
John,
The biggest problem (aside the 4v5’s and the wide disparity between new players and veteran players) with Solo que is the severe lack of communication.
People are able to play minion mancers because they hope that there is a person on the opposing team that will try and 1v1 the mancer at their home node all match. You see a prevalent amount of warriors in Solo que because it’s the class that requires the least amount of teamwork to get stuff done.
It doesn’t help much that hotjoin is a terrible place of learning. There is a huge gap between hotjoin and soloque. People try to 1v1 on far with a minion mancer BECAUSE they have no clue on what pushing far all the time on the map does, since hotjoin doesn’t provide good learning feedback.
A lot of these problems in solo que could be solved by simple communication. However players (ether knowingly or not) will exploit the fact that solo que has poor communication to the best of their ability. They see minion mancers winning games in soloque, so they play minionmancer and sit afk at home all match. If they tried the same thing in a team que match (where there is better communication) against a competent team, the minion mancer team will get crushed into the ground.
It takes about 3/4ths of a second to activate backstab. Forget what the tooltip tells you, tooltips in this game are terribly designed and outright wrong in some cases. The cast time of backstab is about 3/4ths of a second. Here is my proposal: Just like shadow trap generates a black shroud at the feet of the thief when he ports back to his target, what if Backstab generated that same effect for about a 1/2 a second each time it was activated? What will this do?
Well as the biggest benefit for d/p perma stealth, every time they blow a backstab (flailing wildly in the air) the shroud appears. This would discourage this activity, allow the thief to keep stealth, and allow the opponent a better opportunity to protect their backside and retaliate. Thieves have no access to protection or aegis, or high levels of armor, or elemental auras, and limited amount of heals/health pool. So going into melee range as a thief is very dangerous if you don’t have full awareness of what you are doing.
I imagine it would have about the same level of a telegraph as a point-blank clusterbomb shot – which is reasonable. However obviously I wouldn’t know exactly as its not part of the game beyond shadow trap.
The animation is already in the game, which is a huge plus, as it just means they could easily apply it to the skill.
- It would have minimal changes to the d/p trickery set which, in my opinion, is one of the more balanced specs in the game – you don’t spam backstab with it as backstab is often paired with a port. From a personal perspective, it is the closest thing to a cripshot ranger for me – which I adored in GW1. I say minimal changes because the biggest thing you need to land is the steal on d/p trickery which always lands first. If anything, it would harm the infiltrator signet + backstab the most, as you don’t have the daze to cover your backstab. That being said, it might also harm the bassi => infiltrator signet => backstab, as you rarely want to use your bassi with steal because that will waste a cooldown, but I don’t think it would change it by much. If anything, the bassi hit allows you to easily land your steal item skills – which the stolen item skills are really strong anyway, so it would (in some ways) merit the change.
- With regard to things like aegis or blind: Bad thieves will backstab into them. Good thieves will use 4 initiative to clear it with a headshot – not revealing them or providing the shroud.
- With regards to D/D: that set alone just needs some major help. It’s a one-trick-pony, but has easy (cheaper) access to stealth that is more immediate than D/P. The better D/D thieves occasionally wait and continue to CnD people until they see an opening for a backstab (watch yishis). I don’t have much reliable play on D/D (again, it’s boring to me) so I can’t say too much about it.
- Sword stealth attack needs major help as the stealth skill is terrible. So in order to merit the shroud on sword stealth attack, it needs to be better. It used to be good with a 2 second daze, but now it’s not worth it – you can’t reliably interrupt anything with it as the aftercast on things like cloak and dagger takes ages.
- Shortbow stealth attack is in a perfect spot right now – so I don’t think it needs the shroud. It has a telegraph, but does minimal damage and gives the thief some range to work with.
- As with shortbow, pistol also has a well-telegraphed stealth attack.
So yeah, maybe placing a shroud underneath the feet of the thief before they backstab might provide the telegraph people are asking for. That being said, a lot of other things would have to change as well – I’m looking at you, fresh air ele.
