Guild Wars 2

Ayochak.8293:

Thieves can do a lots of things in PvE that warriors can’t do.
The thief profession is better at adaptation, tricks, evasion, attrition.
But these things are useless in dungeons because GW2 is not an adventure game.
The word adventure implies the unexpected.
When the essence of the gameplay becomes speedruns there is just efficiency in repetitions of the same moves.
In this category it’s hard to beat the warrior.

There is no room for adventurers in dungeon farming.
If you want to enjoy the thief profession, and play an adventure game, go roam solo the maps in PvE (or WvW).

Now this I actually find fascinating. Thanks for the insight, Ayochack.

It IS intriguing that, say, Warriors are great in PVE while Thieves are fine in PVP. PVP requires more intricate timing of cooldowns/dodges, the ability to react to the unknown, and elements of freedom (who to attack and when) that PVE doesn’t. I wonder if it’s really “too late” for GW2 to incorporate some of this into their PVE, though. You never know. Either way, interesting point.

And yes, the great thing about GW2 is that it’s B2P. I will be coming back at some point for sure.

Yeah wow. Lots of negativity in here. It’s not deserved.

I’m taking a break for a while due to PVE class balance, but as a Warrior you should be able to stomp ANYTHING that comes your way. You’ll always have a place in a group, and most people lovvvvvvvvve DPSing for some reason, so you should like that.

I’m not sure why people are whining so much. GW2 needs some design polish and could definitely use more content… but it’s not a disaster at all. Leveling is fun, the world is gorgeous and fun to explore, and there are a lot of neat skills. WvW is pretty awesome — it’s everything Wintergrasp should have been — and SPVP is much better than WoW arenas.

If you’re giving it a 2/10 then I think it’s more personal opinion. That’s not an objective perspective.

I feel like a simple internal DPS test could reveal these problems. I don’t understand how Anet don’t have access to this information.

Like… if it was something more subjective, like healing or utility or survivability — something that depended on skill use or dodge or scaling — that would be one thing. But DPS is the easiest factor in a game to balance. You grab some specs, run the numbers in some different scenarios, and presto. Results. I don’t get why this is an issue 7 months into the game’s life.

The classes that work well work extraordinarily well, while the classes that feel underdesigned (don’t get me started on Rangers!) are incredibly far behind. It’s not that I can’t get a dungeon group, either. I play with 4 friends. This content is not hard enough to merit min/maxing. That’s not the point.

The point is that as a Thief who plays PVE, I can’t go melee. As an Elementalist who plays support, I don’t feel like I’m “supporting” much… just like I’m spamming AoE’s. Class design in an MMO is everything. Everything! For me, it’s what keeps me engaged even if the endgame content isn’t the greatest. I mean look, we could go play God of War if we wanted great PVE, right? We’re here because of strategic class design and massive social experiences.

I just feel so defeated. As I said, I don’t hate this game, I think it’s great… but for the past few months I have felt my interest in it hemorrhaging. There is no reason for my favorite class (Thief) to exist. We’re out-DPS’d, we go splat in a millisecond when we go melee, and I didn’t roll Thief to shoot a stupid Shortbow, especially after the ridiculous SB#1 nerf this patch. I’ve already sunk hundreds of hours into the game leveling up and experiencing what content I have so far. So no, I will not roll a Warrior/Mesmer/Guaridan alt. I just don’t have the time or interest.

I hope to return in a few months if the class design gets better, and the balance issues are resolved. But… what about others like me who aren’t so fanboyish? I worry that the future of this game is being threatened by imbalance. It can really ruin a game, especially an MMO. Anyway, any advice, feedback, criticism, and etc. are welcomed. Just… if you flame me or call me a whiner or whatever without actually giving reasons, I’ll just ignore you. /shrug.

Hi, I’m Pawstruck, and I’m quitting Guild Wars 2 for a while.

This isn’t meant to be a complain thread, a “nerf X, buff Y” thread, or anything like that. I’m not looking to start a flame war or rag on how bad this game is. It’s a great game, and in many ways revolutionary to the MMORPG genre. I look forward to the day I can come back. But for now… I might hop on SPVP just for yucks or something once in a while, but for the most part, I’m done.

What I want to do now is to recount my personal experience of this game. If you’d like to call me a noob or a baddie or whatever, feel free to do so, but please make it constructive. I don’t mind being called ignorant so long as there’s some information I can use to educate myself alongside it. Let’s avoid ad hominim.

