Guild Wars 2

I present you my season 1-3 experience:

Team: thief please change.
Me: why?
Team: thief sucks.
Me: well you guys begged for thief nerfs for years. Enjoy the results <3
Team: thief you are <include a lot of various swearing with and without parents involvement, death wishes etc. here>. We are afk.
Me: reported.
Customer support: too busy posting muffin pics on reddit xo xo xo <3

Now that i think about it, i should make it to a comic lol

Deep at night i think about how i could kill people in pvp o.o

As far as names go, i usually pick very short names (since enemy can’t see/target you behind rock, walls, etc. if you have short name), which usually don’t have deep meaning xD e.g. Shsx (shs for shadowstep). They tend not to be taken o.o

Zelulose.8695:

Omg I never though about it before we can use all for shatters 4 times in a row without stopping. It would take serious timing but it would go f5—>f1—>f2—>f3—>f4—> signet of Illusion (SoI)—>f1—>f2—>f3—>f4-f5-f1—>f2—>f3—>f4—>(SoI)—>f4-1-f1—>f2—>f3—>f4 that’s insane I feel like a player might not make it to f4 a couple times but it it is possible with rearranged keybindings. This is insane especially with blind on shatter/heal on shatter either or.

Edit just tried it. And it is possible to do this it is VERY difficult manually. But that being said 18 shatters in a row. May be more useful in PvE because I am not sure if it is possible to use the combo flawlessly in pvp. (Thats 18 instant blinds over 5 seconds not including damage)

Seen top mes doing something like that, maybe not 18 shatters but close enough.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Just delete Revealed Training. Nobody wants it when it was in GM and nobody wants it now that it’s in Master — Panic Strike is obviously more valuable for that slot. Then you can put Leeching in its former spot. Revealed is a complete opposite of stealth, thus it doesn’t belong in SA.

You forget majority of thieves…. actually pve and they probably won’t welcome such change.

Kageseigi.2150:

Eval.2371:

Sad thing is, if they were to change this, any half decent thief would know how to use bound and heartseeker properly to get the same four leap finishers. I dare anet to fix this.

Very sad indeed. I may not be a decent Thief, but I hope I’m at least half decent. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to Bound :-(

Just play pvp, don’t need 4 leaps there to get job done – usually a waste of ini.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Cynz.9437:

Roshi.1976:

So if this “bug” was not intended, then that means anet had no idea about it from release. Because every competent S/D thief knew about it… just goes to show how little anet actually knows about this class.

Oh i am sure they knew about it, it was explained on forums quite few times. There are some vids too, i think. My wild guess is, recent changes were made to please wvw crowd.

Also, did anyone notice: nobody plays thieves in touneys -> Anet throws some little buffs at class -> Sind plays thief for fun in tourneys -> nerfs after nerf lel. Meanwhile mesmers are on top of the food chain for 4 seasons straight and people still flame and cry rivers if someone plays thief on their team.

Short of the thief playing D/P and spamming stealth to backstab, I can’t see why.

Funny thing, backstab was already not exactly best thing to use in pvp thanks to low dmg + passives/blocks/dmg redux on enemy and aoe flying around. You would do more dmg with AA in the time you gain stealth, get behind target and get through miriad of blocks. Now there is like…. 0 reason to use it besides opener maybe. What bugs me a lot actually is sb stealth attack – sb already has long cast times/animations/travel time and then you are stuck with CD on AA as well. I AM NOT SOME FLIPPIN NECRO OR WAR WITH 23+K HP to leisurely sit around with such long CDs/animations.

I just think timing is funny. People dusted out their thieves in s3 → NEEEERFFFSSSS!!!!! BUG FIXESSS that in a way could be considered a nerf. For some reason devs still didn’t find time to fix bugs that currently put thieves in disadvantage and get them killed (infamous no valid path to hope, attacks not connecting for target turning around etc.)

Zintrothen.1056:

Thieves are gods…if played well. The vast majority of thieves suck. A small portion is good enough to get somewhere, and then there’s the best. The best make the class truly OP.

