Guild Wars 2

Silas Drake.8946:

Make black powder a dark field for a day.

@Obscure one, Your argument/point of view makes no sense.

What happens when a Guardian gains stealth?
He becomes invisible. That’s all. There’s no Guardian mechanics that trigger on or during Stealth for thieves there are.

What happens when a thief is inflicted with burning?
He begins to take burning damage. That is all. There’s no Thief mechanics that trigger on or during Burning, for Guardians there are.

If that still doesn’t make sense to you there’s literally nothing else I can tell you that will assist in educating you on the distinction between Stealth mechanics and Thief mechanics.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Obscure One.4357:

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

Dan.2940:

Obscure One.4357:

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

mrmadhaze.8706:

Misinformation. Misinformation everywhere.

Yeap.

Clarifications
Stealth is a defensive means of mitigating damage by becoming untargetable. Stealth grants neither invulnerability nor stability. Note skills with long warm up times that are activated while the target is visible and then gains stealth during that time are not interrupted and target as normal. Subsequent attempts to target (or generally know where the player is) are nullified for the duration of said stealth, thereby mitigating direct damage by up to 100% depending on how well the attacking player can predict the position of an invisible target.

Just wanna throw this in there. Some attack need a target to active, not everything is melee sweeping auto attack or ground targetable. Also stealth provides(spec provided) a lot of condition removal, tons of healing over time, and in the case of say my Mesmer boons.

If stealth didn’t provide so much outside of its targeting issues and gaining the stealther position I think we would have a whole new conversation.

Imagine no healing and free offensive conditions removal in some way. Or even a penalty for healing.

I hope one day a mmo comes around without a pure invisible mechanic for stealth. It only brings headaches for both user and victim.
.

Incorrect

You are associating the things the Thief can do when activating or while being stealthed to the stealth effect itself. Stealth does not inherently cure conditions nor provide healing.

Stealth can provide healing if traited for it, Shadow Refuge also heals you while activated.

Exactly. A Thief trait and a Thief skill that trigger when entering or while being stealthed. These are not mechanics of Stealth itself they are mechanics of the class.

Weapons don’t do damage unless you push the buttons ether. Reguardless reading everything is probably a good idea beforehand.

Thieves have no stealth that only provides invisibility. Damage, blinds, healing, teleport are tied to it aswell. The only pure invisibility only stealth abilities I can think of off the top of my head is vale and mass invisibility. They do however provide for multiple player stealth. So arguing stealth as a sole mechanic wouldn’t make sense with out factoring in its built in advantages that when combained sometimes provides too much.

This thinking exemplifies the common placed ignorance of the mechanics that lie at the root of most of the stealth nerfing arguments. Any class can gain stealth from blasting a smoke field. Stealth does not blind targets, that is a mechanic of smoke fields. When a class such as an Engineer gains stealth it does not heal nor remove conditions, because those are mechanics specifically related to thieves, not Stealth.

Stealth is not a thief class mechanic, stealth is a general game mechanic.

That’s just irrelevant schemantics though.

You continue to miss the mechanical differences.

Remove the thief from the game, and stealth is still present. The problem is not, has never been, nor ever will be the Stealth mechanic. It is, has been, and always will be (since ANet seems happy to leave it broken) the Thief mechanics. Creating this paramount distinction targets not stealth as the source of the problem, but the thief class itself and its plethora of petty no-skill-required troll mechanics.

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

Dan.2940:

Obscure One.4357:

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

mrmadhaze.8706:

Misinformation. Misinformation everywhere.

Yeap.

Clarifications
Stealth is a defensive means of mitigating damage by becoming untargetable. Stealth grants neither invulnerability nor stability. Note skills with long warm up times that are activated while the target is visible and then gains stealth during that time are not interrupted and target as normal. Subsequent attempts to target (or generally know where the player is) are nullified for the duration of said stealth, thereby mitigating direct damage by up to 100% depending on how well the attacking player can predict the position of an invisible target.

Just wanna throw this in there. Some attack need a target to active, not everything is melee sweeping auto attack or ground targetable. Also stealth provides(spec provided) a lot of condition removal, tons of healing over time, and in the case of say my Mesmer boons.

If stealth didn’t provide so much outside of its targeting issues and gaining the stealther position I think we would have a whole new conversation.

Imagine no healing and free offensive conditions removal in some way. Or even a penalty for healing.

I hope one day a mmo comes around without a pure invisible mechanic for stealth. It only brings headaches for both user and victim.
.

Incorrect

You are associating the things the Thief can do when activating or while being stealthed to the stealth effect itself. Stealth does not inherently cure conditions nor provide healing.

Stealth can provide healing if traited for it, Shadow Refuge also heals you while activated.

Exactly. A Thief trait and a Thief skill that trigger when entering or while being stealthed. These are not mechanics of Stealth itself they are mechanics of the class.

Weapons don’t do damage unless you push the buttons ether. Reguardless reading everything is probably a good idea beforehand.

Thieves have no stealth that only provides invisibility. Damage, blinds, healing, teleport are tied to it aswell. The only pure invisibility only stealth abilities I can think of off the top of my head is vale and mass invisibility. They do however provide for multiple player stealth. So arguing stealth as a sole mechanic wouldn’t make sense with out factoring in its built in advantages that when combained sometimes provides too much.

This thinking exemplifies the common placed ignorance of the mechanics that lie at the root of most of the stealth nerfing arguments. Any class can gain stealth from blasting a smoke field. Stealth does not blind targets, that is a mechanic of smoke fields. When a class such as an Engineer gains stealth it does not heal nor remove conditions, because those are mechanics specifically related to thieves, not Stealth.

Stealth is not a thief class mechanic, stealth is a general game mechanic.

Dan.2940:

Obscure One.4357:

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

mrmadhaze.8706:

Misinformation. Misinformation everywhere.

Yeap.

Clarifications
Stealth is a defensive means of mitigating damage by becoming untargetable. Stealth grants neither invulnerability nor stability. Note skills with long warm up times that are activated while the target is visible and then gains stealth during that time are not interrupted and target as normal. Subsequent attempts to target (or generally know where the player is) are nullified for the duration of said stealth, thereby mitigating direct damage by up to 100% depending on how well the attacking player can predict the position of an invisible target.

Just wanna throw this in there. Some attack need a target to active, not everything is melee sweeping auto attack or ground targetable. Also stealth provides(spec provided) a lot of condition removal, tons of healing over time, and in the case of say my Mesmer boons.

If stealth didn’t provide so much outside of its targeting issues and gaining the stealther position I think we would have a whole new conversation.

Imagine no healing and free offensive conditions removal in some way. Or even a penalty for healing.

I hope one day a mmo comes around without a pure invisible mechanic for stealth. It only brings headaches for both user and victim.
.

Incorrect

You are associating the things the Thief can do when activating or while being stealthed to the stealth effect itself. Stealth does not inherently cure conditions nor provide healing.

Stealth can provide healing if traited for it, Shadow Refuge also heals you while activated.

Exactly. A Thief trait and a Thief skill that trigger when entering or while being stealthed. These are not mechanics of Stealth itself they are mechanics of the class.

Silas Drake.8946:

Obscure One.4357:

mrmadhaze.8706:

Misinformation. Misinformation everywhere.

Yeap.

Clarifications
Stealth is a defensive means of mitigating damage by becoming untargetable. Stealth grants neither invulnerability nor stability. Note skills with long warm up times that are activated while the target is visible and then gains stealth during that time are not interrupted and target as normal. Subsequent attempts to target (or generally know where the player is) are nullified for the duration of said stealth, thereby mitigating direct damage by up to 100% depending on how well the attacking player can predict the position of an invisible target.

