Guild Wars 2

Also, try this:
https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/28148006-Repairing-the-Game-Client

Gaile Gray.6029:

Charrbeque, you’re right. There are a few irritating glitches in the Word and Name Filter. I use a certain word all the time, but I’ve had to mentally remind myself to use “analyze” instead of a s ess (intentionally misspelled and spaced) because the latter is kittenized.

I’ll see what we can do about this, and I heard there was some progress made on updating the filter.

If anyone else wants to share harmless words that are unnecessarily censored, please add ’em here (but remember they may be filtered so… get creative!)

Haha, permission to intentionally abuse the chat filter! :P

Kuldebar.1897:

DeceiverX.8361:

The hearts are a grind, though. It’s basically the same thing as “go kill 75 rats” except you don’t need to talk to the NPC to get the quest and its exp reward.

Grind is a virtually meaningless term now days…because it can literally mean anything. Having played MMO type games since the early nineties, my definition of “grind” will be somewhat different; certainly different than a player who is generally newer to MMO’s.

I personally wouldn’t label “Hearts” as grindy solely because there are various and sundry ways to complete them, often in conjunction with an ongoing event. It’s not rare that Hearts are completed before ever interacting with the Heart NPC.

But, having conceded that "anything’ can be considered a “grind” in this silly gamer world, I will leave that aside and say I mostly agree with your post.

Oh I get that. The last game I came from, I poured over 10k hours into the thing and never reached the level cap. I was mostly using it in reference to how someone described the quests for WoW as a grind for killing 75 rats.

A grind is relative as an expression, really; the more fun one has, the less grindy it seems, but the reverse also holds. Hearts can be done in a lot of ways, but they’re short of revolutionary and are basically the same thing as every other WoW/EQ-esque game.

But if this thread proves anything, it’s that the complaints about the NPE and trait unlocks have been largely verified.

The hearts are a grind, though. It’s basically the same thing as “go kill 75 rats” except you don’t need to talk to the NPC to get the quest and its exp reward.

Sorry, OP, but you came to the game at the wrong time. ANet butchered the experience with two “updates” they did in 2014, which killed the game for most new players despite it being in their intentions to make it better. See This 70+ Page thread of complaints about just one of the new systems.

Leveling speeds up beyond the 50 range. Getting there, however, is absolutely dreadful.

As far as crafting goes, yea, there used to be a little tutorial-esque thing that showed up when you were near some certain low-level crafting areas. They removed these, however, because ANet stated it was “too confusing” and new players felt “overwhelmed,” so they just removed them altogether.

NPE and level gating was terrible, too, as the Personal story also makes no sense in the later levels; you used to be able to do your personal story at any level, as long as you did the previous mission; I.E., you could keep doing the quests despite being under-leveled for as long as you were able to kill the mobs and complete the missions. They also changed this, by forcing the story into 10-level blocks and removing some missions altogether and changing the order of some of them. Thus, the story no longer makes sense and is much less-accessible.

The game is great at the high levels, but the NPE and Trait reworks have made the actual experience of new players/new characters pathetically miserable.

I’ve never felt the G600, but my experience with Razer so far has been dreadful. I’m on my third Naga in less than a year – all refunds came from Amazon as Razer refused to refund my DOA and Dead in two weeks mice/stated I would need to pay shipping both ways for a 60-day RMA (stupid), and currently my third Naga’s LED’s are all dead. The synape software is also dreadful and on multiple occasions has just decided to fail for no reason and has subsequently required me to perform a fix install each time to fix it.

Mind you, I take good care of my electronics, so it’s not like I’m killing the things; I still have my old Logitech mouse from eighteen years ago (yes, with a ball) that still works near-perfectly, and my previous Logitech m705 which I keep as a reserve and had for about seven years of very heavy use which also works seamlessly and has retained all of the low-friction surface pads on its underside with no movement or need to re-glue.

I’m severely disappointed in Razer’s quality control/overall quality and terrible customer support. I’ve heard the g600 is awkward to hold, but who knows :P

I’m hoping that there are more contenders when it comes time for a new one, but at the rate these things are failing, that might be sooner than expected/desired.

Good luck on your purchase. Try and find a friend or something who might have one you can take a grope at. I was going to get the hex at first, but a friend of mine got one and after feeling it, I was not at all impressed and glad I could use his. The buttons felt too far back, and the body of the mouse is made from a cheap-feeling glossy plastic that makes normally non-sweaty hands awfully moist.

Just wondering if it’s possible to add another word to the exclusion list to prevent filtering, as it contains a “dirty word” by forum standards despite the word being normal and totally unoffensive/not-adult.

The word is a synonym for “Appraise.” I’ll let you folks figure out which one it is :P

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/appraise

Seeing as words like ‘assign’ and ‘asset’ are excluded from the filter, I figured it might be a good idea to add this one.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

DeceiverX.8361:

Post length requirements…

Post length requirements…

All of what I said was in response to what was said about it being difficult to prove macro use. It’s very easy to do when it actually occurs. Those logs exist; why did you get asked? Because you were too inconsistent in the logs to make “botting” easily-identifiable, and like I said, gold farmers do have human watchdogs to make these randomized adjustments (and more complex scripts using RNG-timers/position changes) to make them appear more human. I even said perfect/automative scripts ban issuing is impossible BECAUSE of this, and also said that it relies solely on players to report it when they suspect they have seen it because you cannot have a computer examine human behavior (they really filter the synonym for look at? -.-). I don’t understand why you’re disagreeing with me seeing as I said in that exact post that programmatic tracking isn’t possible; and that “tracking” is entirely dependent on player reports – because otherwise one would have to have a constant eye on every log ever which is millions of actions per second and thus impossible to do – which is why they exist to begin with; with a report, logs and log segments can be targeted by specific players at specific times which heavily narrows the investigation. I assure you that if the GM’s were told they never had to do another bot investigation, they’d all be thrilled.

