Guild Wars 2

punahou.3986:

ah ok thanks

I thought people were complaining about 1 mesmer able to do this.

So at least for any aspect of pvp— you have to have a mesmer spec group.

Claims of “permanent stealth” are either yes referring to groups or are simply untrue exaggerations/ignorance of those making the claims. They’re probably just thinking it’s permanent since the mesmer has so much access to it for such a sustained period of time.

I would argue a lot of the complaints are stemming from WvW, though, as now two mesmers can bounce stealth off of each other infinitely and port a whole ton of people in, whereas the old required mixture used to require a thief and with pretty big tells from SR’s, smoke fields, etc.

Solori.6025:

Two things.

What new nerf that wasn’t reported is now keeping thieves from stealthing more often than any other class?
None?
No, being a thief doesn’t mean free and easy kill anymore, sorry.
You need to relearn how to fight every class because you don’t have it easy anymore.
Saying that mesmer’s have too much stealth compared to a thief who spends next to nothing to get into stealth is laughable.
Especially when you can stealth with no CD’s at will.

Secondly,
You need to start thinking outside the box instead of relying on the SA crutch.

Sorry, What?!
Thieves were part of the meta for spvp for basically 2 years.
Their access to stealth and mobility will insure that they are kept in the meta until something changes where mobility and/or stealth means nothing.

What game have you been playing where a team decided a mesmer and thief were on the same bottom scale level?

You sound a bit salty, at this point.

Wait, you mean the niche role that only theif has been able to play since..I don’t know
Forever.
Both a mesmer and a thief are capable of +1ing a fight. Only before the patch thief was the ONLY option for that role.
Now you have 2 classes that can fulfill that role.
I can’t think of any other role that mesmer could offer that another class won’t do better.
Try thinking outside the box as far as thief builds go, you’ll be surprised at the old weaponsets that we have that are viable again.

Lastly, Some nerfs for mesmer have been suggested that I think the majority of the mesmer community can agree on.
Maybe look to those threads and offer some type of constructive post instead of the atrocious bias filled QQ post you just did.

I’ll try to keep this short.

1.) Thief stealth was discussed in the livestream and permanent stealth was removed by the removal of IoS. It has been stated over and over again by both thieves and mesmer since 6/23 that the mesmer now has better stealth uptime than the thief.

2.) You’re jumping the gun on me playing SA lol. You must not pay any attention whatsoever to the thief community seeing as I’m probably one of the biggest SA-haters playing thief. Do please look at my post history about SA – you will not ever find a single post of mine defending this trait line as being balanced or a good idea in concept – I would say a very large portion of the thief community actively dislikes me because I’ve repeatedly tried to get Shadow Arts nerfed in the past, and absolutely refuse to play that trait line unless I’m trolling P/P healing power for leeching venoms (see below), no matter how good it is. You’d see me sooner giving up on the thief altogether than playing SA on any serious build. So if you want to fling insults about playing with a “crutch,” please know who you’re talking to.

3.) The thief and mesmer have had similar representation in high-tier sPvP and overall similar effectiveness in their given roles. D/P is just typically easier than any other thief build while also providing the best utility. In the WTS, Helseth gave more fight value to TCG than Sizer and Toker, despite being hard-countered. Most of the value gained from the thieves in the series came from uncontested point caps, and in multiple instances throughout the tourney, thieves sat back waiting to +1 due to sheer incapability of fighting for any amount of time alone. This could have been performed relatively easily by any other class, and strictly speaking, without the terrain abuse of the shortbow to speed this up, would have given zero incentive to bring a thief to begin with. As you say, meta-playing-crutch noobs need to think outside the box, and Helseth was one of the biggest contributors to TCG, while their lack of an Engineer and use of a thief is what appears to have caused them to lose.

4.) That is the only role available to the thief. The mesmer, even before the buffs, had the ability to provide a bit more to a team, proven again and again by high-tier players. Protected and safe caps and lower mobility cooldowns since 6/23 for the mesmer have allowed it to out-perform some class’ only available roles while maintaining its previous use of mixed point offense/defense and both solo and group potential.

5.) Thinking outside the box? I hate to break it to you, but I’ve been doing that for a very, very long time. I won a dueling tournament as a P/P healing power cleric/dwayna venom thief. When it comes to thief builds, I’ve done it all. There is no room left for innovation within the class, sorry.

6.) A lot of people seem to be stating that PU’s stealth duration is too high, which I mentioned as a major cause of the problem, and why I explained why AOE reveals are a bad idea in regards to the scope of other classes when the notion was proposed as being a fair way to balance the mesmer’s stealth; it isn’t.

apharma.3741:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

FYI, I’ve always said the same about thieves sthealth. Always. Some here operate under the very false assumption that ppl who now vent on mesmers never did vs thieves. You couldn’t be more wrong.

That ‘but it always existed with thieves’ rethoric to try and avoid the issue is ridiculous and fallacious.

I’m glad to read some mesmers that are able to acknowledge the problem tho.

I already said it to you in the PU thread I believe but I’ll say it again. The problem is Anet added stealth but forgot the crucial thing that makes it balanced in other games. A way to force someone out of stealth.

Make ranger F2 apply reveal to enemies in 600 range.
Trait shouts to do AoE reveal for warriors (or just add it to fear me)
Allow necros to “see” stealthed players while in DS with the closer to death trait.

Many things can be done, they just aren’t atm.

Can I have a refund on my thief’s class mechanic of stealth attacks, then? I happen to like being able to burst or control opponents at the rate every other profession can.

I mean really, what is a thief without Backstab, Tactical Strike, Sneak Attack, or Surprise Shot? Pretty useless outside of D/P meta-boring blindspam/Air+fire procs as all that’s really left is crappy control-less S/D acro 3spam (gutted with the 6/23 change), P/P (laughably bad except in duels), and S/P (laughably bad in general).

