Guild Wars 2

You’ll have to excuse me for getting carried away with all that hyperbolic language, “server glory” is a cheesy concept at best but it does exist. Certain hardcore wvwers DO care about winning, and server pride is just what it is. It’s as illogical as thinking virtual pixels in a game are in anyway a tangible reward. In the end, a legendary weapon or the fun you get from absolutely trouncing the enemy after a satisfactorily epic battle are just about equally tangible as each other in real life, except the time you spent on that epic battle will give you a warm fuzzy feeling and a crap load of fun.

You may feel the shiny legendary is your endgame, and finally attaining it will be achieving some sort of milestone. If that’s what gets you your thrills, okay. Other people get a kick out of winning wvw for their server. Or killing people. Half the fun is in the fight anyway, and if it was a well played duel even if I lost, I’ll be perfectly happy.
It might seem irrational, but then again wasting time on a legendary seems irrational to me too.

I really wouldn’t mind guaranteed badge drops, especially if it was established similar to the bonus xp system. Killing a player equal to or higher than your level nets you 1 badge minimum. The longer the player goes without being killed, the higher then chance of dropping additional badges. The xp system already awards you bonus xp for killing enemies and NPCs that haven’t been killed in a while since respawn.

More badges = more siege

P.S you delete siege, that is blasphemy.

bhagwad.4281:

FrouFrou.4958:

bhagwad.4281:

Those who fight in JPs are pretty much tools of Anet. They fight….because Anet tells them to. Because the other guy is red.

Wait what? Oh snap! Oh burn! You are jumping in a jumping puzzle because Anet tells you to, you are using a mesmer portal for portaling because Anet tells you.. See what I did there, Mr. Tool?

If only there was free server transfers still going on I would totally jump on the enemy server just to gank you and the rest of these silly pve heroes who qq here. The sweet, sweet tears of silly pvers :>

I do the jumping puzzles to benefit myself. I profit from it. So “being a tool” doesn’t apply here. When you try and foolishly kill someone just because of a color when you can just as easily lose and get no benefit whatsoever, that makes you a tool.

And let’s stop pretending that those who attack others in JPs are some 1v1 beasts. I’m r30 myself in PvP – if I don’t manage to pull you off a ledge, I’m just as willing to leave you on your back. But it’s waste of time and I’d rather not do it. Because I don’t do anything with no benefit to myself.

Ah but the thing is, you’ve been tricked by anet into thinking JP rewards are worth anything. BoH for Legendary? Pffff, 5 minutes in photoshop and I’ll get you something that looks cooler. Siege plans? Rather useless if you don’t wvw.

Now why do we kill people? Same reason why people play video games really, for the fun of it. The prestige of racking up those player kills (a progression that is as meaningful as sPvP rank to some people). The thrill of smashing your enemy into oblivion and inflating your e-ego. It’s obvious different people are going to derive different benefits and experiences from the same feature, but in the end, all that matters is the enjoyment.

Addressing OP’s point, “peace” is never suppose to be preserved in a PvP map. Peace is detrimental to your server’s glory, giving enemies free badges and siege plans. Peace should be broken and invaders kicked off the JP in the most humiliating ways possible. Peace only exists when all the red is dead. PvE QQers trying to get legendary in easy mode can go QQ more.

About the enemy armour colour thing, I never noticed it was an option since I set everything down to the lowest possible setting first day into wvw.

I agree having different coloured names for different invaders would really help you judge situations at a single glance instead of trying to differentiate the massive blob of red, but I DO rather like the colour associated ranking system as it is. Removing it so it appears the same from all perspectives can potentially really screw up the design of the leaderboard layout and everything.

anthsss.1564:

Kardiamond.6952:

@Anthsss

Do you have a random theory generator Anthsss? :`)

Everybody know that early on this week, some commanders in both BP and NSP allied to focus on Anvil Rock. One of the commander even said it on the forum.

With ALS taking time off, We can only do so much to come back.