But maybe not. Maybe I’m just succumbing to the players who say 6-pool zerg rush is OP. I don’t know.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Okay first off, I’m going to preface this by saying that I think thief is – contrary to many people’s opinion – for the most part, in a good state of balance. Personally, the area where I’d like to see the class improved the most would be to have all weapon skills have some REAL purpose in a fight. Currently D/P and Shortbow are the only weapon sets, in my mind, that are the most balanced weapon sets around this idea. S/P is mind-numbingly boring and an easy spec to play. S/D is a bit tougher to play now, but still viable (though in my opinion still boring to play) – Dagger offhand is in a terrible state right now. D/D Thieves are a one-trick-pony, and that’s boring. It doesn’t help that Deathblossom and Dancing Dagger are terrible skills.
This being said, I’m here to talk about some of the precieved “cheese” revolving around backstab builds. Usually they revolve around perma stealth – which, for the record, sees no relevant play in tpvp. In order for perma stealth to work, the team you’re up against needs to be really bad as it can be beaten, at the very least, with proper teamwork. Much of the spam that many people complain about can be beaten with a few well timed hits – this is the nature of going all-in with spam. As someone has stated before on these forums, “It’s about as cheesy as saying spamming low kick in fighting games is cheesy.” However, where the thief shines (at least where good thieves shine) is their ability to be unpredictable.
Let’s side-step a bit and examine a skill in the thief’s kitten nal: Shadow Trap. Shadow Trap is, aforementioned, a trap that is laid down in wait for someone to trigger it. If no one triggers it, the thief can cast a 1.5 second spell (about the time it takes to cast basilisk venom) to port him back to its location. Doing so is a stunbreaker and grants the thief some temporary health regen. If someone triggers the trap, the trap skill then turns into a shadow return skill in which the thief has the option to teleport back to the behind of the target that triggered it while in stealth – basically prepping for a shadow attack. What people might not know, when the thief teleports back to its target, there is a black circular shroud that appears at the feet of the thief. It only occurs for about a half a second.
Okay now lets step forward and discuss our current situation – perma stealth backstab thieves. Many people assume if you’re playing D/P, then you must be spamming 2 through smoke fields all day. In reality, they might be fighting a D/P trickery build which doesn’t do this. Regardless these people who have complained about D/P haven’t played enough of the thief class to recognize what a thief can and cannot do. As anyone who has played enough of the class can tell you, if you’re spamming heartseeker through smoke fields, you’re not going to have enough initiative to reliably use virtually anything else on the set – this is why I don’t play perma stealth as, just like D/D, it’s a one-trick-pony. The Tessa personally introduced me to her legendary perma stealth build, I was immediately turned off to it for this very reason. If you choose to use anything else, you run the risk of being exposed for too long, and a perma stealth thief (being the nature of Shadow Arts traits) wants to be in stealth for as long as possible and out of stealth for as least as possible. Thus, perma stealth thieves are very predictable. So because of this, good players know how to deal with them.
HOWEVER:
A lot of the complaints are about how the backstab is unpredictable. To a certain extent, it is. To another, it isn’t. Fighting a thief, and fighting as a thief, is all about the mind games – getting into the head of your opponent and spotting how they operate. Being able to fool the opponent by mixing things up and to easily read them at the same time is what separates the good thieves from the bad. However I am constantly asking myself, “Is the class/spec I play (D/P trickery) really that bad?” For the most part, or rather regarding most concerns, I think not. In other areas, though, I think it might have the potential to be improved. (to be continued)
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Far point Mes + Minion Necro portal plays = new age petting zoo meta.
if you have Titianic in your movie collection skip to the bit where everyone is diving overboard as the ship starts to really sink.
I wonder who was the propeller guy.
The only reason why I main thief is because of d/p trickery. To me, it’s the closest thing to a Cripshot ranger back in my GW1 days. So much of it is being able to read your target and interrupt the right stuff.
There needs to be different leagues like what we would see in starcraft. There is no reason why a new player should be randomly playing against people 40 levels above them and vice versa – anet have made an egregious error on this. I’m sorry OP for your experiences in spvp, and I hope they get fixed sooner rather than later (though I’m not holding my breath). You’re right though, the matchmaking system needs to be better organized and it’s one of the things many people on these forums have a right to complain about.