The mesmer right now has too much stealth. Thief got its stealth nerfed on 6/23 by the removal of quite a few stealth-build-supporting traits like Infusion. All stealth bonuses are applied after 3 seconds instead of on cast. Permanent stealth is now impossible and was a design decision purposely done and announced beforehand by ANet.

I have no trouble with nerfing stealth builds. I don’t really use the mechanic much and think that a lot of high-stealth uptime builds re fairly cheesy on principle. The thing is that you can’t just ask for more revealed mechanic use at this point to offset the obvious monster that is PU without completely removing the thief’s purpose in most combat situations per requirements of its class mechanic.

It’d be like asking for all classes to gain abilities that make summoned allies (minions, pets, clones, spirit weapons, rune effects) deal 0 damage because of some crazy overpowered summon build – it would largely nullifiy the mesmer as a class and its class mechanic due to the problem existing entirely on something else that was simply too strong.

I understand mesmers needed some boosts, but giving it the most access to stealth (yes, more than thief currently has) in the game was not the proper way to really do this. Yes, stealth isn’t very effective in sPvP as a format due to the conquest mode’s design, but the mesmer currently just offers a little bit too much in the department of being able to safely move around the map and +1 with extreme ease and very little risk when building into it.

Mesmers, like thieves, regarded their low-standing in sPvP and used to be pretty prideful of skill-based gameplay. The rest of the player-base after seeing the buffs to the class is coming to this class and finding that skill demand completely lacking when setup potential like PU is taking away from that “get good or die” type of play and the bolstered damage is making executions easier and safer than the majority of the rest of the classes.

I don’t think anyone’s attesting to the mesmer being better. It’s just that the mesmer right now is on the same skill-requirement-tier as hammer warrior (and easier than glass longbow ranger with fewer counters – yea, I just said that) with still all of the high-reward plays it offers and then some, while out-shining some other builds/classes like burst thief in quite literally every possible way.

It’s not “fair” that mesmers now have the spotlight due to their weakness previously. “Fair” would be every class being balanced and nobody feeling that way. At the moment, the tables have just been flipped over 180 degrees and not straightened out.

So as far as “hating” the mesmers goes, per the OP, it’s not so much that but frustration as to how currently the mesmer is a strictly better version of some other classes while taking the niche roles some of these other classes and builds once had.

Khristophoros.7194:

And it’s more about being able to fight mesmers.

This is the biggest issue I have with proposing for reveal – the thief’s class mechanic and pretty much all of its damage and essential utility comes from its stealth attacks. Throwing reveal around willy-nilly, especially now of all times (thief is bottom-tier with necro atm, if not worse) without comping up with some huge compensation for the thief in regards to its damage potential/stealth attacks is just a really bad idea.

If the problem is mesmers being OP in stealth, but not thieves (which as a class require it for the most part aside from a few builds like P/P and S/P), then just nerf mesmer stealth, not stealth as a whole.

Volrath.1473:

Wrong subforum mate, devs do not dare to enter the thieves lair.

True story.

Hidori.3472:

Ayrilana.1396:

Yep that would explain how. However, if a moderate number of people showed up to timed events such as Teq, VW, or TT with the role as yours, how successful would the events be? They can build those type of roles in future events but applying it to current ones would requiring a reworking of several systems.

How successful you ask?
Well… if they would remove the timer on Teq guess it could be doable in a few hours XD

Yea… anything without a timer actually becomes very faceroll easy with purely defensive specs.

There’s a video somewhere on youtube of a GS warrior in full clerics(? could be more defensive) that literally just facetanks lupi and doesn’t even dodge. That said, it takes him like an hour to do.

Harper.4173:

(A lot of intelligent arguments as to why the trinity concept is absolutely no better than what we have right this moment.)

I think a big issue is that the very same players abiding by the meta they complain about do not know that they are the ones actually creating and enforcing it under the pretense they believe thy’re the victims of a flawed system decided solely by the mechanics of the game that can easily be solved, rather than copy-paste efficiency mentality and stagnant content.

The entire prospect of the “berserker meta” has absolutely nothing to do with the gear or the difficulty of the content but entirely to do with the content itself being stale, per what Indigo mentioned above.

simplesimon.2084:

fixit.7189:

If they can break the zerker meta then I am all for it. Nothing is more boring to me than a game were going max damage is by far the superior way to go. No matter how much healing/toughness I might equip, I will still get one shot like I would in zerker gear and that to me is the problem…many stats are worthless beyond the pure dps ones.

If they make enimies hit faster but smaller damage. If done right would make zerker gear not survive without outside healing because of not enough dodges/blocks.

Tanks could soak the damage better

And healers could keep up.

You’d still want an occasional dodge or die attack too.

There needs to be a line between making it easier for tankier players to sustain in these environments but also making it possible for skilled glass cannon players be able to survive. Forcing a style of play out of a scenario is the same as creating class restrictions, as many players do not possess multiple sets of armor or have interest in doing so or playing anything but their desired role; the same logic as to why people are upset DPS is the “meta” for speed-clears right now – the support and tank playerbase is unhappy that they have no presence, just as DPS players would be if content required them to build tankier. Do note as well that the “requirements” for tank/heal specs are completely artificial and are only defined by the players themselves wanting faster clears, not by the game’s intrinsic encounter mechanics.

I do believe they are pushing this slightly with some of the new mobs in HoT that focus ion grouping up and dealing large numbers of small attacks.

Sparrow.5936:

Why is thief getting mentioned in almost all of these posts? Thief is at the bottom of the barrel post patch in pvp and wvw. They are underwhelming in all aspects of the game.

But asking to nerf stealth or give more classes ways to deal with it is not the answer either. What’s next? Should all classes get 2 ways to instantly remove a ranger pet from combat? Or prevent aegis from being applied? Do you listen to yourselves before you just blurt out posts?

If you have a problem with mesmers, go post about mesmers. Don’t try to break a mechanic that would ruin a whole other class altogether. Might as well just rename topic to “please remove thief from game” .

