Guild Wars 2

I’m fine without a separate solo queue. Most matches I get with solo players vs solo players are actually more annoying than matches I get vs premades anyway. There are so many problems in both the game, the build choices of players and the matchmaking system putting players that are clearly so far beyond clueless it hurts, with players that aren’t, yet when you lose 2-3 pips you realise it expected you to win with that guy, that there’s really no point fussing over separate queues. It won’t solve anything really. It might trade a couple of matches you would get destroyed in due to the other team’s far superior coordination, for every other match queue taking twice as long, though.

Chamladia.8523:

Terrorsquad.4802

Leaving 2 classes out of a meta is quite sad

Funny how you say that when rangers and necros have never been on the meta for a very long time but nobody seemed to care about them being left out.

Except it’s actually 4 classes left out of the meta, technically. Arguably 5.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Let’s not forget “build diversity” – read: power necro at higher divisions, cause diamond ele shuts down all condi builds.

And don’t give me the L2P crap. If it was balanced you wouldn’t see 99.5% tempests running diamond skin, only use more diverse builds, out of which some, but not nearly all would be diamond skin ones.

Condi reaper/necro is hard vs a comp of 2+ eles because players seem more keen to run dragonhunter which gets shut down by eles, or 1v1 bot druids. Neither has the pressure to take a tempest down to below 90% health. If you do get classes which can deal with it, like shatter mesmer or thief, the team complains before match start, half giving up, more focused on the fact that they are the unlucky bunch with X on their team.

So, people run non-team oriented and highly countered builds are welcomed, but don’t really help half the time. Builds which are team oriented get shunned, so those players wind up switching to something easy until their class gets buffed. Those somethings easy are more often than not, bunker mesmer which again has no pressure and no real support for squishies outside of quickness res, druid which 1v1s, has no boon or cleanse support, dragonhunter which can be shut down by on point pressure and or mitigated by tempests, or reaper which needs the team support you usually don’t have because people want to run druid, desperate for a 1v1 instead of supporting a team fight.

Some do swap to revenant and adopt the same toxic attitude, suddenly thinking they are god tier even when they melt to the same classes and even the very same players they complained about, because they are nothing really without a tempest and bunker mesmer.

Krysard.1364:

Even if thief is right now out of the meta, the number of evades he has is absurdly broken. Someday thief will be buffed and then ppl will cry for a dodges nerf

Thief has less evades than pre-Hot/vigor change patch, with the old Acrobatics trait line. Since then, thief has gained one extra evade.

You have a problem with this, and find it broken.

Meanwhile, revenants are evading in shiro to gain 50 endurance for a follow up dodge. Using a cleanse and stun break skill to chain evades with blocks. Next, he will dodge again, then use shield block, sometimes twice in a row, and then evade with sword while dealing damage, and then switch to staff, dodge again, block with staff, evade with staff while dealing damage and rapid crowd control that can remove multiple stacks of stability to interrupt stability stomp and revival attempts, and then evade with shiro again, then another dodge, and... But, you’re right. Daredevil is absurdly broken how they have one extra dodge that doesn’t offer cleanse unless traited and properly timed, and doesn’t break stun.

Thieves asked for more ways to survive in the thick of battle instead of evading and stealthing. ANet gave them another dodge, which isn’t even another dodge, but simply starting a fight with 1 more in the bank. It isn’t re-usable, like shiro’s or revenant’s other evade skills. But let’s whine and call thief broken.

I prefer khylo because if I get a bad comp vs a typically tanky one, I can use the treb.

After that, Foefire is the best one because:
1) No beasts for players to rush or abandon points for.
2) Temple requires splitting to include buffs, and most pugs don’t fully appreciate this resulting in thin splits, over-reaching, and loss. It favours comps with support that can more easily split over each buff and at least 2 points at the same time, and 90% of my teams contain 4 of any combination of druids, DHs, and reapers.
3) It’s less likely the game will be thrown over the map mechanic. It happens, but not as often as forest, or even khylo. (I know (1) falls under this but it deserved special and first mention.)

