Guild Wars 2

Stealth stomping is weaker than some other stomps. What makes it good is the frequency at which it can be done via stealth utilities and cnd.

Jinks.2057:

Kysin.6349:

I use D/D in 1v1 fights sure, but in groups or during a siege or defense it is ALL about the shortbow. They can nerf D/D to complete uselessness and I will still have great use in WvW on my thief. More times than I can remember a downed enemy starts to get ressed by 2 teammates, then its good ol’ Haste + Trick shot spam = 3 downed players.

Thieves can be versatile to a point

Not nearly as versatile as the other classes though.

Excellent single target burst with melee. Excellent ranged AoE with shortbow. Can kill seige on walls. Excellent stomper. Excellent reviver. Excellent escapability. Excellent mobility.

Yup, not versatile at all.

TLDR version of this post: Thieves can’t be OP since I die so much when playing mine.

Haste and culling are the main balance problems ATM. Even when the thief model loads their name often doesn’t, so they can’t be marked and often times can’t be tab-targetted.

Awesome gameplay! Amazingly tense fight full of moves and counter-moves. The jockeying for positioning and fakeouts were just incredible from both sides. You couldn’t really tell who was going to win until the very last second there.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

Oozo! I remember fighting against you in Warhammer! If you remember back some 3 years ago I was the dwarf Ironbreaker Jalis Ironhammer! Had some great fights back then, glad to know you’re making videos still although I do miss the super soaker intro :P

I remember you well.

Hope you are having fun in GW2.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously. You probably shouldn’t either.

12/22/12 – 8vN
12/16/12 – 6vN

Anti-zergers unite!

Check my signature for more movies.

New movies.

12/16/12 – 6vN
12/22/12 – 8vN

12/16/12 – 6vN
12/22/12 – 8vN

Good point. The system doesn’t accurately represent the volatility present in server strengths.

Yes, it’s absurd that this is even a possibility. This rating system needs some serious reevaluation. You also have servers sitting stagnant beating the same people over and over and over.

This sytem needs an infusion of common sense.

Alex.6940:

There wasn’t much he could do, although he could activated virtue of courage to give him time to use his heal. Most of his abilities where on cool down and that’s the main reason he should have died imo. He was an easy kill for any burst build, especially one with some kind of CC.

I think people have the wrong idea about how this game works, although this is based entirely on how I think it works :P The game is about skill and how players respond and act more than it is about gear and stats. Sure you could slot some vitality and toughness gear to help deal with burst damage, but this isn’t nearly as effective as slotting shadow step, endure pain, mist form etc in your utility bar to avoid the damage completely. If you don’t have anything to counter another build, either because it’s on cool down or didn’t bring it, then don’t be surprised if you die to it.

The mug+CnD+backstab combo can only be used once every ~40 seconds btw. This is a longer cool down than many skills you can use to counter it, assuming you only decided to bring one.

Pretty much agree with this. However, I think one-trick ponies are bad for overall gameplay. I’d like to see some of the burst combos (across all professions) nerfed and damage spread out a bit to other abilities to encourage balanced play.

Bunker builds would also have to be nerfed appropriately. Burst builds should still be available and be dangerous but the extremes need to be put in check a bit, IMO.

Well, a guardian relies on blocks, blinds, and defensive CDs for survivability. Since a guardian has a low health pool they are vulnerable to burst when their defenses and cooldowns are down.

What this means is that a thief typically only has success against a guardian when they attack while that guardian is preoccupied fighting someone else.

Solori.6025:

Mechanix.5719:

Archonis.7249:

Mechanix.5719:

Hey at least he wasn’t “perma stealth” and tbh that deer did alot of damage but in all honestly that was just a GC thief you would have died anyway since you pretty much charged a zerg but one thing you did wrong was running away from the thief NEVER run away you give him the best chance to Back stab and tbh if you gonna go toughness go full tank since in this game there isnt really a in between

You can run away from us, but always be aware where the thief stealthed and not run towards it like this guardian did.

hang on im a thief player too im not trying to take a shot at the thief he also saw the thief and ignored it and ran straight for the ranger

He also got hit by basalisk, and stood in the same spot after getting out of it, he had a good second in a half to roll, pop aegis, pop his heals, and start over fighting the theif.
Since he puts out enough damage to 100%-1% someone in 3 seconds.

He was stunned and then rooted. He slowed the footage down, he died before he had control of his character. Only thing that could have saved him was a stun break and a guardian anti-burst ability like shelter or renewed focus.

