Guild Wars 2

Black Box.9312:

Kodiak.3281:

Dragon Hunter is a predominately ranged Guardian something it lacked.

Ehhhhhhh not really. Other than the longbow (which has no CC to KEEP enemies back other than a passive gimmick trait), there’s really nothing ranged about the Dragonhunter. And even then, it’s really not a new playstyle. It’s a trap ranger wannabe.

Guardians are definitely not in any better shape than Eles as far as this whole “elite spec” thing is concerned.

So you’re saying that over the three year life of the game; most, if not all, of the current professions have been steadily pigeon-hole’d into a single “Best Build” as their options have either been nerfed into irrelevance or reworked into counter-intuitive version of themselves which are only useful at pretending to be a different profession’s pigeon-hole?

You could ask someone who mains engineer what role their weapons provide that their kits don’t do better, it’s not a matter of the kits being the best option, it’s a matter of their main weapons are irrelevant. You could ask a thief main how they plan to survive an extended combat scenario without relying heavily on stealth, it’s not a matter of stealth being a very good solution to slowly losing a fight; it’s a matter of the thief having no other way to protect their tiny health pool. There’s a terrible design point that all the base professions suffer from, and it’s not a matter of just looking at what they have that works and telling them not to complain, it’s a matter of having a wide variety of “options” and there being a correct choice.

Just think, if any profession has a choice between 5-7 different weapon skill sets and 5-7 elite skills, but 90% of players use the same weapon set and the same elite skill, then those “options” feel wasted, and the game feels unloved. (keep in mind building video games is a huge endeavour and takes a lot of time and effort simply to produce a facsimile of a working game and the results I’ve been discussing here are what it seems like from a player’s perspective without good communication from the developers)

pepper.6179:

what about the people that don’t want the expac?

Then you’ll still get the free content and likely once the pack goes live, Anet might make a PvP version of the expack which will just unlock some of the specialisation additions but otherwise people who don’t get it will be unaffected by their choice, the vanilla game will still be just as playable and PvP won’t restrict people who don’t have the expack to fight amongst themselves

IGN: Muspell Margreve
Thief type: Scholar (I’ve been out of the game for too long to be hip with the meta
Server: Gates of Madness
Experiance: Quite a lot of WvW and PvE playing casually with friends in mostly a 50/50 split focus between spike finishing and team support (my friends weren’t exactly skilled), 60% of my play style is to gather as much enemy agro at the start of the fight to let the classes less focused on survivability make waves.

pepper.6179:

i want a new offhand or main hand slot

As found earlier, just a main-hand or just an off-hand weapon requires 5 skills (the breakdown is somewhere up there) which in addition to the heal, 3 utilities and elite seems like their decided limit on hard skills. If they gave us a weapon that could be in either hand the number of weapon skills they need to make multiplies (probably by 2) and so would the assumed attention the class would have garnered, and from years of observation, only the Warrior profession is allowed majority attention by the developers.

Gray.9041:

all – with the possibly exception of tempest – are titles. it’s not about other specs.

Well I’m going to claim that in the user interface it won’t be denominated under such nomenclature once this junk eventually goes live with the expansion pack and it is for now to better group and refer to the new content.

Breaking naming conventions is a heinous crime as game developers.

Can I point out that our core specialisations are Shadow Arts, Critical Strikes, Acrobatics, Deadly Arts and Trickery. None of which are a title like many of us seem to be treating Daredevil as. The name of the trait lines (or specialisations as they’ve come to be known) were supposed to be descriptors of the groups of traits, Engineer has Tools as a trait line, does taking that trait line make the player a Tool? Yes, but it’s the exception.

Amante.8109:

While I agree with your rationale—and think some kind of Spellthief Elite would be awesome—it wouldn’t be the worst thing if they chose Rifle. As of HoT, Thief is the only profession in the game without a 1200 range option, after all. Even Guardian has one!

Thus i shall put my vote in for off-hand rifle, it’s skills can be utility or something or there can be a trait to fix the stat issue. But if the thief os supposed to be ingenious and creative in a devilish way, why not one-handing a two handed weapon?

Alternatively aggressive forced shadowstepping our enemies with off-hand focus is a cool sounding idea, then we can force the 1v1 fights we’re designed for.

Going by the thread title we don’t have to call it that, but if the datamining did hit paydirt then someone will

Or better yet, let me shoot my off-hand dagger with my bow

EDIT: Actually, other than skill 3, each weapon attack only uses 1 weapon at a time, no reason why we can’t whip out an off-hand pistol when holding the bow in the other hand (other than the skill bar would look like butts)

Steal gets moved into utility skill and the F1-F4 become a on-the-fly rearrangement of our stats, pulling points out of toughness and vitality to buff power and condition damage.