I don’t think right now we can play for the first place, the score difference is too big. We will have to settle for second and try the first next week.

Well, being a part of the server alliance, we never once discussed working with either server. If you want to think we worked with BP, that’s cool, but I’m pretty sure it was BP’s borderland that we took on reset, not AR, and it was also BP’s keep in EB that we took twice in two days. I mean, maybe I have the definition of an alliance wrong, but thus far I have yet to see how I’m wrong in any of my statements I’ve made.

ALS wasn’t taking a break this week, it’s their excuse for not being in 2nd the whole time, I know this because on reset, I repelled them at hills on BP borderlands with the pugs I was leading. We don’t make excuses when we are losing, we just keep fighting

Guild commanders are all (mostly) taking a break from ARBL defence. We’re a huge guild, obviously there’s going to be a bunch of us running around still, but not actively leading. Except for 2g when he really gets into it.

Not making excuses either, I’m taking the time to sPvP (which btw is quite fun) and PvE like a lot of fellow guildies, and AR is doing just fine.

bhagwad.4281:

Darnis.4056:

Never understood why people cared about Rank..
It’s just skins =D Play to have fun, and to dominate your foes.

Most people (including myself) need more than “it’s just fun” to play. Either give me skins, bragging rights, a new visual etc. (like a star for those who have map completion).

This is one of the reasons I never waste time in WvW. You get nothing for the time and effort you put in there. I only go for the jumping puzzles to get my badges and destroy the siege plans. If it wasn’t for the glory and rank, I wouldn’t to sPvP either.

Loot, skins, rank/bragging rights are integral to the game. Without that I would never play no matter how much “fun” it is.

You destroy siege plans? THIS IS BLASPHEMY! And here I am spending god knows how many badges and gold a day BUYING those plans.

TBH, if you applied your philosophy to RL, there wouldn’t be any point living either :P

Alad QB.8904:

There will always be limits. But the amount of information sent by the server about each enemy character can be reduced by not sending details of face customizations, tattoos, etc… We don’t really have the opportunity to see such details in the enemy. It can be further reduced by not sending any color information, and imposing the “enemy is painted red or violet” principle.

I believe the user should determine the limits of how many characters can be drawn, based on their observations. If necessary, the client can then inform the server of that limit in the hope that it will further lessen the load on the server.

Enemies are already coloured according to their team colour if you haven’t noticed already. The colours are also assigned according to the server’s ranking, so introducing a 2nd set of colours may be confusing.

Haha, I do all my dailies in WvW as well. When they release the multi optional daily system, hopefully one of them will be a wvw oriented one. As it is currently, I can just see too much QQ from PvE players, and WvW players who have to sit through enormous queues waiting for the PvE players to get out.

And there goes a page+ worth of posts.

This is war, and we’re keyboard warriors waging psychological warfare for teh glory of our server. You can’t just moderate all the posts away because one side is getting the upper hand kitten kittens can’t handle the pressure.

^ Oh yes that. Ability to change name by paying a fee.

zastari.1730:

Maybe try bringing a stunbreaker and learning to dodgeroll? I applaud people who figure out good PvE items for WvW, it brings some nice variety.

So, you’ve used your 3 stun breakers up, 2 dodges, and 10 sec stability, and the guy still has a stack of spikefruit left kiting you at range. Now what?

WUT, karma exotic jewellery? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I just wasted 10g the other day buying those bloody expensive things :’(

@jkctmc, being a world vs world type of game does not mean encouraging lagfest battles where one zerg runs around clockwise, meets another zerg, and either wipes or gets wiped. This only turns wvw into that dark corner of gw2 where you go to farm xp and karma like a bot. Their vision of “massive war type atmosphere” has fallen rather short.

