Guild Wars 2

there is plenty of room to maneuver in sPVP. there is also plenty of room to run away. The point is, they are balanced in a controled PVP environment and in 1v1 fights. The only time a thief has been a challenge to me on my Guardian is when there is a major scale fight and culling becomes a factor. If you balance for that in WvW, you screw the thief in PVE and sPVP. It leaves ANET in a sticky situation.

we all forget that no one complains about thieves in sPVP.

Kaizer.7135:

Nashaan.3160:

Webley.1295:

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, permastealth, best mobility, decent ranged dng. What’s balanced about this? Thieves are in abject denial of god mode.

What needs fixing is peoples perception on thiefs

Highest DPS, Stealth and mobility. So thats a 30/30/30/30/30 build your talking about then. When can I spec like this? Because im limited.

And the OP is a warrior. Warriors, full glass cannon, invunrability and 20khp and massive leaps and good duration blocks, 6sec cooldowns. Yea ok. I rolled a warrior and laughed at the power compared to a thief

People need to learn to make proper pvp builds if they want to pvp and win

The difference is you can see a warrior coming, and if he starts losing mid fight, he doesn’t have the option to disappear and reappear 10 seconds later for another attempt. Likewise if he runs away you can see him do it.

Thieves ARE OP in their current state, but until the culling issue is addressed no-one can look subjectively at thieves to see if something needs toning down.

Warriors have invulnerability, KD’s & hastes. Low CD skills and blocks, if you can’t kill a thief with a warrior, then you’re just bad. Btw, an INVINCIBILITY on-the-fly skill is OP, self-rally when downed & getting a revive if you get revenge is OP.

^^ Essentially this with only a few comments to it. I as a thief love fighting a good warrior 1v1. Those fights are typically amazing and challenging. A skilled warrior losing to a skilled thief doesn’t mean they’re bad, just that the thief has taken the time to understand the warrior abilities as well as the warrior understands the thief’s.

Every class has things that makes them OP. The thing that frustrated people is that thieves attack from being hidden, therefore they don’t see the hit coming before it hits. What amazes me tho, is what happens typically after I hit them, wait for my revealed to go away, and CND. They…. stand there. I’m still there. Every thief is still there. Somewhere near by. Just because you lost the target it doesn’t mean you stop.

I would emplore anyone who is having trouble killing thieves to do one of two things (this is an honest suggestion, and not a cop out remark). Find someone who can kill thieves and ask them for some guidance – or – Make a thief and play it to 30. I now kill thieves left and right on my guardian since I have learned how. It’s much easier than you may believe (especially GC thieves).

This is a good concept. Currently, when I have pugs running with my guild groups, we’ll actually make room in our various groups to fit the pugs in and even split groups up to include more pugs. We advertise our TS3 info, but have had 0 pugs join our TS3 to date, most saying “I don’t have TS3”.

This is fairly common on TC server tho. Lots of guild groups will do their best to include as many other people as they can by use of grouping them, communication in say, and communication in map.

Assassinin.4963:

I love thief daggerstorm for alternate reason. I don’t use it on my thief char but I LOVE seeing enemy thief using it.

Thief are notoriously slimy, being able to escape death by keeping a respectable distance and going stealth. They are almost impossible to pin down and trapped.

HOWEVER, when thief utilized their daggerstorm, it gave them a false sense of invincibility and they start charging right into the middle of a zerg group. Everytime I see this, I lol.

I have seen more thiefs get killed after their daggerstorm expired than in other thiefs fight. I LOVE daggerstorm, its a natural thief killer.

I LOL every time I see a thief do this …. and I play a thief! Feels like cannibalism to not warn them, but it never gets old.

This new method is bad. Far worse than before. While I still don’t drop below 25fps in large fights, I typically don’t see enemies as quickly and have disappearing allies. I did find that turninf off post processing under graphical settings resulted in some improvement.

Goloith.6349:

Sabyne.6329:

Tulisin.6945:

toothless.1429:

Irrespective of agony, vitality builds suffer because of the fixed rather than percentage based #6 heal ability. Of course, some classes have additional means to heal as well.

This was demonstrated by simple math in previous posts, and highlights an obvious fundamental flaw in the game.

This is how raw HP vs. defense works in most games, though. Raw HP provides spike/DoT protection, whereas defense (armor derived from toughness in GW2) provides more constant mitigation and acts as a multiplier for heal effectiveness.

There aren’t many MMOs I can think of where going high-HP low-mitigation was a good idea unless there were lots of mitigation-ignoring attacks.

My thoughts exactly. Lets not even talk about agony but stacking HP without any mitigation means you take more damages than someone stacking mitigation and no HP and guess what, the high mitigation setup is always easier to get back to full health.
Vitality without mitigation has always been lacking in the healing department.
The problem with agony is that toughness won’t help you mitigate the damages either, condition removal neither, you need agony resistance or increased healing power.

Considering the same healing power, toughness is weak against big hits and conditions, vitality is weak versus agony and sustain damages cause you won’t manage to get back to full health easily.