Thieves are squishy but deal ungodly damage. A good thief can deal that damage while not getting hit.

So yes, thieves are OP. Most thieves will deny it, but most thieves suck or are extremely bias. Same thing goes for mesmers.

I love such arguments. The only problem with this logic is: for some reason most thieves “suck”, yet apparently a lot of players using other classes don’t……. why is that hm hm? I guess all good players don’t pick thief class on first place and all bad players pick thief? Like there is extra warning on class selection screen by thief: WARNING!!!! ONLY FOR NOOBS!

Reality is, the class is still being balanced around high risk/mediocre reward while every other class was just powercreeped to oblivion. On top of it, devs don’t want thief class to be independent in pvp – they made it pretty clear on stream, with their balance changes etc. If class is balanced around heavily relying on team to do well, then you not going to see “good” thieves when team just sucks – and this happens a lot in soloq. You can be top thief world and not being able to do crap, if you don’t have a single decent point holder on team. Devs artificially handicapping the class almost every single patch is not helping the case either.

To be fair, main issue is elite specs. They were made really strong on purpose (to promote sales) and now we have never ending powercreep :/ Worst part, since players in raids rely on elites we will never see them get really in-line with core builds.

PvP: i play generic d/p da/tr/dd, agi signet, shs, generocity runes, improv for double plasma, withdraw for torment removal. Interrupts and dodge INTO clones is key. Per usual, timing (use of withdraw, interrupts, plasma etc.) is everything for thief.

Can kill most mes with it. It does take long time to kill good mes (worth it, if they are attacking your point). Really good ones (cough Helseth, Misha, Frosty) won’t die to it however for obvious reasons.

Kageseigi.2150:

noot.8641:

Well, it was a bug, But the bug has been ingame since launch.

Do you know what else is a bug? Heartseeker’s length being affected by the direction of the camera. As in what gives the ability to leap four times through a single Black Powder. Directly from one of the programmers…

Action Cam + Thief = Issues

Joel Helmich.7398:

pointing the camera down does not shorten the Heartseeker’s leap, making it much more difficult to jump inside Black Powder multiple times.

The behavior you want is almost certainly a bug in the first place, so I’m not sure what to tell you.

LOL, i am sure they will get to this one day.

Roshi.1976:

So if this “bug” was not intended, then that means anet had no idea about it from release. Because every competent S/D thief knew about it… just goes to show how little anet actually knows about this class.

Oh i am sure they knew about it, it was explained on forums quite few times. There are some vids too, i think. My wild guess is, recent changes were made to please wvw crowd.

Also, did anyone notice: nobody plays thieves in touneys -> Anet throws some little buffs at class -> Sind plays thief for fun in tourneys -> nerfs after nerf lel. Meanwhile mesmers are on top of the food chain for 4 seasons straight and people still flame and cry rivers if someone plays thief on their team.

Weo weo.6378:

Cynz.9437:

Weo weo.6378:

Just play a thief and try it out for yourself.

It’s definitely not OP. You only need to go visit thief forums to see the general opinion of experienced thieves on their own class.

A good thief will decimate inexperienced players and seem impossible to catch/ beat due to their mobility. If they do get caught, failing to activate an escape or defensive utility OR IT BUGS OUT (which happens a lot) almost means certain death from most other classes.

They are a great roaming class, but they have very little margin for error. I personally love my thief because of the high risk high reward play style, but the class can get fairly stressful to play.

The only thing I would be annoyed about though is a Condi thief, which is hilarious to play in small skirmishes.

fix’d

>No Valid Path to Target
I cry everytime fam.

No valid path to HOPE << thief moto since 2012.

Vasdamas Anklast.1607:

What’s the new title btw? Salty legend?

Also, would be cool if we had some title for hitting legendary in 3-5 seasons spvp.

Hardcore Farmer
Devoted Farmer
Extreme Farmer
Farmicious

Weo weo.6378:

Just play a thief and try it out for yourself.

