Guild Wars 2

This matchup did little more than underline the inherent flaws associated with too broad randomization in an uncontrolled 1:1:1 system. You can’t really have one of the players not show up and expect it to be very balanced.

While I appreciated the “diversity”, I’d probably rather go back to the stale-but-more-fair BG-JQ-SOR triangle. “Diversity” is in quotations here because in the end, you’re still bashing players; they just have slightly different names.

BAITness.1083:

Oxy as much as everyone appreciates what you are doing, you are trying to make this more than it is.

Actually, I wouldn’t be posting here clearing things up if those responsible for the transfer had either done it properly in the first place, or would just finally leave us alone (and I’m talking guild spam, facebook, our forums etc.) and shut the **** up forever. It’s a little unfair to poke me and not expect a poke back. The difference is that I’m not doing disrupting stuff.

BAITness.1083:

Your posts are at best misleading, and I am not sure why.

If you’re not sure why, then don’t comment at all. I don’t talk astrophysics because I’m not a physician, don’t talk about my posts/perspective because you’re not me. And if you are going to anyway, provide an explanation or something.

BAITness.1083:

A lot of what happened you were not even there for, you only showed up midway through to take the guild away from the more active leaders.

Except for the fact that Raw vaguely discussed an euro transfer on april second (I remember, it was my birthday) with massively negative response from the guild, with myself spearheading against the idea (he then tried to jokingly call it an april’s fool).

I showed up midway? What does that even mean? I showed up when I learned about the transfer, just as everybody else did. I don’t read minds just yet, nor can I teleport around, so I couldn’t magically smash noodle’s router to prevent anything really really really stupid (such as splitting the community without consent or rationale – that’s just one random, unrelated example) from happening.

BAITness.1083:

what you are doing unhelpful to us on db,

You see this? No? This is the world’s smallest violin playing for you right here. I’m terribly sorry to see that, er, facts are being so “unhelpful” to you guys. Perhaps someone should’ve been more rational/critical before and during the botched process.

BAITness.1083:

but must also be unhelpful to continued efforts for expansion of EMP on jq.

Thank you for your concern. I’ll be sure to ignore it because no one on JQ is actually at fault, and my statements do nothing to change that. Did you know that the word vague was french for wave?

BAITness.1083:

I removed the breakdown of what actually happened since I think it would have made it harder on our JQ buddies.

Cute rhetoric. Act like you somehow have something juicy against us, and then take it back to appear as the white knight. Such bravery!

BAITness.1083:

Nobody was forced to move, the leaders were not threatening to remove people that didn’t move

This wrong just in; I have screens of Lee flat out claiming the opposite. However, even if that wasn’t the case, the circumstancial evidence proves otherwise, between the harassment, the trolling, the call-outs and the attempts to sabotage the remaining 80% of EMP. If no one was forced to move, then one must admit that, clearly, there were people unhappy and plenty of animosity in regards to EMP still existing on JQ. Why this is the case, I have not a clue. But then again, this whole ordeal was founded on irrationality, and so, must the corollaries be loaded with such? Most probably, sadly for us.

I don’t think there’s much more to say to all of this. Too much has been said already. I’d love this thread to be closed before any more misinformation and smearing occur.

As a last note, keep up the bias. I know of one person with you that does an excellent job of skewing words, thoughts and events in his favour. You should visit a proctologist before it’s too late.

Efface.8460:

Nah….apparently this soap opera is 6 season worthy… Maybe milkin sympathy donations or something

Seems like half the posts in the thread are yours, and they’re usually pretty much worthless. Why do you even keep posting? I know this thread shouldn’t exist in the first place, because posting anything about this less-than-important matter isn’t worth it, but I’ll just point out the senselessness here. It’s like trying to convince people to not hit eachother by hitting them.

Oresh.4729:

im proud that JQ showed their support to oxy and emp in this crisis. show how strong the server is.
/respect to you oxy for taking the lead!