Great you’ve been reported to understand there is human interaction involved; I work as a GM in another MMO. I’ve actually looked at these logs and used them to make bans on botting accounts. Yes, false reports happen, but like I said, because it’s not possible to make a program which can kitten behavior with 100% accuracy – or even close to it – the system has to remain imperfect in regards to the need to check what gets reported, thus requiring said GM’s to log in an ask about the validity of the player’s actions. And like I also said, even then, it’s not entirely possible because gold farmers will respond in chat to avoid the ban. Actually, it’s probably why the GM came and asked you – were you talking in guild chat, or doing anything else in the meantime that would define active play when that report was made? All of your chat records are logged as well, with time stamps. An easy search on chat logs during that time frame by you could determine whether or not you were botting.

These issues can also take a while because players often abuse the support/ticket feature by creating too many tickets for one problem in hopes it makes it go faster. I wouldn’t be surprised that if in a given day, a hundred thousand or so tickets are created for the folks at ANet to deal with, plus all of the support work for existing tickets, account investigation work, bug reporting in proper formatting, etc. Firsthand I can tell you that it’s a massive amount of work and in most cases bot reports end up low on the priority list unless there’s a big bust, for some reported issues are substantially bigger problems. I recall a case I was working on that took me a year to finish because of a guild in said other game was using a program to inject and duplicate consumable items. Banning and detecting them was the easy part; finding the resource was the hard part. I had to work my way into the guild and eventually get my hands on this program and its creators to get the devs to patch the game and law enforcement to take down the creators. It costed the company well over a $million. I’d say a few hundred bucks lost to someone botting is negligible in cases like that.

So is the entire process easy? No. But it doesn’t make nailing them particularly difficult when they actually are botting; as my posts indicate, the more human-like the behavior of a suspected player is, the more difficult it is to prove. But, in the instances where it is clearly happening, it is VERY obvious.

I believe a larger reason for the prevention of macro use is because of PvP. It would make extremely difficult builds like my stab thief very easy to play if all of it could be set up on a few different macros by case.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

In theory, I have no issue with it as it’s only for music. Unfortunately, I can see more than a few players using this excuse to apply it to other uses. “I wasn’t hacking or botting, I was . . . um . . . playing this flute! See?” And, because it’s hard to actually observe said behavior at the time, it may be easier to outlaw them all.

Again, I’m not worried about the music aspect. More power to that. My fear is it could be used as a gateway for more nefarious behavior.

This is actually very much false, on the basis that every single action performed by every single player in the game is logged for what is usually a fairly extended period of time. This is agreed to in the ToS albeit not explicitly stated as such.

So for example, double clicking on an item like a flute to use, and then cancelling it and using the macro as a way to do something, is all recorded. A glance at the logs will show that at say, day 792 time 18:00:00, inventory slot 41 was clicked, as well as 18:00:02, which notes a double click on item id123465789. At 18:01:45, with some movement actions taken in between, the player used the auto-attack function against monster X dealing Y damage at Z location, and then proceeded to repeat skill use in an exact pattern and time increment for the next fourteen hours.

There is no way to hide this, either, as it’s all done on ANet’s servers and databases. There is no way to hack this, prevent this, or make it not exist without hacking the servers and databases directly, in which case, the user would have total and utter control over the game, basically, giving an idea as to how difficult it is to pull that off.

The difficulty comes in the difficulty reporting it; but that’s basically player responsibility of finding the bots and then reporting them, and so far nobody’s managed to create a way which automatically bans bots with 100% accuracy and never bans an innocent person.

Not to mention a lot of bots are supervised by gold farmers overlooking multiple computers simultaneously botting who also throw in a stray key press to prevent any kind of behavioral ban software as well as to respond to staff asking about the use of botting before a ban is given.

Staff must be really thin to falsely advertise like that lol.

Has anyone just thought of the idea of removing the level gating of the tiers themselves and just returning to the old system in that you get 1 point every 5 levels starting at 15, which is the targeted “end” of the NPE, so new players can get their hands dirtied a bit with traits?

I feel like this would simplify a lot of questions currently held by new players:
Q: “What are traits?”
A: Well you see…

Q: “When do I get them? It just says they’re locked.”
A: “You get them when you reach level 30.”

Q: “Why do I have to wait so long; I just finished the NPE and want to dive right in, and what do I do in the meantime to reach level 30?”
A: “Well, I’m not sure about the first part, but you can grind map completion and EoTM I guess.”

Q: “Okay, so I’m level 35, but the next tier is locked now. The next tier’s traits are really conducive to how I’m playing, though, and I want to feel stronger. Why can’t I play the way I want?”
A: “I don’t know. I guess because ANet thinks the Master and Grandmaster traits are actually the strongest despite them not being so?”

Q: “So wait, when I tried asking for help on my build, people told me I need X trait from the Grandmaster line. So I can’t play in this way until I reach endgame?”
A: “Correct. You should have stated you were new to the game and not the class before asking. There’s a difference.”

Q: “So how to I beat Y content if my build doesn’t work until 80?”
A: “Get new traits and utility skills using Z strategy.”

Q: “But I don’t have any more skill points. Where do I get more?”
A: “From the blue things on the map.”

Q: “I’ve done them all just for my trait unlocks. Is there another way?”
A: “WvW or PvP can give you some for getting kills.”

Q: “But I don’t know how to play this class well in WvW or PvP because I’m new, and I’m not really interested in WvW or PvP. Is there no other way?”
A: “Leveling up can.”

Q: “How do I level up without being able to beat Y content which I’m currently stuck on?”
A: “Grind out levels I guess via mobs.”

Q: “Where can I do that quickly/easily?”
A: “You can’t; there is no grinding mobs for EXP in GW2 as per the design of the game.”

Q: “Is this for real? If so this game is awful to new players.”
A: “Yes.”

