Guild Wars 2

jportell.2197:

Errant Venture.9371:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. If you deplete the Adrenaline, then they proc their Cleansing Ire (which technically would be a buff for good players).

Lopez.7369:

I’m with you on the cooldown, but depleting adrenaline would be a buff because of Cleansing Ire. It’s not like adrenaline is hard to come by, anyway.

Simple, change Cleansing Ire to require a hit + depleted adrenaline to remove conditions. If you miss with your burst you get depleted adrenaline + no condi clear. Sucks for bad players but that’s what you get for not making sure your target is locked down before you burst them. It wouldn’t even be a huge nerf, you can still charge adrenaline while Bursts are on recharge and 3 condis cleared every 8s is already a MUCH higher rate of condi clear than any other class can achieve.

Which is funny because back in january when asked about warriors terrible condi removal the devs stated that (paraphrased) the warriors high armor/damage/and health pool is kind of why they are slightly lacking on condi clear. Now with cleansing IRE they can self clear condis better than several guard builds. Which IMO is a little ridic considering that guard has low health and low damage.

Massive condi clean is an issue I don’t really want to get into in this thread, but it definitely is something that needs to be addressed now that the real culprits of the condi meta (dhuumfire +spirit rangers) have been shaved enough to make power builds viable again.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Errant Venture.9371:

Read the thread…

I read the thread. Did you?

OP says “We” played the same group 6-8 times.

The second poster references his group.

I agree that solo que matchmaking is broken and needs to be addressed, but this thread doesn’t seem to be about solo. It is about team que.

At any rate, neither is in a healthy state right now. Both need fixes. Surely we can agree on that?

Did you read the dev post? I guess not:

In response to:

Silentshoes.1805:

Nope, your fears are true. It picks the first five people it can find with the closest MMR ranking, these are typically the best players. Then is picks the next five it can find, which are typically lower-MMR ranked players because the population playing SoloQ is so low there just aren’t 10 players of similar rank.

There have been MANY threads showing this with screen shots. ArenaNet has not given a date as to when they will get around to mixing up the two teams randomly before starting the match.

Justin O’Dell posts:

Justin ODell.9517:

This should be fixed in the next PvP drop, which may be next month, not sure.

We’ve got even more substantial matchmaking improvements on the radar, but those won’t make it in until sometime next year.

Justin ODell.9517:

Urejt.5648:

I think system MMR should give first player to team A, then second player to team B. Third player to team A, and thourth to team B.

Doing this biases the outcome in favor of team A.

Alternatives, ordering players from 0 to 9 by rating:

Less bias
0 3 4 7 8
1 2 5 6 9

slightly less bias
0 9 2 7 4
1 8 3 6 5

Starting next PvP Drop (1-1.5 months if it doesn’t get pushed back) when two teams of 5 are assembled for a match, the players on teams will be scrambled to prevent mismatches.

Right now the matchmaking looks to make a team out of you and other players ranked near you then seeks to match you up against another team. What ends up happening is you get team of 5 top 200 players up against a team of 5 players in the 60th percentile.

Starting next patch when the two teams are made the matched up against each other the players on the two teams will be scrambled so you don’t have a massive imbalance.

Kittens, it only took three kitten posts to explain it to you when you could’ve just read the kitten thread O_o The reason team queue matches you up against the same teams over and over is that there’s never more than 5 teams playing team queue even on Saturday peaks. zzz that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

He is talking about team que, most likely.

There simply aren’t enough teams to sustain a healthy gaming environment, and without a serious change before the Holiday season and the release of competing titles it isn’t going to get better.

Cross your fingers and hope that things can get fixed quickly. There isn’t much more you can do.

Read the thread…it’s all about matchmaking for solo queue. Instead of forming TEAMS of similarly ranked players (which ends up with teams full of lowbies playing against teams full of top ranked) the matchmaking will randomize the players on each team after the 10 players have been selected.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/How-are-the-teams-determined-in-solo-q

Team shuffling dropping in next PvP patch (1-1.5 months from now if it doesn’t get pushed back)

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. If you deplete the Adrenaline, then they proc their Cleansing Ire (which technically would be a buff for good players).