Even hotjoin is a mess.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
gesho,
Nades hurt. Bad. Nades can be dealt with easier though if you have some range on the engie. Besides, it’s very dangerous to play d/p against an engie (bombs), so most (good) d/p trickery thieves will try and pull out some cooldowns from you via shortbow – so time your kitten. Also, as caed said, using LoS is huge step in the right direction since Steal is an LoS skill. It won’t trigger the good stuff if the thief doesn’t have a LoS on their target.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Welcome to spvp!
Please feel free to read this post for any tips.
I would recommend you use ogre runes, instead of divinity, since it will allow you to deal the most reliable damage. Don’t use lyssa since lyssa is for man-babies who need a crutch. Infiltrator signet is one of the strongest utilities possible, so I would recommend replacing signet of shadows with it.
Get used to using shortbow over all other weapon sets – since you will be using it the most. The first thing I tell everyone new to the class is to spend at least one full day where the only weapon set you use is shortbow to get familiar with how it works and how the cooldowns on your utility/heal skills work with it. Shortbow is the weapon set that easily/reliably deals with many classes such as mesmer, certain warrior specs, ranger, and engineer (which you really can’t use d/p against an engineer, if they are smart). Also, a big part of the build you posted is being able to wisely use your steal items. A lot of those steal items will require some type of immobilize to pull off well. Hence, learn how to use shortbow. Bassi is like a big brother to immob, but you can use it out of stealth – try to avoid using them in conjunction with each other as you will be wasting a cooldown if you do. If you do use bassi out of stealth, try to apply it when you are behind your target (this can be easily achieved by shadowstepping behind them) so they don’t know the bassi is coming.
Once you get good, you will be able to co-ordinate spikes with your teammates. Using your interrupts help defend other teammates, and to deal your spike damage. Shortbow is also a great support weapon for the immob, and poison field.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Nobody is interrupting black powders.
That’s not the point.
there’s really no way for us to know if this is was really intended.
It shouldn’t be intended. If you interrupt a blackpowder, it should always cost them 6 lost initiative.
This doesn’t explain why GW2- a game with distinct lack of hardcore PvE content- is apparently host to a majority of all dedicated players in the world.
Just because there is a lack of “hardcore” content doesn’t mean people don’t play to win. Also just because people are oblivious to what they are doing, doesn’t mean they aren’t playing to win. It just means the game is shallow in this department. Heck, even you play to win because of:
lazyness, timepressure or disinterest
It’s not about being able to execute super complicated maneuvers. If you can easily kill someone with a series of throws in super street fighter, then do it. It is about getting through obstacles in the most efficient way possible. Things like LoS’ing and arming yourself with all zerker gear are done for this very reason.
On top of that, why would all these dedicated players choose to fight one of the worst AI there is? Is that a strategy for maximizing your chance to win as well? Fighting the weakest enemy you can find?
Well I’m not a PvE’er, but I would assume they do it for the gear (like working towards ascended gear) and in-game money. There is a strategy for maximizing your chance to win in places like fractals and people exploit those weaknesses in the AI, and the game in general. I highly doubt the game was intended to be played by stacking in one spot and dps’ing a boss down, but a vast majority of people still do it because of the very reasons why you PvE. Many people choose to do CoF for the very reason that it’s the easiest, most efficient, way to get money.
Just as there is a difference between chess and streetfighter, because chess happens to have no “cheap moves”.
The moment you realize that there are virtually no “cheap moves”, there are only strategies, is the moment we can start talking.
Chess doesn’t have any bugs either.
Again, bugs does not equal “cheap”.
Most people play another version of the game and they are perfectly right to do so.
