Guild Wars 2

Again, the argument about skill complexity being treated as what defines good play just circles back to the argument on how the old D/D celestial ele in its complex rotations would then be similarly-arguable as the most difficult profession to play in the game. There’s so much more to player skill than pressing the right button at the right time. When you don’t have the “right button” to press, it warrants a deeper understanding of your kit and your enemy before such judgments can be made. Problems start arising when you reach top-tier play, however, when having that “right button” is essential because timing is so much more difficult to nail down and the workarounds just prove to be ineffective half the time. That’s why D/D ele was overpowered: it always had the right button at the right time to press, and not much thought was necessary in regards to what the opponent was doing to make it work.

Like I said, though, landing interrupts/skill timing is a basic part of the game/thief. Before PI and the buffs to DB, Headshot was used as an interrupt to an incoming skill just as how DB had to be used for an evade to an incoming skill while recognizing the penalties of the precast and aftercast at the time. Both had their shining moments and associated risks/costs (initiative use while not dealing damage as the main one).

And never once did I vouch for using CnD on walls/objects/etc. to gain permanent stealth as being good design. I still think it’s stupid, and the mentality of “you can’t kill me” via stealth and evades is why for years I argued for nerfs to the previously-broken SA and vouched for the changes made to Flanking/Larcenous Strikes while more recently hating on Daredevil. The QQ isn’t warranted necessarily out of balance (depending on format, though), but rather, general frustration with those mechanics. Stealthing off structures wasn’t making the thief OP. It was causing permanent contesting of keeps with WP’s that players couldn’t do much to shut down which is just generally annoying. The same is said about PI having no ICD, Daredevil having mobility-effect negation and a leap field on a no-cooldown smoke field with plenty of endurance regen. These aren’t strictly overpowered. But they’re dumb and not fun to play against. I speak solely from a game design perspective to make the game and profession more enjoyable, not solely what I think would make the profession a competitive killer.

And I don’t think anyone disagrees with the fact that D/D is a conceptually simpler kit when it comes to using the skills themselves. I said that exact thing above all the way in my first response. That said, to be effective with D/D outside of PvE, even something button-wise simple as F1 -> 5 -> 1 is so much more difficult than 5 -> 2 -> 1 -> F1 when the reliability and risk of the former is so much worse and higher, respectively. The fact of the matter is that a new player who doesn’t understand the game isn’t and shouldn’t be the sole basis for balancing a kit, and ease-of-skill-use in the case of D/D is based solely on the fact that OH dagger’s performance is so poor that its “other” skills typically aren’t worth using in most cases. D/D is far from being all about 5 -> 1 -> 2. The more practice you put into the kit to make it work, the more you realize this. Because I swap weapons constantly in and out of combat on my build, heat-mapping D/D performance isn’t really possible for accurate results, but I’d wager my skill distribution is relatively even across skills when I play D/D, likely favoring Dancing Dagger and Death Blossom, with heartseeker definitely in the least-used spot.

Against a DH, for example, I need to engage with BV’ed Dancing Dagger to proc passive aegis and FoF, have mug pop the FoF Aegis for the CnD to land, and then in the next half second period either need to evade out of traps, use another Dancing Dagger to negate another Aegis if they use Wings through FoF if they’re quick, DB through trap entrances if I see them get deployed, followed by a disengage and re-position at the trailing end of stealth to Dancing Dagger from behind to negate SoC’s aegis while not staying in traps, then dodge and DB into proximity trying to bait and negate spear, and then finally try to get the CnD and repeat the aegis-shredding (depending on utilities and traits) before committing to the backstab or baiting other potential Aegis sources while avoiding the longbow follow-through, to then ultimately crippling them using Dancing Dagger or if you’re in range, HS, since you need a movespeed advantage to finally land CnD and backstab.

Over the entire course of the fight, one or at most two HS casts, several Dancing Dagger casts, several DB casts, two CnD’s, one backstab. The whole kit was used and needed to be used well. Any misplay in that fight is a dead thief. If a D/D player just tried to 5 -> 1 -> 2 his way to victory, of course he’d lose. And I think that’s what so many inexperienced and novice D/D players do not understand: the kit is more than three skills. The problem is the other two are very difficult and under-rewarding to use, and HS and CnD are both not very good in the context of what D/D needs and under-perform, respectively, since the damage and overall success of the kit is coupled so massively to Backstab.

That of course is only one of the two branches of possibilities I even mentioned against a fairly passive DH. We won’t even talk about the aggressive-DH matchup which involves way more difficult evasion timing and initiative management since CnD can still not be landed.

No no no, clearly you misunderstand that Interrupting with Head Shot without a cooldown and such a short animation requires particularly godlike timing because reasons and makes the caster very vulnerable. No other class needs to time its interrupts as well, clearly, because reasons.

/s

I know I’ve made quite a few 3-spammers upset in the past by asking to nerf SS and by claiming Daredevil is the ultimate thief buff that makes it extremely easy to play at the competency of core relative to other professions, but at the end of the day, what I play is irrelevant when I’m not even asking for buffs to my specific build. What I find even funnier is that by simply disagreeing with you with what kit requires more skill to play, you’re personally attacking me for bias towards… signets. Do realize when I play D/P I also run signets. And there’s plenty of utility in the kit itself to do so. Playing without utilities becomes much easier when the weapon kit provides half of what you’d otherwise run for utility skills on a “good” D/D build.

The requests for nerfs to D/P to buff the rest of the thief have been said for years, and most prominent thieves follow the mentality that they genuinely do not care what happens so long as the profession ends up in a roughly identical position as currently, or will continue to play it as they feel otherwise. Quite frankly, four years of not touching D/P has still led the profession to be extremely gimmicky and in many cases ineffective in general.

Honestly, the few people I’ve seen carrying on about protecting D/P as though the fate of the world hinges on it are typically terrible players that get carried by its low skill floor and fairly low positional and strategic requirements to play semi-effectively. The best of the best require D/P because their decisions (such as Sindrender’s) require that cohesiveness of its diversity and overall strength in its kit to succeed with. Real talk, you don’t need half the skills on D/P to do generally (for the average player) “well” with it in most cases outside of near-professional play, but almost all of them are good options at any given time if you have half a second of patience and understand how to time skill use. But I’ve already discussed why skill use timing is a universally-important ability, and why D/D doesn’t actually really get to benefit that much from it.

I have a genuine interest in making the thief fun to play as and against when it comes to its vulnerabilities. Fact is, permanent stealth and being unhittable are not “fun” mechanics, which is why people complain. It’s not me saying stealth is OP and evades are OP, but the design is terrible and the concept of the Daredevil is flawed and a bad one. I’m passed the point of honestly caring what happens to D/D in upcoming notes. If they make power usable, great, if not, I’m still playing reaper, mostly. I stick around mostly from boredom and the discussion. Personal insults, though? Ridiculous. D/D is a dead kit for power except for giggles and diving blobs who don’t expect it. To do remotely well, you need to punish your opponent on all levels to get past its weaknesses. If you do that, you’ve already won playing another kit or profession in most cases.

