Guild Wars 2

Seether.7285:

You still don’t understand the difference between damage which can be avoided and damage which can not be avoided?

Good luck avoiding all my attacks.

Wow, this thread is still going?

So, I switched over to scholar runes instead of air runes, and I notice no difference at all at how fast I down other players. I do a lot more damage. For example, on the heavy golem, my cluster bombs went from doing ~2400 crits to ~3400 with over 50% hp, and with myself over 90% hp. Inc scholar rune nerf.

I’ve never seen anything over 6.2k, but yes.

“Good for you. move along now please” Now who’s being condescending?

I’m not even going to respond to Seether because he has no clue what I’m saying and I would just have to reiterate what I have already said. Plus, he’s just out for blood.

Prince, I never meant to be condescending to you (I was actually going to say that about Seether lol). I have also not one time gloated about how I am better than you or how amazing I am at this game (lol). The whole purpose of explaining how you messed up in that fight was to show that this video does not show how air rune is OP. What the video does show clearly is the stealth bug.

As for divinity runes. You cannot compare the offensive power of divinity runes to air runes, because divinity runes are hybrid runes. Air runes are almost fully offensive.

Also, I never claimed that using air runes takes skill. All the runes (as far as I’m aware) have passive stats and passive abilities that require you to do nothing more than what you are already doing.

I also already assumed that there are things like human error and luck involved in everything in game and you would not be able make a video of an equal fight. But when you show a video of you not playing well at all and getting hit by a lightning strike then say air rune is OP, I can only ask “Why does this video show air runes are OP?” If you completely outplayed me and then got hit by a lightning strike and then lost the 1v1, I would think that there was something wrong with that, but that’s not what I saw.

I also still believe that lightning runes are only optimal for 1v1s or 2v2s which is why I run them in tpvp (because I’m a roamer). In bigger team fights, runes of the scholar would be much better for a thief, but I have to look at the big picture.

Seether.7285:

Payne, thank you for demonstrating once again for the forum that you have reading comprehension issues. I was the only one who directly brought up reading comprehension issues, but then you somehow associated me with another person’s words by associating the reading comprehension argument with that person’s quote.

Prince never stated that the air rune was the “only” reason he lost and I said previously, this thread has NOTHING to do with the specific fight between you and Prince with the exception of the mechanics at play.

The problem with lightning strike compared to any of your other hard hitting abilities is there is no animation to watch for to prepare to dodge, if you attack the player with air runes the damage is going to come and it is going to happen pretty close to once every 10 seconds because of the high chance to proc. I think this is a problem given how much damage the lightning rune is able to put out depending on the build.

I’m not a person that complains about thief burst, or any burst in this game. I learn to deal with it, play better, etc. The problem with air runes is you can’t simply learn to outplay it, the damage is going to be coming in regardless. I wouldn’t even find air runes OP in their current state if it “infused” the wearers next attack or shot a projectile, something which one can look for and hope to avoid rather than unavoidable lightning bolt from the sky doing crazy damage.\

Pretty much the only thing you have been accurate on in this thread was Prince’s complaint about the stealth culling. This game for some reason has allowed people to remain stealthed while attacking and missing and so the beginning of the fight was working as intended for the most part. Take your minor win and cut your losses and vacate the thread and allow it to return to the original discussion topic.

Omg, the hypocrisy of this post. I don’t even think you read my last post, but that’s alright. The other posters claim in some way (not using your same words) that I did not comprehend Jonathan Sharp’s post. So I use your words (because I thought they were appropriate) and you automatically believe I’m rebutting what you said.

However, I did rebut what you said later in the post by explaining why I was talking about my fight with Prince and why he lost. Did you read it?

Prince is making a claim that air runes are OP, and he shows a video of him getting hit by a 5.1k lightning strike. He is basically saying 5.1k is too much for an ability that is passive. That is an opinion. I am coming in with my own opinion, saying that from my experience this number is, in fact, not too high.

In order to prove that the air rune was OP, he would have to come up with a video that shows two players playing just as well as one another (one with air runes) and show the one with air runes come out on top (by a significant margin). This is why I kept pointing out the flaws in Prince’s playing during that fight.

