Guild Wars 2

As the title suggests, surprise is what it’s all about in these multiplayer games.

What I mean by this is in relation to how people deal with surprise versus lack of surprise, I can use two common builds from GW2 as an example, but it also works in other games that have a surprise element.
From GW2 there is the BS build vs the bull rush -> HB build (with quickness), the BR-BH build works by charging a player, stunning them and then killing them however it’s all completely visual in its execution, you can see the warrior, see the bull rush and see the HB and the only surprise felt by the victim is when they initially saw the warrior.
However this is different for the thief, as a BS build will optimally never let the victim see them until the damage has been done, but the greatest difference between BR-HB and BS is the time at which the player is surprised (which leads to a moment of indecision), BR-BH only has surprise when the player sees the warrior giving them plenty of time to react, but for the BS build the player only sees the thief when they are almost dead or in a downed state which causes a greater delay in the time the brain sends out a reaction than in the warriors case.

An example from another game is a sniper vs an assault guy (BF3), an assault guy can just run’n’gun like a warrior, with the same effect from the brains perspective, but a sniper produces the same result as the thief, one moment you are running between points and the next you are dead because someone shot you from 700 meters away.

The damage isn’t what’s killing most people so much as the indecision created when the brain gets surprised which leads to a greater period of inaction for the average human, and that period of inaction is what surprise builds/classes/weapons in games take advantage of… it’s also why they are the most hated/nerfed/changed/complained about items/builds in most games.

In summary, people are fine with 100b warriors killing them in 1.5 seconds for the same reason that they aren’t fine with BS thieves killing them in 1.5 seconds, it all has to do with how the human brain processes a surprising event and kicks into action.

I’m surprised you lived as long as you did, although that probably has more to do with the SB and (player) skill, you have a better chance to kill a bunker ele in melee range because of the higher damage output but that’s the range they also do greater damage to you.

The best option for killing a bunker elementalist is with a dazelock build so that they can’t actually DO anything… worthwhile at any rate.

VictorTroska.3725:

spitfire.1563:

Coffeebot.3921
+1
u absolutely right
only those, who tries and tries again, explore, get experience – will became a good pvp players
other will just creating new topics on forum about OP class or OP build

yeah, or reroll thief and faceroll to glory with 2 buttons. Been there, done that.

And it sounds like you were bored the whole time, so if that’s the case then why would you do it in the first place given that glory doesn’t inherently do anything for you?

Hell, given that everybody starts with 5 character slots, there is a good chance that many people will have a thief regardless of changes made to the class or its (perceived) power, additionally, it’s not like everyone that plays the thief is doing so because they think the (front loaded) burst damage is high and want a slice of the action.

If you can have 62.5% of all classes in sPvP from the start, then there is a good chance that most people will have what ever is thought of as being “OP” at any given point in time, if you can’t get over that fact then why even bother complaining on the forums?

Based purely on your reply, I get the feeling that you’re the kind of person who won’t go to a restaurant because their burgers were bad and yet never try anything else to see if it’s better.

The counters to a high burst thief are; don’t travel alone, don’t use a glass cannon to fight a glass cannon – unless you get the jump on them, use more defense, get more practice, play a thief to work out their strengths and weaknesses… then exploit them.

You’ll lose lots, you’ll die lots, you’ll get frustrated, but at some point you’ll become a better player… or you could make a thread on the forums saying that you would rather not play instead of trying to get better, in which case most people would be hard pressed to care if you aren’t playing any form of pvp.

One more thing, if you don’t take steps to get better as a player then when the thief changes come you’ll find yourself back on the forums complaining about the new “OP” thing with the same results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

On a side note that is related to this thread; if someone uses something that is OP why are they a noob/unskilled for doing so? I always thought it was smart to use any advantage you have access to if it means further advancement over not using that advantage.
It’s not like they are breaking any rules or knowingly exploiting any bugs (that could get them banned), so why complain about someone being smarter than you when they aren’t doing anything wrong? To me it just makes you (complainers) look like they are naive in their world views and don’t really understand that life is inherently not fair.

I dunno about removing some sharks but I’d prefer the sharks to do less damage and have less health, in addition to that it’d be nice if they became neutral when the point is neutralized.

If it’s a P/P thief and they are shooting you from their blind field then your best bet is to force them to use more initiative so they can’t drop that field anymore, if it’s an x/P then the same tactic works but not standing in melee range works better.

