Guild Wars 2

Anet should make it so that the match won’t start until all have checked “ready”. If someone doesn’t click within a given time frame they are kicked and someone from soloq are added to their party and the process restarts. They really should take this seriously, because they have ladders, and some people will lose a match because if afk’ers.

While I’m at it, they should add a huge penalty for leaving a match or if you’re afk – kicked.

I’m not sure about kicking people because that would be abused if someone think they have one on their team that’s not as good as them…

I have been kicked two or three times from a group as you say here, so it may be something on your server? But yes, way too many doesn’t know what they’re doing, yet they join experienced / speed groups, and as I said; I agree on that point. People shouldn’t join something they’re not up for. In tPvP I meet a lot of negativity against the thief. There it’s go meta or gtfo, but that applies to pretty much every profession. Thieves get hit pretty hard there due to the devs hate against stealth and thieves in general. As for dungeons and fractals I sometimes meet some negative feedback, but I tell them to give me a shot and I’m usually doing a few dungeons / paths with them after that

Hmm, valid point about the waiting and not spending your in-game time waiting. I never get kicked, so I don’t know man :/

Man, you’ve started to look at this game as a life, and not what it really is – a game. Seriously though. I run the 25/30/0/0/15 build with great success in every single dungeon and high level fractals – I’m usually the last man standing, and sometimes soloing a boss because my group wiped. This game is 90% player, which means that builds, weapon sets and all that stuff is personal preference and play style.

Yes, a S/P thief will be more effective against trash mobs and better to bring in speed runs, so I agree that you shouldn’t join a speed-run group if you can’t speed run it. D/D isn’t bad, it’s less effective than S/P in dungeons. So stop saying everyone that’s not doing the same as you are damaging the thief reputation, because honestly, it’s people like you that do it.

Although I do think that if you know you’re running an experimental or downright awful dungeon build – let your group know.

Signet of Malice and death blossom? It’s an evade, and if he were fighting an Asura the animations are easily mistaken… If not then it sounds like withdraw.

Jhughes.8341:

ahh I see I see. so you are just running s/p and snagging all the steal traits.. yeah in pvp I take a ton of the steal traits as well. I really miss hidden killer but since im not going down that line xD. Daze on steal is nasty, and yes that combo carries you super far! Try throwing in Infil Sig to go even farther :P I will give your build a try! Thanks a ton

Any time! Yeah, forgot to mention that signet too ^^

Just pm me in-game if you need any advice or help

Ah, S/P, I love that weapon set! I played it a lot in WvW before the recent buffs, with great results I dare say. This is what I played then and still do some times. You could mix inn some Valkyrie or Knight’s gear if you want more survivability. I don’t really find the need for it though since the key is to interrupt all of the important skills the enemy uses and strip boons like stability, retaliation or protection (retaliation is a real pain against pistol whip) with steal.

S/P coupled with a trickery build is pretty much interrupt/immobilize to death. You’ll find it harder to fight outnumbered fights due to the squishyness of the thief, but if you play it well you’ll manage. Just try and experiment with this, make it your own build by swapping traits, gear, runes, sigils or skills – make it so you feel comfortable playing it. S/P is an amazing and very dangerous weapon set if played right! Would be very awesome to see more S/P thieves out there, since we’re pretty few :/

Edit: learn the shadow step → infiltrators strike → steal combo to travel insane distances within a second. Amazing if you need to chase down someone.

Reverence.6915:

Was fighting in the middle of 25-30 people… Got hit with a killshot doing around 18k damage. That kitten needs to get looked at…

And that’s a 1500 range attack. Yet people complain about a 7k backstab….

Memphisjz.1405:

Please stay on topic guys.

As long as the defenders outsmart the attackers by countering any siege, no reinforcements should ever be needed to show up. You are supposed to be safe inside your tower!

Only when the attackers find high ground, or countered your siege before you could react, ONLY THEN should reinforcement come to wipe them.

Why have supply in the game in the first place if there is absolutely no need to use it?
Player vs Door has to go!

I agree 100%.

