Guild Wars 2

Jae.5138:

60 sec cd defence against a spammable number 2. makes sense

any more kitten rebuttals, please?

If they hit you with a full unhasted pistol whip, then it’s not your class that’s the problem, it’s your gaming skill.

Jae.5138:

roll an elementalist and tell me how to get out of pwhip plz

Mist form

Khronus.8370:

And if you do need time to talk strategy, you probably are not going to win the game because you aren’t good. Strats are set in place and require on the ball decisions to overcome changes. the only strat you should go over in the 30 seconds should be “ok they have class X, let’s do this differently” and go.

You fail to realize that everyone has the same start time, keep the competitive feeling alive and shorten it.

When my team goes up against good teams like Ac, team paradigm, team legacy, iO, etc. , you have to come up with a good strategy to win. It’s also good to change up your strategy against that particular team as well to hopefully knock them off balance. And yes, we win a lot of these games, not all, but a lot. My team must be bad right?

Derps.7421:

^really? rangers are under-powered? Crossfire is one of the most BS skills in this game. When its combined with haste its like a fricking machine gun that apply 10-25 stacks of bleeds. But it only applies if your at the side or behind!!!! NO acaully as long as your not directly infront of them it applies bleeds. Rangers are one of the best pvp classes at them moment

I don’t think you actually read anything past “I feel sorry for rangers”

You barely win against a team that is most likely a pug and decide to show that off?

When my team goes up against a team we know is good, we need at least 3 minutes to talk over the strategy.

shrewd.5319:

Only mesmers and guardians need massive nerfs. All other classes are fine.

You are almost right here. Mesmers and guardians don’t need massive nerfs. The problem is phantasms and retaliation.

The thing I’m seeing now is a mesmer in a phantasm build will spawn two phantasms from behind LOS to attack you (these days, greatsword and sword/pistol are used). If you are glass like the mesmer is, then half your health will instantly be gone because a phantasm is initially invisible to you when they are performing their first attack making it impossible to dodge. After this, all the mesmer has to do is stealth and hide behind LOS while summoning more phantasms. If the mesmer sees that you are far enough away from him or are attacking his phantasms, he will sit at max range attacking you with his greatsword until you target him again. Then he’ll just LOS, stealth and/or run away from you while re-summoning phantasms.

It’s possible for 2 or 3 guardians to sit on each other with infinite retaliation and do 550-800 damage passively with every strike to anyone that attacks them. Since guardians are so defensive they can easily take all the damage with all the protection and aegis they get. This, in addition to the large amount of damage guardians can already do with burns and direct damage attacks puts guardians over the top when they have such high survivability. Also whoever designed the spirit hammer should be shot.

Lastly, I feel sorry for rangers. Crossfire is probably the best ability in the game right now and any ranger build that doesn’t use crossfire as its main damaging ability is completely inferior to ones that do. So rangers are forced to press their “1” button once followed by quickness and a pet swap. If their opponent even thinks about trying to do damage to them, they have protect me and signet of stone to go invuln for 12 seconds while the game mindlessly auto attacks with crossfire for them. Long story short: buff greatword. All rangers which they could use it.

shrewd.5319:

The timer indeed needs to be 30 seconds. And more importantly, players should be unable to change their skills, traits, utilities, weapons, armor, profession, etc during the FULL duration of the tournament. Even when in the mists waiting to advance to the next phase.

Encourage some skill, arenanet.

I disagree with this. I think it takes more skill to know what utilities and amulets to use for a particular situation and to switch them out quickly in between fights.

LanceHavenbay.2067:

Payneful.7934:

A stun break shouldn’t be required any more than a skill to grant might. Or swiftness. Or anything else, for that matter. That is my point.

Yesyesyes!!! I do not carry stun break either. I also feel like it is just… bad… to force someone to use a slot specifically for stun break. If you are going to make it such a requirement, at least give us another slot on our skill-bar specifically for breaking stun…

Even with 8 skills in Guild Wars 1, you have ways to prevent crowd control effectively without completely wasting your slot. That same skill could be used to block, etc.

In Guild Wars 2, that is no longer true.

Nice fake quote. Foo to you sir. Quaggan signing out

That’s why you sync with good teams.

denyitbattle.2609:

Well done guys…

Its almost like, the very thing that people are constantly complaining about being unbalanced and OP in these forums, in reality wouldn’t be very competitive against a well-rounded team.

If mesmers and thieves were so above and beyond the other classes to merit the title “unbalanced”, you’d think that all the top competitive guilds would be running comps similar to the one I stated in the OP. Instead you find very varied and balanced comps that rely much more on player skill and team coordination while ensuring you fill the basic roles of cnd mitigation, CC, and mobility.

I’ve been following the competitive teams since BWE 1 just to see what the high-end PvP would look like, and I have never gotten the impression that thieves or mesmers were too good; thieves are actually under-utilized at present and people are starting to discovering that a really good ele build/play is better at taking and defending trebs than a mesmer (no repair portals though =/). I’ll admit that guardians have always been important, and even I felt they might be a little too strong at what they do, but I have still yet to see a double guard comp at the high-end (that might change once money comes into play).

Its amazing to me how many people are so convinced of the games unforgivable unbalance based on their experiences from 8v8 pub rolls with no coordination in comp, communication, or strategy. It seems like people are just getting to the point that they have graduated from standing still and button-mashing to frantically moving around and button-mashing and so expect it be really good now that they “get the game”.

Hopefully when we get the full complement of “esport-like” PvP tools, it will help to clear up the seemingly large misunderstanding about balance and skill in the game.

Until then, maybe these will help:
Paradigm vs Legacy Part 1- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDjwKgIf4Y&feature=plcp
Paradigm vs Legacy Part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0RcFQk2-us&feature=plcp

Right now in “high end” pvp, you have to have a guardian no matter what. Lately, at least one mesmer is required for portal, time warp, and null field.