- As per my experience with 12+ new players/real life friends who joined after the trait rework. Currently none of them play/all have it uninstalled (and have since returned to WoW and other games) because they saw very little in terms of progression and the road too long to make it worthwhile.

The game was originally sold and marketed as “play how you want, when you want.” This is why we have standardized PvP arenas, up-scaling in WvW, and so on. Why is the creative vision which made this game successful moving away from this, and treating our new players like idiots?

The “new framework” IS Living Story, though; all they’re doing at PAX is trying to sell their game.

Neb.4170:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Adry.7512:

IndigoSundown.5419:

- snip -

just replying to correct one thing; i am sure that MOST people feel displeasure for how the game is implementing content….especially how its NOT implementing content on very crucial aspects of the game, including PVP.

As far as PvP players go, I can see why a majority might be disaffected. I might argue the assertion of “most players” as far as PvE goes. My point (re PvE play) was that the tinkerers and theory crafters are more likely to feel ignored than story lovers, or even treasure hunters.

As someone who enjoys lore in/outside/around games I really dislike living story. It is the daytime soap opera equivalent of a story.

(Opinions)

That’s how most people who actually even appreciate story feel, excluding the majority that just dislikes LS as a means of delivering essential content.

LS is a great idea, and a cool way to deliver some new stuff, but sometimes the old expansion/major update/whatever you want to call it is just more suitable and allows for more developers to focus on critical issues instead of meeting deadlines.

“The living world was just the beginning.”

Of what, exactly? All it mentions is the “new framework for growth.” I believe it’ll just be more hype about upcoming LS stuff and how they’ll distribute content through that instead of actual major updates (so nothing new but a way to market the game to those who know little about it by featuring LS). The title also basically says “beyond the point of no return,” basically implying this is the system they’re going to keep using and probably will not change anything in the upcoming months/years.

Sheesh, you guys have no sense of humor.

:s

Would be a much better alternative to the NPE we have now, frankly.

I’m pretty sure they’d have to make them worth less than BLSK’s on the basis that they’re pretty much strictly worse. Most people agree, however, that these items are terrible and not worth the money on any front, seeing as sigils and runes can just be replaced with new runes and sigils and overlapped.

Granted, most of the consumables in the gem store are not worth it at all and are way over-priced per unit if paying with cash.

If P/P shot at ranger shortbow speed, Dire perplex would just move from P/D to P/P because the bleed DPS would be basically the same as a constant sneak attack, and head shot provides a spammable long-range daze for many, many procs of the perplexity confusion, all the while supplying ample durability from dire gear and utilities meant to restore initative for spamming 4 harder.

The problem with P/P is that what holds it back is the rest of the skills in P/P, and those can’t be buffed to to the strength of D/P and P/D. P/P will pretty much always remain a one-trick pony build so to speak in terms of damage, with sub-par control abilities and mobility on the basis that it shares skills with two other very strong weapon combinations. Anything but straight up buffs to unload which helps make the spam less intrusive on initiative (see my above suggestion as an idea) won’t really work unless the entire thief class’s weapon skills are re-worked, which obviously isn’t happening.

I’m not much of a fan of it since most people have a cleanse ready, and if they’re not already downed, they’re likely not going down without a more sustained approach at that point, but that’s just me.

Okay, so I’ve been dragged into sPvP by some friends of mine after playing WvW almost exclusively since launch. My experiences in the past with sPvP have been bad for the most part, in that my thief build and skill level, which I have become renown for in WvW is completely non-functional in this format due to the drastic nerfs surrounding D/D damage throughputs, and the overall increased durability and slower speed of the fights everyone has in sPvP. So I get it; don’t play the hyper-burst thief in sPvP because it won’t actually kill anyone. Okay, fair enough, so I moved to a P/P attrition bunker as a troll build for guild PvP events and whatnot, Well, the BP nerf kind of killed that idea, too, and the thief almost generally speaking is too fragile to handle well in this condition-heavy format.

So I’ve since moved to a variety of classes and builds and never really found one which could deal with condi bomb engis. The problem is that no matter what build I seem to play, I can’t deal with the constant pressure and crazy mobility and CC this class supplies. I tried today playing on my S/S war, and it got to the point where I was running Cleansing Ire + Berserker Stance + Signet of Stamina active + Shake it Off + Sigil of Generosity + Sigil of Cleansing + reflect projectiles on block on S/S + Melandru runes in an attempt to not die to condi engineers, and I still got massively overwhelmed every time I tried to engage. In every other fight excluding engineers, I had absolutely no problems, and even held a point 1v4 and killed all of them in one of my games in an attempt to avoid feeding the engineer on the opposing team more kills. I’ve heard that using range can help, but that doesn’t really do much to stop a capture or let one engage on a point, especially if there is more than one engineer.

So, what am I doing wrong that causes me to keep getting melted so easily, and how do I go about adjusting to better counter this class/build in general? I feel like running nine ways of removing conditions is way overkill and the problem is lying in mis-playing somewhere, but I’m just kind of frustrated that I can out-play everything else including D/D celestial eles but get rolled 99/100 times by pretty much every engineer I fight against.

Thanks, the feedback is much appreciated.

Also, is it just me or do the engi skills like flamethrower and grenades cause huge lag spikes whenever they’re used? Is there a way to fix this? I get ~80 FPS on high settings and maintain a steady 40 in map-queued blobfights in WvW, but close to even one engineer (or even playing as one), using those skills causes huge spikes, so I know it’s not a hardware-related issue as much as it is probably some setting somewhere.

Thanks again.

“It’s the class feature and it fits within our creative vision of the class, so we have no intention on allowing for it to be optional.”

-Ranger CDI

Even my full healing power P/P on-proc bunker unkillable thief in sPvP went HiS because malice is just bad. The base heal is bad, it lacks condition cleansing, and unlike some other unique heals (like the mantra one) which all have low base heals and are not very effective overall unless traited into, it cannot be used while CC’ed.