So after watching the countless beta videos, I chose Thief for my “main” on GW2. I loved the idea of a non-perma-stealth rogue-class character. It appeared from the footage that the Thief would have tons of clever evasive skills, combined with the dodge system, to keep itself alive in PVP and PVE alike. I was excited!

Once I hit 80, I experimented with several (PVE) builds… first backstab, then Pistol Whip, then tanky/evasive, and then back to backstab. What I noticed was that every single time I would go into melee, I would die. No. Matter. What. I tried to watch for the animations and dodge at the right time. I tried using Signet of Malice and Caltrops to heal-tank some of the time. I’ve tried literally every utility bar setup I can think of.

Bottom line is, Thief go melee, Thief go splat.

“Okay, fine.” I thought, “A-net just need to buff our survivability a bit. Maybe we’re just a low-damage, glass canon class.” One of my best RL friends’ main was a Warrior. I would often struggle with one or two enemies in a dungeon while I would see him ripping through mobs with his Greatsword without batting an eye. He was able to run full offense spec and basically stand there rolling face while I was over here dodging, healing, picking my fights… all while he was out-damaging me by miles.

I watched the various crazes go by and get nerfed. I saw Mesmers go from vital to “okay.” I saw the Guardian-stacking, 50-retaliation-stack groups get taken down. These things are gimmicky challenges to class balance, I thought, and I was glad to see them go. From my point of view, it’s good to be able to run a group full of one class only, but having mandatory or optimized groups with 4-5 of the same class is unhealthy for the game.

So.

“Alright,” I told myself, “I’ll roll and Elementalist. They should be good at group support and always desirable.” I got to 80, super excited to run a staff support build… and found that it wasn’t that great. All I was doing was tossing down combo fields when they were off cooldown, sometimes combining Earth 2 with Water 3 for some heals… that’s it.

But Pawstruck, you say, why not try a different build? Why not a ranged Thief or a Dagger/ Ele?

Well, first off, I have tried ranged Thief builds. P/P is extraordinarily underwhelming in DPS, although very fun. Meanwhile, right next to me, my Warrior friend is chopping people in half spamming greatsword while he’s munching cheetos and taking naps…. and I’m struggling to get 5k Unloads. Have you ever tried using Shortbow on a Thief in PVE? It’s the dumbest thing in the world, standing there spamming #2, shooting ghetto little twirly projectiles that move slower than molasses. This isn’t what I signed up for as a ninja class. I’m looking at some dagger builds on my Ele, but then, I’m not sure… didn’t they just get smoked in the Apr. 30 patch?

So this leaves me here. The same three classes (Mesmers, Guardians, Warriors) continue to dominate PVE, while the remaining 5 seem under-designed. I can’t speak for the rest of them, but many skills on the Thief just seem like they were rushed and not designed very well (Pistol #2 and the old S/D #3 being prime examples, with Venoms following closely behind).

This is just stupid.

Enjoy the nerf, when it finally comes, if the balance team ever gets its head on straight.

Could it possibly be that people want to play a class that does surprise burst damage from stealth, known as the Thief? Shock horror!

The fact that people thing Legendary = GW2 endame… THAT’S the main problem.

“Endgame” in GW2 is actually a problem, whether people want to admit it or not. It asks the player to re-conceive what they’ve traditionally thought of as “endgame content.” Arenanet seem to want to include world completion, exploration, guild missions, and PVP as part of their endgame in addition to more traditional spam-dungeon-over-and-over content… but then, you have Fractals making me want to question all of that, too.

Endgame as it now stands is what you make of it. That’s a double-edged sword. Some people don’t want to “find” things to do in an MMORPG, and I get that. The Living World content is relatively inaccessible, because there was a bunch of very un-fun stuff you had to do to actually get to the dungeon/playable content. Screw that. I totally understand people who don’t want to go through things like that, and just want to use their high-level character as a high-level character… not to keep doing the same thing they did for 79 levels until they get world completion.

Endgame for me is getting the armor-set and weaponry I want, and playing with my friends. It’s not WoW — and I miss certain things about WoW — but it’s its own entity, like it or lump it.

Swizzle.7982:

Warriors are massively overpowered in PVE. There are some classes that are massively underpowered in comparison.

