Guild Wars 2

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Quadox.7834:

think it might become way too strong with this change, but it would be funnnnn

It’s long been noted that quickness isn’t as strong on mes as on other classes, so I hardly think an extra second would tip it into OP territory at all.
And since it’s already weaker than chronophantasma, it’s more likely to just make it actually competitive.

its stronger than chronophantasma for pvp

Lol, ESL players literally 1v3ing on druid

think it might become way too strong with this change, but it would be funnnnn

Glov.5342:

As a necromancer, I am nearly crying.

BRB rolling a mesmer

Why? I’d go so far as to say well necro benefits much more

Yes because its a stunbreak

Wait, enlighten me on why anyone would possibly care about the name of an achivement? It isn’t even the title name! I haven’t gotten home to play yet, but If this is what people complain about i suppose HoT is pretty good!

TL;DR Pretty pleaseeeee let moto sell weapon designs again =)

At the time of SAB, i had no clue what moto weapon design i would choose- i didn’t want to do all that work again to get another skin, so i waited. Naturally i didn’t expect to have to wait half a lifetime to get a chance of buying them again.

I have had these sitting in my bank for a bit of time now
Ahem since December 2013 Ahem :
- King Toad Z-1
- King Toad Z-2
- King toad Z-3

Incredibly useless for almost 2 years now.

Would be super awesome if you could make these available to buy from moto, nothing more required. =)

Carighan.6758:

The original video for Veil shows the Mesmer hidden while inside it ala Shadow Refuge, no?

so, how about this approach:

Veil – 50s CD
Place a curtain of distorted vision, which lasts for 10 seconds. Anyone on the far side of the curtain cannot see anyone on the near side of the curtain.

That way the stealth is lasting, but you need to make sure that the curtain is actively in the LoS between you and the enemy to make your character “stealth”.

I don’t think they have the tech to do so, but this is legit the coolest stealth suggestion i have ever seen. Invisibility cloak material right here, my gawd.

trytonianYeti.4389:

What people fail to realize is that the other 2 light armored classes, cele signet necro and shatter Mesmer, beat dd eles.

Mesmer doesn’t beat DD ele.

Tealots.6095:

I’m confused why CS is called out and CI isn’t. If a Mesmer traits CI and not CS, a successful interrupt will still 1) Daze the opponent and 2) Immobilize + [X-Condition] the enemy (FYI the combination of daze and immob is effectively a stun) and 3) Grant the Mesmer 5 stacks of might + [X-Boon]. There is no ICD for this. It works with MoD, an F3 chain daze, a focus pull, a Chaos Storm, a greatsword push, a sword daze a pistol stun Mirror of Anguish, anything that you reflect that interrupts and, soon, Tides of Time and Gravity well. Sorry, I forgot Signet of Domination. Zero ICD.

Were I playing a glass class, I’d be far more afraid of being caught in any CI interrupt (with, say, Empowered Illusions) than I would be with CS. Bring a stun break or two, some blinds, some stability, some blocks, some friends and some LoS.

(Some of) the main reasons:

1: Baiting CI since it only triggers on interrupt is something that you can do.
2: It isn’t run very often
3: If i mentioned CI again I’m pretty sure the Mesmer forums would rally against me and I would get guillotined. Came pretty close last time!

Fay.2357:

Quadox.7834:

Feel free to support Confounding Suggestions as it is now, i don’t mind.
_____________________________________________________
But know that, by doing so, you are effectively supporting:

- Mesmer class being easier, lower skill cap, smaller gap between a decent Mesmer and an amazing Mesmer, mechanically.

- Limiting build choices by having one much, MUCH better trait out of three.

This entire post is utter garbage. Allow me to explain why, in detail.

Let me explain the concept of a skill cap, since that obviously was lost in translation somewhere. A skill cap is a theoretical upper limit on the influence of player skill on playing a class. This is a result of a huge number of factors, not any one change.

Every class in the game, by the simple fact of GW2 mechanics, has a monstrously high skill cap. No player in this game can even remotely claim to have reached or approached that point for any class. It is absolute lunacy to state that the small interaction of a trait lowers the theoretical upper limit that hasn’t ever been reached.

In addition, it doesn’t make a smaller gap between a good Mesmer and a great mesmer at all. It’s always been possible to land burst on a Mesmer through various means, CS just makes it slightly easier. The primary gauge of skill on a Mesmer is surviving to land the next burst, not actually landing it.

