Guild Wars 2

Mara Gossep.2761:

I play on low pop at night, not medium. I play on EU server. Btw, you tell me to do something about it. Exactly what do you want me to do to make people stay online during off hours?

Perhaps try focusing all of the low pop people who ARE on into a single guild. Guildwars 2 allows people to be in multiple guilds at once. Talk to the other people who are on, see if they’re interested in WvW. Maybe they like being stomped as little as you do. Maybe they’re willing to work together to do something about it.

It’s been proven time and again that a smaller, more well organized and disciplined group of players can often accomplish amazing things.

You act like it is my fault that people are not online during those hours, and my responsibility to fix. You act like it is the players responsibility to fix the high pop vs low pop issue at some hours.

I do not claim that it is the players’ “fault”. I do, however, claim that the players CAN do something about it other than complain on the forums about how unfair a game that is meant to be unfair is. As the example of my last sentence in the OP stated: When a huge enemy force is coming for your keep, do you come to the forums to complain, or do you fight as best as you can? The only difference between primetime and off hours is the scale.

ANet could provide mechanics which would fix it (dynamic pop limit), making it medium pop vs medium pop, without moving any players around between servers.

Well gosh! Maybe Anet could come up with a magical system that tracks how well a server does and then matches it up against other servers that are closer to their own skill and population levels? Man, wouldn’t that be great!

And people wonder why I come off as such a smartass when I post….

As I wrote elsewhere, people don’t only leave WWW because they need sleep, but also because of having little to no chance of getting any points (catch-22). At this point the only outcome of the WWW is a bleeding wallet and close to zero rewards. Don’t blame the player for an unfair matchup system please.

The only complaint that people are making is that they don’t have their cake right now! The matchmaking system will balance out the servers eventually.

In the meantime, however, people aren’t even willing to try and work for their server and want Anet to force the game to make it easier for them(potentially screwing up the matchmaking even more). They aren’t willing to put in any effort to organize and want the game to do it for them with arbitrary buffs or debuffs or limitations on what they’re up against. They would rather roll over and not even try at all, or come here to cry about it instead of making the attempt.

The worst part about it is that even some of the people who are fighting and working hard during primetime are asking for changes that don’t even effect them at all. They want the game to limit what happens to other players while they themselves aren’t even playing!

But to get back on topic: Exactly HOW is there little to no chance of capturing points, anyway? How many people does it take to capture a camp? A Tower? A keep? Even a single player can apparently take on 10 enemies and successfully cause problems according to the thief forums(realistically more like 1v3 or 1v4).

But what if you can get even five of your own people to work together? Run around the map breaking supply camps and killing Dolyaks and scouts. Maybe attract some random people from the enemy to fight you. You might get smashed by a 30 person zerg, but so what? At least you’re fighting.

Now maybe you do that for a little while, and you and your four people keep at it and start to learn how each other plays. You start to get better, maybe get a voice chat going like Ventrilo or Mumble. You start to coordinate, and practice, and gear up. Maybe you still get zerged every now and then, but maybe your time and effort pay off and you start to smash people, even groups larger than your own. Maybe pick up a few more off-hours players along the way. Maybe next thing you know you’ve got a guild of players who are determined to fight in WvW and have fun no matter what happens.

And maybe, just maybe, along the way you find out that the effort was worth more than a complaining forums post, and what you did accomplish was much much sweeter because of how ‘unfair’ it all was.

This is the kind of approach to gaming and PvP and WvW that so many players don’t even consider. They just want everything handed to them, and don’t even see the potential that a map full of enemy controlled points presents.

Fourth: Some of the ‘solutions’ that people are coming up with are outright absurd. Lets look at a couple taken directly from these forums:

WvW should kick people out of the game to help balance the odds.

Really? How would you like it if you were playing and the game suddenly kicked you off? People already rage that they can’t get IN to WvW because of queues, and you want to actively remove people from the game? Ubelievable! The idea that someone else should not be able to play simply to defend your progress while you’re offline is so selfish that I’m amazed this person hasn’t starved because the food doesn’t throw itself into his mouth.

Limiting the amount of people who get to enter WvW based on what country they’re playing from.

