Guild Wars 2

Had it since the end of August. Don’t hope for a fix any time soon, the devs are aware but very uninformative about their progress in fixing it, and whether or not they have even identified the issue yet.

Check out https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/MASSIVE-lag-spikes
The thread didn’t die because the lag left, it died due to lack of regular informative responses from the devs.

Too much stock in the cries of solo queuers. Try this scenario (one of many):

Solo queue match on Nifelhel. The ranger immediately says "no thiefs please, thiefs reroll." I refuse given a) the attitude, b) the fact he said it marked him as a noob, c) on my thief I can play better and do more, d) our composition was fine. Our warrior goes to capture close, I see two crossers and slow them down with immobilises and cripples so he gets the cap, and then we win the 2v2. I can’t remember what happened at mid then, but at some point we did capture both close and mid. I anticipate incoming to close, so I go there to help the warrior, as is my role. The ranger followed and arrived a bit later. We secured close, and while they were on respawn, the ranger and I took Svanir. One of the enemy pushes close again, and the other guy on our team who’s class I forgot, was behind him, evidently having followed him from mid leaving the guardian alone. I check the map, and the guardian is in a 1v2, which may become a 1v3 with their respawns. So I go mid, but the ranger runs back to close to make close a 3v1 on a point we already own.

I arrive at mid and the guardian is downed with no hope of being revived. Fortunately one of them had the sense to pull off close to help mid. Mid becomes a 2v4, meaning their close point holder has finally left it, making it a free-cap. Now we still have close, and mid, but losing mid. If I pull off to far we lose mid for sure, and I’ll only get a decap because being outnumbered, I’d be followed. My speed would only net a decap. If I stay, we have a chance of keeping the cap until help comes from two of the 3 now at close (warrior, ranger, respawned guardian). Then, I would be able to disengage for a decap or full cap on far. Instead, the warrior runs to far and decaps it, and we lost mid with no idea what the guardian and ranger were doing. I respawn and leave base immediately entering a 2v2 where the ranger and guardian are fighting off point, and the enemy has far and mid captured. I get destroyed by the guardian’s burst during the necro’s fear chains, and respawn again 15 seconds later. They are still fighting off point. This time I manage to get past, and decap mid. This act pulled the enemy back to mid, which in turn pulled my allies to mid after them.

Of course, it was all my fault. We lost mid because I am bad. The ranger points out that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I point out that he should have come to mid instead of going to fight 3v1 on a point we already own, and calls me bad when I state that he was fighting 2v2 off point. The warrior declared that he was doing the thief’s job by running to far, implying that I’m not doing it. See, the way I saw it, I couldn’t decap far because I was doing his job. While he was our close defender, he pulled off, and should have then moved to mid (with the guardian, or the guardian and ranger come mid) to allow me to decap as he rightly pointed out is my job.

We did win after I got the fight back onto the mid point instead of off-point, and managed to get two or three sneaky decaps on far. Of course, it was still my fault.

The point? They don’t know what they are talking about. The ranger was obviously suffering from 2BC syndrome (only 2 brain cells, 1 lost and the other looking for it). The warrior got his role muddled up, but he’s a thief main so I didn’t say anything about it. The guardian and other guy seemed to know what they were doing, if you excuse the guardian fighting off point for a minute in the middle of the match.

The ranger was not qualified to have a valid opinion on team compositions and what is or isn’t a good class/build in a given situation. The thief gets blamed for trying to multi-role out of necessity resulting from the actions of his allies, because if they make a call, they think it’s the right one, which means if something goes wrong it must be someone else’s fault, and it’s very easy to jump on the thief-hate-wagon. It’s easier to blame than to think, "maybe he’s not doing his job because we’re not letting him".

What to do? Play your class, enjoy the game the best you can (when it’s not bugging out or lag-freezing every 30 seconds). There will always be haters because people will always complain, moan, focus on negativity when it’s there, and create it when there’s none to focus on. And very importantly, there will always be stupid people. "People are stupid" is an often repeated phrase with good reason. Realise what they are, cease to care what they think, and play.

Just when I thought it was gone, I spend a few days away for uni stuff, come back, get a team together, and get slapped in the face with a chain of massive lag spikes. Of course, the other team is all tanky and therefore have the advantage with the introduction of lag into the game, so I’m a bit too busy trying to hold on to our suddenly rapidly disappearing lead to run a trace route.

Games are meant to be enjoyable, not aggravating and blood-boiling. In a close game, blowing CDs to reach a point quickly to prevent a decap only to have 5 seconds of frozen gameplay before being rubberbanded back to where you were before your first shadow step, and seeing that in that time the enemy got the decap is exactly the latter.

1) Does the lag only happen while you’re in a PvP map?
Now, yes. 2 weeks ago 99% of the time yes, 1% in Heart of the Mists.

2) Does it also occur in the PvP lobby? Other maps?
See above. Other maps, I cannot really say. I don’t go to other maps often, but when I have it’s been fine.

3) How long does the lag spike last? Does it ever clear up?
5 seconds. Then just when you get your bearings, recover from whatever situation the lag put you in, and start to play as before, everything freezes again.

4) Of your last 5 GW2 play sessions, in how many of them did you experience lag?
Last 5... I don’t know. I know that the last couple of days I’ve had slight skill lag in both solo queue matches and heart of the mists, but no long freezes like I was experiencing a few weeks ago. Until now I thought it was cleared up.

