Guild Wars 2

The thief is about as balanced as it will get outside of a culling fix without redesigning the entire class. Which is what they should really be working on because balancing skills on initiative seems to be difficult for them. There is no gradual increase in strength:initiative cost at all. You have strong abilities w/ low initiative cost, and weak abilities with higher initiative cost. If you nerf the low initiative cost abilities or increase their cost thief is basically left with auto attack. Terrible concept all around. That’s not even taking stealth into account which is the biggest kitten up in mmo history. The person who thought that having a class that can stealth over and over again in combat would be a welcome addition should have been fired. Every mmo has had complaints about classes with far less in combat stealth than the gw2 thief, yet they still thought it was a good idea? I’m all for innovation, but I also think you should learn the mistakes of your competition and try not to top them.

I have absolutely no issue with thieves myself. I love playing my own, and I know very well the shortcomings of the class. The issue isn’t whether it’s overpowered, it’s that people would rather move on than fight it. You can argue that people aren’t quitting because of it, but I know well over 10 who have specifically quit because of the class. Maybe it’s just the bads I was around, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are quitting and it’s bad for the game.

Embolism.8106:

My preference is for Mass Invisibility to have a shorter CD rather than longer duration or whatever. The main power of stealth is target dropping, duration past 3s is just icing. More frequent use = more target dropping = good. Same goes for Veil.

You’re right, I just prefer longer duration because in wvw I use it on tough portal placement.

I want 19k dps, teach me. Nevermind, it sounds like a squish warrior not running a stun break.

It could use something special for sure. Actually affecting every friendly in the radius, a cast speed reduction, or a duration increase would all be nice. I’d kinda like it to create 3 clones, but that’s me. It is close to where it needs to be though. Veil needs a cd decrease though, 90s cd is terrible… i know it can work on infinite targets,but honestly it’s clunky and buggy as it is.

An exploit is taking advantage of anything that wasn’t intended in the game. The only reason I say it’s an exploit is because they are soulbound rather than account bound. You can’t mail account bound items so like I said before, they either didn’t think very hard about their own game mechanics and just made it soulbound to be kitten or it is an exploit.

I wouldn’t touch mantras in pvp anymore since phantasm build is fairly trashy and putting it in a shatter build doesn’t seem to be very viable. Try what you want though, you might like it.

Shattered Concentration should be all you need if you’re shatter build. It’s broken against bunkers (both ele and guardian, not so much against engi but elixir gun was nerfed so it’s no big deal) so use it while we have it. That said, I run more glass cannon which many people shun for extra defense.

Run with others who give swiftness. I don’t touch focus anymore and the only class I play with decent swiftness is ele…. the rest are carried and I like it that way. Besides, in wvw warriors are nothing more than banner kitten for swiftness and hammer cc bots. Gotta let them feel useful or they’d ask for buffs

It’s either an exploit or arena net made a mistake making them soulbound rather than account bound. That said it should stay the way it is other than changing BPs to account bound so we don’t need another person to help us transfer siege among our own characters.

I’ve had people quit because of thieves in wvw as well. That said, while it is very annoying, in real combat thieves aren’t much of an issue to me. Most thieves don’t try to fight in real combat, they try to burst and when it fails they move on only looking for easy kills. When culling is fixed it won’t be an issue so it’s just a waiting game.

Can’t speak for other guilds, but we’ll probably stay away from CD as much as we can next week. At the same time, we’re getting our fill of it this week. Fun fights in CDbl tonight.

Swirling Winds is fine. Dragon’s Tooth needs to be fixed, ele has enough aoe they don’t need to ignore los as well.

Word going around is FA wants to stomp IoJ so TC stays in tier 2 where their numbers belong. I hope the match is good either way since FA has been getting lazy.

Rally carries zergs, and I wouldn’t mind it being removed. Down state is fine, other than mist form allowing eles to go back into a keep/tower.

Well they changed pyro’s puissance as well so that even a staff ele can maintain 7 stacks of might in fire with no boon duration whatsoever. 10 on dd. So in all honesty I don’t see an issue when you’re debating 5 points in a trait line. If we want to pass those might buffs well at least that utility has finally become useful. Debating whether or not it’s overpowered is pointless anyways. They know what they did and if they find it broken they’ll change it again. I’d be happy with 2 stacks a shatter honestly, but it’s not up to me

I suggest you guys go play other classes to see how efficient the might stacking can be and then come back to say how “overpowered” keeping on average 9 stacks up really is. I would’ve rather they boosted other builds, but in a way this is an indirect boost to more defensive builds and condition builds so it has some basis behind it. I think you should all take into consideration how relatively weak confusion builds are in spvp before spouting off that it doesn’t need a boost in this situation.

