Guild Wars 2

Please vote for it.

I’ve already played about a dozen matches since the changes, and of the 4-5 times skyhammer has appeared as a choice, I’ve never once gotten in. Please let’s take the time to test the new maps.

Sadly, I know most people here already know there has been an update and are likely experimenting with it, but alas, I don’t know what else to do. Not that I hate the other maps, but skyhammer seems the hardest to get a match in so far for me. I’ve played spirit watch 3 times already during that too. People or my luck just doesn’t want me to see skyhammer. ;<

Ya, as a veteran this caught me by surprise a few times myself. I’ve always managed to make it out before the timer ends, but sometimes by the skin of my teeth. I’ve seen teammates leave the starting area much later, and I agree that it’s silly. Maybe add a sound to countdown starting.

Funny enough I took this time to 80 a guardian. The only character I never made it to max level on. I’ve always really like the guardian, but leveling was slow. The change to retreat means getting perma-swifteness just got way easier.

I played guardian a bunch last season in pvp, and I’m finding it to still be viable for random games so far. It still has that feeling of being slow, but when you arrive you change fights. I wouldn’t be against many improvements to guardian’s less utilized utilities. There are a lot. Either way, looking forward to playing guardian, especially that they are no a bandwaggon class. I hate playing dime a dozen characters.

I was so tired of the meta that once I hit legend, I barely played any ranked games, just enough to finish my achieves actually. Then I realized how expensive the legend backpiece is, and put it on hold. However, last season was fun for a time, but it grew very stale. I’m really hoping they include a few more changes before next season, and we’d be in the perfect play for a more varied meta.

Dahkeus.8243:

Vornollo.5182:

Agreed on all accounts here.
I’m still a big advocate of having Cloak and Dagger (dagger #5 for those unaware) to put a Blind on the enemy hit with it. Not only would it help S/D, it’d also go miles for (power) D/D users.

Totally agree with that suggestion. The blind on stealth trait helped make D/D viable in WvW back before HoT, but with the new DD trait line, the SA trait line just doesn’t fit like it used to. A blind on CnD would go a long way.

Yes, this used to be a feature of the old build, but now it competes with regen in stealth. I played some games as power d/d and it was fun, but it just doesn’t compare to any of our other sets in terms of viability. Off-hand dagger is the perfect place to buff.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I feel like 24/7 ladder would create a lot of burnout. Plus there wouldn’t be time for big balance patches to settle before the season starts.

Regarding matchmaking, it seems that two camps are developing. What about ranked matchmaking do you prefer over unranked?

I agree with you in regards to burnout if ladder was 24/7. But I wanted to answer as to why many of us prefer ranked.

1) There is a different player mentality in ranked. More people are using proper builds, conducting rotations, and the level of play on average is often much higher. This is not a built in feature, but rather an adaptation the community has come to. You practice in unranked and you play your real games in ranked. Without ranked, there is only practice.

2) This is related to the map pool, which has been arguably greatly improved with this patch. I enjoy spirit watch now, and even after 3 days I still haven’t been able to get into skyhammer. However, ranked has always offered a place to play specific maps that many players prefer.

I think keeping the mode open between seasons would rock, but honestly, with the changes to the old maps this patch, I want to check them out and play them. So this is the first off-season I’m not missing ranked. I also have finals, so its a little easier to play for fun than be serious in a game. However, I know there are still many players that want more competitive matches.

I haven’t been into the map yet, but there is not even a single way to die in that map? Why not have everyone just run into eachother attacking without using heals after one team captures all the points.

I myself used these maps from time to time to finish a daily (before the recent change to pvp dailies) And the general idea was to run into each other, hit everyone and jump to your death. There was also players that would help you get defender daily or what not at b. So, it is going to be slower, but couldn’t they just slaughter each other for a slower yet similar effect. I’ve seen many players in there go down before jumping due to 1 spam of other players, it can’t take too much longer to snuff that player. In fact, this could actually be wicked fun, just large 5v5 battle royals, where you ignore points until the time runs out. (one team holding all 3) Players could take turns killing each other if one team is superior. Either way, I miss courtyard and would play that sometimes.