5) Are there specific times of day when do or you don’t experience lag?
I can’t say. I’ve not been on much the last few days, and before then it was a lot better whenever I was on.

6) When do you remember first experiencing lag of this severity in GW2?
26th August. I remember the day because I’d just come back from a 1 week holiday, so for all I know it could have started anytime after the 19th August.

7) Do you also experience lag playing other games? NCsoft games like Wildstar?
No

8) Do you live in NA or EU?
EU, England.

9) Are you playing on NA or EU servers?
EU servers since about 4 months ago.

Was your account ORIGINALLY created on NA or EU?
Originally created on NA servers, at launch.

keenlam.4753:

Also, about the power stat being a bit low, my excuse is that I’m just using what I have at the moment as well as going tanky so I can get used to the playstyle before committing into glasscannon-ish gear. From your experience, how much power should I aim for? With this build, I pretty much have 5+ might stacks at all time, would that boost the power stat to a decent level?

That’s a good idea. I did the same thing with soldiers to knights to berserker on my first character (elementalist) when I used to PvE, and have recommended it to others before. I’ve also recommended trying the D/P shadow arts build before moving to acrobatics or trickery to get a feel for the class first to new thieves. +1 for trying your own thing, most people will argue it’s not the meta and the meta is the meta for a reason, but how then did we come to have builds in the first place =P. It’s also an important part in learning about a class if you ask me; if you go straight for a build someone else made then you jump in without much knowledge of what else your class can do, and actually less appreciation for what your build might be able to do.

Even with might I think it will be quite low power. Backstab is usually about getting really high backstab crits, which means a more defensive alternative is to exclude precision for toughness and run with the hidden killer trait. Where you have healing others would have blinds to mitigate entire hits, and where you have precision others might have more power and hidden killer, and I honestly think the latter of each is a stronger combination if you’re aiming to pull off as many backstabs as possible. If however you’re playing evasively instead, and using more auto attacks than the traditional backstab play style, perhaps it will still work well. One can only try!

When I go to WvW I just keep to my PvP build and its berserker stats, relying purely on evades and withdraw for survival over toughness and additional healing, but maybe I’m just lazy =P.

Esplen.3940:

You forgot to include incoming healing as well.

Outgoing healing is healing you give to others, but not yourself. Incoming healing is healing that you get, whether it be from yourself or others.

Poison affects incoming healing.

Healing Power affects all healing you *do* but not all healing you *get*.

If you are poisoned, you will heal allies for the full amount (as long as they are not poisoned) but you will not heal yourself for the full amount.

I did mention incoming healing. In the combat log, healing yourself comes under outgoing healing because it scales with your healing power. I clarified this to avoid confusion:

Impact.2780:

Outgoing healing includes when you heal yourself.

You’re right about poison, of course. I meant "incoming healing" for poison.

33% reduced healing effectiveness from poison affects any and all incoming healing. Healing power affects any and all outgoing healing, with the exception of life stealing. Outgoing healing includes when you heal yourself. Life stealing is separate from life siphoning (necromancers), which is affected by healing power.

There is a 4th way to regain health in combat: Regeneration boon. Thief can acquire it with the shadow protector trait, granting 10s regeneration on stealth, or about 40% up-time with pain response.

Backstab is a stealth attack, meaning it requires stealth. A backstab build therefore must rely on stealth, otherwise it is not really a backstab build. Having evades is always helpful toward survivability, but they don’t replace stealth where the goal is to land numerous backstabs.

Your power looks very low to me, for a backstab build.

The main problem with signet of malice is poison. Being a heal over time, you can’t cleanse or wait out the poison before getting the full heal - all the while you are poisoned, your healing skill becomes less and less effective for its cool down (yes I know signet of malice is used for its passive, but it still has a cool down here: attack frequency). There is also a disadvantage in needing to hit to heal, because if your opponent blinds, blocks or evades you, or kites for a bit, you won’t be healing.
I noticed you have vigorous recovery instead of something like pain response or even fleet of foot. Vigorous recovery with signet of malice? If you’re in a position where you’re forced to use the signet, that vigor will be helpful for sure, but you’re passing up regeneration and condition removal for something you’ll rarely use.

If evasion is what you want, I suggest going Sword/Dagger. Otherwise, if it’s backstab you want, I suggest Dagger/Pistol, with shadow’s rejuvination from shadow arts instead of assassin’s reward from acrobatics. I assume this is for WvW; in PvP you’ll want to avoid shadow arts, going for 6 critical strikes and 6 acrobatics or trickery, or 0 critical stikes and in both 6 acrobatics and trickery.

Edit: Corrected a crucial typo!

People will always complain. They like to have something to shake their heads and and moan about, and in the event of positives, most will dismiss it and focus entirely on the negative, preferring to find common distaste than common appreciation. It’s also why the news reports mostly bad news.

I’m happy with the changes, with the exception of a blocked flanking strike not turning over to larcenous, and I think they should have reduced the cost of black powder down to 5 initiative after nerfing it. Thief is still just as viable as before. I’ve said so on many a QQ thread, but as I said, people want to complain, so my posts were burried with perhaps a couple of responses insisting the opposite - merely simple contractions, devoid of reasoning, of course.