Lol, 1k’s every few seconds. CV and even Withdraw with mug and DF will out-heal that. I’m sorry but if players aren’t running at least 15k health on a thief these days such that 1k’s (which given DF proccing at an equal rate become roughly 400’s) become substantial, they’re doing something wrong entirely.

The problem with landing CnD against another Daredevil, particularly D/P, isn’t just the blinds. You clearly do not play much OH dagger, particularly D/D power, to recognize this. And there is no reason at all why the D/P player should be taking both a CnD and backstab. Period. Again, these are symptoms of just bad/slow play in general. If you win with DB, especially when running Lotus, the enemy is bad. There’s next to no reason why the D/D player should ever be allowed to even get that close for a sustained fight or have the tracking to get repeated casts to hit entirely if the opponent runs Bound. Your entire argument seems to be based on the assumption that the enemy thief just mashes Shadow Shot as quickly as he possibly can and does nothing else – no dodging, remote timing, any sort of initiative management whatsoever, no reflexive or active playmaking decisions running through his head.. nothing. This is a bad thief no matter how you spin it and no matter how much I argue Shadow Shot’s damage for its initiative cost is overtuned.

I’m going to be blunt and say every D/D power main I knew rerolled with the ICD to stealth attacks, and there were very few to begin with. Not just signet players – I’m the only one I know left playing(I guess having played, since I’m on reaper now?) that build. The weapon set is objectively bad at the moment, and pretending like Lotus is going to do anything is simply untrue except when against bad players. What you’re saying is genuinely not an answer, and to retort by calling me selfish is just silly when you’re providing what is a nonsensical argument that begs the question of whether or not you actually even play the kit.

And knowing where a Daredevil may be in stealth when playing D/D with the stealth attack ICD doesn’t really do much considering the mobility gains on Dash which will cure the cripple, anyways. I consider myself kitten ed good at predicting stealthed targets, but no self-respecting player running Dash is going to let someone with Lotus keep up, especially if it landed the CnD just prior. The D/D player is back to playing then on the defensive with DB, which if the enemy is half-competent will either bait initiative by forcing random dodges or simply just use Headshot.

D/P has hard-countered D/D since release. No build is going to change that. The only thing that should let a D/D player win is a massive out-play and mistakes by the D/P player. In which case, your build suggestion is meaningless, because if the D/P guy gets out-played, he’d have lost when up against… you guessed it, D/P.

Pretty much what your entire post comes down to is suggesting that P/P hard-counters D/P and is an easy fight. Every argument you used can be applied to P/P with objectively more success (multi-hits, high damage, running EA), and it doesn’t “need” to run Lotus and can thus instantly be better off. We all know this matchup still favors D/P.

BT also only strips a single boon and not the stack.

Only Larcenous takes full stacks at a time.

Lol.

I’m sorry but if D/P loses to that they’re just straight terrible.

Nerfed HoT specs.
Balanced professions.
Elites that make sense and don’t break the game.
No dumb gimmicks labeled as fresh content.

AKA not gonna happen.

I really couldn’t give a cat about any new content otherwise. I’d pay $60 a month for core GW2 with the QoL fixes.

The game itself is pathetically broken from HoT a full year after release. I genuinely don’t think it’ll last another expansion that doesn’t fix some major issues.

RDarken.2495:

This worries me. I don’t WvW with a guild, so I rely on the bigger guilds to be commanding. If those guilds decided to move to a new server, it could seriously gut WvW for me.

Is it not possible to match servers based on WvW participation? If a server is 50% full, but only 5% of people play WvW, matching them with a server that is 70% full wouldn’t necessarily make for an unfair matchup for a server that is 80% full, but has high WvW participation (for example).

Again, server population is based solely on WvW participation and has been for about a year and a half.

If they’re going to try and balance matchups in a granular way, they need to use granular data. Player participation is not a good heuristic at all given the nature of WvW.

Ragnarox.9601:

Haha you are doing it wrong….

Just look at gandara, we might have high population but most of them are pve so doing wvw against some other servers (which are more wvw oriented) while outnumbered most of the times isnt fun anymore.

World population does not mean that most of the population is doing wvw…

Your math is broken.

Actually, no, you are mistaken. This was originally the case, but server population is based solely on WvW participation. This was changed a LONG time ago.

I’m legitimately embarrassed to be a TC player with this trueanimus guy spouting nonsense like cripple stripping stability >.>

@atheria, the stigma is roughly the same when playing thief, JS, and you’re less likely to be kept as part of a blob when playing one than a ranger/druid. There’s literally zero group support for them to provide. Rangers get hate just because a lot of them that come in from PvE as longbow heroes are just terrible players from relying on pet AI to tank for them that end up killing their allies half the time, and if running longbow, are often either killing their allies or doing very little to support the zerg. A bad thief is a bag and a rally for the enemy; a bad ranger does 10k damage to your frontline players and is also still a bag and a rally all the same.

bambam.7243:

1. I don’t think this would work because WvW’ers are mostly casual now and just go omniblob everyone. If the opportunity is there to completely ktrain a smaller server they will do it nonstop. Pretty much killing the experience of the smaller worlds. On that point too, because they are mostly casual, and there is no incentive to move to a smaller world or play in other ways that isn’t blobbing, why would they?

2. This would be a good idea if you reset ALL servers to 0, like blow it all up. The problem then becomes timezone differences, which probably don’t matter to 80% of the people here because only NA matters right? But, you’re likely to lose your WvW population that isn’t in NA (talking about NA servers), as they would be left facing overly stacked opponents or tumbleweeds and pvdoor, then get backlashed by their NA server mates/enemies for “night capping” or losing everything. If you can manage to address all these issues then it should be fine (borderline impossible because I don’t think your metrics account for timezone activity) I guess it will all even out if off hour players quit entirely (which is getting there).

3. I wouldn’t be interested in transferring as I am one of these “off-hour filthy nightcapper how dare you play when I’m asleep” population. I will only go to where I can interact with those that play my timezone (enemies and allies), that is the biggest limitation on players like me.

Not sure about the casual bit. The havoc scene died with HoT between objectively terrible class balance/elite spec design, the absolute systematic dissaseembly of small guilds’ presence in WvW, and the desert BL. Blobs, though, seem bigger and badder than ever before.

Which is why hitting the reset button also doesn’t work. Plus, let’s be real here: unless this happened unannounced (which would be absolutely terrible), the serious players would all figure out a new server to stack for maximum coverage and blob presence, anyways, or people would go on mass-transfer shuffles a few months in to build up the next big-bad full-coverage blobby server.

X T D.6458:

Option 2 also doesnt take into account PvX guilds that have members across servers regarding the capture messages.

Agreed wholeheartedly. I also think this would also just be more confusing than it needs to be. That random havoc guild that takes a camp would require everyone to look at their map to see what color it just turned.

I realized I misread the OP, so I’ll make the proper edit:
None of the above. None of the proposed solutions work.

