Guild Wars 2

To make you acknowledge how irrelevant ranks are since they changed how much rank points you need for them, GW2efficiency has this stat that shows you how many times you finished lvl 80 to lvl 81 and I think I have close to 200 repeat, while having taken a pretty long break from the game in the middle of its lifespan.

it’s kinda sad they changed it, i think we would start to see a few dRagon ranks today with the old system. And sicne unranked / ranked gives so much more rank points with no daily cap, people farming it in hotjoins/custom servers wouldn’t be the highest players getting it anyway.

- MMR ratings are different in unranked and ranked, so your ranked mmr is only determined by your previous ranked matches. The rating evolve pretty fast depending on wins and loses, so knowing how long ago they started calculating it like that doesn’t mean much. It’s account based, not profession based.

- 60% is the high part of the scale. it’s pretty rare to have more than that. If you maintain over 55% winrate you’re usually a pretty good player on that class.

- yeah, it’s just escape logout character select screen and pick another of your characters

If i was to play against a two DHs, well, to be frank I would usually switch off thief to play something else.

but if you want to stick with thief against that, staff + basi venom is great at boosting your chances against them.

onevsone.2098:

I find a little weird s2 is almost finished and we have no news on off season, s3 and balance patch

They didn’t say anything about how off season would work for season 1 either. they’re just going to cut the season, and put ingame when the next one starts a few days after its closed.

Arenanet is just scared ( for right reasons IMO ) because the difference between a great thief and a good thief is 10 times the gap as the difference between a good of X class and a great of X class.

If you make Thief good enoguh for the average player to use it, then you make great thieves literally unstoppable.

dominik.9721:

I just want to know if anet will go on with a third pro league or something similar to Go4 cup, so I can decide whether to quit pvp or not

You can always try prestige 30 next season !

Thieves guild is kinda cheesy tho. You can argue using basi venom over impact strike but thieves guild for a conquest match is kind of a waste.

Azukas.1426:

The problem i have with it is that druids have so much access to stability. Without the stab it’s actually a good play to counter it, but as it is now a few stacks of stability guarantees the res.

they only have the elite for stability…

Arenanet should gives us stats like those at the end of each seasons, no reason why they shouldn’t.

For leveling, sword + Pistol used to be the best, I don’t think it changed much.

Sword offers the most cleave on the autos, pistol autos gives black powder to tank ennemy very easily, and pistol whip is evade + good damage on stuff that doesn’t mvoe out of it.

D/P thief with scolar runes is pretty up there currently with the classic black powder, heartseeker steal backstab combo. Especially if you get an interupt with the steal for a pulmonary impact proc.

Kageseigi.2150:

The added range if elevated may be more complicated to code.

But to shoot an arrow at maximum range even if targeting beyond maximum range should be quite simple.

Doesn’t the new targeting mode kinda does that anyway ?

" Lock ground target at maximum range "

Consordion.8369:

Zero Day.2594:

And the backpiece is the first Order of Whispers one…

(Just because there are too many ninjas, hooded, school-girl, underboobs, scarfs, black-and-white, emos, and other kitten out there…)

what shoulders are those?

stalwart

not available anymore, old pvp reward

Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare to code in, do’nt expect anything like that ever is my guess.

Azukas.1426:

ResJudicator.7916:

Narcarsis.5739:

Azukas.1426:

They switched to the only comp viable. You were too stubborn to realize that. The fact that every single pro team switched to it including the best teams and players confirms that statement. Was it favorable to abandon a comp for another during a season…maybe not but the alternative solution of staying with a significantly weaker comp was worse.

Also I never said anything about you not being around nor does your busy life sway any feeling of cares in me….we’re all busy fyi. The shot at all the players in NA pro league was uncalled for though.

Have a nice day.

“Only viable comp” – They switched to the easiest comp. Players make the game, not classes. The only exception to that would be warrior, which provides nothing over another class.