That is exactly right. It’s when people start to call other people cheesy, plz nerf bliz, when learning starts to break down.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
A MMORPG has more modes than just player versus player and there is little point in playing to win against an AI (PvE)
Things like LoS’ing IS a play to win strat in PvE – just like camping IS a play to win strat in FPS’es. In fact, since you get in-game gold, play to win strats might be even more prevalent in PvE. The problem with LoS’ing, and PvE in general, is that the game pretty much stops there. How is the AI going to counter that LoS’ing? By developing a better algorithm to deal with LoS’ing? Of course not. So the game doesn’t grow because of restrictive AI. It’s why I personally can’t stand PvE in MMO’s.
There are legit comparisons between chess and street fighter (and other competitive games) as well. Both types of games seek to try and predict what the other player is going to do and ether punish them for it, or reinforce themselves to prepare for it. You CAN compare single move spam to kite and zoning tactics. A ‘scrub’ would say “quit spamming that fireball, it’s cheap”, where a more experienced player would realize, “oh he’s trying to zone me, what can I do about this?”
The biggest thing to take away from this: Some people refuse to keep trying to learn and instead turn to the “that’s cheese” argument, whereas others will still try and learn and only recognize a certain move as a “tactic” and try and learn how to deal with it.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
I feel this thread was needed, though will be sadly ignored/swallowed by all the kittened off players. Players who would rather visit the forums and vent instead of actually playing the game.
I thought steal was one move that was nearly guaranteed for thief.
This is one of the things that separates the good players from the bad. Again, it’s a thing about reading your target. D/P Trickery thieves are forced to do this, especially against other thieves, and have been forced to do this for a while now. D/P Shadow arts is laughably predictable, though – espeically those which insta blackpowder into heartseeker. Does the thief always immediately attack out of stealth? Does he not attack? If not, how long does he usually wait? You can also try to bait it out by about facing, then dodge roll, then about face again and then activate your defenses and whail in the area if you see an evasion on you. Against thieves, I usually bait it out, evade, then activate blackpowder. It’s not easy to deal with, but it can be done as long as no panicking happens.
what would follow sb#1 immob?
After a Shortbow 1 Immob, its usually followed up by a clusterbomb, or a poison field (usually if the target blocks with a shield or something), or a steal item skill like mace crack, throw goop, ice shard, etc. With D/P trickery, sometimes they steal up to them with a point blank clusterbomb shot because they know they can get a free steal off (which landing your steal is critical for D/P trickery).
Thieves rarely use clusterbomb in blackpowder in combat unless they wish to stealth a downed ally to prevent a stomp.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
No he has 30 acro.
Out of curiosity.. In regards to the D/P Blackpowder+Heartseeker combo, how debilitating to the thief is it if you interrupt the HS and cost them 9 initiative? Do they still have a lot of options afterwards?
In a thief vs thief fight, which is somewhat common in matches, there are a couple things you want to interrupt to secure the kill and get the most easy 100 – 0 situation possible. That is to interrupt the heartseeker, and to interrupt their heal. Both of these situations can be more easily accomplished by simply reading your opponent and learning how they operate. For example, do they always pop blackpowder right after they get revealed? Do they always pop their heal right after they shadowstep away from a bassi backstab? That sort of thing.
In short, interrupts on a d/p thief will kill a thief if the opponent is good and knows how to take advantage of it.
Another critical component, outside of interruptions, is to land the immob from surprise shot. 2 seconds of immob is very powerful.
Guard for the amount of support they bring. If it wasn’t for that, they wouldn’t be top dog when it comes to bunkering.
^This. Guard shines best at being support over just straight bunkering. The support that they bring, though, is invaluable.
face a pistol whip thief on any class that is not engi, no matter how bad the thief is all you have to do is smash few buttons and you have perma evades / blind . the main problem is any1 with 1 brain cell can play it. I see many terrible players just spam pistol whip and killing. I though hammer warrior was bad since it was op and easy to play. Pistol whip is OP AND EASIER* to play than hambow.
Tru dat. The 3 spam is getting out of hand. Part of the problem – a significant portion of it – was the change to initiative. S/D is harder to play now (as initiative regen for it was nerfed and sword 2 was also nerfed), so now all S/D thieves went s/p and it’s worse than S/D ever was – unintentional consequences rear its ugly head once again.