That’s about it.

Everything in this thread is untrue except the quoted material above.

If you think it heals too much from the passive, there are a couple of options other than straight nerfing it into uselessness. (NOT saying that’s what’s happened, but I’m worried it will continue to be chisled down until the passive healing is worthless.)

1. Nerf healing from passive, buff healing from active.
2. Remove cast time from the active heal.
3. Insert (trait maybe?) a way for the passive to remain active when you use the heal.

This puts more emphasis on a skillful use of the signet rather than facerolling as much as possible. Thoughts?

oZii.2864:

Thief is get in do good damage quickly get out.

You can’t face tank on a thief, if a thief could face tank better than a warrior then why bring a warrior?

Right. And if you can face tank on a Warrior AND do double the damage of a Thief (which is pretty much the case), why bring the Thief?

Thieves DON’T do “good damage quickly get out.” They do moderate, much-less-than-Warrior damage, and then die. Unless you sit back with Shortbow spamming Cluster Bomb… which, y’know, that’s great fun. As it stands now, Warriors have it ALL: DPS, lack of skillful interface input, and safety (facetanking). Thus, everything else is obsolete except maybe mesmers and guardians.

HOLY AMEN THIS THREAD.

The only thing I disagree with is the Last Refuge thing. It’s one of our few really great skills, and I always have it on my bar no matter what build I’m using.

Stealth not resetting aggro is my #1 issue here, followed closely by Pistol Whip damage. This is just lazy balance, and guess who suffers for it? The players.

If you want a serious PVP experience, you’re playing the wrong game.

Why people use WvW as a measure of PVP balance is beyond me. It’s really ridiculous. Armor, level, number of skill points achieved, and then add seige weapons on that? That’s not balanceable.

Alex.6940:

Now i’m not against this change. I understand why Anet want to move away from high burst damage and create more interesting gameplay with thieves, but you need to offer a viable replacement to glass cannon build.

Right. They’ve said that they know about the non-viability of other builds, and they promised to fix it. It’s just a matter of will it be fixed in 2 months or 2 years, and what are we supposed to do in the meantime?

It’s really just a matter of numbers’ adjustment… not a ton of design work. Pistol #2 needs to do more damage and have its initiative cost reduced. Healing power needs to scale better. Venoms need to actually DO something. It’s not hard, really… Unless they are working with a 2-man dev team or something.

All I can say is that every single one of my friends leveled a non-warrior class first. When they leveled up there warrior, they found it LAUGHABLY easy. As in, I’ve had 4/4 friends in this exact situation say “Warriors are way too strong.”

Now, let’s notice two things about what I’m saying. First of all, it’s secondhand information. I haven’t leveled a Warr myself, because I don’t like to be the faceroll class even in perception. That said, I know all these friends in real life and trust their sensibilities. Second of all, leveling-up does not equal endgame PVE. I realize this.

What I also realize is that Warrior stacking is worse than Guardian/Mesmer stacking ever was. We’ve got groups that will kick out Rangers and Thieves to get Warriors in. This is not okay.

I am amazed — AMAZED — that Warriors were not reduced to PVE rubble in this balance patch. 100b is not the only problem: It’s the might stacking. That, combined with the fact that Warriors can go glass cannon and still face-tank. Y’know what happens if I go into a PVE scenario as full offense on my Thief? I die. A lot.

It’s just unfair and it’s ruining the game. I’m not raging, I’m telling the truth. It disappoints me to the point that I just don’t want to play any more, because my main is a Thief and I don’t care about PVP. (If you want a balanced PVP experience, play a MOBA, imo). As a PVE Thief, I am unquestionably nudged out of my role as a melee damage dealer. Warriors out-class us in every way. It sucks.

I don’t know why people are so ready to crucify Arenanet.

The biggest issue in this game right now is build diversity and it’s threatening the game’s future because, surprise, not everyone wants to play a Berzerker Warrior or a Mesmer. They’re right in identifying this as a #1 priority.

Also, no. It won’t take years. It’s a simple matter of numbers adjustment, which just takes balance. Take the Thief trait that gives you 2s of Quickness on critical. It has a 10% proc chance and a 60-second cooldown. That’s ridiculous. 2s of the newly-nerfed Quickness is a joke, and the 60-second cooldown is the punch-line. Do we need months of work to fix this trait? No. We need the Quickness to last 3s, and the cooldown to be 30 seconds. Now we have a new, awesome trait. That would take me literally 10 minutes to edit the code, if that.