Shirlias.8104:

It’s not a "omg i can’t 1v1 dh"

It’s cause thief has no role

-Not a bunker
-Not a healer
-Not a Supporter
-Zerk dps deal a little more dmg than a bunker ( cause bunker have boons and armor and you as zerk don’t. It’s higher the Zerk one, but not that higher ).
-Can’t go 1v1 to contest a Point
-Can’t go 1v1 to fast solo a boss ( cause take to much dmg and have to lower its own dps to avoid dmg ).
-Can’t Rezz cause high dmg incoming.

Before we had to take down other zerks and help to debuff ( steal ), but now we simply can’t.

I still play only thief cause is the only class i like ( and the only who really pays for every single mystakes ), but actually the meta is not for us.

Thief can support by counter pressuring and peeling thereby. On occassion it can also aid an ally in escaping being chased from a lost point - usually far - by stealthing with black powder+blinding powder.

It’s role is damage roamer. It does far more damage than a bunker, and it does have boons that are shared by those bunkers. The damage out of say, a tempest, is fairly high at end statistics because it’s AoE and consistent. Consistent damage does not get you kills vs other sustain builds. They are designed to heal through that low pressure. How many times have you seen a tempest+reaper vs another tempest, and they can’t break the 90% health threshold? A thief will pop in, drop the tempest to 80-30% depending on what they have and whether their full burst lands, and the tempest should be done for. A thief will still output more damage than a tempest overall despite being single target and not as consistent.

Nothing that isn’t a decap build should push an enemy capped point vs a decent holder unless their team is in a really comfortable spot. They go when it is undefended or they have time to get there and neut it before an enemy player can get back. So "thief can’t," is irrelevant, if it were true. A thief can go 1v1 to contest a point, just not for long, and it does it not by going to cap it with the intent to fight anything that might push. It does it when it is empty - even if it is being watched - to decap, or to decap and draw 1 enemy back to it to either leave and outnumber another point while they recap, or hold the neut long enough for allies to split off an enemy capped point that they can’t win, to push this point which you have neuted, which your allies in all their "meta-ness," could not do. If someone is camping it, and you can’t win 4v5, it’s an issue of comp, coordination, or player skill. A comp issue might be thief doesn’t fit, just as much as it can be the DH or druid doesn’t fit. In my experience good comps and players with a thief on the team will get the downs, which is what a comp with damagers roamers need to do - play off of kills - but unless impact strike can secure the finish, the downed will get quickness ressed. This isn’t a weakness of thief, but players choose to place blame on the thief anyway, even when he is getting the most finishes in the team fights.

I take executioner. When the bunkers start kiting like crazy and chaining defensive skills because they are low, and I can have any hit I land deal 20% more damage, I’ll take it. Getting them below 50% isn’t actually that hard, even when you’re the only one on them, which shouldn’t be the case unless it’s a 1v1, which you won’t be looking for.

I’ve beaten teams who had DC and gained 3 pips, and lost with a DC and lost pips.

Yesterday my friend DC’d and came back 3/4 of the match later. We actually managed to win. It came to a lord rush which we defended against - I’d solo’d there’s to keep us in it incase the mesmer came back. Points were close. We won a match we were 4v5 for 75% of.

We gained nothing.

Get this all the time, and posting on forums won’t help it any. I had an absolutely horrible run yesterday, and the highlights of it were...

Getting told off from a power rev who was 1v1 far vs a DH on the enemy cap half the game, when I gave up on the neut mid fight (full marauder comp so meant to be grouping up) to go win far with him. The DH is still on 95% health after all this time, so I all-or-nothing it burst him to 5% thinking it’s fine, the rev will down and stomp, let’s just secure this before we have inc. Nope. The rev takes a year to respond. I tanked some to get him that low, so now I’m unexpectedly trying to kite with low cooldowns coming from the team fight, and the rev is hiding... If he has nothing left to use then why is he still there 1v1 on enemy point? But surely he could lend an auto attack? No, I go down, and instead of finish the guard still on 5% or try to res, he does start attacking but there’s like 0 pressure. Next match I face him and he was awful. Still lost though, we had another bad rev that threw. The highlight of that was the rev leaving far which needed help, to take svanir. It took him 1.5mins to kill. No exaggeration.