A well defended and upgraded tower should put the attackers in a vulnerable position. They should have a really hard time. I also think that the entire keep/tower etc should be a capture point. So that if there are still players inside or on the walls they would need to be killed before they could cap.

Assassin X.8573:

Yes. Don’t stand still for the 2 seconds it takes to animate the shot. Its not like you could have dodged, hid, blocked, reflected, etc. or even moved out of range in that time….

If it’s a glassy warrior it’s hilarious to reflect the shot to make him one shot himself :p

Had a warrior one shot (literally) my thief in full dire gear. Didn’t even know what hit me since I was just running around. I was just like, wtf, lag? And then I saw a warrior running towards me and stomped me. Was more fun than annoying ;p

They definitely need to make it more important to defend. As it is now you just don’t care. You just come back in a few minutes with your zerg and melt the keep/tower… Zergs should be severely slowed down and towers, keeps, camps, sentries should scale WAY more than they do now. It should require some serious skill and tactic from the zerg to cap a fully upgraded camp, tower, keep etc that’s guarded by some players…

As I said, I don’t complain about it. I just put it out there for people to see that backstab is far from the hardest hitting ability in the game. Anyhow, warriors can trait to have a redicolously low cool down on weapon swap and burst skills, so they’re nearly spammable. I do also think that the thief should get revealed if the attack is blocked. Backstab can be “spammed” every 3-4 seconds, but it’s hard to land and very easy to evade. See a thief stealth and stand still, if so then you deserve to be killed :p don’t get me wrong, because I like to fight warriors, and I usually walk away as the winner (non-stealth build btw), so I couldn’t care. Just put it out there for the community to see

TyPin.9860:

Geiir.7603:

TyPin.9860:

As a Mesmer, I allways laugh about thieves, I wait till they come out of stealth (not that hard to predict) and let my phantasm kill them

Basicly a thief on the offensive can be evaded, dodged and kited until his stealth wears of. And I don’t even need to retarget him, for my clones are better than me in dealing dmg. I just wait with my GS until they pop shadow refuge and they are done… most of the times.

Then you’re one the few good ones out there. Most people just kitten around and don’t know what to do. The worst thing Evers is wasting a backstab on a clone because the Mesmer evades just when he’s suppose to >_< Allthough I usually just keep stealthing on your phantasms until I get myself positioned for a good combo

Hehe, I wouldn’t say I am one of the good ones, for I sucked after 1 month break over christmas and new year^^. I think I am the average and I meet mostly average thieves. Yesterday one thief tried to suprise me. But I heared him dodge, to get some speed I suppose, before he attacked. So he then backstabbed my clone from decoy. He then had trouble dealing with my duelist and zerker. His luck was, that I opened with the wrong weapon and had my weapon switch not ready when he used shadow refuge and he was able to run away. I have not seen him again^^

Haha, nice ^^ Yeah, most of the thieves I meet are below average skill level… There’s very few thieves that get me down in WvW, especially if I’m on my thief ;p

TyPin.9860:

As a Mesmer, I allways laugh about thieves, I wait till they come out of stealth (not that hard to predict) and let my phantasm kill them

Basicly a thief on the offensive can be evaded, dodged and kited until his stealth wears of. And I don’t even need to retarget him, for my clones are better than me in dealing dmg. I just wait with my GS until they pop shadow refuge and they are done… most of the times.

Then you’re one the few good ones out there. Most people just kitten around and don’t know what to do. The worst thing Evers is wasting a backstab on a clone because the Mesmer evades just when he’s suppose to >_< Allthough I usually just keep stealthing on your phantasms until I get myself positioned for a good combo

I remember when I heard of WvW and keeps, towers and camps, my first thought was: My god! Do this mean that me and some friends can actually upgrade and hold a tower against a greater force? You know, it would actually make sense that someone inside a keep should have the advantage against someone that’s right beneath their walls. I was thinking tactics like choke pointing, AoE damage and siege actually playing a huge role.