Seriously? What possible justification could you give to say that someone who paid the same amount of money as you should have arbitrary limits on their play simply because they don’t live next door to you? How about US troops stationed over seas? How about students studying abroad? This kind of selfishness and limited view of the world is the worst. Try thinking past your own wants and desires for 10 seconds. /facepalm

Ultimately, what I see when I look at all of these complaint threads are people who don’t want to work to maintain their hold on WvW points. Most of the fun is fighting over these points and capturing or defending them. The back and forth. The organizing and overcoming despite the odds against your server. If anything, people should be happy that they see the entire map not controlled by them. It means they have every point on the four maps as an opportunity to go out and fight!

The larger issue is that Anet hasn’t nailed down their server balancing yet. Frankly, they haven’t had time to gather enough data, especially in light of all the server transfers that have been going on. Correct server matchups are going to take time. The fundamental rules of WvW are NOT flawed, it’s simply going to take time for the populations, skill, and organization levels of each server to even out.

IMHO that is the only real complaint about WvW, outside of exploits, that has merit: That server balancing isn’t accurate yet. In the meantime the solution people should be looking for should NOT be to ask for arbitrary rules to limit play, but to get their server organized. During primetime when you see a zerg coming for your keep, do you immediately alt-tab and post on the forums asking Anet to stop their zerg in the name of balance, or do you get in /team or /guild and call for backup? The ‘issue’ of night time players is no different. And if you can’t see that, then I’m sorry, but that is not the fault of the game.

EDIT: Please read the entire thread before replying. Despite my snarky opening post, there is actually some very good discussion going on, and you will probably gain a lot of understanding on both sides of the issue by doing so.

From what I’ve seen over the past week or so, there’s a fairly vocal set of people on these forums that believe that it is somehow unfair or unbalanced that people who play at any time other than primetime are breaking WvW. I’m going to attempt to address the different arguments that have been posted, and hopefully shed some light on why most of them are, for the most part, utterly and completely preposterous.

The most common complaint that I’ve seen repeated is that it is unfair that all the progress that a server made during primetime is being undone by these mythical, super-elite night time players.

The justification that’s given to explain this is that one server with a high population of off-hours players can sweep in and capture entire maps while the other two servers have most of their own people logged off. That this is unfair, because the primetime player had to work harder in order to capture the same territory while fighting against even numbers of enemies. Furthermore, it’s explained that there is a significant demoralizing effect when the primetime players log on to find all of their ‘progress’ in WvW reset and lost.

First off, lets make something perfectly clear: WvW is not sPvP! I know, shocking! It’s not MEANT to be a completely fair matchup where all sides have their team numbers balanced perfectly. In truth, it’s quite the opposite: The fact that a server is, at all times, fighting against TWO other servers is fundamentally unbalanced! The entire reason why WvW is open-ended is to promote unbalanced and uncontrolled warfare! Spontaneous, chaotic, non-stop combat. Get that through your heads now, kids! It is not fair by design!

Second, how do you think the off-hours players feel when THEY log on and see their own server not controlling anything? They weren’t online to fight over it, so why shouldn’t they have a chance to take back what was lost while they were gone? Shouldn’t those players have a chance to get into WvW and get access to the same buffs and bonuses that everyone else does?

Third, I would have been more inclined to understand the complaints if people had argued that servers with large off-hours populations were unfair to their own ‘night’ crew players, and that the undermanned buff wasn’t strong enough to allow them a chance to fight back. But they aren’t doing that. They’re simply crying about their own personal loss in one of the most significant displays of entitlement and selfishness I’ve seen on the internet in a good long while. If primetime is when the most people are on, how is it not possible that they organize a counterattack to retake some territory instead of asking Anet to hand it to them on a silver platter.

I think it’s a VERY good idea to keep the enemy anonymous. It prevents a LOT of the hate that’s generated for enemy players. People raging after they get killed. Entire guild falsely reporting an enemy player they don’t like. There are many many reasons for it.

However, having said that, I do believe that there should be an option to reveal yourself to the world. Your gear colors, guild emblem, even your name. I know that there are many players who respect highly skilled players no matter if they’re friend or enemy, and it’s a shame that we can’t show that respect because we can’t even tell who is who.

Mesmer pets dont attack you in stealth, they attack the milisecond when you unstealth, they do the same if you run into their attack range. Its working as intended.

I quite understand the difference between the server controlled pet attacking me the moment I destealth, and the pet sticking to me the ENTIRE time I’m stealthed. It doesn’t happen all the time, and I’ve noticed it a lot less recently. So maybe they fixed the issue.