Spirit watch was awesome, but I felt the orbs should spawn at specific minutes, unless I’m mistaken, they spawn 2 minutes after being capped now, so only the first one is at a specific time. Either way, it was a great experience, and I would love to see this, maybe with a few touchups in ranked this season. One of my favorite maps. Sadly, few are voting for skyhammer and still haven’t gotten in.

ps: Nerf mesmer (read the threads)

Cataca.3867:

Expiatus.4210:

So I figured it out, mesmers are Kralkatorrik minions, so its not a PvP match but a mini-boss fight. PvM – Player versus Mesmer! The other 4 players are just adds/trash mobs.

The new meta will be a 5 man comp—tank, dps and one support just to take on the mesmer and their triple alacrity uber PU shatter attack, all the while dodging the power wells of timey-whimey stuff.

Usually when a match starts and i see no mesmers on the enemy team, i just tell everyone to sit back and ejoy, because i got this. I then just press my elite and have 90% uptime of moa on everone. Because continuum split allows me to travel back in time, thus clone myself and multiply my uses of everything. The issue is when another mesmer is on the team, then its called the “time wars” and the server is likely to explode

I came here for proof mesmer is OP and I found it. *Scurries off to send this to the devs.

But seriously, mesmer was on the OP side before the update, everyone simply expected it to get some shavings to decrease the power creep that occurred with HoT.

Classes people wanted to see nerfed in S2:
Necro (condi dmg)
Mesmer (Moa + condi pressure)
Rev (dmg/sustain)
DH (burst)
Scrapper (sustain)
Ele (sustain, although they had no alternative so they got spared)
Ranger (rezes nerfed)

What happened:
Necro (Condi dmg nerfed)
Mesmer (slight buffs)
Rev (slightly touched in terms of both damage and sustain)
DH (burst slightly lowered, and made harder to pull off with the bow changes)
Scrapper (sustain nerfed)
Ele (slight buffs to try and give them another build outside support)
Ranger (rez ability nerfed)

So some people are surprised with mesmer, and since ele wasn’t really killing anyone, just supporting, people are more frustrated with mesmer. I personally think that nerfing moa would be enough for this upcoming season. I’m very excited to see how things develop. However, mes was already played a lot at the higher level last season, it didn’t get nerfed like the other outliers, and its main counter (reaper) got nerfed. Some claim warrior can fill this role now, but I’m not so sure. Mes is still a squishy class, so nerfs will have to be carefully considered.

One last thing, a lot of people (myself included) consider fighting mesmer to be the least fun fight in the game. However, the problem is made much worse when you get two mesmers or three (especially if they look the same). I hate any meta where mesmers have large presence. I like having a few of them around, but they simply siphon fun away when their numbers increase. (Funny considering mesmer is all about clones, but it just gets annoying seeing 10 characters who look alike. Focusing a target is a pain.

Dahkeus.8243:

Loboling.5293:

Right now thieves are bringing in close to 30k dps. So the difference is about 10k between ranger and thief, while the thief doesn’t bring any utility (outside stealth), and the ranger is boosting everyone’s damage by about 20%. That is about 5k dps boost for each party member, so I think Ranger damage is fine, so long as they maintain so much support.

Yea, I can hit 30k dps on my thief by just autoattacking with the staff and nothing else, lol.

But a thief won’t bring all the group buffs like spotter, spirits, GotL, etc. and they certainly can’t heal.

However, I’m curious what ranger DPS would be like if pets were able to receive boons too…

No, thief 30k dps includes using weakening charge. I haven’t done the test myself yet, but I will soon, I just saw someone else post it. I think it was like 26k dps with just auto attack.

I both played against it and with a similar build, and I found it really strong. Only thing that may worry it is a condi mes, and in fact when I played I could sustain 3v1 for a bit, but didn’t face off against a condi mes. (although necro is not bad now) When I fought against the build on my thief, I couldn’t down the guard. I ended up having to avoid his point (he was mid in LotF), which eventually led to our loss. Seems to be really powerful.

Edit: I want to mention that thief 1v1 can down ele and ranger eventually, so it was surprising that guard was even more tanky and, even with help I found it hard to land the kill, although not impossible.

Not sure if this should be posted here, but how come more aren’t talking about the improved bunker guard. I played some games last night and it was really strong.