Lopez.7369:

I’m with you on the cooldown, but depleting adrenaline would be a buff because of Cleansing Ire. It’s not like adrenaline is hard to come by, anyway.

Simple, change Cleansing Ire to require a hit + depleted adrenaline to remove conditions. If you miss with your burst you get depleted adrenaline + no condi clear. Sucks for bad players but that’s what you get for not making sure your target is locked down before you burst them. It wouldn’t even be a huge nerf, you can still charge adrenaline while Bursts are on recharge and 3 condis cleared every 8s is already a MUCH higher rate of condi clear than any other class can achieve.

The biggest problem with warrior stuns are the adrenaline burst skills, particularly Earthshaker and Skull Crack. When the f1 skill misses or gets blocked/evaded IT SIMPLY GOES ON 3s COOLDOWN WITH NO ADRENALINE LOSS.

Burst skills NEED to deplete adrenaline + go on 8s recharge WHETHER OR NOT THEY HIT. There’s no other skill in game that goes to cancel-cooldown when it gets DODGED.

You’re effectively rewarding warriors for spamming. Either they land their powerful class attack, or it’s available again in three seconds. If a player blocks/dodges the warrior’s burst skill, THEY SHOULD BE REWARDED FOR THAT by having the skill go to it’s PROPER COOLDOWN + DEPLETE ADRENALINE. It makes NO SENSE for a skill that is evades/blocked/misses to go into a CANCEL-CAST cooldown.

As per title. Caps are for emphasis, not rage, cheers guys ^__^

The biggest problem with warrior stuns are the adrenaline burst skills, particularly Earthshaker and Skull Crack. When the f1 skill misses or gets blocked/evaded IT SIMPLY GOES ON 3s COOLDOWN WITH NO ADRENALINE LOSS.

Burst skills NEED to deplete adrenaline + go on 8s recharge WHETHER OR NOT THEY HIT. There’s no other skill in game that goes to cancel-cooldown when it gets DODGED.

You’re effectively rewarding warriors for spamming. Either they land their powerful class attack, or it’s available again in three seconds. If i miss a Mind Wrack on mes, well i’m kitten out of luck for the next 15s. I don’t get my recharge reduced to 3s because i managed to NOT HIT ANYTHING.

If a player blocks/dodges the warrior’s burst skill, THEY SHOULD BE REWARDED FOR THAT by having the skill go to it’s PROPER COOLDOWN + DEPLETE ADRENALINE. It makes NO SENSE for evades/blocked/misses to cause a skill to go into a CANCEL-CAST cooldown.

The biggest problem with warrior stuns are the adrenaline ones. When the f1 skill misses or gets blocked/evaded IT SIMPLY GOES ON 3S COOLDOWN WITH NO ADRENALINE LOSS

Burst skills NEED to deplete adrenaline + go on 8s recharge WHETHER OR NOT THEY HIT. There’s no other skill in game that goes to cancel-cooldown when it gets DODGED

It’s hotjoin so who cares? The entire concept of hotjoin was lolzerg from the beginning. That’s why the allow 8 people per team on the tiny maps.

Knote.2904:

I mean we already have things that exist that are fluid and cloak-like, we have trenchcoats that move and generally don’t have many issues.

No one wants a completely liquid cloak anyway.

Clipping is not a valid excuse as long as Charr and Engineers exist.

We don’t have jet planes… or did someone have a bad accident with a Charrcopter?

Personally, there’s nothing quite as magnificant as full metal armor and a glorious cloak.

edit : I just realized this was in the wrong forums… But I guess it fits.

Dodge rolls. Apparently it was too hard to make capes that wouldn’t look like/do weird kitten stuff when the character model flips every 5 seconds.

