Guild Wars 2

DarkSyze.8627:

FrizzFreston.5290:

DarkSyze.8627:

“Competitive gaming”

Published on Jul 19, 2015

‘According to Arena net President: Mike O’brien, wvw is not competitive to go to or to play’

In result: the video of Building a Competitive Game Program are only words.

" Actions Always Proves Why Words Mean Nothing "

That is all

Like the actions of cutting a video in such a way it says something totally different. Your words here are indeed meaningless.

Cutting a video? Meaningless? This video is 100% real. Do research before commenting to evidence.

Research: PAX South ArenaNet Interview 2015

I watched the original. The piece of crap you posted there is still artificial.

If you want to make a honest point you would have posted the original video with a timestamp.

zorokai.1486:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Technically…
The warhorn is a vibrational device which merely extend the breath of the one blowing the horn. Tying this in with what you know about elementalist magic you should be able to further enhance this effect. Considering what you know about breathing fire and cold while controlling air and vapor there is virtually no limit to what one can come up with.

Elementalists can already make sandstorms, firestorms, freezing gusts and lightningstorms.

While adding the obvious speed inducing ang sound propagation into this mix the magic could be focussed onto these soundwaves and as such creating a multitude of effects.

If it’s possible to vibrate and resonate the magic and the sound in a fixed place that way you could possibly create multiple copies of the same effect.

you can butter it up all you like – still in the end blowing a horn. Like you stated ele can already make so many storms – so what exactly is the WH for? adding another extra tornado? whoop! ….

I wasn’t buttering anything up or trying to make a point. People here are deaf to a little reason. It would be pointless to talk sense into you guys so I just made something up that sounded sort of cool.

Technically…
The warhorn is a vibrational device which merely extend the breath of the one blowing the horn. Tying this in with what you know about elementalist magic you should be able to further enhance this effect. Considering what you know about breathing fire and cold while controlling air and vapor there is virtually no limit to what one can come up with.

Elementalists can already make sandstorms, firestorms, freezing gusts and lightningstorms.

While adding the obvious speed inducing ang sound propagation into this mix the magic could be focussed onto these soundwaves and as such creating a multitude of effects.

If it’s possible to vibrate and resonate the magic and the sound in a fixed place that way you could possibly create multiple copies of the same effect.

zorokai.1486:

Ele’s sure got a slap in the face with the Warhorn.

Warhorn melee confirmed! First skill definitely is called wack yourself with the warhorn. The special specialisation effect can be called. Tempest tantrum.

Isn’t it an off hand so that awesome offhand plus awesome mainhand wouldn’t become so powerful that it makes the other main handers sort of pointless? This way warhorn needs to be awesome enough to compete with already powerful options, while not making the class even more powerful than it already was.

Nah. They would need to start over and go to Elementary school.

All this rage on the forum is because we don’t have the warhorn to channel their inner tempest yet. Some people are just a bit wind up, it will most certainly blow over.

MattyP.6954:

How about you guys actually, you know, play the content before you declare it DoA? Seriously, Ele will probably get sword in a future specialization—so just wait to see what Warhorn actually does before getting all kitteny about it.

I can’t wait for the second elite specialisation of elementalists to be offhand scepter.

Mara.6782:

No bolt to my ele… well maybe next expansion then

Oh! oh!

…
Could you perhaps say that this news is like… a Bolt to the heart?

Some people here seem to a bit early to toot their horns.

Who is not to say the warhorn will blow our minds.

Either way it will sword itself out.

Foverine.5342:

I’m actually really intrigued by this Warhorn, since it seems those that get 2-handed weapons (guardian, Necro) get existing Profession mechanics edited, and those that get an off-hand (Mesmer) get an extra skill (f5 shatter). I wonder how that would apply to Elementalist? a Fifth attunement sounds a bit crazy lol.

Probably similarly to the guardian. They got changed virtues with the original effect still there. So elementalists could have changed attunements without changing the weapon skills.

Well. .. making threats like “alot of long term players are going to leave if….” without having any factual information is kind of an empty threat. It’s his point that should somehow hold more weight because “alot” of people will leave. Which as you stated yourself, which I agree with, is totally irrelevant.