The second one was a horrible comp of thief, druid druid, necro, necro vs druid, dh, necro, ele, mesmer. One druid tries to tell me my role at start "decap far whenever you can thief." I decapped it twice early game and the other druid complained I was throwing. After that, the enemy druid camped it making it 4v5 over the other 2 points. My team of course, zergs mid non stop, and just keep dying. They say the DH is killing them, and blame it on me not killing the enemy DH. Ok possibly a fair observation, I’d been on the target - the low health necro - but it felt like my guys had no damage. So now me, the thief, is counter pressuring the DH and wound up 1v1ing him up top in sight of far and the druid, and my guys aren’t focusing it with me, no, they are still targeting the necro. Now they complain I’m not focusing the targeted necro. They wipe, and blame it on the DH again who still focusing me only. Then they complain that far isn’t being decapped, when it is being camped by druid.

The final highlight was a power hammer rev that spent the majority of the match in downed state. The shatter mesmer and I defended close at start vs 2 pushers - necro and some sort of bunker DH. We lose mid, the rev complains it takes us forever to "cap close vs 1." A min later, the rev is 1v1ing the guard close on their cap, and can’t kill. I +1, and it takes longer to kill it than it did with the mesmer. Once the guard is down, he just calls me an idiot. Mid is free, the rest of the guys are far, he says cap mid when I’m already there; 1 guy pushes into mid, the rev asks for a target, I give him it, he ports up and dies. Then he blames me. The rest of the match was him literally blaming me and then our necro who agreed the rev was a -1.

People don’t only not know their own roles, but they don’t know a thief’s role, or how to rotate when you have one, or any 1 or 2 damage roamer builds on the comp. Not that people know how to rotate anyway. You can tell a team fight is lost without being there, tell them to split sides, and 20s later 2 are dead and the 1 left is still pushing until it he drops vs 3-4 guys.

I used to like downed state. It brought more strategic play to team fights. Now though, downed state is a minor inconvenience for the downed player’s team in a never-ending battle. Remove downed state or get rid of the invulnerability period and don’t remove conditions upon entering downed state.

Terrorsquad.4802:

Leeto.1570:

no im just posting some random screenshots from runescape

Nice try but looking at the class-symbols this was a very long time ago, when thieves were actually still in the meta.

Don’t try to hide it because everyone with an eye for details will see the engineer symbol left upper-corner is very old.

PS: wasnt it then every necro was running power? Means you’re squishy?

Nice spot. It’s still do-able though, just rare because in this bunker meta everything has protection and a number of damage mitigation passives.

This was with DA/Trick/DD, with Executioner.

Toughness doesn’t help vs. conditions...

Everything else has more sustain, so best not to try a sustain stat combination. Stick to offensive.

Jekkt.6045:

revenant corrupts boons into confusion. it’s not exactly what a necro does but neither is it simple boon removal.

Actually it is. It’s a skill which removes boons and applies a condition. Corruption is turning a boon into a condition. Corrupting stability applies fear, a revenant would remove it and apply confusioin.

“Deal damage, apply confusion, and remove boons from your foe. "

I think revenant just removes boons. It’s necro that corrupts.

Buff warrior instead of nerf revenant? We’re at a point where buffing classes to compete with over-the-top aspects of other classes is just making the game less and less enjoyable. The game was more enjoyable over a year ago before a lot of the new conditions, status effects, passives and over-abundance of crowd-control-effects were added.

I’d rather see revenant toned down, a long with other aspects of other classes, than see classes like warrior and thief buffed to deal with them. Small buffs in some weaker areas of the professions are of course necessary if ANet sticks to the current movement where other classes are moving away from specialising in a specific role and going for all-round builds, but personally I’d rather see more specialising than jack-of-all-trading.

I don’t think warrior needs more mobility. It should never have had as much as it did before anyway. Giving it some team support is a nice idea, and something I’ve always felt it needed. Warrior should be able to support not through healing or significant cleansing, but by breaking stuns, granting stability, and providing offensive buffs all for their allies. They are best built as offensive team fighters, yet don’t have the viable offensive support options to fit the role properly.

Impact Strike to the rescue! Saved many a fight with this.