I tried a burning spirit weapon build yesterday. Had some funny moments, but they are not really viable. Funny enough the build was best at 1v1ing revs. In fact, it was farily solid 1v1, but more than that and it fell off. Once I placed 24 burn stacks on a rev at a bad time, its gg. I also killed one trying to run, he thought he got away, but they chased him off point, didn’t realize I got him until he showed up on the map. No harm in trying things out. But I don’t think it’s as strong as the current bunker guard.

I played about 8 games yesterday and I couldn’t get into skyhammer…. Either way, I got to try LotF, and I really liked the change. I won my game by the skin of my teeth with our lord in down state, so I think it was a successful change.

Spirit watch I love now. I think the diminished value on the orb early game, the higher score from it, and the removal of profession skills when carrying the orb are fantastic changes. I think spiritwatch may become my new favorite map. One thing, I found it hard to predict the orb spawning, it should be every 2 minutes. (10-8-6-4-2) Instead it seems to take 2 minutes from the time it was capped. Maybe this could work, but it gets confusing I found.

Most players with the title played way fewer games than that though. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe I played something in the order to 200 games this season.

I have a total of 2600 games since 3 years ago. So I play an average of 160 games a season, but I’m sure I played a bit more this season, so closer to 200 games. Also, keeping 50% win rate this season was harder than last season. I went on many win streaks for 8 or more games. I understand that by grinding enough, with some skill you can get there. And frankly I’m much more proud of legend this season than last.

I think you’ll find that most people in legend either did it by grouping up and coordinating, or are simply decent-to-good players like myself who solo queued all the way to legend. It wasn’t easy to get out of diamond, and I don’t think that calculation takes into account the fact that games got more and more competitive as I moved up diamond. First two tiers I did as a ventari rev, but that didn’t work as well higher up the league. Had to mix things up, but I ended up finally breaking out of diamond with a guardian dh and thief depending on if we had another thief.

I would be curious on the number of people who reached each division this season, and a mode (most frequent number) for how many games played per player. It should give some indication on how many games players played and how realistic that reddit post is.

I would guess that most players in legend got there within 100-300 games. In fact, if each game takes 20 minutes this number of 649 would take players 9 days of just playing gw2 and not sleeping or eating. If we made it more realistic and imagined someone played 2 hours a day. (which is still a lot) It would take them 108 days, 72 days for 3 hours a day. Both are longer than the season. So these players who happen to win 50% of the time would have to play a hell of a lot to get legend. I feel good about it.

Sure some players just played non stop pvp, but during this season, I did sab, made a new character, unlocked herald in hot, did some personal story, did some wvw, played silverwaste for mastery points, etc. I think most players do more than pvp too, so it becomes even more unrealistic to imagine this reddit thread has much basis on fact.

Yup, sad to see Sab go. I never got to tribulation mode. I tried it, but quickly realized I would need many days and possibly weeks to get through it. I didn’t want to start it without being able to finish. Going to miss it for a year.

peeveez.1985:

I’m new too and don’t know enough about endgame to have an opinion on all these changes, but I’m impressed by the amount of work you guys are putting in. I came from another big mmo (yes, that one), and I can say without doubt that they put in far less effort on tweaking their expansions after release.

Well this is their first expansion, but usually gw2 moves very fast, and a lot of things (bugs, unused skills) get left in the dust. They do manage to do things like this sometimes, but its rare. I think this is semi related to the new director. Outside of obviously not being aware of how awesome mesmer is at home node control due to portal and swinging fights, the A-Net devs seemed to have really fallowed through with some of what they said was their plan. (Work on unsued skills, and imrpove balance after release)

I still think there is more to be done in terms of balance. (Please just prevent mes from doubling up on elite skills, done) And a lot of skills are still useless (guardian spirit weapons, most thief traps, ranger spirits (most not all), etc.).

Still, this is a great patch for the game as a whole. I can’t wait for the living world updates to start.

If you are new you should try to play season 2 of living world when you finish you personal story. It sometimes goes on sale as a bundle, but it’s worth playing through if you are enjoying the story. When the next season comes out (season 3) it will be free, so long as you log in during the time it is available. You can then always go back and replay it. Otherwise, you have to buy them later.

Right now thieves are bringing in close to 30k dps. So the difference is about 10k between ranger and thief, while the thief doesn’t bring any utility (outside stealth), and the ranger is boosting everyone’s damage by about 20%. That is about 5k dps boost for each party member, so I think Ranger damage is fine, so long as they maintain so much support.