I don’t even recommend using it on signet stab because the damage gained isn’t worth the inability to cleanse any conditions whatsoever, and with the metagame we’re in with immobilize and condi pouring in the PvP modes, the signet is just bad. Increases to health gained would make it situationally powerful, but still nothing great. I think the only way to make this heal compete is to just give it the best cleansing effects and a shorter or instant cast, seeing as the class lacks it elsewhere. This way, it can still be used as an engagement/DPS tool on signet builds, it lacks evasion and the better heal of Withdraw, and lacks the stealth and regen from HiS. It now has uses, and good ones, but the other options are still definitely good contenders depending on what type of build you’re playing.

5/6/0/0/3 hits harder on the stab unless you wait for 2 seconds before stabbing in 6/6/0/0/2.

He probably hasn’t been hit by my stab build yet.

Makes one wonder how quickly he’d switch the complaints from stealth to backstab. :P

I used to run P/P clerics/dwayna in sPvP with full healing effects and blind spamming like leeching venoms and Black powder + SR + Dagger storm, with additional burst healing off of shadow arts/HiS and stealth regeneration effects for limited periods of time to prevent decaps, etc., and was literally unkillable. The nerf to black powder, while justified, hurt the build far too much to really remain effective. Being able to stand firm against decap engis and out-heal elementalists was really funny, as nobody really ever saw it coming. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s much merit to running more skirmishy-based builds. As far as #3 goes, it’s only really useful as a venomshare tool for extra party damage. Venoms aren’t really condusive to any existing style of play, as P/D is by far the superior condition damage spec, and one of the single strongest available setups in the game across all classes, and venoms simply don’t work well enough without investing 12 points for sharing, and even then, the benefits are best as party support via burst heals more than anything from skelk venom.

Regarding #2, for reasons that exiting the circle at any point before it finishes force reveal effects and doesn’t stealth users. It’d require a lot of extra setup time and coordination for marginal rewards. A lot of groups aren’t actually that skilled or coordinated anyways; most blobs in WvW get carried by the easy-to-play, easy-to-win GWEN strategy and thus prefer veil because it’s easier to pull off, and doesn’t keep people waiting inside of a tight space.

My biggest advice is to be creative. Use clever mis-spellings and create names with multiple meanings and interpretations. You may also use ASCII characters featured in any European or South American languages such as ì and ï in your names as they are legitimate characters/punctuation in other languages where GW2 is sold or references to historical names.

Norn – I’m more one for elegance in combat and don’t really like their culture as a whole. Basically human except thicker-skulled.
Charr – They’re kind of weird and not exactly likable. Not really a beast-race person either.
Asura – Ew. They look gross, are too small, and have serious superiority complexes. I actually kind of hoped while playing this past LS we’d see a resurgence of a civil war so I can kill some more of those rats.
Sylvari – Lettuce. And so far pretty much every major salad-person in the story of GW2 has turned out to be kind of an kitten. Especially Trahearne. &%$# Trahearne.

Also, I import a lot of my characters from DnD groups, subsequently often needing to make my characters human or based on the half-human races, where obviously the rest don’t work.

Classes? I have/play everything except an engineer. After trying it, too freakin’ easy and facerolly and not enough diversity within the class itself. I decided to just fill the slot with another thief.

Nobody actually cares about a status update. We’ve already got one from Gaile, who’s great. The problem is that Gaile isn’t a developer or anyone with the ability who can actually change this system to not suck.

We actually need developer confirmation via transparency that a new system is in the works with an explanation of what the new system is while accepting feedback on making the new system not suck as bad or more than it does now.

I do not expect any of this, but still, would like to keep this thread relevant a stain to their reputation until they actually do something and bury that unbelievable communication strategy they seem to love abiding by.

And thus why it needs to remain an active thread and concern, for then they at least (and any others) who are on the pretty end can at least acknowledge that there are many upset being on the other end of things.

Depends on your definitions of expansions.

But frankly, if nothing comes, well, not much will probably change for me, unless WvW starts tanking; in which case if it does, I’ll just leave since it’s the sole reason I play the game as a whole.

But if something that’s actually a contender (that isn’t over-hyped garbage like AA, TESO, WS), comes along before there’s any significant update? Then simply, I’m out of here unless they can pry me back.

And I believe that’s what GW2 needs to actually have content developed. They basically co-released alongside TERA in 2012. Makes one believe that they developed the game to be so incredible on the basis that they didn’t want to lose interest to their direct competitors.

The NPE and trait reworks have stopped ALL twelve of my real-friends friends who joined the game from progressing past level 20, and many others from continuing playing the game during the free trial period.

I’d say the wardrobe was really the only “good” thing in 2014; the rest is either average in what a studio should be doing for QoL changes, or simply despicable like the trait and NPE changes which have received zero dev or management response.

I’d really just like to know why they changed the system, seeing as it wasn’t even attached to the NPE “simplicity” nonsense. This just makes no sense in the context of anything whatsoever with seemingly no reason for the change.

Wanash.2794:

DeceiverX.8361:

Those videos were kinda silly. WvW was terribly inaccurate as a representation of what thieves can hit for, and thieves in sPvP can hit around 9k stabs without too much difficulty.

Just they’re not hitting those numbers or even close to them at all without something like my build, which is not at all viable in sPvP.

Also noteworthy is that getting crits that high in sPvP in general is difficult, as critical damage is effectively capped much below that of PvE/WvW.

Stupid to be having a thief vs warrior hate thread. I recently picked up a S/S war using celestial/krait, and it works wonders in sPvP. FT hurts glassy players, but it’s not some kind of crazy mega-nuke skill, either. Berserker war focusing on FT for damage is going to have just as much luck as a berserker signets D/D thief such as my WvW build building for pure backstabs; might work in WvW, does not work in sPvP.