Other than that, his dissatisfaction with the way he feels WvW is seemingly handled is naturally as valid as any other opinion.

DarkSyze.8627:

“Competitive gaming”

Published on Jul 19, 2015

‘According to Arena net President: Mike O’brien, wvw is not competitive to go to or to play’

In result: the video of Building a Competitive Game Program are only words.

" Actions Always Proves Why Words Mean Nothing "

That is all

Like the actions of cutting a video in such a way it says something totally different. Your words here are indeed meaningless.

So… he basically said that players who only play WvW are a rare type of player. Which is far from saying that WvW players aren’t a thing.

It’s not even that weird. I suspect that when wvw queues are full, most “WvW players” aren’t gonna hang around aimlessly.

Haleydawn.3764:

Titles are far too easy to get as they are, putting them onto Personal Story is a bit ridiculous. Titles should reward effort, not be handed out for something extremely simple. I do have an issue with the already easy to get titles, but hey there’s plenty others that require effort.
My next issue would be since the whole achievement system is account bound it’s going to be a huge amount of time to program it to be character bound.
In essence, bad idea.

There’s titles more ridiculous than personal story ones that actually have meaning for your character.

Plus, yes it would require a rework, but to name that as a reason to not have nice things is a bit ridiculous. They have changed lesser things for worse reasons (relatively speaking)

Also adding extra replay value is not a bad idea at all. If anything it would increase the longevity of the game.

Genavelle.9516:

FrizzFreston.5290:

All? Maybe. :p

But I would start with this one:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-objective-claiming-in-world-vs-world/

Does this mean a guild has to take responsibility for upgrading things they’ve claimed? So like…just claiming camps for +5 supply will mean that nobody else can then upgrade the camp until you’ve gone on and claimed something else? Or what?

And while all these new siege thingies and stuff like pact fleets and charr cars sound cool, how do they actually fit in with WvW play? Most WvW players are concerned about PvP fights, and fight tactics- not siege. Most WvW players actually MOCK people who rely on siege instead of coming out and fighting themselves.

That last bit remains to be seen really. They will have WvW tests coming up, but noone really has access to GHs at that point. So it will be a bit until those special thingies come into play.

However I also forgot about these topics they talked about a bit longer ago that should answer dome of your questions.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upgrading-world-vs-world-upgrades/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/ready-up-episode-34-wvw-automatic-upgrades/

I think it was talking about how upgrades will go up automatically the longer you hold it. There should have been some discussions about it in the WvW forum?

There’s also some other things coming to WvW and PvP regarding building the guildhall with stuff from guild missions which is really up in the air atm. I wouldn’t know whether its an awesome thing or just some small band aid change though.

In the end whether it makes HoT worth it for the solely WvW players is up to you. At least I can provide some information only.

All? Maybe. :p

But I would start with these:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-objective-claiming-in-world-vs-world/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upgrading-world-vs-world-upgrades/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/ready-up-episode-34-wvw-automatic-upgrades/

Personally I would like to see something that makes my character not perma logged in to this account cloud and stand more on their own as a character. Especially regarding achievements and titles and such and now HoT progression.

But sadly imo, the game seems to move in the opposite direction.
Maybe titles are low bar enough. Also redoing certain tougher achievements on a different character seems nice to me for personal reasons.

Noted that it’s not a huge loss, but for me the replayability of certain things is just something that is fun to me.

You couldn’t make a logical argument even if you tried. This has nothing to do with fanboyism..
I wasn’t talking about the revenant at all. It is a work in progress as stated by many players and the devs. Merely about difficulty. Which is the thread topic.

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing an elementalist if I like to play an elementalist. And story instances that are designed to be solo should be solo-able, not take 8 minutes to kill a veteran in a party (from DaveyC)!

I totally agree that you should indeed not play another class simply for difficulty reasons and play what you like to play. However, considering difficulty… if you’re on the lower end of being able to handle certain difficulties you cannot always expect the game to be easy enough for you as if the whole game is designed for just you. However, since it is not ONLY designed to be solo able but also for a full party, you can overcome your troubles regarding difficulty with some friends (your son?). That. is why it’s a MULTIPLAYER game.