It’s definitely not OP. You only need to go visit thief forums to see the general opinion of experienced thieves on their own class.

A good thief will decimate inexperienced players and seem impossible to catch/ beat due to their mobility. If they do get caught, failing to activate an escape or defensive utility OR IT BUGS OUT (which happens a lot) almost means certain death from most other classes.

They are a great roaming class, but they have very little margin for error. I personally love my thief because of the high risk high reward play style, but the class can get fairly stressful to play.

The only thing I would be annoyed about though is a Condi thief, which is hilarious to play in small skirmishes.

fix’d

They won’t do it because “it would be too confusing for new players” <<< i still get a laugh from this one irl.

Sooooo many thieves, WTF teams would totally stack them if not for rules – stealth spells nerf was totally justified!!! Gotta stop thieves from dominating pvp for 3 seasons straight!

/sarcasm off

On more serious note: not really surprised about set ups. Fangirl mode on for Sind <3

John.8507:

Yes faced premade team. It was meant to be that only happened when 3 or more of you were partied. Not 2 or less.

This is a bug

just lol

DeceiverX.8361:

If you play D/P, it’s not a problem. If you play D/D, it is. I don’t whiff the air. But there’s also no reason why my enemies should get second/third/fourth chances from my attacks on passive skills and abilities when I had to do my best to just land CnD.

It’s really just that simple, and a perspective that needs to be recognized before debate.

Devs don’t care. People being crying how their passive auto-aegis/blocks gets neglected by backstab spam + SA trait got changed (for some reason they apparently thought that everyone will use it while revs and engis still have reveal on demand lel) so they changed all stealth skills. Just another stupid change done by people that never touched the class.

geekilo.8512:

Fighting condi class is like 80% trying to cleanse of the condi, other 20% actual fighting

inb4 dodge – you get condis on your by literary attacking them once and some crap is undodgeable

geekilo.8512:

Necro is dead …. what ???
I see condi flying everywhere, condi reaper, condi berzerker ….
CONDI META

same here, see 2 necros on each team almost every match

Andraus.3874:

You should send in a support ticket with those attachments.

Those are pointless usually.

Also, daily post:

Andraus.3874:

You should send in a support ticket with those attachments.

Those are pointless usually.

Also, daily post:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

why dismissed ?

Cynz,
why?
how come ?

Because with this system they would get to legend within day or two while soloq players will take ages to get there due to how system works (forced 50/50 w/l ratio).

That would cause premades and tourney players sit in 1 hour queues first 2 weeks lol.

ellesee.8297:

I caved and got overwatch. We play ok? I am esports Mcree.

i loved OW until i realized how crappy their ranked system is

need 15 wins to make up for 1 loss, you get punished for other (even enemy!!!) players leaving match etc. – no, ty

aaand OW suffers from same issues as GW2: no soloq so you get farmed by premades and forced 50/50 wl…..zzzzz

PierPiero.9142:

none was happy with leaderboard…. remember also this

not true

i found old(non-farm) LB fine, pvp just needed better reward system back then

It just means legend in s4 will be another farming achieve (like in all seasons so far tbh) but less frustrating for players in lower divisions. W/e really, could be worse (like pvp system in OW – yes, Blizz actually managed to create worst pvp system in entire gaming history). I am looking forward to changes they make after season ends.

I wouldn’t say DH are OP, stacking traps and high uptime on blocks is definitely obnoxious, then again they crumble under pressure. Bunker guard is still kind of a joke

Engis needed a lot of nerfs. They were too good at almost everything in this game besides teleports.

Staff is weakest build on thief? Since when? Staff works great vs other classes but.. lol thief. Thief weakest class? In some cases – yes, they are still better off than in season 1 although recent change to stealth attacks is most clueless, stupid, not thought through balance change since HoT release. It makes 0 sense since this game is flooded with blocks, invuls, passives and movement bug preventing you from landing strike but then again it is GW2 devs – no surprise here.

I can solo ele and i main “weakest” class in game lol.