Permanent, player-attached server-based identities I think is the best option possible. The simplified enemy naming convention is also critical, and quite frankly, what server you’re from is irrelevant to the enemy. The only truly persistent thing about WvW are servers themselves, and those communities need a lot of help right now, especially considering player population imbalances and potential for growth concerns. Giving them, as allies, back some integrity and a foundation to build on would be pretty huge. A server-specific chat filter would also be pretty major in helping get smaller servers back on their feet to identify persistent allies and go from there.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

If players on the bigger worlds don’t transfer but other worlds do, we could still end up with better pieces to create more balanced matchups. For example say World 1 is 120% of our population goal and World 2 is 100% and our smallest world is 50%. If we were to link the smallest world with World 2, then World 2 would be at 150% and now is much bigger than World 1 creating a matchup that isn’t competitive. However, if the smallest world split their population creating a new small world that is 20% we would have a better world to link with World 2.

Tiers would still remain the same as they are currently. We wouldn’t be adding new tiers along with the new worlds.

I’m assuming in the time it took to make this post you missed what I wrote above. I highly suggest you read it, as it might give some better insight as to why the idea doesn’t make matchups any more or less competitive.

First and foremost: This is a wall. But it’s deeply Analytical.

I really do appreciate the communication and intrigue into trying to solve the scoring and stale matchup problems. I’m also not really sure if it really solves the core problems with why we see runaway scores, though.

Quite frankly, it doesn’t really reflect reality that much, either.

Fundamentals to why we have Runaway matchups:
- Timezone coverage/player distribution
- Organized guilds

The timezone coverage issue doesn’t end up changing. Certain groups will still contribute disproportionately to a given server’s score. Unless you force servers to split up (WHICH WOULD BE HORRIBLE. DO NOT DO THIS.), you’re still going to see coverage imbalance and people stacking for off-hours. Any server that ends up splitting will just be at a bigger deficit compared to those that don’t, and the only incentive to splitting is re-stacking to make a stronger low-tier server move up ranks. The problem is this already happens and has happened, and has lead to what are still stagnant matchups.

Thinning out players across servers won’t do much for the latter, either. Even if particularly strong servers destack for a period of time, guilds, which are the driving force of winning WvW, will eventually cull out other servers, and people will transfer and re-stack to follow the winners, just like now. Then you’ll just have more servers and more links being needed to be performed, which while it works mathematically from a strictly player count perspective, does not work from an organizational/performance perspective. The re-stacked or newly-stacked servers will be led by huge organized guilds with potentially very little link influence that are dominant in WvW. Its opposition will feature similar numbers, but none of the groups will be organized.

The way it currently is, it actually makes more sense from a balanced-matchup perspective that the team featuring the sides least-likely to win and facing the biggest community-merging issues (Which of the closely-ranked servers’ Teamspeak should be used?/Which server really deserves to be the host?/other misc community problems), which further reduce the likelihood of winning.

The big issue with WvW right now is that the problems with the format are so deeply nested in other aspects of the game and are so entrenched in the nature of the format itself that fixing them at this point requires very surgical and complex procedures.

The model you present is simplified to convey a point, but take a good look at the actual numbers between each server. I doubt that between any two adjacently-ranked servers (granted this metric is very hard to gather now with links) the gap is as substantial as 20%. It’s likely single-percentage within tiers, maybe a little more at each tier step. The combinatorics don’t lie in that 27 servers is already plenty to make a ton of combinations. I think doubling-up would probably end up just confusing the system more by putting in extra bloat of pairings that look good on paper but don’t reflect what’s actually happening in-game.

To get a better understanding of the reality of WvW versus what’s happening mathematically, I highly suggest you try an experiment. I know it’s not good practice to meddle in the affairs of players for the most part, but I think this is a necessary evil that would benefit everyone greatly, especially if you announce it as an experiment to learn more about WvW.

Make an announcement you’ll be leading a given T1 server during prime hours. Get some pugs, don’t use some kind of communication media, and attack the opposing servers’ keeps or try and fight them with what you have. This organization and proficiency of commanding on that scale is perhaps what you might get from those mid-tier servers and large groups of hodge-podge players being forced/matched up together. You should still have roughly even numbers, potentially moreso if you hype it up. No disrespect, but you’re likely going to not get very far. Groups who have dedicated hundreds/thousands of hours to being the best of the best are going to continue to be. Evening the playing field for more “fair” player distribution doesn’t really mean much when the organization is so scattered, and communities so fragmented. We’re already seeing big complaints about community fragmentation. I think that’s the bigger priority for getting servers to be more stable; on some level, they need integrity and identity back. This keeps people in cohesive units between matchups and would enable servers to build up with what they have, rather than what they depend on from the higher-tier ones, to then immediately be shut down on the next re-link. Server chat and a two-to-four-letter code title for server membership identification would go a long way, I think, in helping revitalize failing communities.

rennlc.7346:

DeceiverX.8361:

Yes and no. While I don’t think RS or SA is a particularly good way to go right now generally speaking (It works with P/x stealth due to aforementioned multi-hit synergy working with the ICD and short-term negation), stating that SA isn’t good because it’s not in the meta and then saying the meta is determined by crowdsourced investigation is slightly contradictory; in order for a healthy meta to be established, someone needs to break the mold for whatever reason or lack thereof and create a new optimum case. The better-designed and balanced the game is, the more difficult it is to find those optima, and thus there is more fluctuation and fluidity in between any given match.

Hi, Deceiver. What I had originally said was SA wasn’t good because what it offered was generally less than what DA offered (which, in my opinion, is the weakest of the meta trait lines). It’s not just bad because it’s not meta; it’s bad because it’s generally worse than what is currently considered meta. I did not make this determination as lightly (nor as blindly) as you’re perceiving from a post where I tried to express my argument in a different a way.

Otherwise, I agree with what you say in principle. In any competitive area there needs to be some sort of balance between practicing what’s been better established as what works and experimentation. In GW2, this would specifically be playing a current meta build vs. playing currently non-meta builds. Nonetheless, look at how many non-meta builds are typically posted and shared on this forum. If this is reflective of what a lot of us are doing with our time, we’re probably spending too much time experimenting.

Ultimately, that’s what the whole issue of “What should I play?” is going to become – it’s going to become a matter of economy/efficiency. Are hours of non-meta builds going to be helpful for goals like having fun, winning, etc.? Absolutely. But are they going to be as helpful as using that same time to learn more of the nuances of the current meta? Only for those who really like novelty through experimentation and those who uncover something new and better are going to get more out of focusing on the non-meta. For most of us, especially those who value winning and making good plays more than the joys of experimentation, we’d be better off trusting that the meta typically gets many more things right than wrong.

Nothing I can disagree with here only in the sense that it’s only worth doing if you do not care about being at the top of the top in the sense that you need to constantly be experimenting if you do. The experimenters typically set the precedent and the meta only changes because a new optimum at that given point in time is found. The top players in the globe are almost always on the forefront of new builds and know exactly why they’re good, when a meta build may not be. That’s not saying playing the meta is a waste of time – you need to play the best build well to be the best, too – but simply following along and not seeking to shake things up without experimenting is definitely self-hindering; getting .1% better at one set or style by spending another 100 hours will do you less good than spending said 100 hours trying new builds/experimenting to find something that could be 1% better.

No offense, but it might have helped to portray your intentions this way earlier, though; your initial post reads like you simply think doing anything except playing the meta is a waste of time, and not worth investigating at all, which for reasons explained, simply isn’t true, even if it will help the “average” player do better earlier on.