You wouldn’t believe how much support I got from whispers and mails alike. I’m not even exaggerating – but probably 30 people, but not anyone; guild leaders and officers and people I respected, directly contacted me with kind, supportive words.

And to the haters…? You don’t exist to me.

kerona.3465:

I need popcorn for this.

If this is popcorn worthy “drama” (barely qualifies as “drama”, hence the quotations), then you need more internets in your life. Or a girlfriend/boyfriend. Or to leave your house. This is nothing more than a brash decision that was poorly handled. Seriously: TLDR of this entire thread is this: “Big decision taken too fast, members/leadership hardly consulted, poorly handled. Now two guilds instead of one.” Doesn’t sound so sexy now does it?

Trikki.5803:

Eviator.9746:

Kript.3291:

so much for ‘better competition’

I figured JQ WvWers thought more than one move ahead. Perhaps not. DB is slated for Tier 2 next week, against servers that trounced us on their way through T3. There will indeed be a challenge. Maybe not T1 skill-level challenge, but surely a numerical one.

Believe me, there is no more skill in T1, just numbers. Skill is much more apparent in T2 and T3 if you ask me.

I don’t think that WvW is appropriatedly designed to reward “skill”. No amount of beating parties 1v4, 10v40 or 20v80 will make up for a few player’s abilities to PvDoor the ppt through the roof while your server is asleep. I know of two ways to solve this, for interest’s sake:

1) Cap the number of players on each server maps to the numbers of players for the server that is the lowest. For instance, if there are 50 players from BG on JQBL, then JQ and SoR are capped to 50 player as well. This is obviously lame because one server’s downtime limits everyone else.

2) Make WvW available only through specific times, for instance, between 1200 and 2200 eastern. This would however limit foreign communitie’s ability to play and put servers with larger asian populations, for instance, in a bad situation.

These two ideas could make WvW more competitive, by limiting PvDoor downtime ppt kitten but it’d also go against the design idea of an everchanging world. Can’t have everything, though can we?

My point is, in the end, that coverage and server organisation > skill.

Atine.8623:

DB’s weakest time is NA, so yes they got more competition.

However, I’ll point out that NA is also JQ’s weakest time. Challenge/competition, to me, weren’t the true reasons for the transfer. But this is all irrelevant now. What is done is done.

We’re still going to take anyone changing their minds -and I’ve been contacted by a few already, though by only about 5- with open arms, bar a few specific individuals.

Jedbacca.6297:

Oxy, if you need any assistance hit me up. Visit the JQ forums as well and get yourself tied in to the leader/commander boards as well. Need that open line of communication. If there is a need, as usual, I will state “closed mouths don’t get fed.” The SF squad is here to support EMP and the community as a whole in this transition. We are currently going through a new regrowth period on our roster due to our multi-game commitments at this time with GvG’s in multiple games and activity to stay healthy as a gaming community.

Yep, planning to drop by soon.

Hey guys (and the occasional girl),

Oxygg here, guild lead’ of EMP. I’d like to first point out that I was always an equal to Raw in regards to EMP’s leadership (I founded the guild, you knows!), but that I just sat in my Shadow Refuge right next to Raw’s more… err, volatile/energetic and luminous? style of leadership.

And now, with this whole ordeal, I had to step out of the comfy shady shade to protect those EMP’ers willing to stay on JQ. I didn’t really think something like this would happen, but so, here I am, left with a 300~ active members guild, to handle it all. Which is fine, I’m far from complaining; that’ll (and certainly has already) allow me to step up and grow closer to the members, and the server’s WW community.

We’re currently undergoing restructuration, of course. This task includes, but is not limited to:

-Reorganizing officers, and their roles within the guild (as well as other ranks)
-Establishing and affirming guild values
-Evaluating current WvW leaders, and “pin-up” etiquette
-Refurbishing ties within the JQ WvW communities, notably (but far from only) with the AoS and HzH guilds
-Revising recruitment policies
-STUFF
-etc.