Staff Thief kills clones as fast as they’re produced, cleaves downs, and had more than enough survivability in Season 1’s meta. Impact Strike also would have ended fights instead of letting the same person get ressed over 5 times in a single fight. There’s always more than 1 viable comp, despite how efficient that comp may be. You can call me stubborn all you want, I play more than one class and had no issue swapping if I thought it was necessary for a win. The majority of the player base swaps to the easiest class to play because it has the least room for error – but that doesn’t mean it has the largest payback when played optimally. The issue arises when their reluctance towards challenge inhibits their ability to comprehend the game from a strategic standpoint.

Don’t expect people to know better since there’s a large assumption that everyone in Pro League knows what they’re doing.

Narcaris has a good point. Running a thief is difficult because it allows very little room for error — both from the team’s perspective as well as the team’s perspective. One bad rotation from the team can put the thief in a position where he’s not able to contribute well. And one bad movement from the thief is enough to get him downed. We can all accept that as true.

But a thief comp played perfectly may still be better than a meta comp that is also played perfectly. But if both teams make a few mistakes, then the meta comp wins. It makes sense for proleague teams (which are competing for cash) to play the safer comp — especially when you have to deal with uncontrollable issues like lag, random DCs, and A.net bugs (immob, sliding downstate, etc.).

It’s probably the same reason why players in Ranked complain about thieves. When you have a thief on your team, you need to play smarter so that your thief has the opportunity to shine. Doing stupid stuff like leaving a teamfight on a slow class to decap is going to screw up your thief hard, and the scoreboard will make it look like it was the thief that was dragging the team down rather than you.

Here’s the issue with that thinking. The Abjured who were light years ahead of their team had the WTS MVP swap off thief. If any team could play perfectly with a thief it was them….and they switched.

While Im on the side of all thieves (being a mesmer main I just feel a thief in a match creates more excitement which is good for the game) i have to be a realist about the current state of things.

It’s hard to discuss this in particular without having an opinion from Toker himself.
From what you can hear during Chaithh’s or Phantaram’s stream, Toker is just enjoying Rev a lot, and maybe he just doesn’t want to put in the extra work given he’s enjoying what he’s playing just as much.

Whereas i’m sure Caed wanted to make Thief work more than he was enjoying other classes.

on forest, when I don’t get asked to cap close ( which happens, and its risky if anything cross ), i tend to help stack swiftness at the main exit and then go to crossing exit, watch for crosser on the beach, intercept if there is one, go below mid if not;

Then you either engage on someone being a bit late on the 4 mid train. Or you can harass the train with shortbow to slow them down a bit.
Sometimes, one guy from the 4 group will try to attack and chase you ( often Revenants ) and that’s good to make the Mid fight a bit easier for your team because you can just kite the guy around easily.

Then I usually fight mid while being very cautious of positioning, do a good burst combo with steal on the main target and try to finish off low players, especially with Impact Strike instant stomp if doable.

Watch for the guy who capped far to come mid, and depending fi the mid fight is going well or not, i either stay mid to clean up, or intercept the 5th man who might go close to decap, or stealth my way past the 5th man to decap far.

Revenant’s reveal has a 20sec CD…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gaze_of_Darkness

He also has to be in glint stance to use it, which mean you can stealth right when they go into shiro and they can’t even use the skill.

Topher.5631:

Nocta.5274:

Balance every month would probbaly not even be doable if they wanted to. remember there’s manpower and dev time to be used over this kind of stuff.

it’s also very easy when balancing too often to overreact to stuff and nerf / buff where you didn’t need to.

I think 3 months is really the perfect spot. But those patches just need to be meaningfull enough.

Well that is my personal issue with this whole thing. Does it really take 3 months to move numbers around? I don’t think that it does, and if they do have a whole team dedicated to balance (like they say they do), I don’t think they should have 1 day of work every 3 months

Balancing impacts a lot of things, and it takes time to know how much you need to change the number for it to feel right.
I know it often seems as easy as " Change the number", but it really isn’t most of the time.