See what I did there? I complained about the complaints. I saw what you did too: creating a new thread for people to complain to each other on!

Thief has quite nice downed skills. The second skill moves you, which allows you to escape stomp, move to a node to slow a decap/cap, and if the enemy is daft enough to leave you to bleed and leave the point, move to decap their point. Thief is the only class to have a downed auto attack that allows it to sometimes get off its third downed skill before a successful second stomp because you can cripple them making it take longer to reach your new position after moving. Thief is also the only class to have two downed skills that save it from being stomped. The third downed skill can save you from being stomped long enough to be revived or to allow a team mate to stomp a downed enemy, thus rallying you and preventing the enemy from using you to rally their fellow. The third downed skill also opens up the downed stealth attack, which is awesome when fighting downed, especially if you have good positioning near an obstruction because you can poison and bleed then shadow step out of line of sight and begin self-reviving. The conditions from the downed auto and stealth attacks also help your allies in dealing damage to the target, and obviously impairs their healing.

Lachanche.6859:

As for possible solutions to this issue, i see none o_o.

Result wanted:
More players pvping, less clueless people that make matches throughout most of the day un-enjoyable.
Solution:
A) Make players want to PvP more; new game modes, new maps, and promptly (not 1 year after the devs finally mention it, I mean they mentioned introducing new maps and modes a before talking about ascended weapons)!
B) Make people who want to PvP not get fed up and leave. Why do this training wheels experience thing for PvE? PvE is straight forward. If anything, were I new, the new PvE leveling system would make me hate GW2 right after creating my character! Evidence seems to indicate that the concept of capture and holding a node clearly requires an above average IQ, however! Bring the training wheels experience thing with tutorials and demos to heart of the mists for PvP! Have the tournament master NPC screaming objectives and instructions, and throwing links to guide after guide after guide at the newbies.

fumcheg.1936:

Tell me how to dodge and daze with p/d or d/d builds, when you have 2 dodges and no daze. Go on.

Dodge: Dodge with natural endurance regeneration if you don’t build for more.
Daze: If you have no dazes you cannot daze. Nothing says P/D or D/D cannot trait Sleight of hand though.

More constructively though, if you need that additional survivability, build for it…

Yup. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Flanking-Strike-strange-behaviour/first#post4403115

Mahkno.7593:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

You DO have skills to survive that do not rely on stealth. You just don’t want to use them and raging because you lost the hit, stealth, heal, hit "tactic"

it’s not just the single "tactic". it disables an entire trait line and therefore disables another one (at least) of our possible builds.

this would be like giving thieves the ability to shut down the entire wilderness survival trait line or inventions trait line. this would never fly.

this isn’t balance.

So it boils down to a specific skill with a high damage-capable pet, used by a damage built ranger (i.e a type of build), being able to counter a thief build, and instead of supporting the idea of adapting one’s play style, learning how to deal, or modifying the build, you are calling for a revert. Firstly, this is how the meta changes. Something new comes along which makes someone previously used less viable or more likely to be countered, and so that falls out of the meta to be replaced by something else. Secondly, how do you suppose the rangers felt not being able to run berserker stats before because of berserker thieves? And yet here you are moaning about not being able to run a build with a couple of stealth traits because that particular type of ranger exists. Calling unbalanced one build type with "Sic ’Em" that ranger has because it counters your shadow arts build is a terrible way to argue for thief, because by that logic, thief should be nerfed. Thief as a class prevents almost every class from running berserker stats effectively in TPvP.

If we’re giving tips, keep a warrior’s stolen skill handy =P. Some of these flavour of the month rangers are so clueless that they will keep auto attacking with longbow while you reflect...

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Sizer.2654:

i spam the ability

I think I found your issues with being successful in GW2.

If you’ve never pressed a skill to have it not work, even when not lagging, and had to press it a second time, count yourself lucky. Others however, might not be so lucky. Would it hurt you if they were given an option which helps them out with this? If not, there’s no reason to be sarky!

I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve pressed infiltrator’s return thinking "I’ll avoid that" and "I’m fine, fight is going ok" to find myself getting owned because the skill I pressed never activated. Consequently, other times like those "oh ****" moments I find myself press it once... nope.. press it again, and suddenly I return, and then strike right back into their burst. Of course, it’s not the opponent’s burst that kills ultimately, it’s the much deadlier combination of queue cast and slight lag. I’ve never bothered to complain much about queue casting because after practice I’m now usually able to avoid the problems it can cause.

While personally I was fine with getting used to it, and even sometimes making use of it, it can still be a problem for others. I support the idea of a disable queue cast feature.

vincecontix.1264:

You are obviously clueless, save yourself the embarrassment stop posting about things in which you have no experience.

He’s obviously not clueless. Nothing he’s said is wrong. If anything, considering that he doesn’t play thief just proves he has uncommon sense. Yes I said uncommon.. There was once a time when it was common. Good times.

Geiir.7603:

What you are describing here is not kiting. Kiting is keeping distance between you and your enemy while you deal damage to him and he can’t do it as effectively as you. P/D is a great example of kiting weapon sets. What you describe is running away, baiting his pet and breaking los. That has nothing to do with kiting.

Your idea again pressures everyone into sword builds. You think it is fair that ANet make stealth dependent weapon sets useless because some scrubs cried about stealth? Sic’em isn’t the worst, since that skill actually can be countered, but Analyze is borderline op. 1200 range instant cast – in other words; no counterplay at all.