You also are saying the lightning strike from air runes can’t be dodged. Well what about runes that apply passive offensive stats? The only way you can dodge that extra damage from the stats is by dodging the abilities themselves and you won’t always be able to do that. In a team fight situation, I guarantee you, the cumulative extra AOE damage from increased offensive stats will do more damage than air runes in that fight.

Air runes are strong in a 1v1, because it only damages one person. In a team fight, it’s not so good.

P.S. I laughed so hard at this: " Take your minor win and cut your losses and vacate the thread and allow it to return to the original discussion topic."

Seether, you’re right about the 50% downed state damage increase on air rune. That shouldn’t be in the game.

I’m also amazed with the hypocrisy of some of you. You claim I have reading comprehension issues then bring up this quote: “The reason I didn’t become revealed when I shot my arrows is because you dodged and blocked them all.” Then you say I need to read Jonathan Sharp’s post.

The problem is, Jonathan Sharp said “visual culling bug”. The fact that a missed attack in stealth does not trigger the revealed effect is game mechanics, not a visual bug. The visual bug happens when the thief actually comes out of stealth and does not appear completely opaque right away.

Finally, my entire point has been to show Prince that the air rune is not the reason he lost that fight. If he had played well, he could have won that 1v1. One of the two reasons Prince has made this thread is because he believes air runes are unfair in their current state.

I don’t agree with this and Prince has not given solid evidence in his video as to why air run is over powered. All he has shown is him missing every one of his big damaging abilities then getting hit by a 5.1k lightning strike to finish him off.

5.1k is nothing for a glass cannon hitting another glass cannon. I’ve hit other glass cannons for almost 10k eviscerates on my warrior, 7k heartseekers at low health, and have seen the final hit of my sword auto attack hit for 5k under 50% health. These are the kinds of numbers a glass cannon should be putting out when fighting another glass cannon. On a tanky player I would be lucky to hit a 3k lightning strike.

Back when I used divinity runes, I never had trouble with players using air runes. However, I realized I wanted a fully offensive thief and so I picked up the air rune instead of divinity. Air runes are a great way to punish other players for prolonging a fight, because as everyone knows, thief is not the best sustained fighter. So when I’m fighting an ele who is just going to run around in circles healing themselves and applying buffs like protection and vigor on themselves to try to outlast me, I have a way of punishing them for that.

What I want to see is a video of two players dueling in which one player has air runes and other does not. I want to see both players play well, and see if the air rune wins the fight for the one who has them. Then I will agree they are overpowered. Until then, I will go by my experience, which tells me they are not overpowered (except for the 50% down state thing).

Prince.3682:

Actually I wasn’t using frenzy, I was auto attacking then hunderp blading the corpse of the thief after he was already dead but even if I was using frenzy, see post just above.

Thats ok though, what about next image attached? 9.4k steal. Happy with that balance? (No frenzy, thats on my ele)

You’re obviously a decent player but you’re using an ez-mode class with tons of evasion and insane burst – gloating or calling others out for screwing up is unsightly. No need to make this matter personal.

Don’t worry this isn’t personal. I’m just being logical. You have to admit though, you messed up by missing ride the lightning, updraft, phoenix, and fire grab.

And cmon now…. “ez mode class with tons of evasion and burst”. You’re using a slightly more difficult class with tons of healing, versatility, utility and burst.

I also need to ask that thief how the hell he did that 9k steal, because I’ve never been able to get close to that. Or maybe this image was taken before the assassin signet change and he used it before he used steal.

Noctred.6732:

Payneful.7934

Seriously…… you obviously had frenzy up when you were hit by that. You’re not fooling anyone lol!

I’m not sure why anyone would advocate the existence of a RNG proc that has the potential to instaburst half of a player’s hp pool.

I mean, even without frenzy, that was still almost a 9k hit… from a random proc. You really think that’s healthy for a competitive game?

I’m not defending the air runes existence. I’m just laughing at the fact that Prince posted a picture of a lightning strike while he is frenzied and thinking that proves something.