Zilvereen.2091:

I think he needs a boost on his sustains because he gets too much punishment for a single mistake. Usually it goes like this

I evade
I evade
I evade
I fail to evade and I lose 2/3 of my health

So unless Anet wants this class to be balanced around asian reflexes they should do smth about teef’s sustain like boosting his health-gain-regen on evade or smth.

Do you run Daredevil? If you do, no complaining. Daredevil’s sustain is absolutely ridiculous for just how few sacrifices (if any depending on basis for comparison) are made. It’s not all reflexes. There are too many instant-cast bombs in the game to play that way. You need to keep track of your enemy’s cooldowns and predict what they’re going to do next and act accordingly.

To learn the thief it first requires learning of all the other professions’ capabilities.

Felwal.9618:

okay guys i just tested rending shade a bit more and its actually really good. Unlike bountiful theft rending shade can actually steal a stack of boons so under the rignt conditions you can steal 25 might from someone i tested this with a friend

Which is weird because other players have reported this as not being the case.

babazhook.6805:

(Snipped for length)

And that’s kind of what I was getting at; D/D’s kit is simple and lacks effectiveness, but to play power D/D well simply takes so much more skill than any other set to get comparable performance. The only argument one can make is that because there are less useful skills at any given time, it’s easier. but that logic isn’t sound. Period. That same exact logic would strictly demand that D/D celestial ele from S1/S2 was the hardest profession to play in the game, or that DH and chronomancers are just as difficult these days because they require good APM.

We all know that’s totally bogus. Power chrono is more difficult than condi chrono, yet they also have less “ability use” with high-precedent skills to manage in most cases. Like I said, D/P as with most meta builds for most professions has a low skill floor, but because it’s a strong set, it has the highest skill ceiling because it’s actually able to perform at those highest levels of play, while others aren’t.

Nowhere will a D/D player argue that their button pressing requires more effort than another build. Quite frankly, no thief in general should be saying this, as we we have the fewest things to keep track of in terms of our own profession mechanics; even the Berserker has surpassed the thief in ability management requirements, and the Daredevil is just thief on roids/easy mode compared to core. As far as warrior GS goes, it’s still a very strong weapon, and one that is still used in competitive play. It’s a well-rounded kit with substantially better skills than what even D/D offers for power builds.

HS is a null argument since it’s also on D/P, and D/P has more benefit to using it than D/D.

DB doesn’t get a power D/D player anywhere. A few evades here and there to spam if you’re under heavy fire and immobilized or something, but otherwise, it’s pretty much just not worth using. If you need to be on the defensive, it’s better to swap to an alternate set and ride out the reset or just try and right-flank CnD stealth dodge because it’ll typically have a higher impact for baiting out durations per unit of tim over using DB. The only thing DB is good for is condi builds. Otherwise it’s straight horrible on power, and imho, worse than Dancing Dagger by a large margin.

I also do not think D/P is difficult – at least I do not think it is in the sense that I can take an OH pistol against literally anything and do objectively better than an OH dagger, despite having put thousands of hours into playing solely D/D, and maybe a few hundred into OH pistol. It’s easier on initiative overall for what you get out of the skills, and quite frankly things like timing interrupts and managing cooldowns/skills are a fundamental part of skilled play in general that’s required on every profession, so it’s not like this skill doesn’t translate between either set. I play interruption on S/D and on my reaper (why I run GS) with those crazy long casts and 30s+ cooldowns; acting like “timing” with Headshot only costing four initiative with next to no cast is cakewalk.

SoS has kept up with other signets. SoS hasn’t kept up with game-wide mobility power creep. A long time ago, Thief had the hands-down best mobility and warrior with Sword/WH + GS back when movespeed affected gap closers wasn’t far off. At launch, it was the only permanent 25%+ movespeed effect in the entire game – no traveler runes, no other bonus move speed effects anywhere. The best swiftness came from Guard’s staff or blasting Static fields. 1200 range instant-cast AoE blind was just a little extra to try and let people running it have some sort of trick up their sleeve if they got in trouble. And imho, the movespeed and blind are still extremely good, which is why I choose to run it over SoA on my core thief signet build. The cooldown for it and the movespeed aspect of it are actually the weak parts when considering the fact that the the rest of the game is nullifying the point of it. Yea, on Daredevil it’s worse than SoA for a plethora of reasons, but given swiftness there’s no reason to run SoS at all, which was the whole point.

Further, I will say to make use of SoS properly, it takes more skill than using SoA properly. It has common use cases which can be just as effective as SoA on core thief. It’s just not as easy as it is to drop a refill on endurance and get much better negation while not needing to evaluate the costs of losing the movespeed in the period of time necessary while making the decision to negate an incoming attack.

As condi, yes.

Power, no way. Easiest APM, maybe (and even still I’d pin this to P/P, personally), but that means literally nothing, and it’s only that way because the only skills that at one point weren’t total garbage were CnD and backstab. The rest- situational fluff.

Easiest set to use in general probably goes to P/P. It has an objectively easy kit to use and in almost every respect is more rewarding to play than D/D. D/P isn’t far behind imho, though. Sure it has a high skill ceiling, but it also absolutely has a high skill floor (especially with Daredevil), too. In most instances, when I swap to D/P, difficult encounters are trivialized, and I don’t even swap traits to make my build have any amount of cohesion, and still run core thief. The skill ceiling on most other kits is just nonexistant because the kits themselves are so limited in how they can perform to a point where player skill rarely matters past a certain point, because they just simply won’t be effective. That’s D/D power’s case currently; you can be an absolutely amazing thief but it’ll genuinely stop mattering past a certain point because you will not have the tools to deal with other builds as opposed to D/P, Staff, and in some respects, even S/x kits.

It shouldn’t be a dependency to make a profession/weapon work via a trait.

There are simply just too many blocks and invuln effects in the game currently. HoT powercreep, both offensive and defensive, needs toning down.

Answering power creep with potential power creep on a very niche build option gets nobody anywhere.

To kill thieves (aside from the really good ones or those deliberately countering you, but as mentioned, they will have the advantage here so you shouldn’t really go around expecting much):

Berserker or Marauder+Zerk+Valk mixed gear. To beat a thief, you can’t take your time, so running something that won’t melt them won’t do you any good. If they’re instantly killing you, you’re probably mis-playing somewhere or they’re running a build that can’t fight you otherwise (4k hours on thief here). I recommend using A/D. A/D + GS is pretty mean against thieves if they don’t camp shortbow (if they are you were probably never winning to begin with) or P/P (they’re running the hard-counter build to you and DH) since they’ll need to get in close to hit you, and if trying for the engage, will be revealed or will need to disengage. Ghastly Claws’ channel, like all channels, tracks stealth; know this and use this to your advanatge. Run Chill of Death over Rending Shroud. Like I said, you’re not going to kill a thief taking your time hoping they stick around. Odds are they’re running ToTC in Trickery which means they’ll have three boons. Spectral Armor the BV engage and dodge the follow up. Suffer! should send the weakness back to them. GS 5 -> 4 -> 3 -> swap (they’ll typically use BD to stunbreak midway through 3 and try for the BP+HS to escape) -> wait half a second before the BD blocks end and they can stealth -> Ghastly Claws. They’ll not be at full hp and will be on boons. Chill of Death proc during their escape attempt will take all three boons they likely still have from ToTC and hit them for massive damage for the remainder of their health. If you’re critting and they haven’t used Shadowstep anticipating the CoD proc, they’ll in all likelihood die. Be ready for round 2 with dodges and shroud to negate the next burst if they’re still up or you think they might be (wait a second or two and try casting Axe 3 as to prevent them from getting a stealth res), and when they come back, send weakness/poison back to them via OH dagger 4. Apply OH dagger 5 on feet when they engage to inflict extra weakness since it hinders their crits and endurance regen.