Nova Stiker.8396:

sorrychief.2563:

Just call it “I died because I’m bad and meta”.

lol me bad? I’ll be happy to duel you, I’ll give you a handicap. See if you can beat my naked Elementalist. Here is a spoiler, you can’t win.

This buff to immobilize is just broken. Mesmers are probably the lowest PvP tier, that immobilize just kittens them up so hard. Pin Down, throw Balas, they have no choice but to blow Arcane Thievery. If that is on cooldown, GG, 10 seconds of just eating attacks.

Lol are you the one who’s been running the naked kamikazee staff ele all evening? So many stupid teams get wiped b/c they don’t think to train out the staff ele lmao

style.6173:

Flumek.9043:

Well on the hand, it isnt hard to get back. You can totaly carry the games with new players, in my case i think i got back in about 3-5 gaming days. You just need to adjust your build on the way. Either bunker 1v2 far for whole game or go glassy killing whole teams.

The bad thing is that those lower rank matches, i havent found any fun in them. It was very frustrating losing (at 80%s) because 1 teammate didnt do/knew his job. When you play some funzies, you then have to almost kinda grind your way back to higher ranks, where you can find the pleasure of the challenge

The only way to can carry a whole team is if you are one of the OP classes: warrior or necro. Otherwise, I’ve never seen someone good enough to carry a team.

A bunker guard mid or a particularly talented home point bunker ele are usually enough to give your team the game.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Was it that players were leaving, or just not showing up?

I see people leaving more often than never showing up. Even more often than that you have people who will stand afk at spawn if the beginning of the match goes poorly.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sorry, going to change your topic/thread a bit to remove the swearing because I don’t want it to be snagged by moderators.

I would like to know if you’re experiencing leavers (joining and then leaving), or if it is just that people don’t show up to the match at all.

Thanks!

The problem is less about people physically leaving the match than that many people will go afk at respawn if the match isn’t going well.

Solo queue DESPERATELY needs a mechanic to report afk players (and apply dishonor similar to the system in GW1) or a vote-kick + fill from queue mechanic.

These are just two ways to solve the afk-er problem (which is a much bigger issue than people physically leaving the match). Right now it takes 2 mins of the player not even touching their keyboard to activate the 1-min countdown before kick. If the player is typing or even moves one step the afk timer is reset. I’ve never in over 200 solo queue matches seen someone be kicked for afk (though there have been plenty of matches that actually had people standing at the spawn doing nothing)

Red.3572:

The reason Immob was so good in the first place was because it could be a game-changer or it could simply do nothing depending on how it was used. If ‘plays’ were planned around a root, it could allow a damage spike to go through fully without a dodge roll negating any of it.

Sure, you could stack roots before, but the old version required high-level coordination and timing to do so. Even then a window of opportunity would present itself ‘between each application’ allowing the rooted player to save themselves from the death chain.

This meant timing the second root wasn’t always so obvious and needed thought, even theory craft. High risk/High Reward right there.

Now with Arena Net’s latest change, you don’t have to think any more. Just use as much Immobilise as you can fit into a player/team build, then dump as much damage on that location as possible. Dude isn’t going anywhere…

Sure you could band-aid fix this by making dodge work through Immob (making another pointless feature of the game), or some other indirect arbitrary crap like more Zerker Stance type skills, or Purging Flames style changes to pretend the game has any depth, degenerating the game experience even further into a skill-less void of nonsense… Or you could simply return the only ‘good’ condition in the game back to being exactly that. One of the ONLY High risk/High reward features.

Wonder what will happen… A return of the old Immobilise, or a pointless round of changes across 6 months that dance around a problem that didn’t need to exist in the first place…

QFE

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Assuming it would be spammed instead of being used situationally is your first mistake. This build has tons of initiative regen, so its less of an issue than you’re making it out to be.