Prince.3682:

More air rune lolz enclosed:

Seriously…… you obviously had frenzy up when you were hit by that. You’re not fooling anyone lol!

It sounds as if you feel you should have won that 1v1. Maybe you think that I unjustly won that because of overpowered abilities. The truth is, even if I didn’t have air runes or the fire sigil, I still would have won that fight because you screwed up.

Let me give you a list of what you did wrong.
-You missed ride the lightning, updraft, phoenix and fire grab (seriously….. you missed all 4, GG)
-You wasted time by starting to cast water 5 but cancelled it to cast your main heal.
-You wasted dodge while arcane shield was up, causing the buff to run out instead of blocking one more hit and doing damage to me.

Don’t put the blame elsewhere when it’s clear that you didn’t play nearly as well as you could have.

Just pointing out a fact Prince. I didn’t even need the fire sigil or air rune proc to win that 1v1. If you miss your big damaging abilities and I hit mine, you are going to lose, and that’s just what happened.

Point is, ele is a great class and the glass cannon version is very viable in capable hands.

Sprawl and Grimspire. When I said “This is just part of the game”, I’m talking about the fact that when a thief misses attacks in stealth, the thief will not be reveled until he hits something or his stealth runs out.

The stealth bug they are going to fix is the one that makes it so when a thief has just exited stealth he will not be fully opaque.

My asura thief in PvP gear!

The reason I didn’t become revealed when I shot my arrows is because you dodged and blocked them all. This is just part of the game.

What ended up happening is my stealth ran out, and if you look carefully you should notice that I become targeted the instant I get out of stealth. The only problem is my character does not become fully opaque until a second later (which is the rendering issue they are going to fix). But that isn’t a big deal because I was targeted regardless.

Getting a fire sigil and air rune proc at the same time is just lucky.

Also, I have to say it……. I get absolutely blown up by glass cannon eles. I dodged both phoenix and fire grab at the start which would have destroyed me. Eles can put out just as much burst damage as I can on my thief. You just have to hit me with it first. I lose 1v1 almost every time to an ele in my guild. So, I’m sorry I have to say this, but there is a skill issue here.

Hiba i completely disagree with everything you said.

Wait……….What are we talking about again?

Bulldozer.5973:

“It’s a way of weeding out the not so good teams so that paid tourneys become a place for good teams only. But this will obviously take time.”

So you are saying once they have weeded out the not so good teams they will start skipping rounds one and two?

No, I mean the teams that consistently win paid tournaments will retain a constant supply of tickets while the teams that consistently lose will have all of their tickets drained. This leaves only the winning teams to compete in paid tournaments (all three rounds).

I think they set up the rewards so that teams that constantly lose the first round will eventually only be able to participate in paid tournaments by buying gems using gold obtained from PVE or with money. Teams who constantly make it but lose in the second round will eventually find themselves with only 4 tickets which forces them to do a free tourney to obtain that 5th ticket. Teams that constantly make it to the third round can do paid tourneys forever with the gems they get.

It’s a way of weeding out the not so good teams so that paid tourneys become a place for good teams only. But this will obviously take time.

Idk about WvW, but in sPvP dagger storm is not good. Players in WvW are generally not good at PvP as I have witnessed and will just spam their projectile shots at the thief killing themselves. Any good PvPer would switch to a melee weapon or use non-projectile abilities on the thief while laughing at them.

Another problem with using dagger storm is retaliation. It will destroy you.

I can definitely see how thieves guild and basilisk venom would not be good for WvW though.

i had to reinstall the game to get it to work :/

That would be awesome. I could make a lot of money :P.

I beat this kid in a costume brawl. Get good Hiba.

Don’t pick this guy up, he sucks.

He ran a guardian if our tournament. He was afk for the first half of every game. When he came back he immediately ran to the other teams spawn and talked trash in /say chat. He refuses to use voice chat and talks in all caps only in /say.

Luckily we still managed to win the first two games with this guy. The third map, he just raged in /say chat and then left the game. He told us he had reported us for hacking and then blocked us.

This guy is a joke.