Anyway, if anyone has any questions, comments or death threats, /whisper and / or mail to: Oxygg or Oxygen.5918.

Good day or night

Nuked.2360:

Kytana.5079:

Oxygen.5918:

Hey guys, Oxygg here. Founder and “other” leader of EMP. Raw is taking his crew over to DB. I’m staying over JQ with the rest of the guild. We’ll be restructuring to be smaller and betterer. I’m expecting to lose about 30% of the guild core.

I’m not going to discuss the reasons for the departure, for now.

Wonderful news. Look forward to the restructured EMP. I know the JQ community stands with you and your guild during this time.

Kytana would say she would marry you but after her recent nuptials to Jedbacca she is now officially off limits and prefers to be called Mrs. Bacca.

She must’ve changed her mind after hearing me in TS! Right? Right…? :|

hex.3218:

Hey, so what will you guys be called? Still EMP, just JQ EMP and DB EMP?

We’re keeping the EMP name on JQ, most likely. They can call whatever they want themselves to be called on DB.

Hey guys, Oxygg here. Founder and “other” leader of EMP. Raw is taking his crew over to DB. I’m staying over JQ with the rest of the guild. We’ll be restructuring to be smaller and betterer. I’m expecting to lose about 30% of the guild core.

I’m not going to discuss the reasons for the departure, for now.

hai guise!!1 Since my internet doesn’t suck anymore, I thought I’d share the remaining thing that sucks about me with you all: My gameplay. I’ll probably start doing daily bits of streaming (mostly sPvP and WvW solo-ish ganking funs and the occasional drama management) until my roomie yells at me for eating too much bandwidth.

Anyhow, be sure to drop by www.twitch.tv/oxygg tomorrow around noon. Or so. So subscribe. Or don’t.

edit: Quick note: I’m the “other” EMP leader. The one you don’t see. Because I’m a thief, lol! Enjoy.

Daecollo.9578:

Of course, wasting your dodges for boons is a great tactic, I highly recommend it. (I am highly annoyed at anyone who suggests getting non-defensive boons from dodging a good idea, it makes people say things like: YOU HAVE plenty of swiftness, just dodge over and over again, when dodge is one of the most “You should use this to get out of sticky situations, not waste it.” thing.)

I only suggested it being swiftness, because thieves have little to no access to boons like other classes do.

It would not be overpowered, it would match other similar minor-major traits, such as the engineer one does.

It also fits the class, one that brags to have the highest mobility.

I typically dodge when I’m in combat (as a side effect of trying to stay alive), so the swiftness doesn’t come at much of a cost.

Comparing classes on a trait per trait basis is an exercise in futility as basically every other variable is different.

I think that my suggestion would be more elegant;

-Fix the speed to be an actual 50% rather than 33% (as stated in the tooltip and therefore intended)
-Have it stack with swiftness (as logic would denote; there is no logical design reason for different sources of speed to not stack with eachother, as there is the 133% cap to limit the power of speed)

Daecollo.9578:

1) They are exactly the same speed, but one is a boon so its effected by boon duration. (which is what the tree has in it, lucky we have all these boons, right?)

2) Its usable outside of stealth as well as inside, so if you trait differently and stack boon duration, you can get a lot of swiftness like other classes enjoy.

3) Since its usable out of stealth, it will help the thief close gaps easier with there enemies, which is hard to do because everyone runs faster then we do, since we don’t have access to much swiftness outside of clunky long cool-down mechanics.

The intent of the trait is to provide movement while stealthed, though. Points such as “swiftness can be used outside of stealth” are irrelevant because that’s not the intent of the trait. It’s a tier 1 trait; anything more would make it too powerful. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to be “fixed”, should your claims that it doesn’t stack with swiftness, and the wiki’s claims that it is in fact capped to 33%, happen to have empirical foundations. Which I’ll test right now.

