Guild Wars 2

What is the purpose of this thread? The only CDers are the people currently playing on CD. Period.

This is not a topic for the guardian forum, but the answer (plus answers to questions you don’t know to ask yet) can be found here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

Sifu.6527:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Goloith.6349:

As the title says I think its only a matter of time before confusion is nerfed in WvW. Personally I think it’s fine and actually forces people to run condition removal, but as I’ve seen with the Engineer forums, there’s a high likelihood it will get nerfed. I would really like to see a statement regarding this from ANET to see if this will happen or not.

If a glass cannon thief unstealths and I do nothing for 3 seconds, I die.
If I get 20 stacks of confusion on me and do nothing for 3 seconds, I take 0 damage.

…and you want to nerf confusion?

If I get 20 stacks of confusion on me and I dodge on my guardian, I get hit by 7k damage.

and you don’t want to nerf confusion?

Look, I’m fine with confusion. Just tweak it so it doesn’t hit on things like guardian’s dodge heal etc.

If you are a guardian and confusion mesmers are giving you trouble:

1. Read your opponents quickly, determine whether it’s a DPS spec or confusion spec.

2. If confusion, make sure you stop using direct healing abilities, including dodge heal. (Dodge Heal is on the same level of OPness as confusion, both are 50% in sPvP)

3. Keep regeneration up as much as possible. Failing that, at least keep resolve up.

This will guarantee you do not die. You then have 2 possible routes going on depending on your spec.

4. If heal spec – you are being hard countered. Just walk away.

5. If DPS spec – you likely have a hammer, use it to spike the mesmer down as soon as chaos armor and confusion fade.

Not sure if “lack of incentives” is the right way to put it. Ideally, a game should be fun enough that even if there’s no rewards you’ll still want to play it. Adding “incentives” to force people to play a game that’s not fun to begin with is flawed, and cheapen the experience for everyone. This is proven quite clearly with the introduction of the progression system.

Actually it works better on larger groups, each application of resolve lasts a few seconds, heals for a total of about 1k? You keep moving towards where people are getting hit and tag resolve on them, then move on to the next patch. Works best if you have a water ele doing this with you, the two stacks, and also stacks on top of regen.

In Total, protection -33% dmg + 250 resolve + 250 soothing mist + 250 regen (and water ele regen also removes conditions) = Your group cannot be pressured to death, only possible to die to instajib gank squads of 3+ GC thieves focus firing.

I’ve had this since months ago. It’s not new. Though if you’re only seeing it now then maybe the problem got worse.

Why can’t they just admit their ranking system failed and make free transfer base on score gaps over the past month.

santi.7516:

saiyr.3071:

There’s a post from a day ago from a TSym person about fighting, so I think news of SoS’ death has been greatly exaggerated, for now. Once/if TSym and AFS leave, SoS will probably fall a lot faster.

The problem is that SoS feeds at night like hungry dogs and we can’t stop them, also EBG turns into a 1 v 1 between DB and SoS, CD numbers at night are barely a half of the numbers SoS can put on the field after “the fall” of SoS, and DB’s WvW population has increased considerably since 2 weeks ago, things have changed, DB’s actual coverage is 24/7 and consistent even at NA primetime.

All this talks about them dropping multiple tiers probably had some of them fired up too. Like, EH-veryone, including people who didn’t even know who they are, are wishing them to DIAF just so we can have the possibility of more balanced tiers. And SoS is just refusing this involuntary martyrdom.

It would be better if shelter heals at the beginning of the skill rather than at the end, but I’m not sure if the current situation is considered more balanced.

I think the cutscene is on some level better than the avatar with background. However, what these dialogues lack isn’t background noise. They’re lacking body language, and especially body language with context. The cutscenes actually compounded the problem by having people stand still at wherever they happened to be and start talking. With the old style at least you get rid of the background and the format is more like theatre.

As far as narratives go I think GW2 is still miles behind TSW for instance. It’s better to just let it slide.

Yes. The next Priory representative will be a Karka.

I salvaged one. Gives 5 mithril ore.

I was hoping Con/Vit/Tuf exotics will be one of the new armor stats available so I can complete my build without waiting and then grinding out ascended items. Even if most of the other updates are mostly pointless, at least this one addition would make my day.