Im having this exact same problem. I was just playing the game 10 minutes ago too with no problems.

sPvP is not dead.

evilapprentice.6379:

Fellknight.4820

Lemme get this straight but if a theif has a 10% run speed signet with a swiftness active ability something the necro, elementalist and ranger would kill for you would suddenly suck lol.

And don’t lie every theif would slot it.

So with Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadow’s, Blinding powder, and cloak and dagger at your disposal you couldn’t possibly escape.

And with Steal, Heartseeker, Death Blossom, and Inf.Strike at your disposal you cant get right up on someone.

Cmon I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Guys guys, I’m ashamed here. We all somehow forgot that when a thief escapes death, said thief has won the fight. Every game currently being DM style, when you don’t kill a thief, he wins. It’s not as though we’re playing in a capture point environment, which would value chasing your target away from the cap point or slowing them down en route to said points, denying their team nodes.

We also forget that thief has some of the BEST base HP and armor – why do they need all those gap closers when they’re so tough? ALSO, you can’t even hit them when they’re stealth! its 3 seconds of invincibility that they can spam! How could ANet possibly launch the game with the class in this state? It’s unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. I can’t believe it.
[/sarcasm]

Can you believe it?

I like this idea.

Two things that can be done to give others classes a chance against shatter mesmer and backstab thief: Increases the cooldown on illusionary leap and make it so you can’t precast cloak and dagger then steal.

Sanis.1096:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOlBX14Ei50

you might wanna check auron… best thief out there

This thief plays very strangely. He uses dual pistols as his second weapon set and has some strange utilities. He also uses death blossom a lot when he clearly has no condition damage and when there is nothing to dodge. Plus, he is fighting backpedaling pugs like that warrior towards the end.

So, I can’t really say he is good until I see him play in tPvP against good players. But yea………dual pistols.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Payneful.7934:

Blazer obviously doesn’t do much pvp. This bug will go soon, I’m sure of it.

What unlimited block are you talking about? Aegis and block on heal are working as intented, stop crying, learn what your opponent’s ability do.

I don’t know how you don’t know about the block bug. A guardian will use mace 3 and immediately attack something and will then block everything for the next 5 seconds.

Played a 5 thief team yesterday, won 500-100.

Played a 5 mesmer team a while back, same score.

Blazer obviously doesn’t do much pvp. This bug will go soon, I’m sure of it.

There are very few quality teams in NA who run triple bunker (honestly I don’t even know of any). My team (Pancakes to Celebrate) runs a balanced comp with only one bunker on one map. For the past couple weeks we have been undefeated against NA teams: Team Legacy, Last Resort, Curse, Manner Please, Paradigm NA, We Go Outside Alot, Gun Gaming, PZ, ALFA, and WIN.

When playing these teams, we have come across all kinds of set ups, but still manage to win with our comp. The primary thing i notice though is a lot of these teams like to run double guardian. Sometimes the guardians are both bunker and sometimes one is bunker and the other is dps.

The point is, three bunkers is not a strong comp.

Thief is very close to being balanced. The only thing left to do is make it so you can’t pre-cast cloak and dagger and pistolwhip and then steal.

The death blossom build is absolutely horrible. I used to play it a lot and it’s stupidly easy to counter.

Thief is very noob friendly because it’s easy to kill players with. But thief is hard to actually be good at. There are only a handful of good thieves out there. The rest are fotm thieves.

Too be good at thief you have to have good positioning (most important), good timing (with abilities and dodges), know how to play mind games, know what each combo field and finisher does (very important), and know what every class can do and what their abilities look like (as all good players should know).

Kryshade.6075:

Stay out of sPVP! It’s nothing but a zerg fest and is exactly where all the insta-gib happens that people complain about. It’s great for trying out builds but other than that it will just start to aggravate you.

If you really want to experience the GW2 PVP then you need to join tPVP. Now, if you single join and you aren’t using VOIP then expect to get destroyed by a team that is. It takes very little effort to find 5 people to play with. Understand that VOIP is pretty much essential if you want to do well.