I think you answered your own question, here. Thief players are mentioning that asking for nerfs to stealth as a whole is completely unreasonable since part of their class mechanic requires it (stealth attacks). The thief doesn’t need more nerfs when the problem lies with PU mesmer.

There is always going to be a single, optimal “meta” strategy that defines the basic rules of how min-max players and their subsequent followers decide to play any given game, unless a new, better strategy that improves upon the previous optimization emerges, and then that one will dominate until said strategy also changes.

So the players define what they want to see in dungeons and PvE based upon their own criteria; in most cases it’s about reducing the speed of clearing content for faster rewards. This has occurred because there is no “trinity” in GW2.

What does a hard “trinity” model accomplish when the game content is designed around it/required to be played? It simply changes the “5 dps meta” to “1 tank 1 healer 3 dps” with no variability for change and no way for players to optimize much further or change strategies as a whole.

Anyone arguing for a “hard trinity” system doesn’t understand the fact that it solves absolutely nothing but only restricts further the options players have and create an immovable, static “meta” not subject to change regardless of player actions. In every game with a “hard trinity,” all parties will attempt to bolster DPS and reduce clear time as much as possible if it allows them to succeed at completing the content just as reliably. This just enforces certain styles are required to play, which for many, are seen as less fun and creates just as much toxicity within communities regarding kicking for group composition or not meeting the standards of other players.

ANet knows what made this game succeed was the lack of a “hard trinity.” Trying to force that upon players will only make them leave, not change their builds or play in ways they don’t think are fun.

As long as I don’t find myself “waiting to have fun” by being forced into either needing someone else to do heavy lifting for my group due to class/build choices, or needing to get by content in ways I don’t enjoy through necessity by having to build a certain way/play a certain class, I don’t really care what they decide to release as concepts for class and encounter design.

Akuni.8604:

Are we done with thiefs and mesmers throwing the L2P and other snarky comments? Yes? Good.

Now, it is true that stealth lacks counterplay in that you can’t target something that you can’t see. And therefore all the reveals will be useless against good thiefs if they are not AoE. In fact we should just trash the current reveal system.

My suggestion is to give stealth a periodic “Here I am. Now I’m gone” mechanic. That can be done through particles (dust from footsteps and whatnot), sound cues and the stealth giving you visibility from time to time (think of leaving a translucend snapshot of your char every few seconds (like 10 i.e.) that poofs shortly after (1/2 sec or lower). This would give you the possibility to say “He went there” but also gives you a juking potential plus that stuff goes 11/10 with the getting stalked feeling.)
Plus… we could allow chaining stealth without the “cd duration” then… That would be awsome.

If that’s not enough to counter stealth we can think of including reveal again. I would go with a buff that gives you a small AoE of revealing though. That’s more in line with highened senses and less binary (wait it out or jump stab from the range you’re still invisible).

A thief isn’t doing damage if it’s stealthed or doesn’t have a period where it’s revealed, unless it’s playing build that doesn’t deal damage or gain essential utility from stealth attacks, though, such as P/P or S/D. Otherwise, the thief at one point or another is going to be revealed and that is when the ranger/engineer/revealed-effect-caster should be using his reveal effects, or it’s going to just run out of initiative and be unable to stealth for longer, also providing a window. Keep in mind these reveal effects also have incredibly long casting ranges to the point where most thieves, even D/P stealth builds, will not yet be trying to use stealth.

Beyond that, tracking a stealthed thief is pretty easy once you learn how to do it. This pretty much comes down to learning how to first play as a thief and its nuances, and then applying that knowledge from the other perspective as counter-play. The players that can beat stealth best are often ones which play stealth classes. There don’t need to be indicators; I regularly kill stealthed thieves with non-AoE skills out of learning how to beat them and knowing realistically where they will be and what they’ll be trying to do in a fight. D/P is hard to kill only because of the blind pressure more than anything.

Only the mesmer can deal damage while using stealth. Again, this is more of a PU issue and the thread should have been made as a complaint about it more than stealth as a whole.

I’m not really sure they even need new models. A setting within the wardrobe for “Symmetrical Shoulder Armor” could be pretty-easily implemented just to duplicate them. It might be a little weird for some of them like the Carapace/Luminescent ones which have two elements but are asymmetrical (potential clipping issues), but looking at the above screens, I can definitely see the merit in doing something like this.

Camera Turn + tap Lock Autotarget + Stop Autoattack on Target Change = stop attacking anything using a ranged weapon.

As a thief/ranger dual main, this is a L2P problem. If it’s a graphics problem, lower your settings. If it’s still a graphics problem, you’re probably running below minimum specs and should upgrade your PC, or are running with a blob too big and should stop blobbing so much if your PC can’t handle it.

DeWolfe.2174:

All the thieves thinking we’re talking about them. Sorry, most of us are talking about Mesmer’s abusing stealth now.

Unfortunately the mesmer doesn’t have a large portion of its class mechanic require stealth access → stealth attacks as a direct means of performing necessary damage or utility and losing auto-target due to limited defensive options and the lowest HP.

If this is about mesmers, then it should be about PU being overpowered, considering the mesmer now has better stealth than the thief (yes, mesmers have better stealth access than thieves now despite the attempt to nerf perma-stealth thieves because it was “unfun”).

A thief without backstab, sneak attack, or Tactical Strike is in many instances completely useless and potentially even less helpful than an uplevel in regards to damage dealt, utility, and possibly even durability.

So yea, if stealth as a whole needs to get nerfed, I’d expect a minimum of allowing thieves to be able to use their class mechanic attacks without the need for stealth, and given either more defensive options as a whole, or a hp increase to 15k baseline like rangers/mesmers/engis which coincidentally also have access to stealth.

It’s been a well-known fact by the mesmer comunity that the moa actually has better damage scaling than some classes even have access to. It actually hits pretty hard as you just saw. Since phantasms inherit mesmer stats for power, a full zerk mesmer’s moa’d clone will hit pretty dang hard :P

I really don’t care if stealth is nerfed as long as I can stab backstab while revealed. If the thief didn’t have its class mechanic be required to be in stealth for, I could somewhat agree.