As an end notice: when I play my Sword builds I regularly do what you described. But that is not kiting.

Semantics. The ranger and the pet are the same enemy – the pet is an aspect of the ranger, and “Sic ’Em” is a ranger’s skill. By doing what I described you are keeping out of reach thereby avoiding damage from an aspect of the enemy and nullifying his skill, while dealing damage. I call it kiting.

It’s not my idea, it’s an example to make a point. It just happens that I use S/D, and so my example will be from an S/D point of view. If I were using D/P, I’d do the same thing but with shadow shot for blinds instead of evade, and shadow step to create distance when the ranger uses “Sic ’Em”. A few seconds after, return to the ranger, shadow shot to him if he moved away from shadow return, and by the time the pet returns I’ll put down a black powder in time be able to stealth again.

Basically it’s a build that can chase down and deal with high damage, glassy opponents, because the berserker stats alone are enough to hit high on those with low armour. Such opponents’ only defense is their burst to try and force you out of the offensive, but S/D is able to avoid the burst if the player is aware enough and experienced enough to know what to look for and what and when to evade. Unlike those high damage and glassy builds though, S/D has enough evades which when combined with the mobility used to kite and dart in and out to avoid AoE, enabling it to also 1v1 tankier opponents rather than having to range at team fights and pop in for a quick spike then back out.

On top of that you have more mobility with infiltrator’s strike and return, a condition cleanse with infiltrator’s return that other main hand weapons lack, your auto attack cleaves (dagger now hits 2 targets but before it was unable to cleave downed players), you can steal more boons (although not as easily as before the patch), and darn it you just look cooler.

The downsides are that in team fights it doesn’t have the burst to take targets down anywhere near as quickly as a dagger thief, or the blinds that protect not only yourself when attacks miss, and if you are forced to range, your shortbow isn’t as effective as the shortbow of a more offensively built dagger thief.

Geiir.7603:

Kite? On a thief? You’re kidding, right? The only thing we can do is run. Shadowstep and shortbow #5 and never to be seen again.

So what would you call it when the ranger uses “Sic ’Em”, and I infiltrator’s return, move around a corner to obstruct the longbow, wait a few seconds for the pet to come to me, then Infiltrator’s strike to the ranger and continue attacking him while keeping away from the pet? What would you call it when the pet goes back to the ranger to attack me, and I evade it a couple of times while still dealing damage and positioning myself on the opposite side of the ranger as my return spot, then use infiltrator’s return out of range of the pet and to once again obstruct the ranger’s line of sight? What would you call it when I then wait 2 seconds while the ranger turns back around to face me and the pet makes it’s way toward me, away from the ranger again, and I shadow step back to the ranger, down him, cloak and dagger, and stomp him?

If you can’t handle a pet that has a few seconds of +40% damage without stealth, why was this post not made last year regarding 2v1 scenarios? A pet is less of a threat than another player. It actually tells me before this patch that you’d have been tanking the pet which is something that should be worked on. I mean, what’s the point of building for survival through evades and mobility if you don’t use it?

Sadly, it didn’t fix the obstructed bug. Still getting shadow stepped to the target only to have "obstructed" appear and steal enter full cool down without dazing, healing, damaging or boon stealing.

Sometimes when using flanking strike with a target, I have found that the skill behaves as if there is no target. It moves in the direction of the target, but when it would normally flank around the target and strike, it continues to go in a straight line regardless of where the target is – even if they are standing right in front of the player. Quite often in a match, it causes the attack to not reach the target, thus preventing the turning over to larcenous strike which is a huge problem given the recent changes – one takes care to use the attack when it has a good change to land, to have it fail due to a strange new behaviour.

It has happened to me three times: once yesterday against a minion master necromancer, earlier today against a turret engineer, and just now against a spirit ranger. This had me thinking it might be a trajectory mapping issue when there are more than a certain number of foes in range, or something to do with the AI nearby, but I cannot reproduce the bug on a single or group of golems in Heart of the Mists.

Has anyone else experienced this?

aarias.4016:

Yes, they’ve only increased the duration by 50%, no big deal. Same ’ol, same ’ol...????????

Your suggestion is to use "obstructions"? Seriously? Is this some new skill I don’t know about? So every time I get hit with Sick ’em or Goggles I’ll just duck behind the nearest wall? LOL!!! Of course, why didn’t I think of that???

"Obstructions" aside, in my experience, 6s is a LOOOOONG time when you’re actually in a even-skilled fight. How many dodges/evades/dazes do you have to pull off in order to survive revealed for 6s? The answer is "too many".

I’m not going to go through the list of possible thief builds and point out why most aren’t currently viable, but suffice to say that we’re running out of builds in a hurry. IMO, P/D condi is one of the last remaining builds that can hold its own, and tweaking it to withstand an unplanned 6s without stealth would make it no longer competitive to begin with.

You could, of course, make the argument that no one will run Sick ’em or Goggles, but that’s a pretty weak argument. Thieves are prevalent in roaming and small group engagements, and running either of these two utilities is essentially a hard counter to the entire class.

