Guild Wars 2

In wvw all is about War / Guards / Eles / Necros.
I have been asked by my guild to re-roll to War / Guard or Ele and let my mesmer out. (no joke).
We have 1 mesmer that will just veil bot and that will be all.
As a result I am levelling a Guardian. But to be honest I feel Warrior much superior for the moment and Number 1 in all parts in WvW:
1) Roaming : awesome speed and duel capability => close to N1 duelist and good counter to thief.
2) Group even stronger in group with its CC capability.
3) Zerg: King of CC / Sustain damage / Tanking =>King of the zerg. Big hit profession so not blasted by awfull retaliation like other professions that make numerous little hits (engi / mesmers / …)

You can add that Arenanet considers worth buffing their support abilities with shouts in next patch.
Meanwhile they think about enhnacing a little bit mantras to mesmers.(OMG what is wrong in their heads.)

In top of all of that Warriors are god tier in PVE.

So take warrior (already highest played profession by far). Arena can not nerf them anymore as they will loose 20% of their players.

Finaly as they want more players in tpvp, I am seriously thinking that they are intentionally making them gods to drive PVE and WvW boys (highest majority are warriors) there.

Excalibur.9748:

Kicast.1459:

I think the change is good as it will improve thieves skill cap.
With all the L2P I see in their forum, I am pretty sure they have all the necessary skill to succeed in this new ambitious challenge.
Or maybe it will be time for them to start seeing what is L2P.

What’s the point of sticking with thief if warrior and necro is better? It’s not going to improve anyone’s skillcap, they’re just going to move to the next FotM. If they haven’t already that is.

Well currently, thieves are recognized as a real value in tPvP and are considered in a good spot: High burst, high dps, high survivability thanks to spammy evades and stealth, high mobility and even good support with boon stripping.
Changes coming were unavoidable to try to come back to a kind of balance. I think also that further steps are required and coming. Good new is that devs proceed carrefully step by step. This will let thieves try other powerfull builds and have time to adapt to new diversity.

We have been facing same situation on mesmer side. This is a long (very long) process that will sometime hurt but has to be taken as a challenge. What a satisfaction to be able sometime to beat a stronger profession and not always being at the favorite position.
I am not really affraid for thieves as I am sure they love their profession for its gameplay and not its current opness. In the end it will be a perfect opportunity for them to show that thieves required skill & strategy.

I think the change is good as it will improve thieves skill cap.
With all the L2P I see in their forum, I am pretty sure they have all the necessary skill to succeed in this new ambitious challenge.
Or maybe it will be time for them to start seeing what is L2P.

But I agree with hrkljus: evade need also to be toned down (increase initiative cost would be a solution) to avoid spammy skill. This will also enhance the skill cap and drive thieves step by step to use a second button more often.

selan.8354:

agree with u. spvp balance is to blame. we are officially stuck as a class. we are duelists only. spvp mesmers do well and that prevents us from getting anything..

Are you serious ?
Mesmer is considered already by all top tPvP player as unviable.
…
UNVIABLE in 5v5…lol…I mean WTF ??? And then come your second sentence:

There is no place left to shine anywhere currently.

all we will get is spvp passive and support utilities unless they nerf the mesmer to the ground in spvp and then finally give us something we can use in wvw. it is sooo frustrating.

That woulb be the logic. But in reality and as I just said….mesmers are already underdogs of sPvP and what we face is buff to 40% population: warrior.
OMG sometimes I am just really wandering what is the logic
Our major tools to do something in wvw have been remove one by one:
Confusion: nerf down to hell
Blured fenzy: to avoid now at all cost on a retal zerg (you will just die from yourselves).

Mesmer is already least played profession.
Not viable in tPvP
Time warp bot / Veil bot in WvW

Warriors / Guardians keep being uped.
Ok I am done. I stop now my mes. It is middle/long term dead.