Lol never thought this would actually get reverted. XD I found the patch notes particularly funny since the size got increased, and they also buffed the damage. It almost feels like the damage change was to keep it in-line with the size of the fireball. Bigger fireballs deal more damage!

Working on a new thief build now that is a hybrid build, I really don’t think enough thieves appreciate the power of the dodges. (dd) I’ve been running power weapons, with condi roll, traps, and overall it feels very good. I think, with more changes like this thieves may end up with more than one viable playstyle. (although, I doubt decaps will ever be ignored, as thieves just have such an easy time moving around a map) I just never thought I’d play a condi p/p build and wreck other players in pvp. I can solo the new lord pretty fast too.

Super happy with the slight tweaks.

I agree this is a great patch. Looking forward to content patch even more now. I wish I wasn’t in finals and had more time to play around with the changes.

Don’t want to over-embellish this problem, but I do think that condi mesmer meta build needs some shaving, and a good place to do that would be on f5 not reseting elite skill. With just that, I think it is enough to see how this next cycle goes. Mesmer is the only one that I didn’t see what I expected. The buffs seem unjustified for the most part. I think a lot of people expected to see elites not affected by f5, not sure what stopped them from going through with the change.

Agreed, the patch is amazing, super looking forward to taking my characters into the next content update this summer. One thing I found surprising from a balance stand-point was 0 condi mesmer nerfs. Otherwise, fantastic job, keep it up.

Funny enough I did my first two tiers in diamond as a ventari rev. Although it got me a lot of hate when my team comp was something like ele, ele, rev (me), ranger, engie. We didn’t kill a thing. But in many matches it worked well. Afterwards though, decided I actually wanted to reach legend, and switched to dh, and thief depending on matchup.

I agree, I just made a thread about this. Funny enough, when I logged in, ranked was already gone. ;(

Hey,

Post here if you hope they have some solution to end of season. Last time the season ended, we were forced to play skyhammer and spirit watch until the next season started. A lot of people advocated to keep ranked open, but without a season. I was one of these people, and I really do hope we can still play the maps from ranked exclusively.

I guess if they didn’t do anything for it in the patch tomorrow, then I’ll probably try and learn more about stronghold now.

Yes World 3 next year would rock!

*Raises glass of bubble brew

I’m happy I got to experience this content. When it first came out years ago, I skipped it as I was still establishing my character, the second release, I didn’t have any time. And I figured it would come back again. I was so sad when I learned it may never come back. Happy I got to play it, I beat both worlds and had fun doing so, I tried Tribulation mode, but I decided with exams looming I’ll save that for next year. Thanks for bringing back this content. I think a lot would love to see season 1 in a similar fashion. Although I played through most of it. (I never did the marionette fight though )

Shylock.4653:

pepsis.5384:

HoT monsters need a serious review. Right now they are balanced illogically and unintuitively and this is me politely stating how kittening stupid the current HoT mob design is. You have a massive veteran creature that looks like the xenomorph queen, you expect it to be a big threat but very soon it becomes clear you can basically stay in front of it and AFK auto-attack it to death. Its not a threat at all. Then you have these tiny mobs like the pocket raptors eating away 600 to 1000 hp with each bite.

Yeah because size is the most important criteria to judge an enemy.

I mean everybody knows that cows are a hundred times more dangerous than venomous snakes because they are much bigger. ;-)

I had to point this out, but in the USA. From 2001-2013, cows killed 20 people per year on average, snakes only 6, and spiders only 7. So if you look at just the USA, cows are more dangerous than snakes and spiders combined.

Sadly, most of these deaths come from cow tipping where the cow falls onto someone. Dumb people.

Very annoying bug. I hope a fix is coming with this update.

thunderfall.8095:

Replace tool tip with: Creates red text that says,“No valid path.” and instakills any player taking time to use it in the middle of a fight.

+1

Although to be fair, I’ve seen some players that know how to make it connect more reliably. However, to what end? It is only useful in a small handful of situations, it needs to be better to compete as a utility.

Apatia, poor girl. She thought I would protect her, because I was a hero. That is not even the biggest lie, when my character is leaving his final mission with Apatia he says:

<Character name>: Is she alive? I need to get the orb to Trahearne at Fort Trinity right away, but I can’t abandon Apatia.