I have never been so wrong… Since they removed the AoE cap it’s been all about stacking as many people as possible in the smallest are possible to stack boons, ressurect players and be partially immune to damage…

WvW had so much potential, but they failed so hard they won’t even realize it. I agree with OP, make gates immune to any other damage than siege damage (trebuchet, ballistae and catapult). It would add way more depth to the game, and it would actually give the defending players a chance against a bigger force. I would also love to see supply camps buffed to the roof together with sentries.

Best idea I’ve seen so far: Have the events scale with the size of the numbers of players participating. Make the lords and guards 50 times harder if there are 50 people attacking. Make the zerg actually think tactics and how to fight this huge and dangerous boss. Make the zerg try to kill guards and archers inside the keep before they dare to attack the lord, or they’ll wipe. Same with camps and sentries. I think that sentries should be hard as kitten for a single player to kill. Now my thief can kill a sentry within 2-3 seconds, which is unacceptable. Even a lvl 1 thief with pistol off-hand can take a sentry…. Make them require some serious skill to kill. A single player should have to put some serious effort in taking a camp, not just fly through with ease. What’s the point of even upgrading a camp? You know that the enemy zerg will be there soon and wipe it in 1 second.

Anet failed hard when it comes to WvW. The only one that need a brain in WvW is the commander…

As a thief I laugh every time a Mesmer stealths. I’ll just stealth off his illusions and wait for him to reveal himself, then spike him ^^

Thief is a cheesy profession, as it was intended to be. We’re squishy, and we are the best at being that. We’re supposed to be the hated one, the one you’ll never see coming, but you’ll definitely feel. If we fail we have the tools to gtfo, if we fail that then a thief is a free loot bag. We hit hard, if we fail we disengage, that’s how it was designed.

I’ve been literally one-shotted by warriors using eviscerate or kill shot (the latter one being a ranged high damage attack), do you see me complaining?

Some facts from the GW2 wiki:

Kill Shot

• lvl 3 adrenaline damage: 1256 (damage multiplier of 3,25)
• Range: 1500
• Combo finisher: Physical Projectile

Eviscerate

• lvl 3 adrenaline dagame: 1008 (damage multiplier of 3)
• Range: 300
• Combo finisher: Leap

Backstab

• Damage: 806 (damage multiplier of 2,4)
• Range: 130
• Stealth attack

As you can see, a thief with full berserker gear is not going to hit nearly as hard as a warrior in the same gear – the difference? Warrior can be immune to conditions for 8 seconds, immune to all damage from 5 seconds and they have twice as much health and toughness as a thief – this without traits and food.

Warrior base stats with heavy lvl 80 ascended armor:

• Armor: 2187
• Health: 18372

Thief base stats with medium lvl 80 ascended armor:

• Armor: 2034
• Health: 10805

See the differense? Note that I chose warrior because it’s the only profession in the game with an attack with higher damage multiplier than the thiefs backstab. Why do thief has lower stats, because we can stealth and use deception to survive – a warrior was made to breathe you in your face as he crushes it. I would fear the zerker warrior more than the thief. We have literally no immunity skills, as several other more dangerous professions have…

Dee Jay.2460:

Snip

I agree on pretty much everything you said. However, Anet is known for changing too much at a time, so I would say add the dodgeball mechanic and limit resurrecting a dead player to “out of combat”. It would add much more depth to the game and promote more medium sized groups.

sPvP is currently conquest, which mean it’s not about killing the opposite team, it’s about holding the enemy team off the point you’re defending. Thieves can’t hold points, but we are darn good at taking them. We know how to stay alive and we often get the element of suprise. This means that we are excellent far point assaulters and roamers. At least that’s what I feel like Anet wanted us to be – a hard counter to toughness bunkers. We’re not completely there yet, and we lack group support compared to other professions.

The most important thing is finding a build you feel comfortable with. The thief require that it’s player know what to look for on the battlefield. We need to disengage sometimes, we need to break line of sight on ranged opponents and we need to surprise our foe. Find a build that can let you survive for some time in group fights and still dish out a good amount of damage.

Try the 10/30/0/0/30 d/p + SB build if you’re a more aggressive type of player. Or you can try jumpers s/d build that has a bit more survivability.