Now, if we can just get them to admit that utility skills and elite skills are broken, we’re set!

I think I speak for every human being on this planet and any possibly-existing space aliens when I say that there is no need to add new utility skills before they fix the ones we already have. While many of my Thief utilities have some use (several are still useless), I would venture that 50% of my Elementalist’s utilities are completely worthless.

Lol. I can honestly say I did not play GW1 because I couldn’t jump. It was so annoying having to go on exactly the path Anet made for people to walk on, after coming from WoW with flying mounts I just couldn’t take it.

You spend an awful lot of words trying to say a simple thing: “This game needs polish.”

Yes. Some bosses are boring and badly designed (Anet have acknowledged it).
Some classes are stupidly broken while others are very weak (warriors, PVE Thieves respectively).
Many spells and skills are flavorless and boring. (C.f. all elite skills!)
Combo fields are incredibly imbalanced (yep!)

You take forever to make your point, and when you do I’m not sure it’s even the one you intended to make. On the point you do make, however, (whether intentional or not), you are indubitably correct. This game needs polish; major polish. But IMHO, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I have a PVE Thief that I simply won’t play anymore until they’re buffed/fixed/enriched. In the meantime, my Ele is pretty fun and I’m having fun running dungeons, leveling, and doing WvW with friends.

RebelYell.7132:

If enemies didn’t have so much HP, then the high burst done by 100B wouldn’t be so noticeable.

Why do you want to hurt one profession while ignoring the issue affecting ALL professions?

…What? Less HP would mean more effective damage (damage unto death).

The damage on 100b is too high, but let’s not stray off topic to debate that. Plus, it’s a fact anyway, and I’m not up for debating facts unless you want to argue about how the world is flat.

Cosbuster.4379:

Something needs to be done about 100b. It’s the reason we are godly in PvE and crappy in PvP. I’d rather be just decent in both. How about reducing the damage but allowing movement?

I agree! Also the same for Pistol Whip please!

It’s funny how PW got nerfed into oblivion but 100b remains…

Just for the record, I probably would’ve votes yes to kick you.

Silence followed by condescension = kick from me.

My only thought is… what on earth would you do as a solution to this? Just keep your Predator model visible at all times, even when throwing grenades?

Btw, the fun in the “endgame” for me is running dungeons and doing WvW and stuff with my friends. I don’t get this mindset of “Legendary or bust!” as an endgame. I think it’s unhealthy. But that’s another thread.

RebelYell,

You have a very good point. It’s also at least arguably true that Warriors scale better with Might/Precision than any other class… which is why we don’t see a lot of Zerker Guardians or Necros.

Isslair.4908:

Oh, but they are!
It’s the “others” who want to do dungeon runs with them, not the other way around. It’s like a huge hypocrisy “i wanna do speedruns for gold, but i don’t wanna have optimal build”.

This is a straw-man and you know it. Why don’t you stop wasting everyone’s time (including your own) if you’re just going to argue with yourself? The kind of thing you’re doing is what lotion and right hands were made for… it’s not constructive.

The real argument is this: "I want to do CoF [for whatever reason], but I’m not a Berzerker warrior/Guardian/Mesmer and so am being excluded or kicked from groups.

Oh, and believe me, it’s not hypocrisy. We don’t want to do dungeons with your kind. Ever.

Isslair.4908:

Star Ace

Have you read the OP? The point of this thread is not “berz warriors too stronk”, but “i wanna farm cof, but no one takes me with them”.

Ironic. This isn’t what the post is about at all. It seems you’ve cast a reflection of your own reading onto my thoughts.

First of all, warriors probably are a little to strong in PVE. There, I said it! Oh no! Crucify me! Call me a whiner and a baddie and L2P and etc.! Truth is, Warrior DPS is incredibly high with almost no risk at all compared to other classes’ DPS specs. It’s not complicated to perform, and you’ve still got a lot of easy defensive tools. Either the offensive power or the defensive safety of certain Warr specs has to go.

Second of all, the thread is about this path-of-least-resistance phenomenon that is inevitable with this no-trinity design philosophy. It’s one thing to have the occasional group of all mesmers or all guardians, but it’s another to see that as a requirement to the extent that you have people kicking anyone but that class.