Sure, my internet connection may be crap now but it is due to change soon. The fact that HoT is too difficult as the Revenant is too weak is also brought up by DaveyC and many others in his thread:

Goo.7926:

Sure…..! So let’s leave the revenant that way! It’s cool enough (sarcasm)! 2 legends is more than enough! Don’t even need water weapons anyway! (SARCASM)

You big butt suckers! HoT is crap right now! Don’t try to defend A.net! They sucks right now!

I would wait and see if they have really fixed the issues with HoT before buying. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Too bad even if some of the fanboys here disagree with me that I should wait and see before I buy, by denying that there is a problem with the living story and HoT.

There’s enough threads about waiting to buy. Your thread title reads only about difficulty. And while that could be a valid reason for someone to not buy it, it is a very personal reason for yourself and there are ways to overcome the obstacles in this game at your disposal which you just ignore because of reasons of your own making. Also Lag is Lag. The game does come with a list of minimum requirements. If you do not have a working internet connection or good enough graphics card or some such. .. then It’s entirely up to you to meet these requirements . Any troubles coming from that are fixable or you decide to live with them and adjust your plays type.

Personally, I haven’t even bought the expansion yet. I don’t see the pressure to buy right this instant at all. So you definitely shouldn’t feel pressured by anyone else but your own judgement.

Vayne.8563:

But we’ve always had to unlock skills in order. That hasn’t change. Grouping at changed.

Since the beginning we needed to buy 5 1 point skills in order to be able to buy a 3 point skill, whether we liked all 5 of those skills or not. That was how the game was. Then we had to buy 5 3 point skills before we could buy a 6 point skill.

It worked as a gate the same way. They changed the look of how things are gated, but the gating really isn’t all that different.

Actually there wasn’t as much order before. There IS a smaller degree of freedom currently.

First of all, healing skills, and elite skills had their own separate groups.
Second, there was no arbitrary order to unlocking the skills in each tier. You could pick one skill before the others, rather than going through a set of predetermined skills. So you would always progress your character in the general forward way, but with the new system you progress you only progress a part of your character because if you want that one elite at the end of a chain you have nothing invested in, you basically start all over again.

Yes, there was a certain degree of buying skills that you didn’t really need, but it was less of a problem, because you would always get more options no matter where you spend that point in. Now it does matter where you spend that point, and you need to plan ahead to some degree if you want a certain skill or elite skill later on. Which is worse if you need to unlock all signets before you get that one elite signet you like, while preferably not using any signets in your utilities at all. (Just an example)

Even with traits, you need to unlock one trait of the same tier before the other trait that you would’ve rather wanted in that specific slot. It would have been better with the trait system if you could already choose one of the tier 1 traits when unlocking rather than using an arbitrary order for them.

But like I said, it’s not really about having a gating system, but more about what the options are. Options ARE less during the progression of your character.

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is nothing poor me about it. I am just using the points that the community here supplied to emphasize, to anyone who is still deciding to buy HoT, that this game is not for everyone. So we are in agreement.

I have played this game since May 2005 in GW1, then GW2 beta, until now and I am probably more veteran than most of you here. After more than 10 years supporting this franchise, I have gathered enough fun out of it already.

Again, I am not the only one with this point of view:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/So-Disappointed-After-The-First-Beta/first

The reasons you basically emphasised are: If you have crappy internet, found the game too difficult in a few storysteps, are an older person who isn’t as able anymore, and are reluctant to accept help, the game is not for you.

Most of those reasons are highly subjective or plain defeatist. Im not sure you’re making a point for yourself or for anyone else.

So… instead of reaper in english. It could be called harvester.

Isn’t the necro sort of getting the “Dervish elite specialisation” with reaper ?

I must say… that is a very nice post with alot of good points.

Magic find just increases your chances for a higher rarity for drops. Gold find isn’t a chance and ups your income from monster drops by a percentage which I think is the same for karma and exp. Then again… I see more and more mobs without any drops whatsoever.