Sure I do love the huge epic protracted battles around keeps where both teams push back and forth, and real strategy does make a difference. But the current zerging has none of that, and should NOT be considered normal. It comes nothing close to warfare as originally envisioned. At the minimum, zerging should at least have real tactics to consider, by EVERYONE in the zerg, rather than just the commander (if he’s even doing that). It can be as simple as “Which utility should I use to get across this terrain most efficiently?” The current mass sheep mentality of zergs is just horrid, everyone feels like a bot. Shouldn’t there be something done about this botting?

@Revelations,
Yes, zergs are pretty much a crucial part of wvw, but the current implementation can be so much more improved. Not necessarily combated, but improved user experience. You are exactly right about the staleness of it. It helps too, to encourage more group roaming so things actually get interesting. Being able to defeat enemies without numerical superiority by using dynamic tactics tuned to terrain variations and environmental factors is just that much more fun.

Alarox.4590:

As far as I’m concerned, any complaints against “zerging” are essentially complaints about reality. It’s complaining that it’s easier to do something with 3 people instead of 2. It’s like complaining that gravity exists when you get caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. It’s reality: when you have more people, you can generally get something done easier.

That being said, the kinds of things you said above, I like.

But if you have the ingenuity, a small group of people could potentially best a much larger one. These 5-man roaming groups are the best thing on wvw by far, and if there were more things for them to do, it will make everything a lot more DYNAMIC (anet loves all that dynamic stuff dont they). WvW would no longer be just a pure numbers game, which frankly, is a really lame and lazy implementation. It’s not fun.

At the moment, zerg busting is very much possible, given enough skill, luck, and sheer dumbness on your opponent’s side. Unfortunately, you only ever come across that holy trinity occasionally, and if you are caught in the open field you’re pretty much dead anyway unless you have a handy thief. Zerg busting techniques heavily revolve around using the terrain to your advantage, such as height and choke points. If these features were implemented, it would provide so much more opportunity for zerg busting. Eventually, people will finally learn that mindless zerging is no longer a viable strategy, and large groups will have to be actually coordinated and organised. Which is fun

^ He’s tired of people saying “WvW needs larger maps to combat zergs!”

Your idea of the guerilla tactic stuff is awesome, and will allow for some pretty effective small team vs zerg showdowns that don’t require stupidity on the zerg end for you to be successful. If a small team can be effective on their own and get just as much xp/karma/gold as a zergling, it will definitely encourage more 5-party roaming and actually fun battles

Destructible bridges and road blocks will allow you to interrupt critical supply lines in a semi permanent way, which means people will finally learn the importance of escorting dolyaks. Destroying a bridge could be like one of those bandit pve events, giving the attackers 3 minutes to completely hold an area, or ends if the bomber dies before then. A dead bridge could interrupt one of the supply lines to the keep or garrison, and require supply to be rebuilt.

Differing terrains also sounds like something interesting to alter your battle mechanics. Maybe each of the tower can be located in a differently themed area, and have different mechanics applied to it that you have to be careful of. The mindless zerg could be easily wiped by taking advantage of a characteristic of the terrain that the zerg is not aware of. Having more mechanics to be aware of will promote better play among all users.

Theagenes.7403:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmOVFk63-Q

Here’s our second video….surely not so pvp-oriented…loooool

Oh my god, that was absolute pure gold. Had me legitimately laughing my kitten off for 5 minutes straight. Love you guys.

I was going to make the title “reasonably easy fix” but it was too long so I had to shorten it xD. I’m aware how even a little change like this could be monstrously difficult to achieve, especially if the game engine was never built with this idea in mind. But what this solution does, however, is provide a work around for this issue that is just as effective without requiring the effort to completely redevelop the game engine in order for min spec clients to be able to handle loading all those models efficiently – a feat that would be better suited for another future title release considering the amount of work that would be required.