Crosses fingers.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I ran Corrupt Boon for awhile on my necromancer in sPVP. I don’t run it anymore, for a few reasons.

#1: Unless your opponent is boon heavy, it is dead weight.
#2: Even when they are boon heavy, its effects aren’t too potent. Best part being the removal of boons and not the conditions anyway.
#3: Most of the time the conditions were quickly cured and the boons were put back on anyway, and Corrupt Boon has a slow recharge.

Even though I main the engineer, another boon heavy class, and also play the guardian, I’m not too worried about boon hate mostly because I think it will most likely follow in the footsteps of necromancer and mesmer boon hate: medum-long recharges on skills that only do a bit when their situation shows up. IMO mesmer boon hate is a little better than the necromancer, since it is more reliable and doesn’t punish the mesmer as much for using them.

The exception to this is spinal shivers, which is readily available and useful. Even looking at spinal shivers as the base “model” for boon hate, it isn’t too worrying. Sure, upon removing 3 boons it does two and a half times damage, but its base damage is so low that even with the boost it still does less damage than Life Blast, a skill that all necromancers have that is on a shorter activation time, or the dagger’s auto attack which takes about the same activation time to go through the whole chain. This would translate into boon hate being skills that do low damage, but against boons do average damage. Again, it isn’t much to worry about.

There is the remote possibility that Arenanet is going to make boon hate so powerful that it actively punishes players with boons so much they avoid using them. I can’t deny that. But… it seems so unlikely with Arenanets tendency to tiptoe through these issues.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare necros and thieves. Necros are designed to tank and outlast their opponents, even in full zerker life blast builds. Thieves are designed to spike people down before they can react and counter. Obviously the numbers won’t be the same.

Feedback is plenty for nukes. It’s almost never the case that zerglings will stop shooting whenever they see feedback, so if you put it at the point of engagement, not only would you negate their alpha strike, but you’ll also down at least a few people just by yourself, then the enemy will start scattering and stop attacking, giving your team free shots to pick them off.

It’s a one trick pony, but it works, and the bags, just try to spam F as fast as possible.

Numbers were more even today. Most of CD’s NA’ers seem to operate on eastern time. I supposed it’d make it slightly more tough on us west coasters since we’re in between our NA prime and oceanic. We need more west coasters, get your friends to play!

About the orders, I’m quite surprised that they didn’t do it like EoTN where you can do favors for each of them and in the process, participate in their story and learn more about them. Possibly also progress your character through an order of choice. Even the kurzick/luxon war in factions were more involved than the three orders in GW2 now.

The “Defeat pure evil and save the world” plot is about as simplistic and forgettable as plots can be. I’d be more interested in the conflicts the orders face amongst themselves and how their different ideologies clash.

Instead of just throwing the personal story away though, I hope they salvage it by making all three orders recognize our hero after we defeat zhaitan, and let the three orders continue to drive the story onward. It even fits the current living story. The order of whispers should likely have both the dredge and the flame legion infiltrated by now and can provide a lot of intel as the vigil continue to escort and take care of refugees. The priory should have started working on a solution to the problem as well.

If players could take part in that capacity, it will allow continuity for all future stories, no matter what kind of story they add. Even if it’s a complete new plot where the main antagonists and everything is entirely done from scratch, players will still not find it confusing because by then, they’ll likely have picked a favorite order and has already familiarized themselves with their usual channels. The stories can be delivered more coherently, without unnecessary not-quite-a-quest-dispenser heralds that nobody cares to click.

Let’s also at least try to create some justification for why Orr is still swarming with undead after it’s supposedly purified. Maybe the process just takes very long, but at least people who have completed the story should be able to visit that sanctum in a separate instance, it could be a hub for people who have completed the story to meet and possible have some ongoing story stuff there.

I use it with blinding befuddlement for AoE confusion. I think it’s standard for the WvW glamor build.

Can’t say I didn’t see this coming. The same things are in GW1 since day one. It’s part of the complete meta that where there’s boon, there’ll be boon hate, and also why spirit weapons were the way they were back then.

This is the reason why I argued that a “boon soldier” concept is intrinsically flawed. They better make spirit weapons into a viable alternative to boons or the one-trick pony guardian will be ruined.