Well i will first say that iam pretty much a noob at this gam, but still, i tried out thief in sPvP again, and what ever target i attacked i couldnt get close to get 9k backstabs, how do you do that? mine where at a silly number of 3,5k, but then again i could have done something wrong, and i don’t agree with 2 shotting classes either, but when you are facing terrible players, that actually were worse then iam, and i still couldnt kill them, its kinda silly.
I just felt like the skillcap of thief is waaay higher then other classes, i could be wrong, but still, if that is the case, isnt that unfair?

And people saying stealth is good is also silly, i rather take more hp and more defense over stealth anytime, sine that you can’t aoe and autoattack threw.

Iam not trying to whine or Q_q, i just want to learn, and i don’t think thief is the class for me, going to try warrior, but don’t like the so called meta spec and rather play with a GS/LB combo.

Not building into shadow arts or acrobatics, and not going trickery 6 and building a 5/6/0/0/3 signet build will. But as I said, it’s not at all viable in sPvP due to many, many critical damage reductions and nerfs to thief’s overall damage throughput in general.

Using something like my build posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Post-Your-Build-Thread/page/4#post4647153

Will allow for huge damage spikes.
It is correct in most cases, especially for D/D, that the skill : output effectiveness ratio is often lower than other classes, but this is how the class was designed to an extent; if it becomes too easy, it becomes too good. That said, it’s also heavily-dependent on the player. I consider myself to be a very good thief and a build pioneer, but I straight up admit to being a terrible tank and a sub-par guardian. A friend of mine is the opposite; he’s a fantastic tank and guard player but a dreadful glass thief, and seemingly no matter how much practice we dump into each other’s professions, neither can come close :P

Thief doesn’t suffer from a lack of damage as much as it suffers from a lack of viable builds in general in sPvP, and its relevance stems almost entirely from specific setups designed to directly counter what’s within the current metagame. In its current state, there is no universally-effective thief build that works against all foes in all environments equally the same and remains effective; all existing thief builds are both viable and no viable in all of the formats. As such, it’s not problems with the thief class or warrior class as much as it is specific ways of playing the game that create an environment unfavorable to most thief specs in sPvP.

And I genuinely do not believe that the thief is for you, either, as you said it yourself: you’d rather take hp and defense over stealth and agility. There are no damage sacrifices really to be made as much as it is the fact that your preferred style of play is not conducive to the requirements of how the professions must be played.

Vayne.8563:

I really like WvW (and I don’t so much like SPvP).

My advice to you to bridge the gap is to try EoTM first which is like a half step between actual WvW and PvE. Find a commander, try to get to him. Follow him around. Profit.

You’ll start to get the hang of things.

No way. EoTM teaches terrible play in that the commanders there are more interested in K-training, loot, and exp than the actual score. The attitude is literally to ignore enemy siege and let them flip areas on the sheer principle that it lets you re-cap the objective again from them faster for more EXP/loot because it nets better rewards per unit of time by just giving it to them. Carrying that attitude from EoTM to WvW will only be a nuisance to your server and make you perform worse in combat in that the fights in EoTM are paltry and significantly less skill-intensive than in actual WvW.

WvW is a fantastic game mode, and with populated servers, is in my opinion one of the best things to happen in recent MMO history. If you’re on a low-tier server it might not be super exciting, but it’s definitely worth getting into if you’re on the mid-high end. I’d first suggest starting out by gearing and leveling your character (80 in exotics) and latching on to a small group taking out camps and maybe the odd tower or so in a borderlands. Commanders with all different guild tags following them (such to not be a guild group) will help you work on your larger-scale fighting skills so you can survive and learn more about blob fighting. Getting on teamspeak or whatever platform your server’s commanders use for ordering people around/getting intel can help out a lot as well as to learn some of the nuances and what to expect.

It also might help out a bit to try and join a guild which does WvW raids and will let you tag along. Explain to them you’re new to it but want to learn, and they’ll probably help you out a lot. I wouldn’t suggest first joining the big names but some PvX groups and more casual guilds which run occasional raids to get you more familiar with the format before committing yourself to it, as these guilds are usually more forgiving and will likely let you start out doing small objectives with whatever build you prefer to use (assuming it’s half decent) rather than some of the stricter WvW meta builds.

Good luck out there!

Eudaemons.1596:

I’m female and I have more male human toons. GW2 has some really attractive male faces, okay? But my warrior is a female because the Sorrow’s Embrace armor and T3 is awesome on female humans. I honestly don’t object to skimpy female armor. Heck, most of the women in my guild have light armored female humans in T3 or Feathered armor!

I find it weird that any guy would object to skimpy male armor, because it’s almost always a guy playing a male norn…and most norn armor shows off glorious norn abs! Also, the Gladiator and Barbaric armors are pretty popular on male toons, so I don’t get why there would be such a weird reaction to similar stuff on other armor classes.

I think the basis for the argument is often perspective issues.

Lots of people make opposite-sex characters on the basis that they treat them like characters – not as representations of themselves – or merely icons to get off to, or in some places, pretend to be the opposite sex. I personally have taken a lot of my characters directly from dungeons and dragons/pathfinder groups I play in on the basis that they have really cool character concepts and I treat each one as a separate entity as playable, not as an extension of myself (except one, but that’s because I’ve had the character name as my MMO main character name for a decade now among my group of friends before I got into the classic RPG’s).

There should be a reasonably proportional number and diverse armor list for both sexes. If you want to be a primal-looking barbarian, gender shouldn’t be a determining factor because armors for one sex are inherently more revealing. There’s a difference between classy and clkitten.

There are a variety, though a lot of them take additional development resources. We get new skins and things so frequently on the basis that they’re not tested and not designed and created to withstand these mesh conflicts.

Either you implement a physics system to the hair objects and armors such that they do not clip through armors, or all hair objects need alternate mesh structures such that when a clipping item is equipped, if they are both on the same player, the hair mesh is modified in a way which looks normal and doesn’t clip.