Natronix.9827:

CodexG.7593:

Thieves are one of the most imbalanced professions at the moment. It’s not because of their damage (even though initiative allows them to spam their skills A LOT) but because of stealth. The only way to counter it is to spend karma and badges on traps which also cost supply to deploy. To me the only way to balance them is to either nerf their dmg (which is the worse scenario as it will hit their pve) or give every profession a sill to deal with stealth.

Thats not true… thieves are horrible for group play, and a few cc’s can get the stealth lovers down in a few hits. No offense but this is more of a l2p scenario

I play vs a lot of thieves in spvp. Some are still imbalanced but never I faced such an amount of damage. Moreover I play full zerk in spvp.

I feel difference is hudge between wvw and spvp. It is out of control.

And no I don’t think it is a l2p issue. While I am not a great player, I am used to deal with plenty of thieves in spvp / tpvp and I have some success.

Hello,

Some figures from an encounter with a standalone thief.
All happened in 3 sec maximum.
I blinked and dodge twice.
I am full rabid: thus I am supposed to mitigate a lot of direct damage.

I find the figures crazy. How can he reach such numbers

How to deal with such spammy insane damage ?

Thanks for your help.

Dear Kreios,

I bellong to those who think it is absolutely obvious that as long as a profession is viable in PVE, only pvp balance issues count.
Why ?
Because there is no issue (at least for the moment) to participate in PvE with any profession. Player will find (have already found) ways to manage any PvE content with all professions.
Indeed it is more challenging for some particular profession but it is possible.
Mobs are not abusing on your weakness and you can always be more reactive / clever to find solution on your predicted opponents.
In PvE: the question is : “will I be able to finish this dungeon / quest / event ?”
All profession today can say yes.

In PvP this is not the same situation. The question is: “will I be able to compete against other professions ?”
Here the answer is no for some professions.

To come back to one of your questions and don’t take it bad as I sincerely believe what I am saying:

tats not the point i can change build ^^. the point is why i have to

-First because you can: You can change to a build that still will work
But currently on PvP side, most classes (one counter only identified: warrior) cannot manage (according to top-tier players) the inbalance of Ranger build.
-Second because you don’t even have to.

kreios.7108:

i dont pvp at all and any patch i found miself asking why? someone got killled in pvp so i wont get mi pet fixed why xD

You are not alone. What Anet must do is to give a place to everyone in any type of the games.
All profession must be able to complete the Pve Content (which is the case now)
All profession must have a place in PvP (which is far from being the case currently). (at least 2 professions are completely/heavily excluded from tournaments)
All profession must have an added value in WvW to compete for their server. (here i feel situation is not well balanced to: warrior (40%) / guardian (25%) / necro (20%) trains – some ele (5%) for buffs – one or two mesmer required for veil botting – no engies no ranger really wished – thief nice to have but more for camp capping / roaming)

colesy.8490:

Working as intended. A lot of things in the game have a 5 ally cap.

Well thanks for the answers…but are shouts from guardian also limited ?

Hi colleagues,

After some tests, I noticed that inspiration signet is limited to a limited number of allies when activated.
I find no source of this limitation anywhere, so can someone please confirm if it is a bug or if it is working as intended ?

Thanks in advance

KOPPER.1458:

Kicast: Who said anything about a 1 month holiday?

JonathanSharp.7094:

We get tired. Emotional. Fatigued. Excited. You name it. Ask any dev from any game, and they’ll tell you – they’ve been through it all in order to ship a game. And just like you (who are also not robots), we take vacations. We hit caps where we’re just so tired that we need to back off, recharge, take a vacation, and then come back to the project.

Well I personnaly appreciate the communication effort.
Nevertheless, the facts are stubborn.
-2 months of horrid metta with no change due to PAX
-Now 1 month hollidays
…
-Then of course we will need an additional month to get the patch (at least)

Don’t you feel something is too long here ?

It is not my role to give solution but maybe Anet just should put back the patch before Warrior / Necro / Condi up for us to wait as they have neither time nor energy to do something else.
That is what people do in big entreprises when a Go-Live fails: ROLL-BACK.