A thief is more than just stealth

Substance E.4852:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Substance E.4852:

Citation needed because this is a complete reversal of Anet’s long strides toward making the game as easy and casual friendly as possible.

SW and Dry top have definitely harder content than before relatively speaking, so I’m not sure where you got it from that ArenaNet made long strides to make it as easy and casual friendly as possible. (Maybe casual friendly, time wise) I’m pretty sure that also needs actual citation.

Harder in what sense? I as an individual don’t have to put in any particularly high level of ability for the event to win and most if not all of the content can still be done with auto attack spam given appropriate numbers of people.

The only remotely difficult Dry Top event is the Sand Giant and people stopped messing with him after a few days.

Neither zone requires any real planning of builds or strategy and 2 of the SW sub-bosses can be killed by just standing in the right spot and 1-1-1-1-1’ing them from range. The tandem boss is probably the hardest and that comes from other players popping bubbles too soon more than it does from the mechanics of the fight itself.

Strides as in they have seeming all but abandoned instanced, party content where personal performance impacts success of the event/mission and interaction with those directly next to you is necessary in exchange for large open world content where you need only learn where to and not to stand while auto attacking a large HP blob.

Hell, all three VW fights literally are “stand in spot X to completely negate the bosses’ special attack.”

Even if you don’t know to drag bees to combs or open platform flowers, chances are, at least 1 other person in there does and the fight will go as planned because of it.

MMO’s typically tend to elevate the skill ceiling as time goes on where as Anet seems to be lowering it or at the very least, leaving it where it is.

Strides based on your personal perception rather than actual facts. Good job. Next time don’t use “citation needed” when you can’t even do so yourself.

Plus I was speaking relatively. Harder doesn’t mean hard. Also it took a while before people figured the bosses out. If not abandon them completely because “too hard” which is more too much effort for little reward.

Substance E.4852:

Citation needed because this is a complete reversal of Anet’s long strides toward making the game as easy and casual friendly as possible.

SW and Dry top have definitely harder content than before relatively speaking, so I’m not sure where you got it from that ArenaNet made long strides to make it as easy and casual friendly as possible. (Maybe casual friendly, time wise) I’m pretty sure that also needs actual citation.

While I think reporting for every swear word is kind of pointless, it’s never wrong to report it if you feel that is the right thing to do. In the end ArenaNet is the one taking action on it or not, and I really doubt that one whisper is going to turn them into Banhammer mode.

So, while the meaning of asking someone with or without swear word might be very much the same, using a swearword is more hostile (subjectively) and thus invokes more defensive counter reactions. In the end, it’s an emotional reaction. People react differently to different words and while you can ignore that because you know the meaning of the sentence isn’t that much different, it doesn’t mean that other people are falsely reporting someone.

Broom.2561:

You might have missed the point saying ‘normal’ game mode not being a problem. Personally, I did manage to get most of this stuff AND the achievements done, in some cases with help. But I do agree that the rising twitch level of the content is causing problems for more people that you’d think. And giving an answer of ‘get better’ or ‘get help’ is less than helpful.

A comment you took out of context for your personal campaign. He started with offering to help him do it in-game. He turned all the comments down. It is you who missed the point.
Plus I didn’t exactly post any point or counter point to said discussion. I was merely asking what the point of this thread is.

Personally I think that when you’re disabled you need to face the fact that you need help with certain things in life, rather than demanding that everything is adapted to your specific case.

You asking for another way to get certain armor pieces that are behind an achievement is to me the same as asking for an easy mode. A wheelchair safe route to the same prestige-y like armor.

On the other hand, if you really, really want that armor, you can also ask a friend to play for you. Considering your RSI, I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all.

So yes, if offering help is turned down, then the only option is to get better on your own. Rather than starting to demand things.

It would be interesting to see how that works out. Less base healing in general may even increase the worth of defensive stats.

Sooooo, add a special easy mode for disabled people (hardware or physical)?

Or accept your current conditions and accept help from fellow players?