As for making GS better (I don’t think there’s a lot needed to be done fundamentally here):
Delete Soul Eater and reduce GS cooldowns baseline to AA/6/10/15/20 seconds, split chill to 1s on first AA and 1.5s on third AA, then make a real condi trait where Soul Eater is. No power build is going to surrender either DD or CV for some recharge unless GS ends up busted, and no condi build is going to run GS effectively, anyways.

Been running alternate Axe for quite some time, and I think it’s a great weapon. Pair it with OH dagger and you have two boon corruptions, AoE weakness, ranged condi transfer + blind, burst/burst LF gain, and vuln on AA. Mix with GS, and you have good burst and utility from A/D paired with the pull and blind/dark field + more vuln stacking to make a mean switch-hitter combo build with Reaper shroud.

At this point? kitten . I moved to reaper from thief because the past four years on that profession has been largely lacking common sense altogether, and let me tell you, playing off-meta reaper is so much better than off-meta thief.

I don’t think GS needs much. You have to really know when and how to use it to make it work, but when you make it work… it’s absolutely amazing. The PvE damage is horrid, but PvE is so screwed up that aiming to balance around it is just silly at this point. HoT powercreep ruined the game in so many respects.

The real issue is that the necromancer, aside from not spawning with some LF, is well-designed overall. There are some trait lines and skills that need to be tweaked and some QoL changes that would be very helpful here and there, but overall, it’s pretty solid.

The real issue you’re seeing is that the reaper is in fact so well-designed that it’s suffering from the power creep that came with the rest of HoT. Reaper isn’t much better/worse than core necro in most cases, and its use kind of depends on context. That’s how it should be for every spec. That was what ANet said they were trying to do to begin with when announcing HoT. The fact is they screwed up with everything else. The power creep elsewhere is overly-substantial to a point where the good implementation of the reaper and solid foundation of core necro are meaningless. Against core specs, the necro and reaper are actually in fairly excellent spots overall. Not OP, but not UP. It feels good. If we lacked HoT powercreep, it’d probably be a middle-of-the-pack/stronger profession.

Fixing forum bug – see previous.

1U1D doesn’t work for WvW where the teams are persistent and where there’s a huge divide between servers/tiers themselves. If every server/pairing was roughly equal, it’d be suitable. Fact is, though, the links don’t work well enough to justify doing 1U1D since it’d continue to lead to unfun matchups; first and third place servers would constantly trade no matter how small/large the gaps between them and the others are, and the tier above coming down is only going to lead to an even more one-sided matchup, where servers either stomp or get stomped and nothing ever changes.

I’m honestly surprised (although I guess by this point I shouldn’t be, all things considered) that this option even made it to a poll considering how blatantly obvious the result would be: It’d be worse than now. The only viable method to balance WvW scoring is with heuristic-driven learning AI. Yes, it’s a lot of work. Sad fact is it’s the only actual, real (practical) solution. Simple algorithms do not work effectively on systems that are not fair and on ones that can be manipulated. This is like game design 101, and why good design leads to systems which increase in fairness and prevent manipulation.

All 1U1D does is increase the rate at which servers trade tiers. It doesn’t actually affect volatility unless players make those changes by transferring and stacking, which is what you genuinely don’t want when looking into the future, considering then simple algorithms become more valuable when players push into enforcing fairness on their own accord, which can lead to faster and more interesting responses from the AI given a few tweaks.

The whole thing is a mess.

Massive defensive power creep with HoT to offset the massive offensive power creep with HoT. Too bad it leaves everything core game totally screwed.

The only thing that gets me is the CC output and CC immunity. This is mostly a Berserker/HoT thing, though.

I can deal with any core warrior with a reasonable/understandable amount of success when on my reaper. Berserker simply just prevents any attempts to kite or stick I try and make. Extra stability and stunbreaks for no reason, extra ridiculously-low-cooldown CC for no reason, and extra skill damage for no reason, either.

And when I burn things to get a clutch disengage with Death’s Charge, it doesn’t matter because Arc Divider has a 450 radius hitbox (Like what the actual hell? That’s most pre-HoT mobility skills’ ranges!).

I think the most infuriating part of it all is that I can’t play it. I’ve been told, repeatedly, that I’m thinking too much when playing it. I can play with fair success an all-in glass core thief that doesn’t reset or stealth that is totally and wildly underpowered, but can’t play a Berserker with double the health, 50% more armor, damage immunities, and better AoE/CC/mobility/cleave with the same damage (facepalm).

That’s very generic. All outgoing attacks forever? Is there an ICD? Stealth attacks only? There are tons of variables.

I see it being absolutely overpowered or just straight terrible. I’ll reserve judgement unless full details are provided, but it’s still a rather gimmicky idea imho.

rennlc.7346:

Meta isn’t one build. It’s typically specific weapon sets, utilities, and core traits, such as short bow & D/P, shadowstep, PI, sleight of hand, and dash for Thief. Other aspects are more up to preference and situation, like taking thrill or flanking strike? Brawler’s tenacity, weakness on crit, or havoc mastery? Withdraw or channeled vigor? Improv or exectucioner? Which two utilities to team with shadowstep: Bandit’s defense, blinding powder, and/or signet of agility (even skills like inf signet and impairing daggers can have their moments)?

You suggest I haven’t tried the build and state you haven’t played much with it yourself. I say both of our individual experiences and lack thereof are inconsequential because we’re not talking about just the two of us. If we’re actually going to talk about play styles and builds that will, after some learning, tend to work better for the majority of players, the majority of the time, and regardless of whether one’s opponents are experienced or extremely new, then this is going to typically be a conversation about the core aspects of what other players have been successfully using – a.k.a. the meta. In our class’s case, that’s not SA.

Meta builds are the outcome of crowd-sourced responses to a big question we generally have: “What are builds I should learn and play if I want to both have fun playing and win as much as possible?” Meta builds don’t specifically address the fun factor (unless you define fun as winning) but they do reflect what other players win more frequently over longer periods of time with. Determining a meta through all of our choices is the closest thing we have to a real scientific process and it seems you’re ignoring what it has to offer.

Yes and no. While I don’t think RS or SA is a particularly good way to go right now generally speaking (It works with P/x stealth due to aforementioned multi-hit synergy working with the ICD and short-term negation), stating that SA isn’t good because it’s not in the meta and then saying the meta is determined by crowdsourced investigation is slightly contradictory; in order for a healthy meta to be established, someone needs to break the mold for whatever reason or lack thereof and create a new optimum case. The better-designed and balanced the game is, the more difficult it is to find those optima, and thus there is more fluctuation and fluidity in between any given match.