Give the thief a higher base vitality and lower power and some obvious signs to powering up and it’d be golden. It still fots our mentality of hit hard and fast and gives us more survivability and keeps us on the knife’s edge that some people quite enjoy. Also new trait line can give us 1 second of distortion when powering down as an option.

With the new Heart of Thorns content each profession is having their F# skills changed up a bit in addition to the new Elite Specialisations, so the question is: How do we think ArenaNet will change the Steal mechanic?
(cause the thief’s unique mechanic at this point is clearly not reliable short distance telportation, stealth or rapid attacks)

My guess is a seemingly invisible wire they attach to a target with a shadowstep which allows them to CC that target at will once (with a fail state repercussion to give the thief a reason to pop the skill if their target has defiant).
It focuses on the Thief’s chief idea of single target fighting, is useless if a better equipped class kills the target first and doesn’t require the devs to design any additional features into their obvious favourite class.

Due to the devs having only all of their time set aside to work on more Thief content [/sarcasm] Our new weapon will likely only be one we can wield in a single hand (main or off-hand), that way they only need to make ~5 weapon skills for it.

But there’s little reason we can’t have Axe or Mace (go-go team night-stick) and still fit into the idea of a shadowy brawler. If we go with focus (and if the devs did, I would 100% support double handing foci to make the profession look even less intimidating) we would probably go in more of a necromancer direction, and there’s already a working profession in that direction, the devs wouldn’t do that.

frayon.3984:

Pardon, when did ranger get main hand mace?? Yeah, they have a main hand sword but the feel of it is very, very different as is the mace vs the axe.

Ranger has two main hand, one-handed weapons; one for additional manoeuvrability and the other for condition pressure. No class is a 1-to-1 reflection or directly takes elements from another, but some changes and additions do look quite like one is “heavily inspired” by another in a few instances.

Swish.2463:

I feel like the game doesnt need a 1v1 specialist with so much of the heavy focus being on Group combat, Thief could probably do to retain its single target spiking but with the ability to rapidly hit multiple targets without tabbing till your fingers bleed, as it moves in and out of the fight.

Here’s the problem with a 1v1 specialist: there’s more than 1 opponent in the game and you will very infrequently find a single target without friends to back it up; if you do it’s designed to be a 1vX fighter and will laugh and ignore your CC abilities.

So instead of making someone good at 1v1, you’ve just made them very bad at 80% of the game where they will be fighting alone against several targets with no way to kite them apart. Mesmer has been put into a decent spot when it comes to 1v1 fighting, where by the tool you would use to deal crushing blows happens to have a handy AoE effect. The Thief’s tool for being good at the PvE content is to pretend to be playing an entirely different game and turn into 4 dudes (with 4 swords) for a bit and crush each foe individually before your backup dancers run out of song.

Some of the other classes have a handy thing called cleave on auto-attacks and the health pool to stand up to a stiff breeze, or utility skills that have similar tight AoE effects on their location.

The thief doesn’t exactly fit into this model of content, which is probably why a lot of the assumption on the new Elite Spec are to solve this, and why we’ll end up with the mentality that the Elite Spec is required to play the old content. Not because the original features were sub-par, but because there was no area of the PvE content that really let a single target focused approach shine.
EDIT: or for that matter, where stealthing NPCs was a valid solution to any problem despite it being logically the best solution on hand.

squints suspiciously at the Shiro stance
That looks like a well built thief weapon set
looks vaguely at the main hand weapons
I’m now getting ranger flashbacks as well
sees the ventari spirit tablet moving sensibly
Gosh it’s almost like the designers know how to build working elements of a video game. It’s a shame the HUUUUUGE chunks of existing professions don’t see such sensible design choices and developer acknowledgement of player concerns, or at least that’s what it seems like when one glances at the other profession’s sub-forums below the sticky posts.

Now it could just be bad timing (attempting to prep working demos for conventions is an enormous drain on development resources and there are a lot of conventions at this time of year) but the efforts going into the development of the profession content for the expansion seem oddly to be going well for a team that spent a long portion of this game’s life making large scale changes and then undoing 90% of those changes. Even with the Beta weekend events we’ve got going on, it seems like there’s far too much work to do for the few people you have available to do live work as the event happens and are spending a lot of the following time playing catch-up.