Just wanna throw this in there. Some attack need a target to active, not everything is melee sweeping auto attack or ground targetable. Also stealth provides(spec provided) a lot of condition removal, tons of healing over time, and in the case of say my Mesmer boons.

If stealth didn’t provide so much outside of its targeting issues and gaining the stealther position I think we would have a whole new conversation.

Imagine no healing and free offensive conditions removal in some way. Or even a penalty for healing.

I hope one day a mmo comes around without a pure invisible mechanic for stealth. It only brings headaches for both user and victim.
.

Incorrect

You are associating the things the Thief can do when activating or while being stealthed to the stealth effect itself. Stealth does not inherently cure conditions nor provide healing.

mrmadhaze.8706:

Misinformation. Misinformation everywhere.

Yeap.

Clarifications
Stealth is a defensive means of mitigating damage by becoming untargetable. Stealth grants neither invulnerability nor stability. Note skills with long warm up times that are activated while the target is visible and then gains stealth during that time are not interrupted and target as normal. Subsequent attempts to target (or generally know where the player is) are nullified for the duration of said stealth, thereby mitigating direct damage by up to 100% depending on how well the attacking player can predict the position of an invisible target.

Victory.2879:

I don’t know why they didn’t also make wexp reflect the difference in ranks between players, so if my rank 10 (say) mesmer kills a rank 300 thief my mes gets say a 1wexp point bonus per 10 rank difference, whereas if he kills me he gets a penalty to his wexp.

Would make it slightly easier to level up ranks on alts etc and address the issue, as apparently us multi alt users (we like variety) are not going to gte account wide anything any time soon.

Karma, you know that purple stuff that just keeps stacking up with nothing interesting to spend it on? Yeah…that’s account bound now…not WxP.

Guess enough PvE 1-pressers complained enough for ANet to benefit all alt-o-holics on their behalf. Guess those talentless casuals aren’t so bad if they can occasionally inspire progress that throws me a bone or two once in awhile.

But come on, how is Karma account bound, and WxP not? I got some of that stuff off of personal story junk, yet its okay for it to be used by my alts? Come on ANet pull your heads out of your kittens…doing that to an animal is illegal in most states and particularly unsanitary…(stupid forum filters. I’m certain grandma is pleased mods…buncha children…)

The design was fine until they added the achievement reward system. Before that it was exclusively a matter of personal prestige to obtain the max in any of these titles and achievement points didn’t really matter at all. Now that they’ve altered the design it’s clear achievements were whimsically given point values that didn’t reflect, nor took into account, the amount of time it takes to gain them. By making these achievements represent tangible rewards they invented a grind that did not previously exist. Furthermore the WvW achievements are so unattainable, most players will never complete a singular one of these title tracks over the lifetime of the game with dedicated daily play.

So I recently got a couple posts of mine targeted as infractions. One of which, yeah ok I was kinds being a “kitten” and had it coming. In both posts (and actually in the wild majority of all my posts on any forum in the last decade or so) I used a string of random symbols like “!#$%” to avoid tripping any filters.

I was warned for infraction for not swearing and not doing so in a manner that would conceal a word from the filter as to circumvent it. These symbols used were not arranged in a manner that could provide an alternate representation of a swear word such as clever placement of “at” symbols and dollar signs (a word used in-game audio files yet censored here).

What I’d like to know is how we’re defining circumvention, because either I’ve been circumventing the filter for quite some time or I’ve received the warning in error and should contact forums@arena.net for further assistance.

Thank You.

Dan.2940:

A total rework of the class, as long as it’s done the right way, would be interesting, but i doubt Arenanet would scrap what they have and make thieves work completely different

I’d like the focus to shift off stealth and be placed on shadowstepping, steal, and hit and run tactics. In the place of a class you cant hit because you cant see, a class you cant hit because its more mobile based on well timed teleports and evades. Coupled with the ability to directly support it’s allies in a straight fight with boons like vigor, swiftness, retaliation, and frost auras it could rapidly become a welcomed addition to any party.

If we look at GW1 we can see ANet has a track record of totally overhauling a class due to poor core design, with the Dervish being the first that comes to mind.

Straegen.2938:

Lets cut to the chase, does anyone think this is not one of the more powerful, relatively cheap and easy to use combos in all of WvW? Can you name another that is more powerful with similar convenience?

As soon as you can name something else the thief can do thats as effective as those other classes to which you compare them, I will continue to deem it the no-skills-thrills design of an overall unchallenging, easy mode, bull!@$% troll class.

Klawlyt.6507:

10/0/0/30/30

I take the damage/health on steal trait in the first line.

Acrobatics I have fall damage reduction, extra init every 10 seconds, and the third one changes pretty frequently, usually the heal on init usage lately.

I have fury/might/swiftness on steal, vigor on steal/boon steal (I think that one is Bountiful Theft), and the interrupt on steal/steal CD reduction. These three further allow me to play supportively, but overall the build isn’t completely useless ins small scale battles. You just have to play… wait for it… intelligently and skillfully. I can keep swiftness on a slow (mesmer) commander (or yak, or back of the tail…) for 13 out of every 21 seconds all by myself, too.

And no, I can’t ever remember the names of the actual traits.

I use SB in large group engagements for the aforementioned blast finishers, and use D/P for more personal fights. Yes, I use HS, no it is not all I use, that gets you dead to good players. No, I don’t “abuse” stealth, but I’m not above using it if I need it. For 9 init a whack, I’m definitely not spamming it.

I use Withdraw for my heal. I use Scorpion Wire since it’s cooldown was reduced. It’s nice for dragging called targets into your zerg, or a great interrupt in smaller fights, even if the pull kitten s out. Roll for initiative for additional stunbreak/init regeneration. Sig of Shadows for… well speed. Dagger Storm because it’s WvW and I’m not made for venom sharing.

It grants survivability, utility, and enough damage output to be on even footing with any given player in a 1v1.

Very little use of stealth, certainly nothing close to spamming. Far from zerker damage. Crazy utility for my group.

Pin me. Pay me. 1-2-3 4 Life.

Edit: Really? The D word that rhymes with burp is a censorable word?

Now I cant say the build is bad but it’s not as efficient in a party as a full clerics gear staff/hammer guardian 0/0/30/30/10 that can bring fire and light fields that it can blast in every 5 seconds, have huge durations off of the granted boons and pump out 21 stacks of might on up to 5 people by itself…which also heals it. It’s boon count exceeds your builds capability with just core class design…which is dumb.

Your build brings poison and smoke fields. To be efficient, spamming your blast finishers in your fields will cause weakness or stealth…otherwise you’re useless to the party when there’s no field around that the devs decided not to give the thief because they’re !#$%ing bad at creating a rogue archetype class.

When it comes down to raw utility the build is bested by a vast array of Engineers who have a better pull than scorpion wire (unblockable, unreflectible, shorter CD, one of five skills they get for that same 1 utility slot) and bring every field except for dark and ethereal to the fight. They can not only provide more utility but also do not have to give up mid-high damage to do so…another failure in the core design.

Is the build playable? Sure why not. Is it as efficient as any other class filling a support role? !@$% no, if I have a choice between that and the guardian build I mentioned, its a no brainer I’m going with the guardian every time its a heal and boon factory on a level the thief couldn’t dream of. If you’d like the build I can post it in its entirety for you since I’d also want the same given our friendly wager.