Same as pre-patch. 25/30/0/15/0 (those 15 points can be put anywhere really) S/P + SB. Short bow for mobility and sword/pistol for PvE godness.

Just whisper me in-game if you need any advice or help. Or you can pm me here on the forums.

1. WvW. Nothing beats the joy of wandering around killing other roamers or small scale groups. I gotta say that tPvP are at a very close second. The challenge there is way higher, and challenge is an important part of my gameplay.
2. I created my first thief the first time it was possible in the beta events.
3. I usually play my thief exclusively. If I play some other professions it’s just to learn animations or how to counter a certain build.
4. Yes! I love the thief – everything about it.
5. The balance team are listening way too much at the casual players. They’re catering to their casual player base, and that have made the thief a very hard profession to play and master.

Thief zerg with SoM, Ambush Trap, Dagger Storm, Devourer Venom, Smoke Screen and venom share. My god it would be awesome!

Did a similar thing to a zerg with a five man group of thieves. We downed the entire zerg within seconds

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Stealth in this game is a joke. There are almost no counters for stealth and the ones that exist are pretty meh.

I don’t know about other classes, but ranger’s sic’em should set the revealed debuff on 10 seconds and not 4…

Hit—>hide—>hit again—>hide again—>run away if target is not dead must be the most stupid mechanic I’ve seen in any MMO.

As said earlier; D/P is the problem with stealth, not stealth itself. They could add diminishing returns, but they would have to apply that to other parts of the game too then.

Are people still complaining about stealth in WvW?! Did you lose to a 1v1 specced Thief while you were running to your zerg with your 111 build? What a shock.

I can agree that D/P has too much reward and too little risk. It’s nearly impossible to kill one if he decides to disengage. This is not a stealth problem – it’s a D/P problem. If anyone say that D/D doesn’t have decent risk/reward they should really give it a try.

I can’t recall seeing one. Didn’t even know they existed! Pretty awesome look btw ^^

9/10
Catchy name that was well thought trough. Cool with the meanings too ^^

Mine is a female Necromancer named Neala Dreamcatcher

Sounds reasonable to nerf that yes. Being able to carry the orb with that kind of hp and armor you will be nearly impossible to down…

Knowledge and use of combo fields and finishers can change the tide of war. Way too few know this and rarely uses them. I try to abuse combo fields I see if I can or if I see the need to buff my group by using them. Well timed use of combos can save a friend or give the final touch to end the enemy.

But I see you mentioned hot join, don’t ever expect to see any skilled players there. You’ll find way more use of combos in tPvP.

Would love to see these changes! P/P would finally be viable, and there would be more counter play to certain skills and builds. Great work indeed!

Hildebrandyr.5820:

Karolis.4261:

One shot thiefs is a myth created by glassies that dont have dodge roll bound.

That’s not true. I have full berserker’s on my thief and had 15k health, and today I got killed by a single cloak and dagger backstab combo. I didn’t dodge it because I was in friendly territory in WvW and thought it would be safe to do some items research on my other monitor for a moment. Suddenly, I went from full to dead in less than a second.

In WvW it’s possible to achieve backstabs for 20k due to food and stats. But in sPvP it’s more tricky. It’s not competitive though, since you’ll be dead if any other profession just look angrily at you ;p

Hi there, I’m Melder, a soon rank 20 thief who recently got back to Guild Wars 2 after a few months of playing other MMO’s.

I recently got back into the sPvP scene and I’m looking for a team or a dedicated sPvP /tPvP guild to have some fun with! I’m still in the learning so I would need some help in learning the best tactics for the different maps. I’m planning on playing team queue as a main. I’ve mained thief since beta, so I dare say that I have an above average understanding of my profession. I rarely die, and if I die it’s usually because I got too bold.

I’m in my mid twenties, so I’m looking for mature players. I’m also in a full-time job, so every other week I’m working evenings and won’t be available before midnight.

Cheers!

+1 for this! Would be awesome.