But, you can’t expect physics because of graphical demands and/orlimitations on the engine, and adding new meshes to the game every new gem store item would be a lot of work, as ANet is already making their money from the folks who insta-buy. I’d suggest sending a support ticket in hopes you can get a refund.

No trinity? Yes. Because there are no requirements for completing content regarding class gating based upon hard numbers and what is implemented within the game’s systems.

No metagame? No.

But it’s impossible to abolish the concept of the metagame… because it’s entirely a concept. Please do read more about metagame strategies and optimization strategies. It’s literally impossible to do so, even in games like checkers which seem incredibly balanced.

Trinity != the existence of an optimal play strategy

I want to point out that I just favorited this thread so I can show it to the rest of my guild.

+1, OP.

Those videos were kinda silly. WvW was terribly inaccurate as a representation of what thieves can hit for, and thieves in sPvP can hit around 9k stabs without too much difficulty.

Just they’re not hitting those numbers or even close to them at all without something like my build, which is not at all viable in sPvP.

Also noteworthy is that getting crits that high in sPvP in general is difficult, as critical damage is effectively capped much below that of PvE/WvW.

Stupid to be having a thief vs warrior hate thread. I recently picked up a S/S war using celestial/krait, and it works wonders in sPvP. FT hurts glassy players, but it’s not some kind of crazy mega-nuke skill, either. Berserker war focusing on FT for damage is going to have just as much luck as a berserker signets D/D thief such as my WvW build building for pure backstabs; might work in WvW, does not work in sPvP.

Not sure it’s programmatically possible without a lot of really funky coding, as events are likely handled as interrupts (programming term), which absolutely MUST finish before executing anything else.

Frankly, I don’t see why the trait just can’t be removed. It reveals in so many ways and in my honest opinion, is a really frustrating and annoying crutch skill which saves far too many baddies and kills a lot of better players.

As others have iterated, the issues with P/P can only be fixed via unload or some kind of minor power scaling tweak (or a very creative idea) to the AA. The other skills on the set if buffed would make the already-strongest sets (D/P and P/D) too strong.

Unload can’t be buffed in damage scaling, seeing as it already deals respectable damage at range – and I don’t think lowering the base initiative cost is really what needs to be done.

That said, unload is intended to be a primary DPS skill used to apply constant pressure; kind of like the ranger’s strong auto-attack on longbow. Because it’s spammable, damage just can’t be increased, else it would be overpowered (I.E., think of a longbow ranger with no RF cooldown using it twice in a row). And of course, the skill IS named unload after all, implying that it’s unleashing everything for one attack. A flavorful and mechanical solution I believe is to allow for better unload chaining. As it stands, you get two uses out of the skill – which is about the equivalent of a backstab – per ten initiative. Consider adding this effect to the skill in its current form:

>Every consecutive cast of Unload reduces the next Cast of Unload by 50% of its initiative cost (minimum 1).

But golly! That would make Unload have an infinite uptime on a full bar of initiative! It would, but that’s actually the point. While unload has quite a bit of damage attached to it, using unload as a means of “bursting” down your target would require you to maintain ~0 initiative while constantly pumping damage and pressuring your target, and in doing so, also preventing utility effects, heal skills, etc. from being used without interrupting the chain. Over time, your initiative would slowly rebuild as well, allowing for the use of another effect or skill, or simply allowing for 2 unloads with a few initiative to spare.

P/D dire perplex/krait is the safest option, and the most powerful build in the entire game in WvW. However I have been keeping an eye on one of my friends who is currently working on a P/P perplexity build focusing on a headshot interrupt build on the basis that confusion does multiple times more damage than bleeding in a shorter time frame and is harder to remove.

Frankly, the massive added defenses from the offhand pistol will likely let you utilize berserker gear better, as you’ll be dealing a lot with auto-attacks and Heartseeker. I don’t think there is too big of a difference, however, assuming you’re using Thrill of the Crime. I would slowly try to transition over and experiment, and see what works best for you. Not using a signet build can allow for the use of Practiced Tolerance, which will keep the difference in health smaller while retaining nice critical hit chance.

Figured I’d throw this up here. I’ve been getting a lot of PM’s in-game lately about my 5/6/0/0/3 setup and the sheer damage I do, so I’ll post a newly-modified miniguide here for easy access for aspiring assassins.

This is truly a build meant for the assassination-style people out there. This is focused towards WvW where the damage on CnD and Mug is higher to usually get folks with < 3k armor at 50% or below.

WARNING: This build is extremely binary without long and arduous practice and very vulnerable to counterplay if your target is left alive beyond the initial burst. This build is also one of the single most difficult builds to play effectively in the game due to the timing required to execute the damage smoothly before allowing for counterplay efforts to kick in due to the sheer number of button presses at very precise timings in a very specific order at very specific distances.

So, here we are with the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY8alsMpxpVOxzJ8PNRLhs9oVf86tuPCA-T1CBABHfCA2TPAGPAgV0Mg1+DAcQFyS5HjKBTRDDDHpAdU/JAACwNbzAwNv5Nv5NvZpAiYZE-w

Tips, FAQ, and Details

Why 5/6/0/0/3 vs 6/6/0/0/2:
Because simply, 6/6/0/0/2 in order to deal equivalent damage, requires wind-up time. 5 points in DA and 3 in Trickery lets you immediately utilize another 10% damage modifier from the 5-point trait in Critical Strikes called First Strikes, which gives you 10% more damage when above six initiative. When using 6/6/0/0/2, a CnD will put you at 6 initiative (not above 6), and is often preceeded by a gap-close heartseeker, shortbow 5, infil strike, etc, thus requiring a wait period during stealth which can extend beyond the stealth duration before you’re able to stab for that modifier. While this nets more damage, especially with revealed training, I find it very inconsistent to use and easier to counter due to the wait period. Pulling off everything before BV even expires from mug landing makes executions much easier.