What might be a good idea for gathering some extra info in the long run is a fixed state arena, where players don’t get to decide on their build as they join a PvP match or a isolated PvE arena but are instead given pre-built setups to get some nice solid numbers on interactions in a sterile environment. Because at this point it really seems like you guys are being pushed beyond what you can handle and could use some self sustaining metrics (rather than the observation heavy beta weekends). Setups like that might not be representational of the final product you want Heart of Thorns to be, but giving 1-to-1 representation of upcoming content isn’t what large scale beta tests are for (for those interested they are for checking coherency of player choices and matching expected actions to player actions).

So from one developer to another, I wish you the best of luck keeping up with the convention schedule (and pretending to have new content to show off at each successive show floor).

Agemnon.4608:

In other class forums they talk about how easy thieves are, that should be a huge red flag for those in charge of balancing right there, especially since thief is meant to specialize dominating 1 on 1 in PvP.

Not necesseraly , I went looking and asking and the main consensus is that thieves used to be able to 1 shot every class but gardian in PvP, but now when fighting a skilled thief the odds are 50/50 on who will win in any scenario with the odds in the thief’s favor if they initiate the fight. Except for against mesmers, who can’t agree if thieves are too easy to kill or that they don’t have any tools for responding to a class without cooldowns on their weapon skills.

Also, no one has any idea what the thief is supposed to specialize in

thaniretouni.4762:

The thing is that both lose from shatter mesmer

I think all melee professions can come together in fear of Shattercat Mesmers

I’ve been trying to get into the PvP scene with my Thief main, but I’ve been finding my ability to 1v1 Necros has dwindled quite a lot recently. My assumptions on your lower armor class giving me the headstart in fights seems to be a bit wrong now Thief has lost their trait for extra dodge rolls.

In the interest of making your games less of a rofl-stomp when I face you, what’s some techniques I could look into to surviving just a few seconds longer in a direct confrontation?

As it says in the title: With better traps, but worse stealth: could you beat a thief? Do you think in a 1v1 fight you could fight and beat a thief? Their sub-forum seems to think they can’t win a 1v1 fight without a metric tonne of additional advantages (you not seeing them coming or reacting for the first few seconds of a fight for one). But if you could see the thief coming do you think their poor nerfed backstab combo could end the fight before your freshly buffed pets could cough lightly in their direction?

Alternative if a thief came after you with a venom build (a build focusing on some utility skills which add extra conditions to their regular attacks) could they burst you out before you ran out of pets to take conditions for you?

So many moons ago the full zerker Warrior was matched in DPS by only one other, the Mug+Backstab Thief; but that combo no longer works and the Thief is a pale shadow of their past glory. The question still stands, are there any Warrior builds that have actual weaknesses to the current Thief meta?
I’m asking for a friend who thinks in a 1v1, he could take a full Berserker Warrior provided the warrior stopped attacking if he entered stealth.
As the flagship profession to using Berserker armor sets, you guys should know if in your most vulnerable a thief could fight you on even ground.

Agemnon.4608:

Don’t give the devs any nerfing ideas.

Could we actually? I feel the Scorpion wire has too great a range and should be brought back to 1000. Heartseeker moves too far if we’ve got no target and the animation ends before we hit the ground. Blackpowder shouldn’t cause a blind field around the user but rather the target and should be smaller. Backstab is unrealistic and should be put on the sword instead. Unload should hit harder but less often, list 2 shots instead of 6. The Thief profession has been mispelled for quite a while and should be corrected to “Work in Progress – Finish by Monday”. Thieves need to become magnetically repelled by one another to avoid dangerous overuse of the critical hit system. The random items the Thief gets from stealing are too unpredictable and should be all replaced by a 2500 range tripwire instead that causes 1.5 second knock-down, if the target has stability then remove a stack of it and deal damage to both the user and target.

See it takes no effort to come up with terrible ideas, they don’t need or want our help.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

We did this a few years ago. It was the profession tournaments. Teams of casual to semi-advanced players were put on teams of all the same profession and they were coached by one of the veterans of the profession. It was quite fun to coach and watch as the full class teams had to fill different roles in order to function. Maybe could be brought back with build restrictions for build stacking.

So we make it 5v5 and each player only gets a single, unique full trait line which they pick at the start of the match?

Entenkommando.5208:

If you remove eles, mesmers and thiefs from the gamemode it may work.

Or just section them off together to fight amongst themselves, as they are the rock, paper scissors combo of each other.

Would you want to talk to someone who doesn’t appreciate your work and is fed up? Or would you want to wait them out till they finally do what they keep threatening and leave?