Anet love their casual gamers. They said they want this game to be an esport, but at the same time they said that they want everyone to be able to play PvP and feel successful doing so…. They need to understand that PvP players want something completely different than PvE and WvW players. The main problem is that they need to separate balance. I would rather wait longer for new balance patches if they actually changed things differently for different parts of the game.

Condition removal is the key. If you can cleanse their conditions (very easy for a D/P thief) then there’s pretty much nothing they can do to kill you

Ghostwolf.9863:

Not sure about calculations whether 5 might or 5 vulnerability is better.

But this one should be somewhere close to highest possible backstab in spvp, executioner would increase it further but I find that trait irrelevant if it’s the first strike that should one shot.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKO3cy3E/5Ey2DfSoIKvCgl2DaqlYQA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNKYBxkCA

This Is what I’d choose. It’s pretty similar, but gives you the extra burst from CnD and and the ability to stack bloodlust. First wrap up some kills to get 25 stacks, then open by popping all signets + venom, then CnD -> Steal -> weapon swap (25 stacks of bloodlust and might now + 3 stacks of vulnerability on target) -> Backstab -> if not dead -> Heartseeker.

If anything can survive that combo without any buffs or evades, then I’m pretty impressed. I use to do this some times in hot joins just for the laugh. It’s nearly impossible to survive more than 5 seconds in a group fight since you use all utilities, heal and elite for that one combo, but it’s fun to just troll people with it. Don’t ever use this in any competitive match – unless you’re a thief god!

Edit: Here’s the same build, but for WvW. I chose Valkyrie armor since you have the Hidden Killer trait. You lose 20% crit chance outside of stealth, but gain 5k hp and some extra power from food. You can go for berserker if you want that extra crit chance out of stealth, but if you do this right, there won’t be any need to use any heartseeker…

Amiron.1067:

Geiir.7603:

Not broken promises? Did you see their MMO manifesto and played the game the last year?!

“We don’t make grindy games” was their first mistake; this game is all about grinding, whether it be dungeons, fractals, champions or others. Don’t even get me started on legendaries.

I try not to log in to grind; I just log in and do whatever I feel like, whether that be pvp, dungeons, or roleplaying. As they say, everything in moderation.

It’s the same with me. I try to PvP a lot since I hate grinding. The ascended and legendary gear is such a redicolous grind that, yeah… The devs sick love for the casual gamers and the guys who doesn’t want to l2p the game is just sickening. They wanted the PvP to be an e-sport, yet they cater to the casuals. They have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, which is sad, because this game has so much potential!

Not broken promises? Did you see their MMO manifesto and played the game the last year?!

Well, every time they do something they’re pretty much giving the hard core community the middle finger while they’re embracing the casuals…. So I’d go for the first one – they simply don’t care.

Mrbig.8019:

i disagree,

Conquest is the PERFECT gamemode for a game which strives to be competitive.

The only issue i see is that most of these maps they gave to us are SMALL, with SMALL POINTS, favouring tanky and fast builds among all ( there was a time were staff guardians didn’t exist, then Azshene).

After staff guardians, it has been a race towards fast defensive proffs ( engies, necros, rangers post buffs, now wars) for the simple reason they move fast ( aside necros), can decap, can hold, can kill.

All favoured by casuals hatred for burst and high dps and aNet granting their wishes with nerfs.

Foefire is a great example of the format which should be taken into consideration for a SERIOUS PvP game : gamechanging secondary objective, huge points, overall quite big map.

Other maps are simply bad, even Nifhel, Khylo and Temple ( temple being slight better).

The problem is not abou conquest, the problem is about conquest being unchallenging and favouring boring builds: having more maps like foefire ( layout) would really solve most of our problems with build diversity.

Lol, in foefire even a staff ele could work, mind you.

This!

I agree 100%. The secondary objective should be game changing, like in Foefire. They should indeed have more maps like it since it has a really nice design. Getting The Lord can really change the tide of the game, and sometimes decide it.