The claim worth noting here is that GW2’s profession situation right now isn’t designed well since it fails to abide by the above principle. You see some powerful or potentially-powerful mixtures on a few select builds, but typically speaking said builds are either not good enough at high skill tiers (which then effect the low ones) and the meta remains unchanged, or simply don’t have enough diversity to really take in any other build except some edge case. It’s typically not too difficult to see where and why things may work or may not work, and typically weaknesses or strengths of a build are overly build-biased and contextual to other builds rather than what “could be” on the battlefield.

Felwal.9618:

Preparedness should definitely become baseline but what should it be replaced with maybe take something from acro? and give acro the old practiced tolerance because converting that 7% precision into vitality is really usefull

The steal cooldown reduction moved from SoH would be enough. Gives a reason to run QP and not get killed by passive CC reflection on so many professions these days.

Fixing the forum bug.

Dug up from earlier:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The fault is at the design of the weapon skills leaving it without cooldown. A simple cooldown on Backstab (and all other Stealth attacks) would have solved the stealth problem without punishing the stealth mechanic

Seems like the developers agree with you for putting an ICD on the attacks. Granted, it seems most players don’t. They’re never removing Revealed, though. Not happening. If they do, so many people would leave in droves it’d be pretty bad, honestly.

Preparedness baseline. I don’t like handing out power creep, but honestly, this genuinely would solve a lot of problems.

ICD on stealth attacks removed or reduced massively. This change was unwarranted on so many levels, and didn’t even have the desired effects.

Cut blocks and invulns game-wide, including what’s been implemented on the thief with Bandit’s Defense and Instant Reflexes. There’s no reason for so much blocking to be happening.

Cut mass-AoE burst damage and the simply stupid CC access game-wide. Arc Divider has the same radius as Heartseeker’s full gap close. Rev auto-taunt is just horrible design since there’s no way to know it’s coming or even going to happen at all.

Boons need accessibility cuts or reworks. Too many professions are running too diverse sets of boons for an unlimited amount of time, and aren’t being balanced around them. A reaper with 25 might does a lot of damage, but a reaper with 25 might has been in combat for some time hitting targets that haven’t run away, and the profession is assumed and designed around likely stacking lots of might and/or vuln. It’s fairly obvious that bunker druid was not balanced around having permanent capped might/all boons.

Cooldown bumps on defensive abilities/sustain, including the Daredevil. There are too many get-out-of-jail-free cards in the game right now. Defensive abilities are extremely easy to get, and since HoT, have carried very low cooldowns.

HoT skill coefficients reduced. Related to the above, this is probably a chicken/egg problem in that defenses were either too strong so offenses got massively bumped for no reason, or offenses were too strong so defenses got massively buffed. Either way, it’s silly.

Conditions nerfed, two stats minimum needed for high condition damage. Another game-wide issue not necessarily specific to the thief, but without Daredevil, the thief has very poor cleansing options. Currently there’s too much condition pressure in the game and not enough cleanses on even cleanse-heavy classes/builds, and in most cases, these builds get free defenses, often further included in their respective condi-based trait lines.

OH dagger/dual skills reworked. Enough said, I think. We all know why – they just suck on the design-level.

Crit Strikes made more consistent/useful. There’s no incentive to run this line outside of PvE. DA/DrD offer near-identical damage bonuses with much better utility. Marauder powercreep reduced its use of consistency/purpose to even less than it was.

Incentive for not being in stealth or able to negate penalties to being revealed – our only boon right now in this case is RT, which contends with a substantial reason to take DA to begin with – Panic Strike, and the RT buff doesn’t really do much considering the thief lacks the capacity to stay in combat and take advantage of it in any situation except PvE. If the enemy can build to counter you, you should be able to build to counter them.

Skill lag will not ever be fixed in all likelihood, unless ANet decides for once to do something healthy for the game. It was stated once in an offhand remark by one of the programmers on reddit some time ago when it first started showing around the release of HoT that it was caused by the number of interrupt calls made when groups collide because of all of the proc effects occurring at the same time. The same is said for boons. I kid you not, if nobody ran on-hit or passive abilities and people weren’t constantly stacking re-stacking all boons, we’d likely straight-up not see skill lag happen.

Still don’t see the merit of complaints on GS. Been using it since the HoT beta and have had next to zero issues. I actually find it better than most of the weapons if you learn to use it properly for what it is instead of mashing 1 and thinking you’ll keep pace chasing people without a movespeed bonus.

You want to talk about a bad weapon… OH dagger on thief is so much worse than GS it’s pitiful.

Mikhael.2391:

Jeknar.6184:

The problem is: depending on what you want to have increased cd’s on the mesmer, you’ll basically killing other mesmer builds just because of a single build that all it can do is 1v1.

A single build that can kill anyone isnt a problem? So anyone roaming should just teleport to wp on sight or log off right away.

Yea… I think the rock-paper-scissors ideology is simply silly. You should feel comfortable engaging anything and the fact of the matter is how well you play should dictate if you win or lose.

A common issue is that people misjudge how good they are and there’s no good definition of what defines “skill.” Some players have an innately higher aptitude for some styles/professions than others, and the converse is true for other professions. But builds like condi mes/chrono, which have been mathematically proven as being too excessive, have been running rampant for years and everyone knows

Currently, there are too many free defenses in the game as a whole, and too much power creep on offensive abilities and suppression/cc. It needs toning down.

Halbarz.3854:

Mikhael.2391:

I keep saying. Fix balance in wvw classes and everything else will seem smaller issues.

an easy solution would be to introduce the SPvP system.
Just pick your weapons, sigils, runes and an amulet.
This would make it easier to balance classes + they can keep the rewards / loot that they have as it can be used for people their Pve Mode chars.

The sPvP system is horrible from a diversity perspective, though, and doesn’t scale with the number of players. Not only will professions be excluded from certain elements (as in you won’t see a thief or ranger taken to the front lines of a blob), but the number of viable options within sPvP by stat distribution systems alone is less than in WvW.

If anything, they need to bring WvW/PvE stats in sPvP and go from there. Things not dying or killing too quickly? Well, now it’s in sync with the rest of the game. Things seem broken in terms of how they’re used? Well, it’s probably time to reconsider what the skill does or how it works since it’s probably poorly-designed.

Sad truth is ANet’s not willing to put in the work to re-design anything or willing to take the flak from PvE players who just assume that power creep is fine and nothing else matters except their ability to kill mobs quickly.

short special stealth buff that doesn’t reveal the user when attacking

Nope. Not unless every skill coefficient on the profession is reduced to < 1 and conditions cannot be applied. This has existed in the past with CnD spam builds and was the most overpowered and brainless style of play that’s existed in GW2, ever.

Un-reflectable massive nuke and reveal is just begging for problems, and this pretty much only seems fair in thief v thief.

Jeknar.6184:

DeceiverX.8361:

Mikhael.2391:

Tbh just balance classes first then worry about the rest. If balance not fixed new content doesnt matter.