After the patch, there will certainly be new and more popular builds (FotM) but the problem is the “meta” of s/t PvP, or more to the point the tPvP meta is leaking into sPvP and making more games be a case of bunker builds to win rather than varied ‘fun’ builds to play.

A crappy way of saying: I play a thief and enjoy a bursty high damage + low survival build, but I keep losing to bunker builds, so I feel the need to run a bunker build just to win.

Not to mention that this would completely kill BS being used in PvE and would be pretty useless in sPvP/WvW because of the low uptime of stealth when in a group fight, not to mention that the debuff that cancels stealth skills lasts some 3-4 seconds, so you would only have a max of 6-7 seconds to land a CnD/stealth skill and hit someone who is actively trying to not be hit… and you would need to repeat this 5 times to get to the current level of BS.

The general idea is interesting but the examples, numbers and execution as well as lack of thought for all aspects of the game reduce the overall applicability of the idea.

Comparative damage to CnD? HA HA HA.
CnD in sPvP gear (zerkers) has a tooltip damage of 1290, FS has a tooltip of 645 + 1290 this of course assumes that FS works perfectly every time, and it’s 2 less initiative than CnD.

Although, it really needs to be faster in animation, a 10-20 range boost (hotfix) and an actual fix to the whole “flank”/evade part that affects S/x rangers and S/D thieves… personally I’d like to see a double 250 range shadow step with striking and a rename of the skill and maybe a +1 initiative cost (step strike, step strike, done).

In my opinion points should only be awarded on a win or loss, and nothing else should affect an individuals points gain. BUT… the devs would need to make a good system to weed out the botters.

Stealth is only really good against people who don’t have any patience, experience or quite frankly are of average intelligence, mostly because it’s easy to work out where the thief will appear after using a stealth (away from the danger if they are sub 70% health).

Af far as damage is concerned, most of it comes from out #1 slot, sure there are a bunch of backstab builds that do high burst… but they are getting changed, after that one will have P/x condition (slow and boring), D/x blunted burst (blunted and mobile), S/x (immobilize and auto-attack of doom) and SB (condition or heavy but slow damage)… so essentially 4 build variations based on our MH weapon, but the builds aren’t terribly fantastic or interesting else people would be using then more as of now.

I’d love Corrosive Traps and Trickster just to encourage the use of stuff other than passive signet use + a stealth in PvE

It’s a known bug, the devs have a fix already and it’s in testing for next patch.

42.5k Bladetrail.

It’s kind of terrible only being able to use a 1 second cast venom that lasts 1.5 seconds, due to the attack speed of our spear we can theoretically apply the venom with the first hit and it will have worn off when we land our last hit… so all in all it’s just a terrible PvE venom, although it could be worse, we could be elementalists and need to spend 30 points for our underwater elite.

I say the same thing to all the thief haters (or nerf cryers), go play a thief in sPvP and see just how amazing(ly crap) stealth is in a BS build (3 seconds where you can still be hit with AoE). Go see just how amazing you are at team fights after killing one person with the BS combo (if you are lucky you’ll have 9 initiative and ~70% health due to incidental AoE). Go see just how effective(ly terrible) builds other than BS are due to the utilities and weapon skills we get (but don’t use because they are terrible).

Essentially, bury your ego and prejudice and go play a thief for a while, if you do well great but remember… your experience isn’t everyone’s experience.

Also… go kitten a kitten you kittening kitten kittener. Couldn’t understand that? Yeah, that’s why word replacement filters don’t work, better off just removing the words from the post ANet.

Zato.3054:

Maybe we can have dual 1hand sword as an option?
It’s weird when we can dual pistol, dual dagger and main hand sword, why not even off-hand

It’d be nice, but if it were to happen I’d hope they would then give the weapons a focus like; Pistols = conditions, Swords = Damage, Dagger = 50/50

For P/P – I’d like to remove the daze from Head Shot and add it to Body Shot (remove the vuln. from bodyshot) and add 4 seconds of confusion to Head Shot.
Add a 9th shot to Unload that cripples the target for 3 seconds.
Add burning for 1 second per pulse to Black Powder.

For P/D – I’d like to remove the dagger strike from Shadow Strike and instead leave a small AoE poison.

For D/P – I’d like to remove the blind from Shadow Shot and add a 0.25 second daze as well as a short duration confusion.

For D/D – I’d like to remove the vuln. from Cloak and Dagger and add a poison instead (lowering direct damage of CnD too).