All I’ve done is attempt to help rather than simply saying "you have x,y,z defenses", "this is no concern", or "L2P". Given that you made this thread you have a genuine issue, so it might be worth listening to people when they offer guidance rather than attempting to mock it. I say attempt, because if you did indeed know to do that already, you wouldn’t have made this thread; thus your mockery has backfired. If you want to play a berserker class you need to know how to kite and obstruct if you want to survive. Your opponent isn’t going to reduce their damage or toughness for you, so why should you reduce your mobility for them? You don’t have to evade attacks for 6 seconds (you could of course), you merely have to evade your way to a corner for obstruction or a drop that the AI won’t jump down, or a wall to shadow step up that the opponent can’t directly follow. It’s nothing new. Anyone who has clocked a lot of time on their thief will have done this while low health just to escape and wait for their heal on a number of occasions.

Thieves will likely stay the same, although D/P may become more popular. We might see a small return of the ’carry’ role builds such as 5/6/x/x/x.

Elementalists haven’t really changed, but we might see some nice active uses of the elite elemental now.

Engineers... I can’t remember anything of note except the turret buff... But we’d still be seeing turret engineers around despite because it’s so easy for people to be effective with.

Rangers are basically the same, just more popular. They still get countered by thieves, other rangers, meditation guardians, and likely mobile GS warriors.

Mesmers are in a very good spot now. They were before but now even better. Unfortunately condi mesmers got the biggest buff, so there’ll likely be more of those around but I doubt it’ll make an appearance in tournaments/top tier.

Power necromancers were becoming increasingly popular already, and we’ll definitely be seeing more of them and more death shroud. Condition necromancers haven’t really changed.

GS/LB warrior was good before the patch as well if played right, it just didn’t appear because eviscerate was tankier given that it had an offhand shield and 4 points in arms wasn’t helpful and could be spent elsewhere, and hambow provided some support in team fights by making people dodge more, and the area knockbacks and stuns basically protected allies from direct damage while the enemy was disabled/recovering. GS may now replace axe, especially when considering it brings the advantage of a high mobility heavy to the composition.

Guardians.. I sure hope we don’t see any cheesy spirit weapon builds. Aside from that, buff to meditation guardians but they’re already popular. Personally I’d take a GS/LB warrior over a meditation guard, I don’t see them reaching a higher level of use/purpose than they’re currently at. We might see some more tome usage.

They have paid attention to it. They have stated that regardless, it will not get removed. There was a post from a dev somewhere saying that removing skyhammer is not on the table. I’ll see if I can find it.

Here’s the thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Vee-Wee-s-PvP-Suggestions/first#post4296093

ArrDee.2573:

<snip>

*Skyhammer!*
We’ve all seen this before my frands! Skyhammer needs to change! It doesn’t necessarily have to go, but goshdarn it my frands it needs to change! And Arenanet taking your time to find the perfect solution is not helping! Make a change! If it doesn’t work out, make another change! Just do something! Not changing things means things don’t get changed! It’s so simple!

<snip>

Evan Lesh.3295:

<snip>

*Skyhammer*: Obligatory "Nothing is off the table". (except deleting skyhammer)

<snip>

"Sic’em" always had a revealed effect, just 4 seconds instead of 6; only utility goggles didn’t have it before. Dealing with it is the same principle as before though. Use obstructions. A good thief will be using obstructions anyway. S/D and S/P can still cope with it - even vs. utility goggles. D/P should be able to cope with blinds from shadow shot against the engineer in place of S/D’s evades, interrupt skills to save endurance, and of course blinding, dazing and obstructing rangers and using blinding powder for the pet if it follows you still work. Don’t forget steal if traited for sleight of hand can be used defensively as well. Thief still has the tools necessary to survive and keep on fighting.

Just had a match where I found myself fighting a minion master. No problem, of course, until I encountered a very strange behaviour from flanking strike which I’ve never experienced before. The necro has minions around them, so even if they dodge, it’ll still hit a minion and turn over to larcenous, so you’d think the fight would be almost the same as pre-patch. Three times (in a row deliberately because I couldn’t understand why it was happening) I used flanking strike with the necromancer targeted... Flanking strike behaved as if I had no target and went off in the wrong direction. There’s no doubt I had a target. I always have a target, and as I said I did this three times in a row trying to figure out what was causing it.

moi.4398:

Impact.2780:

I feel they should have made it turn over to larcenous strike when the attack is blocked. Semantically speaking, a block is still technically a hit, just not where you intended to hit.

With that logic you should be revealed when your backstab get block right ?

Yes.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ArenaNet has always had problem with consistency in their definition of functions.

A Block is a hit that deals no damage ("GW2 Wiki":http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block).

Thus it should satisfy that requirement.

A point I was trying to make on another thread in the sPvP forum, and even referenced ANet’s definition of hit when they were making the changes to RTL, stating that it would be intended that a block still count as a hit thus reducing the cooldown to 20 seconds. I don’t know whether the people replying there genuinely can’t grasp the concept or just hate thieves with a vengeance, but they insisted that a block is not a hit... Of course, ANet has opted not to clarify or even state whether or not flanking strike not turning over when blocked is intentional. In ready up, the terms "blind" and "evade" were used in explaining when it would not turn over, but nothing was said about blocks. For all we know, given that they never fixed RTL to work as they originally claimed it would, they might have changed their minds on what constitutes a hit, but it would be nice to know for sure.. to know whether the skill is in fact working as intended or not.