Regarding your #3, if you trait far enough into acrobatics to access FS, you have swiftness on dodge. I’d call that far from a “clunky long cooldown mechanic”.

Daecollo.9578:

Fleet of Shadows is actually 33%.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fleet_Shadow

Bug: Fleet Shadow bonus to movement speed is only 33% when in combat.

Then, your point of criticism is a bug regarding the trait, not the trait in itself, as we’ve pretty much objectively established that, on paper, the trait ends up being better or at least equivalent to swiftness as they work together, not against eachother.

edit: It makes sense for Fleet Shadow to feel ~33% when in combat, for .75*50 may have felt pretty close to the players who have tested this for the wiki. Since their methods haven’t been documented, I’ll test this out myself on video. They could have been wrong. It doesn’t change my opinion in regards to the trait however. It’s still a good one.

DreamOfACure.4382:

An interesting thought.

But I don’t think ArenaNet will be working on this any time soon because:

1. Culling makes Thieves ridiculous in WvW
2. A big portion of the player base hates Thieves on principle

I don’t think the popular opinion should affect whether or not bugs are to be fixed. In other words, leaving bugs present because element X is seen as overpowered already isn’t a good and logical way of proceeding with basically anything when game designing. Why?

The design process of a mmo/rpg character (roughly) goes as: Paper design, creation, testing, bug fixing then balacing. These steps do not entertwine, nor do they make up for one another. Fix bugs first, then work on balance. Otherwise, when you later work on balance, you have bugs in the way, which is annoying, and can skew perspective when you need to reduce variables to a minimum.

Daecollo.9578:

I actually play a warrior, and pistol thieves are an absolute joke unless they are D/P stealth users, I just run at them and autoattack, they dodge twice and then die, because they have no cripple or snare to stop my rush, and there damage and conditions are pitiful, Black Powder can simply be moved out of and costs half there initiative to use.

Dagger offhand has a cripple, and P/D has an instant shadowstep away in melee range. Against who have you been playing?

Fleet shadows is actually better than swiftness for a few reasons, but notably these:

1) The 50% speed bonus brings you to 125% while in combat, while swiftness would only bring you to 108%; together, they bring you to the 133% maximum

2) It counteracts the effects of cripple and chill more than swiftness does, and as mentioned above, stacks with swiftness to help counteract these effects even more

3) It cannot be stripped

Shortbow 1, Dancing Dagger, bouncing bullets and Dagger Storm are all guilty of this fact. I can’t really see a logical reason for this, as you aren’t actively attacking from stealth, and the new projectiles themselves aren’t directly coming from the thief. Typically most annoying when reaching the Blinding Powder threshold with at least 5 points into Shadow Arts, though this can end other sources of stealth as well.

It’d be nice to have a hub for every server. Not much else to say. I’d like to see a NA section, for instance, with subforums divisions, listing Jade Quarry, Stormbluff Isle, Henge of Denravi… etc. for server-wide discussion. You are trying to create more cohesion with the upcoming patch, so this is a good chance here to do so.

The guy above me is probably right.

Positive: Theming done well.

Negative: Most boss encounters are dull. It’s either avoid red circles or kill ads. Very rarely you get something interesting, and in most cases, people figured a way to exploit it to make it easy. Need dungeon specific drops. Need better drops. Tired of getting blues and greens.

121127-000150

Can you help my officer? Seriously. It’s been a week now, and I have an entire 250 member guild ready to vouch that he’s not a gold seller or whatever.

EndlessDreamer.6780:

Also, him being online could easily due to the fact that once an account is locked out, the character is sometimes not logged off and the account is not logged off. So it’s quite possible that the hacker has been removed from control, but the account is still active as a security precaution.

No, he blocked me and several guild members, and swapped out characters. Also, I doubt anet would be that interested in his bank content.

It’s a pathetic sight.

Body shot is disgusting.

Volrath.1473:

I found that the only way to reset this situation is:
1) Log out, log in again
2) heal yourself and kill the nearest mob you can find.