You just go somewhere the DH isn’t and let your team manage them.
DH literally lose to every other class in the game, so you shouldn’t be wasting your time as Thief fighting them.

If you know a spot is trapped, just dodge in and dodge out before it cages you.
And if a DH start targeting you, keep Shadow step ready for when he tries to use the Pull, he needs to chain you before doing that so it’s a pretty easy tell.

D/D was dead in sPvP way before the addition of reveals abilities. Actually, unless you are a WvW cheeser, D/D died 2 years ago.

Also, the whole " Oh my god reveal abilities will kill thief " is so 2015 now.
Those abilities are really not as great as some people here were trying to convince people about.

Balance every month would probbaly not even be doable if they wanted to. remember there’s manpower and dev time to be used over this kind of stuff.

it’s also very easy when balancing too often to overreact to stuff and nerf / buff where you didn’t need to.

I think 3 months is really the perfect spot. But those patches just need to be meaningfull enough.

The better the players become, the rarer teamfight involving more than 5 players become tho.

Even in everyday ranked play, only at the beginning does a big fight usually happen, and that’s when both team choose a 1-4 split.

Current rate seems fine to me. with small hotfixes in between only when things are really out of control. ( like bunker mesmer was )

But the 3 months patch really need to adress stuff right. the fact that Warrior are a joke two season in a row is unacceptable for example.

I have everything finished but the Gift of fortune and thinking of saving the mats for the new shortbow instead. The backpiece is so kinda meh. #_#

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Nex.7243:

I made an alt account which I got to legend for 2 reasons:

1. To help my friend who most certainly would have quit if I tried to get him to Legend by duo-queuing in Legend.
2. To prove that you don’t need HoT to get to Legend.

ah, what profession and build you used on your non hot account to get to legend, can share? XD

Plenty of people have made F2p legend this season.

Condi necro, SA thief, burn guard, condi engi are all good choices for F2p builds.

Thief is fine honestly. we either don’t need much, or we have to wait for a real Shiro nerf.
I’d be happy if they would increase our survability in fights just a tad, but otherwise its okay.

Shortbow buffs would be nice tho, won’t lie. Shortbow 4 is very lacking since the change to Poison stacking, shortbow 2 has always been very clunky for damage due to its speed and flip skill, and some of the nerfs to shortbow 3 could be undone.

But you can actually play thief this season, which wasn’t really the case the last one, so heh, improvement !

Ithilwen.1529:

That same alt has gained 20 ap so far this session, from wins.

Good morning Chaith.

Season 1 was rekt by players smurfing. This season is being trashed by alts. It’s basically the same thing, high level players using a loophole to farm easy wins and loot.

You realize most of these players are completely not caring about rewards ?
You think Chaithh and people like that care about golds, mats and such ? most of them can barely manage to find how to craft the legendary pacbkpiece by themselves because they’re just here to play.

The main reason for pro players doing that is because of queues times.

LOrd should have some kind of self condi cleanse. it’s way too easy for condi classes to solo him right now. Maybe makes some of the 4 other NPCs cleanse him from time to time.

Want a reason, here, have one

Well, as a Thief main, i’m happy, i got a serious pistol and this sounds like a serious shortbow. And i’ll have a few years to get ready for the new dagger apparently haha

but overall this decision sucks, I’m just trying to look on the bright side of things. sigh

Well, scrapper will definitely need a look at once they nerf necro a bit, but right now, they’re not too much of an issue because they suffer so much against them and necros are everywhere.

Traps don’t trigger reveal because the traps are coded as entities, so the damage comes from the trap, not the thief that placed it.

Lexander.4579:

pro playurs have no idea how to play thief tbh

They do, but the good thiefs players are using revs because they know better.

Staff + healing signet + invigorating precision makes any solo pve content easy as hell, i wouldn’t worry.

Things could be better, but they were worst a few months ago so in the end we just ride the flow of the game.