Why Valkyrie:
Because this build doesn’t use Shadow Arts, despite the WvW setting. Valkyrie, with more health, makes you less prone to dying to conditions, and gives you more power via sharpening stones while making you overall more resilient to burst damage. ToTC also gives you a perfectly-timed access to fury, so your sustained DPS doesn’t drop by much either after your initial burst.

Sigil of Intelligence on D/D? What?!
Yup, because there’s a very often overlooked player here: The Signet of Shadows active. The difficulty of the build and playing it right comes here with this choice. Using a long-distance engage via IS, you can get in range to use the active of SoS to blind your target from about 900 instantly, putting you in combat. This lets you hot-swap to your intelligence dagger set, granting you three automatic critical hits on your next three attacks, letting you perform a Mug (1, despite the inability to crit), critical CnD (2), and Backstab (3), all while utilizing the effects of Assassin’s Signet, and in all likelihood, Executioner.

But Flanking strikes lets you get more damage, no?
Yes, but the might helps compensate for it, and the fury and swiftness from Thrill of the Crime are invaluable. The benefits of the swiftness are especially useful, seeing as you can therefore escape better as SoS will be on cooldown.

How come you chose S/P as an offhand set?
I did so because of the shortbow having forced auto-attack problems after using Signet of Shadows from range, and even one attack would thus cause the Intel Sigil effect to get wasted before using backstab. I also like having the increased mobility via infil strike, head-shot lets you enable a guardian by removing aegis/getting into combat from range if SoS is down, and black powder allows for more secure stomps against classes with CC effects during downed like guard, ranger, and warrior.

How do you set up?
I prefer to pre-cast BV and Assassin’s Signet unless the foe has aegis, in which case I’ll either use Dancing Dagger, or headshot to remove it. I’ll then engage as normally with the rest of the signets used, followed by a weapon swap, steal, CnD, and the stab.

I lose a lot to guards. Why?
They’re kitted out to deal with this kind of build better than most classes due to their access to blocks, stability, aegis, protection, etc. Fighting a good one is very difficult and one of those things I mentioned at the beginning about counterplay.

Why not Signet of Malice?
You need condition cleansing and a good heal somewhere. Plus free stealth. Not really worth the 5 might IMHO.

This build is really stupid; it’s so vulnerable!
Which is what I said in the beginning. This is truly THE assassination build. It’s meant to kill an isolated and unprepared target, and leave. If you want a skirmisher for “1v1 me bro” l33t pr0 ski11z du31z, look into P/D perplex or anything built around Shadow Arts. This build is not designed for that.

Shadelang.3012:

Hey there. Im a long time gw2 player looking to make a thief. I made one before and played it to some effectiveness but wasn’t able to get into the playstyle. This time I thought id come here to see if anyone had any advice.

Im looking for primarily a hit and run playstyle. I dont mind going full glass or needing fast reflexes. Im looking specifically for something that can effectively guarantee a kill on a specific target as long as I take the time to keep hitting him over and over.

So something with moderate to high damage and very high mobility capable of breaking through a point defense build given enough time would be ideal.

First question: sPvP or WvW?
Second question: How difficult and risky of a build are you willing to run to secure a kill before your opponent has any chance to retaliate? As I currently have a new-and-crazier backstab build than my previous 5/6/0/0/3 which will yield EVEN MORE DAMAGE! (utility skill fees and sigils apply)

Solution to Sick Em?
Engage from further away.

Most rangers won’t use Sick Em outside of their attack range on the basis the thief has better mobility and can just run away for the duration. Also predicting range between ~1800 and 2000 is very difficult to do, so most just PBS → Sick Em → Auto x 2 → RF.

Thus, you can utilize Steal + Infil Signet for 1800 range engages, which won’t lead them to use Sick Em on time, thus giving you a better chance to dispatch them.

A lot of rangers run SotW + QZ/SotH + SoS these days, anyways, so there’s not much to fear. I rarely see Sick Em used.

@OP:
5k is disgustingly low. I hit for that doing AC. My condi warrior uplevel hits harder than that on FT…

spoj.9672:

DeceiverX.8361:

Saint.5647:

It’s funny reading through threads like this. They usually start off with some sort of grievance but they almost always boil down to a few people arguing:

1. Human Nature
2. Their ability to write a convincing argument
3. Math/Spelling

It’s especially funny seeing the differences in early to later posts by the same poster. One dictionary and thesaurus later: Presto-change-O! Instant Oxford grad

Sounds ridiculous.

The latter two are usually the result of people arguing the wrong topics with a firm and genuine belief that they are correct no matter what kind of evidence is shown to them, and wish to remain on top by trying to point out irrelevant problems with the other person rather than refuting the arguments posed. As such, this often goes back and forth repeatedly when no parties in the debate are actually “correct” in regards to their analysis of the problem.

Kind of like how we’re raised, though; when politicians run for election, never are their strategies to resolve the problems they’re voted in for announced. Instead, they simply try to bad-mouth the other parties with irrelevant topics that have no merit to the effectiveness of the leadership capabilities of the other party.

Not all countries resort to bad mouthing to win elections.

Indeed, some just forcefully select the next dictator to rule with an iron fist :P

Saint.5647:

It’s funny reading through threads like this. They usually start off with some sort of grievance but they almost always boil down to a few people arguing:

1. Human Nature
2. Their ability to write a convincing argument
3. Math/Spelling

It’s especially funny seeing the differences in early to later posts by the same poster. One dictionary and thesaurus later: Presto-change-O! Instant Oxford grad

Sounds ridiculous.

The latter two are usually the result of people arguing the wrong topics with a firm and genuine belief that they are correct no matter what kind of evidence is shown to them, and wish to remain on top by trying to point out irrelevant problems with the other person rather than refuting the arguments posed. As such, this often goes back and forth repeatedly when no parties in the debate are actually “correct” in regards to their analysis of the problem.