Why would you be using it situationally when thief has access to massive vigor + traited endurance restore? If you’re only dodging situtionally and not looking for perma-evade then using D/D is stupid. D/P will have far greater utility + damage (shadow shot, head shot, and bp are AMAZING, far more useful than kittenty D/D evade).

Stacking immobilize wouldn’t be as big a deal if you could dodge-roll-in-place while immobilized. Being able to lock someone down for 5+ seconds with something as spammable and easy to apply as immobilize is just silly.

This is why a PTR is needed to test balance changes before they hit live. Anet and their QA team simply don’t have nearly as good a feel for their mechanics as the playerbase do.

Stx.4857:

Errant Venture.9371:

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Sometimes experiments fail. Sometimes they yeild impressive results. Never hurts to be creative.

But thank you for being useless!

Useless? Lol just think for a minute and you don’t need to experiment. You’re burning initiative on a low-damage attack in order to spam evades…but then you won’t have initiative available to burst with. I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in physics, and if one thing’s for sure, you don’t waste time and resources doing a physical experiment when a thought experiment will yield the same results.

D/D is obviously designed as a condi skill, and anyone with an IQ above 20 can see that spamming it doesn’t make any sense for a power build.

Running a DD evade spam build while speccing for power is beyond dumb.

Aza.2105:

I can confirm, they last 3secs. I’ll check shortly in pve.

Edit: But when I use all 3, the fury duration is around 11 secs. So that seems right. Hmmm

The game DISPLAYS the lowest whole number on buff descriptions. So at 3.9s duration left the mouseover for buff will show 3s. Before the buff expires it should display 0s for 1 second. Same thing applies to conditions and any modifier really.

That’s why popping one buff shows 3s and popping 3 will show 11s.

Farming hotjoin to get r50 doesn’t make you a better player than a skyhammer farmer.

No one cares about rank.

Skyhammer was nerfed so how are people farming each other now? Just trading kills in custom arenas? O.o That’s not going to be any fast than just playing hotjoin since rank points aren’t awarded till the end of the match now.

Every profession is OP.
Sounds like balance.

Shukran.4851:

ensoriki.5789:

Excalibur.9748:

style.6173:

Shukran.4851:

cool! pw build was the highest cap skill build we had (huehue haste op).
dead after 2 months anyway.

so, what is left to thief to be op? what build? thanks

Thief is the best class at respawning after getting killed. They should nerf that too so that a thief has to spend 30 seconds dead before respawning.

Joking aside though, thief is one of the bottom two classes in PvP at the moment. Play warrior or necro if you want to be OP.

It was bottom 2 before this patch, now it’s bottom 1.

Thief sets that were in question before have had quite little done to them including S/D. D/P and S/D aren’t really going to change in significance as a result of anything internally done to the thief. Headshot is still effective at its role of interrupting and Tactical strike is used too infrequently for the reduced duration from 2s rounded to flat 1.5s to be of great importance whether S/P or S/D. S/D’s boon reduction will put less pressure on boon profs, but it’s evasive defensive capability is untouched, which lets it keep staying power even if a S/D steals protection in reality he’s still a glass thief and he can’t actually eat damage. Only question for S/D is if teams feel he puts out enough pressure to keep, which will probably be a yes.

Only thing is I don’t know why you’d take S/P now unless you had a heavy cc comp to set it up, but given that why wouldn’t you just take HB which does more damage then a single PW if you that amount of of util. Group stealth? A Mesmer could fulfill that purpose and bring significant levels of cleave themselves.
Even in venom sharing P/P with the body shot may be able to serve that position better due to having more reliable damage on a single target.