Remember Guardian stacking? Remember 25 stacks of retaliation? Remember why that got removed? Yeah. Because it was stupid. Arenanet clearly doesn’t want these “stack 5 of the most OP class”-groups to become so successful that people ONLY run those. The history proves it. If you’re arguing in favor of them… good luck. We’ll see who wins.

Finally, to the people who are whiiiiiiiiiiiiiining (Vayne) that there really don’t seem to be as many groups as my title indicates… Puh-leeze. Rabbit-trail more. It’s a common phenomenon that several people here have attested to. I’m one of those people. I didn’t just make this kitten up and come to the forums and waste an hour of my time just to troll people. It happens. It happens a lot. It happens enough to be problematic. You may think you’re trying to be a voice of reason, but really you’re just showing your ignorance of the situation.

I did forget about Mesmers… god forbid, lol.

The point I was making is still valid, though. These same classes have been a problem from launch. The only reason people hate Thieves is because of PVP, which tbh is a balance joke in this game anyway. :/

This is NOT the trade-off we get for not having a holy trinity. Class balance is incredibly off. If your argument is “class balance can be terrible because no holy trinity,” then I have no choice but to roll my eyes and move on.

Take a scroll down gw2lfg and take a look. People are running full Berzerker Warrior groups with the occasional Guardian mixed in. It’s ALL they’re running. It’s getting impossible to find a group as a Thief or even an Elementalist. All people want is faceroll damage and some support.

Look, I’m all for the no-holy-trinity thing in this MMO. It’s awesome. If people want to run a group of 5 whatever’s, let them do it… but when balance becomes so bad that all people want is a certain class or two, I’ve got a huge problem.

Can you imagine if, in “that other MMO,” Mages, Priests, Druids, and etc. all became obsolete? I can tell you about how long “that other company” would take to fix that. I don’t say that to rag on the folks at Anet, but to emphasize that this is a game-breaking balance issue. When I say game-breaking, I mean “if this continues then many experienced MMO-players will flee from this game.”

This is my favorite MMO of all time so far, so don’t think I’m just whining. I can tolerate a certain amount of class imbalance because, philosophically difference = imbalance. But it doesn’t have to be broken imbalance.

What do you guys think about this?

Did you seriously play the game for 5 levels and then come here to make a thread about not liking it?

What do you expect from us, sympathy? It’s an objectively good game that has received plenty of awards and lots of people like it. If you can’t see it, fine. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Just go elsewhere, and stop whining.

Quick Mouse.7635:

I have suggested the same thing way back in september. It would be nice, but I don’t think they will add this.

They’ve said that it is something they’re considering. Google it. Take heart!

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

It’s pretty remarkable how free you’ll feel once you let go of that whole “needing things” in a virtual world.

No, you don’t need laurels. You don’t need to do your dailies. You don’t need to do fractals. If you do, you really need to revise the way (and why) you play games.

QFMFT.

Don’t sit back and whine about “needing” things. It’s a game. If you’re not having fun, don’t do it. Really.

…without going into their inventory and manually clicking things?

This clearly isn’t a balance issue, as it takes about the same amount of time for an experienced player to with an organized inventory to swap weps. We’re talking the difference between 1 and 2 seconds here. Just make the darn “swap weapon” thing disappear when in combat, and reappear after combat.

QoL buff that I would welcome.

…What’s a guild transport?

Seriously. I google’d it and got nothing.

1600 hours?

Don’t burn yourself out, man. kitten Learn to play some other games in between or go do something else IRL. Honestly, as others have said, 1600 hours is a LOT! I feel like I play a ton and I only have ~400.

Signed. PW needs a full-on redesign.

Arenanet,

Do you guys realize why people play burst thieves at all, and particularly in PVP? Because there are almost no decent builds outside of it. Burst is always necessary in PVP, particularly in this game where everyone has a self-heal. I don’t see why having powerful burst once every 45 seconds is such a big deal. Other classes (Warrior?!) can put out more burst than us, you realize that right?

I’m personally getting extremely frustrated because my Thief is my only level 80. I don’t have a lot of time to play. My main focus is PVE, but I like to jump in and do PVP once in a while. Unfortunately, the age-old accusation is true: You guys are really hurting PVE Thieves while aiming at PVP ones. I think I speak for all PVE Thieves when I say PLEASE STOP IT!