So if you run a low hp/toughness/glass canon build, you won’t suffer as much from agony and doesn’t necessarily need lots of agony resistances against most bosses. If you run a vitality build, you will need this agony resistance or better healing. But anyway for Jade maw, at some lvl, every setup will need agony resistance cause even if you heal through it, it lasts for so long that you’re gonna get down and maybe die regardless of your setup.

Why should toughness builds be more punished than vitality ones when agony can’t be removed? It makes no sense either.

Having agony inflicting fixed damages would defeat the whole purpose of having agony resistance stat because you would just need HP. Same as if agony could be cleansed.

Have you ever heard of EVE Online? SOAK tanks have had their place right along-side mitigation in most games.

In all honesty toughness is not getting the shaft, its mitigating non-agony damage the boss and its pets are doing just like vitality builds are soaking up non-agony damage the boss and its pets are doing. If you have agony do % of the base stats it equals out. You will be able to heal up just fine and your mitigation will protect you. So if you lose 40% of your health (without any vitality) to agony with toughness you will have 60% left, where vitality will lose 40% the base HP leaving total HP above 60%, but keep in mind 80% hp w/o mitigation will keep you alive just as long with 60% hp with mitigation. Just because vitality builds will have more % hp left than toughness builds does not mean the player will stay alive any longer.

SOAK tanking requires a large enough of a health pool to overcome the lack of mitigation / viable healing (and this is substantially larger) and be applied against a set amount of incomming damage allowing that particular player to last longer than an ally who is not set to soak.
- or –
the applicable heals have to scale by % as opposed to set numbers.

Without one of these 2, you have a character that still dies quickly and just simply can’t keep up with heals since the incomming damage is % based and in GW2 heals are a set amount. With +Heal Power being mostly irrelivant, it means Vitality (soak) tanking isn’t viable when a debuff is based on % health in damage.

Below is a fictitious and exaggerated example to better explain the principal

Incomming damage from enemy is irrelevant because it is equal for both. For this example, we will only consider the debuff damage because it is variable based on %.

Beginning Health / Information
Health Pool 1: 20,000
Health Pool 2: 10,000
Incomming Damage from Debuff: 25% every 5 seconds
Heal: 5k every 10 seconds

Tick 1
Health Pool 1: 15,000
Health Pool 2: 7,500

Tick 2
Health Pool 1: 10,000
Health Pool 2: 5,000

Both heal
Health Pool 1: 15,000
Health Pool 2: 10,000

Tick 3
Health Pool 1: 10,000
Health Pool 2: 7,500

Tick 4
Health Pool 1: 5,000
Health Pool 2: 5,000

Both heal
Health Pool 1: 10,000
Health Pool 2: 10,000

Tick 5
Health Pool 1: 5,000
Health Pool 2: 7,500

Tick 6
Health Pool 1: 0 (DEAD)
Health Pool 2: 5000

I hope this better explains the concern the OP is expressing.

I’m with you mSum. I have yet to complete a fractal that didn’t experience one of the numerous bugs.

Cliffside Player falls, dies, and can’t be found to be res’d = group suicide to resolve
Cliffside Player falls and hammer disappears = group suicide to resolve
Cliffside Chanters don’t spawn when boss drops hammer = group suicide to resolve
Swampland Vine Wall appears on player in Swamp locking player in place (this persists after wall disappears again) = group suide to resolve

All Player disconnected and group is unable to complete with 4 = no resolution
Urban Battleground Charr costume does not disappear at completion of the event = no resolution
Aquatic Ruins NPC is in the roof of the under water cavern and unable to be attacked = no resolution

Considering there is only 9 fractals, 2 contain bugs with no way to resolve (which happen nearly every time), and each group is on burrowed time until someone disconnects, they are a bit silly right now. If I wasn’t a glutton for punishment and refused to accept mediocrity, I wouldn’t do them at all but Ascended gear demands that any player who wishes to remain relevant must farm them.

In my opinion, hundred blades is ruining the game. Instead of learning how to counter it, i just keep standing in it and dying! Loco Bookah.

Mosharn.8357:

—Classes should be able to do different things for fortifications during attack.(All of the following should be make to only work when inside and defending from a fortification, could be like the weapon switch to change 1-5 skills but in this case 6-0 and 0 being the elite defense skill) Like engineers can repair certain siege, Warriors can set up areas where the defending side can do more damage from or deploy fortification banners(like normal banners but buff more and in a bigger are) Guardians can spawn shields that protect a certain area, Ele can intertwine with certain siege and fire different kind of shots, for example on a catapult the ele lets the person on the siege shoot fire/ice/electrified/hmm(earth y u troll me here) Rangers could give out buffs that increase range of people in certain areas, Necros can res more 2-3 dead people at once(this would have a long cooldown because it is a powerful ability) They can also summon siege minions on the walls or anywhere near the fortification. Like a big tank like minion(anyone played left for dead remember the tanks? somethin like that) Minions that shoot like catas but do less dmg and can move around in the area they were summoned, Mesmers could deploy illusionary siege or create shield like structures on walls that reflect projectiles. Cant think of anything for thief atm

While I don’t think WvW NEED anything to be fun, as I enjoy it now, but some new stuff never hurts.