This is a good thing!

If every aspect of a class was obscenely difficult to do, there would be no reason to play the class at all (aka Mesmer for the majority of this game). All classes should have aspects that are easier; for players to start with, and aspects that are harder; for players to master.

Limiting build choices is, if possible, even less coherent of an argument than the skill cap one. CS is a good trait. It is better than the other options at its level. However, did you ever consider that this disparity is caused by the fact that the other options are garbage-tier? …obviously not.

So i guess the entire thread turned into a sandbox of 5-year olds.

Every class in the game, by the simple fact of GW2 mechanics, has a monstrously high skill cap.

True. If we are being picky, almost everything has an infinite skillcap. Tic Tac Toe is one of the few games where i can actually see the skillcap before me. Back on topic. Rereading my post i see that a much more effective and accurate way to describe the issue is that Confounding Suggestions simply makes the game easy. No need for terms such as skill cap or skill floor this time. Something that gives the Mesmer a way to set up a burst that doesn’t require timing, reactions or anything else, simply makes Mesmer much easier to play and much more frustrating to play against. Same goes for other low-skill traits such as PU. Frustrating to fight and super easy to play.

Bursting is not only “slightly easier” because of CS, the difference is huge, and it absolutely makes a bad and impatient Mesmer still be able to burst easily. You mention “other ways” to land bursts. Assuming no CC help from teammates, the only other mechanic that essentially gives Mesmer a “free” burst is stealth- something that also lacks counterplay in this game (Let’s not discuss this here).

Feel free to support Confounding Suggestions as it is now, i don’t mind.
_____________________________________________________
But know that, by doing so, you are effectively supporting:

- Mesmer class being easier, lower skill cap, smaller gap between a decent Mesmer and an amazing Mesmer, mechanically.

- Limiting build choices by having one much, MUCH better trait out of three.

I don’t like confounding suggestions (it is actually the main reason i don’t play anymore), but i do not want another ICD raise and neither do i think we need yet another interrupt trait. Honestly, i would very much prefer if the trait was just re-imagined completely. An increased ICD would simply make the trait just as skill-less but with a slightly longer wait.

Also, do NOT make it 50% chance again, RNG hard CC is absolutely ridiculously bad for the game.

A thief is not an assassin

Kageseigi.2150:

Quadox.7834:

They conclude that thief is weak because it is weak at the things they want to do (1v1, teamfight?).

I would define it as “weak” because it is very fragile and doesn’t have the damage output as other professions do. So it is weak both defensively and offensively.

Yes, it is very mobile, but it can be mobile and weak simultaneously.

And while speed is a “stregnth,” being fast does not make the Thief “strong.” It simply makes it fast.

So you think thief is weak because of low damage output/low survivability outside of stealth?

You agree Thief is strong in the metagame on a team, facing other teams?

Mayday! My sarcasm detector appears to be failing again! Over to you, captain.

Ithilwen.1529:

Buff ranger, kitten Mesmer into the ground. This has been the pattern for years now.

My sarcasm detector appears to be non-functional. Over.

Nocta.5274:

Thief is like top4 in pvp. Stop saying we’re weak because you dislike what Thief’s role is.

This is pretty accurate. While i don’t particularly like the thief meta as it is, this is generally what i hear from many people. They conclude that thief is weak because it is weak at the things they want to do (1v1, teamfight?).

Daishi.6027:

I thought damage was a little high before, but that was before sigil nerfs.

With the sigil nerfs I feel it is a little to low now, and the game never got to see any longevity of the middle ground.

I think it should at least added to “Imagined Burden” since it would disallow for the use with “Mental Anguish” or “Power block” which could be considered an aspect of it’s balance, as well as making the less popular trait more appealing.

Actually a pretty good idea. That trait is currently under performing and needs a little something something to compete with power block/ mind wrack dmg.

Jurica.1742:

To the OP -> Don’t play PU. No mesmer that actually likes the class for what it is and played it pre patch does. I hate playing PU and only did so in pugquest for 1 game yesterday as we had no thief and didnt know if we would need the stealth. I play full zerk no vamp runes and illusions or the occasional CI (I also always run staff) and I do perfectly fine in soloq. Don’t shelf this wonderful skillful class just because of 1 skilless build that exists which you don’t really have to play. Thats like shelfing mesmer when you enjoyed it because PU condi existed.