Expect to get owned at first. My guild {AIM} is honestly one of the better PVP guilds I’ve come across. We win 90% of our matches but it wasn’t always that way. We got ROFLSTOMPED in the beginning and it took a few weeks for us to really start to gel together. Now though it’s a completely different story. We work well together, we have a blast and we don’t run what people consider all the OP classes.

I can’t remember the last time anyone was insta-gibbed by a thief or we couldn’t get a bunker off a point. I feel like 99% of the complaints I see on the forums are from bad players getting destroyed in sPVP. When you are in a horde of 9 people guess what’s gonna happen? You’re going to get your kitten whooped. I personally don’t find it much fun and try to stay away from it.

If you’re one of these people that whine about thief DPS, guardian survivability, mesmer moa’s, necro conditions, engi knockbacks, elementalist’s kiting etc then I highly recommend you find some friends, start practicing tournaments, don’t cry when you get stomped and keep on trying. I think you’ll find that you start to agree with the people that say they feel like this game is pretty well balanced overall (it is) and you just might start having a bit more fun then the mass zerg horde that is sPVP.

My team, Pancakes to Celebrate [PTC], is always looking for good teams to play. Send me a whisper in game and we can sync! Unless you’re EU.

Pancakes to Celebrate

The problem with this backstab build that baddie thieves are running, is that it’s usefulness decreases dramatically after their initial burst. If you saw in that video, the thief was 30/30/0/0/10. He is all glass and has no mobility.

Another thing. It is completely obvious when they are going to do their burst because they first have to either cast or have already used basilisk venom which you can see on their buff bar. At this point you know that their next attack is going to be an attempted insta-gib. This allows you to be ready to block or dodge their next attack. After that it’s easy.

Is your team EU, because I’ve never seen you guys in tournaments.

You should not be looking at a player’s armor and and weapons to find out what kind of class they are. Their class icon is next to their health bar.

This has no effect in tPvP. I’m the only asura on my team and usually one of the first to get focused. Good teams will target high priority targets, not bigger targets.

Necro is really good against thief. I play both classes. You can plague signet the fear they cast on you back to them then stack them with conditions then fear again. Stack with conditions again. If they are able to get you in a pistol whip or stun use DS and fear, then stack more conditions. Use chill and cripple to slow them down. If you are a well necro, then you have it even easier.

I’m 39 atm. I don’t imagine anyone being 50 yet as it takes 45k rank points to get a level starting at 39.

Definitely Mesmers > Guardians > Rangers.

Mesmers can kite you around LOS while their phantasm do the work for them. They will then stealth if you actually are able to start doing damage to them Shatter mesmers take a bit more skill but are still just as powerful. Blurred Frenzy makes pistol whip look horrible because not only does it do a lot of damage but the mesmer is completely immune while using it and can pivot in place to follow you if you move around the mesmer. So if you get caught in the immobilize from illusionary leap without an immobilize break, prepare to have over half your health taken away in one combo.

Just yesterday I decided to try guardian. I had a guildmate give me a build that he wanted to test out. I then go into a game and realized just how faceroll guardian is. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing yet I was destroying other players without regards to what I doing or where I was standing. I realized that guardian has so many passives that basically do the work for the player and this in combination with how powerful the passives were allowed me to run into zergs and destroy people.

Not sure why there aren’t a lot of complaints about rangers. They are extremely powerful because they have the most powerful ability in the game: crossfire. Basically what a power shortbow ranger will do is spam crossfire and quickness from their utility from pet swap. If you actually start to do damage do him he will use “protect me” to mitigate damage. If you are somehow not down by this point, he will use signet of stone for even more invulnerability. But basically, a shortbow ranger’s crossfire spam can take someone down 100 to 0 in around 5 seconds. And this is from max range.

Your necro build is absolutely horrible. And why oh why oh why oh why would you ever for one second anywhere in this universe use assassin’s signet with pistol whip.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Payneful.7934:

This was a big buff to my condition build. I barely spend that much time in DS anyway. I use my DS abilities quick and get out. If a HB war or pistol whip thief attacks, i instantly enter DS and fear. Don’t need a full bar of life force to avoid that damage.

Also, stack some conditions on an opponent and use scepter 3 to get an adequate amount of life force. Not hard.