Portal cd should be reduced back to 60s. At least for pve rules. At the same time, I think aoe cap should be raised to 10.

ykyk.2740:

Derv The Monkinator.4915:

TIMMEH.8106:

Yes your awesome “TC we have a new strategy…ZERG them with overwhelming numbers, that worked!”

you were in first place before…..and still are

This statement is a win. All TC does is zerg. They can’t portal bomb, they can’t build siege effectively, they can’t invis spike, they can’t stack might, they cant timewarp a group, and they have 0 tactical ability. When they fail to the point of exhaustion, they just have some guy drop, litterally, 100’s of golems and ZERG. They’d get PWNED in Tier 2. They should be thanking us for stopping them from going there to get ROFLSTOMPED.

41 Golems = dead. Bite me TC.

Well…

FA can’t get points.

ZING

True story, but we can apparently kitten other servers off like no other. I’d take the latter since we can always make points later.

Jayne.9251:

Love that you avoid answering why you didn’t “respond and defend” your own server’s land after causing the whole mess. Hope your fellow FAers are taking note.

Maybe you missed it, but there was a queue. It does hurt that randoms didn’t see us defend though. I promise i’ll be there next time I get to kitten off roleplayers.

We’re not jerks, we’re just upset we weren’t invited.

Chris.5024:

Shinhwa.1604:

Well I hope next time there is a truce in the jumping puzzle or a fight club in Ogres that BT and PD will come “play the game” then too. I’m so disgusted at FA right now. Specifically BT. They didn’t know about the event until I told them an hour before. They still went in and ruined it for everyone. In fact, see you guys in a few days. I guess its time to run some dungeons, or god help me, some fractals.

We also had a WvW event planned in CD before hand. It was an inevitable clash. We appologize for all the problems, next time maybe TCBL might be a good place for a TC RP party since it’s not as busy at night.

We don’t apologize. Mal is trying to be nice, but really we’re pretty amused by all the nonsense.

We tried to goto FA and there was a queue. Was the parade your idea? If so I’d like to thank you personally in game, i’ll give you a free kill. Btw if you really want revenge I do run around with the tag [ODA] guild name Odaman, so you can always try to hunt me, although I’m done for the night so you’ll have to wait until reset.

sceptus.9415:

I commend your thinking. Can you please ask everyone else on your server to stop defending keeps and roam about killing singles? It would save us a lot of time.

Don’t be silly, we both know tc’s “single” during prime time is 20+. I would kill for a solo or two though because on mesmer during the day I’m stuck killing 3+ at a time QQ

I’m taking bets on how much longer this thread goes without getting edited/locked.

There were more fighting back than you’d like to think. I’d like to formally apologize to FA for ruining our reputation as whiners… now we’re griefers with no moral compass. I’m just glad we’ve had this all straightened out, and tomorrow… I’ll be holding a dolyak parade at 8PM est in CD BL. I’ll bring the fireworks on my ele.

phaneo.4597:

Odaman’s post makes it pretty clear though. If we are zergs that throw our bodies for our server, you guys are just farmers that don’t give a damn if your server loses. No wonder you guys keep losing. GG!

That’s pretty accurate actually. I’ve seen tc throw their bodies at keep gates for hours getting stomped over and over and never give up. Personally I’d rather have fun killing than hitting auto run for 3hrs just to win.

sceptus.9415:

We love zerging and don’t feel bad about it Odaman. If its red its dead right? Thanks for the bags at LV!

=p Not my bags, but grats on killing stuff. It’s fun right!?

My guardian appreciated the dolyak parade… it was good xp. We should have a parade every night. BTW we were well aware when this was going to happen before hand.

The event is good for wvw. I do think they need to remove alot of the mobs in wvw maps though. Particularly in the southern areas of each server’s boarderlands. If nothing else make them yellow so they only join the fight when someone aoes them.

Not an exploit. Get out of their spawn. Also for the guy who was crying about an ele mist forming back to immunity… you can still stomp when they’re immune so unless you’re at the front gate of the spawn you should be able to deal with him.

I don’t think anyone can argue the 3 on scepter isn’t great. Some slight animation issues, but at least the core of the ability is effective in a confusion build. I guess my real issue is with the 2 because really none of the 1s are overly impressive (for mesmer), nor should they be. Taking the delay out of the 2 between the block and the attack portion would go a long way even if it sounds like a minor change, it makes it far more useful as an offensive ability. It needs the offense boost because honestly a single block is a mediocre defense option.

Okuza.5210:

Odaman.8359:

The main problem with scepter is sword works so much better if you’re willing to give up the range. Only confusion and clone death builds are really benefiting from it. The block is weak, the clone generation is slow, and the damage is sub par outside of confusion. You can use it and kill things, but that could be said for the crappy golem elite asuras have… it still doesn’t make it “fine”.