Arsenic.8259:

You have 16k hp, and how Anet said damage works. Vit/health is counter to burst. Toughness is counter to constant damage. Maybe try to get some more health?

That’s pretty respectable for a Guardian not selling out completely to health and toughness. Here is an experiment for you to check out. Go to the Hearts of the Mist and work on some offensive Guardian builds and see what level of health you end up with.

I wonder if Stormwolf has any idea how ridiculous he sounds.

Raven.6287:

Today DR reached a new low. After the first few days of chest beating that they managed to finally, after a very very long time claw there way out of the bottom tier, they pull a childish stunt like this. Spawn camping us after owning the whole map, Seriously.. But wait there is more. It appears this was not good enough, they must be afraid we may attempt to take a camp or tower. They were so concerned that they placed the following siege around our spawn out area. The list as best that I can remember goes like this. 2 or 3 Ballista, 5 arrow carts, 3 catapults. I may have missed a few but you get the general idea. Other achievements to date. Losing 9 Golems to take over garrison. You must admit you were very entertaining during that time.

Finally as I stated before you managed to claw your way out of the bottom tier, but you are not tier tier 5 or 6 material. As you have been told you will lose due to a number of factors which is a detriment to your server. I will let you work on finding that out in the coming weeks as you soul search why your starting to slide again. If the roles were reversed do you think we would do these sorts of childish acts. Some my say lets give them a taste of what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Will you blame us if we do. I will ensure this will not happen as we are much bigger then to stoop down to your level.

This is something to think about, you have presented yourselves to us in this manner, will your attitude change in the coming weeks. as they say time will tell.

Not a fan of spawn camping, but in this situation I’d probably order the same thing if I was a commander. It’s going to be a razor-thin outcome whether DR moves up this week or not.

In a way, they are trying to do you a favor by helping to ensure that we don’t have this extremely unbalanced matchup two weeks in a row.

Use the side exits if you are being spawn-camped.

Gameplay and presentation look great. Looking forward to the HD versions. Looks like a really solid build philosophy. Tons of healing and toughness. Toughness counters direct damage. The healing counters condition damage. And you use shelter and renewed focus to counter burst.

You kite and LoS to let your health regeneration work for you to tip the scales. Sword ports are used to reestablish contact. So, there is a lot of dipping in and out of direct combat. Good stuff, probably the strongest solo build I’ve seen for a guardian that can still actually kill people in a decent amount of time.

Stiv.1820:

Syeria.4812:

lettucemode.3789:

“Removing the downed state will actually give smaller/coordinated groups more of a chance to beat the larger group.” – still haven’t seen an argument to support this that isn’t simply “they have more people”.

Exactly. People have repeated that statement so often that it seems to be just universally accepted as fact, but I’ve never seen or understood the logic behind the statement. All evidence I’ve seen points to the opposite, that downstate helps a smaller/coordinated group more than anyone else.

What are the reasons people believe downstate encourages “zerg” groups, and that it helps them more than other types of groups?

Because the rate at which one get resurrected from downed (and stomped) state scales with the number of people ressurrecting?

True, true. Fortunately, zerglings don’t often take advantage of that. Now, if you run across a larger group of coordinated people they will take advantage of that. But, a large coordinated group beating a smaller coordinated group is the natural order of things.

Dual.8953:

Roezz.5460:

Oozo.7856:

Tulisin.6945:

Although I will say that many of the people complaining about downed state aren’t the ones that are having their “superior skill” mitigated by it, they’re the people are are bad at manipulating the downed state. You can’t attempt to ignore an entire mechanic and then say “But really I’m skillful, this thing I’m bad at is just holding me back!”

Ding! Ding!

Actually if you have a fight where you are winning 15 against 35 and and are in the process of cleaning up, then one random person who was tagging along rallies them, it’s a crappy mechanic. Especially since they will start with half health, no conditions and their short cooldowns all refreshed.

Now, introduce a 20v20, guild versus guild system with a limited time format and I will change my opinion.

If you’re leaving so many downed enemies around that rally makes a difference then you’re being sloppy. When you down them, make sure you have at least someone to finish the job.

Meh. When you are fighting while that outnumbered you typically have no choice but to give up ground and leave behind people that you have downed. That’s okay with me (personally) as it’s the price you pay for being outnumbered.

What sucks is when you have to give up ground to a zerg and they revive the people that you have stomped.

As a reply to some of the other comments above, I definitely feel that downedstate health and revive rates are something to be looked at. I really don’t have strong feelings there one way or the other.