I hope they don’t nerf boon removal on shatter. It’s the only effective counter to DD ele and Guardian bunkers in the entire meta. If anything, the other anti-boon abilities really need to be brought up.

Condition duration isn’t too useful for burning, especially if using sword, as every auto attack chain is 5 hits, enough for a justice proc. For pve, also take 30 virtues for permeating wrath. You’ll have continuous aoe burns. Take absolute justice if your main is greatsword.

Trait wise you could do 10/30/0/0/30 signet build for max DMG or 10/0/30/0/30 for meditation/ AH.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’ll put 50 Silver down that no matter what they do with the Living Story characters they revealed, people are going to complain.

The way I see it there are different ways to complain. One could complain that they hate the character or whatever, but a character that has elicited strong responses from the player is a successful one, regardless of whether or not the response are positive or negative.

The complains on Trahearne (and also personal story) is actually not targeted in that way. People complain about technical points of the story, like how characters are developed, how the plot evolves (or not, as the case may be), the voice acting and the bad characterization, these are all problems that we didn’t hear back in GW Beyond and Winds of Change. The only complaints back then was the pacing was slow, but it wasn’t a long story to begin with, and they have to fill a few month’s gap, so there was that. But there was none of this “major character in the story is BS” deal.

Characters were memorable. Story wasn’t too contrived. It had strong lore backing, especially Gwen’s story. Characters didn’t mysteriously disappear (most join your hero line up, so they are true companions). Cameo appearance of Lian, Dragon’s Pedal was flavorful. Blimp’s mystery carried over to GW2. It had romance (not the sylvari “romance” that you see in gw2), war, and more importantly war with historical references, including references from the player’s own experiences. In my view it was a pass, would play again. I would hold Anet to at least that standard, for the living story.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Heinel.6548:

My beef with Trahearne is that his characterization is implausible. Charisma cannot be a hidden attribute. The entire thing about charisma is in the way one deals with and handles other people. If his personality is not outstanding, then at least make him physically attractive? Whatever that means for a plant… But to convince us that a sulking, pessimistic, withering necro that shows negativity at every turn and speaks like the a pre-recorded propaganda broadcast would also be an extremely well-liked leader with bffs all over the world? No amount of suspension of disbelief could make this fantasy sound right.

His negativity does get better, as does the pessimism.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Trahearne: I must not lose faith. We were so close-closer than ever before.
Trahearne: Once, I thought my Wyld Hunt was futile. This failure would have shattered me.
Trahearne: But now…I see it as a challenge.
Trahearne: I know we can succeed. We must!

I just wish the Sylvari . . . other than the Nightmare Court members . . . had a slightly different voice direction. While I can pick out inflection and emotional responses, they really are subtle.

When dealing with large amounts of people you should not attempt subtle, because there’s a high chance nobody will pick up on it.

I have encountered this problem with voice direction before, mind you, so I know this was probably something that sounded good to the people conceiving it . . . but it fell flat to the audience. And you don’t blame the audience for not getting it, you wonder how you missed it.

I actually do not find those quotes to be motivational at all. It’s just him actively trying to suppress his own nature by verbalizing a supposedly internal monologue. This is indication that he had outside influence and that he’s trying to learn to be not pessimistic, that’s a far cry from suddenly becoming in a position where he could potentially lead a squad, let alone a legion.

And if you actually study real leaders, you’ll find that most of them have strong personality and tend to show strong emotions often, and their ability to infect others with the same emotion is often proportional to their ability to lead others successfully. There are of course exceptions, as strategic leaders tend not to need charisma, but you won’t see them giving motivational speeches, and they usually require a strict hierarchy to already be in place and people have no choice but follow the chain of command. Trahearne is supposed to be the diplomat who united 3 factions that has shown mistrust towards each other for as long as anyone remembers. Trahearne does not actually possess the skills to pull that off.

(But, but the player hero is the one that’s united the 3 factions!) And yet the hero is not the one leading the army. The roles are reversed. The player is supposed to be the war leader, while Trahearne is the scholarly assistant. That is the more plausible situation. But then they can’t have the players taking the major credit in case they need to write it into the game’s canon lore.

Anet basically setup a no-win situation with the way the story goes. There’s not enough supporting characters (well actually, tonnes of characters are written out half way through), and the ending is rushed with little to no substance, by the end the choices didn’t even make sense. I need to choose a fear.. what? Random much?