I don’t think they’re looking at scepter any more than the other weapons tbh.

The block is actually amazing if you time it right. If you don’t need a block, you can convert it to a blind, which is nearly as good. The scepter/1 dps varies inversely with range (at melee distance it’s similar to sword/1). And, it produces clones roughly 2-3x faster than sword.

The best part of scepter is that unlike sword, it’s working all the time. There’s no time lost for gap closing (sword/3 doesn’t work as a gap closer most of the time — ports you OOR to melee and is really slow). IMHO, unless you have a situation where you can keep your sword/1 auto hitting the target every second you have sword out, scepter is kicking your butt on DPS.

OTH, I do agree scepter is “low dps”. Same with sword, staff, and (now) GS. Post-nerf, Staff is now our top DPS weapon, which is rather sad. All the weapons needed to be buffed up to match old GS. The sad part is that even the devs are focused on the size of the hit delivered by the phantasms and not how long it takes to get that hit into play. Every fraction of a second that hit is delayed lowers DPS.

For sword peeps, that includes closing time & avoidance time. For ranged, that includes projectile time. For phantasms, it now includes an extra 05.s delay as well as any pre-damage animation time, such as pursuit, leaps, dashes, etc..

BTW, direct from the in-game tool-tip: “Ether clone. Clone. Shoot out a bolt of energy that confuses your target. Summon a clone that casts ether bolt.” From what I recall, it’s always stated it confuses on the 3rd hit, but has never done so in the released game.

The block is trash because of the delay between the block and the counter attack. Not only is a delay not necessary because you’re already losing dps during the channel, but it also opens it up to have the damage half interrupted. The blind is ok, but there should be damage associated with it tbh. The clone generation is trash except in the situation where you don’t mind taking a dps loss to throw out clone death conditions. If you’re spamming one just to generate clones, more power to you, but don’t come here and say it’s anywhere near optimal because it’s not.

I’m not sure why they didn’t have this on day one. I’m all for innovation, but leaving out basic features wasn’t well thought out.

The main problem with scepter is sword works so much better if you’re willing to give up the range. Only confusion and clone death builds are really benefiting from it. The block is weak, the clone generation is slow, and the damage is sub par outside of confusion. You can use it and kill things, but that could be said for the crappy golem elite asuras have… it still doesn’t make it “fine”.

I don’t think they’re looking at scepter any more than the other weapons tbh.

I prefer norn. Snow Leopard gives me an escape even with staff. With d/d it’s nearly impossible to die.

When they nerf thief dodging 9 times in a row (real dodge, not LDB) with a tanky condition build that can heal on initiative use and in stealth while dropping caltrops while invisible I’ll eat a BF nerf. It gets even worse if they actually do use LDB with this build to build endurance for another dodge chain. I don’t even think that’s overpowered, but it is leaps and bounds above blurred frenzy and anyone disputing that really just hasn’t seen anyone decent do it.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Ruufio.1496:

There is no counter or skill involved with this, “skill”.

You mean like staff guardian 5? And hammer 5? Trap a Thief inside this and watch them bounce around. Caltrops isn’t a ground targetable skill. They have to be in the cap. Catch a thief and smash it.

That’d work except dodging rolls right through those abilities without issues. You know dodge right? It’s that thing they’re doing to drop caltrops in the first place. Such a well thought out counter though, perhaps you should skulk away in silence after that idiocy.

Rally is broken in large fights period. It favors aoe spammers and punishes support and ST dps. I wouldn’t begin to tell you how to fix it other than removing it entirely from wvw and giving people a % bonus to hp to compensate. That’ll never happen though so your best bet is to get used to it sadly.

Many nerfs for the sake of balance have no effect on wvw. I know they said wvw isn’t meant to be balanced, but my point is, why make it more imbalanced than it needs to be? I’d assume switching the rules wvw is under wouldn’t be very difficult, although I can see it potentially being annoying depending on how they implemented it. There’s only 1 thing it would radically change and that’s confusion, but the others would help make wvw more enjoyable as well.

Confusion does 2x dmg in pve.
Most healing and dmg nerfs are only for spvp.

LaronX.8079:

Durzlla. Besides feed back non of them is really usfull. Mimic Mirror is just a wast of a skill slot . Warden dies to fast and has horrible delay between his attack, is static and on a long cd. I mean to give us a lot of kitteny things that are supposed to do the same is not good.

QFT, mimic is terrible in pvp, and warden is a terrible refect for anything that isn’t a karka.