Lol, yeah. I’ve done this. When logging out and back is faster than disengaging, there’s a problem to be recognized.

Moderator.1462:

Hi Oxygen,

What your friend must do asap is open a ticket to customer support.
http://en.support.guildwars2.com/

If after 3 days he has had no answer, he can post his ticket number here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-3-days-and-older-merged/page/55#post758494 so that the ticket is taken as priority.

Thanks and good luck

He opened one yesterday as soon as we knew that the account was compromised (over 10 hours ago), and clearly, it hasn’t been blocked yet since I’m seeing someone online. I hope your restoration services are on the ball because we’re talking about 8 geared level 80 characters.

What would you do? I’m just watching him getting stripped, slowly, in LA. I demoted him from guild so the guild bank can remain intact, but… I don’t know how else I can “help”.

frans.8092:

Oversight, I assume, or buggy implementation of disengage-routine. Stealth is more about defensive and offensive mechanics then an ‘out-of-jail’ card.

Do you happen to know what the regular disengage leash is like? If I could put out clear numbers, I’m sure devs might pay more attention to this.

-Most venoms and traps feel like a waste of a utility slot, especially in PvE.

-Steal is a lame, forgettable prof mechanic. Without traits, it’s mostly used for the fact that it’s a free shadowstep. Goes on cooldown even when it completely fails. It’s also underwhelming with ranged builds.

-Flanking Strike.

-Many traits are really bad (never used) or too niche. Examples include: Corrosive Traps, Sundering Strikes, Improv, Quick Venoms, Residual Venom, Ankle Shots, Patience, Assassin’s Retreat (too short), Master Trapper, Hard to Catch (too long cooldown), Ricochet, Initial Strike…

-Many traits feel misplaced. Deadly Arts, for instance, promotes too many things: Direct damage, condition duration and venoms. It’s hard to mesh these 3. Critical Strikes is a lot more defined, for instance.

-Underwater combat has no good option for condition damage.

Full berserker is the true way. Don’t be a kitten!

Poxxia.1547:

Strange .. we saw the same data and saw different results. Really .. you retort to some childish insults. I refer to the exact same data. Thieves were not horrible off in 30+, and in case you didn’t notice many high end guilds do run with thieves. No .. they are not stackable .. and yeah, that can be argued to be an issue.
Oh .. and btw: Those data were for 1821 matches. Exactly how many fights were over 30+ … I will let it hang there for you to figure out the importance of that.

I missed the insult part, I’m sorry? Point it to me

I think the number of high level matches should speak for itself, at a level beyond thief popularity. A large number of people are clearly not interested in sPvP as it stands. An open mind could help.

Poxxia.1547:

@Oxygen: That is a nice theory. But it is a theory, nothing more.
I claim, that retaliation is one factor that keeps glass-cannon-thieves in check … and if anything that class is responsible for a huge drop in variety, and thereby retaliation promotes variety.

You keep looking at things in a vacuum. Retaliation is just one step in a vast number of changes this game needs to see. I just bring it up because I felt like it – but it could’ve very well been topics like glass cannons, bunker builds, haste, culling, the issues with a point capture system, useless skills / traits, gear power disparities, …

I’d rather see both pistol whip and retaliation go away, since you bring up PW. But my discussion is far from limited to the effects of retaliation versus PW. If you can’t see the design issues behind a boon punishing “fighting” in a game of point capture, then there’s little I can do with you in the first place.

Poxxia.1547:

erhh what ? Oxygen … like every team in the top has a thief. I can make free statements as well. If you want to come with these kind of statements, back them up.
Last data I saw, thieves was in top3 as usual … (the data, that was posted on the forum).

Someone posted data showing that at level 1-10, thief was most played (which makes sense, people are horrible there and the seemingly “easiest” class will always be most popular); after level 30, theives fall just ahead of rangers and another proff I can’t recall.

So, yes, you’re right in your own pathetic vacuum.