If you find one thing doesn’t work, why not carry out your threat? Leave the subforum and don’t post at all, for like a week. If asking for attention doesn’t work, then do the next best thing according to toddlers and hold your breath. Ignore all new info, don’t react to any of the data-mining. To pretend to keep this on topic, steal the dev’s optimism by attempting suicide of this section of the community

Odyssey.2613:

Kocoff.7582:

I had one my posts flagged and removed and got awarded two “infraction points” .

SO THEY DO READ OUR STUFF. ALL OF IT.

Yup. Same! That’s partly why I’ve been banned 5 times. That and I’m past the being civil part. I’ve lost all patience and now am as blunt as I can be. Thief has been on a steady downhill path ever since launch. Never once has it leveled, or went uphill.

It went uphill once, about 6 months after launch after a quite severe nerf in response to essentially the critical hit mechanic the thief got a bump back on track to the point where auto attacking same level mobs would kill the mob. Like most weapon skills got a 5-12% damage boost. It never happened again, but it was fun while it lasted because the next nerf didn’t immediately undo the boost.

Shh, we’re trying to be positive. And one doesn’t only do that in a fight (they might if they want to survive, but most thief players I know will happily walk into a losing fight because they like to fight and bounce and be free), a thief also can face punch a dude from 1200 distance and dance like a pretty ballerina without fear of damage during the animation.

The tension between the players as to which class is the best is a fierce and heated argument, best solved by remembering each profession has gotten better after each consecutive Thief nerf (yes, even the Thief’s, like a grumpy phoenix they rise from the ashes of self immolation because they got too kitten about not getting access to the burning condition).

But now there could be a better solution, stick them in an unranked PvP game mode where small teams essentially tavern brawl to show off why they’re the best in a team of players all the same profession (each team is a different profession. Like 4 Elementalists Vs 4 Warriors. Is that clear enough? I feel like it isn’t a hard concept to misunderstand). It could even still be in the mists and make sense, giving us a Norn representation in the mists of a big ol’ lodge of the past.

Yes there might be obvious match ups where one profession will out power another by several magnitudes, but after a few dozen games wouldn’t you get enough metadata to be able to give specific match ups match long buff/conditions to even the playing field?

Does anyone else think this would be mildly hilarious to play? 3 minute long rounds, best of 3 matches, where the aim is just to have downed more of the opposing team. Where there’s a bunch of Neutral NPC’s that rush in to revive and bring out of the brawl the downed players or something, you could interact with the NPCs with fear and knock-down (not immobilize, we’re gentlefolk here and know not to purposely involve bystanders).

Feedback? Comments? Early calls for obvious winners of match-ups?

TL;DR: What’s the best thing a thief is useful for using only cheerful tones and nice words?

I’ve probably been playing this game for too long, I played the Original Guild Wars, with the Assassin as my primary class and I’ve been on the Thief bandwagon since launch, and with all that time and experience behind me it’s probably a bit difficult to see straight when it comes to the seemingly counter-intuitive choices with the Thief profession over this game’s life. (I’m still not sure why nerfing Dancing Dagger was a wise choice, any circumstance where you need to use it you’re looking for a solid hit AND the cripple, if I just wanted to catch up to them I would remember I can teleport on a whim)

It seems a lot of the Thief community is upset that other professions can do what the Thief is supposed to specialize in but better. (expect a list of such ironic thefts below, I’m not going to get off topic with them) But the Thief isn’t about being the best, it’s more designed like the Engineer: as an Ikea Rocket Launcher – A device where you build it yourself, from seemingly innocuous parts, with a few bolts left over, and if everything goes to plan your target is a mostly dead corpse, if things don’t go to plan everything explodes, but it’s just as fun when it fails, because those spare bolts double up as caltrops for your escape.

The Thief seems to shine best in a highly organised group or under very controlled circumstances, planning for the worst because we probably don’t trust our weapons or armor to last the fight.

However, in light of the current environment, where it seems like all the attention and best ideas are being given to the other professions, we should steal some of their thunder and start boasting about all the amazing things our favourite class can do. We have enough places on this sub-forum to mourn the passing our our Halcyon days.

Did you know, most roaming teams require a venom share Thief to top out their damage, that’s just our Utility skills dude, we haven’t even drawn our weapons and we’re contributing more to the fight than the Mesmer.

Well the forces in the Mists that encourage us to fight each other for their amusement could have seen the present thing and gone: “People like those? They fight over those? We should scatter them about! I don’t see how this could go wrong!”

Quick question: does this boost make us move at +33% speed in combat also?
Cause we get slowed down in combat, does this make us normal swiftness speed even in combat?