Dan.2940:

So please, explain to me how you know what needs to me nerfed, and WHY you think it needs to be nerfed, because right now it looks like you just want thieves to stop being annoying, even though you can kill them easily. Which to me, doesn’t sound like a valid reason for a nerf.

Not looking for a nerf. Looking for a complete overhaul from the ground up on the entirety of that infantile class.

Obscure One.4357:

The problem is not what the thief can do it’s what the thief can’t do.

Why do thieves spam stealth and heartseeker/unload/clusterbomb? Because the devs designed this class so !#$%ing poorly that this is all they can do. Don’t point at the player and say “oh you just have no skill, and that’s why you play a thief.” you need to point at ANet and say “oh you just have no skill, and that’s why you made the thief.”

The class is terribad, so bad in fact that it can only do one thing well (so well it borders on exploitation of game mechanics causing thread after thread of “QQ nerf thief!”) and be about as effective as a pile of hot sick horse !#$% at literally anything else.

The whole class is over-specialized to the point of absolute infantile simplicity, that’s the problem. Saying you want ANet to nerf stealth and HS spam is taking away the only !#$%ing thing the class can do, which is why Thief zealots will troll you every time you mention a nerf to spamming and stealth.

Problem: the whole Thief class stinks worse than a week old diaper wrapped in burnt hair and crammed inside a road killed skunk that got hit by a gravel truck four or five times. Save for one hyper specialized, game breaking, and childishly simple play style, the thief is a horrible class.

Solution: kill it and burn it…or just kill it with fire…then like the mighty Phoenix let it rise from it’s ashes as a valid, well rounded, and challenging class to play.

If you wanted to understand where I was coming from you could’ve actually just read this thread so I didn’t need to repost old news.

Klawlyt.6507:

Obscure One.4357:

If you can name one role a thief can fill that doesn’t involve stealth spamming or massive damage that allows it to the support, bunker, or roam with the efficiency of ANY other class, I will concede the point and send you 5 gold in game.

Equip PVT for survival, spec for maximum init generation, and be a source of constant blast finishers. In essence playing support for a well coordinated team who uses combo fields intelligently. No stealth needed, only medicore damage.

Klawlyt.6507 or Doubleoh Nothing. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.

No credit for half answers. Gimme the build and give you your gold.

Jayne.9251:

It would probably have to go down as low as 60 per server per map to rectify it. Then the queues would be insane.

Mind you, that might force some to go to other servers and spread out the population more in order to get fights ….. Hrm ….

It sucks, its an unchangeable failing of the engine itself, but there’s no way to maintain it the way it is now without heavily reducing maximum populations per server per map. If the biggest fight I can hope for is 60 vs 60 vs 60 but it’ll be smooth, everything will render, and there won’t be any skill-lag, then maybe that’s a better route. Then again I can’t speak for anyone else on the matter since quality over quantity is a personal preference not all share.

Yeah I’m really growing to hate the engine. Clearly its very difficult to optimize and flat out can’t support the demands WvW calls for. Considering the talent of the art and level designers it may be simpler to fix populations to 100 per server per map and just add a bunch more maps. Rendering as many as 10 particle effect AoEs per player in a 300 person fight for stone mist still sounds way too taxing on the engine, but with say 12 maps instead of 4 having this type of fight would become rare…which sucks, but I’d rather them put the fun in functionality than continue creating just as many problems with the fix as they had to begin with.

Jski.6180:

Obscure One.4357:

Jski.6180:

And when they do update WvW ppl will complain that Anet is never updating pve and spvp. When they update pve you see this reaction. When they update spvp then ppl say its only about esports. So why is your view of any worth?

Look at the gem store. This is how Arena Net makes their money after point of purchase. Look at how it targets the PvE crowd. They ignore us to the point of not even wanting to target us with digital goods for a profit.

Look at the content design goals the company has shifted to. The Living Story has not, does not, and in all likelihood will not ever have anything to do with the WvW player base…like ever…and its irrefutably the content design focus of GW2.

Every time these come up they are nothing more then delusions of what you most like and what you most do not want. They just added in use for Gems in WvW that something comply new that you can add to your WvW game play. But before that there was NOTHING and now that they added in something you go off?

WvW is part of the living story because of the loot bags that ppl can drop. These out of all the bags in the game give you event items. Spvp get nothing most of the time for event items.

I’m not sure if you’re trolling or being serious.

I achieved exactly 0 achievements from the past living story election event. Not a single one. Meanwhile those who chose to participate in that mind numbing content achieved more points than I will get from WvW in the next 2 years. Getting event drops from the living story in WvW is a table scrap delivery of the content that is intended for PvE.

Now if you browse around the WvW thread you’ll actually find a thread in which I acknowledged ANet for finally beginning to put some items onto the Gem store to target its PvP fan base, and even suggested a few more. I’ve actually already purchased one of the finishers and intend to purchase more of them in the near future (probably Friday).

Facts remain the development goals are production of living story content for casual PvE gamers and not for PvP. Otherwise I’d have gotten engaged in this silly election nonsense that just ended and be rewarded with a vast plethora of achievements to work towards this childish achievement reward system.

Look up everything ANet is doing, has done, and continues to do before you persist in trivializing my legitimate and well founded complaints with their bull!#$%. You bring nothing but opinion to a contest of fact.

Dan.2940:

Obscure One.4357:

Dan.2940:

You’re quick to judge a class by a few popular builds, there are many builds that don’t rely on stealth.

Dan.2940:

Thieves are FAR from OP, and in most cases/builds, stealth is the only thing keeping a thief alive.

So many builds don’t use stealth to stay alive only most of them.

Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

EDIT

Taking my sentences out of context would make me sound confusing wouldnt it? I was first referring to glass builds, which rely on stealth, then i was making note that there are tons of builds that don’t rely on stealth. If you were to nerf the builds that DO rely on stealth, you destroy those builds all together.

There’s no context presented for which I could have removed them from. You made two conflicting statements, I pointed it out and now your attempting to defend yourself from an indefensible position.

Now, if I may provide you with crucial information that all the typical thief zealots always assume when anyone calls for a nerf to that class. I never once said OP or that I have any problem with fighting a thief…go ahead…scroll up…snoop around. I main Engineer, I shred thieves like a twinkie tossed into a fat camp, but it took months of dedicated play to learn to counter thieves…and when I say thieves I mean the only ones that’re a threat, the big damage ones that constantly stealth. A thief I come across better !@#$%ing stealth and do so frequently or he’s dead faster than you can say loot bag. If it doesn’t stealth and doesn’t do massive damage and its a thief, its what we call a “bad thief” and I’m sorry but I won’t consider sucking a viable build.

Now, the principal is it should take a sizable amount of skill and complex understanding of a class to do something that requires the same to counter. Well as I mentioned I was replicating the results of the highest DPS build in probably 6 hours of play, and by 10 hours was doing it consistently, and by 12 hours I was straight wrecking kids…but apparently everyone who plays hot join is trash has no skill and doesn’t count…

Convenant.7092:

Obscure One.4357:

shadowraith.9124:

Absolutely. Really like the commander badge idea, 0 effort to implement and would definitely sell. Some interesting purchaseable emotes would do well too. How about a limited use lootbag collector that will instantly pick up every lootbag in 2400 radius? I would be all over that!

Why are we having to tell Anet how to increase revenues? :S

It’s because the whole development model is focused intently on producing junk content to keep causals and MMO tourists playing “fill up the bar and win a prize!”