For S/D – I’d like to see Flanking Strike changed to a double 250 range leap rather than a “flanking strike”… also a rename.
Lower Infiltrator’s Strike initiative cost to 1 so that it’s inline with other 2nd slot costs, also lower the duration of immobilize by 1/2 seconds and increase its damage.
Move the weakness from Crippling Strike to Slice.

For S/P – I’d like to see Pistol Whip have the stun and self root removed and a 2 second cripple added, along with it’s cast time increased by 1/4 of a second and a damage increase.

For SB – I’d like to see 1200 range on Choking Gas and Infiltrators Arrow, the removal of blind from Infiltrators Arrow and 5 stacks of Bleed from the small explosion from Cluster Bomb.

For Steal – I’d like to see its cooldown lowered by 15 seconds (from base) as well as a base damage equal to 75% of mugs damage, with a 1% damage increase per point in trickery.
Remove direct damage from Mug (trait) and replace it with two stacks of confusion that last 10 seconds.

I’m not trying to say that thieves aren’t FOTM or anything, I’m just saying that one or two or 500 screen shots don’t prove anything beyond your poor luck.

I had someone in my guild today claim that the team with the most thieves in it always won, so I played 5 games and won 20% of them… and my team always had more thieves than the other one.

Because posting anecdotal screenshots means something right?

I get the feeling that they will lower the rear portion of backstab by 25% (for me 2000 down to 1500) and raise the active portion of Assassin’s Signet by 5% (15% bonus to 20% bonus for 5 attacks) with a 3-5% increase in Wild Strike and Lotus Strike damage.

melchiz.7182:

Krathalos.3461:

Apparently you just ignored the last few posts. Other classes can do it just as well as thief. However, since they’re not as widely used (since those classes have more viable builds), they aren’t complained about and, therefore, aren’t in line for nerfs.

I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you.

If you want to talk raw damage, yes, other classes can produce similar numbers. No class, however, can produce such numbers with the mobility and flexibility of the Thief. The Thief chases and escapes superbly, has great gap closers, initiates strongly, can survive despite glass cannon builds thanks to stealth, and so on.

Please O great overlord, point me to this build you describe; a build with MULTIPLE gap closers (BS build has one), superb escapes (BS build has the only useful thief heal) and high survival due to stealth (BS build has C&D + heal).

It sounds to me like you don’t actually know what the backstab build is, it has one gap closer (steal), one ability stealth (C&D), one heal + 3 second stealth (Heal), not a single defensive trait or skill and a 45 second timer between the death of one person and the potential death of another… it’s also not a team oriented build so it’s less common in sPvP/tPvP.

To reiterate, you have a very high chance to kill one person every 45 seconds and a very high chance of dying after killing someone, and if you mess up even once you’ll probably die… is this REALLY what you are complaining about?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted you guys to know we’re looking at this specifically right now. We will probably bring down the raw spike DPS for some builds, but we’ll be careful to increase other areas to compensate.

Too many people have a vested interest in seeing Thieves have far lower burst damage for this to be a good idea.

So based on what you said, backstab based build(s) will probably get nerfed… along with other unspecified spike damage builds. The problem is the unspecified “other areas to compensate” bit, increasing the damage of dagger auto-attack or Heartseeker will cause complaints, and you can’t really increase dagger offhand damage because it’s already good and not all backstab builds use a dagger offhand… there isn’t a whole lot left to “compensate” a nerf to backstab without making a different build just as (supposedly) OP as backstab.

Another point to add, continually nerfing the one profession that is fundamentally different from everything else can make people wonder if the different profession was a massive design flaw/headache waiting to happen.

Would +1 but it disappeared.

OP offers a “solution” that contains a hotfix and completely guts PvE thieves… well done OP.

I’ve heard that the rendering issue is a problem in WvW, it’s ~2 seconds of extra invisibility, the first step is to actually fix this bug, not introduce a hotfix, after that’s done the devs would need to gather more data on what’s happening and act according to that data… not the whimsical ideas of one player.

The OPs post didn’t really talk about stealth so much as changing backstab to not be the death of glass cannons, it’d be a good idea to stay on track for your own topic OP.

Backstab isn’t the problem contrary to popular belief, the problem is the interaction of specific traits, utilities and weapons as well as initiative all of which makes thieves a very bursty assassin… and it’s unlikely to change due to the length of time the game has been out. The design of a thief causes it to be deadly against other glass cannon people (every 45 seconds) and pretty useless outside of that period, if you want backstab to change you would be better off asking for the thief to be redesigned entirely because it’s flaws will always allow a bursty “glass-cannon killer” build to exist.