This. The game most of the time just doesn’t feel worth playing because its fundamentally broken because ANet refuses to nerf their precious HoT powercreep or do necessary reworks on flawed professions/skills/concepts which have needed them since launch.

Making the game fun to play for the most part would be a pretty big start to making WvW more successful overall.

Unless they separate the balance between PvE and WvW we’ll never see big nerfs to anything that could potentially hurt PvE. The change in the Signet of Inspiration and Facet of Nature already caused a lot of revolt on PvE. And keep in mind that PvE is the big chunk of the population in this game, so I don’t expect them to “hurt” the game mode played by most people in favor of balancing the game for a minority.

Power creep is power creep. Doesn’t matter what format may or may not benefit from it. HoT was marketed and sold to not have any/minimal power creep, and that objective has not been met a year later. If PvE gets nerfed, it shouldn’t matter. And if skills and professions get reworked, it’s because they largely need to be because often times the things that break PvE and WvW are one and the same at the end of the day.

The PvE revolt is because something OP got nerfed. Raids didn’t get made any harder. Diversity isn’t really any better or worse. If they nerf power creep, and raids are too hard, nerf the raids. If reworks put a profession/build out of the meta in PvE, it’s probably a reason.

The PvE meta-abiding sheep will complain about literally anything. They complained about the arbitrary lack of diversity from the so-called berserker meta, when the entire thing was made up by the PvE community and when there was tons of workable diversity game-wide. They set the tone for their own imbalance a majority of the time, because they balance to the optimal performance of speed clearing because they want more loot faster.

The encounters don’t change in PvE. The meta will never change as a consequence. There’s zero reason to balance for PvE because unless encounter design changes, literally nothing else will unless things are balanced around it. But that’s kind of stupid considering such changes need to be major and as seen in the changes to revenant and mesmer as of lately, they’re just going to be upset even when nothing actually changes (Revenant usefulness still proven mathematically incapable of being surpassed by another profession).

Mikhael.2391:

Tbh just balance classes first then worry about the rest. If balance not fixed new content doesnt matter.

This. The game most of the time just doesn’t feel worth playing because its fundamentally broken because ANet refuses to nerf their precious HoT powercreep or do necessary reworks on flawed professions/skills/concepts which have needed them since launch.

Making the game fun to play for the most part would be a pretty big start to making WvW more successful overall.

The problem isn’t the skills (granted it appears to be for the professions team when it comes to balancing and gameplay). The real issue is the assets that come with bringing in new weapons to the game.

Consider the greatsword, the main 2h melee weapon. Look at every skin, all possible loot table entries, the crafting recipes, MF updates, legendaries, the list of what needs an update just keeps on going. Frankly, if ANet is adamant about not bringing the spear itself to terrestrial combat, an equivalent is just as unlikely considering the similarities.

Joel.8705:

Stealth stacking is definitely needed in pvp not to camp but to rotate without the enemy team seaing u in pvp i cant camp in stealth because i take DA not SA and taking SA to be able to stay in perma stealth would mean to give up 30% extra damage.

Which kind of goes back on the point of that if it’s needed there are fundamental issues with the weapon set/profession.

Azukas.1426:

D/D is the training wheels of thief.

Thats the truth

On condi, sure. But people including myself have been saying that even since before the DB cast time changes got implemented. Good luck having half a chance of making it work on power, though. It’s definitely not easier or more effective at lower skill levels, that’s for sure. Maybe that could be argued before HoT, but absolutely not now.

bluri.2653:

Jana.6831:

bluri.2653:

Just 1 thing dropping any utils that are meta for something so bad as refugee/smoke screen just lol, please no just no.

and 2nd thing as i already understand this issue just exists in wvw where you guys are bothered about it then split stealth if u want it nerfed, it is not unbalanced or broken in spvp on higher levels where the balancing should be done rather than destroy a class.

One question: did you ever play any other set than D/P?

I’ve already played everything in the meta SPVP (S/D, S/P and D/P, some staff too), now let me ask you something – do you play competitive SPVP? No you don’t.

Also blaqfyre theres no revert of nerfs of S/D that would ever bring it back into meta competitive spvp, im talking about ESL/WTS

I’ll say it once again, stealth stacking in SPVP Competitive in the highest level has no issues whatsoever, you guys talk about scenarios that don’t exist here, and nerfing it because you guys have problems with it in other game modes is not the direction that thief needs in SPVP to become viable. Nor does it help reverting any other weaponset nerfs or traitlines (acro S/D for example)..

I want to say that’s part of the point to be made here; stealth has little role in the highest echelons of play in sPvP – and even in the lower ones, since it doesn’t contribute to captures/neutralizing points even in lower-tier games where the thief might be fighting more. Not to mention perplexity runes don’t exist which depending on the variant is a huge part of the ghost thief – at least the ones I see running around. Because of that, one needs to ask themselves if this kind of change would really have an impact in sPvP – I sincerely doubt it would, all things considered, as most people playing it power/meta would be unaffected by the cooldown since maxing out stealth uptime is a waste of initiative and nobody there runs SA. The prospect of removing permanent stealth or such high stealth uptime (I think we can agree it’s pretty poor design overall) is a valid endeavor so long as it doesn’t potentially harm the usefulness of the profession in other formats. Obviously PvE is about DPS, so it’s fine, and in sPvP, like you mentioned, nobody really does this. I see this as being a bit more of a philosophical debate about any aspect of the thief being nerfed over how it’d actually negatively impact the performance of it in sPvP or create an inconsistency between formats.

That said, I proved in a previous post that a 1s ICD would do nothing or next to nothing overall (I should perhaps edit my first post) in terms of the builds being discussed, since stealth could still be capped. Putting low-risk stealth on the initiative system was probably one of the biggest shortcomings ANet could have made for the profession when it comes to balancing it. Obviously the culprit(s) here is D/P or more generally, OH pistol with Bound.

Looking at the profession, I don’t think D/P Daredevil will ever not be the dominant build. To make it not dominant, you’d have to nerf it pretty massively to a point where the whole profession probably would see even less of a presence than it has now. There’s some promise with staff, but overall the thief as it is seems utterly broken in its implementation and without a comprehensive and total rework, no small amount of tweaks would seemingly enable diversity and keep it feeling fair to fight while rewarding skilled individuals/play.

I think this is particularly at the fault of Daredevil, which has single-handedly in so many respects made the thief border-line infuriating to fight against. Not so much strictly better (although it did do this), but the raised skill floor and lack of engagement when fighting against it make the thief seem much more overpowered than it is, but moreso, and in my opinion more importantly, simply not fun or interesting to fight.

Granted, we’re also very far from that mark of fun and fair gameplay with the rest of the professions since HoT. The game-state right now is so horrible I’d be hard-pressed to believe things will ever significantly improve, especially since we’re only in the first expansion and things got so bad :P

quote=6381950;Lexander.4579:]actually i thought condi tank mesmers were going to be nerfhammered this patch when everyone was talking about mesmer nerfs

somehow the nerf only affected the zerg mesmer build where it wasnt really a problem anyway[/quote]

Wat.

Granted, the issue was more or less with revenants, but boonsharing was breaking WvW lol.