Quoting dev own words:
“It may suck to have YOUR build and YOUR class slightly brought down in power, but, here’s the thing, it’s good for the game at large. So don’t think that we hate X class. We love all the classes. But sometimes we need to adjust a few things in order to protect the health of the overall game.”

Slightly ???? Could someone please tell me… what happened slightly in the last changes ?
-Ele and Mesmer are heavily out of the game.
-Rangers / Warriors / Necro / have became heavily powerfull

leungclj.4915:

Kicast.1459:

If you want to make a descent burster in spvp and be viable in tpvp in current meta you have only the following build working:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV8YlUmKO3eS6E/5Ex2DfuTe6VgsaPcJNhJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNsYZxuAA

Hope this will allow you to avoid loosing time.

I thought he wanted a memser build =/

Yeah…I know but maybe it is still possible for him to avoid a big mistake.
So I gave him a chance.

If you want to make a descent burster in spvp and be viable in tpvp in current meta you have only the following build working:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV8YlUmKO3eS6E/5Ex2DfuTe6VgsaPcJNhJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNsYZxuAA

Hope this will allow you to avoid loosing time.

There is one anomaly in this thread….

…one line is closed to be correct.

Kicast.1459:

Did you see preliminary PAX tournaments ?
I did not see a single mesmer in 6 matches (both EU and US).

Mesmer is not low…it is dead.

Great job Arenanet. Nice diversity.

At least I saw one mesmer (REIGN team). No necessary to mention that REIGN loose…by far.

Did you see preliminary PAX tournaments ?
I did not see a single mesmer in 6 matches (both EU and US).

Mesmer is not low…it is dead.

Great job Arenanet. Nice diversity.

Not a single mesmer in EU pre PAX tournament final. The two teams (TP and CC) were far above the others.
Obviously mesmer are pretty strong…but less than
-Necro
-Thief
-Engineer
-Guardian
-Elementalist
-Ranger

I can’t tell if warrior is now better.
What an OP class…..please nerf more.

Perma stealth thieves with portal.
Again…wonderfull design arenanet. How on earth could they not foresee that this will be abused over and over.
No more golem required to take a castle now.
Just let a perma stealth thieve and wait 10 minutes for a insta ninja.

And while we are at it…please give to us all hundred blades and initiative please.

A big GG to Arenanet to put such mechanics…awesome…great job

This thread is a wonder:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Level-80-D-P-in-WvW-Where-am-I-going-wrong

If you want to hear from a thief that
- thieves are OP
- perma-stealth exists and that it makes you unkillable
- perma-stealth thieves have still hudge damage

you’d better present yourself as a thief.

Some delicious parts:

“Standard perma-stealth build of 0/30/30/10/0 outputs enough damage. Heavies will take time to kill but you should be completely unkillable using perma-stealth.”

“On a better note I did manage to engage in and win a 2v1 against a Mesmer and Ranger. It wasn’t the most spectacular of fights but I was quite pleased considering my inexperience so it was a morale victory to say the least.”

And top of the top, they feel that not being able to kill someone while more numerous is “incredibly frustrating” :

“A similar thing happened with an Elementalist, only it was myself and 2 others versus her and despite a good minute of combat she must have got bored and decided to retreat to a Keep with a sizeable amount of health still intact. I have to admit, that fight was incredibly frustrating.”

Well that is exactly what thieves do to all other classes in a much bigger ratio.

But ok, it is just a
-L2P issue
-You just have to know where thief is and what he will do
-If he let you, you win

It seems Thief community feets perfectly well with profession mentality.

colesy.8490:

He means that pyro mentioning phantasm builds not being completely kitten means they’ll get hit with the nerf bat again.

Erf…ok ok I am sorry :-)
I fear I am still not too used to the nerf bat chains.