Easily added with minimal effort that would target WvW players with the gem store:
Badge Of Honor Drop Booster
World XP Booster
Unlimited Repair Canister
Account Bound Siege Weapon Backpack
Premium Guild Emblems
Automatic Feeder (consumes designated food and utility consumables in your inventory when their duration ends)

In addition to the custom color for commander tags I already mentioned I could rattle off gem store items we’d love to buy all day long.

And you can easily bet that those ideas are 10x easier to implement than designing any given Living World event.

And that took almost no time to think up at all.

Hey ANet why don’t you just pick me up as an intern, and I’ll make the drive up to Redmond one weekend a month and get this whole WvW thing sorted out by Christmas, free of charge!

Dan.2940:

You’re quick to judge a class by a few popular builds, there are many builds that don’t rely on stealth.

Dan.2940:

Thieves are FAR from OP, and in most cases/builds, stealth is the only thing keeping a thief alive.

So many builds don’t use stealth to stay alive only most of them.

Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

Jski.6180:

And when they do update WvW ppl will complain that Anet is never updating pve and spvp. When they update pve you see this reaction. When they update spvp then ppl say its only about esports. So why is your view of any worth?

Look at the gem store. This is how Arena Net makes their money after point of purchase. Look at how it targets the PvE crowd. They ignore us to the point of not even wanting to target us with digital goods for a profit.

Look at the content design goals the company has shifted to. The Living Story has not, does not, and in all likelihood will not ever have anything to do with the WvW player base…like ever…and its irrefutably the content design focus of GW2.

Dan.2940:

More people complaining about thieves stealth?
For the people complaining about it, have you actually played the Thief class?
Let me answer that for you.

No, no you haven’t.

You are asking Anet to nerf a class that you have little to no knowledge about?

Mesmers should be nerfed, and not have clones or phantasms, and guardians? Lose the virtues. Oh, what about warriors? They should be nerfed because 100 blades hits too hard.

Thieves are FAR from OP, and in most cases/builds, stealth is the only thing keeping a thief alive. If you have played the class, you would know that thieves are easily counterable, even if stealthing. Please STOP these whining threads on how thieves are OP, stealth is OP, remove stealth, remove thieves, rework the class…. You either need to get better at the game, or play the class to actually learn to counter the class, because in all honesty, it’s really not hard.

The same counter argument to the same argument. I nearly didn’t need to even read the post to know what it said.

Your ignoring the design flaws of the class in your admission of them. A visible thief quickly becomes a dead thief if he stays that way for any great length of time. It’s the basis for the class’ entire defensive mechanic. When I come out of stealth its when I’m immobilizing or basilisk stunning them in a smoke field off of a Backstab. If I cant get that setup, I don’t engage, and this no-skill-required class will let me stay in stealth until the end of time if that’s how long I need to wait for the opening. Everything else is just a blurr of HS spamming it which normally goes 8-9k backstab, ~4k heartseeker, ~5k heartseeker, ~6k heartseeker, ~7k heartseeker, and then I break off because that last HS rolls in as the revealed debuff comes off which puts me back in stealth (smoke fields for the win). If they survived that spike, one more backstab for 8-9k normally puts them down and then I refuge stomp. If initiative is ever looking like a problem I just activate a Signet and get at least another HS out of it (Signet Use trait).

You want to know how I know this is broken? I straight decimate people with it and I have a grand total of about 14 hours of play experience with the class. The skill ceiling is so low to master, yet the skill floor to counter it is so high that the problem is obvious yet time and time again the thief zealots show up waving their pitchforks and chanting its fine and everyone who loses to a thief is just a nub that needs to learn to play.

The class does one thing extremely well, and that’s be a petty one-trick-pony troll. Oh look…the thief stealthed…oh look he backstabbed again…oh look he’s spamming 2 again….oh look he stealthed yet again…oh look he’s using unload now…f’n troll.

I took the advice that you and those like you give and played the class and mastered it’s most optimal DPS build in one Saturday afternoon. The class is an unchallenging licence to troll, nothing more. The sooner you thief zealots realize that, the sooner we can band together and fix the !@#%ing class and its myriad of bad designs.

shadowraith.9124:

Absolutely. Really like the commander badge idea, 0 effort to implement and would definitely sell. Some interesting purchaseable emotes would do well too. How about a limited use lootbag collector that will instantly pick up every lootbag in 2400 radius? I would be all over that!

Why are we having to tell Anet how to increase revenues? :S

It’s because the whole development model is focused intently on producing junk content to keep causals and MMO tourists playing “fill up the bar and win a prize!”

Easily added with minimal effort that would target WvW players with the gem store:
Badge Of Honor Drop Booster
World XP Booster
Unlimited Repair Canister
Account Bound Siege Weapon Backpack
Premium Guild Emblems
Automatic Feeder (consumes designated food and utility consumables in your inventory when their duration ends)

In addition to the custom color for commander tags I already mentioned I could rattle off gem store items we’d love to buy all day long.

shadowraith.9124:

I think the problem is WvW players don’t spend as much in the gem store as PvE players so the motivation for anet to devote a lot of time to WvW just isn’t there.

What them don’t seem to realise though is that WvW players don’t buy gems because of the way that Anet themselves designed WvW…

The reason we don’t buy gems is because we aren’t targeted by the gem store items. They’re only now going to be releasing custom finishers for PvP modes available at the gem store, and its literally the first thing to directly target WvW players. Custom finishers that I myself will likely be buying, because if I want to illicit change in the game I know “money talks, bull!@#% walks” is the general corporate philosophy. If I want the game to succeed I have to be part of that group that gives those soulless mother !#%ers at NCSoft enough money so that they see we are a profitable demographic to target...even though there is a power vacuum for a high quality skill based action game that's focused on PvP that GW2 could have filled if they weren't !#%ing away their budget on PvE.

Target the WvW demo with content and we’ll buy it. Custom finishers are a good start, now let’s push it further with some more stuff ANet…customizable Siege Golem suits? Alternate commander tag colors? You sell it, we’ll buy it.

Aaaaand facepalm.

Good thing I kept my two and a half stacks of them. Tough luck for everyone else who just kept deleting them.

Klawlyt.6507:

-snip- All I’m saying, is I continue playing the game because I continue enjoying the game. Why is it you continue to play the game again?

My point in the rebuttal was not intended to be offensive…well at least not directed at you anyways. The reason people still play something is due to personal investment, which in this case was formulated under either false pretenses established by the developer or our own naive trust in them. We’ve poured hours into the game, progressed our characters, made friends, and had fun. Giving up that personal investment is not easy, thus even though people do not enjoy it, they stick with it hoping it’ll be better…which in WvW’s case only sets us up for disappointment as each patch comes and goes.

Perhaps I spend so little time actually complimenting Arena Net for their few successes that people think I totally hate them and the game. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The whole reason I hang out on these threads I because I like Guild Wars 2. What began as base suggestions I’ve tossed on the forums from time to time have evolved into full on ridicule because I’ve lost any genuine consideration for the Dev’s as they have lost any genuine consideration for me. I enjoy WvW, that’s why I play it. However I cannot ignore blatant issues that frustrate that fun, and then when I suggest fixes and report bugs all I see is “Hey check out the living story! We’ve got loads of new content!” . I’ve seen entire dungeons of content produced, refined, implemented, and then tossed out like it was garbage without a singular thing being addressed in WvW…basic things, like a comeasurate means to acquire ascended gear, or just be able to kick people from my party who log off.

