Guild Wars 2

Lol i love it how caed is an imba “thing”. Made me laugh OP

The game just needs a more appropriate matching system. If you’re relatively inexperienced, you shouldn’t be fighting people like caed. It’s not fun for people like caed, and I’m sure it’s not fun for people relative to your skill level.

If my team in GW1 was ever matched up against War Machine in GvG, I would have cried.

Lol I’d accept Jumper’s changes to thief over this guy, and I don’t even like Jumper’s changes.

What’s truly ironic is he thinks his opinion is “law” – nevermind the obvious situation of putting laws of unintended consequences to the wind.

Seriously, these balance ideas you have for all classes are cute, but, as with all balance suggestions given by players, it’s simple theoretical gymnastics. It’s fun playing dev – I get it. However the best we can do as players is give general feedback on what we have experienced. Leave hardcore balancing to the devs and the alpha testers. Anet just needs to make sure their alpha testers have a healthy amount of players who deeply know the mechanics of the game inside and out.

Even then, giving general feedback is a touchy subject because, as an example, 6 pool zerg rush was a thing which drove people up in arms – the problem being that most of those people were just bad at the game though. Where simple scouting would solve the problem of any type of quick push. There was a time in starcraft history where people were actually debating about the efficiency of using hotkeys instead of clicking everything. Feedback is great, but it has its limits.

Here you go. Have fun.

The only way to use shadowshot to not reveal you is if you press your stow weapon keybind at the right time.

Which is why I play dota2 and not lol. You can’t even deny creeps in lol.

Shadow Arts isn’t required at all. D/P trickery is very viable in WvW.

Rome.3192:

Jumper’s idea of Shadow Arts trait focusing on going in and out of stealth rather than constantly staying in stealth was a pretty good suggestion imo.

If only the toilet of the profession balance forum suggested something like this…

Instead we get kitten ideas in a polished bowl.

I know this is probably not what you’re looking for, but I’m going to say this anyway:

In a teamfight, don’t stomp as a thief – thief is terrible at stomping in a teamfight simply because it’s incredibly dangerous to do so. Cleave the body instead with aoe attacks like shortbow and let your teammates stomp them – always plant a poison field on the downed body because it reduces the amount of health they get healed if a teammate of theirs starts trying to res them. You can also pop down a blackpowder on their body, but don’t stomp. Instead let your teammates stomp. Thieves shouldn’t be stomping people. They rely on mobility to survive and the 3 second “stun” when stomping is going to kill you.

Also, hotjoin is naturally more zergy than more structured forms of play. It only takes one person to cap a node, and most hotjoiners (like groups of 3 or more) will sit on a node for like 15 seconds waiting for it to cap – this is a big nono as more than 1 person capping that node is effectively useless for the time it takes to cap that node. If you see a bunch of zerging, then get out of there and move to a new point. Even if you can’t really cap, simply taking the 5 seconds to decap a point is incredibly effective at reducing the zerging effectiveness.

Is warrior hard to play?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

If you don’t have 30 into wilderness survival, you’re doing it wrong.

Use shortbow.

/15chars

hooma.9642:

mesmer have less utility, cause they cant afford to bring portal

I stopped reading when you said this. Apparently you don’t even play mesmer.

I’m really tired of people whaling and whining on this toilet of a subforum, and really in general. I remember when thieves thought S/D was going to be dead with Sword 2 change, on top of the initiative adjustments – it got to the point where people were “threatening” on leaving. In reality, just so you know, the initiative change actually hurt perma evade thieves but they’re still viable to play. I don’t like them, but that’s just the situation. In any case, so many people blow things WAYYY out of proportion all over this forum.

Like all warrior teams being viable? C’mon guys.

frans.8092:

Did that formula include Cloak & Dagger and autoattacks? And how?

The formula is calculated by taking the expected damage from hidden killer and comparing it with the expected damage from executioners. It is a general, back-of-the-napkin calculation to help gauge what you will need. In almost all cases, you’re going to want to try and push your crit chance to the point where executioner’s is favorable as it benefits you even when out of stealth. However if you just REALLY want something in your build, and your crit level is “low” because of it, then you can always run hidden killer.

Ultimately, since its a generalization, it usually comes down to whether or not you have access to Fury. If you don’t, then use hidden killer. If you do, then it would make more sense to use executioner’s.