But like I said it’s possible they just up the stun duration to match the new rounding system but perhaps not. If they put it to 1s, then Rune of mesmer I think could round it to 1.5s, which would be really potent and sigil of paralyzation would put it to 1.25 (which could be a slight buff to pre-patch).
Given that a potential 1.5s Pistol whip sounds too strong it may not get that.

putting a .25s stun on the first sword swing maybe? Immobilize is another option but that probably wont go well in practice.

my english is bad or im very tired, can u reassume with simple words what you wrote because i find it interesting? please

Thief was only okay before patch. Only one weapon set was decent (S/D) and two other specs were okay (S/P + D/P)

S/D was nerfed (S/D #3 only steals one boon)
S/P was nerfed (S/P #3 stun got cut in half 1s→0.5s thanks to Sigil of Paralyzation nerf)
Basilisk Venom nerfed (stunbreakers can now be used to break the Petrified effect)

Only buff (immobilize added to Pistol #2) doesn’t improve the weapon enough to make it viable.

Yeah, Pistol Whip needs the stun increased back to 3/4 or 1s, the S/P spec got hit VERY hard by this update and it was one fo the few viable thief specs available.

Incurafy.6329:

^ P/D*

15chars

Fixed, thanks

Eurantien.4632:

Errant Venture.9371:

So…the two viable weaponsets (S/P + S/D) were nerfed.

And we gave a ranged, single-target, condi class access to immobilize. Why would a P/D or P/P thief run immobilize? They already had access to it from the venoms and never touched immobilize. It doesn’t need immobilize to apply it’s ranged condis. I guess P/D could use immobilize for focus targets in teamfights, but who in their right mind would use a single-target bleed stacking weaponset for teamfights?

Anet astounds again.

A lot of rangers.

The rangers are also teambuffing like mad with 2-4 spirits and are on melee cleave sets as often (if they’re not really bad) as they’re on shortbow.

P/D thief doesn’t do anything but stack bleeds on a single target, safely stomp, and (now) immobilize. Using a whole weaponsets for single target bleeds, stomps, and immobilize is kind of a waste imho.

So…the two viable weaponsets (S/P + S/D) were nerfed.

And we gave a ranged, single-target, condi class access to immobilize. Why would a P/D or P/P thief run immobilize? They already had access to it from the venoms and never touched immobilize. It doesn’t need immobilize to apply it’s ranged condis. I guess P/D could use immobilize for focus targets in teamfights, but who in their right mind would use a single-target bleed stacking weaponset for teamfights?

Anet astounds again.

Let’s try the wiki!

Notes:
Grants immunity to unmodified conditions and gain 5 strikes of adrenaline per second.
Bug:
Grants full immunity to conditions regardless of condition duration modifiers.

I.e. it’s supposed to reduce the duration of all UNMODIFIED conditions to 0. It’s bugged so that even modified conditions (i.e. condition duration increases) are still reduced to zero.

Jae.9682:

It’s 80% reduction. So it works well with 20% reduction runes.

This is just…wrong. Completely false.

Justin ODell.9517:

Hmm, maybe this is a good opportunity to get your feedback on the issue.

Do we freeze everything or do we throw everyone back into their team spawns and keep the gates locked? Immobilize + immunity on everyone (preserve effect/condition durations as well if possible). Pause point ticking + cap status. That’d be great!

Do we add a time window for how long a game can remain paused? Yes, I would say 2.5-3.0 minutes would be a good time window. After that point fill the empty slot from the queue!

Tournaments are often run on a schedule, do we keep the game clock running while the game is paused so the game will still end around the same time? Pause the clock

If the player comes back, do we just resume the action or do we restart the match? Resume action

What do we do when we have to give up on waiting for the player to reconnect? Fill from queue

How do we handle trolls that disconnect on purpose? *Dishonorable for DC’s (at half the rate of a normal match-leave)

Do we count a disconnect as part of dishonor? Yes, it’s unfortunate but you have to. If you have a connection so bad that you’re disconnecting multiple times in a day, you’re as much a detriment to your teammate as a ragequitter

Do we disable progression and rewards for a game that doesn’t finish because of a disconnect? Don’t disable progression, disable or reduce MMR loss for losing team (make no changes to MMR loss for leavers), and leave MMR gain for winning team alone

Do custom arena owners want to be able to pause through a command? Yes but I would say to limit its use somehow to prevent abuse

Lets hear your ideas. Try to come at the problem from more than one angle.