Thiefs in GW2 take all the annoying cowardly aspects of theifs in other MMOs and multiply them massively, Not only have the stupid burst, they also have stealth and can run away incredibly quickly.

So if their opening attack does not work, they can run with impunity. Only really really bad thiefs ever die.

They need sorting so that if they dont win the fight, they can be killed, they shoudl not be able to always get away.

Cowardly? You’rekittenright! Ever heard the saying “All’s fair in love and war”? If you can destroy your enemy while denying them the chance to fight back, you’re honestly telling me that you wouldn’t do it? What, then, do you call stuns, knockdown, and blinds? What about kiting?

Stealth is just another tool in the massive array of abilities each player has to use. You don’t have to like it, but it is a part of the warfare of PvP combat.

Also, if a thief specs for pure damage, they are squishy as hell. They’re not gonna have the utility abilities that get them out of CC effects, so you can stun or immobilize them for the kill. And if they spec for survivability and escape, they’re probably aren’t going to hit anywhere near as hard as you seem to believe ALL thieves are capable of.

Before people go spouting off about how broken and overpowered or unbalanced ANY class is, try playing it for 40 levels or so to get some real understanding of how it works. The strengths, the weaknesses. Because I assure you that no class, not even thief, is the 1-shotting, ten foot tall, immortal god of destruction that some of you guys make them out to be.

Good players over bad players. There is more to warfare than tab targetting and activating all of your abilities.

Builds like THIS are the reason:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Jinzu-s-Burst-Backstab-Build/first#post135699

They only do one thing, and they generally only do it when all their cooldowns are up. Once you figure out what to look for, you can generally avoid it with some success through good use of dodging, blinds, protection, stuns, or similar abilities. Glass cannon builds like this also generally drop VERY quickly under any kind of focus fire.

But yeah, the same thing can happen to you with a warrior hitting you with stunning/immob followed by hundred blades. Elems can cycle through their biggest attacks in no time flat. etc etc. Glass cannons aren’t anything new to PvP games.

Agreed with most of the people in this thread saying it’s a matter of tactics, not game design.

Sitting up on a wall is a surefire way to get plinked to death by AoE. So don’t sit on the wall! Rally the troops and counterattack. Some of the most effective siege breaking situations I’ve seen have involved a large group of defenders jumping off the walls on the side, and circling around to attack the sieging zerg from behind.

Disagree VERY much with the people saying Thief is worse than ranger. As a thief player who’s coming from playing both a warrior AND a ranger, I’ve found the class to be highly effective at WvW, as long as you understand that WvW includes more than just gate sieges.

Thieves lack a really 1200 range attack for gate sieging, and also are a little weak in the AOE department unless you use the shortbow. Scorpion Wire can be amazing for pulling people off walls, or out of a zerg pack if you can time it right. Thieves also make the best supply runners and back area raiders due to their speed and elusiveness through stealth.

In zerg vs zerg fights, the ability to run in, get a stealth execute, then get away can sometimes be the difference between an enemy players getting back up and into the fight again or being knocked out. A group of thieves working together can be absolutely devastating against reinforcements trickling in from the enemy respawn as well.

Rangers do have a really strong advantage in distance attacks. The longbow traited for extra range can be nice in standoff situations at gates or zerg vs zerg fights. It’s on ALL the time, and there isn’t really a situation where the extra range isn’t useful. Their group buffs through spirits are also a welcome addition to just about any fight, although they can be a little squishy with all the AOE flying around.

Both classes have their strenghts. And saying one is weaker in WvW than another is just plain wrong. It boils down to what role you want to play in the fight. If you enjoy sitting at the gate or in the zerg and picking people off at range, go with the ranger. If you enjoy a more skirmishing style of fighting, go with thief. Both are very good classes, either way.

I have to admit to being a bit ambivalent about this build. I really REALLY hate seeing highlight reels of one-trick pony builds like this, but at the same time I’m actually impressed with the numbers you put out in the video.

What I would like to see is a video from the OP for the entire duration of a few different matches. See how it does outside of the highlights when the CDs aren’t ready.

It looks like a REALLY fun build when it works. But I’m guessing that it isn’t always as effective as the vid makes it out to be.