Keep in mind no one should think the the extremes would make any sense at all with this formula. It isn’t reasonable to think that a full Valk gear thief with hidden killer is going to do more damage than a thief who has some berserker gear mixed into it. You won’t be backstabbing 100% of the time and your damage out of stealth will suffer.

Holy kitten. Someone who has some remotely good ideas on the profession balance page. Well done Fox. This place isn’t just a giant toilet of shi- uh I mean poor ideas after all.

As a general rule, follow this forumla:

Crit chance = (0.3 + Crit dmg % increase) / (0.6 + 1.2 * (Crit dmg % increase))

If your crit chance is higher than this, then choose executioner’s. If your crit chance is lower than this, then choose hidden killer. Obviously this general rule only applies to backstab thieves and not sword mainhand thieves. Usually it just means that if you’re running a backstab setup, you’re going to need fury if you want to run executioners. Sword mainhand should just use executioners.

Fortus.6175:

[…]rerolled to thieves due to the amount of unbalances and apparent favoritisim towards certain classes such as warriors and thieves. They are now rolling thieves themselves.

[…]

HECK, even devs themselves admitted in a stream that thieves were driving away mesmers and elementalists from this meta.

First, don’t take everyting helseth says to heart. Expecially when he says stuff like, “blah blah blah class isn’t viable, I am.” He has some great points most of the time, but you shouldn’t treat whatever he says as a testament from god. The guy thought full blown PU messes would be a “thing” in Tpvp for example.

Lol, regardless, he said nothing of the sort. Absolutely nothing. So many people here making things up just to fit their supposed “beliefs”, nevermind the fact that most people in this thread has probably played only 5 games in soloque max. The entire stream he was talking about comparative advantage. He believes thieves have better survivability, damage, and mobility (I would agree with two of those points). Mesmers have more utility primarily because of portal and boon rip (which I would also agree with).

I would also agree with him that the mesmer has had a harder time in this meta, overall, than thief.

Aza.2105:

The character is invisible, of course you can’t see it.

And it’s when they ARE visible when you can read the obvious tells.

Aza.2105:

[…]that you can’t see coming.

If you can’t see it coming, then you ether got outplayed because you wern’t paying attention, or you don’t have enough experience to recognize the tells the setup offers you.

I have the sneaking (pun intended) suspicion that most people commenting on this thread ether WvW exclusively, or their spvp experience is limited to hotjoins or at the very least they have EXTREMELY limited soloque/teamque experience.

This thread is starting to become unreadable. Which is sad because I thought it was going to actually go somewhere. Welp. Chalk it up to forum-go’ers again. I really shouldn’t get my hopes up like this.

Bad mesmers die to D/P.

Hint: It’s not the D/P that mesmers have the most trouble with. It’s the SB. This really has very little to do with stealth, when it comes to D/P.

Decent to good mesmers will die to S/D.

The overall thief class isn’t the problem. The problem is the overall meta.

frans.8092:

Mhh, I thought the evasion messages where positioned and the others would too, still he’d most likely be where your back was.

This. Almost all cases, you’re going to want to about face once you see the block or evade (hell even a blind) and attack the area. The thief spamming backstab will get a front stab on you (significantly less damage) and put him in an incredibly dangerous position (being in melee range). Most people don’t do this, however, because they panic and still continue fleeing. It’s as if they were fighting Riki and all they do is expose their back to him the entire fight.

If the thief is using a ranged attack, it has an obvious tell as the shot itself isn’t invisible – whether coming from a pistol or shortbow.

Dardamaniac.1295:

thief did more dmg than Ranger..Rangers Longbow attack speed is 1sec and must be at max range for max dmg..

I dream of the day when Rangers actually co-ordinate their spikes/defensive measures with their pets. Or really, rather CAN co-ordinate with their pets because the AI in the game is just soooooooooooo bad. Right now, Rangers just let their pet sit on a target and provide high sustain damage on them – that’s really it and it leaves many to greif about them on the forums.

In the meantime, you have to remember that Thieves can’t even hope to have the amount of sustain that a ranger can accomplish with 30 points into wilderness survival and some condi gear.

Leadfoot.9071:

Also, how do you guys feel about thief going straight for initial boss steal on forest in soloq?

Boss is best used as a catchup tool. If you choose to go after it beginning of the match, there is a good chance you will lose mid. This puts your team at a disadvantage because they can now push your home node with much less difficulty. Because, if they’re smart, they would be moving up their home defender up to mid.