Walker.3056:

S/D is has less damage now? YES.
S/D brakoen, not viable, bad even in top pvp play? NO.
You just need to change your game style. damage now comes much more from AA chain than LS. My tip is keep pressure with AA chain. use FS only to dodge! one more dodge!! or u can use it as offensive tool if the target has some great ight stacks or stab.

Don’t forget less boon ripping. I’d like to think that auto attack was already used as a primary source of damage, and larcenous simply when it was ready after using flanking strike as an evade, or to steal might stacks from warriors/elementalists, or remove stability (I know it’s still stealing but the purpose is to have them removed from the target) in order to crowd control a reviver or lich. Elementalists can now protect their juicy 15+ stacks of might from us just by dodging the telegraphed flanking strike, and stability can be protected with blinds and blocks while reviving. It introduces some nice counterplay to S/D, but having an unblockable attack which only has a 5 second window to be used requiring an unblocked hit to be accessed has removed a the counterplay thief has and brings to a team against blocking skills. In my mind, a flanking strike is a flank intended to avoid damage and or bypass a block followed by a counter strike which – given the bypassed block – should land. This kind of worked in the past in that flanking strike flanked and made available an unblockable attack, fitting the thief/assassin/acrobatic style very well, but now that element is gone without compensation. I can understand how one might argue that aegis should always block it because it’s a boon rather than a skill, but not blocks like shield stance and shelter. It’s not like it was without cost and risk either, because it used up a lot of initiative for a single strike.

I feel they should have made it turn over to larcenous strike when the attack is blocked. Semantically speaking, a block is still technically a hit, just not where you intended to hit. This, or they should have given us something back in exchange, such as a missed flanking strike - if it doesn’t count as a hit - not resetting your auto attack chain, making flanking strike unblockable too, buffing larcenous strike so you have more time to use it, restoring it to its former glory of stealing two boons, or increasing the damage of one of both of the attacks.

That being said, it is still a completely viable set, just nerfed once again, and probably again next patch, and so on as seems to be the pattern.

data.4093:

2. If you don’t want 2 characters to look the same then turn off team colors.

Indeed, although if you want both options, a slight difference would be nice. Bear in mind though, that this is day two since it was released. I think they are more concerned with (especially given the crash issues and FPS lag standard models were causing) ensuring that it works properly and gets positive feedback or comments from the players before dedicating more resources to improving it in ways that they might have already considered and obviously ways they might not have considered that would be suggested by the players. Sorry for this snipe but I have to say it: it’s also a PvP exclusive system, and they seem to have very little focus on adding and improving PvP content.

That being said, it’s never too late to learn a new skill! It’d be a good idea to start trying to remember at least characteristics of names when there are duplicate classes on the opposing team so that you can identify which is which anyway. Especially when you consider that so many used asura for a combat advantage, who’s to say teams won’t start matching their armour and or dyes to try and throw their opponents off!

There is no bug anymore =P.

The way steal used to work was that it would shadow step you, and then "hit". You were also able to use it to shadow step while out of range when using it immediately after a skill that moves you closer to your target, but before it actually moved you. This was most likely due to the system updating the variable for your location on the map before the skill is validated and finishes casting. This created some problems like rubberbanding when the engine redraws your character given the new position, then validation code says "hang on, you can’t do that," resets the variable and redraws you again. It appears that they have fixed the issue by tweaking this, changing the order in which routines are executed when you attempt to execute a skill. This means steal now validates (checks you are in range) using your actual visible location on the map when you press it, rather than where you will end up after the skill you pressed immediately before it finishes executing.

It might seem that steal has a reduced range now, but it doesn’t. It seems like it to me (and likely any other S/D thief) because we are so used to using flanking strike and steal together, which would reach from 1000 range away (maybe a little more). You can still do this, but you have to use steal after flanking strike moves you within range.

So they have completely fixed the steal bug created by the feature patch, and possibly some rubberbanding issues! (Maybe it will have fixed the random obstructed/out of range steal bugs too). This is awesome. The fluidity of the skill-&gt;steal combinations will have to be accepted, and thieves will have to be more careful with their timing of such combinations.

Strike through doesn’t seem to want to work for this post so I’m just going to delete it and post my edit separately.

Never mind, I was slightly out of range, and it just doesn’t say "out of range" anymore. Moved a bit closer and it worked fine!

Edit: Nope... It went back to not working again even when I was closer still, but in a different position. It must be something to do with the terrain.

Edit 2: In the places it works, it seems you also have to be moving toward the target. Simply standing still then pressing infiltrator’s strike followed by steal doesn’t work.

I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying, but what I get is steal interrupting infiltrator’s strike so you don’t go anywhere and steal goes on a 4.5 second cool down.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

This isn’t an issue. The idea is of the skill is that your first skill throws the enemy off and allows you to do a critical blow.

In real life, if you land a surprising flanking strike a person, they’ll probably be vulnerable for an additional attack. If your enemy anticipates your surprise attack and blocks it, you definitely won’t have a chance at another hit.

The only scenario where sword 3 now fails is when someone is blocking and you hit them. However you can still land it if you hit them before they block or proc aegis so the unblockable perk still works but it’s just not as abused.

Thieves are not meant to be full on tank strikers and spam 3 whenever they feel like it. They are meant to be tricky and strike the opponent at vital times.