That has potential. Make it cost more and more supply for defenders to fix gates and put up siege weapons based on how long they’ve held a point?

Also of note, many explore points can be obtained simply by running through the area, or suiciding to get it. Just take off all your armor so you don’t have to pay for repairs, and run through. Put it back on before skill challenges that require fighting tho.

Running around during off hours is another option. Pay attention to the map and the crossed swords symbols so you know where the fighting is in order to avoid it. Keep your eyes open for “INVADER” nametags.

Waiting until your server controls a keep to get those explorers can be a little bit annoying, but it’s not like you’re paying a monthly fee or anything, so there’s plenty of time. And you’re probably waiting on broken skill challenges to be fixed before getting completion anyway.

Talk to your server. Find out what times of day/night your people are dominating. Check the WvW maps regularly to see if the explorer you need is available.

If you’re really determined to get 100% completion, it’s not all that difficult to do without EVER seeing an enemy player. You just have to be smart about it.

Or you could just suck it up and learn to WvW. It’s actually a LOT of fun to run around a map with a huge zerg, putting up siege engines and using a battering ram to break down the gates. And it’s not like the movies. The ‘heroes’ don’t always win. Sometimes they get routed and beat down. Lucky for us we just respawn and try again.

Maybe some kind of buff that slowly adds up the longer a side goes without controlling much of the map? That way over the course of the week, an underdog server that’s being dominated can get back into the fight. It might cause people to give up until later in the week tho, or specifically avoid recapping buildings in favor of open field kill farming.

I’m not a game designer. The idea might need some work.

I read most of the posts in this thread, and there is some really good advice mixed in if you’re willing to sift through it all. However, to the OP, I would recommend being open to changing your build and weapon choices. Personally I absolutely hated thief when I first tried it from 1-20. I even quit it for awhile and levelled a warrior before coming back to give it a second chance.

After reading threads like this one and watching some videos and trying things out for myself, I came up with a P/D build based on outlasting an opponent. It might not be an optimal way to play, but I feel like I have so much more control over the fight than I ever did with any melee-centric build. I still have a lot of practice and learning about the class, but the build I use just seems to work VERY well for me, and I can take on classes that used to wtfpwn me. At the very least I can always get away and reset the
fight from anything short of 3+ players burning all their CD’s to lock me down.

A lot of the points you made are similar to problems I had with the class as well. Until I gave thief more time and got better with it and changed my build and approach to the class entirely.

I’d recommend: take a break from Thief for awhile. Try some other classes to see what you think about them and to broaden your understanding of the game as a whole. Thief might really NOT be the class you enjoy most, despite all the troll attempts by people in this thread.

Agreed. Never underestimate the power of rear area attacks. Cut off the supply lines and disrupt reinforcements. Get your thieves to do it, since they aren’t well-suited to sieges in the first place, and they move REALLY fast.

I have noticed a VERY distinct lack of AOE abilities while underwater. Jetting backwards while spewing poison is fine when you’re fighting melee enemies, but not against groups of players or ranged NPCs.

Furthermore, only having a single elite skill available for use underwater is another problem.

I, for one, avoid water like it’s acid filled with flesh eating piranhas lead by SAS trained attack sharks.

Wub wub wub? Sounds like dubstep to me…. XD

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_'bears_repeating'_mean

“Answer

“Bears repeating” actually has nothing to do with the animal. Bear in this phrase means “able to support, carry, or hold.” For instance, a person may bear a heavy load, or bear glad tidings. If something bears repeating it means that the subject can usefully be brought up or talked about multiple times."

Total Barrage is correct. As a thief player myself, I can assure you that as long as he’s landing his attack that gives him stealth, he can restealth just about every 3 seconds as long as there’s targets to hit and initiative to burn. Combine that with the heal that also stealths, and the potential for a stealth ability through stealing, not to mention utility skills, a thief can stealth VERY often in optimal situations.

The only drawback is the “Revealed” debuff, which lasts 3 seconds.

A thief can also stealth then do the execute animation, which doesn’t reveal the thief until it completes(counts as an attack). A thief also gets a special attack from stealth, based on their primary weapon.

With so little information, it’s hard to tell exactly what the OP saw. But this doesn’t sound like a hack or exploit, it’s sounds like a thief knowing his class and playing like a champ, and the OP not understanding how thieves work.