People CAN take animal beginning of the map, but it’s a rarity and really only relegated to super bursty team setups (ur gonna want to drop him in 1-3 seconds on your way to mid via back end). Otherwise, it’s used more as a tool to catch up in points if your team looses mid.

Thief currently has one role on a team right now: Roamer. As a roamer, you are relegated to certain tasks. In the case of the thief, they have 3 big ones.

1) They are in charge of creating uneven numbers in a fight. As an example, with their burst potential (D/P) they can easily support home node, and the home defender, from being invaded by 2 opponents. They jump on one target, spike him down or sit on him if you’re an S/D thief (props if your home defender brought him down to 50% health), and you can easily force one of the opponents to or close to downed state. Making the fight a lot easier to deal with. The good opponents will realize that something like this is the role of the thief and will be better prepared for it (keeping their eyes peeled while pushing far, and good communication with the team). If a thief can’t land that initial burst (at least for D/P), things have a potential to go downhill real fast, for reasons I will explain later.

2) They are also relegated to guarding other team members from any hard counters they might run into. One example is necro vs engi. Necro will always win against an engie if the necro knows what they are doing. A thief can show up, however, and ruin their day to save the life of the engie. Another example is another thief: i.e. thief vs. thief. One of the best ways of stopping a thief from forcing uneven numbers is to send your own thief at him.

3) They also decap far node quickly. This is the key factor to matches in order to generate a snowballing effect. You can’t just sit on two nodes and hope to win in this game – it’s just not possible. You could get 19 kills in the game and hold two nodes, and the match will still be a pretty close game by maybe 50 to 100 pts. This also can be very risky, however as you don’t want your team to die on mid because of your antics at far node – more so if your journey to far node is impeded by a home defender because you will be wasting your time fighting that thing. Regardless, smart quick decapping (i’m not even talking about full capping here) is critical to establishing a solid lead over the other team.

The biggest drawbacks to thieves are their lack of sustain (less so for S/P or S/D) and lack of being able to actually contest points because of stealth (only for the case of D/P, but S/D and S/P aren’t a class to just sit on a node like warrior). Contrary to popular belief, thieves are pretty terrible in 1v1’ing things. Many matches are lost in soloque because a thief thinks its their role to solo push far all match, only to ether sit on his kitten doing nothing because he is constantly disengaging, or dieing on node trying to contest it. If a thief blows all his utility skills (shadow refuge being the critical one) and you’re still in control of the fight, then you almost guaranteed your win. Thieves have absolutely no sustain (to a lesser extent regarding S/D and S/P). So much so that there are certain matchups that they will, or rather should, not touch without some type of team support (1 other guy will do, most of the time) simply because it’s ether just too risky or you’ll be serving your team better doing something else. So Thieves, as other classes designed for burstyness like mesmers or eles, are not really OP. Thieves are just simply outshining all other burst classes right now as they have the best mobility and a bit better survivability than the other two. Burst damage is pretty much equal across all boards.

As it stands, the only reason you really want to take mesmer is for portal. Portal bombing can be incredibly effective. Insta teleporting 1-2 additional people to far to jump the home defender can lead to a quick win on far and can lead to a crushing defeat for an opposing team if done properly. You can do a lot of other neat stuff with portal (like far push at the beginning of the match then insta porting back) But access to portal is the only reason why you would want to bring mesmer.

The reason why mesmer has a harder time is more likely because the overall meta has hit them harder than the thief class. Their build options are pretty limited, if they wish to spec for providing the most for the team, in comparison to thieves probably because they are forced to bring certain skills in order to just survive. For example, you can’t really run anything but Mass Invis on a mesmer because you need lyssa runes and the shortest cooldown (90 secs) is mass invis. Condi nukes arn’t the only problem, they also don’t have as easy of a time dealing with things like warriors or S/D thieves. In short, mesmers have to yell “help me!” more than a thief does.

Eles are just in a terrible spot altogether right now because anything can deal with an ele very easily, though originally you would take them because of the added team support that they offered. AoE boons and heals in their hay-day were very valuable to the team. Now we have spirit rangers who heal for 420 each second.

Inb4 comparison with skyham poll.

Callin’ it.

I wonder how many people here die to Riki…

hihey.1075:

PU mesmers?

People should be able to kill this, and many other specs, with just shortbow.

The skill functions not as a boon “rip” as you might think it would. It removes two boons, then applies those types of boons to you on set timers and stacks. Currently, you only get 1 stack of might and protection will be applied to you for a maximum of 3 seconds if you remove them from a target. It doesn’t actually “copy” the boons you ripped onto you. Maybe mirror would be a better term to describe it.

entropy.9613:

If someone is willing to blow a powerful utility to stomp you, I think you should probably have to eat it.