This is sort of true and i do run this build myself, but the point of the PvP forums is to provide reasonable suggestions that will improve game balance and feel.

So, to the people who want mesmer to be on the easier side/are happy with it as it is, you should definitely play Chaos traitline or Inspiration traitline (with duelling and domination). There you will find a good burst build that is still not too hard to play if you prefer it not to be. To the mesmers who want a more difficult but more rewarding build, you should choose the Illusions traitline. This is the beauty of Guild Wars 2, we have choices- we don’t have to argue.

The only problem left is therefore the fact that the Illusions trait-line currently doesn’t offer enough reward even though the build is much harder to pull off. A number of things can be done about this. I don’t know what would work best, but i had this idea:

Move Blinding Dissipation to the Illusions Trait line. The Illusions line has always been about shatters, much more so than dueling. We have “Illusionary Retribution”, “Master of Fragmentation”, “Shattered Strength”, “Master of Misdirection”, “Maim the Disillusioned”, you name it. In fact, Blinding Dissipation makes much more sense thematically and in terms of balance in the Illusions-traitline. Not only is illusions the trait-line for shatter traits, it is also the trait-line for conditions. Just look at how well Blinding Dissipation synergizes with Ineptitude for example. I am not sure exactly where you would place it, but i do think that there are multiple viable choices. Anyone has any thoughts?

Another idea is to simply add the extra bounce on mirror blade back as a trait in illusions- “Mirror Blade has one additional bounce”. In place of the 3% damage per illusion.

Something else you could do is move up Confounding suggestions to master tier. This forces the player to choose between it and Shattered Concentration- both amazing traits. A problem Mesmer has always had is that nothing competes with Boon-strip Shatters.

However the PU nerf should also help with this luckily.

Jekkt.6045:

Sykper.6583:

Jekkt.6045:

Sykper.6583:

Chokolata.1870:

What made DD Ele OP was the combined effort of damage and sustain. They decided to nerf the might stacking and damage part. They probably want it to remain a bruiser and a bunker but not dish out so much damage.

If you want a damage Ele, I suppose going for the scepter fresh air build is the way to go.

^^ This. Actually would be refreshing to see Fresh Air back in the meta once again.

fresh air was never meta. it would be refreshing to see it in the meta for the first time ever.

Huh? Could have sworn I saw it being run mid-2013, think it was around the Aetherblade Hideout in LA times…

…Blargh, I’ll just take your word for it and agree with the prospect of Fresh Air being in the Meta.

people tried to run it, one of them was zoose. it was terrible and suddenly there were no elementalists in any tournaments for around a year, 99% of queue matches were 0 eles in both teams and IF you played fresh air ele you got flamed for it. good old times /sarcasm

Sounds surprisingly alot like ranger!

Jurica.1742:

IMO CS is nowhere near OP. You basically have stun on diversion which is a 40s CD. By that logic necro ds 3 is super super super OP because its better than a stun and on a shorter cooldown. PU I agree with and Blinding Disippation I don’t. You basically have only 2 blinds. Mind wrack and CoF, using distort and diversion for blind is just stupid + you need to be close range. This all with PU is a bit over the top but once chrono becomes meta it will be needed for mesmer to function properly and everyone will see that CS and BD are not OP.
So CS and BD crying is invalid, PU crying I support.

Im scared of stating my opinion because of forum warriors (not you), but i think Confounding suggestions is not overpowered, rather it makes mesmer too ez. I think this is what OP meant as well, and other in this thread. (plsdon’tkillmepeople)

Holy kitten i can’t believe i only saw this thread now. OP’s description is so perfecttttttt. I feel like you must have read my mind when you made this thread. +111111111

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

The fact that d/d ele sustain was not touched is hilarious. They still will have perma vigor from water and Ring of fire even got a general buff. I guess we get to enjoy another 6 months of double/triple d/d ele.

Let’s be fair, the blind spam from blinding ashes was a big part of cele ele survivability and it was slightly nerfed.

Rym.1469:

Druid in fact has AoE condi cleanse. A lot of it. Check out dem Seeds, not to mention low CD shouts+Soldier runes if you need more.

guard op

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Quadox.7834:

At the moment mesmers and thieves are WAY too similar.

no, mesmers have illusions, thieves do not. NOT similar.

They both do decent damage.

all professions can do decent damage if they trait / sPvP amulet for it.