Hopefully the living stories will not have the same mistakes, and its cast should be more like GW beyond/ winds of change, and not in anyway resembles the mess that is gw2 personal story.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

goldenwing.8473:

The voice acting for Trahearne is outstanding!

It is a masterful blend of supercilious tone, pendantic droning and neurotic uncertainty.

The actor who voices this distraught, depressed, indecisive analytic scholar deserves accolades for imbuing a lifeless twig with some semblance of tolerable personality.

.

ANet constantly asked: “Is this character memorable?”

The answer is a resounding “yes”.

There was no qualifier in there for enjoyable or loveable. Nor any question about whether the player would EVER want to see the kitten thing again.

I’m not sure if you are quoting what has been said in the past (by Anet) or what…
but the voice acting is really bad.

When people in the game are having a conversation…. it usually sounds as if they are talking to each-other.

When Trahearne is talking, he is always at least one or more of the following
A) Reading his lines (as if he were giving a speech) instead of having a conversation
B) Actually giving a speech, but sounds more like a robot than a motivational speaker.
C) Emotionless or his voice doesn’t match what feelings he should have.

Though he might change tones of individual words…. the tone of every line of dialogue is always the same. Even when he is supposed to be excited or happy, his celebratory remarks are the same as a person just reading “Yes, we have defeated Zhaitan” instead exclaiming “YES! We’ve defeated Zhaitan!!”

I read the posted you quoted as sarcasm. I think you two are in agreement.

===

My beef with Trahearne is that his characterization is implausible. Charisma cannot be a hidden attribute. The entire thing about charisma is in the way one deals with and handles other people. If his personality is not outstanding, then at least make him physically attractive? Whatever that means for a plant… But to convince us that a sulking, pessimistic, withering necro that shows negativity at every turn and speaks like the a pre-recorded propaganda broadcast would also be an extremely well-liked leader with bffs all over the world? No amount of suspension of disbelief could make this fantasy sound right.

For comparison, Keiran Thackeray from GW Beyond was also a good-for-nothing (a bit exaggerated) turned charismatic war-leader. That story was a lot more plausible because firstly, the guy likes interacting with people to begin with, secondly, he was motivated (because of Gwen, who was higher ranked than him, but didn’t have the magnetic personally he had), thirdly, he had the player hero who was supposedly the most well-known perfect embodiment of virtue blah blah who was his mentor, and fourthly, the events lead up to giving him the moment to shine in the war in kryta. This all give us much better context and most importantly a believable path, along with real feedback, that a character has indeed transformed. Where is that level of writing in GW2? Honestly I think GW2 is better off without the personal story in it.

Some paths like path 1 and 3 are faster for me after the change. Almost all mobs have their health reduced by half, at least. The only buff I could see is maybe the spider hatchlings? They don’t die in 1 hit now.

All the final bosses have their instajib moves nerfed big time too, aside from warmaster grast bugging out and not bubbling sometimes, rumblus fight is basically tank and spank, with even less moving needed than before the changes took place. Howling King is easier done ranged, but only because you can pull ads with more freedom. None of his attacks are a threat at all. Ghost eater fight is the only one that actually require thinking, but if you are skypeing it up, that should be no problem.

Obligatory troll: I wouldn’t say L2P, but I’ll say stop playing WoW.

If the outmanned buff gives stat bonus then it should show to the other servers, since it’ll have to opposite effect it has now and make them not focus on you.

Dual.8953:

D W.5179:

Jinks.2057:

Heinel.6548:

Jinks.2057:

So everyone is just complaining about all thieves then.

Its either too much damage or too tanky or stealth abuses too much or resets fight at will etc etc etc

Gotta hate those 30 30 30 30 30 thieves running around

Not all. Thieves who don’t abuse stealth is not in the complaint.

That’s not true. We could go thru all the pages and pick out just as many if not more complaints about glass thieves damage.

Every aspect of the thief class has been complained about in this thread.

This thread needs to be locked.