Dire has needed a nerf for years.

medusashadow.3567:

Omg thanks for the great laugh about this post when really condi mesmers are non issue. The biggest issue thing called a ghost thief. Cause you obviously have not fought one. When fight a ghost thief come to then we can talk about unkillable. But until do us all favor and be quiet.

Sorry, but no. I’m not advocating for ghost thief (I’d like to see it nerfed because it’s stupid by concept), but ghost thief only kills either bad players or ones caught without cooldowns. And it’s only unkillable because of, you guessed it, Dire/TB gear, since it never needs to attack with power coefficients and can’t be cleaved down when stacking that much defense.

I’d really like to see the two sets deleted and give players with them an option of any kind of gear like they did when removing MF, and I think perplexity and durability runes also need to go.

But yea, roaming scene is ded when it comes to fun fights. Used to be incredibly diverse, now it’s basically as kittenPvP. Thanks HoT.

Korgov.7645:

Titles are not even displayed in WvW. Except for your party (squad?) members.

I doubt being able to display server name is enough to restore identity/community/morale on guest servers. The leaderboard rating – the only thing servers were able to compete in WvW – was removed from guest servers with the linking feature. No matter how well guest server plays, the host server probably won’t even thank you.

I don’t follow. Lower-tier servers before the links never cared about the leaderboards, anyways. T6 servers knew they weren’t going to T1 unless they got mass transfers. All that mattered was winning the week. It’s no different now.

Allowing people to see which servers players are on, however, would be quite helpful in the sense that persistent allies/servermates would be able to identify each other and maintain sub-communities for their server’s WvW than just be integrated into the host’s endless ranks to then be dispersed at the end of the link.

A server-specific chat tab for WvW would also go a long way to get people to at least be able to communicate and set up communities if they went looking. As of now, you need to just ask every random person where they’re from, which gets more difficult to do on mid/lower-tier servers that have multiple links.

As I’ve said repeatedly, even if the Ghost thief build isn’t objectively overpowered, it’s only possible due to poor design, and should be negated for that reason alone.

Eval.2371:

DeceiverX.8361:

The initiative cost for its damage is too low. BP + HS -> Backstab can be interrupted similarly, Unload suffers from a similar channel, FS->LS if used sequentially is extremely easy to punish, and CnD has objectively longer punish frames while providing less damage, no gap close, and no evade.

The damage is comparable to unload, backstab & pistolwhip. FS/LS have a terrible after cast between skills… its actually faster or FS use 1 then LS than it is to FS->LS, but thats off topic. CnD comparison is irrelevant, as it should be used for the stealth for backstab rather than the actual damage component its self.

DeceiverX.8361:

If moved to 6, it’d be barely recognizable except in instances where it gets spammed. The skill currently allows three consecutive casts all in a row without traiting for Trickery. With Trickery, it enables almost four.

The skill only allows 3 consecutive casts with trickery atm. I don’t know what grass your smoking but you cannot do more than two back to back without trickery.

People that are going to die to vault are going to die to regardless of the cost if you cannot dodge burst skills spammed back to back, your not going to make it far in any kind of pvp.

Ive already outlined this is my post above, you can get more dmg in aoe format from using debilitating arc to get a full auto chain down in the same time frame.

DeceiverX.8361:

That, or its damage needs to drop. There’s no reason for it to be hitting harder than backstab with the further capacity to hit substantially harder than backstab at peak via Staff Master (the wiki’s coefficient is wrong; it’s actually 2.52).

I wouldn’t have much of an issue with it if I couldn’t hit for 30k damage per vault at 5 initiative on no cooldown

Ah yes, claiming damage numbers are absurd while on valk signet build. Your the same person that has shown me 15k CnD’s followed by 30k+ backstabs with your build… and turn around and spew this? I am not buying it…

The only people that are going to see that high of numbers are people that run pure glass like you. Vault or not that gameplay will be binary because of it and to be frank the weapon isnt the cause, its the % modifies after being juiced up on valk gear with furious oils.

The avg thief gets 10k at most out of bound and thats running crit strikes on a target with no armor. Your avg staff thief is running acro trickery DrD and might see 8k vaults.

Ok, I’m sorry, non-trickery thief needs to wait a period of a whopping one whole second between the first two casts to get three casts in a row. CnD isn’t irrelevant when discussing punishing frames because in order to deal damage equivocal to the staff via backstab, it has to be used and can be just as easily (or really, moreso) punished, while still costing more initiative.

I don’t think I’ve hit a 30k backstab since 2012 when Assassin’s Signet was still on a 50% damage modifier. The highest I’ve ever gone since was 27k, and this assumes a light armor player in berserker or glass gear that goes to < 50% to proc Executioner. 5% more innate damage on vault’s coefficient and an additional 10% and 7% extra damage modifiers (or better) damage gain over what dagger has push vault’s damage to be astronomically better than what MH dagger can achieve. The 30k vault number isn’t a maxed-out-got-lucky figure. On the same target as a 27k stab, A corresponding vault would push close to 40k – one-shotting most damage-built berserkers such that they’d never get a passive off since they’d go from 100 to 0 in one hit. A build without DA or CS such as Acro/Tr/Daredevil could still achieve ~15k vaults while not using Assassin’s signet by just pushing offenses via Daredevil.

I don’t see why this is an issue when everyone has already said that the best players use other aspects of the kit, anyways, and all this really does is prevent spam. If Vault was like backstab is to D/D in that it was the only thing carrying the weapon set, fine, but the staff doesn’t need that unjustified lower cost. I speak for nerfing the HoT power-creep game-wide, and Daredevil/Staff is not an exception. It might be more subtle, but it is there.

@baba, as far as the “heartseeker costing more than vault” comment – I was speaking in the context of mobility when compared to shortbow, and damage compared to vault, as multiple HS’s will be required to match either of them.

I don’t think it really needs much. I’ve been running A/D since some weeks before the patch (and for those who’ve seen me post before, GS since forever) and have had massive success with the mix. Good melee, good range, lots of utility and solid burst damage and burst LF gain.

Honestly, I think the only weak aspect of the weapon right now is LF generation. Giving the AA a three-part chain with 2 vuln → 3 vuln → 2% LF and no vuln (repeat) instead of just repeating the same skill with 2 vuln would probably set the weapon up for greatness. That little bit extra sustained LF generation would probably be just enough to keep it fair but make it seem worthy enough to keep around rather than GC’ing/burning utility and swapping or going into shroud ASAP just because it provides so little purpose otherwise.

All I can think of is maybe some kind of GS warrior build if not rev. Revenant is thief++ in pretty much every regard.

The difference being that I thought Axe on necro was already a solid weapon before the buff – it frankly just needs a little more life force love by putting some on its AA chain and it’d be in a great spot. It’s no PvE master due to its AA, but it’s almost a very good PvP weapon, and an amazing WvW one, as it offers good burst LF gains, lots of utility when paired with the OH options, and non-reflectable ranged damage

I’ll take my 14k GC’s and two boon corrupts + cleanse and run with them :P

But yea, ANet’s profession team only does “low hanging fruit” fixes per the words of either MO or Colin (can’t remember who said it specifically) some years ago. These are often lazy and in many cases are not enough or go too far.