They both stealth alot.

no. thieves have more access to stealth than mesmers.
thief can black power + heart seeker anytime for on demand stealth with virtually no recharge time. mesmers can NOT do that.

They both have team utility (stealth res and portal).

shadow refuge provides stealth for much longer, has a much shorter recharge time.

Thief should have good burst damage, stealth, chase-down potential, like it has.

thief always have that. what the kitten are you talking about?

Not mesmer, like it is now.

and who the kitten are you to dictate that? every profession should be able to have good burst damage if they trait / sPvP amulet for it.

Mesmer should be about amazing damage, great team utility, but with very low survivability as a trade-off.

you piece of kitten kitten. no profession should have low survivability. low survivability comes from choosing sPvP amulets without toughness vitality, not by gutting core profession traits.

The survivability from mesmer should stem from good positioning and confusion (not the condition), like it did in the past.

confusion, sure thing, if you make it such that all clones also have all the prepared mantras and signets that the real mesmer also have.

you said it yourself.
confusion.

how the kitten can the real mesmer confuse opponents if the clones do not have the same prepared mantras and un-activated signets?

fix that, then we can talk confusing players.

Ill post this as a placeholder and edit it later. Almost none of what you say has any point in response to my stance, I’ll explain later. I don’t think you explained your stance by the way? I guess you want to keep the 100% PU?

In the meanwhile, stop swearing and calling me “A piece of XX” to prove a point, it doesn’t work.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

The Druid is not going to replace Bunker Guardians. I explained it already in another thread, don’t really feel like double posting it. Long story short ~

• Druid has no party protections
• Druid has no big AoE CCs to stop stomps, secure stomps, defend itself in 2v1
• Druid has little to no STABILITY has no party STABILITY to secure/stop stomps
• Druid has no AoE party condi cleanse
• All of it’s healing is in Staff animations, which is easily interrupted, especially on a class that is going to have no peel, little to no stealth, little to no stability, LITTLE TO NO CONDI CLEANSE.

Seriously guys ^^
It won’t be able to stand on a point without being focused down 2v1 very easily.

Indeed, it looks more like a shoutbow to be honest, and even that, hm.

mistsim.2748:

how is it a mockery? guards and eles are the masters of boons. druids give no boons to anyone.

Exactly, i don’t know how strong druid will be (numbers can be tuned), but there is no reason to complain about another profession than one getting support options. That is what Guild Wars 2 was about from the start, allowing players to choose how to play on each class.

The preview PU nerf was absolutely 100 percent justified. In my opinion it should actually have been removed/changed completely.

At the moment mesmers and thieves are WAY too similar. They both do decent damage. They both stealth alot. They both have team utility (stealth res and portal). Thief should have good burst damage, stealth, chase-down potential, like it has. Not mesmer, like it is now. Mesmer should be about amazing damage, great team utility, but with very low survivability as a trade-off. The survivability from mesmer should stem from good positioning and confusion (not the condition), like it did in the past. At the moment, there is too little differentiation of thief and mesmer in the zerker role. This is mainly because mesmer doesn’t gain enough from the illusions traitline (about damage), and gains TOO much from the domination, duelling, chaos traitlines in combination.

Arctarius.2649:

So you are telling me, Dare Devils 1 EXTRA DODGE BAR…is our class mechanic to the druids avatar form, (which has 5 skills left side like death shroud AND 5 flip skill utilities on the right) Like Are you kidding me right now??
I am honestly kittened off, EVERY other class got an incredible addition to their class FOR FREE, our mechanic has been pushed into the GM traits as a choice as repeated countless times. The Dare Devil is in drastic need of a buff at this point. God help us.

To be fair, if we compare Ranger and possibly necro class mechanic change to ANY profession, they pale in comparison. We have for example chrono, while it is VERY strong, the new class mechanic essentially allows mesmer to use their baseline skills- twice. Kinda boring compared to for example the Avatar State on ranger. Same goes for Scrapper, whose profession mechanics is essentially a ranged interact key. Keep in mind, i am disregarding how strong they are here. In terms of quantity, ranger necro and ele got the long end of the stick while mesmer thief and engi got the short end.

Saying “EVERY other class got X” will not help. Dragon hunter doesn’t get their profession mechanic for free, for example. They have to trade off their current virtues. Same with necro. Anet could probably replace steal with a toggle for the new dodges and make new grandmaster traits, but i would expect many many thieves would not be very happy about losing steal.