Compounding the issue, there is a certain small window of opportunity to kill the thief as the evade frames doesn’t cover the whole animation. On one hand, this is great since it requires people to read their opponents. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible for certain classes to take advantage of that window of vulnerablity.
Since I main thief, this isn’t a problem for me as all of my burst is directly under my control. Other classes (ahem, mesmer) rely on AI or, as with the ele, certain classes have longer cast times because of the AoE potential. It’s virtually impossible to be able to time a shatter or in general have the tools necessary to pull off the necessary timed burst against a perma evade thief.
It doesn’t help matters when pistolwhip is really the only skill you need to deal your damage, as sword 2 is situational. Why headshot at all? Also blinding powder on S/P is really only used to stomp people.
So I’ve been toying around with a bunker/support guard and, beyond holding points and supporting the team, I’ve noticed a few things. I’ve typically been playing it in hotjoin as I’m trying to learn the mechanics – what skills to use in a given situation. It’s a build that’s fun to play as, coming from the perspective of a thief, I’m not used to being smack dab in the middle of a teamfight. However whenever I play support guard, I’ve noticed that I get overly critical at my teammates.
Granted, hotjoin is filled with absolutely terrible builds. As a bunker/support guard, you’re dependent on others to actually do the damage. Granting 15 stacks of might to everyone around you and an unblockable 5 second burning proc to everyone in the area certainly helps swing things into your team’s favor. Also being able to kitten on necromancers’ days is extremely satisfying. But kitten it all, I don’t deal damage, so I’m reliant on others to drop targets. It is incredibly frustrating sitting on a point seeing absolutely terrible builds fail horrendously at dealing damage. PU Mesmers are terrible, people. Don’t play them.
Moreover, when I’m holding a point for a good amount of time, running on my last leg against 2 to 3 opponents – hoping for ether someone anyone to come by, or that the team would be taking the other two points. Instead I get no love, and I see my teammates fighting on roads instead of points. I know many in hotjoin know little about rotations, but I still cry inside when they don’t even fight on – or even near – the cap points. I also cry inside when an enemy flees from the point and me and another thief just calmly sit trying to recap when the thief should be chasing them down. Or when eles mist form (rip eles) when they get downed while I got a clear shot at ressing them. GAHH! It’s so annoying!
Is this a better tragic love story than twilight?
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
Why? Because why would you waste initiative on a skill that doesn’t give the results as CnD and Back stab?
Thieves don’t use them because they are terrible skills. Not that everyone would just rather cnd and backstab. They are simply terrible skills.
Deathblossom is a condi skill that does crap damage and has a terrible evade – which doesn’t fit at all with the other skills of d/d. And dancing dagger does crap damage with a crap cripple duration that has a crap projectile speed. There is no point into using poorly designed skills.
Having these weapon setups changed is the core of what I think the thief class needs right now. It brings initiative management to specific weapon sets instead of just 3 spamming like S/P does currently. As phanta said, “Want to deal damage? Pistolwhip. Want to evade attacks? Pistolwhip. Want to cleave downed bodies? Pistol whip. Want to interrupt something? Pistolwhip.”
D/P and shortbow are the only weaponsets which a thief has to truly manage where they want to put their initiative. It’s pathetic.
(edited by Chicago Jack.5647)
A skyhammer thread in disguise. Clever Vuh.
don’t really have problem with people pushing far in opener. I do get annoyed when people get greedy and push far when you control 2 pts.
After taking two points, the standard fair is to have everyone push far and one guy sit on mid. Preferably, this guy is tanky and, in general, good in 1v1’s. All other players, including your spirit ranger and your bunker/support guardian, should be pushing far. While pushing far, you should have eyes on where the opposing team is at all times. This allows you to respond to any counter pressure on your home node because you have a guy sitting on mid that can easily adjust to the situation at hand as he has a leg-up on anyone trying to be a sneaky snake.
Above all, you simply cannot get a safe win by just holding two points. It’s not possible to snowball in this way. You need to put some pressure on far node.