Sayeh al’ Rajihd: You have no choice. The krait overwhelmed her and took her. Among my people, we would say her steps have faltered and move on.

Sayeh al’ Rajihd: I will deliver the orb for you. I would enjoy visiting Trahearne again. I owe him, and largos always keep our oaths.

Sayeh al’ Rajihd: You should go, too. The krait will be back in force. The longer you stay, the more likely you’ll end up lost, dead, or on a torture rack. That won’t help your friend.

<Character name>: I’ll go. Trahearne needs that orb, and I need to be at Fort Trinity. But I will come back for Apatia. I swear it.

First he says he can’t abandon Apatia, and I’m thinking “yea lets do this” and a few words from an npc, and I’m like you know what never mind. I’ll be back one day Apatia….

*Comes back and proceeds to kill her (as undead) and claims it’s for the best. lol

I thought my character noble, but he’s just a street rat. XD

Lastly, can you even still play this storyline? I haven’t seen it in forever.

I’m with OP. Don’t buff, just nerf some of the outliers.

Although please do buff skills that no one uses. (Rev Jalis, Thief ambush trap, warrior kick, etc.) This has needed to be done since before elite specs.

I don’t get it, was Emperor Angsiyan your great grandfather or something?

But seriously, Shiro is awesome. I agree that he lacks some defense. He doesn’t have much protection, so you have to know when to pull out with him, he’s quite fast.

Jalis needs some help. Bump.

Depends if you want more damage or more sustain. There is no such thing as the perfect build. You’ll just have to play the game more to know when to spec each. However, I can tell you that ret makes you more useful on point (which is very important for most teams), while invocation can help boost your damage.

Practice and have fun. I sometimes start games and realize I have Frankenstein builds. This happens when I am going to bed and start changing builds, but get too sleepy, wake up and end up playing 2 half of builds together. I am often surprised by the results, and discover new playstyles that work.

I’m now playing a ventari build with decent success in diamond. (Still working on it, but I managed to get to tier 2 with it so far) So it depends on your team and the opposing team, your ideal build does.

Appreciate the work you put into this, but I have a problem with a lot of it sadly.

I like your jalis suggestions for the most part. However, the only change for ventari you mentioned I like is the tablet auto spawning when you swap to ventari. (oh and water field would be nice, but not essential) I’m also not a fan of all your shiro changes. I think the devs need to focus on making jalis work, give ventari some qol (but don’t take away the feeling of the spec, its fun that includes blind spam)

Honestly a shame there is a lot of good in your post, but many things I wouldn’t want as well. In finals, but hopefully some other players can pick it apart and find what is valuable, or just start a new thread with more agreed upon ideas.

HAMBOW META. I played an engie, ele, thief during that timeframe and had lots of fun with each. Engie was all about flexibility, and switching up skills during warmup. Ele was just solid as always, but I think I played scepter/dagger burst back then. And Thief had both d/p and s/d as viable, and a lot came down to careful timings. I think the state of things now is my third, following cele meta (pre patch).

Sages.3496:

It’s not the quick leveling i am after, it’s the ability to actually enjoy the game again. back when we had champion events in the starter zones where we had a good 10 to 15 players killing them at once. it was alive, it was awesome, and quite frankly.. it was the best leveling experience i had back when the story wasn’t staggered, zone events were actually fun, and skills could be unlocked early so you could get to understand the rotation and try new stuff out.

Now i have to wait till level 10 just to experience the story, i am handed all my skills as i level which makes it feel.. not rewarding at all, and the zone events just.. aren’t fun like they were.

I fully agree with this. It was an awesome time. I didn’t personally spend much time in the champ trains, but I would see them moving around, and join them if they were close. Really felt the action, and the sense that the whole world was worth exploring if some players would even farm the starter zone. I think somehow going back to that time would be best for PVE.

THEIVEA LA REVOLUTION!

Now imagine this with an actual weapon. XD The new physical thief skills deal really good damage. Hilarious to make it work without an actual weapon. HaHa.