Creslin.1758:

2. Combat-rez speed:

If there are two revivers or more, they will get the person up before your stomp goes off most of the time. This is kind of ridiculous. It makes it EXTREMELY difficult to kill someone in WvW when they are in a group that likes the “F” key. IMO, something has to be done to curb this. Either make combat rezzing interrupted when you get hit, or decrease the speed of a rez in combat.

This is something I can see as working both ways. A small group can still beat a larger group if they react faster and are built to help prevent stomps and secure revives.

For example, you can have a 3v5 and one of your guys gets bursted down by glass cannon focus. The revive speed can help you recover if you manage that situation with stability, stealth, knockbacks, etc better than the people outnumbering you.

So, I think it’s fine in a group BUT it’s a huge problem if you are soloing – which is probably where you are coming from.

Overall, decreasing the revive speed would actually hurt small groups even more versus a zerg (I think) since they are generally going to have less people on a body reviving.

Things are just going to be inherently diffucult if you are soloing. You kind of have to hope they aren’t aware enough to revive those you’ve downed and just keep trying to kill you.

Bunzy.8674:

The downed state has no place in spvp or wvw imo. Especially since classes (eg theives) are able to finish people off much easier then other people. They just pop stealth and bam they are done. It makes things so unfair its just ridiculous remove the downed state from everything besides pve.

Is anyone in your group built to help counter stealth-stomping?

Roezz.5460:

Oozo.7856:

Tulisin.6945:

Although I will say that many of the people complaining about downed state aren’t the ones that are having their “superior skill” mitigated by it, they’re the people are are bad at manipulating the downed state. You can’t attempt to ignore an entire mechanic and then say “But really I’m skillful, this thing I’m bad at is just holding me back!”

Ding! Ding!

Actually if you have a fight where you win 15 against 35 and and are in the process of cleaning up, then one random person happens along and rallies them, it’s a crappy mechanic. Especially since they will start with half health, no conditions and their short cooldowns all refreshed.

Now, introduce a 20v20, guild versus guild system with a limited time format and I will change my opinion.

Which is why I tend to avoid putting myself in situations where some dude might come by and kill a coyote and rally downed players. The OP is a solo runner, BTW. We avoid friendly players that we don’t know like the plague. Of course, you can’t really control who is around you.

As I mentioned before, I like the overall downed state mechanic but there are things that I think should be changed.

No rallying off of PvE MOBs in WvW.
No reviving stomped players.

Rallying downed players by stomping players is up in the air for me, as I’ve used it intentionally to help my team win a fight when we were outnumbered. That one can swing both ways. It also requires you to make a choice. Should I go for a straight revive or a downed stomp? How you make that choice and execute it can have a huge impact on the fight.

Tulisin.6945:

Although I will say that many of the people complaining about downed state aren’t the ones that are having their “superior skill” mitigated by it, they’re the people are are bad at manipulating the downed state. You can’t attempt to ignore an entire mechanic and then say “But really I’m skillful, this thing I’m bad at is just holding me back!”

Ding! Ding!

Niim.9260:

Didnt this last patch have some bit about downed state, well I guess that was probably just for sPvP, not WvW.

Downed carries bads, bads love downed, forever be a contentious discussion.

Bads don’t know how to manage downstate in fights where they are outnumbered. Bads don’t make sacrifices in their l33t glass cannon builds (that die ridiculously easily to balanced builds) that help them manage downstates. Bads don’t like things that challenge them.

Damn, I’m good at generalizing.

I’m shocked that the LARP elems managed to drop you in a 2v12. I guess they got lucky.

Templanos 1: Death by Cleavage
Templanos 2: Guardian’s Got a Temper

These are movies edited for entertainment. If you are more interested in some straight unedited footage (with music) then check the link in my signature.

Shooting someone from 1500 range while they are fighting someone else takes ridiculous timing?

New movie – Infotainment style.

Templanos 2 – Guardian’s Got a Temper

New movies.

12/13/12 – 3v15ish Supply camp defense
Templanos 2 – Guardian’s Got a Temper

khefka.2804:

^ Rune of Lyssa doesn’t work with Guardian tomes.

Okay, never tested it since I don’t use the Tome (haven’t used it on a damage build since it was nerfed hard in beta). It works very nicely with Renewed Focus, which is the only thing I’ve been using. Tome without stability is too fragile, IMO.

TheGreatA.4192:

Finishing is a skill in itself. You have to know what class you’re dealing with and which skills they can pull off while downed.