Stealth’s counter is smart play and knowing how to beat stealth users. The number of invisible targets (thieves, mesmers, rangers, engineers) I often kill with just single-target attacks is rather high after playing so much of thief/ranger/mesmer and understanding how they are often played in regards to their use of stealth.

Ranger and Engineer already have hard-counters to stealth. The dragonhunter is also getting a pulsing AOE reveal trap.

Ravoku.1852:

DeceiverX.8361:

I prefer the split. It can allow for multiple evades with no nearby target (to avoid ranged effects, etc.) at a lower initiative cost than if it were bumped up back to its full cost. As someone mentioned above, I also like being able to save its second skill to use on a separate target; I find myself frequently using FS on classes without blocks or aegis to get LS and then using it to finish a guard, war, or engineer with unblockable burst damage that steals a boon, too.

Yeah, you would need to be more timely with your evades so as not to drain your initiative as quickly, but I’m also not a huge fan of evade spamming, which would be discouraged if anyone concerned about any skillful application of FS.

I personally find saving it to be useful in very rare situations like that, and it’s not enough for me to want it to remain split. That being said, I understand what you like about it and respect your take on it.

I’m referring to more or less a case where such spamming is absolutely necessary, like in out-numbered situations against, say, a ranger and mesmer at long range and a hammer warrior in your face; not dodging RF/shatters and the CC of the warrior is going to get you killed, and the lower cost of evades is pretty much necessary when being hit by a bombardment of must-dodge attacks. Having no immunities, blocks, etc. puts the thief in a position where it needs such a prolonged defensive option through this kind of evade spamming in an outnumbered situation.

Arguing for the contrary really just puts the thief into a deeper role of only being able to +1 fights than it already is, which is being heavily out-classed by a variety of roles and classes at the moment.

I prefer the split. It can allow for multiple evades with no nearby target (to avoid ranged effects, etc.) at a lower initiative cost than if it were bumped up back to its full cost. As someone mentioned above, I also like being able to save its second skill to use on a separate target; I find myself frequently using FS on classes without blocks or aegis to get LS and then using it to finish a guard, war, or engineer with unblockable burst damage that steals a boon, too.

Make it a 2-part skill like FS/LS. I know I’m gonna take some flak here, but let me explain:

On power, this skill is border-line useless except as last-ditch evade efforts in situations you would otherwise die in.

This means just buffing it is kind of out of the question as it’d likely end up breaking something.

On conditions, spamming 3 and getting an evade out of it is not really engaging. The multi-hit aspect of it also synergizes with DT to the point where it’s not only effective but almost always optimal to spam 3.

As a two part skill, it can be broken down into a skill-shot evade gap closer (like warrior GS 3) and transform into a multi-hit attack at melee range after a successful hi with part 1. Except provide the dash/evade with just two low-coefficient strikes and no bleeds (it is D/D after all), and the follow-up attack a very fast and repeated sequence of say, five attacks at a total medium/medium-high power coefficients but each applying bleeding, and at the beginning of the animation, a stack of poison(? balance-testing needed).

This gives the set some engage/escape potential to D/D and a little bit of damage while keeping the condi build mobile and evasive but not just safe/spammy from free evades, a bit more variety in innate poison/stacked bleeding application (not solely from P/D), and a bit more of a bonus to damage potential on the D/D build path for condi users as well as power builds.

It’d also give a few more evasive options to D/D rather than being forced into Sword, but sword of course then ends up a better in-combat evade and keeps you within the fight while providing a bit better escape/engage mobility from IS/IR, condition and condition cleansing with the utility of either offhand dagger’s evasion and boon ripping/blinds/dazes/control effects or offhand pistol’s strong defensive utility.

Yamsandjams.3267:

DeceiverX.8361:

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ll keep trying it out though, maybe I’ll find some combination of traits that will at least make it acceptable enough to kill zergs of keyboard turners with no effort.

Wrong class. And definitely not D/D.

Hm… maybe p/p?

D/P and P/D are the lowest-skill and highest-reward weapons on the thief.

Coming from a WvW perspective, mind you.

I’ve been using Trickster, and while I only have one trick (beig withdraw), I’ve found that it helps a lot against condition builds, as it prioritizes the immob/cripple/chill first, then clears another DoT effect, and then heals, which helps also remove poison to get the full benefits of the heal. I’d rather get the removal to get away from something dangerous/killing you than trying to remove boons which often on boon builds come up again quite quickly.

I’d argue for thieves using SA it’s probably not necessary due to the awesome removal that comes from SE, but for builds which do not contain a lot of removal, I’ve found I prefer it to theft. I think it will be even more useful when we see more slow come into play, as then this skill will provide the possibility of removing every disabling condition.

Coloxeus.3480:

DeceiverX.8361:

Nobody knows. I doubt we’ll ever get it, honestly.

or bringing back the withdraw’s 15secs CD but same healing power 4,344 is fine to me

That’s even less likely, as that means they acknowledged the error and decided to change their design decision on it rather than properly adjust the numbers.

Nobody knows. I doubt we’ll ever get it, honestly.

Sagat.3285:

DeceiverX.8361:

I do believe it’s meant to be that way; 1 initiative gained per effective stealth cycle. I believe it’s done to remove the ability for thieves to maintain permanent stealth uptime.

It’s a still a GM and the “perma” stealth was d/p related and was not a issue. I’m not liking where they are going.

It wasn’t just D/P. X/D had permanent stealth uptime without needing any utilities and effects other than Infusion of Shadows. If played properly, a thief could maintain permanent stealth if it was near an attackable structure, which was a huge problem in WvW. It also subtly nerfs stealth abusers and raises the skill ceiling/lowers the skill floor in general by making them think about initiative management instead of just 5—> 2 —> 3/1 --> 3 —> 3 --> 11111222.