Ya, I’ve been stuck in Diamond for about 12 games. Going up some, losing some, and mostly hoping around 0-4 pips. The system is designed to put you into harder and harder divisions. My win rate was about 70-80% going through amber/emerald then 70% in sapphire and ruby. Now I’m facing a solid 50/50 win rate in diamond. I got addicted to the wins, but my opponents seem to be a lot better now. I’ll have to improve more if I want to make legend probably. (Or play a ton of games) So long as the matches are fun, I’ll continue to pvp, but it is hard to get used to the frequent loses now that I’m in my intended division.

Pretty surprising, but A-Net has been under performing for a while now. (in reference to their past, still love the game)

Hope this leads to better development decisions. Like many I am sort of on the bend with their next expansion. However, I believe that if I’m still playing by then, I will buy it. I’ve almost never come back to a game for an expansion. Funny enough, I just started leveling legendary crafting.

Either way, disappointing, but I will continue to enjoy the game for as long as I can.

I’ll agree that things are much harder for thief. Also, you should not be getting one shot by scrappers, thieves can hold their own to them, and even decap them off a point with pressure. However, Necro and DH can both kill you super easily if you aren’t careful. What needs to happen is nerf the outliers. I made it to diamond on thief solo queue, and have been getting more into revenant lately. I got a little tired of being so vulnerable to damage when not evading or running. I think thief can bring a lot to a team, but it is a struggle, and you need perfect gameplay. (less room for error than most other classes)

I didn’t switch to rev only for pvp though, just haven’t been having as much fun in Diamond (it might be my plateau with Thief, as my win rate dropped to 50% since entering diamond). So I’m just rolling my first rev to play around with the class.

Thieves need help on a lot of their skills that are never used. (some weapon sets too) However, the problem in pvp is due to overtuned classes that can almost sleep at the wheel. I get tons of compliments on my thief, from enemies and allies, and some games I mess up a few times, and all I get are insults. Very unforgiving class. Good luck with you thief. I never felt underpowered on it, just less room to exploit enemy team weaknesses in the higher divisions, as they play better. Also if your team is uncoordinated nothing you can do about it. I lose games feeling helpless on all professions. (At least thief can end those games with 0 deaths if played well)

Ya for most thief 1v1, shortbow is essential. If you are fighting another thief and don’t pull it out, you can get killed fast. I find most of my 1v1 thief fights are a couple of swings at eachother, then we both swap to shortbow, and once one thief feels the advantage, burst attempts are made. (using physical skills we can burst quite hard in sb)

MadVisions.4529:

Lexander.4579:

MadVisions.4529:

Lexander.4579:

MadVisions.4529:

Lexander.4579:

MadVisions.4529:

Lexander.4579:

pro playurs have no idea how to build thief, they just copy paste metabattle builds just like emerald-sapphire overlords

do you have a mental breakdown or smth? what do you think who dictates the “meta” if no pro players XD

im not a pro player but in legend division im playing hybrid thief winning nearly everything with enemy players whispering me after match to ask me what build i am running or simply saying that i have sick build

that should give you an idea how meta is created, son, and learn some respect towards your betters before they have to teach you some

ok master! can u link here the godlike build of yours so i can see it with my ‘unrespectful towards my betters’-eyes?
i’ve never said that you can’t make non-meta work i roll ppl in legend with s/d thief which is clearly non-meta. The fact is tho that your performance would be better with a visible amont if you would play some alter of the ‘meta’ spec. which is D/P – daredevil in our case.

d/p is an outdated build which works only against bad players and becomes completely non-existent if enemies have a rev who keeps an eye on you

many could argue with this

still waiting for the build. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQBAA

sorry son but what mine is mine, dont feel like sharing my intellectual work with people who are only able to copy paste builds from meta battle

at some point someone will figure out this build for sure but i am genuinely curious for how long i can abuse it

I’m really disappointed daddy. W/O sharing, your arguments become kinda groundless
also i’d like to see how creative hybrid build you could come up with w/o any might stacking ability. You claim it works or even reaches abuse-level, so i’m even more curious

Loboling.5293:

d/p is definitely not the highest damage, or even good at 1v1.

nor is it used for these factors. You are unable to do stealth rotations, fake pushes etc on any other thief build. Plus the damage, rupts and in fight mobility is just enough to focus down targets with a teammate with high pressure(necro, reve, etc…).
Staff builds got intense damage but are easyer to focus. Also D/P can just stealth camp and dominate other thief builds from the enemy.