LOL, why does this thread need locked? It’s a discussion.
I don’t think anybody would be complaining about thief burst if there was no issue with stealth. I agree that this thread went pretty off topic and started targeting thieves instead of stealth, but it’s kind of understandable since one directly relates to the problem with the other.
Of my three mains, a thief is one of them, and the crap you can pull off while abusing stealth needs addressed. I don’t know how to address it, but a conversation like this one can often spark an idea with some middle ground they may catch a developers eye. In other words, I hope this thread does not get locked, but I also hope it gets back on topic.
When they “fix culling” with the next patch, who knows, maybe stealth will not be an issue. I doubt it since historically, most games with stealth have balancing issues to where the stealth class is either completely useless or OP… Would love to see ANet be the group to find the middle ground.

Assuming all thieves only want to burst. Tch.
S/D has no burst and no condition and it’s control is accessed through spamming CnD -> Tactical Strike. If stealth is nerfed the set becomes completely inferior to S/P, with a weakened defense and completely shattered offense.

Just what makes you think spamming 2-second daze is acceptable?

KStudios.2850:

Heinel.6548:

And for people who supposedly “don’t care” they sure like to talk about it. X)

He also said “most people.” I care… Enjoy your possible rise in rank, and the bragging rights therein, CD. You’ve earned them I guess. I wish you the best.

CD only brags when the other people taunt us first.

And I actually think T5 would be a more fun environment. Can’t understand why you like getting stomped by YB/Mag so much.

Jinks.2057:

Heinel.6548:

Jinks.2057:

So everyone is just complaining about all thieves then.

Its either too much damage or too tanky or stealth abuses too much or resets fight at will etc etc etc

Gotta hate those 30 30 30 30 30 thieves running around

Not all. Thieves who don’t abuse stealth is not in the complaint.

That’s not true. We could go thru all the pages and pick out just as many if not more complaints about glass thieves damage.

Every aspect of the thief class has been complained about in this thread.

This thread needs to be locked.

You’re the only one who’s obsessed with responding to those posts. The title of the thread is Stealth needs to be nerfed, not burst needs to be nerfed.

Stay on topic.

And for people who supposedly “don’t care” they sure like to talk about it. X)

I’m shooting for Con/Vit/Tuf for my glamour mes as well, and if eventually they release it for all slots, then I can basically full bunker it as well. It’s just going to take very long… but I think it’s worth it.

Jinks.2057:

So everyone is just complaining about all thieves then.

Its either too much damage or too tanky or stealth abuses too much or resets fight at will etc etc etc

Gotta hate those 30 30 30 30 30 thieves running around

Not all. Thieves who don’t abuse stealth is not in the complaint.

Sunflowers.1729:

Dual.8953:

My problem is where people aim to bring the OP specs in line. They want them down and they don’t care if the more balanced specs and are screwed over or changed into something completely different to do it.

This is the same with all classes though – for example when they nerfed evasive arcana way back when it always gave a blast finisher, that affected S/D as well, a weapon set that nobody has ever argued is overpowered.

I’m all for balancing only the OP specs, but this happens to everyone, not just thieves.

Actually S/D is argued to have too good sustain, if you frequent spvp forums. Often S/D eles run more aggressive specs because of the slightly better range, so they’re slightly different from D/D but still share quite a lot of the abilities, especially the healing.

As for balanced thief builds that would be hit by collateral damage. That’s just baseless fear-mongering at this point. I’ll acknowledge it when I see it.

This thread is now about animals?

tiramisu.8706:

patricide.1062:

Boreal.9826:

Ah, ok. I do run into [GH] much more often than you guys.

Haven’t seen [ECHO] yet, but then I haven’t been playing much this week.

I thoroughly enjoy fighting [GH]. It’s always an interesting fight because they have this never ending supply of nasty little tricks they can pull.

That [Seks] guild takes turtling to a whole new level. I’m not bashing them at all, btw. They are REALLY good at what they do! They are really disciplined. It is a lot harder than it may appear to get 30+ people to stay close to a commander. It takes a lot of bulldog-style leadership to do it.

Thanks for compliment. We just transferred here a week ago. Being that the gem prices are about 2g per 100gems, a lot of my members have yet to transfer. It was maybe just 8-13 of us with some pugs who happen to be close by or following along.

That explains a lot. Veil zergballs are not typical T4 tactics.