A meta where tank and jack of all trades builds are so rewarding results in people not knowing how to rotate and play when they have anything with a more specialized role in their team. With a team of tanks and bunkers, you can almost pick a point and random and run to it out of the base and be fine. Other comps require some actual thought in where to go, when to leave, awareness, peels, punishing over-extenders, and when you actually run a comp that needs to play off kills, having the sense to change targets when one is low, arrives on point, or over-extends instead of perfecting the art of tunnel vision.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Impact.2780:

1. Make alacrity a boon.

Oh look, a Chrono buff.

Alacrity boonshare 100% stackable alacrity uptime for the whole party XD

Can also be stolen! XD

Nope, it would result in duration changes to balance it in light of becoming affected by boon duration, and it will be able to be corrupted/removed/stolen, allowing for some counter play to it.

1. Make alacrity a boon.
2. Remove slow from downed rev #1 skill, or at least fix quickness/slow affect on stomps. Best case scenario, get rid of slow. 1 less thing to work into skills, balance, and no one asked for the blasted thing in the first place.
3. Rework everything that currently gives immunity to direct damage or conditions, or turn them into damage reduction effects. Passive immunity is not skill. The only immunity in the game should be to cc via stability.
4. Get rid of passive defenses for "when disabled." If you don’t want to get disabled, try to avoid the hit. It should not punish the player who managed to land it inbetween the immunity, stability, invulnerability, blocking, dodging and evading.
5. Plentiful or spammable AoE cc should be toned down or have diminished returns. It’s over the top right now. Simple combat is better and allows for more skillful play. There are too many effects, ccs and damage avoidance in the game; it’s out of hand. Beefing something up so it’s broken to deal with something else that got too much focus is not a good balance strategy.
6. Specialised roles. Less of this "jack of all trades" can bunker can damage and possibly support nonsense. 1-2 classes is ok - in fact, it’s nice. But when so many can do it, it creates a boring meta.
7. Superior Runes of the Ogre!

It doesn’t kill build diversity. It speeds up realization of the lack thereof.

It went downhill after shoutbow came in. I liked the bunker guard with thief+mesmer meta, and I like engi more than hambow, but the switch from hambow to cele engi resulted in the realisation that with 2 cele already, you can switch a bunker guard for a third cele, be it ele or shoutbow. It wasn’t a terrible meta - certainly better than the current one - but I prefer clearly defined roles, strengths and weaknesses, and the all-round nature of cele prevents that, especially when more than half the team is running it.

sephiroth.4217:

Moa is great against Rampage and Minion Mancers.

I know, right. I lost count of how many rampage wars I’ve killed as a moa.

What if thieves could watch for the animations indicating that a trap has been placed, and note the location.

Wait...

As much as thief deserves a turn at getting one skill buffed over and over to achieve "1 button to win" status, I never agreed with that sort of thing on other classes, and like to try to remain objective.

-1.

Better idea. Master minor in daredevil gets the might on evade in addition to the healing. Acro is a full defensive line now, while Daredevil is a mix of defense and offense, and due to thief’s role, Daredevil gets taken more than Acro. Acro will need more than a small buff to make it meta viable again; throwing a small buff into it instead of elsewhere is tantamount to no buff at all since it won’t get used due to not being enough to make the line worth taking.

Stop complaining, wow. Everyone knows it’s fine. ANet gave careful consideration to balance and thief when they introduced these things.

ANet gave us an extra dodge.

It’s a 0.75s evade on a 7.5-10s cool down depending on vigor uptime, working out to be 0.75-0.937s evade every 10s.
Well of precognition equates to a 0.66-1.11s invuln every 10s depending on alacrity uptime.

Well of precog is also AoE, doesn’t cost endurance, has its cool down modifier as a status effect so it can’t be countered with corrupts, and let’s you attack while you use it.

Just like True shot pierces, doesn’t require setting up, has a cool down to match reveal, is unblockable so it can’t be countered with blocks and also in case thieves try to use their new block skill vs it, and let’s you hit hard from a long distance to keep out of the cleave-fest with their superior armour to spare their variety of block and invulnerability skills.

So next time you go QQ about inbalance, remember there is balance. All is well. The classes are balanced with respect to their imbalance compared to thief.

Edit: The post took a turn mid-way. I couldn’t decide whether to make it a troll or serious post.