I repeate. You can make many builds work. You can even carry games with builds like Staff, S/D, or the mysterious hybrid build, but the Highest performance expecting good players vs good players can be reached by playing D/P due to it’s mechanics.
My 5 cents.

Edit:

pro playurs have no idea how to build thief, they just copy paste metabattle builds just like emerald-sapphire overlords

also what do you think how ‘meta’ specs are made if not good/pro players experimenting, finding working things then optimalising? It’s not the 500-games plebs thorwing together some traits that’s for sure….

You are right on all counts. I only brought it up because the weapon set is not the best at everything. As you mention yourself, you can run anything. (that is good/has shortbow XD) And staff is easier to focus down. (With much higher damage)

I have personally found that with thief, the mobility is the best thing about the profession. With such quick mobility, I want to be moving quite often, to make use of that mobility. Moving without purpose is useless, however, with careful observation of the map and game there is always somewhere to be as a thief. When I arrive at my destinations, I like to come in a deal huge damage.

That is the general reason for moving to my current huge burst build, that can also take many 1v1s. (so the option of attacking a base is open, if its a engie, (silly rev*although they are much harder fights), ranger, thief, warrior, guardian (it is a tough fight, but it can be won and it often ends fast), mesmer, necro (although its sometimes a waste of time if they have full lifeforce). For engie and rev, you only get the decap, as bursting one down solo is often impossible. (Also a good rev wont fall for your tricks (wait for number 3 sword →shadowstep → Stun with his back away from point (you can predict this because he appears behind you) →shadow return. (do it fast enough, and you get enough time for decap)

Anyway all things said, I think the thief is in a solid position, but I still believe some other classes could use a tone down. (rev mobility or defense, reaper condi pressure, engie defense (another 2 seconds on leap would be enough probably), ele bug with frost shout (cleanses multiple conditions), dh (traps getting some type of limitation, but the base guardian needs to be buffed to compensate). My version of balance for this game.

ya staff and d/p are pretty even in a fight. Depends on who makes the first mistakes.

Ya, I also always play original builds. d/p is definitely not the highest damage, or even good at 1v1. Running staff now, dealing way more damage (about twice in most games), my rotations aren’t affected, but my interrupts are. (no headshot) I can also not blind as much, but blind spam can do some decent damage to runners on staff. After quite a few games, I think that Thief is a lot more viable than people realize. It just takes a lot of practice.

Just yesterday in diamond, I join a game, a necro on my team says “glad you are on my team, scared to fight you” “you were so beast last game, watched you take out 3 by stillness within like 5 seconds” (he was obviously exaggerating, but I came in after the 3 had finished my ally, all weakened, and just finished them all in a few seconds)

Now these don’t prove too much, but I do get these type of comments often enough that I think I know how to play the class, and the tournament video don’t show the best thief play. He knows well how to control his character, but his rotations weren’t perfect, which is the biggest part of thief.

Generally the goal is to always have your team in favorable fights, and their position allow them to transition into another favorable position.

Good rotations takes profession and build into account. Sometimes leaving 1 player on mid/far to fight two enemy players sounds like bad rotations, but if that player is fighting two (and surviving) then the rest of the map is in your favor. So instead of helping that player win/end the fight, you would focus on the rest of the map and secure the favorable position.

It is all very complicated, and best explored by playing, but you just need to realize, if you fought a battle and it went bad, why did it go bad? Where could you have been to further your teams victory? Was being part of that fight helpful? When you spawn (the most critical time for rotations), where do you go? You want to head somewhere you can make a difference, either by weakening your opponents rotations, winning fights, holding a point, etc.

Good luck, and the most important things for rotating well are to watch the map, and understand the game (classes, builds, timers, objectives, etc.).

Must be a Troll. These are the best games. Perfect matchmaking. I just won a game like this with a creep kill when the enemy was at 492. So much heart pounding fun. XD

I really hope this is a joke thread.

BJownes.6927:

I deal with it because WvW used to be amazing and I know it can be again.

I sure hope you are right, as this was my favorite mode for the first few years of the game. So much fun, big fights, small fights, 1v1s, 1v2s, 2v3s, 2v4s, so much diversity in encounters. Really felt alive. I only roamed outside of playing a staff ele which was really fun during the old days. (with warriors and guardians leading pushes)