I know the devs have said they are already fixing the problem, namely by throwing more money at the problem and making some extreme improvements to the game engine – but that is a very long term solution and by the time you’ve rebuilt the entire game engine to handle culling, it’s probably time for gw3. Here’s a more intermediate solution that will effectively remove all the issues of culling with very little change in resource consumption or requirement for game engine improvement:

Load the names of players first before loading their models. Floating text to indicate an enemy definitely takes less resources, and bandwidth and client limitations are not so much of an issue. No more invisible 50 men zergs popping out of no where – you’d be able to see a huge pile of names before culling decides the models should load. Same with thief stealth, if we see their name pop out as soon as they come out of stealth, it’s effective enough to give us a place to target. This is not a technically infeasible suggestion, and client hardware considerations are not such a big issue.

Eh, I think many people tend to do that if they are in a small group on an enemy BL, and meet another small group of invaders – it’s just easier ignoring each other since it increases the chances of survival for both parties while pursuing a common goal. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that jazz.

There’s certainly no inter-server alliance though, just spent hours defending towers down south from zergs of both NS and DH using the breakout event. AR put up a great defence though, even if we lost the towers and had to keep recapping them back. Still laughing at the flaming ram episode xD

Drednyte.7601:

DR has a night crew?? omgawd….since when? I game late night and more often than not we got the outmanned buff. yet see 30+ man zergs from AR and NSP at 2-3+am late night. If that’s what your calling a ‘skeleton crew’…imma jst laugh at that.

Well..weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Happy New Years everyone…what’s your resolution for the new year? Mine is to once and for all PWN that darn Dolyak up north! I swear, he’s NOT gettin outta ma crosshairs this year!

Eh, my timezones are weird. I’m on oceanic, and most of the time I’m on, there’s hardly any one else on.

New year gw2 resolution? To be able to finally caty down bay water wall without being discovered. Someone always pops up just as it’s about to go down

Yesterday was a blast, flipped bay in NSP from DR with a 5 man team of low level alts by following DR in. And then defending AR bay from DR an hour later, finally pushing them out after they broke into inner. Saw some of the most amazing defence work in AR to date, congratulations to everyone who helped

Also, please stop generalizing entire servers based on what YOU personally saw of a few small groups. @The DR guy who says “DR don’t zerg” and whatever rubbish you have to claim about DR/AR, I’ve seen both pro and crap performance from both servers. If I was going to be anal about it, I could keep going on about how DR is full of stupid zergs, repeatedly using the breakout event and failing to take our tower SEVERAL TIMES in a row on NUMEROUS OCCASIONS with a much larger force than ours etc. etc. But I wont, because I’m not going to make any judgements based on the sub par performance of a minor percent of your population.

The simple fact is, DR is winning because they have a higher population with better coverage. When you roflstomp two other servers in your tier by double the points, it’s bad sport to go on about how “pro” you all are and just admit you’re not in the right tier. And in all these tiers, it’s always the population and coverage that makes the biggest difference. No matter how skilful your little 5-man teams and organised guilds are, it’s the zerg that’s going to have 24 hour coverage, create a nice uniform green over the whole map, make the biggest difference and get you most of the points. There’s nothing wrong with it either, but you can’t claim you beat the other servers solely by being skilful. You may have skilful players who played skilfully, but that wasn’t the reason why you won.

You say we have just as big a zerg, but I know that only really happens once every day for a few hours, and that’s when we take back all our BL and make some headway on EB and other BLs. As part of our so called “night time crew”, I know exactly how painful it is defending our BL with a skeleton crew.

Rayya.2591:

Op, an single question
what if , i as an thief decide to skip the battle vs an 5 group players and find an easy frag , i stealth and pop up 4 heartseekers and i am at 2000 + distance before you see me
How you counter that ?
1 min latter i find the lowest defence frag in your group , jump on it when you are distarcted with others and get him. Stealth and go away.
Just asking , cause i did that over 100 times

That’s about the most useful thing a thief can do except for DS in zerg situations, so it would be a pity if you couldn’t do it.

My main is a thief and I just realized how boring the class was. There’s absolutely no diversity and everyone does the same thing. Yawn.