Straegen.2938:

Heinel.6548:

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Many people here have focused on what thieves excel at and have current unfair advantages but completely ignore their weaknesses. The class is built to be one of the best 1v1 classes so players should have difficulty tangling with them 1v1. However what they cannot do is portal groups, run with tons of boons, group condition removal, stun/lock aside from an elite, squishy, move with limited combat mobility and do not make a group inherently stronger like so many other classes.

They do need to make adjustments but again I would rather see buffs to rangers, variety of builds for necros, better server balance, soft caps on power/crit (which would actually “fix” the thief IMO) and dozens of other items that effect all players all the time. Besides as has been pointed out before, stealth is a complete non-issue in sPvP when 20k damage doesn’t come in a stealth package

That goes back to my point about thieves not fitting into the current meta. Changes on that front is of course very welcomed, but it will most likely take a very long time to test and implement, not to mention no one has any constructive input as to what can be done to make thieves relevant in a game about siege warfare, without breaking the lower tiers.

Meanwhile Anet has demonstrated with the orb that if they can’t get something working in a timely manner, they’re perfectly okay with simply removing it entirely. I for one would like to see stealth not go the ways of the orb (stealth is still one of the few ways for smaller groups to tackle larger zergs, this includes perma-stealth), but I also cannot agree with the current situation in WvW, where there’s no penalty to free roaming gankers who are being a detriment to struggling WvW communities and getting rewarded for it.

Daeqar.8965:

If you look at powerhouse WvW guilds, the coordinated teamwork type folks that push their servers to success against equal or greater opposing numbers, they are not composed of very many lonewolf or even balanced thief specs and definitely are not recruiting them. They very much build around an entirely different set of classes, and for good reason.

Secondly, you mention that thief counter builds are bad for zerg fights or sieges, and that’s not entirely true. Frequently, there is a lot of overlap in thief counter builds and large scale teamwork builds.

Three core things in many thief counter builds: PBAoE, high survivability (toughness + vitality), and CC. Those three things are also core tenets in teamwork builds that the above mentioned powerhouse guilds demand from their players.

1.) That’s why I said gank thieves don’t fit into the current WvW meta. That makes the thief problem in lower tiers a lot worse. We can counter thieves and lose manpower in the front lines, or give in to the fact that not all of us will make it. It doesn’t make much difference either way we approach this and the response so far is to either pretend it doesn’t happen or quit.

2.) Toughness and vitality isn’t a problem for a patient thief. They have enough burst to go through passive defenses, all they need to do is repeatedly burst you until you’re out of cooldowns and endurance, then HS you out. Remember, these thieves themselves run some healing power, and has at least two sources of healing outside of #6 (regen from stealth, health gain while stealthed, some run even more). Unless you go full bunk with sustain, you only delay the inevitable. With defensive specs, I can only see mesmer bunkers and guardian bunkers having enough sustain to outlast the thief, eles will RTL after the cantrips are gone, the other classes I cannot see how they can compete. Otherwise you run glass cannon yourself, and make everything a gamble.

3.) CC. The problem with this is two fold.

Firstly, not all classes are made the same in terms of CC capabilities. In high level zerg balls, each profession has their own thing that they do, because that’s what they’re best at—glamour mes, stability guards, staff eles, and the melee CC train. The CC job is mostly relegated to the heavy classes because they have the most abundant AoE immobilize/stun/knockdown/pull/wards that can hit masses of people. Other professions don’t get that, and instead of single target versions of those abilities. The thief counter this by not striking when and where a hammer warrior is present.

Secondly, the AoE CC abilities that are favored in zerg tactics does not work in small scale fights because of balance issues. They’re supposed to be chained by multiple people one after another. You have to actually have that many people present to chain it, and a comparable size of foes to use it against, in order for those abilities to be worth it. Otherwise they are skills with very singular use and very high cooldown. For this reason you won’t see a glamour mesmer being able to curtain a gank thief to death. This is by design. Similarly, the more small-form friendly stunning abilities aren’t really worth it in zergs.

===

Basically, at the end of the day, unless you’re warrior, you’ll have to either build for the zerg or build for the gank. Sounds reasonable, if respec’ing is free. But that’s not the case, so it is a hard proposition to make when convincing new people to WvW. It’s bad enough that it’s the least rewarded activity to begin with, but you have to gear for multiple sets, and familiar yourself with so many builds just to not get ganked 5 minutes into the game or feeling completely useless standing in a mass of AoE. I question how many people actually got past that stage.