Wars – they definitely could use some adjustment in defense department.

I am surprised you didn’t mention mesmer anywhere xD They have been on top of the food chain for 4 seasons now.

Generic unranked. Whenever i pvp i usually just focus on winning match (cap/decap, finish struggles etc.) and don’t pay attention to who (player) i am fighting (unless it is someone i know) or what is said on map chat. Match is over, we win. Enemy thief sends me this message. I haven’t said anything all match……. i am not even sure why i was supposed to rage o.o

Xillllix.3485:

Because instead of balancing skills to create build variety it seems the balance team just wants to “change the meta” which pretty much equals to them telling you what build to play.

More like balance went: MUST SELL HOT.

Splash screen are ok. Waiting ages to be able to leave match now is stupidly annoying and serves no purpose.

I don’t understand different exists either. It serves no real purpose.

The map is definitely bit too big, it is close to impossible to prevent enemy home cap at begin of the match unless you are thief and dump everything into gap closers but then you end up basically naked vs enemy with full CDs – not a good mix for thief, since Anet didn’t spam them with ridiculous passives like every other class.

I think bell point is kind of OK.

I wish all nodes had better LoS choices so you don’t get sniped across the map while trying to cap point (sup DH, druid, wars). Good example for semi LoS on point is waterfall in Foefire.

Also, from a lot of places around side nodes you can’t use spells like steal, shs etc. – old fashioned no path available. I often literary have to walk up into the point to actually be able to use those spells on enemy.

The rubberbanding continues

GL with RL stuff.

More like they should delete balancing team.

Came back to game after couple months pause, now every day i get frequent short lag spikes up to 400? ms in pvp matches which results in slide show in game.

Help?

Shadow.1345:

Saiyan.1704:

Here’s my list in terms of class unhappiness in PvP according to forum complaints.
Top is worse
1. Ele
2. Thief

That ends my list. Anyone else uncontent with their class? Who should be 3rd & 4th picks?

Thief and Ele mains are always unhappy with every balance pach.

Get nerfed for 4 years straight and forced into being team’s pet that is unable to do anything by itself – no wonder really.

Reem.3578:

Just came back after a while to discover this change.
Just when i thought we started getting to a better place…
You got my vote. This change was terribly wrong imo, and should be changed back asap.
I’m out of pvp until then… :/

(BTW: good to see you guys are still active! )

Sind dared to play thief for fun in tourney -> insta nerf to whole class lol. Now to actually efficiently use stealth attacks you would need some illegal 3rd party software to keep track of enemies INVISIBLE (w/o any tell/icon) defensive passives (and there are a lot of them). /slowclap

Yeah i get it too. I see guards rubberbanding during jump, slide show from time to time etc.
Ran Pingplotter (user friendly tracert), it seems like i have 20-30 ms till each hop but NCSOFT servers. On last hop i keep getting random spikes up to 400ms.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

As a necromancer who does not lik getting ganked by Thieves all day

I find this change to be total BS considering all the requirement for Dagger and Sword stealth attacks to be worth it is that they need to strike from side/back and on stealth timer and aftercast of the stealth attacks also count towards the cooldown enforced.

Revert this kitteny BS or show us dear balance team how do you make it work yourselves on something other than a golem dummy?

Well, they expect thief players to keep track of all passives of all 5 enemies in match while many of those passives don’t even have a tell icon. I don’t see how it is possible unless you are some kind of genius or use… illegal 3rd party software. In wow raids are designed around 3rd party add-ons, without those doing raids is humanly impossible now. Anet devs went same direction except add-ons are forbidden in GW2 lol.

That being said, CD on stealth attacks would be ok if there were less defensive passives and more tells (e.g. aura, icon etc.) for them.

Bossun.2046:

Backstab didn’t even hit that hard lol

Well, devs were never really aware what is really going on in pvp, ofc they wouldn’t know that backstab hits on average for 3k, if even, and involves too much effort/risk to be worth it compared to… lol auto attack.