Poxxia.1547:

Oh .. so the amount in SPVP is due to the balance of retaliation?

It’s a factor. A skill-less mechanic, if you will. And the more of these, the less PvP becomes popular. On its own, retaliation manages to counter every glass cannon build. It’s a boon that kills much more than thieves – it kills variety.

STRanger.5120:

Oxygen.5918:

Learn how to dodge and berserker gear is by far the best in terms of damage output. Which is what you want as a thief. You don’t need other stats to bring utility to a group. Hitting harder than any other class is your utility (outside shadow refuge and scorpion wire).

That´s true of course, but some situations (and there is quite a lot of them) requires some survivability, which is hardly met with 10800 HP and basic toughness (f.e. CoF path 2 NPC defending part), and in some of the encounters, there´s just dmg you can´t avoid (or you will need to have much more than two dodges to avoid completely), so some survivability is very recommended in dungeons generally.
Also some servers are quite laggy often, and that completely destroys your ability to time the dodge/evade right and with GC build, you´re going to get yourself killed very fast in these situations…

First of all, you make up for lack of survivability through utility. Signet of agility provides me with 2 extra dodge rolls, and shadow refuge is self explanatory.

As for the specific CoF encounter, I run it as a guild, and with 2 other berserker (104% crit damage) thieves. Do you know what we do? We don’t cheese it – we kill stuff as it pops. And we never go down, let alone come close to failing. It’s, in fact, how the encounter is supposed to be dealt with! This is what I meant by “thieves utility is in their damage”.

As for lag, it’s personal. I have no issues, but if you do, then of course you should adapt.

Edelweiss.9815:

I’m almost positive Bleed Durations runes don’t work.

I know Rune of Lyssa bonus works, but not the specific condition/boon duration runes.

I’m pretty sure they do. With 70% (5% from traits, 20% from agony/agony and 45% from 2xkrait/aff/cent), my death blossom reaches 17 seconds, from the base 10. Could I be missing something?

Learn how to dodge and berserker gear is by far the best in terms of damage output. Which is what you want as a thief. You don’t need other stats to bring utility to a group. Hitting harder than any other class is your utility (outside shadow refuge and scorpion wire).

Preemptively leaving shadow refuge’s area of effect, no matter the amount of stealth accumulated, will result in losing all stealthing effects -and- the revealed debuff.

This is wrong for two reasons, notably:

1) Leaving shadow refuge shouldn’t remove existing stealth effects
2) The revealed debuff is supposed to be a combat mechanic preventing permanent combat stealth. Obviously, leaving shadow refuge has nothing to do with attacking while stealthed, and so, it should NOT apply revealed, unless you are actually attacking from within shadow refuge.

carrion legionnaire

Stealthing away from combat and disengaging, despite fully resetting foes, keeps you in combat for unreasonably long distances. Is this a design decision or merely an oversight?

If it’s an oversight, it just needs to change.

If it’s a design decision, I can see why – you don’t want thieves to have a free “out of jail” card. The issue here is, stealth is still just that. You just need to tediously run like 3000 units of range away from your foe. Which people do, and in which case we’re just wasting time.

Thieves are like the third less played class in high level sPvP.

Here’s a short video showing the sPvP (although you can do the same in PvE/WvW) setup for an initiative D/D blossom spam. Sorry for the flickeriness. I forgot to turn windowed mode on.

http://fr.twitch.tv/oxygg/b/342064536

Here’s a short video including speccing and gearing. Streaming makes me lag -A LOT- so it wasn’t as clean as I’d have liked it to be.

http://fr.twitch.tv/oxygg/b/342064536

Sorry also; I forgot to make GW2 windowed, so it’s all flickery.

supergica.8652:

And your second point, what are you talking about? If you’re out of range when using steal you get like 3 seconds of cooldown, not the whole 30. Also every skill activates the full cooldown when it’s blocked, dodged or missed. Check the mesmers ilusions summons for example…

Sometimes you get the full cooldown. I’m not sure of the conditions, but it happens. Sometimes it’ll be 5 seconds. It’s a strange thing.

supergica.8652:

Steal is just fine, maybe even OP a little. If you use it just to gain an ability you don’t understand it’s full potential. A huge INSTANT gap closer dealing massive damage while stealthing you and blinding everyone around WHILE getting an aditional ability is not enough for you??