- Thief can climb walls / battlements like in DAOC to take out enemy snipers, infiltrate the keep early to set up internal counter seige, ETC? Then again, anything given to thief will be considered OP LOL.

- I like the idea of new larger maps, possibly to replace EB ultimately with one gigantic map. Leave the BL’s alone as they are good for server pride.

Aza.2105:

Nethril.7413:

Aza.2105:

Nethril.7413:

Aza.2105:

Well they could remove downed state and re-add rez signet from guild wars 1. And make it a utility skill so that way no one takes it. Then what will happen is, when you die in pvp you will realize that no one has a rez signet and then make a post complaining about that.

I actually like this idea though. Downed state feels a bit fisher price and really is the least enjoyable aspect of this game to me. That’s just my opinion.

lol no you wouldn’t.

it would bring finality to the fights without that sense of …. blah in between. Plus i played GW1 (through all expansions, not one of those 1 week players) and understand the severe frustration with people NOT bringing res signets and would take that in a heartbeat over the extreme feeling of ……………….. that downed state brings (both from my own and dealing with others in theirs).

It would actually be better for them to give ranger’s the frozen soil spirit than to bring back the old rez system. The downed state is a lot better imo.

it wouldn’t still be in the game if enough people didn’t like it (like myself), therefore I am likely in the minority here. I can always wish it would be removed and keep wishing tho. LOL Hell, I despise it soo much I considered a return to GW1 or WoW because of it…… I know … I actually thought about going back to WoW ……….. No worries, i’m past that and have accepted my place and that I must simply deal with the downed state.. LOL

Aza.2105:

Nethril.7413:

Aza.2105:

Well they could remove downed state and re-add rez signet from guild wars 1. And make it a utility skill so that way no one takes it. Then what will happen is, when you die in pvp you will realize that no one has a rez signet and then make a post complaining about that.

I actually like this idea though. Downed state feels a bit fisher price and really is the least enjoyable aspect of this game to me. That’s just my opinion.

lol no you wouldn’t.

it would bring finality to the fights without that sense of …. blah in between. Plus i played GW1 (through all expansions, not one of those 1 week players) and understand the severe frustration with people NOT bringing res signets and would take that in a heartbeat over the extreme feeling of ……………….. that downed state brings (both from my own and dealing with others in theirs).

Aza.2105:

Well they could remove downed state and re-add rez signet from guild wars 1. And make it a utility skill so that way no one takes it. Then what will happen is, when you die in pvp you will realize that no one has a rez signet and then make a post complaining about that.

I actually like this idea though. Downed state feels a bit fisher price and really is the least enjoyable aspect of this game to me. That’s just my opinion.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Jinks.2057:

Yes I said it, and no you can’t disprove it.

Its just the way it is. It has a place in the game, but there’s no unknown.

It’s called SPvP and TPvP. I don’t see PvP anywhere in WvWvW.

A persons skill in WvWvW is only a measurement in their skill at WvWvW. A persons skill in SPvP, and TPvP is their measurement of skill in PvP.

Now if you want to discuss which one takes more skill, o.k. If I have to quote you I will. Fact is I can’t say that because I’m good at boxing I’m good at taekwondo. I’m good at boxing.

They are both PVP. Just because one may like the other more, doesn’t change the fact that they are both PVP.

That said, a measure of ones skill in sPVP is a measure of ones skill in sPVP.

A measure of ones skill in WvW is a measure of ones skill in WvW.

They are different and they do not cross from one to the other well. sPVP if you want sPVP titles and WvW if you want WvW titles. Past that, to each their own.

Karuna.1357:

Amongst the top 10 servers this is the friendliest WvW crew that you could hope to find, and with some extra coverage we can spread the awesomeness even further . . that’s right, spread the awesomeness.

This is where some other servers go awry. They worry simply about coverage, whereas we are interested in spreading the awesomeness.

This is a great server! My guild transferred here after getting fed up with some of the shenanigans in WvW on our old server and we’ve never looked back.

To the D/D FA Ele that just fought a TC Thief at the back of Victors Lodge on YB BL. Great fight and I’m sorry we had people show up. Would love to know who would have won that.

FireRunner.9481:

Please. My cousin is a thief and even he says he’s insanely overpowered. He’s also got a 80 Mesmer and says that class is overpowered in PvP.

I’m calling it as I see it. If you honestly think thieves are not overpowered you’re wearing blinders. Also, I was suggesting just ONE of the three items I listed be applied…not all three. Just one would balance out the class. And, don’t even try to compare ranger pets to stealth. Ranger pets are like gnats (and their DPS is the same). Unbreakable invisibility is ridiculous to have as a skill. You really want to compare ranger pets to unbreakable invisibility? Really?

Well, my brothers mothers fathers sisters friends uncle say’s that Mesmers are OP and thieves are kittened…..

seriously man? LOL

IF you understood the thief class, how it operates, it’s weaknesses, and it’s abilities (actual, not implied just here on forums) you would see the error in your thinking.