Oh the irony. Oh man I haven’t laughed this hard at forum go-ers in a long time. Thanks guys! My sides hurt again!

Harbinger.8637:

Yes mixing it up helps. PvE and WvW are also a lot of fun, I don’t know why so many people shun them.

The cost of PvE is having your soul sucked dry. The cost of WvW is playing a game with ridiculous stats. Also playing with 70 – 80% warriors/guardians on any given map (ironically not too far off in soloque). And zerging, don’t forget the auto attack zerging.

TBH, it doesn’t really matter to me though as I have discovered dota. 10x better balance and 10x more complex teamplay and a game that’s completely free. Facepalm Anet.

Warlord.9074:

I doubt this dude ever had a GF to begin with and if he did I’m sure she could find other reasons to leave him just based on his post.

There is no girlfriend. GF is an acronym for good fights. The good fights left him because of leaderboards.

Luto.1938:

Auto attack is either on or off. You can not disable it based on weaponsets.

Yes you can disable it for certain weapons. I have it off for d/p and on for shortbow.

OP,
The main reason why I disable auto attack on d/p is so that I can get more control over my backstabs. If it doesn’t connect immediately, I don’t sit there flailing around. Instead I could be doing something like shadowshot+backstab. Auto attack delays actions like that. I leave auto attack on for shortbow because small strafes to the left and right can stop a lot of projectiles from hitting you. I need that free finger to do that.

Important to note: If you don’t have auto attack on for pistol main, you can about face withdraw (to use withdraw as an advance instead of a retreat) a LOT easier. Of course the trade-off is the need to constantly press 1 to maintain your damage.

Kyon.9735:

I’m not taking away anything from that guy in the video. I believe we can all agree that he’s good because he can pull that off. But you’re only stating the PROS and leaving out the CONS.

Lol. Ohhh the irony. My sides. They hurt.

Btw Yski, I know that vid wasn’t your vid, but I just want to say that you do a great job on your videos. You do a wonderful editing job. Keep it up!

Sceinna.3561:

Low risk high reward, it shouldn’t be like that.

it costs 9 init to stealth with d/p.

Dee Jay wasn’t talking about 30 shadow arts perma stealth cheese. he was talking about trickery d/p. you can’t really perma stealth with it as you don’t have very good init regen. they can’t perma evade ether. they have to rely on 3 to 6 second stealths (if they chain heartseeker stealth with hide in shadows) and positioning via shadowsteps to survive.

Good idea Phanta. I approve.

Solo Que is mostly about who can herd cats better.

Proven.2854:

Woah, woah, woah. Wasn’t the fact that hard counters were less needed because battles took place almost entirely in team fights, so people could specialize more?

Don’t get me wrong, people played hard counter cheese all the time in GW1. IWAY, Ranger spikes, Lightning orb spikes, etc. All of which had another from of hard counter cheese that could deal with them. The difference, and this is absolutely the key difference, is that a balanced build could beat all of them. Every single one. The problem with running a balanced build instead of a cheese, go ham build was that the balanced build required skill to play usually by out-maneuvering and outplaying the opponent by splitting effectively.

Secondly, the moment someone talks about how gw2 isn’t focused on fighting and instead about just capping points is the moment I tune out. There are plenty of team fights in gw2. 1v1’s are a rarity if a team knows what they are doing. Currently, warriors are a class that every team builds around. They are not just an addition to the team to contribute, they ARE the team. Everything is built around them right now. What’s worse is the warrior spec is so mind-numbingly, boringly easy to play. This is simply not fun to play or to play against. I, and I’m sure others, would be okay with it if it was challenging to play like a guardian can be, but it’s not.

The fundamental problem, and the key issue that you are missing, is that these hard counters make the game shallow, boring, and bland to play. My hambow warrior beats your spirit ranger! Yeah? Well my Necro beats your Engie! This isn’t fun when we have such a limited number of classes to play. Compounding the issue, these classes are super easy. Spirit ranger? Press 1 on your keyboard and move around a bit – done. Necro? Spam marks and fear and auto attack with scepter just keep at range – done. Warrior? Press one button called “i win” and proceed with pressing all your attack buttons. If you need to cleanse conditions? plop a huge AoE fire field on point – done. These counters works for games like pokémon – not a game aiming to be highly competitive. Its not super effective!