Thief: A person who steals another person’s property, esp. by stealth and without using force or violence.

Of all the skills, abilities and weapons we have available… only one steals something and yet we are called a Thief for some reason, we are less thieves and more rogues/assassins regardless of what the profession is called or what the devs say.

If you finished every fight (PvE) at 50% health which isn’t unreasonable for a thief, and in the time it takes for you to regen to 100% you would also regen 15 initiative points.

If it takes 5 seconds after the end of combat to get to 100% health and given that thieves are a spammy profession to begin with, we would become ridiculously powerful in 1v1 chain farming with that improved initiative regen.

3 Unloads or 3 Pistol Whips kill most mobs and also use most of out initiative, if we could then just wait 5 seconds and do it again it would be counter-productive.

I’m just rambling here… but it would be a bad idea from a speed killing point of view and it would also cause some people to want their cooldowns to reset between fights aswell.

The one thing I wish people would do with these threads is identify the skill/ability/trait which is being compared to the supposed overpowered skill/ability/trait.

Something can’t be “overpowered” as it implies it’s more powerful than it should be, but we the players can only work out what is “too powerful” by comparing stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, it is annoying but no other class has their cooldowns reset between fights which is a direct comparison of systems (one of the few that can be made with initiative).

Yukishiro.8792

Well yes…. we could change almost every trait in the game to be as effective as mug, and rebalance the whole game accordingly.

Or we could just make mug as effective as almost every other trait.

I am not sure you thought that one out very carefully.

Mug is simply too good. Traits in this game arn’t supposed to give you 5k extra burst damage for a class that already is the master of burst damage. Mug simply doesn’t fit with the power of the vast majority of traits in this game. Mug should hit for about half as hard as it does to balance it with the basic trait model of this game.

So you would rather turn gold into trash because it’s “too good” instead of turning trash into gold and increasing the trait variability… good game design there, what you are suggesting simply results in everything being nerfed into one homogenized mass of mediocrity.

Also define what is too powerful about steal traited with mug and use OTHER abilities as examples of “good” and “bad” instead of saying mug is just “too good” and leaving it at that, otherwise it just looks like you know nothing about development and are just annoyed at people because they can do something you can’t.

Yukishiro.8792

/facepalm

Your example is so bad it is literally stunning. A totally non-equivalent ability that isn’t even a trait.

The point with mug is it’s a 10 point trait that gives you another 4-5k to your burst for no downside. Traits like that don’t exist on other classes. It is simply too good for a 10 point trait compared to other options out there.

P.S. There are several other traits out there that make things that didn’t do damage before do damage. For example the necro trait that makes fear do damage. It does about 700 damage/second. Nothing near the strength of mug.

I’m impressed, you did come up with an ability that has to be traited to deal damage, now tell me… how is a ranged gap closer not equivalent to a ranged gap closer? One is “instant” and the other isn’t, one has a 900 range the other has a 1200 range, one has a base 45 second CD the other has a base 20 second CD, one has to be traited to deal damage the other doesn’t… seems pretty kitten similar from a game development standpoint.

Sure traiting into mug only costs 10 points but that also removes other options for doing so… but what you really want is for mug to do less damage because you don’t think a 45 second CD warrants 4-5k CRITICAL damage (hint it doesn’t always crit) for 10 trait points, so tell me, why don’t you advocate for thief deadly arts tier one traits being buffed to make them more appealing than mug? It does the same thing in the end, you get less mug damage (due to less people using it) and we get better tier one trait choices.

Yukishiro.8792:

Coffeebot.3921:

I have no idea why people say mug’s damage is high given that it’s essentially a 32-45 second cooldown (depending on traits) hell a warriors burst skill has a 10 second cooldown and can hit for 2-5k (depending on weapon) but people aren’t asking for nerfs there.

Know of any other traits that give you a risk-free, effectively undodgeable 4-5k instant cast on an ability you already use as a gap closer? Didn’t think so.

Warrior Greatsword: Rush (base 20 second CD, traited to 16) 1200 range, takes UP TO 2 seconds to close the gap, deals equivalent damage… oh sure it’s not instant travel, but you can dodge a steal just like you can dodge a rush, it’s just your fault if you can’t do it as often.