Confusion is broken in wvw. It’s not uncommon to get 4k+ ticks from confusion stacks. If a thief attacks with that on them they instantly die for the most part. Granted stats don’t get quite as high in spvp, but I still think it’s balanced there. Besides wvw isn’t supposed to be balanced (supposedly). They’ll change their mind on that later I imagine since it seems like far more people play wvw than spvp atm.

papacooldown.9482:

Yeah so the real reason GODS as a whole is moving is because a small group of our top players (15-20) finally got fed up with the leader of GODS and decided to move to TC for a fresh start. Instead of cutting his losses he is throwing tantrums and now apparently moving his entire guild to TC to follow us (to spite us??).

My apologies to TC if he actually goes through with the move. I’ll just say GODS leadership hasn’t been known to promote cooperation or play nicely with other guilds/commanders on FA.

Wait so is derv going or not? =p I’d like to say I’m upset, but this is really good news… If a large portion of that guild moves it will hurt population wise, but honestly a majority of the time the shoddy calls wasted the numbers many times.

Vorpal.4683:

This was a discussion we had a lot in DAOC as well. Individual player skill in 1 on 1 fights is great, but it’s less important than functioning well as a member of a group. Since the 8 man group scene DAOC had hasn’t really shown up here in GW2, the most important aspect is being able to function well as part of your server, working with others, coordinating, going where you need to be before you are needed there.

I’ve found people who can 1vX well tend to do better in groups. I think they tend to know all classes including their own well enough to counter most things and many times that transfers over into group fights. That said many group oriented specs aren’t going to fair so well when they’re caught outside their element so judging how easy someone is to kill when you have no other information isn’t really the best way to judge skill. You can faceroll tank all day, but that doesn’t make you any better than a glass cannon that got caught in a hard place without cooldowns.

HtFde.3856:

Odaman.8359:

Mass invis can hit more than 5 targets (the most i’ve seen at once is 9), and curtain is almost unlimited (same with veil). Anyone who thinks it’s not useful hasn’t put much effort into trying it out.

That’s strange – MassInvis in my experience even get’s less than 5 because it also uses phantasms, pets, etc.

True about curtain – my bad – I play the game in German and got at least one stack of confusion on me – I meant veil, the second invisibility slot-option not the focus 4 skill.

I’ve stealthed my guild smallman on many occasions with it, but there’s no special trick I’m doing. The only reason I can think of that it goes over the 5 person cap is that the spell is a wave (the tiny line you see shoot out around you when you cast it) and that it functions like a line field effect like curtain and veil rather than a field like time warp, null field, and chaos storm. I tend to stick with mass invis just because I’m a bit on the selfish side and the cd is far shorter than TW… making it more useful in a situation I want to rez or stop a stomp.

I use torch in wvw with my shatter build. The prestige is free aoe dmg when I’m running into the zerg to go boom. I wouldn’t touch it in a non-shatter build though, because iMage is less useful than a staff clone. I tend to run full zerker gear with it though.

I hardly ever run without Deceptive Evasion (only in pve do I drop it). iPersona is probably my favorite though, along with shattered concentration (nerf inc).

Mass invis can hit more than 5 targets (the most i’ve seen at once is 9), and curtain is almost unlimited (same with veil). Anyone who thinks it’s not useful hasn’t put much effort into trying it out.

Curtain’s pull is situational, especially considering the lips of keeps/towers will prevent someone from going off the ledge. Which means it’s only useful for pulling people on the lip, or on an edge with no lip off. That might sound like it’s not a big deal but that’s 80% of the people you want to pull right there. Warden isn’t exactly the best phantasm, and as others have said the reflect on curtain is subpar. Really all the weapon is good for is swiftness out of combat and a situational pull in combat.

I make my group run the swiftness now because running focus is a waste. Let the guardians pull in open field and I can swap in the situations it is actually going to be useful.

Nretep.2564:

zexion.5842:

Nretep.2564:

It spawns confusion causing clones ?

Because confusion works when a player in downing animation?

Because a giant freaken red arrow above your head indicating who the real mesmer is works right?

I was talking about the condition (status ailment) [Confusion]. Each of your or your clone attack causes 1 stack of confusion.

And he was talking about how worthless confusion is when the person is stomping you. I agree confusion is a pretty terrible way to do damage to someone trying to stomp you, but it is still strong when you’re not the focus of attention. I don’t particularly like our down state myself, but it’s still decent.

We have a decent amount of dmg immunity, but nothing on thief with tanky dodge/stealth build. Not only that but they can actually be dropping caltrops via dodge in stealth and not break it.

Temporal Curtain is fine for reflects. The warden on the other hand should have a bigger reflect field imo. You also failed to mention the torch reduction which removes 1 condition… which honestly considering how niche that weapon is it should probably remove 3. I think the pistol range trait is the main reason many of us are hoping for a mh pistol and then that trait would be very strong.

It is amusing to see them “take advantage of the situation”. The same way over and over again even when the roles switch. W/e it’s the only thing making the match interesting tbh.