Yup. It requires game knowledge and the ability to make crucial decisions in a short period of time. That is what I really like about downed state.

However, I don’t think those crucial, knowledgable, and skillful decisions are properly rewarded. A stomped player should be completely removed from the fight in WvW.

Bumping for a great movie. We run similar builds with the main difference being that I use mace and shield instead of GS for more group support and downed state management with shield of absorption.

I notice that you guys don’t even really try to stomp you AoE people down and saturate that area to deny revives. Shortbow thieves are great for this. We typically don’t have the ranged AoE to do this and having to stomp the players you down can be really frustrating.

For the person questioning the VoC stability trait, it can be a game-changer. The stability can be used to stomp, revive, or it can be used to protect a tome cast.

You might want to look into runes of lyssa. You gain all boons when you use an elite, including stability. That synergizes nicely with the guardian elites. I’m not using the tome personally, but you would gain stability passively every time you use it which would help protect the long cast time heal. The side stat is precision which also fits in nicely with your build and food choice.

There have been some short queue times, but not on all maps. DR seems to have a very active WvW player-base for it’s overall server population.

My opinions are coming from a solo and small group player. You can check the vids in my signature to verify.

I like the downed state mechanic. Yes, it makes winning fights when you are outnumbered harder… but things that challenge me are what keeps me playing. You try to come up with solutions to a problem. In all of my builds I sacrifice damage to pick up things to help my team manage downed state.

Now, with that said here are two things I HATE about the downed state system in WvW.

1) Players should not get rallied from MOB kills in WvW. Period.

2) Players who have been stomped should be forced to respawn in WvW. It sucks to be fighting a 5v20 (for example) and get people downed AND stomped but end up losing since you can’t keep that many people from rezzing STOMPED players.

Fix those two things and I’ll be a very happy solo and small group customer. Keep the overall downed state mechanic as it adds a great amount of tension to a fight, which I love.

Instant abilities can be used while you are channeling other abilities. They can also be used while stunned or knocked down.

Ring of warding and JI is just one example of taking advantage of that. Popping VoC or SYG while in the middle of stomp is another example.

A thief using steal in the middle of stomping another thief who uses the downed state 2 teleport is another example. The port doesn’t cancel the stomp.

A warrior can use fear me while kneeling on the ground reviving a friendly player.

There are many many tricks like this for all of the classes that involved using an instant ability in the middle of a channel.

We’ve never had a straight up open field group fight against an Envy group that I was involved in. There have always been other people around. In those situations, you have downed a few of us and we have downed a few of you.

Of course, the only people we’ve downed are alts in green gear I’m sure. :P

moutzaheadin.4029:

One has to wonder , where are the videos of the times you get a spike in your eye. I know it happens , I have your head on my wall next to the fireplace.

Of course it happens and you wouldn’t have to wonder if you watch the videos since I show deaths in them. I’m playing a guardian which has no escapability. This means I die when we get overwhelmed by numbers quite a lot.

A lot of zerglings have my head on their wall over their fireplace. But I have far more of thiers.

Hammer is fun, yes.

12/13/12 – 3v15ish Supply Camp Defense

Darek.1836:

Junkhaus.4301:

Went to EB to have fun with my guildies. Thought I had a 1v1 with an Envy thief, turns out ferg zerg was around the corner. I don’t mind the quick death, but this Charr Ranger from TTA, good job killing me in a 10v1, and then celebrating with a good old teabag. That kitten belongs in Halo. TTA, I never heard of you guys, this is a great impression of your guild you are giving me with your ranger in this pic. Thanks.

I’ll apologize on behalf of TTA, most of them are nice guys and I’m pretty sure none of them actually come on the forums. However I assume they’re just being happily stupid since we were running basically our last offense with you guys in EB last night. It’s especially fun I bet to rub it into a Dev’s face after being zerged, since there’s at least a 10:1 ratio of fergs being zerged than a dev being zerged

We get a good bit of taunting after dying to 3-5 times our number quite often. Even when we take a huge number of them out with us. You will find these kinds of people on every server in every game. It’s best to just ignore them. All that matters to us is killing.

BTW, you will also find players who recognize what you are doing and bow after taking you out. You will find those type of people on every server in every game as well.

Here is a 3v15ish from last night. Not sure what these people were doing or thinking. I saw a lot of new guild tags out there last night. Welcome to WvW? :P

I guess nobody told him he could just server transfer to the top server and become instaleet.