Khristophoros.7194:

First make it so they can’t sustain stealth throughout the entire duration of a fight. Revealed debuff should apply even if you wait for the stealth to end naturally. Stealth bugs should be fixed too.

A bit harsh, it’s like saying that a Guardian shouldn’t be able to recharge their virtues in battle. A Thief will do one of two things when going into stealth: 1) set up for their next attack (1-2 second wait till they’ll unstealth and will stay in melee range) or 2) retreat to “reset the fight”. In either situation retreating and setting down CC to limit their mobility will stop they from taking the advantage in the fight. If they attack they have to walk through your AoE’s and give you fields to combo with if they retreat to range. Don’t stop fighting unless you really think the thief has left, in which case, you’ve just WON. The thief couldn’t beat you and had to flee, why do you crave killing them so much? You won the fight, now go fight something else so you can get the phallic satisfaction of thrusting your decorated shaft into their still submissive body.

Khristophoros.7194:

Then wait and see how things shake out. Keep an eye on their ability to escape from fights. Something I’d like to see is more indication of the thief getting hit during stealth; if I hit him with my sword I should see a blood splatter, maybe an extremely short reveal, like a quarter of a second would be enough.

I agree with this part though, a particle effect to show them being hit is needed, cause only having on hit buffs activate as of writing will let you know you hit a Thief. A more visible one if you land a critical, probably have the shadow step particle effect, it’s already visibly tied to the Thief and it’s gameplay.

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, perma stealth and best mobility all in one class with one build? Don’t you think that’s a bit imbalanced? Oh, don’t forget decent cc too.

Why do so many say thieves have the “best mobility”? Wouldn’t it be more accurate if you said we used our inherent mobility more? Because a Warrior (so I’ve been told) can have permanent 33% speed boost and elementalists can get even faster by changing attunements and weapons out of battle, but in battle a thief has to and by the nature of his skills just happens to move a lot more than most other classes. A warrior will move a bit in battle, but only in straight lines through and to his opponent. An elementalist will go in circles, strafing his opponent and dodging any AoE’s or large spikes. All the classes follow this, they all move in a pattern, except the thief who bounces all over the place, changing directions and positions and weapon styles (D/D to SB changes entirely how a thief moves).

So don’t complain to us that thieves have the highest mobility, they just move the most erratically “IN BATTLE”, out of battle a thief will often arrive second or third to a fight if running along side others unless skills like “Windborn Speed” which buff us up to the 33% (we have no natural Swiftness)

Sorry but I’m going to have to defend the Jumping Puzzles. Tactically whichever server is winning in that particular battleground will reach a point when players will start to wonder: “Can I do the jumping puzzle now? We’ve beaten our enemy back far enough”
And more likely than not they give it a go, so that’s 30-50 players that are no longer contributing to defense or offense, it’s at this point that they lose a tactical edge and can lose large amounts of the map. Especially the Obsidian Sanctum getting past the first part and up the well, players are too invested to stop even if commanders start asking for a zerg to form.

I believe it causes a reward to risk situation that is quite subtle and useful in some situations.

And if you’re so upset with the PvE guys taking up space in the queue then go into the puzzle and help ‘em if you think that as soon as they’re done they’ll leave.

I, as a lifetime player on GoM, think this could be the start of our comeback. I recently joined a mainly PvE guild and many of their top members had absolutely no idea about what happened in WvW and the large barrier to entry was always not knowing how to get to WvW, not knowing it was a thing, cause we don’t really have anyone apart from NPCs advertising and asking for help in the mist wars. Until yesterday that is, where upon my girlfriend and I logged in half expecting to still be facing AR for another week to find we had to queue to get into the Eternal Battlegrounds. Our guild members had fun, even if they just sort of stumbled into battles and would definitely give it another try again.

So yea, all we have to do is encourage people into WvW this week, show them the ropes and slowly harden them up so if we do go up a tier against BP and AR again we’ll have the numbers to do our defensive game.

The few things I think we need to work on is leaving people to actually defend and learning where to place siege weaponry, cause when we do make an attack it’s slowed down by having to pay almost triple the supply cost to try and build then fix then rebuild further back.

Just on a personal note, it wasn’t until the day before yesterday, during the last fights with AR that I actually found out how to get rewarded for defending a place from an attack. I do think we have a distinct lack of understanding across our player base. I walked a siege golem to front lines only to get out and hand it over to someone who knew how to use it, cause I did feel kinda useless despite being a walking tank.

So yeah, we need to share and talk more, I think we can totally take AR and BP and any other server if we all knew what we were doing.