While I appreciate where you’re coming from, it is still an issue. If you’re going to reference real life scenarios, I can simply say when your opponent is blocking their right side, you won’t say “oh kitten , I need to get a hit in there before I can strike them where they aren’t blocking.” More constructively though, if the time larcenous strike remained available for use was increased, it would certainly make preparing the strike ready for a block a realistic option. Only 5 seconds for them to block and you to land the attack – especially if the block is aegis in which case they can still dodge, blind and attack – isn’t enough time to use it to actively counter a block.

hehk.8705:

lol, how dare someone block my blockable skill!

You did it again v_v. It’s not about blocking flanking strike, but blocking the turn over into larcenous.

Phaeton.9582:

Agree with me on what? Putting words into my mouth are we?

While I admire your sophistry on the matter, arguing the point by referencing rtl miscommunication during ele previews last year seems a little weak.

If you’re having issues with proffession matchups, over and above the glaring steal issues, I suggest you discuss this as there are lots of players happy to help-or maybe join in on the qq

Hope you found this post more useful.

Given the context and nature of your response, it implied you were in favour of blocking attacks from stealth causing reveal. If that is not the case I can only apologise and advise that you communicate such things in a less sarcastic manner if you want to be interpreted correctly.

As for the rest… I don’t feel like repeating myself for your benefit yet again. Simply re-read my earlier responses on what this topic was asking.

Seiishizo.7162:

if necro is that strong, like some people say, then why are there so few necro’s in top teams? the only people who claim necro as being strong are the ones that get hard counterd by it….

Because they are a selfish class, lacking synergy. Their support options cripple them because they have to give everything up and still won’t compare to guardians and elementalists. Warriors are rather selfish too, but they can provide support in the form of crowd control, might stacking, they don’t have any problem stomping or reviving, and they have the tankiness to fight a 1v2 on point for a time. Hopefully with necromancers being able to stomp/revive while in death shroud they will be seen more on teams. One huge thing was addressed though. How long was necro asking for a cleaving attack? I know 2 targets isn’t a cleave, but it’s a significant buff for dagger. Of course, it’s human nature to complain about the negatives instead of focusing on positives.

I’m guessing the well of blood duration nerf was because of the new light field combo to gain light aura. As for the nerf to the heal it gave.. I mean I get not wanting that much of a heal in so little time being possible, but in my opinion it should have been increased by 100% instead of 50% so it wouldn’t be a nerf to the healing, or at least reduced the well’s cool down.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Imagi.4561:

Phaeton.9582:

So you’ve no problem with a block not breaking stealth, but it should trigger an on hit effect now...? XD

Where did the OP even bring this up?

If you have an issue with block not causing Reveal, discuss it in a thread dedicated to that topic.

Those two are actually tied together. If touching a block counts as a hit, it means that a stealth attack on a block counts as a hit, and would give reveal... You can’t have one without the other.

I don’t like having words put into my mouth, and it’s especially bad practice to do so in that manner because the person you’re talking to might actually agree with you. In this case, I do, so all your snipe has accomplished is making you seem petty and unhelpful in this topic, and making me type out a response.

I didn’t bring it up here because despite whether the concept of a hit is equally relevant to stealth attacks, it’s a separate issue that has been argued over for perhaps more than a year. Stealth already has plenty of counterplay, and blocks are one of them already. They tell you when the thief is attacking, that they are close by, and that you need to dodge or move from that position. Longer duration blocks will result in the stealth running out before they can get off their attack. But what of longer stealth durations like shadow refuge? Well the thief will just wait out your blocks, unless it’s a long duration of aegis in which case yes, it will be a successful counter unless the thief steals the boon after starting their stealth attack. See, it won’t really make a difference, so I don’t see why it’s such a hot topic. If you must know, there was a thread dedicated to this somewhere many many months ago, where I posted that I agreed that one should be revealed when attacking from stealth even if the attack was blocked.

As for the two being tied together, they really aren’t. Sure you can take the definition of a hit and run with it on another topic, but this is about an individual skill. There are plenty of skills which have their own special properties, so it wouldn’t be game breaking to allow flanking strike to turn over to larcenous when blocked. They could also make flanking strike unblockable, thus addressing it without any words on what a hit is (although I doubt they will because then it would go from a huge nerf to a huge buff). Edit: Actually it might be rather balanced overall if they did given that accessing larcenous is likely to cost a lot more initiative now, but versus a blocking target S/D thieves would be a total counter, and almost render their blocking ineffective as defense (almost because it is still forcing the thief to use a lot of initiative) to damage.

KarinaCO.6948:

The developers themselves said what counted as a hit during the Ready Up! video. Nobody is giving their “own opinion.”

No definition is given where the change to the skill is mentioned. It could be that it is somewhere else in the video and I missed it, of course. Although, just as things said can be forgotten, it wouldn’t be the first time someone recalls hearing something that was never stated.

Yup. I was willing to try and be optimistic about the changes to flanking strike. But now we have an even buggier steal, chaining with steal is 80% likely to produce the "out of range" bug, and we have an unblockable attack that cannot be reached in its chain if the enemy is blocking.