My responses in bold.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Gaile, can you clarify a little on this rule? I can’t find anything in the Rules of Conduct (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/) or at the top of this forum which states raffles are disallowed in-game. I can’t even find language which closely resembles it.

50/50 raffles are a great and fun way for guilds to build up their bank.

Please describe a 50/50 raffle to me. Thanks.

Players would submit gold to the player running the raffle. The winner of the raffle would get 50% of the total gold (in the form of gems) while the organizers would keep the other 50% of the gold

Gandarel.5091:

It should actually be the Hall of Heroes, lore-wise. Another thing they screwed up.

This is wrong. The Hall of Heroes is a location in the Mists. So is the Heart of the Mists. The two have no other connection.

Ally can you have the programmers look into this again? I’m seeing an inrodinate amount of skyhammer and haven’t had a Forest or Foefire pop in my last 25 matches. It’s been 75% skyhammer + spirit watch with an occasional khylo.

I pretty much always go afk when skyhammer pops. These days it seems like skyahmmer + spirit watch are 75% of the pops….i haven’t seen Forst or Spirit watch in my laster 25 games….

I thought they stopped awarding glory and rank points until the end of the match, so how are people still farming skyhammer? O.o

You’re 3-6 months behind the curve on this one mate

12/18 matches on sky hammer this afternoon (3 Oct 2013)
Was noticing a similar pattern yesterday. Lots and lots of skyhammer (which is disappointing considering how universally hated the map is).

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1nn70r/some_strings_about_guild_halls_and_gvg_from_data/

New strings about Guild Halls and the Hall of Heroes turned up in the gw2.dat file after the most recent update. Well HOT kitten , maybe they’re listening after all?

“Some strings that are in gw2.dat about GvG and guild halls, dated from last year:

Your party is already in that guild hall.
You must be in your guild hall to use that command.
Guild Hall
New guild hall.
Guild Battle
That guild is already involved in a battle. Please challenge another, or try again later.
Top Guild Battles

Another string i found that got me excited was this one:
Hall of Heroes

(if no one knows what is it – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Hall_of_Heroes)
I tried to search all the others map’s name about Heroes’ ascent, but weren’t there :/"

Marcos.3690:

feliscatus.1430:

Ele’s are so overnerfed it’s laughable. You could double their base HP, and MAYBE they’d be viable.

This is so true

That’s less important than the massive nerf their sustain (dodge roll healing + signet heal) took at the same time their mobility was effectively gutted (stunbreak off lightning flash, massive increase to recharges on offhand dagger)

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

I don’t get how it works. I’m 13 rank and it put me always with 30-50 allies/enemies. Yes, i had long winstreak with low ranked players, but it really means i have to face Champions? Every single person have champion title on matches and i’m just newbie with 25 wins

Rank isn’t considered when forming solo queue matches as it’s not considered a measure of player skill (it’s only a measure of time investment). The game uses leaderboard ratings to try to match up players with similar skill levels (the theory being that if you’re in similar positions on the leaderboard, you’re going to be of similar skill).

Unfortunately the leaderboard MMR system is kittened to all hell. Instead of using a proper ELO system to allow players to gradually climb ranks as they compete, it uses a bizarre MMR system which is incredibly volatile and will result in new players cascading from top 100 to bottom 25% every few wins.

Just take a look at the leaderboard, the top two players are 14-1 & 11-1 while other people in the top 10 have played over 500 matches. It’s an absurd, broken system which results in absurd, broken matchmaking.

Writetyper.1985:

I think it would be a perfectly viable tPvP map if the water area got the temple treatment and the side points of the map were “balanced” a bit. West spawn looking onto west point has an advantage over east spawn looking onto east point.

Removing the water and turning the ship into a generic raised platform would actually make this map very interesting.