I’m not discussing its state in balance, I’m discussing its design as a class mechanic. Half of the thief weapon sets are ranged, so from a design standpoint, it makes little sense to be limited to a melee class defining mechanic.

Psikerlord.2569:

I think its too late for changes to steal, if they were going to change it it would have happened by now.

That’s a really lame way of looking at things, you fatalistic you.

xyger.7349:

Lol, missing the steal and having the cooldown isn’t really all that bad, just don’t mess up which is quite easy to do… I used to play a banner warrior. If you tried to summon your elite banner anything canceled the animation and made the banner go on full cd.

It’s not about “messing up” or “not”. It’s about a skill going on cooldown when it seemingly shouldn’t. Period. I literally feel like the skill is broken due to this. Imagine using a warrior adrenal skill, but losing all of your adrenaline for no effect. And a cooldown. Imagine switching attunement with your elementalist. But staying in the same attunement for no apparent reason.

Do these examples feel far stretched to you? I hope not, because this is what happens with Steal.

xyger.7349:

Stealing is really useful. (+ boring anecdotes)

I’m not questioning its usefulness. I’m questioning its design and working aspect.

xyger.7349:

Personally I don’t see the reason behind a Grapple. In fact, if given the choice I’d still use other one because for a short moment I can switch to a melee and deal a quite a bit of burst damage and then move back and switch to range.

The reason is that the thief has a choice of playstyle, and not all of them involve being in melee range.

Once again, the warrior’s mechanic, adrenal skills, don’t lose their value when they pick up a ranged weapon. Nor do the mechanics of elementalists, necromancers, mesmers, engineers, rangers or guardians.

If you’re using a SB or P/P, you typically want to avoid melee range outside finishers, and basically 100% of the time while in PvE. Why should I have to waste dodge rolls to make use of my mechanic? This makes no sense.

1) Two stealing mechanics for a class that works with two range levels.

F1 key: Steal. 900 range. Shadowstep to your foe and steal from them. Prioritizes stealing melee objects from the stealing pool.
F2 key: Grappling hook. 900 range. Throw a grappling hook to your foe and steal from them. Prioritizes stealing ranged objects from the stealing pool. Ranged projectile combo finisher.

Each have an independent cooldown, but succesfully using one would set the other on a 15-20 sec. cooldown. This means that you could potentially store two objects for you to use, given that you wait long enough.

2) When steal fails, don’t give it its full cooldown.

I know of no other class mechanic that can go on full cooldown without doing anything. Too often steal just doesn’t do anything, doesn’t shadowstep, mug, thrill or recuperate initiative only to go on its 45s cooldown. This just sucks.

I must add as a personal comment that steal is quite uninteresting in design compared to all other profession mechanics. It’s far from useless, but also far from necessary to play the class – I use it because “it’s there”, not because it’s core to how the class plays like Eles or Mesmers, to name these.

Poxxia.1547:

I think this thread is not so much about retaliation, but about buffing PW-builds (the underlying reason for the suggestion). That is why I am asking for your opinion about it. Sure retaliation affects other classes … but apparently not enough to be countered by focusing the source or removing it. It is funny, because nearly every build I have use 2 stunbreakers due to haste+stun. And the ones using haste-builds can’t be bothered to some extend counter the counter?

Pistol whip is certainly relevant to bring up, but so are other fast attacks and auto attacks as well. But regardless, my main point is that retaliation absolutely hard counters glass cannons without boon removal. No other boon or condition for that matter have such an impact.