Romek.4201:

@Rezz

for your last point s/d thief have to be nerfed too or this both are freekills and get farmed
both classes need something to counter s/d thief like a anti sword #2 spam shield^^

S/D got a massive nerf dude. They pretty much ruined sword #2 by giving it a cast time and putting it in skill queue. It was a skill that was used spontaneously, but I’m afraid that’s not the case any longer…

Since I play 95% thief, that’s where my perspective come from. These are the professions I’m seeing most and what’s giving me a tough time. It’s not about who’s OP or not, it’s about what I’m seeing and playing against. For the record; I’m a S/P stun-locking thief.

Necromancer – their condition burst is insane and if I’m not quick about shadow stepping I’m dead within seconds. MM builds are fairly easy due to my sword cleave and dagger storm.

Warrior – as other have stated, they have it all. Somehow I manage to kill them pretty fast if I get the jump or see their combo coming and just interrupt their combo.

Guardian – dat retaliation. If I’m jumping in the middle of a group fight, popping pistol whip and see retaliation up – it’s already too late ;p

Mesmer – fairly easy to counter if I can spot the real Mesmer. I’m able to completely lock him down until he’s dead.

Ranger – they’re annoying if played right, but I usually win in a 1v1 scenario. Their spirit builds are tougher in a team situation though.

Thief – I have enough hp to survive a burst or condition thief. The one giving me a headache is S/D thief. The usual thief player is bad, but there are some good ones left.

Elementalist – walking points for me there.

Engineer – a tough son of a kitten. Good bunkers I just leave or wait for them to get distracted.

Ryan.9387:

Just solo queue. You won’t become the best unless you play against them.

I would start in hot join and move on to solo queue. People get really kitten ed when someone who doesn’t know the profession, maps or tactics come around and screw up their stats… :/

This would not be a good fix. Anet need to look at conditions in other ways. My opinion is that no professions should ever be able to reach 25 stacks of any condition or boon alone – ever.

Go play some hot join and try out different builds (craft your own), all your weapon sets and different tactics. Yes, many players in hot join is awful, but you’ll get the basic idea and some training and learning from it. The best would be to find an empty server and ask a guildie or a friend if they could duel you while you test different builds and weapons.

That’s at least what I did, and it worked out pretty good for me

What you’re really saying is that you’re getting killed by a build meant to counter your build? Guardian have a ton of group options, which other professions (thief for example) doesn’t have. Getting beaten by duelist professions shouldn’t surprise you since the players running these professions often choose duelist builds.

Take a look at TapDatMouse on YouTube and you’ll find guardians very powerful for roaming. I use mine with a regular shout build in knights gear and I doesn’t seem to have that much of a problem roaming WvW.

I remember back in the days where thieves were considered gods the second they entered stealth. The difference is that a thief can still be killed in stealth, while a warrior immune to almost all damage with insane burst and cc on top of it… Even more than a thief.

Nothing makes my day better than the steal skill from eles! Smacking that absurdly long chill in their face right after their condition cleanse burst is pretty much leaving them dead ;p

I think Mesmer is in a fairly good spot right now actually. Mesmer is a duelist profession and should have the advantage in 1v1 imo. I’m a really squishy thief, but I’ve never had any trouble finding the real Mesmer or killing phantasms. Getting phantasms down and them focus on the Mesmer isn’t that hard, it just requires skill to do so.

I agree with you 100%. I’m not that experienced with sPvP maps and tactics for the different maps, therefore I leave ranked games alone until I feel I got a good hang of it. It’s wrong for some highly skilled players to get their stats messed up because of some new players that figured they wanted to give it a go.

I’ll keep crushing skulls in hot-join until I feel I’m in a good spot ^^

I remember way back in the days (before PW got buffed and before the stealth and mug nerf). I played a pistol whip thief, which was quite uncommon at the time because of the other choices thieves had. I encountered a downright awful D/P thief who just spammed stealth to disengage whenever he felt like he was losing (which was almost every fight).

I completely tore this guy apart, not because I out played him, but because he was just standing there – eating my entire pistol whip several times. As it was back then he should have eaten me alive unless I could time my interrupts to deny him stealth. He them started whispering me and calling me a hacker and a noob running a cheesy build. I mean, really?