All events are (or should be) designed to be rewarding when succesfully completed. Failure shouldn’t be rewarded unless there’s a specific reason the event should fail, like story.

I always try to do the event normally. I don’t think anyone “owns” the event. I simply want to complete it normally the few times I come across the event.

That said. It’s mostly a design flaw either way. The event chains that lead to a boss that’s on an arbitrary timer are generally broken in my opinion. If anything, the whole route should be a part of the “pre-events” and champions should simply instantly despawn on event failure. (Let them explode into multiple vets or something)

Vayne.8563:

FrizzFreston.5290:

So. Since the trait system has been reworked along with the way utilities are unlocked… which turns out to be an even more gated system than before. What do people think about that now.

I’m not very much for this “unlock all other skills of the same type instead of hand picking the ones you actually want” and feel it’s another step in the wrong direction. But I have no clue how it actually plays out. Also there’s traits you need to pick with the same linear system which make your point allocation rather limited and well linear.( no matter that it’s displayes as a circle)

While it probably doesn’t matter on the long tun as you will unlock everything anyway. I’m not looking forward to leveling through a system that doesn’t at all let me progress naturally through the world of Tyria.

Then again the NPE was turning the game from “almost sandboxy” to jump through these hoops to unlock basic functionalities" and now they made even bigger hoops. (I guess that’s why the unlock system is displayed circular)

Ofcourse it probably works. But that feeling of a living and breathing world they were advertising is hidden more and more by the UI of levelling up “rewards”, skillwindows and taking away immersive and sort of realistic interactions with the world.

Tyria is more and more a game and less and less a living world with a soul.

It’s not as bad as all that. We’ve always had a lockout mechanism for traits. You ended up with X number of trait points to start, and up until level 40 you couldn’t access any trait above master and not until level 60 could you access the top tier of traits. So this isn’t really much different in that regard. In fact, you can access traits that you were never able to access before earlier in this new version.

My advice is to get every single skill point you can while leveling, because the more you get, the faster you can unlock everything.

While I’m sure that it’s workable. I still see that you have to follow the order in which it unlocks. I’m not sure how it works with traits as it seems that is a more gradual form of the trait books. But I was mostly meaning the utility, healing and elite skils.
It seems to me that those unlocks are more randomly put in a specific order which little people care about. And those also compete with trait unlocks to a smallextend

Of course. It might be seemingly minor, but to me being able to unlock things in the way I want seems alot more interesting to progress my character than the current system.

For me, I liked the natural character progression. Regarding the new system, you’re not picking specific skills that fit your characters story anymore, but you’re basically set on a path to unlock everything. You simply presented a way to play the game (get all skillpoints) while I said or meant to say, It’s turning more into a game than a world (because you’re sort of molded into an optimal way to travel through it.

But yeah, the system on it’s own is not as bad.

Last time I checked, you only pay for HoT.

Not one person paid EXTRA to get beta access, the ones that did get access only paid EARLY.

It’s an opportunity people took, rather than a service that should be provided in a shape or form that is acceptable to you.

To begin with you only get access to these events, without getting to demand what these entail. It’s up to arenanet to grant you access only. If you don’t like a beta, then why were you so stupid to pay the prepurchase.

So. Since the trait system has been reworked along with the way utilities are unlocked… which turns out to be an even more gated system than before. What do people think about that now.

I’m not very much for this “unlock all other skills of the same type instead of hand picking the ones you actually want” and feel it’s another step in the wrong direction. But I have no clue how it actually plays out. Also there’s traits you need to pick with the same linear system which make your point allocation rather limited and well linear.( no matter that it’s displayes as a circle)

While it probably doesn’t matter on the long tun as you will unlock everything anyway. I’m not looking forward to leveling through a system that doesn’t at all let me progress naturally through the world of Tyria.

Then again the NPE was turning the game from “almost sandboxy” to jump through these hoops to unlock basic functionalities" and now they made even bigger hoops. (I guess that’s why the unlock system is displayed circular)

Ofcourse it probably works. But that feeling of a living and breathing world they were advertising is hidden more and more by the UI of levelling up “rewards”, skillwindows and taking away immersive and sort of realistic interactions with the world.