I play both a Guardian and a Thief. Thieves are funny little things to kill with my guardian, and I love playing my thief. I don’t believe thieves are OP what-so-ever aside from capping / preventing while invis. And this isn’t coming from my brothers mothers fathers sisters friends uncle.

Aysnvaust.7046:

Thanx HabibLoew, for the update.
FireRunner: Let me add some more points to your list, to get that “godmode” off those crappy little thiefs for once and all:
1 – remove weapon slots from thiefes.
2 – reduce thiefs lifepool for AT LEAST 50%.
3 – why not remove stealth completely, as we are allready at it.

then, MAYBE, thiefs are somewhat balanced. Did I get you right?

wait wait, thieves still have traps and dagger storm. and don’t think think 50% is a bit off? Shouldn’t it be closer to 75%?

haha – that’s awesome! just hope your EE doesn’t have the same collapse that EE did. Man, it became an ever man for himself zerg out of nowhere and ended in an explosion of drama, QQ, and tears…

Penguin.5197:

Nethril.7413:

haha! I will not most definitely be tossing up my commander icon and leading more zergs on the FA BL now that I know I have opportunities to redeem some of that gear I lost to you back in the day! Those Evil Empire vs losk/fate/(forget the other guild) CPK matches were intense. ULTD Guardians are going to hate me now that I will be targeting them specifically………

funny that we’re on opposite sides again after that brief stint of owning n00b horde in WoW.

on a different note, I can tell you none of the 2v1 talk is true. The closest it EVER gets is when we’re on a map and it becomes “The enemy of my enemy is my friend… for now”. ever since the collapse of the EE and the backstabbing that went on there, I don’t trust alliances.

It isnt as much as EE collapsed as we dont do much wvw together anymore. Were mostly at the moment running dungeons/trying to get our groups into competitive spvp.

Sorry! EE was a reference to Medievia / Daedalus. It stood for Evil Empire, which was an alliance of clans which got together to take out the 3 larger clans already existing. Once the other 3 clans started to slowly wittle down, EE collapsed and turned on itself. In that game, that meant people killed you and then took your gear.

haha! I will not most definitely be tossing up my commander icon and leading more zergs on the FA BL now that I know I have opportunities to redeem some of that gear I lost to you back in the day! Those Evil Empire vs losk/fate/(forget the other guild) CPK matches were intense. ULTD Guardians are going to hate me now that I will be targeting them specifically………

funny that we’re on opposite sides again after that brief stint of owning n00b horde in WoW.

on a different note, I can tell you none of the 2v1 talk is true. The closest it EVER gets is when we’re on a map and it becomes “The enemy of my enemy is my friend… for now”. ever since the collapse of the EE and the backstabbing that went on there, I don’t trust alliances.

I would assume that if you did not kill the NPC’s and you’re stealthed throughout the duration of the circle, that you will not receive credit.

that’s just an assumption tho, so to be safe I would simply be out of stealth during the cap

sorry, i un-hijacked this thread and took it to PM’s…

Daedalus.3954:

I did, early 90’s. Jesus, I haven’t even thought about a MUD in ages.

holy kittenmunkies!

<—— Qrat from Medievia and Zyrith from Shattered Hand bro.

Daedalus.3954:

How about that score update, maybe a map? Eh? EH? ;]

while daedalus wouldn’t be exactly a rare name, you didn’t play Medievia by chance did ya???

HabibLoew.2590:

In an upcoming patch the WvW capture points will be updated to follow the same rules as the PvP capture points with respect to invisibility & invulnerability. As a result invisible & invulnerable players will no longer contest capture points.

^^ this solves it. thank you Habib for posting this and updating us. Now, this argument of keeping resources camps held with perma-stealth thieves is over and we can return to discussing the real issues: fractals and the requirement to grind them, warriors and 25k hits, mesmers and portals oh god portals, and last but not least, why oh why do so many thieves try to look like they’re from Assassins Creed?

okay, the fractals are really an issue… the rest were just a joke

mu, check the TC forums for more information on server wide voice chat.

Sixpax.8360:

Nethril.7413:

If they are CnD, they are hitting something to maintain it. Simply stack up and aoe your stack to kingdom come. Eventually all of the bunnies and other squishy NPC’s will be exhausted and it will have to come to you. Once you see damage from an aoe, stun / lock / squish.

This tactic doesn’t work because in most supply camps there are buildings and other obstacles the Thief can hide behind without being in stealth. So you have no choice but to have people roam around the circle looking for them.

Again, easy fix: shrink the circle.

there certainly are some situations where this isn’t as effective, but the last thing you want is your entire team spread out like bunnies. makes it very easy for the thief. in my group we have 2 people assigned to roaming, the other 8 stack in center. those 2 stick together and it’s easy to tell when the thief hits one of them. they both are prepped to lock the thief in place. they also know which camps have which hiding spots. so yes, it doesn’t always work, but it is a good premise for groups to build from and in most cases will at least increase your chances of success. It’s not 100% and really shouldn’t be necessary to overcome something as silly as this.

One of the major issues with the “we need a way to counter stealth” arguments is a thief without effective stealth is nothing but a VERY squishy warrior who doesn’t hit anywhere near as hard. There is a lot more into why I make that comparison, but to keep the post short I will leave it at that because that isn’t the primary point.