Know of any other usable ability that has to be TRAITED to do damage? Didn’t think so… we can play this game all day, the fact is steal is a 32-45 second CD and does damage accordingly, if the thief worked on CDs rather than initiative then most of our skills would be hitting that hard if not harder as they have to hit for less because they are able to be spammed.

I have no idea why people say mug’s damage is high given that it’s essentially a 32-45 second cooldown (depending on traits) hell a warriors burst skill has a 10 second cooldown and can hit for 2-5k (depending on weapon) but people aren’t asking for nerfs there.

Its damage is bloody high for its initiative cost but only if you allow both strikes to hit.

However the problem of it tracking its target is well… a problem especially given that it doesn’t always hit a stationary target let alone moving targets.

The method for reliably achieving large crits with blade trail is fairly simple, it has to do with the interaction of Forceful Greatsword in the Arms trait line which gives might on each crit, if you crit 7 targets on the way out and then crit them on the blades return each target would give the warrior another stack of might which would increase the total damage for the next hit.

Dunno about a full on sPvP game but I got a 42.5k blade trail against heavy target golems using sPvP gear.

Hey, thought I should enter this here, be warned… there’s simple maths.

If you do 1000 damage and your base crit damage is 150% then you would hit for 1500 damage. However to compare crit damage against normal damage we must consider two situations, first is increasing damage by 50% and the second is increasing crit damage by 50%.

Increasing damage by 50% would lead to 1500 damage, on a crit a person would deal 150% damage, as such the total damage of a crit would be 2250.

Increasing crit damage by 50% would lead to 200% crit damage, on a hit of 1000 damage the person would deal 2000 damage.

Based on these numbers we can see that a damage increase creates more over all damage (crit and non-crit) than just increasing crit damage alone, this leads to a situation where increasing damage is ~15% better than increasing crit damage by the same percentage.

Based on this information we can conclude that Superior rune of the Scholar which gives 8% crit damage, 165 power and 10% damage while health is above 90% is the single best rune for backstab thieves based on the fact that it provides the single largest damage boost of any rune/gem combination.

Divinity… +10 to all stats and 2% crit damage, no, no it’s not good for condition damage builds.

Rottaran Owain.6789

No mention of class, build, or even if sPvP, or WvW. Nothing to discuss.

For all we know, you’re wearing level 1 gear on an elementalist.

In all honesty we know less than we have been told because there was no screen shot to verify the damage log, but assuming the numbers we have been given are correct then we can ascertain that he has a maximum of 19,525 HP, based on the damage numbers we can assume he was in WvW and using full berserker’s gear and his opponent was also in full berserker’s gear that was at least full exotic armor with an exotic weapon.

Given that a warrior or necromancer without any vitality from traits or gear has 18,372, if we add 5% bonus health from a single orb of power then they would have 19,290 HP (which doesn’t include the stamina bonus from a single orb).

From this we can conclude that the OP has a pure damage build with berserker’s gear and in all probability he wasn’t playing a warrior or necromancer, the OP is complaining on the thief forum so we can conclude that they don’t use a thief, guardians tend to live longer than other low and medium health classes due to their survivability and skills so there is a low chance that they are using a guardian. Mesmers, from my understanding, are less likely to use a berserker’s set due to lack of survivability which lowers usefulness as such I doubt they were using a mesmer.

Based on all my theories the OP is most likely playing a ranger, engineer or elementalist, the OP uses a pure damage build with berserkers gear… man I’m an arrogant kitten, but the OP is worse for complaining about dying quickly when they are playing a glass cannon, which in GW2 is more glass than cannon.

Blazer Hellsing.9184

P/P and all Pistol builds would be tPvP viable with the following changes:

1. Vital Shot: Instead of bleed, it adds 1 stack of vulnerability for 5 sec.
1.1 Sneak Attack: remains the same.
2. Body Shot: Instead of vulnerability, it adds 3-4 stacks of bleed for 6-8 sec.
3. Unload: Damage increased by 15%, fire speed increased by 20%.
4. Head Shot: Damage increased by 300% (it has to become a mid combat viable interrupt instead of an anti-rez/stomp/quickness).
5. Black Powder: Reduce the initiative cost by 1.

The suggested changed to #1 and #2 would be nice as pistol main hand just hits like a nerf gun because of the bleed which restricts that weapon set to a condition damage armor set (which runs counter to the direct damage of Unload).