Roysten.3456:

Heinel.6548:

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. If you really think WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think few of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too.

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Thought stealth capping in spvp went out in beta.
It was removed from www a lot later, but it was removed.

By comparable I didn’t mean exactly the same solution. Just like the PvE nerf isn’t exactly the same as the sPvP nerf.

If stealth is to be brought in-line with the other game modes in WvW. All objectives will have innate stealth revealers in their vicinity (100% up-time with a first tier personnel upgrade, same range as guild buffs), all guards, sentries, other keep NPCs, caravans, siege weapons, doors cannot be used to enter stealth. Guards, Sentries and keep NPCs will put stealthers at higher aggro priorities.

Straegen.2938:

Until the culling patch this topic should just have a giant pin in it. Once culling is addressed, there are probably some lingering thief issues that need to be dealt with but IMO thieves probably won’t even make the top five list of real issues that significantly effect most players in WvW. I seriously doubt this issue ranks above nuisance to most WvW players. I run across an annoying thief or a really dangerous one occasionally but there are dozens of other items I would like fixed/addressed before this.

I don’t think the issue is quite as lighthearted. Even for someone who can accurately predict the location of stealthers, balanced thief builds still require specific counters—counter builds that are bad for zerg fights or sieges. In lower tier servers we cannot afford to send people after 1 or 2 thieves that held off 5-10 of our defenders.

If you look at thief videos where the thieves fight in the middle of at least 4 hostiles, none of them run pure glass cannon. They all have at least some vit from gears, and most have 30 in shadow arts (That’s Toughness and Healing). Thieves have a lot of advantage working for them as is as they can burst effectively with just 30 points into offensive attribute. Every other class require 40+. Perma-stealth as it is is already the most effective bunkering mechanic in the game, add freedom to burst with no cooldown and no visible tells and the issue is quite apparent.

Culling is part of the problem. However, I’m not convinced that it is the only problem. Culling only really help low-skill glass cannon thieves, but they aren’t even exploring the full potential of thieves to begin with. Glass cannon thieves will die to AoEs, visible or not. Balanced thieves can take a hit or two if they’re shown for 3 seconds (assuming the most ideal fix for culling happens, which we all know is impossible) then heal up in stealth to burst again. If you don’t stun lock them over and over, you just won’t kill a well-played stealther.

Until Anet can trivialize zerg fights or thieves finally achieve 60% population of WvW, single target stun lock builds will never be popular in WvW, and the rest of us can beg till our tongues fall off and no new players will join the mist fight just on this alone.

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And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. Do realize that if WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think not that many of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too (as if the risen priests can complain about imba. *rolleyes).

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

The mask isn’t new. My guardian had been using it since day 1.

Though if they add more variety to headgears it’ll be nice. More intricate ornaments instead of helmets for heavy, masks for light.. my Mesmer still uses the necro starter face markings and I found no better substitude. Really disappointed about headgears in game.

I hope it’s account bound. Gearing different chars with best-in-slot are hard enough. But I think the update is suppose to introduce grind… so it’ll likely be character bound..

magicthighs.5372:

I’m all for the numbers showing. Maybe not DoTs, but direct damage should show for sure.
As a temporary solution you can spam #1, if you go to the second attack in the chain you know you’ve hit them. But again, yes, I think the damage should show on your screen.

This only works on melee auto attacks that have a chain. On skills that do not have a chain, or ranged attacks (most ranged spells shoot the ground or fail to shoot if you don’t have a target) will not be able to hit anything. Until that has been fixed, damage numbers are not viable.

You need to zerg ball. Put down a light field (any Guardian symbol), then have at least 5 people do whirl finishers in it. If you have a lot of Guardians maybe you can just ask them to all use save yourselves then if they downed from it insta-rez them. Cleansing water eles with healing rain can also help.

The most sensible thing however is to just not shoot (you can still do everything else). Glamour themselves don’t really stack a lot of confusion, most of the confusion you get come from reflected projectiles (which comes with confuse because of the combo field), or if you get pulled in and out of the field’s boundaries. For that you need AoE stability with cover. Null field can strip stability, but it only strip one boon per second, so make sure you spam aoe might fire combos.