TL;DR
In quantity, thief, mesmer and engineer got the short end of the stick (thief got +1 dodge, mesmer got to use all skills twice, engi got a ranged interact key).

At the same time, necro and guardian has to trade-off their current profession mechanic to gain access to the new one. Only ranger, ele, and warrior gets new tools to use that don’t replace any of the current abilities.

In terms of the quantity of new abilities, stop acting like thief is in another tier of bad.

Amante.8109:

A 20% buff will barely make a difference. Vital Shot needs a faster attack speed at the least, and Body Shot needs to be redesigned into something worth using.

I hope there’s a lot more in Tuesday’s patch than the tidbits we were given.

Pretty sure he said “At least 20%”, which makes me believe that some skills or some skill will get more. I don’t think they will add Ricochet in, though

Oh no what horrible thief nerfs! (Oh wait, nothing was actually nerfed on thief)

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Reaper will hardly be abble to follow the Staff Mes/GS Druit duo I think, if they have to rotate (and they will have to eventually after they kitten (reap?) everyone)

Mesmer/Thief duo all the way ! Bring back 2013 meta.

Thief/Mes duo is what people use now? Bring back 2015 meta!

Definitely no overnerf. Undernerf, if anything, in my opinion. This trait should have stayed at one second or be changed entirely in functionality (prefer the latter). However, veil should be increased in duration or alternatively be changed to a smoke field in my opinion.

I agree, the mirror blade nerf should not have been done in my opinion. What people forget is that mesmer had this looong before specialization patch- when mesmer was regarded as one of the three weakest professions by most. Mesmer damage today is at its lowest point in a long time. The problem with new mesmer does NOT lie in the damage, which was there before the patch already. It lies in the survivability and ease of burst setup.

Think about it; compare the past to now.

Mesmer used to have very little defense and no condition removal. It also had very little burst setup in terms of CC, the only one being sword immob which could be dodged easily. The trade-off was that if an experienced mesmer played really well, he could be an asset to the team because of the damage spikes. It required skill to execute and even more so to survive.

Mesmer now has crazy survivability through PU and Blinding Dissipation that makes surviving on mesmer much, much easier than before specialization patch. There is very little room for a good mesmer to play better than a bad mesmer in this regard because it is so forgiving. Additionally, new mesmer has confounding suggestions. This makes setting up bursts (im thinking mirror blade mind wrack) a breeze. What would previously require coordination with the team, counting dodges, or timing, now requires a simple button press for the instant hard CC into burst. Again, there is very little difference between a dedicated mesmer who has played for thousands of hours and a mesmer who rolled the class last week and practiced bursts for an hour.

So, the new mesmer can be played with bad positioning and bad mechanics, and still survive and burst people easily. Therefore, people started to complain about the damage. This in turn lead to ANet nerfing mirror blade. While it works to limit some of the mesmer’s power, it cripples good players alot. The difference between a good/decent mesmer and a great mesmer on the Meta PU build, is now neglectable.

Sorry for the long post.

And phantaram had to pretend to be happy about it -.-

ghoust.8591:

Sekai.2987:

someone should tell lypion,alkore and rom that war isnt good in pvp and ranger is op because for reason no top team seems to know that..

First read what i write then start rage. Where did you find that i said ranger is op, its similar to warrior difrents is ranger is range class so stay near his team so can be fast revived and make big damage power ranger or condi ranger what ever you want. And any one who said that warrior is op need to prove that but not in videos where he have all time team where all are top players vs random solo regular players.

Hang on, guy! Interpretation! You said in the title that warrior is the worst class, implying that ranger is better. He simply responded that top players don’t seem to know since they are running warrior and never ranger.

Amante.8109:

You.

Use the reply function next time =)

That aside, why should i give proof when the person i replied to simply stated that “Even before June 23rd thief was UP”.

T raw.4658:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

T raw.4658:

You don’t have to give up anything IMHO. All the other classes get have their cake and eat it too.

Now we are staring at a whole slew of new broken reveal skills with HoT and you want to nerf mobility? No.

Things are about to get worse unless they get DD up to par (which i doubt)

Well, I don’t think that those classes should be able to have their cake and eat it too…thus I don’t think that we should have both either.

As for mobility, it’s not like we won’t be compensated. My main point is that with our mobility nerfed, we can be given more staying power in a fight. The reason DD isn’t as good as it could be is because they still have access to shortbow.

