Guild Wars 2

I used to play an elementalist and I liked it a lot.
Now I play a thief and it is just so much easier that I never log onto my elem any more.

I should mention that I play almost exclusively WvW but I think my analysis would hold for that other aspects of the game.

Without weapon-swapping an elementalist can only be strong at one range, long range with staff, melee with d/d, kind of in between with s/d but not as strong as either of the others.

Other classes don’t have this dichotomy (not sure about all but I am just going to talk the strong classes here, we don’t want elem balanced against other weak classes).
Warriors are strong in melee and have powerful long range rifle shots.
Thieves are strong in melee and shortbow clusterbomb is a powerful long range AoE.

Staff elementalist have very good long range AoE, and may be the best support class, but when an enemy gets in melee range the staff skills are just too slow.
Dagger elementalist are very strong but I would not say they are stronger than thieves or warriors (or guardians) in melee and they have no range ability to speak of.

Allowing an elementalist to weapon-swap would not make them twice as strong, it would just make them so they are not weak as kittens (actual word I chose, not language filter) when the fight moves from one range to another.

An elementalist that could swap between staff and d/d would not be the strongest class but it would be able to hold its own against the other strong classes.

Kirrund.2654:

Second of all, no offense, but people who can’t stop cloak and dagger thieves from holding a point are just bad. There is no other explanation to it. They’re bad players because they don’t have map awareness, and they don’t use the tools provided to them by the game.

Look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j54bkD-3Nr0

These people are AWFUL! This is what the playerbase consists of too! These are the same people who whine on the forums about unfair tactics or class balance issues, but not a single one of these players even pays attention or pan their camera and notices the thief popping in and out of stealth tagging people. I mean, nobody even bothers to communicate either from the likes of it, otherwise people should spin around and target him and kill him. He even kills a guy unstealthed for 6+ seconds and two people RUN PAST HIM at 1:50, and nobody else out of the 50+ people their even turn around and look.

They don’t have map awareness. I’m sorry, no matter how much these and other players touting this video would have you believe, they are just not skillful, and don’t understand basic game mechanics.

Someone posted a list of all the thing that would pull him out of stealth. Any ground targetted AOE will hit him, any traps, or necro marks. You can even use Mesmer clones and phantasms to see where he’s at. They’ll stand there while he’s stealthed, but as soon as he comes back out of it they’ll automatically do their ability and hit him, even if he goes back into stealth again. Mesmers can also use Temporal Curtain pull to dictate about where he’ll be when he comes back out of stealth. Rangers could volley. There’s tons more of things that can be done, the fact is, this guy should not have lasted more than a minute, or been forced to leave. Period.

I have thieves and other classes stealth on me all the time and they DIE in stealth, because you learn a sense of where people will and won’t go, and you learn how to dictate their movements while in stealth. I am aware of the rendering issue, and I still don’t have trouble knocking them out of stealth when they try to pull stunts like this. All the rendering issue does is delay their death just a little bit longer.

This is a player skill issue, this is not a “thieves are overpowered, nerf” issue.

Players need to fix their own skill first, then worry about class balance later, because apparently a lot of people still don’t core game mechanics.

No offense Kirrund but you don’t sound like you have played much WvW, and certainly not as a thief.
I do almost nothing but WvW, first as an elem then once I saw how broken they were I rolled a thief and that is all I play now.

Your link is broken but you say ‘He even kills a guy unstealthed for 6+ seconds and two people RUN PAST HIM at 1:50.’

Once a thief unstealths he still stays invisible (unrendered) for a LONG time, much more that 6 seconds. What you saw was an unstealthed but still invisible thief kill someone.

AoEing an invisible thief, yeah good luck with that, like it is hard for him to evade roll out of the red circle that tells him exactly what you are doing.

I’ve been on both sides of the camp cap block where 20 people are running around tabbing trying to target the thief. You get lucky, you happen to be facing the right direction when he is targetable (but still invisible) you get a chance to hit him once before he stealths again. And 2 of his stealthing moves are also heals. Plus he can trait to regen health while in stealth.
Yeah, of course eventually someone will time a stun right or something like that and the thief dies but the ability for one person to counter 20 is just ridiculous.
And it takes no skill, believe me, I stink and I can do it.

You could transfer to the server with the active night (to you) population.

I have been having a great time in WvW, and I play on Tarnished Coast which just got seriously clobbered by Blackgate. Granted it was more fun the week before when we were on the winning side, but still, I have been leveling completely in WvW because even losing it is more fun than pve.

Speaking of leveling…
and thiefs…
I stink at pvp…I am an old man using an ergonomic mouse and keyboard.
I leveled a thief to 7 (so I could weaponswap, not really necessary tho) then went WvWing with him.
It is embarrassing how easy it is killing people as a thief in WvW, even with no traits, only one utility slot, and blue gear.
If you think thieves aren’t broken…try it.

And another thing…
That ridiculous glitch that allows a practically perma-stealthed thief to stop a supply depot cap is infuriating and has got to be fixed asap…WvWers that were fine with losing as long as they got goods fights started logging out because of it.

And one last thing…
HEY! You kids…get offa my lawn!