Also, your team needs to have a thief. Shadow refuge is invaluable for rezzing, choking gas is a necessity to stop rezzes, and cluster shot allows for mass aoe and blast combo finisher effects like area retaliation. Thieves can easily insta-gib any squishy in a team fight. Thieves also have the best mobility in the game. Plus thieves have so many evades that even if they have 14k hp and no toughness, they can still tank an entire team for about 10 seconds. No other profession can tank an entire team for that long as glass.

If your team is not running at least two of these three classes, your team is at a disadvantage. That is a problem.

Classes like engi, ele, ranger, and necro don’t have abilities that are so necessary that you have to have the class on your team.

My ideal team would be:
Tanky guardian
Tanky hammer warrior
Glass Mesmer
2x glass thief (1 death blossom, 1 pistol whip)

How about 2 power shortbow and 2 condition shortbow rangers with signet of stone and protect me, focusing down targets with a necro to get rid of any retaliation buffs.

Zyrusticae.7245:

Payneful.7934:

Pistol whip and HB is extremely useful in “higher tier play”. You just have to know when to use them.

With quickness, yes. Without quickness… hell no. With the combination of a self-root AND melee range? Good luck with that!

The idea is to only switch to your sword when you have quickness up. Otherwise you are full time short bow.

Zyrusticae.7245:

Wolfe.3097:

the thief spell haste (or quickness in general) does need looking at

pistol whip without quickness tho imo is fine, most id suggest is remove the stun and remove the self root

I agree here. Pistol whip without quickness is not a problem; and if the stun was removed (or changed into an interrupt) and the self-root removed it would actually require some modicum of skill to use in sticking to the target.

Actually, I think none of the attacks should be self-rooting; this includes warrior’s hundred-blades. Atm they’re just pure pub-stomp abilities; they have no use in higher-tier play where everyone’s packing a stun break/condition removal of some kind (and have even less use without quickness).

Pistol whip and HB is extremely useful in “higher tier play”. You just have to know when to use them.

Detahmaio.2014:

Because most of the time a thief is gonna do 4 things

Unload spam
Heartseeker spam
5—>1 on dagger dagger.
pistol whip spam

the only time it’s different is if they are near death which means auto stealth or heal spell to stealth.

Every other class almost has to implement 4-5 other buttons to get the job done. I’ve yet to see a thief with a sword or a shortbow in Spvp and in WvW thieves only use shortbow for the teleport shot.

I really never understood why players think that all thieves still just spam the same ability over and over. Doing that is not effective at all.

Heart seeker spam doesn’t do that much damage above 25% health. You’re better off using your shortbow first for the poison field, cluster shot, and trickshot with a couple disabling shots to avoid any initial burst, then switch weapons, cloak and dagger + steal into a backstab if you can land it, then finally when they are low health should you use heartseeker for the finishing blow. No where in that rotation was an ability spammed.

No good player spams pistol whip ever. Every 60 seconds you get haste which allows you to use 2 back to back hasted pistol whips. Trying to hit someone with an unhasted pistol whip is incredibly difficult on a good player. You’re basically just going to make yourself look bad by pistol whipping air.

Unload is a terrible ability atm. The damage it does is mediocre for the length of the channel and its initiative cost. If you’re spamming this ability, you are doing your team a disservice.

Bottomline: Good thieves use every single one of their abilities on both their weapon sets. And btw, in my build I use shortbow 80% of the time.

I killed a player with shortbow and one pistol whip and he accused me of spamming heartseeker. No lie.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Pistol Whip does an incredible amount of damage. When hastened, they blow up players within 2 seconds, which is simply not enough time to react in a match. Given how frequently thieves can get their haste (every 30?ish seconds), it’s imbalaced in hot-join pvp.

This needs to be appropriately adjusted.

What class do you play?

Liav.7598:

Every 48 seconds when traited.

Also the only version of utility Quickness that can have its negative effects mitigated entirely, without sacrificing too much.

Immunity on movement impairing forms of CC and we’re golden. There’s no need for a class to be able to perma-stun you.

Stun breaks are useless against it when it’s a spammable ability.

Yes, I play a Thief.

Edit: To the guy above me: See my post. See your post. See why you’re wrong.

Stun breaks work extremely well against it and the fact that they can’t dodge leaves them wide open for anything. Also if thieves are following a player around and trying to spam pistol whip on them, they are doing it wrong.

Good players prepare for a thief using sword/pistol to use pistol whip; or a rifle engi to use net shot or overcharge shot (which leads into big burst), or a shortbow ranger to use quickness+crossfire spam; or a greatsword warrior to use bulls charge+frenzy+HB

Every stun break in the game has some other function as well. So it serves two purposes. For example, I’m a thief. I always have “roll for initiative”. Not only does it break me out of every CC in the game, but it gives me 6 initiative.

Another example is engi’s utility goggles. It’s a stun break and it gives fury.

Ever had a rifle warrior knock you down and burst you down before you get up?

What about a mesmer who stuns you then blurred frenzy+mind wracks you before you get out of the stun?

and believe me…. two hasted pistol whips do far more than 10k damage. If you don’t have a stun break, you will eat both of them.

Honestly, I’m wondering if most have you even played in tournaments. The only thing I’ll agree with is that necros need a little help and retaliation needs to be changed in some way. Eles are absolutely fine and anyone who says they are not are just not good at playing the class.

Also just because a backstabbing, heartseeker spamming thief works on unsuspecting players in hot join doesn’t mean it works in tournaments.

I used to think crossfire spamming rangers and phantasm mesmers were over powered until I learned how to counter them. All classes can be countered you just have to figure out how.