The way to fix issues like what is seen in that video is simply make it so thieves can not progress / stop caps while in stealth. They already do this in sPvP and there is NO reason it should work in WvW.

Until they resolve it, here is some ways you can counter thieves doing this:

If you’ll note in the video, every time the thief hit someone she gained the reveal buff and was visible. By looking around and identifying it is a smoke screen thief and not CnD, you are now aware of this major limitation of the build. If you spread out thereby reducing the viable areas for the thief to use Heartseeker and increasing the risk of accidentally heartseekering somebody, you will cause the thief to reveal itself. Once revealed, stun / lock in place and squish (as they did in the video).

If they are CnD, they are hitting something to maintain it. Simply stack up and aoe your stack to kingdom come. Eventually all of the bunnies and other squishy NPC’s will be exhausted and it will have to come to you. Once you see damage from an aoe, stun / lock / squish.

Hopefully they change it so thieves can’t progress / prevent capping soon, until then, use the above listed method’s for greater success.

As always, have fun !

Xavier.2176:

kanikani.2430:

The heart of the problem there though is that the ‘system’ as it is designed is highly against defending. Meaning there is no reward most times for many hours whatsoever. No gold, no karma, no xp, not even any fun. What happens is that you spend a night chasing after some camps if your lucky which is irritating at best.

It’s true that Arenanet has done an awful job with the WvWvW rewards as only mindless zerging gets you personal rewards, but I also blame the mindless zerg people for ruining WvWvW. Why should there always be personal gain in everything you do? WvWvW is not about karma and exp, it’s about your server.

I was on a server that had too many selfish people running around in zergs going after easy karma/exp all day long. No one cared about defending, scouting, escorting yaks etc. The best example I can tell you is that one day I was defending a fully upgraded tower alone, but I was doing fine because the enemy zerg was small and the tower was full of supply. I asked for help in the chat but the response I got was “chill out, let them take it, we will take it back later for easy karma!” My jaw hit the floor. We could have saved the tower if at least 3-4 would have come. But no. I lost all my will to fight for a server like that.

Fortunately not all servers are like that though. I transfered to Yak’s Bend last week and boy has it been a completely different experience. YB is full of great and unselfish people staying behind doing all the “boring” but necessary stuff like escorting Dolyaks, staying on watch in our towers, running supply and staying on a treb for hours. I love it, I really love it here! These YB people realize that WvWvW is not about personal gain, everyone fights for their server. And that’s why YB is doing fine even though TC and FA have more people (I’ve seen the outmanned buff on EB way too many times…).

So in conclusion, some blame goes to Anet for only rewarding mindless zerging in WvWvW but much more blame falls on people who don’t either understand WvWvW or just are in it for the personal gain. Unfortunately people in general are like that these days, everyone knows about their rights but no one seems to have any responsibilities. You can see that clearly in GW2 and WvWvW with too many people running after karma/exp and not caring if anyone remains behind to defend.

/end of rant

Oh and I almost forgot to say that I’ve never had this much fun in WvWvW than I’m having right now. Looks like our tiny EU guild has found a permanent home in YB if I just can get my other guildies to transfer here.

I had the same experience. My previous server would actually yell at people for upgrading towers because it slowed down how quickly the other side could flip it. So, about a month ago my guild decided to change to TC and try out a server a bit higher in the ranks, and we have never looked back. Much like Yaks, TC has a great deal of unselfish people who defend locations and put their money into upgrading.

^^ is the difference between FA / TC / YB. The reason FA BL gets attacked more than YB BL is because it’s easier to take. FA doesn’t hardly defend it. Going to YB BL you know you will have a fight on your hands, no matter what hour of the day it is. I assume TC BL is much the same since I see a lot of people defending it often while I bounce through it to check it’s chat and see how it’s going.

T3 has been great ever since I came here. The battles are close and rarely blow outs. Yaks Bend and Fort Aspenwood both consist of gooed and honorable players. Ignore the little spats you see here and there from any of those 3 servers, all 3 appear to be great.

There is a que at prime times on Tarnished Coast, which can sometimes be upwards of an hour long on Friday nights.

Static.9841:

kanikani.2430:

I agree, I am typically preoccupied in WvW and I do not take great offense to it really and don’t pay much attention to emotes in general to be honest, be it good or bad. And just because someone didn’t bow or salute doesn’t mean they didn’t appreciate the skill or fight or whatever. I have seen plenty of good sports on ever server we have played. I was just saying.

Oh please don’t take my comment as being negative at what you said in any way, I was just suggesting that if you’re one of the people like me, who WP pretty much right after death, you won’t see the other player make an emote. I’ve noticed some people will stick around, but as soon as you run up to them, they’ll WP, perhaps thinking you’re about to pull some kitteny move that they have no time for.

I’m in the same boat as you. The only reason I would bother sitting around is:

1. my group is still fighting and it would be more productive for me to wait for a res than to run back

2. I am spying

If it’s #2, then the other team has every right to /dance, /laugh, /cry, /whatevertheywant because it means they are more busy wasting time on my already dead corpse than doing something productive, therefore I am STILL helping my team – even while dead.