Currently rolling a mesmer now, and lolling at thieves wasting all their initiative ganking my clones while I literally confuse them to death. They were incredibly bad thieves like most of them, yes, but regardless it would’ve been easy to get one shotted by any of them.

zastari.1730:

I don’t think you understand how much it completely flips matches. When we’re running 5 man zergbusting groups, the difference between us killing 20 people or us wiping is whether each person downed in our team gets rezzed or not. The instant one dies the fight is over.

Unless you all have handy invulnerability/stability utilities, it’s rather problematic going 5v20. If that’s the case, you should simply avoid engaging until you can divide and conquer, no one’s forcing you to zerg bust at such odds. You might’ve been able to do it in another game, but this mechanic changes things and tactics will have to be adjusted accordingly.

By sizeable zergs, I meant the typical huge scale pug 20v20s, where downed state doesn’t really change MUCH. Except for the bit about rezzing the dead, now that’s a feature that serves no purpose except to favour the already powerful.

It’s weird, I get the “report” button sometimes, and the proper option list other times. It’s the same thing with my contacts list – some of the contacts don’t even have the option to remove them, only a nice report button.

zastari.1730:

I’ve already worked rallying off of mobs into my strategy. It’s still stupid. I’ll destroy you 1v1 and probably 1v2 in a pile of mobs any day. It’s not near as stupid as the rally cascade that causes zerg battles to be number v number though.

If you’re capable of destroying someone 1v1 or 1v2, the pile of mobs is only good for them to get away alive. Kinda like thief stealths. If they rally off, you shouldn’t have any problems dropping them again. If it was a very close match though, it could be a flipping factor and you’d be hitting yourself over the head if that little game mechanic got you. In either case, it’s still a core part of the combat system and even if you personally think its stupid, it adds a depth to the battle you have to consider. You can’t call for getting rid of thief stealth because “it’s stupid”, its a core part of the class and its not going anywhere. All you can do is take advantage whenever, and if you really really hate it, maybe gw2 isn’t for you.

As for cascading zerg rezzes, I do facepalm if a lowbie who gets himself killed revives the whole enemy party just as I’m about to finish them off, but in any sizeable zerg its not that much of a big deal, it just prolongs the inevitable but rarely flips matches.

This sounds like something I should try out Berserker thieves are getting old.

@Alarox, oh I see. I was assuming Server A, B and C represents the corresponding positions of the server, with A being the strongest.

Our tier is currently right, we’re coming second or third with very tight points between 2nd and 3rd (within a few hundred points), while top server rolls us over with a large margin but never large enough xD It looks like that will change next matchup so that’s cool. But in any case, no matter who we play against, the situation is always the same and it gets stale.

But downed state IS an integral part of the combat system, so you need to adjust your tactic to work with it, just like how you can adjust your tactic to fight against different classes and their quirks. You can’t say, remove all the classes because otherwise I am so skilful I can win 1v5s anytime if everyone was the same class. The mechanic introduces a new element into the combat system that you need to consider if you want to come out on top.

@Alarox “If you choose to attack, you want to pick the server that won’t be able to defend as easily. Server A is ideal.”

I don’t know about you but that NEVER happens in any of the lower tiers our server has played in. Server B is more ideal because they have less people than Server A, and by attacking them, they are similarly engaged at two fronts. They will be even less likely to retaliate because they will be inferior to Server A (numerically or otherwise). Situation two as described by OP is always what results.

I agree a 1v1v1v1 battle will definitely make things a LOT more dynamic and interesting, but its probably pushing the technical side of things a bit seeing how 1v1v1 already has severe culling and lagging issues.

A 2v2 match, where a server from a high tier will be allied with a corresponding server on a lower tier will also make things so much more balanced and interesting. Every pairing from this system will result in a battle that is roughly balanced, and will involve a LOT more strategic intrigue in order to cooridinate teams from both servers.

1v1v1 matches right now just feel so stale and samey, it’s getting boring.