You’ve helped part of the problem, which was Haste. Nerfing it was a good way to go, but you honestly might as well have just removed it as it’s now worthless.

The second part of the problem is that there are weapon sets/spells/utilities that are poorly designed and not cohesive (no offense, that’s just the kitten truth). Pistol/Pistol is poor. Sword/Pistol is now poor, as Pistol Whip is ineffective and just doesn’t feel good to use because of the slow animation, cast time, and self-root. Venoms are extremely lackluster. Sword/Dagger needs some major love, too.

Overall, in groups, we are a low-damage, extraordinarily squishy Warrior. We need something —-anything!!-—to bring to a party besides Shadow Refuge. So we’re ninjas and we have to dodge around and be tricky to survive. I get it. But what’s the payoff? Do we just do all that extra work, planning, and keyboard-piano-playing to look cool? Because it’s not worth it.

Overall, I rolled the Thief because I wanted a new spin on the rogue/assassin class. High damage, low health, high risk, high reward. Instead, what I’m getting is mediocre damage, low health, and a bunch of nerfs. I’ll say it again: People use backstab builds because there is almost no alternative. Not to mention, they’re fun! If people want to give up survivability for more damage, I don’t see the imbalance here. Warriors do the same damage with survivability. Introduce counterplay, don’t just blindly nerf.

I’m going to end up quitting this game if I get too dissatisfied with my Thief. Not a threat, just the truth. I don’t have time or energy to roll another class after putting ~300 hours into this one. Please put some real effort into class balance. Thanks.

-Paw

Here’s an idea: What if Last Refuge provided 1 or 2 seconds where you couldn’t fall below 1 hp?

This would make it sort of a last ditch ability to give yourself a couple more seconds to react, stealthed even, to whatever is going on. Even so, I don’t feel like this would be TOO overpowered because if you have a condition on you or the person attacking you is providing any sort of continuous damage at all, you still die. Plus it has a loooooong cooldown (which could even be made longer).

….question mark? Someone enlighten me?

What’s the advantage of running D/P and D/D? As opposed to D/D and a ranged set.

….really? I didn’t see him come close to 1s away from dying or 1s away from missing a kill.

Auesis, What do you feel adequate “compensation” for the work you put in as a Thief to stay alive and doing top DPS should be? Thinking from a design philosophy perspective, there aren’t many options.

You could just buff the damage on Thief skills. This is an option and almost certainly needs to occur in some areas (lookin’ at you, Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Pistol). However, artificially inflating the Thief’s numbers to be #1 DPS just because they are difficult to play is quite a philosophical leap. “Hard to play = high DPS, easy to play = low DPS.” Well, then you’ve got questions like: What does it mean to be “hard to play” a class? Complicated rotations? Difficult positioning? Necessity of dodge? Why should anyone want to play an “easy” class (Warrior?) at all if they’re looking to maximize their group effectiveness?

As I said, certain sets and spells NEED a buff, either in damage or effectiveness… but I’m not sure it’s the answer to all of my complaints.

You must be trying to keep your exact build a secret, eh?

Entertaining video! This is what I’d hoped the Thief would be when I rolled it… lots of quick stealths (not perma stealth), lots of dodging, lots of tricks. Cool stuff!

So, what, this is a thread about a thread about a topic that has been done to death, but you thought you’d make another thread anyway?

I don’t get your point. People complain about EVERYTHING. Welcome to the internet.

I feel you there, Brtiva. I feel like the nerfs to Thieves have been for the sake of PVP dominance, but paradoxically have done almost nothing to PVP Thieves and really hurt PVE ones.

Again, I emphasize that this is not about strength of the class, but the “feel” of the class — the quality of its design, whether or not it lives up to our expectations as players.

Thanks for the tips guys.

I’m using P/P right now as my ranged set because I guess I thought it would be more single-target ranged damage, and my S/P spec puts a lot of emphasis on crits and dual skills, which I thought would carry over better to S/P than Shortbow. Also, am I the only one that hates Shortbow? The projectiles are so slow it feels like I’m shooting spitwads, esp. Cluster Bomb.

Have you guys ever personally experienced being rejected from a dungeon because “Thiefs r bad PVE loloL” ?

Oh, one last thing. Can we get a buff to Pistol Whip now, Anet?