If it’s not one of those 2 though, I don’t bother waiting around long enough to even care what they want to do for their jollies.

Chamone.6890:

applekwisp.2139:

why is the solution to everything in this game RNG or gambling or straight up luck?

Koreans. They just can’t help themselves, they love it.

Someone should let them know this is a western MMO…

Predictable is boring.
Chance is exciting; or a big let-down.

Either way, it’s exciting when you get it. I’m glad to see them finding a position between the 3 week camps in EQ to get 1 mob to even spawn, with a low chance of dropping an item, vs. today’s panda way of handing people some lame currency for completing something. I miss the days of relying on RNG for drops.

populationcontrol.5072:

(…)

But be all that as it may, (if it’s a wrong analogy or not, I just thought I should explain why I thought it was fitting), I think Anet should be upfront about making these kinds of changes. A sort of “hey guys, sorry but the horizontal progression thing…it’s just not working out…”.
I think it’s too early to be getting new gear. I just got my guild backpack, which was the best back item available. Now, it’s not.
I’d be content if the new gear could at the very least not be useable in WvW. Through something like adjusting player level to the zone they’re in. Maybe make players with Ascended gear suffer from agony while using it in WvW? * Evil *
Players with full ascended will have a noticeable advantage which I’m not sure just how well it can be bridged by player skill.

In the end though, hoping for no gear progression is a bit naive. It’s gonna happen. It would make for a repetitive and boring game. The question is: how fast should it happen and by how much?
Regardless of what the manifesto implied or “promised”. I’ll say it again: Ideals don’t work well in Reality.
Democracy works well as an ideal. By the people, for the people…everyone happy, right? In reality, it’s by the majority, for the majority. The rest can just suck it up until the next election and hope their demographic don’t get screwed too much in the meantime.
A static world goes against the “dynamic event” philosophy behind the game. So, how else would you add incentive to play, without better stats/abilities and harder dungeons and bosses? With new challenges, you need better tools to work against them, otherwise you’re at a disadvantage. You’d quickly get overwhelmed and skill would be useless without the means to counter it. But we have a chance to counter players with better gear: it’s also available to us.

How can you maintain the status quo when things, by themselves, tend towards change?

I long for a game where devs would listen to players and make the game evolve based on player needs. But that’s just an ideal. And ideals…well…

It’s not naivety, it was wrongly placed trust in a developer based on the precedence set by that developer in its previous presentation, and the belief that it would stand by its own words.

Guild Wars 1 succeeded without ever increasing the gear. Not once did it. That game is literally the only argument needed against every single person who claims “gear increases are inevitable”.

Because every single person who grew to love guild wars 1… The group of players who were loyal, bought every expansion, bought into the ideals and the concept, who truly stuck by the game through the good and the bad, those players who trusted ANet, just got metaphorically punched in the face and told to suck it up.

Plain and simple. If I made this great new invention that was able to regrow hair in balding men permanently. It was natural, it was great. The downside was, the hair didn’t grow past a certain length, but other than that, it was perfect. Then one day I realize, well, once people buy this and use it, I don’t make any more money again. So I somehow forcibly retroactively altered my product to diminish in quality, even on those who have already used it, thereby forcing people to buy more of my product. If you were one of those people I lied to up front, that had bought my product, had loved my product, then woke up one day and realized your hair is now falling back out and you need more of my product, wouldn’t you be PISSED?

I’m glad some people like the gear grind. Go play an MMO which was designed to have a gear grind. Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2 were not (or at least, that’s what they told us). We, the Guild Wars 1 fans, who stood by ANet and Guild Wars 1, are now PISSED. I would venture to say, likely over 90% of us are (though this is entirely speculation and in no way factually supportable with information I have at my disposal).

i support this in the absence of a quality LFG utility in game

SteepledHat.1345:

Yep. Welcome to the new GW2. Join a guild that will help you get up on your fractal ranks, new 80s.

oohh – i’m not a new 80. I actually have 2 80’s but I just WvW mainly, and only tried to work on some Fractals during the off times. Except yesterday I decided to torture myself!

Regardless, I understand there are things I can do to resolved it and wasn’t hoping for a solution, but rather just voicing my vote behind the OP. Heck, I could have simply represented my other guild had I not been soo tired & thought about it …………….. which I didn’t think about until now!!!!!! LOL

The biggest issue I am seeing is the wide spread of levels of dungeons and the inability to utilize a LFG utility to insure compatibility with your desired outcome. For example, I was LFG for Level 2 for over 8 hours this weekend. Ran into a couple of issues (never actually got to attempt a level 2).

First, not many people were looking in the Level 2 range. Most were either 1 or 5+. After a few hours of looking, the few of us that were looking finally got a group together. When we went to enter, the highest level available was level 1…… This meant one of the PUGS didn’t understand and wasn’t fessing up to being the one. We began the process of kicking, checking, and reinviting. This unfortunately frustrated 2 of the members of the group who just left before I found the one who was the non-level 2. This left my group of 5, with 2.