It’s not entirely because people don’t like seeing warriors that they rage at them, but because most still playing warrior have tunnel vision, and insta die outside of the few seconds of endure pain. So people associate this level with any warrior they see. People also don’t like to accept or recognise their own mistakes. They’d rather blame someone else. Usually this is the thief or warrior, and not because of this meta - it has been like this for a long time.

Getting clueless team mates happens to everyone. I’ve seen elementalists provide no support at all on a point, and think they are good because elementalists are a good class, and they have the right build. It doesn’t occur to them that such a build should be played to support others. I had a match earlier where the ele stood on point watching a DH res a reaper I’d downed, twice in a row. The point was already ours, but even if he was in the process of capping it, securing the kill was more important. I couldn’t stomp - I barely even had enough health to survive the downedstate attacks while cleaving, which was mostly dodging for bound or I’d have died - and between the DH ressing, the reaper’s leech auto attack, and my inability to go full offensive, there wasn’t enough damage to prevent a res. We needed the ele to stomp. After the reaper was ressed, I managed to down him a second time, only to have the same process repeat itself, and he got revived. The point was then lost. The ele firmly believed we lost the point, not because he didn’t come and stomp, but because I didn’t use choking gas. Nevermind the poison on my auto attacks, no. We lost, because I didn’t use choking gas on the downed. He firmly believed it, and pestered me about it after the match in whisper, telling me to learn to play, after blaming the loss on me and the reaper I was partied with.

It doesn’t get better, and it won’t get better. If detailed explanations can’t help them see the real problem when it is so obvious, then such people are beyond hope. The only time you get truly balanced matches is when you get 4 other people on your level to queue with. This is what I strongly suggest doing for there to be any enjoyment come from PvP for you. I doubt I’d still be solo queuing if I didn’t have a full group to run with 2-3 evenings each week; I’d probably have quit a year ago (I did briefly, actually, but the combat system in the game I went to just didn’t compare to thief in GW2).

The system already aims to prevent class stacking. All that is proposed is in addition to that, that it attempts to prevent a full team of one broadly defined role. The checks could probably be carried out as part of the same routine/"simultaneously", meaning there is no added stage of "quality over speed" in the algorithm. Of course this means that the queue can still be longer if for example, you would have otherwise had a team without any stacked classes, but such is so rare that an increase resulting from the proposed change should not be noticed.

I don’t know how Starfall jumped to the suggestion being to make an automatic role calculator for a given build, from "players tick a box."

Yup. I had a forest where the ele says go close and mid, and 1 get beast. 2 of us say no and explain why. He replies with "lol. it’s 25 points and a 50 stat buff. it’s very important." Miraculously, he doesn’t go for it. We wipe mid, however. He and another just tank a DH’s traps and longbow 5, I like an idiot go in to try to res but manage to port not completely onto the target - it put me onto the barrier of one of the longbow 5 cages, and the knockdown of course moved me inside it, where I was bursted while cc’d. Our solo push far also failed. The ele then says "this is why we need beast."

Oh dear.

Then while we are 4 wiped, they take their beast. The ele then says "look, half their points are from beasts and you all said not to take it. if we had taken beast we’d be level."

Oh dear.

2 of us again explain that of course they can take beast when we are wiped, and point out they didn’t take their beast at the start, only after the wipe. He disagrees and accuses the whole team of being in amber, as if division even remotely means anything, below diamond. He then goes after our beast, and another guy helps him instead of actually trying to come back.

So now, the loss combined guy’s inability to understand simple reasoning has reinforced his belief that the beast is crucial to winning and should be rushed even when all enemy players are up, and probably made another poor sod think the same.

Oh dear.

Yup. I had a forest where the ele says go close and mid, and 1 get beast. 2 of us say no and explain why. He replies with "lol. it’s 25 points and a 50 stat buff. it’s very important." Miraculously, he doesn’t go for it. We wipe mid, however. He and another just tank a DH’s traps and longbow 5, I like an idiot go in to try to res but manage to port not completely onto the target - it put me onto the barrier of one of the longbow 5 cages, and the knockdown of course moved me inside it, where I was bursted while cc’d. Our solo push far also failed. The ele then says "this is why we need beast."