In small group combat, I always make sure to pull in mobs around me and bring down their health, specifically so I can ninja rez myself if I get downed. Skilful players will be aware of this, and kill any mobs before they can be used as a rezzing point. It’s the same in zergs, if I have allies around me downed, I’ll always prioritize killing easy targets to rez more people at once than stopping and reviving them myself. It’s a legitimate tactic and it’s not a broken mechanic. Instead of complaining about it, work it into your strategy and skill, and you’ll find combat just that much more dynamic.

Downed state is a mechanic you have to figure into your strategy if you’re going against a larger force, and it’s part of being “skilful”. It’s very much possible to come out on top while outnumbered and it’s definitely not a broken mechanic, so if you’re trying to propose to remove such a feature because you can’t figure out a way to do so, maybe you should take another look at your own skills. Downed state is an important feature of gw2 combat, so instead of wasting time campaigning to remove it, work towards overcoming it.

Lightsbane.9012:

Kardiamond.6952:

@Reido

Man just ease up and watch the show.

GoM AR and NSP don’t have any rivalry going on, so for sure you are missing your other match up!

we don’t? so you won’t mind going away and fighting NSP instead.

Lol, in this matchup AR has more rivalry with AR than the other two servers we’re suppose to be fighting :eyeroll:

Zoltar.8912:

Sheadong.8217:

Nuh uh GoM, you ain’t gettin’ this tower. And neither are you NSP. Your field rams will not break out spirit. This is [ALS] tower. Not yours.

I’m kind of curious. Is Lou Gehrig’s disease a requirement of your guild?

AHA I see what you did there :P
I’m in ALS and no, I don’t have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I’ll prove it to you with my thief

Rob.7624:

Good job guys pushing through the Borderlands with me and Os. Was a great ride and I’ll see you all tomorrow for the night shift.

Oh and to all my NSP friends who have battled at my side of the last few months…

..BORLIS PASS ARE STOMPING DRAGON BRAND IN THEIR FACES..

HOOOOORRRAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Damn and here I was hoping BP would get roflstomped >.< As would everyone else in AR :P

Well, if you want to take it that way, I just personally logged into the game, got into a fight with a random invader and logged out. Guess what, no repair bills, no death. Quite the revelation.

LameFox.6349:

Opc.4718:

There was official confirmation from an anet developer in one of the threads that the insta-kill on DC only applies WHEN YOU ARE DOWNED. I remember this, because someone specifically raised the concern of whether or not logging out in combat mode will kill you.

Then why are people getting repair bills for DC? Hell, why did someone (forget the name, read upthread) get killed by the queue from BL to EB?

If that’s what it’s officially supposed to do, it isn’t working. And to be honest that sounds like a terrible fix anyway, because people could just alt+f4 before they get downed.

Citation needed. I haven’t seen anyone complain about repair bills for DC until I came across this thread. It’s not a perfect fix, but people rarely have time to alt/f4 before they get downed. If you have time to consider whether or not its worth quitting to save repair bills at the cost of several minutes waiting for the game to boot back up, you can run away by then.

I reckon the dev’s are getting hit with code smell right now. Someone didn’t think through enough about how the fractal mechanisms will work, and now that the entire system has been built on the faulty mechanisms, “fixing” it will require an entire recoding of the whole thing.

There was official confirmation from an anet developer in one of the threads that the insta-kill on DC only applies WHEN YOU ARE DOWNED. I remember this, because someone specifically raised the concern of whether or not logging out in combat mode will kill you.

Damn, how’d you get 100 charged cores at their current price xD
Working towards bolt too, but that gift is really kitten me off xD

It would be an amazing day if we HAD 20 people in our server coordinated enough to use portals :P

I can confirm ~592 MB, just finished downloading it with no problems.

I’d have thought the whole idea of p2p downloads was to reduce the strain on anet’s servers and remove the need FOR a centralized download server. I imagine having an option to disable it would only make things worse.

So back on topic, you make some really good points. I’d love to see this implemented:

-And let people play the highest difficulty the party has unlocked instead of the lowest.