I don’t know about the inability to click on him, but that could have been lag. Try using tab to target enemies instead. Also, a thief being in stealth does NOT make him invulnerable. Use AOE attacks around the area you think he’s at. You can even swing melee weapons in their general direction. Again, as a thief player, let me assure you that I have been hit AND killed while in stealth by lucky guesses with these kinds of attacks.

I’m almost certain that this topic has been brought up several times, but it bears repeating. It bears repeating over and over until it’s fixed, quite honestly.

Based on what I’ve seen about the quality of GW2, I’m almost certain that a change for the better is coming on this topic. I just thought I would make a post about it after spending 2 hours in WvW, successfully capturing 2 full on castles and countless towers and camps, and only having ONE badge to show for it despite not ever getting killed even once.

I helped kill plenty of people(scorpion wire off the wall is awesome!), helped build siege weapons and defend them, rezzed or pulled people to their feet, DPS’d on many Keep Captains, got the killing blow and the execute of several players, and I’m pretty sure I looted every bag I got from kills. They just never had badges in them. Maybe I just don’t fully understand how badges are awarded, but after all of the different things I accomplished in those two hours, a single badge just seems very wrong.

Assigning rewards based only on the amount of damage that you’ve inflicted on an enemy is such a mind-numbingly simply way to calculate rewards for a number of reasons. Primarily is the simple fact that there is so much more than just damage going on in any situation, and many different ways of contributing to the success of your team.

Lets take a look at a typical WvW situation:

Generally speaking, as long as you’re in the fight and doing just about anything at all, the game is going to reward you exp and karma when the gate or keep goes down. Or when you successfully repel attackers, or capture a camp. But what you don’t get by being a team player and filling a supporting role, is Badges of Honor. These appear to be rewarded based solely on who inflicts the most damage on a given target.

This not only screws over people who do ANY of the myriad of things required to be successful in keep sieges(such as running supply or breaking enemy siege weapons) but is also unfair to condition based builds that kill more slowly, yet are often vital to weakening enemies enough so they can actually be killed before they escape.

The game seems to only reward the person who mindlessly tunnel-visions on enemy kills. This makes very little sense unless the idea is to encourage players to selfishly pursue kills instead of being part of the greater team effort. Furthermore, it also promotes camping and exploiting in areas such as the jump puzzle. A decent team can just sit in there for hours farming kills with siege weapons at key locations. Why should something that’s borderline griefing be rewarded more than capturing towers and keeps?

A-net, maybe the kill-based system was a shortstop so you could release the game. I understand completely. In almost every way you’ve made an amazing game with as smooth of a release as I’ve ever seen. But the current system of how rewards in events, boss fights, and WvW are assigned needs some serious work.

Gigachip.9473:

My only problem with the way siege works in this game is that you can repair when its under attack.

Except for all the ridiculous AOE that’s damaging you through the door makes it just a little bit difficult to keep that door repaired.

I’m almost certain that this topic has been brought up several times, but it bears repeating. It bears repeating until it’s fixed, quite honestly.

Based on what I’ve seen about the quality of GW2, I’m almost certain that a change for the better is coming on this topic. I just thought I would make a post about it after spending 2 hours in WvW, successfully capturing 2 full on castles and countless towers and camps, and only having ONE badge to show for it despite not ever getting killed even once.

I helped kill plenty of people(scorpion wire off the wall is awesome!), helped build siege weapons and defend them, rezzed or pulled people to their feet, DPS’d on many Keep Captains, got the killing blow and the execute of several players, and I’m pretty sure I looted every bag I got from kills. They just never had badges in them. Maybe I just don’t fully understand how badges are awarded, but after all of the different things I accomplished in those two hours, a single badge just seems very wrong.

Assigning rewards based only on the amount of damage that you’ve inflicted on an enemy is such a mind-numbingly simply way to calculate rewards for a number of reasons. Primarily is the simple fact that there is so much more than just damage going on in any situation, and many different ways of contributing to the success of your team.

Lets take a look at a typical WvW situation:

Generally speaking, as long as you’re in the fight and doing just about anything at all, the game is going to reward you exp and karma when the gate or keep goes down. Or when you successfully repel attackers, or capture a camp. But what you don’t get by being a team player and filling a supporting role, is Badges of Honor. These appear to be rewarded based solely on who inflicts the most damage on a given target.