Once again, I’m seeking a definitive response as to what constitutes a hit, given that (yes even though it was due to reducing mobility, it’s still the same principle hence the reference) for ride the lightning to have its cooldown 20s it needed to hit, and when this was announced a it was stated that a block would still count as a hit. You guys can keep ignoring that point and proclaiming that thieves are crying (yes we know you hate thieves, we’ve had it since launch and we no longer care) when the reality is that you saying a block is not a hit is your opinion since you cannot know for sure since you are not developers.

Edit: Discuss your opinions and why, of course, but don’t pretend to know. By a definitive response, I don’t mean non-devs saying what they think or want it to be.

hehk.8705:

How dare Anet make it so you have to hit with your skill!

I genuinely enjoy sarcasm, despite it being the lowest form of wit, but if you’re going to do it, at least make sense with it. The question is what counts as a hit, given that when the ride the lightning change was made, a hit for those purposes included being blocked. It was just never fixed to work as originally stated/intended. That is what is being asked here, because what is the point in having an unblockable skill in a chain that you cannot reach while being blocked?

It might be due to the standard models. Were you using them? Someone in my party had this problem, and the rest of us didn’t. He had enabled standard models, and after disabling them he was fine.

I’m not going to go and look it up because I don’t care enough given how small the changes are, but a fairly obvious conclusion is they have been updated to reflect a full set of ascended armour as opposed to a full set of exotic.

So S/D thieves can no longer access their unblockable attack while their opponent is blocking. Much like ride the lightning, a hit that is blocked does not count as a hit, and so does not open up larcenous strike for us. I don’t know whether this was intentional; it wasn’t intentional for ride the lightning as stated before the change, but it was never resolved.

So a question to the devs: was this intentional? If not, will it get resolved unlike ride the lightning? If so, will you consider resolving ride the lightning as well, so that a block sets it to 20s cd as intended at the time of the change?

Sizer.2654:

what if the steal bug is related to the bug to cause auto attacks to randomly say out of range or obstructed when it clearly isent

I am glad to hear it’s not just me. No one else I run with seems to have this issue, but I moan about it every other match, either causing my steal to fail or shortbow attacks to say out of range/obstructed when I’m like 300 units away on flat ground.

Over a week of lag, freezes, disconnects, teleporting warriors, distortion engineers, invisible terrain... I wish I didn’t like this game; wishing for it to be fixed doesn’t seem to do much good.

It would certainly make sense if the two were related. There you have it, two birds with one stone, ANet! More of a reason to look into it! Yes, yes.. Of course. After a few more seasons of living world.

I think it is a steal bug. I never have problems with infiltrator’s signet or infiltrator’s strike and return. Yesterday alone my steal kept telling me it was obstructed and going on full CD when it should have worked, and a number of times while dueling it told me it was obstructed when there was literally nothing between me and my opponent - not even a rise in the terrain. It also happened when my target was on the lower ledge at the graveyard in legacy of the foefire, telling me it was obstructed. Infiltrator’s strike worked fine immediately after, even phase retread would get you up there, but steal failed me for no apparent reason.

I like the shadow step in steal, I would hate to see it removed. We are already in a rather risky position, not only by being a squishy class, but by having so many eggs in the basket that is the steal skill. The fact that you so easily lose if you miss it just once really shows this.

Edit: Oh and to anyone that responds along the lines of "but X class is more broken so soak it up"... That’s not how problems get attention or resolved, and it’s a ridiculous argument to make. No where does it say by fixing this that the other classes needing attention should be ignored. Although, they’re less likely to get noticed if you’re posting about them on threads intended for a different class - I suggest starting your own thread specifically for your class and perceived problems.

Wow. This takes QQ threads to the next level. Bashing a dev for delivering information that everyone is eager to hear just because of the way he speaks? As many have said, he’s a programmer, not an actor. It’s not his job to entertain you with amazing vocal skills, or to deliver you any information other than that which is completely related to the topic.

You’re complaining that he reads form a script, and squints? What the hell dude. That to me says: this guy has taken the time to prepare this and is making sure that he doesn’t leave out any information. If that’s not enough dedication for you, then I think you might have to re-evaluate whether you actually like this game, because if you did you’d be able to appreciate it, and would be paying more attention to the message instead of conducting a personal review on the presenter. If he spoke inconsistently with seemingly random pitch changes and or was difficult to understand, then okay, but he delivers the information clearly and factually.

You say he’s not a good presenter, but with respect to the above, he does it very well. However, just to humour you... Have you ever watched the news? Would you really want him to be like that? Sounding bored and immune to emotion? Not that it would be a problem or warrant this thread - I’m just reinforcing my argument.

If Karl reads any of this, I hope he listens to the responses and not the original post, and that it in no way changes the work he does. I’ll be shaking my head in despair at the original post for the rest of the day.

It is dissapointing. So much map space left unexpanded upon in favour or living world updates. New weapons for classes that were rumoured before ascended weapons and armour that appears to have been forgotten. So many new game modes in PvP that can easily be made available, but we may never see. Conquest we have already, of course. They gave us courtyard for a kill farm mode, but didn’t make it available in team queue as a new game mode - the code is pretty much written already for that. Spirit Watch introduced a capture the flag mode except it is also conquest; the orb shows there is code for capture the flag which can be implemented in other maps and made available as a third game mode.

So yes, standard models as an option is very nice - I swear the asuras are getting smaller - but it’s far from what the PvP community has been waiting and hoping for since... a long time. It really is time for something a little bigger than a ’feature’ patch.