Maugetarr.6823:

Mattigan.6395:

I guess I’d rather they help us out on survivability rather than a HP increase. I don’t want to tank, but I do want better ways to avoid direct damage and mitigate condi pressure.

Buffing the minor traits in acro would go a long way towards helping. Also SA traits should just be front loaded to “[effect] on gaining stealth.” Note this isn’t on entering stealth, so shadow refuge would cause the effect on each pulse. Some effects would have to be nerfed slightly, but it should balance out and promote attacking faster from stealth.

This used to be the case for multiple effects, such as IoS, but it ended up being wildly overpowered to the point where D/P 5+2 spam was so effective it pretty much couldn’t lose in small-scale fights to pretty much anything.

I’d prefer the active mechanics of SA embracing more benefits for revealing – you need stealth pressure to gain these benefits – to promote more diverse capabilities of the trait line rather than just sitting around invisible or turning invisible passively waiting for effects to happen. Allowing players to spec this way would create some pretty cool situations with SA; consider a counterpart to SE that removes 2 conditions when getting revealed, a lump-sum heal effect on reveal as a GM to counteract Shadow Rejuv, etc. I think it’d help solve SA’s passive play problems while giving a variety of builds more interesting ways to play using SA, and also punishing players who just spam reveal effects, as currently, aside from S/P and P/P (SB I don’t consider as swaps can be baited or if not, 3spam avoidance) every build is punished no matter what for getting the revealed effect as it reduces the number of available options for the thief by a very large margin. Consider a condi ranger or engi unloading high stacks of a condition and then using Sic ’Em/Analyze with Minimize/block/CC effects as part of a rotation as a means to auto-win rather than a situational counter. It would cause the SA reveal build to be potentially the beneficiary by removing said conditions or healed.

I do believe it’s meant to be that way; 1 initiative gained per effective stealth cycle. I believe it’s done to remove the ability for thieves to maintain permanent stealth uptime.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ll keep trying it out though, maybe I’ll find some combination of traits that will at least make it acceptable enough to kill zergs of keyboard turners with no effort.

Wrong class. And definitely not D/D.

Here’s 11.5 on the heavy in spvp with substantially lower power/crit damage than WvW

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw109_zpsdpy7bqlj.jpg

Stat Comparison. WvW is down atm so add another 350 to 500 (+30, forgot ToC) power.

sPvP:
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw112_zpsna9cvfbk.jpg

WvW:
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw111_zpszglvgbns.jpg

I did my best to emulate the valkyrie benefits by using a berserker amulet in sPvP to maximize the damage output via PT. So you’re comparing about 650 less power and 16% less of a critical damage modifier.

What’s more is that my full zerk warrior, has even less toughness than said golem by around 9%, seen below.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw113_zpsv77rt1zo.jpg

I’d say that’s a pretty massive difference.

So, care to tell me how I’m not hitting these numbers on heavies in WvW?

Jana.6831:

@ Deceiver:
So, before you quoted me in that thread I already said that I wasn’t a one shot thief (who did around 9-10k BS before the patch) but you are now claiming that I spoke to you first and later claimed something differently? Or what is it?
I have no idea how you got that number and you don’t show how you got them, so yeah you have a screenshot with high numbers – good job, but that doesn’t say a thing.
I actually think it’s kind of funny to be called a “noob” by someone who doesn’t know valk and zerker stats

(And Maugetarr, a BS against a light golem in pvp is something differently than a BS against a guard/warr in wvw and that was what we were talking about)

I think you’re confusing my point. You aren’t one and weren’t one, so you have no authority to make claims that sch high numbers aren’t possible. That’s why I quoted you. If you were built this way before the patch, and built this way now and were making these claims, your posts in the previous thread, and the ones here, would possibly have more merit.

I can’t go back in time and record the encouter, sorry.

Uh, what? I’m making mentionings that valkyrie offers superior damage throughput except in the cases against say, uplevels, and this is only the case due to PT’s ratio being 10%, and being changed to ferocity based on precision. If it was 7%, and/or being made to go prec -> vitality, there would be no mathematical equivalent for reaching peak burst damage with Furious Oils because they would out-scale PT in ferocity, so the argument for power wouldn’t even be necessary.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Neither. You’ve clearly never played signets before and you keep claiming that such damage numbers are not realistic when many people do this with relative ease.

You seriously do not know me aside from the fact I’ve made claims about being one of the hardest hitting thieves in GW2. You’ve never fought me. You’re making baseless claims about damage because you personally have not optimized your build for it on the sheer basis that your Shadow Arts build is hitting for substantially less damage than a pure damage signet stab such as mine.

Again, you’re playing CS/SA/Trickery with meta/defensive utilities and are missing 30% damage from Deadly Arts alone, and 16-21 stacks of might without signets, and 15% from Assassin’s Signet compounded on the rest.

Just the power bonuses alone from signets turn an 8k stab into about 10k, add the modifiers and you’re looking at 14.5k.

That’s under the assumption you’ve got somewhere along 2.3-2.6k power baseline, and aren’t further modifying your damage via Valkyrie’s superior backstab scaling in WvW to Berserker’s.

You yourself said that the screenshot you linked to prove that thieves were able to do more than 20k backstabs before the patch was only possible because someone buffed you – and then I wonder why link it with the claim that this was a thief’s doing? It basically is but it leads to rubbish class updates like we have now. So we can now all play like deceiver and the other oneshot spawn campers. Yay!
(And btw 14,5k is something different than the 17k you first claimed)

Well if you want me to know you – then act differently and make some videos in which people can see how you get the numbers – not just screenshots where half of it is left out.

So, I really hope all of you are getting my point.

Edit: Oh btw: Isn’t a valk backstab the same like a zerker’s backstab? If not, please enlighten me.