Oh dear.

Then while we are 4 wiped, they take their beast. The ele then says "look, half their points are from beasts and you all said not to take it. if we had taken beast we’d be level."

Oh dear.

2 of us again explain that of course they can take beast when we are wiped, and point out they didn’t take their beast at the start, only after the wipe. He disagrees and accuses the whole team of being in amber, as if division even remotely means anything, below diamond. He then goes after our beast, and another guy helps him instead of actually trying to come back.

So now, the loss combined guy’s inability to understand simple reasoning has reinforced his belief that the beast is crucial to winning and should be rushed even when all enemy players are up, and probably made another poor sod think the same.

The hardest part about learning thief in PvP isn’t knowing what to do, but when to do it, and that only comes with experience. It can be time to pull off when your on 2k health or when you’re 12k health; it depends on your cool downs, your team comp, the other team comp, ally and opponent health bars, whether you’re being focused or not, and how much damage is floating around.

There are plenty of guides for conquest strategies around, builds on metabattle, and tips floating about on the forums which I dare say can be recovered using Google. As for what to do when and where, the best thing you can do is keep practicing with awareness of your surroundings and the minimap.

Thief is actually alright to go engage a 1v1 ahead of its team, and then have backup when the target is low. Backup from 1 guy can heal you, and finish the target off. Unfortunately people don’t think like this. If they are already in a fight, they won’t leave it even if it means surviving. They will stay until they die. If you happen to win your 1v1 securing a 2nd cap, it’s your fault your team is losing. It doesn’t matter that they could have split to sides and had a 2 cap to hold. No. They wipe, leave you to hold 2 points 1v4 or 2v5 or whatever, and get annoyed when the points you had are lost. They also don’t think "hmm... If I was left in that position I wouldn’t be able to hold them either." Not thinking, and raging, is easier.

They don’t even go to the right points on respawn. I swear most just pick a point at random and charge it, and stay there till they die.

Oh I have a theory. Games seemed to get a lot better after bunker mesmer nerf. Then, the next day it got worse, and now it’s abysmal. The bunker mesmers stopped playing the mindless bunker mesmer and went back to being trash, only now they are in ruby and diamond division. Very well bloody done again ANet. Finish the fix by throwing them back down to amber.

Salamander.2504:

Impact.2780:

Got to tier 5 ruby a few days ago, and since then it’s several losses, one rough win, several loses etc. Constantly getting either complete clueless team mates, 1-2 bads that insta die when they reach a point or suicide 1vX, or 3 alright team mates vs a good team, but one pug is so awful it’s like he’s playing for the other team. Being constantly put in the team with the imbeciles or bads is starting to make my blood boil. You can’t tell who is decent or bad from a forum post so there really is no point to an angry post like this, but for God’s sake, I just don’t know what to do. It really is lost on me how anyone can be so bad.

The comps too. Stop giving me bloody warriors and 2x DH.

J/c, are the scrubs also Ruby?

Most if not all. I’ve seen a few sapphire and diamond in my teams but I can’t match the badge with the name, class or match.

Got to tier 5 ruby a few days ago, and since then it’s several losses, one rough win, several loses etc. Constantly getting either complete clueless team mates, 1-2 bads that insta die when they reach a point or suicide 1vX, or 3 alright team mates vs a good team, but one pug is so awful it’s like he’s playing for the other team. Being constantly put in the team with the imbeciles or bads is starting to make my blood boil. You can’t tell who is decent or bad from a forum post so there really is no point to an angry post like this, but for God’s sake, I just don’t know what to do. It really is lost on me how anyone can be so bad.

The comps too. Stop giving me bloody warriors and 2x DH.

Make this into a multiple choice exam that must be passed each time you want to queue ranked.

I started to make an actual reply to this, initially thinking sure, why not. It might disuade condi thieves from mindlessly spamming dodge, and making dodge spam builds thinking they are MVP. But then there are situations where you do need to double dodge, and reckless dodge doesn’t have an ICD - although necro mark of blood on dodge does. Then I figured, noobs will be noobs anyway. Heck, they’d probably run the same build and still spam dodge. It’s a bad build and a bad pick for a trait in PvP as it is, so why care if it has no ICD.