I think what the developers were looking for was 2 event flags, the first being that you at some point started to attempted the event chain (cause many people were turned off the event as a whole by the first two days worth of bugs). Second that they didn’t “complete” the event. The second event flag probably was flipped a while after actually beating the boss so the people who swapped servers to go again missed getting triggered and got sent a shiny new one and the people who were unfortunate to get lagged into an already finished server/overflow got that flag triggered and miss out now. So yeah, it’s a solution that should cover most cases and props to doing such a wide recovery of faith, and cause there’s been no official news on it yet (via forums and wiki) they might not be finished rolling this out, so just give them a bit more time, they already showed they’re true to their word.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

One major advantage of thief is they can always escape. And thus eat food, and never die while having it. In my opinion this give thief a 5-10% attack bonus (there’s food that give 6% of toughness/4% precision all towards power). For a profession that’s able to never die if well played, such a buff is cheap and almost overpowered to other professions.

With max precision or toughness these food buffs only give ~150 power, and if you trait a Thief for max toughness or precision power will fall by the wayside and this buff won’t really add much. Also why are you complaining about the food buffs? Which are available to All Classes. So a Warrior who does the same can kill my Thief even faster from max range with kill shot, I’m not gonna complain, it’s the nature of WvW that there’s always a chance someone will find you after a fight while everything’s on cooldown.

Just dropped into the Eternal battle grounds to see if GoM had taken back the overlook, just outside spawn I find several unmanned siege weapons: catapult, arrow cart and a balista, further up the hill coming out of the Overlook are a dozen or so AR invaders, bouncing down the hill like suicidal zero-G Teletubbies (or goblins, you know how in some fantasy stuff goblins are all bouncy and stuff?)

So I legged it.

I don’t know about you but this doesn’t exactly sound like the honor-bound AR guys represented in this thread, no offense, but I think GoM needs a decent sized force to break that gridlock.

Due to range of draw distance you can only see a new arrow cart being built, the rest of the siege is just beyond that. Though I gotta hand it to AR, you’ve got determination to camp out our spawn for so long with so little results.

Hunt.1925:

Feedback:
I don’t think any thief should be able to kill anyone in less than 2 sec. Before you start flaming me, I’m a tanky elem with full exotic gear with toughness and vitality. I have scarified a lot of power and Precision for survivability and I still get 2 shot’ed. If I was using my Power, crit and precision gear it would have been a one shot kill. I’ll even post a screenshot to prove it. So yes something needs to be done with a Thief’s C&D and BS. Getting hit for 11k+ in one hit is outrages with 2600 armor. Now if I was using my full excoitc glass canon armor that would have been a one shot kill.

Sorry to go off topic, but how is that your third screen cap? The game’s been out for several months now, seems fishy to me. >_O

Change #4 to Call for support (or something, I’m terrible at naming things)
a ground targeted skill that summons a Theif NPC to that location for 10-15 seconds.
Cause thief weapons tend to have 1 mobility and 1 self-support skill, you’ve got 4 damage and 1 mobility.

Everyone’s main issue with the WvW is suddenly appearing enemies not being able to be rendered fast enough that they’ll be taken and killed and have no chance to retaliate. So is there a possibility that you can use a placeholder to show large amounts of players in an area so players can see, for instance a dust cloud.

That way players can get fair warning to either get out of the way or turn their own zerg around, there’d still be issues, not being able to see any of the players inside the dust cloud for a few seconds, but in large battles I hardly go looking for enemies, I just draw lines with my AoEs and knowing vaguely where my enemies would be is better than nothing and moves in the right direction. The players will have much less frustration what with the “can’t cap points while stealthed” has made WvW less cheese-able only this and Mesmer portals through geometry are left.

Any better ideas? Feedback? Official response?

And then Anvil Rock took the world.
And not a single kitten was given.

Which isn’t a good thing, but with them just sorta sitting there, waiting outside spawn, we don’t exactly have a strong position to fight back from.

If you gave GoM back the overlook we could have a good old fashioned fight rather than a picnic outside spawn.

Because making them stay out in the actual battlefield and not away from the fighting weakening their forces is a wise tactical decision. A better method would be to lead them astray, especially if they’re PvE players doing the puzzle for the first time, as opposed to the WvW vets who can breeze through the gauntlet. The climb up the well is a great spot, just go ahead of them and jump down the middle into the water, they follow and just get confused, staying in the puzzle for much longer and weakening they forces, annoying them for help and/or resources.