Tyria is more and more a game and less and less a living world with a soul.

It should just function like the guardian skill Sanctuary. That it can displace everything probably means it just isn’t added to the list of Stability affected CCs.

stevonzo.6879:

While you are mostly correct, you are blaming the wrong people. The gaming industry has started using beta testing as a marketing tool rather than what it is supposed to be. You can’t really blame gamers at this point. You should be saying, “it is dumbfounding how the game companies don’t know the purpose of a beta test” or “it is dumbfounding that these companies continue to knowingly misuse beta tests”.

I would say the twist on that. People have gotten used to beta tests where pretty much everything is working, is pretty much a media stunt and all the reported bugs is the only thing the game developer needs to do and has time to do since development is pretty much at an end. Gamers are not used to Betas where multiple things still aren’t working perfectly and if they report something they expect it to be fixed the next beta.

Because if anything… it’s most obvious that HoT is not done. And the OP expected a more ready product because it’s a beta which he expects to be at least working… which exactly isn’t what a beta is about. Or rather betas are something that developers want to be at least confident about showing to the public. It seems to me that ArenaNet is confident enough to share a much earlier cycle with us and then gathering some feedback regarding that.

So they have alot of work to do still. At least we know and can tell them. Rather than going “mimimimi its still not done” or “mimimi I don’t see the instant change I requested last beta.”

I’m more interested in guild halls for different server hubs. But I doubt that is gonna be a thing.

I personaly think that the lore of Guild Wars 2 is pretty good because it is a descendant of Guild Wars 1.

Also, are we really making a thread with a dozen people responding to Scar? …

deSade.9437:

FrizzFreston.5290:

That, or every existing class has too much dps with too little drawbacks.

Let’s nerf and completely overhaul 8 classes instead of buffing/adjusting/reworking 1…

Okay! If you do the mesmer, necromancer, elementalist and warrior, then I’ll do the other 4.

Oh wait, my sarcasm light is burning, totally missed that. I’m glad mine is at least working. :p

That, or every existing class has too much dps with too little drawbacks.

While some of his reasons are a bit subjective, his points are some big issues in the game right now on their own.
Like not being able to get runes or sigils from ascended weaponary is hugely annoying.

Switching stats only being possible with gear is another that can be seen as annoying inventory management.

Especially when one of the arguments brought forward is to merely adapt to the new system and MMOs need changes. The current system isn’t too friendly to adapting at all.

Maybe they are betting on players buying an extractor by making it not too eady to switch, seemingly forcing people to buy such an expensive thing for something that should not actually be an issue is not making people stand too positively towards that.

Also building your character’s skillset is linear as opposed to being able to pick your skills fairly freely. Instead of picking a skill you like you need to go through the whole skilltype tree before ending up at the skill you want.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

MiniEquine.6014:

stof.9341:

There’s little point having 66M different builds if only 2 are remotely viable.

I agree completely. They made these changes so that you could alter your build to accommodate your play style better and not punish you for taking that Grandmaster you needed in that one line but had nothing else you wanted, or for losing attribute points because you didn’t take the berserker line 1 and line 2 all the time.

I would bet that there is at least the same number of more-significantly varying builds if not more now than there was prior to the update.

Yes, but the reason for that isn’t the new trait-system, but the fact that condi-builds are now viable as well and the fact that some traits were buffed. Learn to keep those apart!!!

If anything comes to mind, it’s that such changes always are interconnected. Sure, conditionbuilds brcome stronger with a buff to them, but that doesn’t mean the trait changes suddenly had no effect at all. (As little as that may be)

LunarRXA.5062:

I don’t post on the official forums often. I prefer Reddit. That being said, this is more of an unfinished “Early-Access” Alpha than a Beta. I think ArenaNet should have explicitly stated the lack of Shiro & Glint stances in their announcement address. Transparency would have saved them a lot of drama and grief.

They said they added the Ventari legend with this test, which sort of makes it obvious that’s the only addition. While they didn’t explicitly state Glint and Shiro won’t be available, it should be pretty obvious they aren’t available yet.