Ya try playing tpvp were you start each game with 0 life force than say its not hard.

I do it all the time. It’s easy. Tpvp is the only thing I play in this game. Honestly I don’t even need death shroud to get a kill.

This was a big buff to my condition build. I barely spend that much time in DS anyway. I use my DS abilities quick and get out. If a HB war or pistol whip thief attacks, i instantly enter DS and fear. Don’t need a full bar of life force to avoid that damage.

Also, stack some conditions on an opponent and use scepter 3 to get an adequate amount of life force. Not hard.

Five good players in any profession can beat pug groups in tournaments. You could have 5 thieves who are good players all running sword/dagger builds and still win.

Jae.5138:

1. sound argument. i accept that
2. i do use valkyrie’s amulet. hence the 14k hp
3. elemental is hardly a protection against a thief. especially if the guild is used

phantaram gets oneshot during quickness pwhip too.

you argue that if mist form is up, quickness pwhip is averted. but what if it’s not up?

look at these following cases:

1. mist walk not up, quickness not up => sound duel
2. mist walk not up, quickness up => death in one 5 seconds by thief
3. mist walk up, quicknessnot up => sound duel
4. mist walk up, quickness not up => again, sound duel

i believe that in no situation should an elementalist get killed without being able to lift a finger against another.

You mentioned phantaram. He runs one stun breaker: mist form. Again, because he has to run damage heavy (and heal heavy) at the cost of low hp, and no stun breaker to be viable.

I’ll tell you what’s probably going to happen to thieves that will make pistol whip not so bad. In order for a thief to land pistol whip (because it’s incredibly hard other wise) they first pre-cast pistol whip and towards the end of the castbar they use steal which teleports them to their target and continues the pistol whip that they precast. I think Anet is going to change that so that thieves will have to use steal (or infiltrator’s strike) first to get to their target then start casting pistolwhip. This gives whoever it is they are attacking time to dodge roll away.

Another thing. When a thief uses haste all of their endurance is drained and they cant regen endurance for a period of time. At this point the thief is pretty much helpless, allowing you to updraft or earth 4 easily.

1. No problem. You seem to be assuming all of the thieves cooldowns are up, so then you have to assume the ele’s are too. Thief uses hasted pistol whip…..ele uses mist form…..crisis averted. If the fight lasts for another minute, both of you are doing something wrong.

2. Frost armor is the most amazing kiting ability ele’s have. With that on, the thief will not be bashing on your from behind. And yes, with a valkyrie’s amulet, you will heal yourself to full in water attunement.

4. Valkyrie’s amulet

5. Where’s your elemental?

Have you ever seen phantaram play his ele? He only has around 13k HP, but he can soak up and heal so much damage and at the same time he does a lot of damage. And yes, every time he goes to water attunement he heals to full. Check out his build if you haven’t already.

Jae.5138:

Payneful.7934:

Jae.5138:

they did hit me with full hasted pwhip.

quickness has 45 second cd? big kittening deal. the problem isn’t the cd. no class should be able to kill another by spamming one button every 45 seconds.

Haste has a 60 second cooldown, not 45. And like i said. Mist form for a hasted a pistol whip.

1. mist form has longer cd

2. by the time you react with your mist form, you lost a lot of hp already. (and don’t give me bull kitten about how you can react fast enough to avoid any damage. that’s only possible if you react to other random stuns as well with mist form.)

3. if the first pwhip engage fails, the thief simply pops guild of thieves to stall time until next quickness pwhip

1. You just said in your previous post that mist form is a 60 sec cooldown.

2. Eles can just heal to full in water attunment, then switch back to air/fire, and destroy the thief.

3. Thieves guild has a 3 minute cooldown and a very long cast time. Long enough to interrupt because of how obvious the animation is. You walk over to them and updraft them then proceed to destroy them.

Jae.5138:

they did hit me with full hasted pwhip.

quickness has 45 second cd? big kittening deal. the problem isn’t the cd. no class should be able to kill another by spamming one button every 45 seconds.

Haste has a 60 second cooldown, not 45. And like i said. Mist form for a hasted a pistol whip.