Hours later, we got the group again, only to have the same issue. I gave up.

I know, find a group of people I know to run with, but that group isn’t always available and I wanted to be able to run this weekend. It’s very frustrating. I’m not looking for a solution, just supporting the OP with some supporting evidence.

Static.9841:

NineOnine.4327:

Waffler.1257:

NineOnine.4327:

I’ve been playing wvw 4-5 days a week since launch on TC a few hours a day (mainly solo or small group roaming). Out of all the match’s CD has by far the highest alt-F4 players I’ve seen. Tonight i thought I’d keep a tally, in 3 hours 10 alt F4’s. I’d be lucky to see 10 all week against other servers. They complain about being out numbered on this thread from time to time yet thats exactly the way they slamed us a month or so ago when they were FOTM. No respect for CD. Yaks however is cool.

Alt-F4 just became popular recently, and you just started playing matches against CD recently, coincidence? No, logic is your friend. I know everyone likes to jump on the CD hate bandwagon, but I can make the exact same observation. TC and YB both have tons of people Alt-F4ing and I’ve never encountered this many in the past. Also, I’ve received plenty of dirty messages from both TC and YB while killing your folks in the JP, so the people who like to say that CD is the only one with rude players are just flat out wrong. I have never messaged anyone insults after they have killed me, and I’ve been CD since beta.

What i said is simple dude, here ill break it down for you, CD alt f4 far more often than Yaks. You don’t notice this because your on CD.

See, I don’t agree, I’ve had 1 CD alt F4 on me against YBs who seem to do it every other fight I encounter them in. I have absolutely no doubt our server has its fair share, being a sore loser and bad sportsman in your own character’s death is not confined to any single server.

agreed. i’m on TC and i’ve seen it done fairly equally between yaks and CD. I don’t delude myself into beliving my own server doesn’t do it as much.

xtorma.1283:

WvW is the only thing keeping me playing.

same

Zilm.8459:

Agreed rhonyn. But logic is a tough sell to some.

This same game engine issue is argued with mesmer portal bombing. The issue of the amount of people that can port aside, it’s the culling that people have a probelm with. I don’t mind dying but I would really appreciate seeing my foe(s) prior to my death, not in a downed state.

I don’t see a problem with the thief stealth build, I don’t have a problem with the mesmer portal bomb. Anet has a problem with culling. And with that said the skills should be designed around the game engines limitations.

How does that not make sense?

because anet failed to compensate up front, made a class with certain abilities, sold this class, and people now use this class. I’m not saying anet’s initial implementation of the thief / mesmer were good, but these are the classes people play right now. changes to fix these issues go way beyond small tweaks to the abilities, it is a complete revamp of the class.

my argument is – the class itself in it’s current form isn’t broken, the game is. short of removing stealth from thieves you will not fix the ability to take advantage of culling. therego, in order to adjust the class, you have to essentially remove that class and insert another. a thief without stealth, in guild wars terms, is an assassin – not a thief. that isn’t fair to anyone who plays and likes their thief. therefore, the solution is for anet to resolve umbra 3.

i don’t see how ^^ doesn’t make sense … ?? or is it too logical?

and for the record:
1. The current implementation of thief DOES gain an advantage because of culling in large scale battles. I don’t argue this. It does NOT gain any advantage in sPvP or small scale battles.

2. Preventing a location from capping, or, performing the cap while in stealth is wrong and should be changed. If they are stealthed, it should not prevent the bar or progress the bar.

3. I’ve never said l2p (i know none of it was directed at me, just making sure it’s known) and I never will. The closest I will ever come is by suggesting ways to overcome the issue until the time with which it is resolved. I prefer to work toward the position of finding solutions over finding reasons to complain.

rhonyn.6810:

no comment on thief balance per se, other than to say class mechanic issue or game mechanic issues shouldn’t be viewed differently imo. Class mechanics should account for game engine performance and limitations in all game play scenarios that exist.

tldr: if culling is crappy, design stealth mechanics knowing that.

Culling isn’t crappy, their current implementation of Umbra 3 Occlusion (commonly called culling for GW2) into their game engine has a few issues which need to be ironed out. These types of fixes sometimes aren’t as easy as changing a couple numbers. Sometimes these may take months for the coders who know how this works to resolve.

The instantaneous appearance of a character is what causes it to appear later while the Umbra 3 process determines if it should be seen and queries the servers for it (look up Umbra Occlusion on wiki for more info). That is also why you see it with Portals. The same can occur if someone jumps from behind an object and runs out into the open. The only way to eliminate or reduce this issue is by removing stealth / portals. These are complete and utter class eliminating changes. If you take stealth away from the thief, it is no longer the character people signed up to play.

This leaves only one option. Fix Umbra 3 Occlusion. This unfortunately may take some time. Now, before anyone yells “oh, the thieves will defend anything” – i’m actually not sticking to playing my thief a lot. It is no the class for me. I learned a lot by leveling one to 80 and WvW / sPvP’n and now understand the class better. I do not think anything should be changed with the class. period. I have no issues with what they do and going against them.