I think it would add a lot of the z-axis complexity they were looking for in Skyhammer (but ruined with fall damage instagib)

evilapprentice.6379:

@Estoroth

Please explain how the developers stating that they want thieves to be the most mobile class in the game is irrelevant to the conversation about the mobility inf strike grants them.

An HP “Pool” is occupied by multiple classes – Thieves belong to the lowest HP pool, with guards and ele’s.

How is the nerf to thief burst irrelevant? It’s part of the reason thieves need mobility.

Your list of points is laughably incoherent – half of it is incorrect (“I have no idea where the thief went when he ported back, it’s not like the ability leaves a handy little red circle or anything”), the other half is exaggerated or just observations on the base mechanics of the game, as if they were “points”.

“It has No CD” and “Pretty much Spammable”- congrats, you know how every single thief weapon skill works, why it necessitated a point is beyond me.

“No counter play” – because closing to the circle is never an option, and the game has no ranged weapons.

“Can be used to completely negate stuns” – So stability and blocks are broken too then – better, actually, because they actually completely negate stuns, as opposed to SR which leaves you stunned, just somewhere else. See point about ranged weapons / closing to the circle.

“Low cost initiative” – 5 total initiative is not “low cost”, its 42% of a thieves standard Init bar.

“Causes immobilize” a 1s immobilize on a set with lousy burst is hardly something to complain about. S/D has 2 highly telegraphed swings that do the majority of the damage in the weapon set – without immobilize, they would never hit against a moderately skilled player with half a brain.

I could keep going, but why bother? When you have points, they’re poorly supported or silly, and when you don’t, you just dismiss things with absolutely no insight or reasoning. You have little idea what you’re talking about – please gain some experience with the game and explain your points more clearly.

Bingo. Spot on.

This build has been around for at least 4 months, and this is all known information (that has been complained about for months). Thanks for reposting it for the 37th time, though.

Estoroth.4310:

Unfortunately there are lots of skills in GW2 which need a rework and
Infiltrator’s Strike + Shadow Return is one of them.

At First some comments about some statements:

Thief exists to go in and out of the fight.
“We want thieves to be the class with the best mobility” – The game’s developers.

Irrelevant.

No Blocks
No Protection
No Aegis

Thief spammable Evade on Weapon Skills is much better than Blocks and Aegis.
Thieves can steal Protection.

Lowest base HP pool in the game.

Wrong.

Ele, Guardian and Thief have the same HP pool.

Constant nerfs to burst, nerfs to stealth with more to come.

Irrelevant.

This is actually a nice list which describes the problem with
inifiltrator’s strike. Furthermore Infiltrator’s Strike + Shadow Return is a very good expample of the Risk vs. Reward Problem in GW2 already addressed in this thread:
Risk vs. Reward

1.ignores Line of sight in spots,
2. ignores the Z axis
3. has no cool down,
4. no counter play
5. Pretty much spamable
6. removes a condi,
7. causes immobilize,
8. can be used to completely negate stuns ( not stun break but you can give enough distance to stop stuns)
9. Low cost initiative
10. The opposing player has no idea where the port back spot is.
11. Other classes have to waste utility slots with 30+ second cds to have this mobility."

The 4. point is imo the most important, “no counter play”, but it is a
little unspecific. Why does Infiltrator’s strike not allow counter
play? Well mostly (but not only) because it has no animation and is
instant. Additionally Shadowreturn functions without target and even
if infiltrators’s strike misses. As an counterexample let us look at a
quite well designed skill (from a couter play perspective): Magnetic
Grasp + Magnetic Leap, one of the gap closers of the ele
profession. This skill has an animation (and Magnetic Leap only works
if Magnatic Grasp hits the target), therefore it can be dodged or
blocked and thus you can prevent the ele to close the gap and reach
you. => counter play (simple isnt it.)