Yes, the over-20k mark against a non-uplevel guardian as my highest recorded, non-uplevel stab was reached because I gained 9 more stacks of might from a nearby allied guard and was thus capped out at 25. I mentioned in the same discussion that my normal stab damage is still 15-20k+ against glassier lighter-armor targets and that damage has not changed – if not decreased – since the patch on 6/23 due to increased baseline toughness. You were making claims that high damage stabs were impossible/the root cause of the changes on 6/23 and that counter-playing said high damage is too difficult, and I demonstrated that your assertions were incorrect and that players with signet stab builds have gotten accustomed to surviving in said encounters while not depending on gimmicky trait-based defenses and have been shelling out high numbers since the game’s release.

You even admitted later in the thread you could have achieved said numbers as “in theory it would’ve been possible,” and that you’ve never built your thief to play burst damage.

See here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Two-Shotted-in-WvW-since-Jun-23-patch/first#post5220586

So are you going to continue claiming you are all-knowing about damage output potential when you’re both inexperienced in this topic and make claims that what you’re arguing against was in fact/still is very reasonable to achieve?

Depending on the foods used, one can achieve better power figures, and thus more reliable damage against higher-armor targets via the conversion from valkyrie armor than berserker. While the upper bound is technically superior against extremely low-armor targets due to PT’s conversion, the gains are often fairly small once approaching the heavy armor tier of defenses, as modifiers become strictly less relevant as this escalates. Additionally, equivalent numbers can be achieved through Furious Maintenance Oils, which also leaves the thief with substantially more health.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

godmoney.6025:

Jana.6831:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

If you go DA/CS/Trix, backstabs are pretty insane10k -15k+ on average and no, I am not talking about stabbing upscaled naked ele running around wvw. With buffs from allies it’s even more, I hit tower lord for 24k lol. The dmg is there, just spec for it.

Do you do 17k damage on heavies in wvw ?
With one hit that is.
(I’m playing this game too =))

Why the disbelief? I have personally backstabbed heavy armor zerkers for over 15k. I’m sure with seaweed salad, more signet might stacks, etc. that I could go even higher.

The disbelief is because I know Deceiver.
And my highest backstab on a guard was 10k so far – I don’t think 17 would’ve been possible without any help from someone else.

guard = guardian

I’ve reached 16k in spvp. With food buffs 17k seems more than possible.

Alone or while being buffed by your allies?
You guys realize what you’re doing with this, right?

Neither. You’ve clearly never played signets before and you keep claiming that such damage numbers are not realistic when many people do this with relative ease.

You seriously do not know me aside from the fact I’ve made claims about being one of the hardest hitting thieves in GW2. You’ve never fought me. You’re making baseless claims about damage because you personally have not optimized your build for it on the sheer basis that your Shadow Arts build is hitting for substantially less damage than a pure damage signet stab such as mine.

Again, you’re playing CS/SA/Trickery with meta/defensive utilities and are missing 30% damage from Deadly Arts alone, and 16-21 stacks of might without signets, and 15% from Assassin’s Signet compounded on the rest.

Just the power bonuses alone from signets turn an 8k stab into about 10k, add the modifiers and you’re looking at 14.5k.

That’s under the assumption you’ve got somewhere along 2.3-2.6k power baseline, and aren’t further modifying your damage via Valkyrie’s superior backstab scaling in WvW to Berserker’s.

DHawk.2687:

HunterMcGregor.6843:

Yeah, triple stepping to someone, Crit’ing 7k with a CnD then a 11k Backstab is not fun… JUZ KEEDZZ

Critcal Strikes, Deadly Arts and Trickery. Mmmmmmmmmm. Can’t get enough of 2 hitting people.

Well personally, I only find this game fun when there is a risk involved. No defensive traits at all.

No combination of weapons is “garbage”, just personal preference I guess.

I’m sorry but I can’t believe that you do a 11k backstab, I’m not trying to be rude, but I’ve been testing out so many different things with the thief post patch and simply math wise the backstab can’t go past about 9,7k
so if I’m missing something please enlighten me

Still doing 17k on heavies in WvW. I have no idea where you’re deriving your figures from, but that’s definitely not accurate. I’m able to reach 12-13k in sPvP, even, on medium armor targets.

Drayos.8759:

DeceiverX.8361:

Yes, but I feel like dealing 6.5-8k + 6.5-8k + 13-15k AOE damage every 1.3s is a little bit much, don’t you think? Do realize that this would put necromancers as an easy first or second place DPS in the game via a cleaving auto-attack alone. Putting it simply, the DPS is double that of Lich Form’s.

Just seems a wee bit high o.O

Well mesmers hit for 10k

Eles Burn Tick for utpoo 10k..

Reapers hitting for 8k Dmg isnt really anything to todays meta, so no i dont think it’ll be too strong ,

Can i see Reapers being Hard nerfed and Just becoming Useless, yes i can its pure balance will depend on doing more damage then anything else due to no mobility no fast paced Attacks and being locked behind only being able to pull to you.

Reaper nerfs are inevitable and the likelyhood is u wont find much use in GS after it happens lol… but u never know i guess.

Mesmers do not hit for an average of 18k per second on auto attacks. They do huge numbers in intermittent bursts, but so do thieves, wars, guards, rangers, etc. NOTHING deals such high numbers repeatedly with no skill use. Only eles using summoned weapons could even come close to competing in DPS, which isn’t even sustained.

Burning is overpowered as a condition and the setup for huge ticks from eles is high. Again, this isn’t AOE auto-attacks.

GS looks like a bad weapon except for the pull. Dagger and Staff remain better options for LF and DPS generation. I’m referring solely to shroud.

I was just expressing concern over the wiki’s damage figures because levels of damage that high are completely imbalanced and contradict ANet’s current goals of trying to normalize PvE/PvP viability.

Whether or not the reaper gets nerfed is irrelevant; it would have to get nerfed if the damage coeffs were what I was asking about on the first page due to the fact it’d have 50%+ more damage than the current #1/#2 glass cannon DPS builds in the game.