Shovel Face.4512:

So people think it’s good to add survivabilty to the class whether it’s through traits, runes, amulets, etc. Well I say no to this and instead what you should be doing is adding as much power as you can.

Shovel Face.4512:

you could still hold your own using a full offense build with dash as your dodge.

Shovel Face.4512:

lol

Hypocrisy!

Take bound.

---------------------

Taking damage over survivability as a damage dealer is called specializing in your role. This is not a new concept or perspective. Role diversity means different interdependent roles working together to achieve greater potential in pressure, group sustain, rotations and in being able to out play comps consisting of just 1 or 2 roles, stacked. This was the in case in PvP in GW2 around 1.5 years ago, before warriors got pushed out by recursive support compositions consisting of cele elementalist, cele engineer and bunker guardian, and then bunker guardian got pushed out for cele shoutbow. Celestial allowing jack-of-all-trades team fight builds began to be more rewarding, less risky, and easier to use and rotate with than individuals specializing in different roles. Jack of all trade team fighters and constant recursive support resulted in fights lasting longer and damage dealers needing to sacrifice some damage for survivability. Some even went so far as to become barely worth taking as a damage dealer, and fell from meta. I think ANet’s aim with HoT was to return the meta to one in which roles are more clearly specialised in, but of course they mucked it up by introducing more of what players keep saying they hate: invulnerability and strong overly-rewarding passives. Chained invulnerability that can be applied to allies, and defensive passives more rewarding that successfully landing a hard cc between invulnerability and evade frames. Not to mention the introduction of resistance and slow, and the genius idea to make alacrity a status effect instead of a boon that might be countered. Nevertheless, for thief/daredevil, taking more damage over survivability is practically mandatory.

TLDR; not a new perspective/concept - rather, an old one someone just now realised.

Except, people still say they lost because they had a thief on their team.... When the other team also had a thief.

Whatever helps them convince themselves they are not the problem.

What is the logic? That is a very, very good question, and one with a long, complicated answer:

Winning.

CD increase would probably make PvE QQ. The other way to deal with it in PvP would be to make alacrity a boon so it can be stolen, corrupted and removed, and to reduce alacrity duration to both effectively give WoP a longer effective cool down, and to balance it for boon duration. Sure it’d be a slight nerf in PvE as well but they’ll live. The main counter would be being able to.. counter it - the increased cool down rate from wells. You can counter boons, but you can’t counter status effects.

Welcome. As you’re new to thief we’ll inform you of something important to consider when talking about class skill and trait changes:

Don’t trust ANet to buff thief, even if it’s their honest intention.

Depends on the people you get.

Some see thief and complain.
Some see thief and complain and throw or don’t contribute.
Some blame the thief for others in the team giving up early because there is a thief.
Some target you for blame if you speak up against the missplays like zerging close vs 1 or point out what the team needs to do to have a chance.
Some don’t care.
Some play a truly ineffective "carry-me" build and blame the thief start to finish.
Some blame the thief when the issue is the comp i.e. 2 DH vs a lot of on sustain and point pressure.
Some start to perform your role instead of you so you can’t get stealth decaps and have a weaker team fight.
Some compliment you during the match by saying only they and you have a clue, and the other 3 are bads.
Some compliment you after the match.
Some block you and rage-whisper you after the match.
Some want to party with you after the match.
Some go onto the forums after the match to complain about thieves.
Some go onto the forums after the match to complain about people complaining about thieves.
Some thieves go onto the forums after the match to complain about their class.
Some thieves go onto the forums after the match to subtly suggest other complaining thieves are just doing something wrong because they themselves are getting praised.
Some go onto the forums to ask a question to which the answer is obvious.
Some go onto the forums for a laugh.

Nice joke thread.

Like my joke post?

It depends on your role and buid thus-far.

I don’t WvW but I’d imagine the role would be to roam, and win fights by taking advantage of your mobility and the time you have to win them. Take whichever one enables your build thus-far to complement that role the most.

In PvP, your role is likely damage roamer, and since the game is very time sensitive and you’re with allies a lot of the time and if not, can rotate to them, you want to specialise in your role as much as you can without being an easy target. It’s the same principle as outlined above, but since I actually play this game mode I can say - at least in most cases - that the best pick would be bound.