My biggest issue, skill-lag, is presenting the bleakest problem the mode has faced as it will quickly turn “This is a great fight!” into “what the !@#$!!! I can’t do anything! Why the !@#$ did I just rubber-band across the screen!? ARGH!!!” , which, unless your some kind of freaky digital sadist (hey I don’t judge bro) is not fun. It’s not fun to see problem after problem go unfixed month after month, while we can all clearly tell they have a sizable development staff and budget to produce bi-weekly content that expires like a jug of milk.

I just can’t manage to not talk !#$ about a game that talked !#$ for years about how amazing it would be and here we are a year after it launches looking at boring PvE, unrefined sPvP, and stagnant WvW.

Klawlyt.6507:

Vanthian.9267:

I have recently stopped logging on and I can’t honestly say I miss it at all. I literally only logged on for dailies and not because I wanted to do them, but because of the “achievement points” (yeah… because those are achievements…).

I will never understand this.
-snip-

“We’re a company of passionate gamers with one mission: to make Guild Wars 2 the best MMORPG ever created.”’
-Mike O’Brien, Design Manifesto

If you feel Arena Net accomplished their mission you have low standards for what you’d consider the best MMORPG ever created.

Go ahead, give me the “they’re still improving the game” argument, I’ve got an even better quote from the development team to respond to that one

kamikaze kane.1063:

As for this, sure they stated it, but they state a lot of things and things always get changed. Just cause they said it doesnt mean its going to be concrete and they can never change it. Look at Ascalonian Catacombs, that dungeon was drastically overhauled from the original. Also siege, was never sell-able or mail-able, but one day it just happened.

Things do get changed you’re absolutely right. And absolutely right again to target a PvE element as a prime example of the malleability of the game…because you wont find it in WvW. Have they changed the inability to kick logged off players from your party in WvW? You know…a basic “not functioning as intended” bug in the game that’s been around for as long as the mode has? Yeah that’s too hard, they’ll stick to overhauling entire dungeons, much easier.

Long and short of it is there’s very little focus on this particular mode of content, and change comes slow, if at all. The changes to the game are largely focused on the PvE crowd. When the PvP crowd does see changes, we weigh it, measure it, and find it lacking thing X or object Y over and over again. I get the feeling the PvP teams have the hard job of feeding an elephant with a q-tip…even if they try to give it a little nourishment over time it’s just going to crush them for it not being enough and run off to find something better.

Geiir.7603:

You have a really wrong idea of the thief. Pressing #2 a lot. Well, if that work on anybody then it’s a serious l2p issue…. I have yet to die to a HS spamming thief.

How about I guest over to your server, we jump in sPvP, and I can be your first? I promise to be gentle

style.6173:

Do you actually play the game? It sure doesn’t seem like it. If so, don’t feel bad. Once you level up a bit you’ll actually be happy to see any thief that spams 2. They are easy to kill.

Oh wise one your words of wisdom are truly overpowering, I’ll be sure to send you a thank you letter when I finish QQing. Obviously a 450 ranged leap finisher that deals more damage each time you spam it is something that is so easily countered by any and all builds, by any and all experienced players, at any and all times, that no thief would ever even consider doing that. I think you’ve turned my life around, inspired by your wise words. I’m suddenly overcome with respect and admiration for the class.

Now you’ll have to excuse me I have some excess skill and complex understanding of the game mechanics I need to flush down the toilet so I can enjoy my new found love of the Thief class.

timidobserver.7925:

I guess you missed the point of what I said. Nobody works for free. Anet is not trying to provide you a free game with free constant updates. If they were going to relaying totally on box sales, they would either need to be releasing an expansion in a couple of months or preparing to shut the game down due to lack of profit. They do need to make money.

The game isn’t even a year old yet. Updates to Spvp and WvW will come, however it should be expected that they are focusing on the portions of the game that the most players participate in and the portions of the game that are most likely to generate money.

I call bull!@#$

“Major League Gaming CEO Sundance DiGiovanni summed up the live streaming and eSports panel at the 2013 Game Marketing Summit like this: “In five years, what we’ve been talking about it is going to hit a sweet spot with an audience of hundreds of millions. There’s an unparalleled growth curve here.”

(source)

Face it, the company deliberately doctored the business model based on decisions to produce bull!#$ content to target that same group of no-talent dip !#%s that like to watch bars fill up and get something shiny when it happens. They’ve bent over and sold out to the lame-stream gaming community, and at the current rate of PvP development, any hope or dream ANet has of ever drawing the mainstream competitive PvP crowd will be gone, and I will be gone with them…bet you’ll all feel better without guys like me around anyhow, but in the mean time I suppose I’ll try to be civil enough not to get permabanned so I have something to do until Destiny comes out…

Don’t get me wrong, WvW is still pretty entertaining. It’s just stale and is facing the most of the exact same problems right now that it had at launch…with a few new ones popping up every day. The team is clearly not equipped to handle it in anything near a timely manner, and the company refuses to shift its focus off of use-it-and-lose-it content to fix it.

Cactus.2710:

Laii.2780:

BillFreist.1527:

Here’s a copy/pasta response i made the other day on the topic.

BillFreist.1527:

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear

First off, I do realize that I kind of ninja’ed in a response in a post that had nothing to do with addressing skill delay. The reasoning behind that was simply that I wanted to make it clear of why I wasn’t spending much time on the issue that I was addressing there. I’d like to say that I pride myself in keeping things as transparent as possible with you guys.

That being said, I know that seems contradicting since I haven’t really said anything on the matter since. I’m doing my best to lurk in the shadows here in the forums more often and chime in where appropriate. Frankly, I just don’t always have something to update you guys on .

But! I do have a small update for you today.

Over the past several months (boy time can really fly by), we formed a small team (myself, with the help of a couple others at times) around addressing the issue of skill delay in large groups of players. It’s actually a part of our Skills and Combat team that are responsible for balancing and, in the near future, introducing new skills, traits and other combat improvements. When tackling such a large project, you don’t just dive in and start shooting from the hip. It takes a lot of research, data and planning to really start addressing the issue at hand. The past few months have mostly consisted of these things (referring to data gathering).

As of recently, really as of just a couple days ago, we’ve gotten to a point where we have the data we need to take the bull by the horns and get down to business. Meaning that I hope that the results start speaking for themselves in the coming months. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean we haven’t already made several improvements, just sadly that they weren’t really noticeable from a players standpoint (but have made a significant difference).

It’s not just skill lag that we hope to start resolving in a more noticeable way, and even eliminating one day, but getting PvE culling disabled game-wide. These two projects are beasts that really go hand-in-hand, which is why we’re working on them simultaneously.

Now this brings me to another seemingly tight-lipped change; PvE culling. You may have noticed that we temporarily disabled it in Frostgorge Sound for a short duration. That was us, lurking in the shadows, gathering extremely vital data. We’re making great strides in getting that removed, and hoping that happens really soon.

That’s all I have for today, but hope to have some great news in the near future. Ideally moving forward I won’t need to update you all, as the results should start speaking for themselves.

<3 Bill

So assuming you didn’t skip all of that…We are chipping away at it and hope that you, the players, start noticing an improvement soon. But to answer the initial question, no, there aren’t any significant changes coming in the August 6th release. There’s mostly client-side goodies in that build.

-Bill

They’re working on it :<
Coming in 2014~ lol

You realize that Devon Carter had this to say in that very same thread, right?

“These particular changes are indeed on the client-side. They won’t impact lag, unfortunately. We are still both investigating additional ways to combat skill lag, not that there are any particularly good looking options at the moment, and continuing to make improvements to overall game performance as we can.”