This not only screws over people who do ANY of the myriad of things required to be successful in keep sieges(such as running supply or breaking enemy siege weapons) but is also unfair to condition based builds that kill more slowly, yet are often vital to weakening enemies enough so they can actually be killed before they escape.

The game seems to only reward the person who mindlessly tunnel-visions on enemy kills. This makes very little sense unless the idea is to encourage players to selfishly pursue kills instead of being part of the greater team effort.

A-net, maybe the kill-based system was a shortstop so you could release the game. I understand completely. In almost every way you’ve made an amazing game with as smooth of a release as I’ve ever seen. But the current system of how rewards in events, boss fights, and WvW are assigned needs some serious work.

Or until the warrior goes up against a thief who knows wtf he’s doing instead of spamming HS.

Slamz.5376:

Probably a bug, but I’ve noticed that engineer turrets seem to “see” stealthed thieves. My net turret will magically net something invisible near me, then my rocket turret shoots it, then I flamethrower the area.

I’ve made several posts about NPCs ignoring stealth. It happens with many player-created NPCs, like turrets, mesmer clones, even ranger pets sometimes. It’s EXTREMELY annoying to a thief that relies on stealth to stay alive.

As for the 1v10 situation described earlier, it sounds like a case of a high-survival specced thief harassing a group of disorganized and undergeared players. This isn’t an issue of the thief class being broken, it’s an issue of one player absolutely capitalizing on his classes’ strengths, and absolutely exploiting the weaknesses of the people he was up against.

Don’t confuse the two.

Furthermore, people need to acclimate themselves to the idea that skill plays so much more of a role in PvP for this game. It’s not a simple matter of who has more people(to an extent), or who has better gear. If a player is talented and skilled and practiced, he/she is going to be able to pull off some amazing feats like the one that was described.

I definitely agree with the auto loot and the zerg points that the OP made. Those tiny little loot bags are VERY easy to miss, especially when in a large group vs large group situation where you often have to be constantly moving and paying attention to the enemy. NOT that tiny bag that might spawn while you’re moving very quickly after killing an enemy.

Also, the biggest zerg winning really is a problem. I don’t know what can be done to address this problem, but it’s clearly an issue. Yes, a few elite players with godlike coordination can do amazing things, but the moment they’re up against a zombie horde of enemies that outnumbers them 3 to 1, it’s game over.

A simple system of rewarding more and more tokens based on how many bosses you down in each dungeon run. Using the number of bosses killed without a wipe as a multiplier to promote skills as opposed to zerg tactics from the respawn waypoint.

Or increase the number of tokens based on how long it takes you to finish each boss maybe? Time attack?

Problem solved?

As opposed to those 79 hoops you jumped through to reach 80?

Picture is attached. People don’t trust links apparently.

And for good reason. Links in forums are one of the most likely way to end up on a website with a keylogger.

And besides, you can VERY easily attach pics directly, as you did.

Really all I’m seeing are the complaints of people who have had their crutch taken away and are now having to learn to actually walk on their own.

If HS is well and truly doing less damage than intended, then Anet will balance it again. In the meantime why not try some different weapon comboes and trait/gear builds. You might find that there is a whole depth to thief that you weren’t even aware of.

P.S.: P/D thieves said hi, and hope you get well soon.

Phishing scam? Can anyone verify the link?

When attempting to join a second guild with any of my characters, even after standing down from the current guild, I always get the error message:

“Network error .

Please check your Internet connection and try again. (Code=3040:1002:3:1930:101) "

I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s clearly not my network connection, since I’m actively playing when I get this message.

DrakeWurrum.6049:

I don’t even bother checking what I have. I steal. Then I use it. Hasn’t bitten me in the behind yet.

I see your point. However, if the intended use of stealing is to immediately use it, or even if the optimal use of stealing is to immediately use it, then why have it set up to require two button presses?

I suppose that when you look at it that way, you always have the option to save your Stolen ability, but can generally just throw it into your rotation by double-tapping the key. Honestly, I hadn’t thought of it being used like that. And from that perspective it makes sense.

But from a ranged-built thief it remains pretty counter-intuitive, and all the problems I described still apply.

Hmmm……

This is good info. Glad I kept my hood instead of ditching it.