We have a sentence in France for that: “Pour vivre heureux…vivons cachés”
which I would translate this way: “To live happy, live in secret”

Cyber.1798:

… you don’t have the right to just kill the profession simply because of your sorry excuse for PvP tests…

…uhhh…..yes they have…
and they just showed you they can

This is a standard MMORPG behavior: To keep (bored / leaving) people playing…you have to provide them new objectives. Easiest way is to force them to re-roll / change stuff.
It has always been and will be always as long as they do not find a good way to keep you there.

Expansive.3716:

Yea Pyro you’re a good guy and pretty helpful, but sometimes you talk a little too much lol. No offense though

I do not see exactly what do you want to explain regarding the topic ?
I just see nothing but pure personal offense here.

AndrewSX.3794:

Just saying, Shatter is the only one nearly untouched – aside BF nerf.

Which I feel is hudge for shatter mesmer…so this why I created this post as it is not the focus on previous topics which are much more general nerf discussions.

I would like to get the opinion on advance spvp players on the state of the shatter mesmer in this domain.

Dear colleagues,
I saw the patch and your comment on the overall nerf on mesmer.
I read that the only remaining viable build is the shatter one. This is my prefered one at least in sPvP and made a try to check how it is now.
Well I was hurt by the blurred fenzy CD pretty hard.
I had the impression to spend lot of time avoiding focus to wait for the next try for a burst. And here I come to my concern:
1) I feel mesmer boring in combat…feel like I have to wait frequently…which is very frustrating.
2) I feel that I cannot take tanky build down anymore as my sustain damage is now too low. I know sustain damage was already an issue for shatter mesmer in the past (saw a never ending duel between Osicat and D/D ele) but now it is a nightmare.
I feel that without a teamate…I can do nothing on an avergage tanky build:
- ranger => not possible to down in one burst => hit him at 30% of his health on first burst and back 100% when next burst came
- D/D ele => lol…not worth even mentionning it
- Guard => same as ranger but life never bellow 50%
- Engineer ….
…
All the guys I had in front of me were pretty bad as they made an eternity to touch me. I was almost sometimes ignored and could land 4 to 5 burst attempt while they were focusing on other teamates. But in the end they never went down.
(I am full berserk and do not know how to maximise my dps)
I base my burst on vulnerability F3 then doubled image and F1

Do you have the same concern ?
Is shatter still really the only viable build or is there no more viable builds ?

Thanks in advance

Well isn’t blured frenzy breaking the shatter build as the burst can only apply with a much lower rate ?

Nebilim.5127:

DevonCarver.5370:

Orbs will never come back in the form they had as they simply were too easy to hack around. With that said, we are definitely working on finding a suitable replacement for the best parts of the orbs, while avoiding as many of the downsides as we can. It’s not simple task though, so it isn’t as simple as deciding to do it one day and finishing it the next. Our goal is to get a new and improved version out when we can, but we can’t say yet when that will be.

There are several ways of dealing with that. You could just add a very tough champion that would require a zerg to defeat him to be able to take the orb out, much like the giant grub.
.

Flyhack + Mesmer = massive zerg on any point anywhere with only one hacker.
End of story.

Caom.9251:

Guys we have a thread for QQ both for thinking the thief is UP or OP.

Can we not clutter up our forum with crap, can’t we be more like the mesmers with their constructive criticism, builds , guides etc…

I think it is a sign that there is a real problem with thieves:
-The one who do not want to loose their charming efficient toy
-The others who feel the situation is completely unfair

When you have non constructive discussion it is because someone has no interest on doing it. Guess who whishes that no conclusions can be taken ? Those who want a change or the others ?