Kind of like how we’re raised, though; when politicians run for election, never are their strategies to resolve the problems they’re voted in for announced. Instead, they simply try to bad-mouth the other parties with irrelevant topics that have no merit to the effectiveness of the leadership capabilities of the other party.

Different folks, different strokes, largely. Being almost an entirely WvW player, having the ability to do the dailies within my desired format is obviously something that makes me happy; pretty much I have the ability to reliably acquire my dailies within minutes of playing versus needing to move to some content that I had no desire in doing. This also left me with a lot less AP than most of my PvE friends over the past two years of playing.

I do, however, understand the concern and believe more options are better. Not really sure if there’s any way to argue or debate with the OP about it – but that said, I’m seeing a lot of outcry that I’m kind of seeing as a little childish coming from a lot of so-called “PvE’ers” who mostly just run WBT and expect to win at the game. The folks who logged in for WvW and sPvP for the past two years and did their dailies or got the AP had to do what was a of things that were simply undesirable to them. While obviously I don’t mean that PvE folks should suffer because of the change, it is important to consider that two other entire audiences have pretty much silently dealt with the same problems since their conception to an even larger magnitude.

I understand that some people don’t like certain formats and don’t wish to really partake in them – and that’s cool – but a lot of the WvW dailies are extremely easy and can still appeal to the other audiences: capturing a camp in WvW is safe, easy, and literally killing a mobs. Capturing the closest camp to your spawn in an opponent’s borderlands is pretty much guaranteed with no retaliation, especially without the white swords in WvW at the moment. One would think PvE players would like this, seeing as the camps are not exactly easy-mode flips and the mobs that guard them use a variety of skills and effects to make the fight more interesting. The other WvW one is ruins capturing, which quite literally is walking into a desolated area, standing there for a minute, and leaving. Basically a vista. I was near a WBT boss recently in-game and some folks were complaining about the daily system, so I mentioned these two possibilities as easy ways to complete the daily without really needing to try new formats or do things in formats they don’t like. The responses were really negative, with many people insisting that the killing mobs guarding camps in WvW is not PvE content or comparable to PvE content. I genuinely don’t understand this kind of attitude and don’t really see why it’s such a big problem for some people to do.

My gripe with ANet comes from the absolutely massive mishap regarding traits and the NPE. But the OP already knows my stance on this due to constant posting in the Trait thread

Zenith.7301:

People don’t want the meta to change because this game is all about farming the metric ton of gold it takes to get legendaries and other luxury skins.

If you change dungeons so they’re more challenging but longer, people will be upset because this game is incentivizing farming by putting forth hideously long gold grinds.

Nothing needs to change about completion times, just alternate design beyond the scope of draining health bars. I iterated this a while ago in some of my earlier posts regarding dungeon design and game design philosophies and the explanations behind why the “berserker meta” exists.

I’d like to put the nail into the coffin about the “optimization” debate as well in accordance with a combination of game theory and computer science by re-raising of my previous posts. The debate over “optimal strategies” is subjective. Why? Because while there can be objective, optimal strategies to solving a problem, equation, or performing a calculation of a function, the context varies within execution.

So compare the two following functions:
f(x) = (x + 2) * (x + 3)
f(x) = x*x + 5*x + 6

They are the same in regards to what f(x) is (under the assumption x is a self-contained expression). But you see, both can be optimal depending on the situation, kind of as though both are parameters to a greater function trying to solve a bigger problem; you are trying to use the function to solve a bigger problem and are comparing the two as parameters and the other parameters are the demands of the problem. If you’re programming driver software, one of the two will run faster depending on targeted machine architecture, so that one is preferred.

But for readability on the application level? That depends on the programmer who may need to expand upon them later. Personally, I believe the former to be more readable, and thus, in that scope, the optimal way of writing the function.

So let’s parallel this to the discussion where dungeon completion time is the condition to fulfill in terms of optimization.

DeceiverX.8361:

Back on topic, the problem still lies not in the stat allocation and distribution among equipment sets and their effects in combat but in why the optimization of certain strategies creates metagame strategies. Metagames are literally optimizations – abstract optimizations – or games within games – which define the “best” methodology of approaching a given situation based on a desired output yield; due to the fact this is an optimization within a confined environment, if variables change, that optimization at some threshold is guaranteed to also change.

And it can only change, not be removed altogether.

This is asserted in that in order to create a situation where there exists no metagame strategy, the ability to create an algorithmic solution to an associated problem must be removed. This implies one of two things:

Either there are infinitely many variables allowed to influence the problem (impossible due to programmatic limitations when examining computation theory and algorithms),

or

Two different algorithms perform exactly identical operations despite being differently constructed (a paradox; similar to 1 = 2).

So how are metagame strategies better removed? Well, by simply attempting to increase the pool of available variables to create the illusion that there are infinitely many, or try to approach infinitely many as best as possible.

Therefore in this kind of context, optimization adjustments to just raw numerical data will not affect much, for the variables are pretty much figured out.

So adding more – or simply changing – the number variables is what needs to occur.

So in TL;DR/simple speech, the dungeon design needs to change, since the algorithms of how to solve the problem have been figured out, and running some numbers is all it takes to tweak the dominant metagame strategy into a new one, merely moving the problem somewhere else, and we’re back at square one. By altering the dungeons to allow for the incorporation of more variables, the metagame requires much more effort to re-establish due to more complexity and dependencies on the differences between human interactions with the content.

The “berserker meta” exists only under the principle that time of completion is what is being considered as the optimization strategy. This is why none of the other formats have this as their metagame strategies, and thus any strategy that provides absolutely maximal DPS will remain as said strategy, regardless as to whatever stat distribution this is. If nomads proves to yield better DPS somehow in the long run, or there is a dungeon based solely on the principles of taking huge amounts of damage/mitigating it, that will become the optimization strategy.