The feeling comes from the fact that they never gave us back the " gain 3 initiative on entering stealth " trait we used to have.

it’s pretty obvious arenanet has been shawing stealth from thief over the years, so its not totally unexpected. Even outside of Daredevil they’re pushing us into being a dodging / shadowstepping character more than a stealthy one.

Shadowstep and signet of agility are kinda mandatory, but the third slot is very customizable.

Black powder, bandit’s defense, shadow refuge, infiltrator signet, Roll for initiative, the new dagger throw that inflict slows, even shadowtrap

All of those have seen usage in the last months.

feels to me MMR hell of whatever is just the new excuse for players not willing to put the effort;

Most of the pvp playerbase would not have bought the expansion if it wasn’t for elite specs.

And while I agree pvp felt better without them, its naive to think arenanet would do that.

Raek.8504:

Quadox.7834:

Raek.8504:

Quadox.7834:

Anomaly.7612:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Getting ‘stuck’ in ruby is a very important topic regarding how best league should operate. We changed matchmaking to make the ladder more prestigious and so far it has done that. Divisions are aligning with skill level much better than season 1. The product of this change is that the bulk of players who hover around the middle of the mmr curve should stay in sapphire and ruby. Win rate will level out at 50% because there are plentiful players of similar mmr in the same division.

Should average players be able to climb out of the middle divisions by grinding? This removes prestige and can make matchmaking worse within a division, but always allows a sense of progression.

Should average players stay in the middle divisions because that’s where they belong at their skill level? This retains prestige and only improving skill will allow climbing, but rewards and progression stop at some point through the season.

Is there an incentive that could be added to league games for players who have reached their appropriate division and can no longer climb?

This post seriously seems like an inflammatory “git gud” post. Mechanical skill doesn’t matter in a game that’s more about how well you can outrotate the other team, and what comp your team is running. Face it, Evan. Your team has made a system that caters to ESL level players that are premade on TS.

There are SO MANY builds and classes that are just completely irrelevant this season. How does it show skill that I can get on a Necro (that I rarely play) and faceroll a mid fight and win just because Necro’s are just OP teamfighters? This game is really lacking in the “skill” and rewards department and it’s severely pushing vets (like me) away from y(our) game.

Fix the matchmaking. Base the enemy team on MMR as well. Make crossing divisions require a certain MMR. Increase MMR if you win. Decrease it if you lose. Divisions can be lost. Increase MMR more if the team you’re facing has a much bigger MMR and your team should statistically lose. Don’t decrease the MMR if your team was statistically supposed to lose.

I really don’t understand why your team doesn’t get this (not even) novel concept. It’s like you guys have never played ranked games before.

The system you’re trying to put on the majority of players caters to the minority. The system would work if there were more people playing this game, but thanks to your team not being able to balance to save your careers or add a decently rewarding system, or making a PvP lobby worth staying in, you DON’T have the population to make this system work.

Sorry not sorry for seeming angry. I just feel like y’all are so kitten out of touch with your playerbase. I hope for Anet’s sake that things change, and change quick, because there are other games out there, and more coming soon, that will REALLY hurt this one if things aren’t made better. (See: Crowfall, Black Desert Online, Over Watch, Paragon)

How does it cater to the minority, by which i suppose you mean esl players? Pretty much all of them hate it/are dissapointed.

Why ? Que times ? Rewards ? What ? As i heard from few of them, they are pretty satisfied that plebs are in the pit with plebs where they belong.

With the absolute lack of incentive and progression after legend considering the horrible “leaderboard” (if one could call it that) etc. Then there are other problems such as super long queue times after prestige 1 and such, which is likely due to the previous issue in combination with some other factors.

Okay thanks, i still don’t get it. Please explain.

There is WoW which is more competitive and popular then GW 2 pvp will ever be, and there is no rewards attached further you move in the rating (above 2200). Which is gained rather quickly within a season by Pro players.