Let me extract the key phrase for you …

“We are still … investigating additional ways to combat skill lag, not that there are any particularly good looking options at the moment”

LOL

Devon Carver: “god!#$it these !#$ing forum posters are !@#$ing killing me. I’m not sure how long I can stall them before they eat me alive.”
ANet Overseer: “tell them to check out the living story, it’s got loads of new content.”
Devon Carver: “I do that and they’ll !@#$ing riot. Just give me a bigger team and a larger budget.
ANet Overseer: “But we need it for the living story, it’s got loads of new content.”
Devon Carver: “Look these guys !#$ing hate the content, and pick apart every !#$ing word I say! Gimme something.”
ANet Overseer: “We can give you some living story, it’s got loads of new content.”
Devon Carver: “…”
ANet Overseer: “What?”
Devon Carver: “…”
ANet Overseer: “What?!”
Devon Carver: “I’m just gonna get back to work…if you don’t see me for awhile it’s because some crazed mob ate my legs…”

Draygo.9473:

Obscure One.4357:

but now we’ve learned it’s because they want to rub it in our faces that

Source?

First Statement:

After a careful reevaluation of orbs of power we have decided to remove them from WvW in an upcoming build. As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back. In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game. Under the circumstances we believe that removing orbs completely is a better choice than attempting an in-place redesign/re-implementation as it will immediately put a stop to all orb hacking. It is likely that orbs, or some orb-like mechanic, will return at some point in the future, but only after we are confident that they will not exhibit the sorts of issues that we see with orbs today.

Second Statement:

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

Basically the same statement, one made in November 2012 and the second one made in June 2013.

How many things do you know of that are broken, get removed, and then seven months later still have no !@#$ing clue what to do to replace it?

I’d wager the answer to that question is equal to the number of things that you don’t give a !@#$ about.

Seven months. To put that into perspective for you an entire academic term for most colleges is about 8 months (occasionally 9). They were less productive in figuring out what to do about a singular game mechanic than they were in one fourth of the time it took them to earn their four year degree.

CETheLucid.3964:

Most of the WvW and PVP community I’ve experienced have been very kind and level-headed reasonable people, who love the game and what we have so far.

Even more so then some of the toxic PvE folks I know.

Anet hasn’t dissapointed yet. Implementation does take time and everyone hates waiting. Patience is a virtue.

Some of them are growing restless and are eager for more… and then on the other end of that are people like you.

You’re in that emotive irrational minority of folks that every game with an online element has.

You don’t speak for anybody but yourself. Further, declaring on the public forums that you’re going to do your best to be a toxic community element isn’t very smart.

You’re on the record for that now. Well done!

Allow myself to quote…myself.

The last time I anticipated a game as much as Guild Wars 2 was Final Fantasy 7. I grew up playing Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3 on Nintendo (NES and SNES) and when Square announced a Final Fantasy as launch title I pre-ordered my PlayStation and my copy of Final Fantasy 7 that day…and when it came out I played the breaks off of that game (the clock maxed at 99:99:99 and I thought how much they’d underestimated people would be playing this game).

Ever since then no game has been the kind of thing I followed like a religion until Guild Wars 2, which I originally wrote off as a cheap Aion clone when they first began putting out details about it years ago. But, being the kind of nerd I am, I like to back up my hatred of other games from a position of knowledge and I continued to follow the info stream until they hooked me during the 2010 hype blitz. It blew my mind, and when I got my hands on the PAX demo it blew me away again, and when I finally got to play it from the comfort of my own home in Beta it blew me away yet again…twice!

That being said, Guild Wars 2 simply cannot be measured in terms of games that have come before it, it can only serve as the measure for games that have yet to come. It’s a shining beacon for hope to the true artists of the industry.

and again…

A very wise man once said:

“Jesus was perfect and he only had twelve friends and one of them was a hater.”

Haters will hate. That’s what they are, that’s what they do. I couldn’t care less what a bunch of haters have to say, nor am I concerned with the ramifications of them being haters. I have faith in the GW2 dev’s that they’re not pulling any punches in making the best game they are physically, psychologically and economically capable of creating. The hype of “Best Game Ever” is a lot to live up to, but ANet has proven that they’re ready to back up their big talk.

Now fast forward over a year from when I made those statements, and here we are. Arena Net toxified a die hard fan.

I’m not this way for lack of reason. I’m not some random fanboy. I’m not some MMO tourist. I am the same angry jaded MMO hater Arena Net got to zealously commit to their game and then, after point of purchase, have turned their backs on with a PvE development model.

Your judgement of my character is unfounded, and I genuinely don’t care if I am labeled a toxic member of the PvP community. I will always say what needs to be said to every developer, in every company, at any tier of that company. Worst case scenario is I get ignored, which is what they all do anyhow, so in the end at least I can get it off my chest.

I’ll just put this here.

Obscure One.4357:

The Official Answer: From Arena Net Themselves

“The goal for this system is to ensure that players always have something to constantly work towards. We want each character to have a unique experience in WvW, so World Ranks and WXP are all character-based values rather than account-based. We believe that in the long run, this will actually help incentivize players to experiment with various different ability builds for each character. It also creates a long term goal for players of multiple characters, as they can strive to rank up multiple characters to help show off their dedication to WvW.”

The reality is it removes any incentive to play a different character for a myriad of reasons but the two greatest are:

1: If I play my alt, I do not display the rank of my main, and it is a rank that only enemies can see. This negates the design goal of an ability to “show off” my “dedication to WvW.”

2: If I play my alt I must progress through the trait lines all over again. There is not a limitation to the number of trait lines I can have, so ultimately the goal is just to gain the best ones first and then, “in the long run” obtain them all. This negates the design goal of “experiment with various different ability builds for each character.” as every player is running on the notion that they will just have to get them all on a long enough time line.

The Actual Answer: Arena Net utterly failed to achieve even a remote fraction of their goals with the design of WxP, Traits, and Ranking, and persist to ignore the community on the subject, who have time and time again called for this system to be account bound.

that is all.

Homonavn.6348:

It should. Way more stuff should be account bound..

1. Legendaries
2. Dyes
3. Story mode on dungeons

I am sure im missing something

1: provides an end-game experience for old school grinders who actually enjoy the boredom and tedious tasks, removing this grind is something they’ll never do.
2: monetized cosmetics are a partial source of gem store success. Also never going to happen
3: this has been suggested for quite awhile, with no formal response I can recall. Simply put, there’s no reason for this not to be implemented.

ANet hasn’t been “developing” WvW, they’ve been fixing it…very slowly…and often kitten.

They “fixed” orb hoarding by just removing them and left the orb guards hanging around as if to say they’re going to bring them back…but now we’ve learned it’s because they want to rub it in our faces that the game mode is incomplete and they don’t give a !@#$.

Culling was a fix for a default problem with the game engine. It didn’t add more to the game, it repaired something that was broken.

They added a character based progression system that was so kitten they had to DOUBLE the rewards to rank up in decent amount of time, rework that traits in it causing a refund of these supposedly permanent traits (twice), and even came up with one of the worst and most arbitrary rank naming structures I’ve ever seen. B.S. like going from a Knight, you know those noble born men that were dubbed with special titles and ruled fiefdoms as lords, to Major, a middle management tier military rank of which a knight would command several. But even after that train wreck it gets better by awarding those who ascended to the rank of Legend the high honor of eventually becoming a Bronze Invader.

Now to top it ALL off the only people who can see your prestigious rank of Silver Rubber Chicken or what the !#%& ever are the enemy, and are completely divorced from the actual title system.