Every PvE noob you leave in the Obsidian Sanctum at peak is a victory for your server.

kenshinakh.3672:

Having stealth in the game is just another defensive/offensive mechanism, and for thieves (which are the squishiest class), it’s a must. (And if you remove it, the mesmers are going to be in a tight spot about not being able to effectively fight using clones and stealthing..)

Mesmers can also use stealth, not for long mind you, but around corners or mid battle, you can be fighting 3 clones and the Mesmer legged it with his Glamor stealth, sure it’s only 3 seconds but you don’t exactly focus on the surroundings and players who are running away vs 3 guys beating into you and giving you confusion and other fun conditions who you gonna call? The Mesmer can knock you down, cripple you (if the placement was just right), stealth and teleport instantly (non of this Infiltrator’s arrow delay) 900 whatever-units away. Mind you this uses up all his utilities, but the Mesmer does at least have a full useful weapon set of skills. So what was that about only class able to get out of a losing fight?

Further, in WvW and PvE everyone has access to stealth (or maybe it’s just rangers and thieves, I haven’t noticed this that I remember with other classes) when you pick up a tuft of feathers from the ground. Sure it’s only 3 seconds, but a Warrior can cover a lot of ground in 3 seconds and a Elementalist can channel all of Dragon Fang in that time, and again all it takes is good positioning and it’s brilliantly powerful, a brilliant tactical action. Should black powder not stealth anyone but the thief? It has no range on how far you can go from the AoE before the stealth runs out (to my knowledge) and stealth doesn’t break till you actually hit someone (again allowing for channeling or fun gap closers) so yeah, if you nerf stealth, does tat include all the strategic plays a thief can do as support? Everyone keeps talking about glass canon builds, but all classes can do support, a rune of water, SB and haste and just using utilities you can be the best support, want you’re whole team to disappear? Done. Sure it has limits, but all classes have limits…except Warriors, I haven’t seen the limit to having all the armor and weapons yet, but I digress.

If you want to nerf any ability you have to look at “EVERY” permutation of it’s use. If you keep crippling stealth then the thief looses much of his support potential and all we have left is second best damage spikes and a small weapon pool and the Mesmer loses a utility, Ranger pet pig has less objects he can find and the environmental weapons are only sticks (seriously I only see feathers and sticks, Blind/Stealth and Knockback, which are the effects that are least prolific across normal weapon sets, is it not? [sarcasm] Wow the developers must have noticed that too [\sarcasm]).

(gotta stop editing this post to fix spelling mistakes, I just keep adding to it)

If there was a change to the scoring mechanics against worlds who are heavily out-manned there would always be the tactical option for worlds to organize a mass drop out, leave the WvW and come back in an hour or so, your enemy is now stretched thin, has captured places that were worth less points and your organized group can now take back for a bonus in points.

It’s a nice idea, but has far to great a potential to be abused to make for uneven playing fields. What you do need is a buff to out-manned to encourage players to stay and fight the overwhelming odds, buffing magic find just encourages players to avoid combat and look for the collectables, not sure defenses and fend off attacks. Maybe have NPCs man the siege weapons when there’s insufficient players, they do little else.

Also I don’t see why a single player when attacked by a zerg in their own fortress can’t be buffed up to a minor boss level encounter. If one guy stood up against 50 I’d call him a Champion, but I’m Australian and call lots of things Champions. It would make it much more fun all around, want players to stay late and keep the torch burning, give them a kitten enormous torch. If there is essentially no chance for a player to hold a position by them selves 50:1 odds are quite imposable from most of the smaller forts, why not let them have fun as they go down rather than standing inside the fort and hiding waiting for the zerg to move on or having them leave and probably get mown down when the zerg rush moves on?

Just give them a field weapon that replaces their skills and multiplies their stats while they hold it, or make it essentially a form to limit gimmicks from utilities, it only lasts within the confines of the fort (so you can’t use it for offensive purposes). Essentially changing a bug against a windshield situation inn Gandalf Vs the Balrog, even add a skill which is: Shout – ‘You Shall Not Pass!’, knock back enemies in front of you.

If everyone’s playtime is equally as worthwhile then why can’t a single player have fun against 50 guys? Just give us the tools, the groundwork is already there.

Cavor.1958:

…but failing that, could the mechanics for costume brawl be utilised in this instance? For example, entering WvW in a ‘time out’, with no weapon skills (so you can’t randomly turn and attack) and invulnerability (so you can’t be attacked).

Or just have players affected by this not be loaded for other server players, it would cut down on the culling issue in WvW, and if you have to return to far beyond where enemies can reach to return to normal fighting it’s quite a good idea.