While I don’t share your rifle passion, I can understand that you’d be disappointed when it turns out they don’t have a rifle (which seems likely). Even if so. I’m pretty sure ArenaNet don’t deem it impossible to create a creative rifle skillset for whichever profession if not thief. If anything, they seemed to have tried with shield for sure. Hopefully warhorn for elementalist if that speculation is true. So I wouldn’t lose your hope just yet. It just (sadly) might mean your ghost is a little further from resurrection than anticipated.

Personally, I’m more looking forward to a rework of the underwater weapons/EPs additions and such. Though im likely to be in a very small minority for that one.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Agreed, beta is beta. That said, it’s also the only point of reference we have. I believe I saw someone refer to current Rev damage as ‘nomad Thief level’ in another thread. That doesn’t really seem like a thing we should be pushing for on actual Thieves, eh?

Ehm. I don’t think there’s a “we” pushing anything. “We” do not make or control what ArenaNet is putting out. Its more speculating what ArenaNet is going to put in and is likely to be put in. I really don’t have a preference to rifle or staff. And even if ArenaNet is considering public forum opinions, then it’s way more likely they thought about both options long before this topic started and probably worked out most of whatever weapon they planned. I doubt they would flip their design concepts at this stage.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Make it a 600-range medium-distance Power weapon, to compare to the Shortbow’s utility/Malice-centric nature. Make it a disruptive choice rather than a boom-headshot choice, somewhat like the Engineer’s rifle except actually good/not completely schizophrenic. The important thing is that in virtually all cases the rifle would be something we don’t already have, while in virtually no case is the staff something we don’t already have.

Technically, staff could be disruptive somewhat medium ranged as well. Considering the length of a staff, it would be interesting to have some close/medium range that isn’t in the game at all yet with a melee oriented weapon.

Also a staff seems something that could potentially knock down or launches away which all are things a thief doesn’t have access to yet. It seems more disruptive in nature as main hand sword currently is. As well as some pole vaulting that you can control to use offensively over and enemy or something crazy like that. Or AoE cripple or CC.

Plus, it might be not the best offensive weapon, maybe it’s a more defensive or supportive weapon. Which might seem a little weird (lame?) for most thieves, but it’s definitely an option that is definitely not explored with most thieves.

The Monkey King Tonic has some staff animations in its transformation, so it’s not that far off either. (considering it’s a drop the Dry Top towards the jungle, maybe even more so)

I just would say, that while it might SEEM more lame than rifle (in your opinion anyway), it’s all in all just more judging the book by it’s cover. You’re only comparing your speculations for one weapon against your other speculations for the other weapon. Which in the end is nothing factual, and limited to your already biased view on either of the weapons.

arenta.2953:

evidence? a picture with no text. no indication of where it goes. or even if its the new elite skill or an actual weapon.

I think you’re onto something…. it must be …
A rifle shooting staves!

you’ve posted a picture.
but no reason for staff being appealing over the current melee weapons that thief has.
or possible skills the staff would has
or how the staff would work with the class at all.

Because he doesn’t need to. There’s only a picture that points towards thief with a staff. Which is MORE evidence than thief with a rifle which is nothing more than conceptual idea by some forum posters.
Sure, like you said, it could be a kit or anything else with rifle still being the main weapon. Though the likelyhood it’s a staff going just from that picture is obviously higher than rifle because of the simple reason, there’s no such picture of a thief with a rifle.

so unless Anet is planning on adding appeal to other classes and leaving the thief with a profession thats worse than the base profession.

There’s no proof that rifle nor staff will be more amazing than the other, other than some wild imaginations made by forum posts. It’s all just speculation. You can argue all day that staff is less amazing just because you can’t think of a way where it would be, or merely because you’re more a fan of rifle. You can look into history, fiction and other works for proof, but in the end it is still speculation. It doesn’t make one or the other better or worse.

I just randomly googled for thief and staff, and it seems DDO has a Theif acrobat which works with quarterstaves. For example only ofcourse. Because that doesn’t mean GW2 will get something similar. Just that it’s been done before. It’s not weird at all.