All ANet has done with WvW is throw band-aids at it, and then prove their lack of commitment to it in halfassing the new additions.

EvilSardine.9635:

I love the cute “just stand in the black power circle to stop the thief from stealthing” comments. The heartseeker puts him into stealth while hitting you and does NOT apply reveal. Yes, you heard that correct.

I have a thief and so do most of my guildies and every single one of them agree that this blackpowder + heartseeker needs to be taken out.

Thief is just a license to an open season of trolling…it makes a mockery of the entirety of the game mechanics and it a blatant slap in the face to skilled players of all classes in trivializing our efforts to play a game with skill that provides a path that doesn’t require us to do so.

Vena.8436:

meep.2601:

anet created this jaded and bitter community themselves by basically ignoring (and continuing to ignore) WvW since launch.

Nah, it was the players.

Most of us waste our time on server forums for WvW, not here where people post some of the dumbest suggestions imaginable.

Tell angry jaded MMO players your making a game for them, and really convince them of it, and you fill them with zealous loyalty to your game. They will fill your game with the most devoted and strong player base you could ask for.

You neglect us in favor of casual, no-talent, lame-stream, tourist gamers and we will fill your game with the most toxic and spiteful PvP community imageable. All those promises are straight up poison and venom when they’re broken…and without a pay wall to keep up from sticking around we’ll continue to toxify the PvP community.

We came to GW2 because:
“The most important thing in a game should be the player…we have built a game for them.” -Ree Soesbee, Guild Wars 2: Manifesto

And we stay to flame post because:
_"…no monthly fees." -Mike O’Brien,Guild Wars 2: Manifesto

lunyboy.8672:

Obscure One.4357:

What’s that you say? Can thieves do anything other than spam stealth and massive damage?

They really don’t have to, even in “real” pvp. I have run across at least 10 “small teams” in WvW who are 4 bunkers and a glass thief, and while you are fighting the bunkers with 10+ people, the thief is picking you off, one at a time. And they win more often than they should, because stealth.

What can a thief do in WvW?

Focus down eles, guards, siege, etc., follow zergs – O&R, cut supply, gank slowpokes, contest every tower on a BL map in less than 4 min, group stealth… the only limit is the player ability.
-snip-

First, the rebuttal entirely agrees with my statement…stealth spam and massive damage. These groups of thieves are griefing squads that camp out in towers after they flip, or just roam around in permanent stealth to gank people doing exactly what I said they do: “spam stealth and do massive damage.”

Player ability is irrelevant. The skill ceiling is set incredibly low. All that player talent and knowledge is a waste of time better spent just spamming stealth and ROFLSTOMPING with skill spam.

If you can name one role a thief can fill that doesn’t involve stealth spamming or massive damage that allows it to the support, bunker, or roam with the efficiency of ANY other class, I will concede the point and send you 5 gold in game.

Darak BG.5396:

Not sure living world is that much of a success considering the latest part saw 9 million votes for both Kiel and Gnashblade. It might seem like it is a lot but considering the fact I had no issues at all to contribute for 300 votes while not going out of my way to gather the material needed for it and you get a rather drab picture of not that many players being needed to get to that total.

I have two and a half stacks of these support tickets I’m refusing to turn in on principal. Yeah that’s right, over 600 of these PvE content contribution junk items from exclusively playing WvW.

I figure if they actually cared about me turning them in there’d be a drop box somewhere on the map. I honestly hope the vote comes down to some super close amount equal to the amount I have in my inventory so I can screenshot it and post it on the forums just to be a troll…

Way Point cost reductions (costs we don’t have at all in WvW) or RNG keys? Yeah you see it’s like month 11 for this game and I ran out of craps to give about PvE at like month 6.

timidobserver.7925:

Why wouldn’t they focus on living world. They are making a ton of money of it. They are probably making Turbine Store level money off of it.

Nothing is free. The one time price you paid for Gw2 only goes so far. There are no ads on the site or in the game to make money from. They’ve got to make money somewhere. WvW actually restricts money. My WvW Guild requires wearing the guild chest piece, so I don’t even bother with cosmetics grinding for the most part since the Guild Chest piece is ugly and nothing goes with it.

I am not saying I like it, but it does make perfect sense to me. Yeh I like WvW, but absolutely no money comes from it.

This was ANets choice in business model to expand the market share. They could have just as easily committed those resources to sPvP or WvW, targeting that consumer base with microtransactions, game improvements, and overall additional content. THEY CHOSE to target unskilled PvE casuals and MMO tourists with garbage content violating the core of the company’s founding doctrine: innovation. Instead they put themselves on the path to becoming just another boring MMO from what was once the most anticipated and promising title to hit the genre since World of Warcraft (yes there was a time in which Blizzard was the very heart and soul of MMO innovation…how far they have fallen).

If they cared about the PvP crowd, the content model, the very method they use to make money and grow the IP, would reflect that. We are not targeted by the business model they developed with our very own funding. That collectors edition box I paid for in full the day pre-purchases went up was ultimately money taken and spent to create sub-par content with a monthly expiration date that I do not care for nor cares about me in return. Every dime I toss into the gem store in support of the game gets thrown straight into the pockets of NCSoft who make all the budgetary rules for ANet.

This game will gain more unskilled casuals and be a successful business for years to come…at the price of losing it’s WvW and sPvP fanbase, and likely be glad to be rid of us since we don’t fit into their chosen business models targeted audience. They’re on a fast track to being sellouts that abandoned innovation for profit forgetting true innovation is the most profitable thing imaginable. The audacity to think that I would not judge and ridicule them for doing so is foolish, as they targeted me by saying exactly what I’m repeating to them now. They know they’re doing wrong, because they were there leading the crowd with the ridicule of other MMOs…and then they decided to set themselves up to become them.

Talyn.3295:

I don’t understand why people keep coming back here only to tell us all they are going to quit. Or try to get others to quit as well. Honesty, there are hundreds of games out there, when I get bored or don’t like one I simply pick another. I don’t feel the need to go online and tell everyone that they shouldn’t play a game.

“If you love MMOs you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you’ll really want to check out Guild Wars 2.” -Mike O’Brien, Guild Wars 2: Manifesto

Chalk me up to those who hate MMOs near to the point of total loathing. Guild Wars 2 targeted angry, disenfranchised, and all out MMO haters with their advertising model and design goals then proceeded to prove equally incapable of achieving those goals as every MMO that came before it.

Put simply we were deceived into thinking this would be a skill based game with a strong focus on PvP with an e-sports quality structured PvP system (near a year and it’s still garbage), and a open world PvP system to revisit the successful large scale multi-faction combat popularized by Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot…they lied.

The sole focus of the development team has been to enrich their PvE content, and appeal to talentless casuals to broaden their market share…you know like all the other MMOs that I hate for the same reason. They fed us a line if bull#$%&, made us look like idiots for believing every word, took our money without disclosing their intention to dedicate the business model to PvE aspects of the game, and people like you wonder why there’s flame threads like this on their forums?

I’m not saying they lied to us about their design goals, oh no, they committed a much greater offense entirely: they allowed their overconfidence to fail us, and ultimately fail themselves.

Do I still play it? Of course, but only for WvW. I refuse to partake in sPvP since its an atrocity, and reject PvE as a game mode that rewards players equally just for showing up. WvW is now even threatened by things such as skill-lag, an alt discouraging progression system, lack of achievable achievements for progression in this new achievement reward system, constant petty thief and mesmer griefing, no new content since launch, identical maps since launch, no additional maps to make the mode larger, no steps to countering the tier 1 tactics of server-zerging and siege creeping (I’m looking at you SoR), no implementation of GvG death matches, no implementation of dueling, no basic UI fixes like being able to kick logged-off members of your party, no Commander utility additions to make squads easier to manage, no integration with the living story, no commeasurate access to full ascended gear progression, and the list goes on and on and on.