Hey guys.

I’m here because I’m considering abandoning my Thief for another profession.

It is NOT because I have read the forums, nor is it because I’m jumping on some kind of bandwagon. I’m here representing the Thief as I have experienced it… and my experience hasn’t been terribly good. I have a Charr Elementalist on the backburner (around level 42), and might switch to him… but I figured I’d come here and see if you guys might have any insights.

First, I’m interested primarily in PVE. PVP is fun in spurts, but if I wanted a real balanced PVP experience I would play League of Legends (which I’ve already hit Gold on, jsyk). Let’s face it, PVP balance here is pretty bad at present.

Second, I’m not necessarily interested in min/max-ing. I mostly play with a small group of friends, and when we need a bigger group we have a decent guild that we’re all members of. To be honest, I find that GW2 is extremely lenient when it comes to gear-checks compared to WoW or Rift, which are the other MMO’s I’ve played extensively. For these reasons, I’m okay with running groups that aren’t 3 guardians, a warrior, and a mesmer. People that will only run that stuff just confuse me. :S

Finally, I’m bringing some baggage to my Thief experience. I played a Rogue and a Feral Druid in WoW for upwards of 5 years. Stealth, to me, is something you turn on to go run around Stormwind invisible and gank people. Now, I’m open to other design philosophies for assassin classes, which is why I rolled Thief in the first place.

My problem is this.

I rolled the Thief, and persevered to 80, because I was under the impression that it would be a high damage, low survivability class which relies on trickery, evasiveness, and skill to execute opponents and get out alive.

Instead, what I have found so far is a medium damage, low survivability class which—while having some powerful/interesting spells—has several useless abilities.

My main problem is this: I’m squishy, yet warriors, mesmers, and others seem to out-DPS me frequently. I don’t feel very “Thiefy” in dungeons. I try to jump in for some damage, but end up getting smacked around so hard it’s not worth it. This is especially bad since the change to stealth not dropping aggro. So… I end up sitting around with an INCREDIBLY lame shortbow (shooting projectiles that are slow as hell and do this weird spirally thing that I can’t quite understand). I didn’t roll a Thief to be a ghetto Ranger.

I can’t figure out if we’re supposed to be melee-capable or not. Are we? Whenever I go melee on a boss, I get one or two-shot. Mind you, I am running Berzerker’s gear, because I can’t figure out how to be “tanky” without sacrificing all my DPS. Am I missing something? What is the typical technique, if any, for doing melee DPS on bosses with Defiance?

So what do you guys think? Should I swap out? Any tips? Any guides I should look at? Feeling very bummed right now because I feel like I invested time into a class that I am so far disappointed in.

…is there any other way to get T1 sylvari weapons that I am missing?

This has been going on forever and it’s really getting up my nose…

I’ve already filed a bug report, and it’s even on the GW2 official wiki: Rhiogheil, the sylvari NPC sells Asura T1 cultural gear. There is currently no way to obtain Sylvari T1 cultural gear from vendors. This is pretty annoying.

Riot pls

Just wondering. This change would be very welcome, and I haven’t heard anything about it since last month when Colin said something along the lines of , “Meh, it’d be hard.”

Lots of us want this feature. Has anyone heard anything?

Erasculio.2914:

Nope.

Grinding is not a skill set. A bot can grind very well, in fact. When people say “the most determined”, “the most devoted” or anything like that, they are simply talking about time spent, not skill. Legendaries are, in fact, the greatest example of “time spent > skill” in GW2.

When Legendaires stop rewarding people who play ten hours a day for 4 months just facerolling over their keyboards as they kill the same easy enemies over and over… Then maybe someone could say they have anything to do with “success”. Until then…

What kind of “skill” do you want? There’s PVE skill—raiding—which, by my book isn’t skill at all, it’s just following a script. Even if you DO consider that “true” PVE skill, there are already PVE dungeons that yield Ascended gear for you.

PVP, which I believe requires more skill, also already has rewards of its own.

Legendary weapons are something to work towards. You may be deceiving yourself into thinking “Pfft. If it doesn’t take skill, I won’t do it!” but what you’re really saying is “I don’t want to work for it.” And that’s perfectly fine! Don’t! You’re free to not work for it and still get the best weapons/gear! Legendaries are for those of us who do want to work for them.