Since it’s unlikely that you can make your zerg stop shooting at will, basically you want to educate people to not use builds that utilizes projectiles. Zerg balls use only confusion bombs, retaliation and maybe some aoe and insta-built siege for damage. No one shoot, especially not against feedback bubbles.

Our personal nemesis is Trahearne 2.0, with the exact same appearance and demeanor. His name is Enraehart.

On the other hand, perma-stealthing against perma-stealth thieves has proven to yield hilarious results. X)

Columba.9730:

Thieves don’t dominate Spvp because their dps was balanced!

It’s more than just that.

In an sPvP match there’s a lot less uncertainty. You know exactly how many people are on the other team and in a few moments you’ll know their group composition by heart. If the team has 3 thieves, and you see 2 in your field of vision, that means 1 is probably hiding somewhere about to gank. This makes the element of surprise much much less relevant. Almost all fights also occur inside the cap circles, everyone not on a cap circle is in transit to one, and most of the maps are composed pretty much entirely of choke points, so it’s also much easier to predict the location of everyone else, invisible or not. Want to reset a fight? Well, no cap point for you.

WvW on the other hand has no location restrictions, and you may think the 5 thieves nearby may be all you have to deal with, but in actual fact 10 more is hiding behind a pillar stacking up stealth. All organized gank teams in wvw utilize baiting tactics. The tactic is sound, and stealth as an opener is definitely a valid option in WvW, but perma-stealthing to reset fights with no drawbacks and no risk whatsoever is not acceptable. How many people had argued about the D/D ele’s fight resetting capabilities are OP? And D/D ele’s escape options are actually very easy to counter as long as you anticipate it. Stealth is on a completely different level and has no effective counters in game.

I see a lot of thieves fear that stealth will be completely gone, but even if stealth are to stay (which I support), it needs to be toned down.

Jeahanne.5209:

As I said, stealth as a MECHANIC is the discussion point here, not pointing fingers at ANY one class, player, guild, or other group or individual, because doing so helps no one except the ego of the one pointing the finger. If you play an experienced Thief or other stealth using class as a main use your knowledge to help others understand your point of view instead of beating people over the head with your experience.

I don’t think the discussion is worthwhile without pointing fingers at specific classes. I can’t imagine thinking the stealth engineers get breaks the game. Rangers and Elementalists also have access to smoke fields (underwater) which allows them to stealth as well. You won’t really see people complaining about it as those stealths are unspammable and don’t provide much utility beside de-targeting and a few seconds of minimal incoming damage.

Stealth of this form does not break the game. The perma-stealth that heals and remove conditions and can be spammed indefinitely to reset the fight every couple of seconds is what breaks the game, and that is only achievable by thieves. I think people could agree that thieves should at least have some stealth ability, and maybe even better stealthing abilities than the other classes, but not to the current extent. Hence thieves are what needs to be looked at.

FangedTerror.3852:

I used mine for obsidian shards for my legendary and used my saved karma on the orrian jewel boxes and banked some serious coin and loadstones.

The jewel boxes also return obsidian shards with some fair regularity. Certainly more often than lodestones. If you have indeed done what you claimed you do, you wouldn’t have wasted any other resources on obsidian shards.

Akitsuki.6803:

Arikyali.5804:

I gotta admit, I’m a little disappointed with our CD NA timers…I usually pop in during the oceanic time. In the first few days we grabbed SMC from maguuma in a pretty outnumbered fight…spent a good chunk of time defending and upgrading it. Even doing supply runs for stocking up on the siege.

When I come back, all our effort is wasted with Maguuma owning SMC again. I mean, what happened guys? There was practically siege at every corner. How did you not hold them off?

I’m sorry if we always lose SMC whenever you guys take it. CD is always outnumbered by Mag in their NA prime time and even in CD NA prime time.

Problem is that there isn’t really any major active guilds in the NA time slots in CD. Most of the commanders just have to make do with pugs and there’s not much organization, so people see that there’s no action and leave the map.

Since we’re unlikely to get a WvW focused guild to transfer in over now, we’ll just have to hope something else changes so some other guilds in NA time start focusing on WvW. The March update may be able to do that. If not, then we’ll just have to accept that CD is a SEA server and they will get night-capped by NA servers, just like they night-cap theirs.

I give my support for a way to attain ascended accessories for those of us forcibly locked out of guild commendations.