The issue I see here is there is a specific order in which you want to upgrade most keeps and towers. By putting some incentive in front of pugs, it will make them want to claim / upgrade these keeps and towers quickly. This may cause a pug to claim Hills and toss up some oil just so he can get his rewards.

I agree with Roo. If two sides fall behind, they can work together to play catch up. Warhammer and DAOC both were great because it was 3 and not 2.

I play a thief / guardian (split my time between them). The issue isn’t Thieves, but rather the stealth mechanic as it is. The primary issue with stealth is that someone in stealth should not be able to either cap or prevent the cap of a resource. This would fix the majority of issues.

To mirror what someone else said above, thieves in small skirmishes are balanced as they stand because in those cases, culling is not a factor. Thieves only feel OP when culling comes into effect in major zerg battles where culling does affect game play. This is a technical issue with the game engine, not a component of the thief class.

rhyein.6172:

Mauvelence.6870:

So TC just cheesed their way thru the back wall of Redbriar which is laughable being they outnumbered us defenders at least 2 or 3 -1 there. It is stuff like this that will hurt you guys in tier 2, you cant be afraid to fight equal or your 2 to their 1 guys. You need to step that game up if you hope to compete up there. Just saying..

You’d probably have more defenders if you didn’t have a ten man group holed up in the jumping puzzle.

We probably all feel that same way about the other servers at some point. I’ve seen groups of YB, groups of TC, and groups of CD camping in there for hours. The one I have personally seen the least of is my own server (TC), but I don’t delude myself into believing my server doesn’t camp the jump puzzle as much as any other server.

cannons.8109:

Zilm.8459:

HtFde.3856:

Apart from the fact that I think capping should work (once the important NPC is down) so that the team with more players inside the circle should cap it (as it works in GW 1) you’re not really trying an efficient counter.

The thief CANNOT remain invisible endlessly without Cloak and Dagger (D/D, P/D) or the #5 #2 with D/P. Even if skilled so that stealing makes him invisible and given the chance he finds something while stealing to grant him another stealth for free … stealing, etc. has cooldown so that sooner or later the thief MUST attack to regain stealth.

If you have 20+ people you’re helping him if you clump together in the middle. Everyone with a low power computer will have culling issues and thus will prolong the stealth artificially.

Have everyone but 2 people move out of the circle. Those two (Elementalist work well) will stand together and spam blindness, cripple, bleed if they can and lay AoE on themselves.

The thief now has two options when he has to attack. He can go for the targets in the circle and risk being hit by the AoE or (worse) blinded and have his attack miss or he can attack one of the targets outside of the circle.

When he opts for the 2nd plan he will leave the circle and your capping will progress a bit before the thief returns. Eventually you will cap (hopefully before the NPCs respawn).

With most of the team out of the circle range (anyone not able to provide AoE should not be even near it) culling issues will be significantly better and the thief will render pretty quickly once his stealth time is over.

This from a thief who had this tactic used against him ^^

If a group of people have to do what you have suggested to counter one playable class, you don’t see this as a problem?

Really?

I find that funny as well. It’s like having to prepare for a raid boss. But really, why is this a big deal? I find that it adds a lot of fun to WvW, which gets stale and repetitive. I’ve tried it myself on my thief, and it’s not as easy as it looks.

Thieves simply should not be able to cap / prevent cap while hidden. That would solve a TON of issues.

Urxx.6840:

Belenwyn.8674:

I see that many players are begging for a treadmill. Many player do not want to be annoyed by a treadmaill. The best solution would be to limit the functionality of ascended gear to this certain kind of dungeons. For all other rewards beside infusion and acended gear introduce alternatives on equal level in the world outside of the fractals.

This would satisfy both sides of players.

Since GW2 was advertised as a no-threadmill game, whoever came here looking for a threadmill is out of place, not those who hate threadmills and don’t want the game to go in that direction.

^^^ It’s simple guys. Guild Wars 1 set a precedence. They claimed Guild Wars 2 would uphold it. I came to this game because it would NOT have the gear treadmill that WoW and soo many others have. This is a direct violation of the precedence AND promises set forth by ANet and the Guild Wars series.

I don’t see why anyone can argue for it? You obviously didn’t read about the game before you bought it if you believe this is acceptable. By saying you are okay with this new tier of gear, you are saying it’s okay for ANet to lie. What’s next? Guilds of Warcraft with 25 man raids, gear score, add-ons, a mini-pet pokemon game, built in farmville?

Sinfullysweet.4517:

BTW, I have to say CD, whoever came up with the mesmer bomb and is using it, VERY effective. Nice tactic! Definitely gives us TC players a “Oh dear god” moment! =D

Keep up the fight everyone!

I believe that was guild ARMA. I saw them using a lot of mesmer portals to move their team around the battle field to artifically create flanking situations. it was a brilliant move that I am most definitively going to have my guild steal from them and use ourselves.

I think the OP is referring specificaly to Rams and not Siege equipment. He specifically points to the fact that people building rams in the EB jump puzzle is simpley done to waste supplies. Short of building a gauntlet of fire to run through, I see no value in rams in the EB jump puzzle myself.

The rest should remain as is.