Main arguments I saw:
For “Thieves are ok or need a up”:
-Thiefes are squishy
-High risk high reward
-Designed to be high burst / high mobility / high escape
-Anticipate
-Guess when backstab will land
-No place in zergs
-PVE useless
-If the thieve leaves…you won … so be happy (=> I promise I saw this one)
-L2P

For “Thieves have a complete broken mechanic”:
-Thief can reset the match as long as he is not the winner
-High reward / No risk
-OP engagement damage
-Escape when he wants
-Perma stealth
-Uncatchable if the thief wants to leave
-OP condi removal / OP health regen / OP Stun break / OP dodge machine / OP initiative regen
-4 sec to kill a thief otherwise thief stealths / resets fight / restarts fight => impossible on a dodge / teleporting machine

To be honest I agree that thieves are squishy but I fully disagree to the “High risk High reward” => Thief is by far the class with less risk if played with caution (no comparison possible to other professions)

Dear colleagues,

After the nerf on confusion, I have tried to change my gameplay in WvW.
No more zergs but some roaming with a shatter spec in little groups (2 to 5 members).
What I have been noticing since last patch is that now my staff is agroing everything around a fight.
It is even worth against thiefs as dodging makes clone which attacks closest creature if the thief is stealthed. Wasn’t it something supposed to be fixed ?
I can end-up fighting with up to 4 creatures on me in top of my target.

So my question is: does the mechanic work as intended. Do I have to live with that or may I expect a fix coming ?

Episoph.5289:

The biggest issue for itV is the lack of viable counterplay to it .

Yes it has: dodge / stability.
Average success on grabing someone with iTv is 50% to 60% i would say.
Neverending dodging thieves are a pain to catch.
Do we play the same game ? Or maybe SR escape is now broken because it does not provide 100% success rate ?
I am wandering if this message is not a troll….

Epic…
It seems poor thiefs feel unconfortable on landing backstab on mesmers.
Unacceptable. Providing frustration to others should be kept for thiefs. It is in class design.
Fix it fix !

Same…once stealth trap triggered the thief teleport and outruned us 30 sec and come back to harass an finish us.
Working as intended…L2P blablabla…no advice..
Indeed I have less problem with stealth in sPvP because Thiefs have to force a quick fight otherwise they loose.
It seems that many of skilled thiefs on this forum have not identified this specificity

Well,

I would like to thank you for the tips that some of you gave. Particularly Alchemist for the open-minded and constructive feedback.
Some of them were kitten however.
I particularly appreciated the flow of L2P and last but not least one:

“Wait until you see the blinding powder, then use focus to pull him. This should pull him out of stealth at which time gives your thief buddy an opportunity to burst.”

Well it seems that counter to thief is to play with a thief. What a good mechanic.

PS: When I say I belong to top EU server does not mean I am a good player. I am not and I know it. I am just trying to know what I could do if I were a good one. However I have been playing with very good guilds players. They are in the same situation than me: even in Zerg they feel unable to organize counter scouting on harrassing thiefs without … thiefs team.

I saw Osicat vids…pretty kitten good mesmer. I see him win 1v1 duels. While playing close to perfectly with a very good anticipation, he is always about to die and I had the feeling that the thief could have run away whenever he wanted. The thief however played the game of the duel and did not wait for complete CDs return.

And for the advice of rolling a thief…well I did it in sPvP. For the moment 5 games won out of 6. I am tempted to try leveling one in wvw
I was, I am sure, pretty lucky and didn’t play in tournaments. WvW is not tournament though.

Dear Arenanet and thief community,
Me as a mesmer feel lost while roaming alone or in group once me and my teamates encounter a perma stealthed thief.
What can I do against a perma stealthed thief ?
I have been reading plenty of Arenanet dev claiming that we have to learn to play against this profession.
I am on the top EU server since beginning. Me and my teamates still do not understand.
Do you feel perma stealth against a 10 men group is not broken ?
What are the counter ?
Now that mesmer are not valuable anymore in zergs whith confusion / time warp nerfs…what can mesmer do while roaming and being chained agressed by untuchable thief ?
Ignore him ? What if the thief does not ignore me ?
Is thief the only class able to roam without risk at all ?
Thanks for your help.

Clearly a bug as feed back applies only on projectiles.