How much planing goes into your route from heart to heart, I’m assuming that’s how you’re getting much of you experience, that and knowledge of dynamic event risk.

You know how in anime and samurai movies where they clash and stand for a moment or two then one of them drops dead from a suddenly appearing gash? If we have OH S introduced, can S/S duel attack or 5th attack be essentially that? Shadowstep behind your enemy who is immobilized for 1 second and then after that second they get quite a few stacks of bleeding for a short time.

Such an attack fits the burst style of the thief as well as mitigating the damage over a longer period of time without sacrificing power/mobility and giving the opponent a moment to react to the threat and having the risk of counterattack by rooting the thief as well.

Also probably scale the bleeding stacks with remaining health on target or on the thief themselves (if you’re both below 50% health they enemy get’s 10 stacks or something)

Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I would use that all the time, if not just for the look of the skill, that’s why I use flanking strike half the time, cause I look awesome doing it and no one can touch me (if I miss the enemy with my second attack on FS I just throw a Dancing Dagger and use 2nd Sword skill and I’m back in melee range, the Thief is adaptable). Because part of being a thief is to be flashy, we have a whole type of skills called tricks. Come On!

Reiven.2543:

For wvwvw the stealth problem is magnified by culling issues but anet is already looking into this. Otherwise atm thieves are able to just perma stealth (or maintain for a very long time) and keep a camp from being taken by contesting it. I wonder why the spvp formula wasnt brought in as thieves aernt able to contest point capture in spvp and i believe the same should be brought over. Naturally id like that to apply to other similar skills eg elixer s which also contests capture in wvwvw but not in spvp.

Good point, but if the capture of a point is very closely contested and the remaining thief goes into stealth he shouldn’t be not counted anymore, it would need to exclude thieves not in combat instead, because when in combat you have that crossed swords icon showing vaguely where you are and if it is just one guy against many he would lose the point but 1v1 there’s a chance he can defend.

Reiven.2543:

I do believe the bigger complaints about thieves being overpowered is that there are near zero ways atm to detect thieves in stealth. No other class mechanic seems to give such near absolute defense ie it is still possible to detect the real mesmer in the clones is you just look carefully on how he moves (rolls, sidesteps etc).

A more skill based way of this is to have particle effects/the animation when a thief goes stealth (that spiral of black lines) when they are hit in stealth, those black lines stand out against everything, a fair compromise, that way everyone can see his location rather than one guy who might not be watching all his AoEs

Yashino.5713:

i do agree that need to fix a lot of things in wvwvw due to the fact that a lot of keeps/towers, thief can just teleport inside with shortbow’s 5th skill
for stealth capping, it’s all about tactic, ever heard of “buying time”? just complainers gonna complain

How do I do that? I’ve spent 10-15 minutes sitting outside a gate peppering it with shortbow attacks (cause I will die from going too close), being able to jump inside the keep, or at least up onto the battlements (while I don’t expect to survive long, the battlements are always covered in AoEs) I could provide necessary distractions to help my team break through quicker.

Another issue I have with the thief (aside from Infiltrator’s arrow not working across any gap despite that engineer can do the same with their rocket jump) is the strange way we don’t have a global mentality. Rangers commune with nature, all of their skills say this about them. Warriors hit things with swords and other blunt pieces of metal, everything about them accentuates this. Guardians strike a middle ground between punishing their foes, protecting allies and controlling the field. So what does the thief’s skills and weapons say about them? That they were unprepared to go toe to toe with an enemy? That they fight dirty? They like the color black? They have an absurd fear of the ground and spend as much time as they can hopping about above it?

I always saw the thief as someone who had very good eyes. They could find and stab a person in their weak points from 100 paces. That they could manage and control the distance between their opponent and themselves like no one else. That in their long an hard trials as a low life (or just being a sleazy dude, it’s your story) they made allies and earned favors they can count on in a tight spot. Lastly that they never leave home unprepared for any eventuality.

But the scatterbrain attitude and lack of much obvious synergy between skills doesn’t really make this apparent.

Also a 1200 range weapon would be awesome, I’d love to do more than wave at tower defenders and drop the occasionally useful poison field.

This is an intended effect, Shadow refuge stacks up to 10 seconds of stealth (more with traits) as long as you stay inside the circle, if you want a few seconds of stealth you can use readily, you might want to use the Major trait that gives stealth on steal (deadly arts line), Blinding Powder (which also blinds nearby foes, giving you an edge in dodging attacks), Hide in Shadows (also heals) or Cloak and Dagger (but I think it needs a target)