I am just surprised that they effectively added 2 sec CD on failed backstab (made it require even more skill to land considering all the passive defensives; by all means, i am all up for “skilled gameplay”) but still continue with their “passives ftw” politics for other classes. All classes should be treated equally.

Worst part, many defensive passives don’t even have a tell so you actually have no way to tell whether your attack is going to land or not.

CynicalFred.9135:

Correct me if i’m wrong… but this sounds more like a bug fix than a nerf seeing as the point of reveal is to prevent the thief from using multiple stealth attacks in a short period of time. Seeing as it hits hard as balls and has no real cost even when it fails it’s not hard to see why you might want it to have some limitations.

- “hits hard as balls” – no it doesn’t actually, on average backstab hits for 3k in pvp matches, not to mention the patch affected ALL stealth attacks so even sb one, which does close to 0 dmg

- “has no real costs” – yes it does have costs, which is stealth and stealth has relative high costs, it is acquired either via high ini combos or high CDs…..and melee stealth attacks require you to be close to target and preferably behind it, which puts technically naked thief at HUGE risk. Not to mention successful hit applies revealed debuff which locks thief out of main defensive.

I actually just realized something: remember when there was BS bug that made BS apply reveal regardless whether you hit something or not. I think it wasn’t bug at all but test run for the current change :|

apharma.3741:

You really need to be more informative when you say “passives”.
What do you call passives?

Would you call an executioner trait passive as it activates instantly when targets are below 50% with no user interaction?

What about X on evade traits? There’s an active component in the requirement but sometimes it’s stupidly easy to hit that.

What about elixir S and other similar skills including mirror of anguish which have pretty high cooldowns? You’re not likely to bump into them more than once in a fight unless it really goes on for a long time though no user interaction is needed for it.

How about traits that grant boon X when you get boon Y or some other benefit from boon Y? Is that passive or is it active as you have to actively get boon Y.

Define what you mean as passive so the “balance” team can understand just what irks you.

I would say mostly defensive passives that require close to no player action, mirror anguish or nightmare runes 6th bonus are good examples. I am ok with passives that require you to actually do something but not the ones that require close to nothing.

Zenith.7301:

You’re such a joke. Other classes whiff a skill on aegis or a block and their skill goes on full cd. You whiff it and only need to wait 1 second to try again.

These thief crybabies.

actually it is 2 sec with aftercast, you can get 2 backstabs max in 1 stealth if you are really fast and precast bs while going stealth but normally just 1 which probably will get blocked or dodged or interrupted

my point is, enforcing active gameplay is fine but it doesn’t make sense that such balancing strategy is only applied to one class while other just ride passives on passives

also, personal attacks are hardly a good argument

Zintrothen.1056:

They nerfed backstab? It didn’t hit that hard… The problem was how hard Thieves hit AFTER backstab.

yeah, it has effectively 2 sec CD now, regardless whether you hit someone or not
that on top of reveal and all the CDs of the spells you need to cast to get stealth on first place

Since goal of the backstab nerf (yet another) was most likely to promote less spamming and more “skilled”-cast then i think passives for other classes need to be nerfed(removed), since they promote total opposite and it simply doesn’t make sense why one class is forced consistently into active play (which is a good thing, imo) while other classes continue to get more and more passives(which is not a good thing).

The way i see it, it is just another buff to classes with passives (because clearly they needed more of that). Backstab is already pretty worthless as far as correlation dmg to risk/setup effort goes. Now there is like 0 point using it besides nuking enemy thieves.

I am surprised it is 1 sec given how long aftercast is on bs which brings it to almost 2 sec CD. Might as well just delete backstab tbh.

SA is still unviable at higher levels since reveal applied by enemy is untouched. Changes to basi is probably only interesting thing.

As i said i have absolutely no guaranty when i get home from work during the week :|

Actually it is simple. Just make it that you need to do so many objectives in 24 hours.

Try to do guild missions with 1+ hour queues lel

Oh hell no, i xmuted mine right away.