Well, you can do some decent work on gate defense with the poison cloud and exploding the cluster bomb early. On offense you can use scorpion wire to pull defenders off the walls if you’re lucky. Just make sure you don’t pull them near thier escape hatch back inside.

But I’d say the place where a thief can really do the most damage is by skirmishing.
Take out supply Dolyaks and kill reinforcements before they can get back to the front. Team up with a small squad, preferably other thieves, and wreak havok on the back lines.

In open field Zerg on Zerg battles, try to attack the flanks and get people who stray too far from the pack. Scorpion wire comes in handy here again. If you connect with it, you can pull some unfortunate into range of your own zerg. Lots of fun!

Agree with the OP. I was in the exact same boat when I first rolled thief. I hated it. I was squishy, I couldn’t kill anyone. But now…..

P/D is the way to go, imho. Leave the HS spamming to other players. I’m all about survivability, enemy harassment, and team tactics. I don’t get kills as fast as some builds, but I can take on any class with confidence. I used to dread mesmers and guardians, but now I can go the distance with them. And if I have even a single teammate to back up, it’s downright scary how well I can do.

Practice and research and more practice got me to finally figure out thief. I’m still learning and figuring it out, but it’s a lot more fun than the other classes I’ve tried. Far more mobile, and much much harder to lock down and kill. The best part is that I always have options on what to do. Stick around and brawl, stealth and flee, stealth and reposition to attack from a new angle.

That’s all stuff I couldn’t really do effectively on my other characters.

Well, stealing is interesting, but mostly kind of just wierd to use. It’s absolutely great if you’re playing a melee oriented build, but kind of weak if you’re going ranged. Honestly, I would love stealing to do something different depending on what weapon you’re using. If your mainhand is melee, it shadowsteps you towards your target. If your mainhand is a ranged weapon, it shadowsteps you AWAY.

Secondly, there needs to be a better way to track what abilities you’re actually getting from stealing. Maybe it’s just random, or maybe it’s based on what class you’re stealing from. But either way, thieves need to be able to have a better indication of what they’ve got besides a single tiny icon on the steal button. Maybe a bigger UI element, like what Guardians have when their flaming attack is ready?

Third is the shadowstep function itself, which I believe has already been mentioned in a couple other threads. Shadowstep is still pretty buggy. Sometimes it gets you to the target, sometimes not.

What do you guys think? Am I off base here? Do you like stealing, or hate it, or something in between like me?

So Pat6019, why did you even make a post if you weren’t interested in any dicussion?

I can tell you right now that if you didn’t want to play a class that relied on stealth and kiting, then you should probably go with warrior or guardian instead of thief.

I’ll never understand the mentality of trying to make a class into something it is clearly NOT meant to be.

Oh, and I assure you there ARE builds for thief that can and DO go toe to toe with other classes. They do employ stealth, but so does every thief build except maybe the odd P/P.

Just because you can’t figure out how to make it work doesn’t mean that it’s broken.

OMGZ! You mean you have to use more than one button now? What is the world coming to?!

On multiple occasions while trying out thief, both in PvP(all types) and PvE, I have noticed that very often when going into stealth and the 3 seconds after, NPC enemies will simply act as though I am not under stealth at all. They will continue to attack and follow me as though I did not have the stealth buff, or was invisible.

This happens with NPC attackers in the open game world as well as player created NPCs such as ranger and necro pets, as well as temporary NPCs like mesmer phantasms and illusions, and Thief NPCs created by the thief ultimate.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen often enough to be very annoying, especially when trying to escape or evade in PVP situations. Other players are smart enough to see that their pet is attacking something, and drop AOEs in that area.

Has anyone else noticed this problem?

I don’t understand. If a person doesn’t like greatswords, but likes rifles, and wants to get rid of their pet, why don’t they reroll as engineer? Or if they JUST want rifles, there’s Warriors.

People need to stop thinking of the classes in GW2 through the filter of other games. GW2 is not other games, no matter what inspired it. Each class has its own unique set of skills and playstyle. Instead of trying to turn one class into something else, Just play a different class!

Rangers are fine as they are.

Lifesteal? I didn’t think warriors had any of that.

Here’s a couple pics of my asura warrior as I’m levelling. Because, who doesn’t like chickens?

Yojack.7082:

Yes Eliteseraph, I was that yojack

Nice! I used your Trooper build for a long time. I don’t doubt you’ll come up with something super effective for GW2 as well.