I don’t see why you can’t choose to play at a higher level with your friends if you feel like it, even if you will be disadvantaged. That’s my own problem, I’ll deal with it. This system doesn’t entirely remove the concept of progression, and will mostly eliminate the problem of finding an available party.

Also, I’d just like to point out that there’s probably infinite levels of fractals, as implied by the name. They probably use an algorithm that spits out progressively higher health/damage bosses as the level increase, with only a noticeable difficulty plateau after level 10 that’s probably manually implemented. Reducing the number of fractal levels by 10 times still makes it infinity.

10+ fractals have a CHANCE to drop the ring in dailies, it’s not guaranteed. Bag of gold is a loot you can find in all dungeons, and it invariably drops silver. It’s not meant to be taken literally, unfortunately xD

Also regarding your mysterious loot bag, the system works differently to the PvE system. Any loot that drops automatically spawns at your CURRENT location in the form of bags, no matter where you are or how far away you are. It’s to simplify looting when you’re in the heat of battle, so you don’t have to run over corpses.

My position is the exact reverse of yours. I’m an intense WvWer, got my 500 badges before I even reached level 80. For most of the part, being out-manned actually made obtaining badges even easier, and being in a low pop server was no deterrent at all. Now I’m hitting my head against the wall completing dungeons and trying to get map completion, which I just find completely boring. I’m being forced to waste time in low level areas which I have absolutely no interest in exploring.

However, the requirements for the legendary makes sense – this is a major end content reward, a long term goal you aspire to by mastering the entire game. It’s a simple skin, no one’s forcing you to get it and you won’t be worse off without it, but attaining it is a symbol of your awesomeness and it therefore has to reflect that in terms of its requirements.

Stealth attacks are what thieves are designed for, and the only thing they are good at. Nerf it, and the thief class essentially becomes squishy warriors in leather.

“Balance” isn’t about every class being able to do what another can, there wouldn’t be any point in “classes” then. Each class has its own set of special abilities, and when applied correctly, can help flip battles and achieve other goals in their own way. People don’t get mad over other classes being OP, because most of the time, the truly battle flipping things aren’t even directly noticeable until everyone around you finds themselves running, and even then, you might not even know what originated the flip.

The widespread vendetta against thieves is a lot more personal, because at one point or another, people have experienced distinctly identifiable harassment tactics by thieves that may have taken out several people out of your group, and then go around thinking “OMG 1v15 and the thief is owning us. This is absolute BS blabla”. If you’re in a largish group and find yourselves unable to kill a single thief, then you really do need to rethink your tactics. WvW isn’t all about free karma/xp farming, and if you can’t fix a little blip in your zerg with some basic tactics, you don’t deserve to be zerging. WvW is a war zone, so don’t expect things to be nice, fair and orderly. Pitched battles were last century, guerilla tactics are now all the modern rage. If you think a single thief going up against a large group and coming out of it unharmed is OP, then consider the fact that it’s about the only battle flipping thing a thief can do. It just happens to be up close, personal and dirty, which invites all the hate. Learn to play your class and play up your strengths instead of crying about balance all day, and you can similarly flip battles in your own way.

@Johnson, stealth DOES stack, but it’s far from giving you perma stealth. A thief has only about 3 utility stealth skills which take 45-60 secs to recharge, so you wouldn’t be able to stack it to make much of a difference anyway. It’s reserved sparingly for emergency uses and escaping out of tricky situations. The “perma stealth” thing everyone is talking about isn’t true perma stealth. It’s just a well timed and executed series of CnD, which involves getting out of stealth organically first, before hitting someone again with the skill and going back to stealth for another 3 secs. Contrary to common misconceptions, this is a very tricky thing to do, takes a lot of skill, leaves a huge window for error, and can be prevented by other players fairly easily. Any other class with players behind it who are just as skilled can cause similarly large amounts of damage. (mesmers, necromancers and warriors come straight to mind.)