Poxxia.1547:

What you are saying is, retaliation is hard to counter, because it is applied so frequently and for so short duration, right? I do understand that is an issue. How about a longer duration with fewer applications?

There’s still the issue of boon stripping being so scarce versus proffs that can apply an reapply a whole bunch of them quickly. This is becoming roulette.

Xae.7204:

Oxygen.5918:

Xae.7204:

Oxygen.5918:

Xae.7204:

Thieves already cried enough to get Retalation nerfed once, lay off the waterworks a bit.

Bunker builds are a hard counter to your class (Thieves), you don’t get to kill everyone, some people get to kill you too.

I’d rather have a game where player skill and reflex > profession picks / trait builds in importance. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

There is skill in knowing who you can and who you can not beat.

There is teamwork in having builds be strong against some, and weak against others.

Do you not think that some class/builds should be able to beat a Thief?

Do you not think that teamwork should be rewarded?

Knowing what you can and can’t beat isn’t a skill – it’s merely knowledge, and spending half a day in sPvP would pretty much set the score in that regard.

Teamwork is irrelevant to having strong or weak builds, especially if you consider my comment just below.

Teamwork is still rewarded through combo fields, not through sheer, shallow “I can’t beat you, but my friend can so suck it!”

I think that every class should beat every class. I initially thought this might actually be a possibility with GW2 having the dodge mechanic, blinding affecting the next attack, no healers, limited buff removal, and such, but there are many things trivializing these high skill capped features.

You do not considering being informed to be useful.

I really don’t know how to respond to that.

You can beat a Guardian or Engineer on a Thief. People do it every day, the problem isn’t that Thief isn’t powerful enough, or that Retaliation is too powerful. The problem is that you are not good enough.

Don’t put words in my mouth. I already have a hard time deciphering what you try to say, you don’t need to start arguing poorly on top of it. Being good or bad is irrelevant in this discussion – retaliation remains a boring boon to fight against, and boon removal is too scarce. If the game was as shallow as “knowing what you can beat and what you can’t”, we might as well go ahead and skip the 60$ to play rock-paper-scissor.

Noctred.6732:

Just wanted to say that using corrupt boon and null field/arcane thievery to remove retaliation is a joke.

Firstly, builds that focus on retal can typically reapply it frequently in constant short bursts, so blowing ~40 sec cd’s on that is about as wasteful as it gets – and second, those utilities are 100% more useful in a variety of other, more critical situations (i.e. removing stability, bunker busting, countering epidemics, and so forth).

Also mesmer auto attack? No mesmer is going to run (and stay) into the middle of a team fight to spam sword #1 on somebody.

So yeah, I’m just generally not a fan of passive damage reflect in any sort of competitive game. If it has to be there, make it an active thing so players are forced to use it smartly and at the appropriate time.

Eloquently put better than I could. Thank you for your post.

Xae.7204:

Oxygen.5918:

Xae.7204:

Thieves already cried enough to get Retalation nerfed once, lay off the waterworks a bit.

Bunker builds are a hard counter to your class (Thieves), you don’t get to kill everyone, some people get to kill you too.

I’d rather have a game where player skill and reflex > profession picks / trait builds in importance. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

There is skill in knowing who you can and who you can not beat.

There is teamwork in having builds be strong against some, and weak against others.

Do you not think that some class/builds should be able to beat a Thief?

Do you not think that teamwork should be rewarded?

Knowing what you can and can’t beat isn’t a skill – it’s merely knowledge, and spending half a day in sPvP would pretty much set the score in that regard.

Teamwork is irrelevant to having strong or weak builds, especially if you consider my comment just below.

Teamwork is still rewarded through combo fields, not through sheer, shallow “I can’t beat you, but my friend can so suck it!”

I think that every class should beat every class. I initially thought this might actually be a possibility with GW2 having the dodge mechanic, blinding affecting the next attack, no healers, limited buff removal, and such, but there are many things trivializing these high skill capped features.