Silverkey.2078:

No

Class stacking is not the issue. Class and build balance is. Gw2 is designed around build diversity within each class. There is absolutely nothing similar between a bunker chrono and a shatter mesmer, why would we prevent them from playing together?

This.

If you have two or more of the same CLASS in a comp, it’s not a problem, unless each one of that same class is performing a different role better than all other classes, in which case it’s a balance issue, and other classes capable of performing that role need to be buffed so that it becomes a difficult choice between the options, and each are viable in the right comp.

If you have two or more of the same BUILD in a comp, it’s a problem, and that problem is also the result of a balance issue in which either two of that same class running the same build are better together than two different classes – i.e. one class complements itself better than a different class – and fixing that issue would either bring other classes and builds of that role into the meta or if the difference in synergy is significant enough, bring in a different role and therefore potentially a different strategy.

Whether the druids I encounter are bad or not I can’t say because I’ve not encountered one significantly better than the rest yet. I find them either squishy and fairly easy to kill once stone signet is done, or very healing-oriented in which case they don’t even have enough pressure to force me - a thief - off the point as long as the stolen healing seed doesn’t get interrupted.

I never thought they would make it in the meta because all they do is heal. Their damage comes from their pet, which is as it always has been - ridiculous for a tanky built player because the pet has its own stats. That’s the only good aspect. As a support role it lacks allied condi cleanse and boon support, making tempests, mesmers (until yesterday) and even support DH, in my opinion, better at performing the role. Furthermore, aside from healing, a druid’s survival comes from a high CD signet, and a lot of dazes which can of course be countered by a lot of stability of which engineers/scrappers, tempests and heralds have, and support dragonhunters can pump out to allies.

Another important point is splits. If you have a druid filling a support spot, it isn’t a full role on its own without the boon and condi cleanse support, meaning it needs another support or half-support built player with it to amount to one full support build plus. Two half supports is worse than one full support and something like a reaper, herald or daredevil, and also worse than two cele support team fighters. It’s fairly decent in 1v1, but it can’t decap a point or kill another tanky player like a tempest, making it even less effective - although more versatile - than the old decap engi.

Downed allies always have the downed icon. Yes, it’s an "ally downed" icon. It does not show for enemy players. In PvP, an enemy being downed is indicated by a downward pointing red arrow. The icons are very different and different ones are used to distinguish a downed ally from a downed enemy. If you have no trouble recognising the icons - as you seem to imply - you have no reason to argue so aggressively about it as an issue, unless, of course - as you seem to imply - you don’t know there are two different downed player icons, one for ally and one for foe. If the latter is indeed the case, then you’ve learned something today: there are two different downed icons! Either way, a simple, "idea: In PvP, make the downed icon the colour of your team and enemy downed icon the colour of their team, so that it is clearer to new players," would have been a much better approach to suggesting what you’d like changed.

Delete all invulnerability and immunity, except stability.

Yeah! Then we can have 3 mesmer 4 revenant 1 tempest comps!

So that PvP will be fun again!

It’s nice to be told of updates in advance, even if it is only a day. Really though, assuming this game is going e-sports and has a large competitive player-base, informing players about upcoming updates and at least some if not most of what is going to be in them should be done at least a week ahead of time so players have time to prepare for the shift - especially if tournaments are upcoming or ongoing at the time. It’s nice to hear that this might be the aim - a new year’s resolution? - but we’ve seen it started before, and it’s great, but then after 1-2 weeks it’s back to silence. So I will remain skeptical.

I would also like to assume that the lateness in dealing with the game breaking builds and unbalanced skills is due to a lot of changes being done and bundled together. Well, firstly, ideally, they would be made live as and when they are completed - not held back to be released in a big bundle. If there is a fix for a problem that is making aspects of the game frequently un-enjoyable, they should be applied! Secondly, I can’t assume there will be a lot of changes because most of the times in the past we’ve been waiting extremely patiently for months for a "big" balance patch, there wasn’t actually that much in it, and it hardly made an impact to gameplay except for one or two classes, leaving the meta the same. So I’ll be remaining skeptical on that, too.

This time hoping to be proven wrong instead of right.