If Infiltrator’s strike + Shadow Return would function similarly, if
Infiltrators’s strike gets an animation and Shadow Return only works
if Infiltrator’s strike hits than counter play would be
possible. Because now the opponent could prevent the thief from
closing the gap and moreover the thief could not riskless engage into
the fight because shadow return would not be available to teleport him
away simply with one button press.

=> counter play => more options and decisions for the thief and
opponent => better Risk vs. Reward

So…..every weakness inherent to thieves is irrelevant but every one of their strengths is BIG KITTEN PROBLEM.

What a joke. Take your pseudo-intellectualism somewhere else. You can’t call every weakness of the profession irrelevant without explaining WHY.

Edit: Apparently you don’t understand how the skill works either. The immobilize + damage are NOT instant, they are tied to an attack that happens AFTER the teleport and HAS an animation. Stop moaning about lack of counterplay on thieves when warriors can stack 800 HPS of passive, unstrippable regen on zerk set and spirit rangers have as much built-in evade and unstrippable condi-cleanse as thieves (with a whole lot more utility).

Eurantien.4632:

Although a little inaccurate at the moment it is really cool that the builds are posted for people to see what was used.

Yeah for now they’re a bit incomplete due to lack of equipment, but I’m going to try and get that fixed in the next week and hopefully it won’t be an issue in the future!

Eurantien.4632:

You could always just ask the player directly.

Yeah that’s my plan, when I get some free time this week I’m going to PM some of the players in game and hopefully I’ll be able to update some of the teambuilds.

If anyone gets a chance to talk to players for the tournament and could confirm what runes/sigils/jewels they were running, I’d love to know so I can update the builds!

Arthur.1963:

ensoriki.5789:

Yes and no depends on time of day. Fill it in with hotjoin.
- EU is better than NA for players it seems.
- Yup but they arr small and getting smaller. Since you are interested in WvW look for a WvW guild that dabbles in Spvp and youll be fine.
- You can gear up via WvW but its not instant like PvP. You get scales up to make it easier but there will still be a difference thats felt when you operate as an individual. Run with a herd and its negligible.

Other info?
Persevere when kitten gets hard. Class balance in about two weeks.
Spvp is sort of restructuring itself.
Oh and once you get in stay away from the forums unless you are quitting. Place is pessimistic and slighly toxic but we all love a good “I quit” story if you’ve got one.

I’m not exactly interested in WvW, but I figured I’d give it a try as it has a PvP aspect to it!

I’m glad to hear there’s some game balancing happening in PvP. I just came from Rift, PvP seems to be an afterthought at this point.

WvW these days is much more often zergs playing PvDoor rather than PvP unfortunately. You can give it a try if you like, but I personally find it boring.

Hotjoins have no queues. Ranked solo matches usually have ~5 minute queue (less during NA peak hours)
There’s a fair number who still play, but it’s not a very massive scene.
Yes there are guild who specifically play team queue + tournament PvP, check the “Looking for a Team” forums.

Writetyper.1985:

Why didn’t the casters check runes/jewels for half the builds? That’s a lot of what I’m interested in, runes are pretty important.

I honestly don’t know, I asked Blu but I haven’t gotten a response yet. Runes + sigils + jewels are really vital part of what makes a build function, and shoutcasters NEED to take the extra couple of seconds to mouseover the equipment sets in the future.

Heya all, here are all the team builds + bracket from the first round of this week’s MLG Invitational. Thanks to MLG for putting on the Tournament, as well as Blu, Sireph and Shawn for shotucasting. I don’t plan on writing up the builds for any of the later rounds b/c I believe the only thing that changed was Caed switched around his thief build a few times.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:TahiriVeila/MLGInvite27Sep2013

In the future it’d really be great if shoutcasters make SURE to hover over the armor set, each weapon set, and the amulets for JUST A SECOND so we can get all the build info before the match starts. More than half of the builds from the tournie didn’t have runesets and/or sigils and/or jewels listed because the shoutcasters just never checked them! Thanks!