Proven.2854:

In lanes, you can very often end up in situations where one player can’t do much against another without using their tower/creeps/allies for added cover. Some Champions and builds are in a clear advantage against others in 1v1 situations.

And there are a lot of subtle things you can do to help mitigate/deal these counters. Again – this is the important part – those subtle things you can do are what makes the game interesting. They are called heros, btw, not champions.

Archaon.6245:

Terribads killing other terribads in “rambo mode” 1v1 in a team game while ppl discussing about worthless 1v1 specs…still wonder how this thread reached so many responses, but for sure you can get why 90% gw2 pvp population is beyond braindead and every single competitive side is already gone. All is vain

The bots in dota are better team players than most of the gw2 spvp community.

Chaith.8256:

That’s very true. And to add on to that, the interests of the sPvP community and where the development budget needs to go is completely out of alignment.

Just play dota Chaith. U know you want to. It’s free and they have better pvp than GW2.

Proven.2854:

But can that happen in any balanced game with more than one type of damage?

GW1 had enchants, hexes, conditions, raw damage, armor piercing capabilities, evasions, stances, item bundles, and more. Any form of “hard counters” in that game were so highly circumstantial that it was a rarity to see them in any high level play. Every skill had a give and take. It’s what made builds in guild wars, guild wars. So yes, you can create a meta that puts hard counters on a back burner. In GW2, I don’t think it’s possible for them to even exist because of the structure of the game – many, if not all, need to be removed. Condition nukes also have to be toned down as well as it spawned this terrible meta.

To be honest, I’d rather play Dota than play this trash of a metagame right now.

Interesting take on IP. Other suggestions are to have it proc an indicator underneath the engie and the next attack applies the incendiary powder. This way a person fighting the engie can see the powder proc and have a chance to avoid it.

Proven.2854:

Warriors even served a similar purpose back in GW1, with pressure team comps pushing down on the enemy with a tanky frontline while the backline attacked with condition/hex pressure or spike damage.

Absolutely not the same thing. The typical warrior setup in GW1 was a W/E evis shock war. It used its burst combo with frenzy stance (which doubled the damage the warrior took while increasing his attack speed). It would line up a spike with a knockdown via shock or bulls charge (both incredibly balanced skills in GW1) then spike them to hell via combo plus frenzy stance. He then would activate another stance, usually sprint or rush (preferably rush, which was another incredibly balanced skill) in order to cancel the frenzy stance and gain himself a speed boost. If team co-ordination went well, this spike would catch the opponent (mainly monks) offguard and easily down the opponent. Alternatively, the warriors would wait for the midline to shut down the monks and THEN spike.

The primary source of pressure was the slow ticking from apply poison via ranger in which the ranger would spread poison to many different targets by switching targets constantly. The best rangers would be able to do this and monitor the targets that they needed to shut down via their interrupts. It was a give and take and for a good ranger, and the best could find that equilibrium easily.

The important aspect was, during the spike of the warrior (which was a very short time), the warrior can get hit for double damage, greatly exposing them when they did their spike. If they over-extended too much, it usually meant a dead warrior. In other words, they weren’t the sustain monsters we see in GW2 today.

Yasha.5963:

Carpboy.7145:

Its not like hes doing anything to you anyway. Just leave.

In spvp you have to take nodes. If he is standing on the node and I can’t kill him relatively quickly then its an issue for me.

Most likely the banner war will be on far. You will fair far better in a team fight dropping clusterbombs, poison fields, and ganking low targets or even assisting home if the enemy is trying to push than solo-pushing far. Remember, if the warrior is sitting afk on his home, that means you can usually create a numbers advantage at mid if your team isn’t completely terrible. At the very least, you will not put your team one man out (trying to cap a node that has already been capped) if you choose to not fight the banner warrior. If you can get another teammate to join your to push far, however, this is a different story.

All are viable.

Against a ranger who is built to last, a thief’s only hope is the tree he steals from you.

style.6173:

A decent mesmer should be able to beat any other class. They are the best 1v1 class.

Lol no they’re not. They’re not for the same reasons why thief isn’t.

Ugruk.4069:

Lemme guess the skilled 11k eviscerate to the face sponsored by intelligence sigil?

Don’t forget the kraft sponsor.

Gf’s: cruel mistresses.

Long story short, if you’re not using 30 in wilderness survival, you’re doing it wrong on a ranger.

Lol soilder, have at it.