I agree with most posts mentioning that the damage should be high due to the reaper’s low mobility and what is now useless chase potential from the changes to movement skills. That said, the damage being so extraordinarily high as I initially mentioned is completely broken. It should absolutely be competitive, and I think the GS will be a weak weapon in the end, but 50% more damage than the highest DPS builds in the game running an effective 1/4 HP and fewer defensive options is just simply not balanced in any way. I’m hoping the best for the reaper, because my sole motivation to even buy HoT is pretty much resting on this spec, but a 25% to 33% reduction in damage to the AA chain during shroud (and only during shroud) – if the wiki’s numbers were correct as base values – would probably be appropriate to keep the class in line with the rest.

Okay. There were no coefficients posted on the wiki, so I was just comparing them by values to what the numbers were for a variety of skills for other classes. If those numbers are post-gear, they’re actually pretty low. I was just really weirded out by the fact it looked like the damage was going to be better than Lich form.

Yes, but I feel like dealing 6.5-8k + 6.5-8k + 13-15k AOE damage every 1.3s is a little bit much, don’t you think? Do realize that this would put necromancers as an easy first or second place DPS in the game via a cleaving auto-attack alone. Putting it simply, the DPS is double that of Lich Form’s.

Just seems a wee bit high o.O

Looking more into the Reaper, I’m noticing that the shroud auto-attack damage according to the wiki is 456/456/912.

Holy moly, that’s absolutely insane. One Auto-chain (while cleaving) is almost the same damage as a full Mug/CnD/Backstab combo from a D/D thief on about the same cast time, which as everyone is probably aware, is a ton of damage.

Can anyone verify if these numbers are correct or are just speculation? I feel like this kind of damage output is just totally obscene coming from rapid, large-radius AOE auto-attacks with the amount of defense available via DS and incoming stability bonuses.

I take issue with it just because it’s basically building a better thief; the mesmer currently had better stealth uptime than the thief (permanent stealth uptime on the thief is no longer possible), in-stealth burst, long-ranged options, and overall subtantially more group utility. The biggest issue I see with the current trait setup for PU is that there’s basically no reason to leave stealth; damage from shatters if cast from range and phantasms is fairly high and doesn’t cause any kind of revealed effects or punish the mesmer for camping stealth, while also providing a lot of boon benefits. At least with the thief, there is a need to make a judgement of when to leave stealth and attack, and the durations are much shorter with a much higher opportunity cost. They may still pack better reset potential, but they’re not doing any damage or are cluttering up the battlefield in the meantime.

I’d probably have to say that disabling shatters while under the effects of stealth from a mesmer (as thief/mesmer stealth is treated differently by the game, so the distinction already exists) would probably be a good place to start. This makes PU/Phantasm builds still maintain potency and benefits of stealth and reset potential, but will require them, like thieves, to leave stealth (or not use it at all) to actually come out in the open (sort of, considering the clones/distractions :P) to truly kill people and burst them down.

Just my two cents.

Sad reality is without pretty constant DoT cleansing, there really is no way to deal with PU condi mesmer at the moment. It’s rather dumb.

It was one of, if not the single most overpowered small-scale fighting build in the game lol. It’s in a reasonable place right now and requires a bit more active play than just camping in stealth and dealing ridiculous amounts of damage.

While mesmer is broken, it doesn’t mean everything should be buffed to compensate it; mesmers need a tone down.

Stunbreak would probably be pretty fair, as it’s activation purposes are fairly niche or are used for signet builds, which creates more interesting play than just “activate for more damage.”

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Linken.6345:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

You may not buy, sell, transfer or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell, transfer or auction) , or offer to transfer, sell or auction, or buy or accept any offer to transfer, sell or auction, any game Account or game Content, including (without limitation) game characters, character attributes, items, objects, currency, credits or copyrighted material, or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by ArenaNet, Inc., NCsoft, the Service, or our licensors, nor may you encourage or induce any other player to participate in such prohibited transaction(s), except as may be specifically authorized by the Service and by ArenaNet or NCsoft, without first obtaining our express written permission.

One could argue that your selling them currency in a way, like loansharks do.

I’m fairly certain that this rule is in regard to real money trading. The part I’ve italicised refers to real-life money.

If you tried to make the rule apply to gold, then nobody would be able to purchase anything in-game. The rule doesn’t make sense in that context.

EDIT: just saw that Danikat jumped in before me

Not quite. That bit refers to in-game currency as it is encompassed within Game Content. This section of the TOS refers to RMT issues and the terms “buy, sell, transfer, or auction” refer to using real-life currency.

Regarding the OP, it’s not against the TOS, but you cannot enforce you will get money back. Them mentioning that they will pay you back isn’t necessarily enough evidence to get them banned/suspended due to scamming, as there is no set deadline on when they’ll give back your money or make payments, and if a payment is late, it doesn’t constitute account suspension, and reporting too soon on this would be argued as abuse of the support feature, especially if this expands to many different players.

Really, unless people scam on massive scales from many players, they do/should not receive account suspension on the basis that the distributing party is not using endorsed features of the game to secure safe transactions and is performing trades outside of official systems as their own risk.

It’s always been this way. Stats are inherently lower in sPvP than WvW. My thief has almost 3k baseline power in WvW but barely past 2.2k in sPvP to put this in perspective.

DevJD.5483:

People should stop raging….yes SM is a ridiculous spot for a 1v1…. Go do it somewhere that make’s scense. To ppl saying 1v1 shiuldint even be in wvw is basically telling 80% of roamers they are useless….just stop, its called quality over quantity.

Yea no offense but saying that is pretty insulting to pretty much every roamer ever.

Hannelore.8153:

Ravenmoon.5318:

^ These issues can be avoided entirely by implementing Dx11/12 renderer. Although when I made a thread asking for it, some guys decided that it’s a genius idea to talk to me about marketing and economics and I’m like whaaaaaa ?!? this game barely works on 50vs50 and that is a real problem and those guys are giving me economics lessons? <o>

No, it can’t. DirectX 11 is thread-safe, but that doesn’t automatically make the game engine fully thread safe from the ground up. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the engine can accomplish tasks asynchronously without sufficient locking.