Do us a favor and quit ignoring the overt problems with WvW and chastising us for our legitimate complaints with a product we paid for under false pretenses.

Zacchary.6183:

Obscure One.4357:

Svarty.8019:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Svarty.8019:

This is a part of the larger problem: thieves in general.

They require a lot of attention from Mr Peters and co.

Thieves are fine.

If by “fine” you mean “overpowered”, I agree.

Thieves are a trash class that was overspecialized into doing one thing in the most game breaking and simple manner possible: press 2 a lot and have near permanent access to invisibility…!#$%ing infantile…

The class is otherwise totally worthless in WvW. You run in a zerg with a glass cannon thief and what happens is you go down, you die, and then half the enemy zerg rally’s off your stupid little thief !#$, and they proceed to straight up curb stomp your allies.

The Thief represents a total failure in core class design by being neither challenging to play, nor encouraging of build versatility, nor presenting options to fill other roles in a party, and makes itself infamous for the only thing it can do well: being a no-skill-required pain in the #$% amounting to little more than a bunch of petty trolls.

The entire class needs a MAJOR overhaul, primarily in changing the whole no-skill-required stealth and spam-2-till-it-dies mechanics of the class.

I’ll leave you kids with this

It isn’t challenging to play because 90% of the people who play GW2 are scrubs. Because there are so many of them, scrubby play is seen as “average”.

New ANet Product Line: Scrub Wars 2: Thief Edition
Gives players access to only the thief class and comes with a specialized key-pad optimized for thief game play…which is actually just an extra #2 key with a USB connector to avoid permanent damage from constantly pressing the one built into your keyboard.

sPvP stinks like a pile of cat !%&# wrapped in dog !%&# wrapped in horse !%&# and deep fried in a construction site port-o-potty…and that may be more of an insult for all the various types of !%&# and nearly a compliment for sPvP…

It’s a trash game mode that is alienated from the rest of the game. I literally cannot run viable builds in sPvP that I run regularly on all of my level 80’s in WvW; it’s mechanically impossible to do so. Thus, when I duel in WvW, it’s drawing on all the actual play experience I have. When I duel in sPvP it’s not with a build that even comes close to the attributes of it’s WvW counter part.

sPvP < WvW

The Official Answer: From Arena Net Themselves

“The goal for this system is to ensure that players always have something to constantly work towards. We want each character to have a unique experience in WvW, so World Ranks and WXP are all character-based values rather than account-based. We believe that in the long run, this will actually help incentivize players to experiment with various different ability builds for each character. It also creates a long term goal for players of multiple characters, as they can strive to rank up multiple characters to help show off their dedication to WvW.”

The reality is it removes any incentive to play a different character for a myriad of reasons but the two greatest are:

1: If I play my alt, I do not display the rank of my main, and it is a rank that only enemies can see. This negates the design goal of an ability to “show off” my “dedication to WvW.”

2: If I play my alt I must progress through the trait lines all over again. There is not a limitation to the number of trait lines I can have, so ultimately the goal is just to gain the best ones first and then, “in the long run” obtain them all. This negates the design goal of “experiment with various different ability builds for each character.” as every player is running on the notion that they will just have to get them all on a long enough time line.

The Actual Answer: Arena Net utterly failed to achieve even a remote fraction of their goals with the design of WxP, Traits, and Ranking, and persist to ignore the community on the subject, who have time and time again called for this system to be account bound.

Happy One Month Anniversary Rocket Boots Bug!

…I hope you die on the August 6th patch…by being chained down in a pit of fire and slowly burned alive…

Aberrant.6749:

Kontrolle.3514:

Aberrant.6749:

Kontrolle.3514:

What build is this you guys are talking about?
GS/Hammer?

I use as always the elixir-gun and protection injektion.
If h charges you jump away with Acid bomb, tthen criple him and keep him on range.
Atm i use E-gun, traited toolkit and rocket boots. Thats a huge amount of cc and mobility. I also use melandrus runes.

But yes after all this crying warriors became really hard. Unlike necros however they are still beatable. Balance is a complete mess in 1v1 right now. I play since beta and since last patch i cant beat everything just by skill right now. If there werent rocketboots i would stop roaming on engi, the boots help me to escape from battles i cant win. A whole new experience…

This game’s balance isn’t based upon 1v1, nor does it ever look like it will be.

Thats one of the top 5 stupid answers in this forums.
Of course it is balanced about 1v1 and it has to be balanced about 1v1.
There are no roles every class can do everything, there is no trinity and the spvp mode itself forces you in 1v1 every time.

That’s what the dev’s said long ago man. They said that they balance based upon group play, not 1v1.

Yes, they did say that, but that doesn’t make it any less of a bull!#$% cop-out way of saying they lack the skill required to balance the game for 1 v 1 scenarios. Case in point, the Thief, a class that sucks so much !#$% that it is flat out a known bad class that excels to the point of game breaking simplicity at one thing: exploitation of the non-existence of balancing for 1 v 1 scenarios. Talk to any player who mains a thief and they’ll be able to tell you how unilaterally useless they are in any role in any scenario that doesn’t involve focusing a single target (by spamming the same skill). This mirrors the issue many have with countering the Hammer Warrior CC spam, the core game play is naively imbalanced and is not at all something ANet remotely wants to address.

That being said we Engineers have to think and play smart in a way no other class must in order to survive in an environment that puts us at a disadvantage by default in more ways than one.

Ever wonder why Engineer’s are the minority class in GW2? It requires skill and complex knowledge of the games mechanics to be effective in a way Warriors (and Thieves) enjoy without having to try.

scootshoot.6583:

Obscure One.4357:

For me, the ANet development team has until This is released to make massive improvements to GW2, WvW before I up and quit.

It’s just like any other relationship, you neglect us long enough we’ll leave you for someone else…

Though GW2 is b2p, so if our new relationship doesn’t work out we’ll just move back in until the next sexy thing comes strolling by…ANet, you’ve set the tone for a very abusive relationship…

They already got your money so go take a break, sounds like you need it.

WvW Player: “Hey ANet, I think that passion we used to have is gone…”

ANet: “Oh come on baby, check out this living story, it’s got loads of new content.”

WvW Player: “It’s not you, it’s me…I have needs.”

ANet: “Oh come on baby, check out this living story, it’s got loads of new content.”

WvW Player: “…and I feel like you don’t even listen to me anymore…”

ANet: “Oh come on baby, check out this living story, it’s got loads of new content.”

WvW Player: “alright, !#$% this I’m out!”

ANet: “We’re aware of the problems and are working towards ideas that may potentially work to resolve them in the future.”

WvW Player: “Really!? Like what?”

ANet: “Not prepared to say at this time…in the meanwhile check out this living story, it’s got loads of new content.”

WvW Player: “Oh what the #&$%! We need a break…maybe we can try this again when you get your #$%& together!”

For me, the ANet development team has until This is released to make massive improvements to GW2, WvW before I up and quit.

It’s just like any other relationship, you neglect us long enough we’ll leave you for someone else…

Though GW2 is b2p, so if our new relationship doesn’t work out we’ll just move back in until the next sexy thing comes strolling by…ANet, you’ve set the tone for a very abusive relationship…