Basically everyone who plays PvP nowadays need a reward to PvP in the first place ? Only i do see issue with it ?

Wow actually has rewards for that. teams that end first gets something special ( a title ), whereas first in leaderboard in GW2 gets nothing for it.
Also getting gladiator in wow arenas is a lot more difficult and represent a lot less people than legendary in GW2. Gladiator is 0.5%; Arenanet doesn’t gives stats but I expect the % of legendary players to be a lot higher than that.

I didn’t mind. Got Legend yesterday and felt like this season was a definitive up in skill from the last one in the latest divisions. Diamond had some really fun matches.

Balance could use work but its miles better than facing Bunker Mesmers.

just playing ranked games should reward you with something that isn’t in unranked, even when you don’t cross tiers or divisions.

It doesn’t need to be big, but people would accept getting to the league ranking they belong to more if the system didn’t punish them for not going up anymore.

The feeling of being stuck is awful mostly because the system tells you throught its reward system that you are not good enough, instead of encouraging you to become better.

I also strongly agree with making shards of glory more useful. i remember when they were announced, they were promised to be something Pvp players can make money off, and now they’re basically a non currency.
maybe make shard of glory only available throught ranked play ? it’s hard to do anything about that now because there’s billions of them available for basically nothing.

One interesting metric would be to know the % of players who finished achievements that can’t even make the legendary backpiece because griding for two seasons doesn’t even get you enough to buy the stuff for the gift of Fortune lol;

style.6173:

No, having a thief is usually a loss. They suck. Nothing wrong with playing them, but its better to play it in unranked where they have a better chance to win.

You just don’t play with good thieves then.

Also, try to be honest with yourself in matches. It’s really easy to just blame everything wrong on the thief player despite usually not being the case…

Thief is decent too. There’s nothign wrong with 1 thief in a team.

The way the system matches you agaisnt people at the same league spot as you will do that. It makes you realize not that many people actually play sPvP, so you see the sames faces all the time.

I play all the classes affected by this ( Thief as D/P, scrapper and rev ) and I hoenstly think its fine.
The reveals are all pretty slow, and it can be very hard to get a thief with it if the thief is smart about it.

The only thing I don’t like is that the Rev ones inflict reveals on target even before they stealth, for the sword 3 under reveal combo.

witcher.3197:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

300 000 dollar wasted on E-sport tournement. I don’t call that ‘ignoring pvp’. They are addicted to pvp.

This is the biggest misconception ever. GW2 is 99% PvE content, but advertisements and events are ~80% PvP. It’s easy to believe Anet’s PR bullkitten if you don’t actually see what’s behind it – there’s literally nothing new content to play in ranked PvP since 2012, only stronghold which nobody cares about.

PvP development is a joke and devs couldn’t care less, they just love attending tournaments and hope that throwing money at things will magically fix problems so they don’t have to work.

Throwing all the marketing budget at PvP when the finals barely get 5k viewers is like the biggest waste ever.
I rather have them doing traditional add campaigns ( and not stupid kitten like taxi cabs ) so maybe the game would get more players overal.

I’m convinced one fo the main reason HoT sales figures weren’t as big as predicted is because they wasted marketing money on PvP.

Playing multiple class is fun guys, try it. I’ve been playing 4 classes seriously ever sicne season 1 started and it helps quite a lot at times.

Thief isn’t bad. Revenant is heavily overshadowing Thief if you can stack them.

The idea behind it is that Revenant has less free mobility ( just as good chasing power tho ) in exchange for way more in fight survability ( protection access, Glint heal, sword 3 to do damage without risks, Shiro riposting shadows being the best skill in the game )

And currently having enough survability to fight a bit is way more useful than an excess in mobility, because you have to fight scrappers and/or be under the effect of aoe crap from necros and tempests.

Well, you might see thieves only because proteams won’t be allowed to have 2 of the same class anymore, so that Fith slot after Rev Scrapper Tempest Necro is up int the air between Mesmer, Druid and Thief now.