Shelledfade.6435:

you guys do too much damage with 2handed swords.

Dodge. Move. Stun. Interrupt. Knockback. Block. Invuln.

Your class has one of these or more. Use it.

Hundred Blades channel cancels if the warrior moves. The warrior can’t even turn to face you if you get on his sides or behind him without cancelling it.

Really, once you know how it works, it’s kind of easy to avoid getting hit by it. Stop calling for nerfs and start learning from your mistakes.

Big Boss.6248:

Playing more passively means your DPS in the end is much lower.

Do you have parses to back up that claim?

On level 80 the required precision for 1% critical chance is 21, Deep Strike is hardly worth it as a trait as it’s cons WAY outweigh its pros.

Care to elaborate?

By my math, using your values for Precision to crit chance:

Deep Strike with 5 signets nets you 9.5% crit chance. Add in Signet of Fury(which you should be using with this build) for 90 more precision, and you’re bumped up to 13.8% bonus chance to crit. That can be used with ANY combination of weapons.

Furthermore, you can use the active ability, or swap out any signet for any other ability at only a cost of 1.9% crit chance, unless it’s Fury, in which case you’d lose 6.1%. And Fury’s active is so poor, I’m not sure why you’d want to use it instead of just hitting something anyway.

It’s perfectly fine to say “I like a more active playstyle.” because of reasons X, Y, and Z. Its even ok to say “It works better for ME”, or “I would like it better if my teammates used active abilities”. But claiming that a Signet build is worse without some kind of proof isn’t going to convince anyone.

Until someone comes out with damage logs and parsing on the target dummies to show that one set of skills is outright more DPS than another, there’s not much more to be said. Even then, it’s a well known fact that target dummies are not real combat.

Big Boss.6248:

I don’t know how you got this vibe but Greatswords are pretty much the meta for warriors in PvP, most people think hundred blades is broken as hell and kills way too quickly for such a short cooldown. The amount of time that it takes for hundred blades to do all it’s damage is not all that long and the range is very misleading and a lot broader than you’d think.

Which can be easily countered by hitting the V key once. The people complaining about it being broken and OP are the ones who don’t even know they have an endurance bar, or are too stupid to get out of the way.

I myself run bolas, but I just like having a fairly spammable root slot skill as I hate having people try to run from me. You are naturally going to want to have some cc on your bar if you’re running GS as it is a pure damage weapon with only a cripple as it’s cc, its going to be useless having all the damage in the game if you can’t hit anyone.

Which brings me back to one of my points. Why does an ability have to have another ability just to work effectively 1 out of every 3 times?

hype r.5431:

I use the elite signet when i want to stay mobile, 30+ seconds of swiftness with 50% uptime, means you miss out on other stuff though

Yeah, the elite signet combined with the trait to reduce signet cooldowns means you’d have really good uptime for swiftness from it, without giving up your axe/axe combo.

Is this the Yojack from the SWTOR Trooper build?

Big Boss.6248:

In WvW I run greatsword/long bow with bolas, stomp, “fear me”, and battle standard as my slot skills. Long bow is a given at the keeps to rain death on everyone below me but when it comes to ground battles not matter how big I use rush then straight into stomp or fear me to break everyone up, then just start beating on fools.

Now imagine a coordinated strike using the tactics Bigboss described, but with 5 warriors backed up by 5 ranged classes. A squad of 10 disciplined people on vent could completely disrupt and break an unorganized zerg in the open field, or in front of a keep/castle.

I think a large part of the problem is not that enemies are hitting too hard, but instead that it is not really all that obvious that they are targeting you in the first place. I really like the evasion mechanic by dodging, or the ability to activate a block or immunity cooldown before an attack lands. But there’s often so much raw spam of abilities, that it becomes really difficulty to even SEE a boss sometimes.

What we need are more telegraphed animations for attacks, and/or graphics options to turn off/down the effects of other players.

Additionally, bosses need to have more attacks that hit ONLY at range. Or bosses that hit less hard, but are more evasive themselves.

There are lots of ways to address the issue. But frankly I’m a little bit disappointed in Anet for making the mistake of other MMOs and making ranged classes EZ mode, and melee difficult.

Needs more balance, for sure.

Don’t think of it in terms of “warriors should be able to use all weapons.” Think of it in terms of how many abilities each class has access to.