Kraigan.6057:

That’s ok, because we’ve been fighting against your alts with our alts which were also undergeared and leveled exclusively through tradeskills, so we even have less of an idea than normal…

Kraigan’s alts have alts. :P

Clicking heal, utilities, and elite?

Thief seems to be a good profession for people who haven’t learned to keybind yet.

New movie. >:)

12/9/12 – 4v10+v10+

Thanks.

A new “unedited” style movie is up. This is roughly a 4v10+v10+ with us stuck in the middle of a 3way.

12/9/12 – 4v10+v10+

Near the end, a friendly karma/exp train comes through and takes the supply camp and moves on to their next karma/exp target without engaging the people we are fighting. :P

I ran with focus for a bit in PvP and it made me realize how good the shield is. Yes, the cooldowns are long which is frustrating. However, the shield allows you to make game-changing moves to win a fight.

You can knock people off trying to stomp a teammate. You can knock people off trying to revive a foe. You can knock people off of cliffs removing them from the fight. You can interrupt key moves an enemy is trying to get off.

These are the kinds of big moves that can win a fight that you would have otherwise lost.

Balidore.2790:

Green gear, blue gems. For both my ranger and ele, lol. Even my thief is in half yellows. So yeah, that’s what I mean by alts.

Oh, you are the ranger? Yeah, bad combination of being gear squishy and having little escapability. A bit harder than the mesmer, I imagine. :P

I’ve seen some pretty decent melee ranger builds though.

Balidore.2790:

Oozo.7856:

Junkhaus.4301:

On behalf of myself and my guildies who were there, I thank NP and Envy for the 1v1 fights. We’d like to do some more before our server leaves this tier, there’s no people better than you guys to learn how to 1v1. Everyone on my end said they enjoyed the fights and are amazed at your skill. Again, thanks for taking time away from defending, you’ve shown us a lot of class tonight.

The Envy people are the best solo players I’ve run across in this lowest bracket. Part of that is pure skill but part of that is also running really strong professions with very good builds. I think they had three d/d elementalists, a thief, and a mesmer grouped up the other night.

Can’t blame them for that. It’s really the only way to handle the numbers you have to fight on a nightly basis. Those d/d elementalist are great for zergbusting. I watched one of their d/d elementalists consistently kite and down people in 1v4-8 situations.

Their ranger has balls. He must know he is going to be taking focus every single time when running with those professions since he has the least survivability and is also the easiest to stomp in downed state . :P

It’s kind of odd that the three best classes for survivability through escapability also have the best downed states for buying time while fighting in groups. While a class like the necro, which has horrible escability, also has the worst downed state. 0o

Hate to tell ya man… but you’ve only fought our alts, lol. We only have 1 main d/d ele in the guild. And no ranger mains.
We’ve only really played alts the past 2 weeks or so. We’ve been in this exact match up for ages now, gettin old :/ I actually haven’t been on my main in over 2 weeks now.

A good player is a good player whether on a main or alt. It’s not like classes in GW2 are that hard to learn and in some cases an alt of a certain profession is stronger than a main of another.

Unless they are not in full exotics or something? :P

Here is a 4vN from 12/9. Around 7:45 in the movie you can see a DR exp/karma train move in and take the supply camp we are near and then leave out the backside (probably to kill the veteran harpy) without ever fully engaging the 15+ people we were fighting.

Junkhaus.4301:

On behalf of myself and my guildies who were there, I thank NP and Envy for the 1v1 fights. We’d like to do some more before our server leaves this tier, there’s no people better than you guys to learn how to 1v1. Everyone on my end said they enjoyed the fights and are amazed at your skill. Again, thanks for taking time away from defending, you’ve shown us a lot of class tonight.

The Envy people are the best solo players I’ve run across in this lowest bracket. Part of that is pure skill but part of that is also running really strong professions with very good builds. I think they had three d/d elementalists, a thief, and a mesmer grouped up the other night.

Can’t blame them for that. It’s really the only way to handle the numbers you have to fight on a nightly basis. Those d/d elementalist are great for zergbusting. I watched one of their d/d elementalists consistently kite and down people in 1v4-8 situations.

Their ranger has balls. He must know he is going to be taking focus every single time when running with those professions since he has the least survivability and is also the easiest to stomp in downed state . :P

It’s kind of odd that the three best classes for survivability through escapability also have the best downed states for buying time while fighting in groups. While a class like the necro, which has horrible escability, also has the worst downed state. 0o

The link is fine. It’s the forum that is bad.

You will have to copy the link as text and put it in your address bar.