DirectX 9 in its own thread is about the same performance-wise as DirectX 11/12. And the game already fully offloads DX9 without the -dx9single option passed to it.

Graphics engine =/= game engine.

To put it more simply, imagine that your game code is running on one CPU, and your graphics code is running on another CPU. At some point you have to synchronize with the graphics code so that you can pass the coordinates, animation properties, etc. of each object in the game code (often called “actors”) to that thread.

During this time, both threads freeze if they try to access the same data asynchronously, and only continue when the data access is finished.

Solutions to these problems require the engine to support it from the start. Using a different graphics API just means that you can access the graphics API from all threads safely. That’s useful if you’re trying to render from two or more threads, but your game code is always running on a single CPU due to network synchronization and timing and thus at some point you will always lock on the game data.

A similar response was stated by an ANet programmer on reddit and on the forums, mentioning that from what they got out of DX11 testing and the underlying theory of what’s under the hood, a change here would result in marginal if any performance gains as the code wouldn’t be able to execute any faster.

fixit.7189:

My server was once in top three….now it’s at the bottom and dead. And I have to pay a ransom of 300+ gold or 20 bucks to move to a server that actually has people playing…only to have people/large guilds suddenly move over night. For instance, back when my server was hopping there was 1-2 large oceanic guilds so we had a night crew but NOT as large as the other oppositions night crew so what did those guilds/players do? They all paid the transfer fee and moved to the one that was winning. Right after these guys went, several large NA crews did the same thing. GG.

Here’s the thing, so i do happen to pay the ransom and move….what happens when the server I go to falls out of favour? Oh right, same deal that happened to my once great but now dead server.

Transfer fees were put in to discourage this but it hasn’t at all, if a guild and their hangers on decide to move…they do it, all them. This leaves whatever server they left to become dead.

Anyways, I used to absolutely love playing WvW but due to the drop of a hat transitory nature of the players here…I don’t no more. All I want to do is play WvW like how it was meant to play: map cap vs map cap instead of lil ol me vs 100+ players alone. Is that too much to ask for? So if not, can I have a free transfer pls? I am not going to drop 20 bucks every time a guild and their band wagoners get kitteny. :S

All I can say is that researching a server is pointless, you never know when a server will fall out of favour and be vacated. I seen it happen TWO times now so I am not playing WvW no more and that to me is disappointing.

Solution is either merge servers, free transfers, or give some sorta mercenary option (not eotm) for mist war. But I guess this won’t happen cus anet is banking on people paying the transfer ransom. Sorry, I won’t be paying that. 300 g to me is a month+ of grinding like a dog and 20 bucks? I rather spend that 20 on silly cash shop kitten instead.

This is why they have to do forced merged groups based on population density per time (and when), average size of guild entry, average “blob” size determined by player density mapping, PPT/kills based on a per-server record, etc., and merge groups of servers together weekly to create forced positive matchups. The glicko system is way too slow. My server is falling down tiers now due to a migration of the guilds like you explained, and we’re 3 weeks still in the same tier after ticking < 100 PPT and outnumbered against 50-70 man blobs 24/7 since the migration. It’s been a boring slaughterfest the entire time and the majority of the people I played with have since just left the game due to low morale. We’d also just transferred in as a guild because the same thing happened to our last two servers. Playing catch-up is terrible and overly-costly.

This way servers still have identities and will retain their communities, but server size will be irrelevant and the populations will stabilize and force people not to transfer aside from creating “home base” scenarios for guilds so that they are always together as a community.

mako.2431:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This thread’s title was changed to “4 shotted”. That means there’s no issue, since the damage was spread across multiple hits. Now it’s just a L2P issue of using evades and stun breaks.

Give me a break. The guy was on me and hit me 4x in 1 second and downed me. I had absolutely no time to react at all, much less evade and stun break. You are talking out of your backside. The mods changed the subject, it was virtually a one shot, not literally. I could have lied and just said it was all in the same skill though. I put “one shot” in quotes for a reason.

This is L2P, though. As my screenshot above proved, this damage is nothing new at all. If anything, damage from hyper-burst is lower than it used to be before the changes due to all the defensive bonuses given out. 18k over four hits is actually extremely low. A hasted hammer warrior can do the same if not better.

And people dodge and react to this all the time. As a thief that plays a build like this, skilled opponents will negate it, and I have learned to do the same in time when playing against pretty much any burst builds in general.

As to why they changed it:

They changed it because of the slow condition. As it was before, any changes to animation speed caused by quickness would cause the animations to move faster and thus end shorter than normal. With the implementation of slow, a user could presumably have super speed and be slowed down and use a mobility skill, gaining absolutely silly amounts of movement from a condition that is supposed to be harmful. Consider the effects of super speed slowed down rocket boots or even just a GS sprint slowed down (50% extra distance basically) or somesuch nonsense.

While I disagree with how this was handled as well, I can understand the reasoning as a means of preventing huge issues and delaying the patch. That said, delaying the patch might have been a good idea >.>

I typically make my names based on wordplay which have largely come first from my DnD/Pathfinder characters.

There’s my oldest, Héll Hunter (ranger) which has spanned many games, which is a pun as it’s a hunter/ranger, and it plays on a dual meaning of a pursuer of chaos/battle and a purger of evil,

Shívyr, a dagger-based assassin using ice magic/weapons – I’ll never stop using corrupted shards on this character :P (Shiver as in from the cold, and Shiv-er as one who uses a shiv).

Clarette is a blood-based character (in DnD was a melee mage) which in GW2 is a s/s bleed warrior. Claret is a red wine/a deep red/purple color and has been used commonly as a euphemism for blood.

The rest follow similar inspiration or are just copy-names taken from friends’ DnD characters to see how well I could re-create them.

Except they don’t. That’s the issue at hand.