Number 3 The damage increase could happen but given ANets dislike of one button wonders (for thieves) I doubt it would happen

Number 4 is unlikely to happen even though its damage would still be less than 1 (in coefficient)

Number 5 unlikely to happen because of standardization of thief offhand costs, in other words, unless they changed C&D to 5 then they won’t change BP to 5.

I agree with the general idea of what the OP is saying, after one has done all the dungeons and done the three main story paths then there isn’t much left to do PvE wise beyond vanity features like acquiring a legendary weapon (which is most of the PvE content available right now).

WvW is a good idea from ANet, but at present if one server decides to spend a lot of money on siege weapons early on then they will tend to dominate the other two servers and it then becomes a case of spawn camping (which is boring for all servers involved) and the benefits of WvW are… questionable, it’s mostly about zerging large groups of other players and clashing “armies” than gear or benefits though.

As for sPvP, it’s the only form of long life content in the game… but that’s the case for every MMORPG currently on the market, but it’s imbalanced (in many areas) both from a mechanical aspect (actual imbalances) and from a perceptual aspect (perceived imbalances) but again, that’s the same with every form of sPvP in every game ever.

So really, if you don’t care about vanity (achievements/titles/looks) and you don’t enjoy sPvP/WvW then there isn’t much for you… FOR NOW, but there will be content at some point, and you can just pick up right where you left off, it’s not like the game will charge you a monthly fee for it.

BioHazard.2147:

What I would like to see.
-More viable builds for BOWS ( we are rangers this should be our primary weapon regardless ) and we should excel at Longbow and Shortbow ABOVE any other class.

How amusing, another person that doesn’t understand the meaning of ranger. I’ll be kind and inform you, the name ranger doesn’t have anything to do with ranged attacks or weapons although this is a common misconception but it’s still wrong, it instead refers to someone who “ranges” aka travels far and wide (usually in wilderness) a classic example of a ranger is Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. So now you know assuming you read this, but I doubt you will read it or take it into consideration.

Stin.9781

Not all of those work Sword and dagger Flanking strike has slow animation, clunky pathing and sometimes misses on its own, i would not call that a damage skill, unless you are talking PvE wise, which again is offtheme.

I was using that to show that there was one damage ability for that weapon set, not so much that it was a good damage ability, if we are honest about it neither Shadow Shot or Shadow Strike are used for their damage, if you have a Heartseeker build then you aren’t going to use Death Blossom (due to lack of condition damage) and if you have a pistol main hand then you really need condition damage to make it useful but that lowers the burst effectiveness of Unload, at present Pistol Whip seems to do less damage than auto attacking and you are correct about Flanking Strike.

The only good ability the thief class has is Heartseeker all the rest are lackluster in their output vs. initiative cost which still leads thieves to be a one button wonder… or more specifically thieves only have one useful initiative based damaging button from all their weapon sets.

The biggest problem the thief will face is the initiative system, the reason for this is due to the fact that initiative rewards players for efficient usage rather than varied usage.

Just looking at the damaging abilities of the various weapon set combinations you can see that many sets have only one damaging ability that uses initiative;
Sword-Dagger: Flanking strike (4 initiative)
Sword-Pistol: Pistol Whip (5 initiative)
Dagger-Dagger: Heartseeker (3 initiative) AND Death Blossom (5 initiative)
Dagger-Pistol: Heartseeker (3 initiative) AND Shadow Shot (4 initiative)
Pistol-Pistol: Unload (5 initiative)
Pistol-Dagger: Shadow Strike (4 initiative)

That’s a list of initiative using abilities that deal significant damage, as you can easily see there aren’t enough abilities there for a thief to be anything but a one button wonder, hell with the way stats work in GW2 having a pistol in the main hand requires the use of condition damage and power to make it mediocre (otherwise it’s terrible) but those stats counter the use of Unload or Shadow Strike which benefit mostly from power/precision/crit damage.

So to all the people complaining about one button wonder thieves, based on this information can you suggest any way for a thief to NOT be forced to spam one button when the system punishes us for using all of our skills?

Mistake #1 A ranger doesn’t specialize in ranged combat, that’s a misnomer generated by the name. The ranger is someone who ranges far and wide, essentially meaning someone who travels great distances.

Mistake #2 ANet has limited resources and can’t work on everything at once, if you stop being impatient and just play the game, things will get resolved… hell, go play another profession if you are dissatisfied with the ranger, it’s not like your ranger is going to get deleted if you stop playing it.