I’m not asking for another nerf to the class. That’s been done enough. I think we just need to rebalance our strengths. Since all of our eggs are in one basket, I am asking for some of those eggs to be removed and placed in another basket.

As it stands, most engineers will probably not use Stealth Gyro anyway (taken from Wolfineer’s review) because Supply Drop and Mortar Kit are just that much better. If they use Stealth Gyro, they’re going to be gimping themselves just to win harder against us…an obviously silly choice on their part.

Well its 3yrs later and they still some cake eating having mutha kitteners now aren’t they?

Thieves dont get compensated. Never has anet given a thief anything in return for taking something away. Seriously the class has been nerfed for 3yrs straight in just about every patch….they nerfed our choking gas because they gave a kittenty poison trait. That’s Anet’s compensation to thieves. Nerfed something to get Potent Poison which sounded great on paper didn’kitten Then you realized they nerfed poison damage to kitten thus making the trait worthless….and I forgot to mention they nerfed it in potency from +50% to +10% damage. Meanwhile ppl are stacking burns that tick for thousands of damage a second.

Besides we are thieves and they are supposed to be mobile + slippery. Not some watered down kittenty warrior who can’t take a hit. So we keep what we have and we get more mmkay.

O btw lately every time I queue and end up with some engies on the opposing team they have been running Lock On. Yes its not used in extremely high lvls of play but for 99.9% of the gaming population it is being ran. Gyro will be ran just for the simple fact of all the rage you can induce while running it.

You are so negative it seriously hurts to read your post. How can you say that “Thieves dont get compensated”. Did you play the game when thief recieved a 33% baseline boost to initiative regeneration to compensate for the nerfs to initiative generation traits?

Amante.8109:

Care to offer any supporting evidence, or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Who are you talking to?

T raw.4658:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

T raw.4658:

Your whole argument fails and reeks of bias and ignorance on the subject matter.
give and take scenarios you like to spout on about.

As far as I can tell, yours does as well. I know that thief isn’t in the best place right now, and I know that other classes are not terribly well balanced either, but that is not an excuse for us to become just as overpowered. You want to be given something without compensation, and I understand the mentality behind that. Since every other class is doing so well, it is only fair for us to be brought up to their level right? The problem with this is that the issue with thief extends to much more than a simple number tweak. The CORE of our class puts us in the situation where we will either be completely overpowered at what we do, or completely useless.

Again, suppose ANet grants us our wishes and decides to revert all the nerfs to out class. What is thief then? Thief is a class where the skilled player can choose to only engage in favorable conditions, and disengage from all unfavorable ones. Is that balanced? Maybe that is what the thief flavor is supposed to be but in terms of game balance that is NOT fun to play against. If we are to become reasonable fighters, we’re going to have to give up something, and that something will probably have to be our ridiculous mobility. To keep our theme of mobility, I would like to see us become sprinters and travel very quickly across shorter distances, but fall behind, say, a warrior who I would consider a marathon runner. As it stand, we are currently both, which I feel is the main barrier to us getting buffs.

First you revert the nerfs to the defensive trait lines and thief is FAR from OP. Even before June 23rd thieves were UP.

Warriors already out pace thieves over long distances. So according to you no changes to thieves mobility is needed.

In today’s game my proposal will give thieves some sustain without making them OP. They will remain weaker 1v1 vs all other classes but hopefully gain the ability to skew the 1v1 odds to 40/60 or 30/70 instead of the insane up hill battle you have today

“Even before June 23rd thieves were UP. "

No they were not. Absolutely not.

Really glad to see someone trying to make a new team- good luck to you guys. Once you have a good team composition (generally 3 tankier players and 2 burst/roamers) you should learn matchups which can be done by for example asking on Forums or whispering top players. Then you learn rotating so that you create favourable matchups, for example you rotate an ele to contest a point vs a warrior. Once you know how to put the tankier players in the right places, you rotate the roamers (med, thief, burnguard). One common thing you can do with them is called a " +1 ". Which means that you rotate thief or mesmer into a fight to end the fight quickly and kill enemy players. There are more advanced stratergies such as mesmer portal rotations or decapping with thief, but this is the gist of it. Of course mechanical skill plays a certain role but in this meta, mechanical skill is not as important as rotations/teamplay.

Zakka.2153:

I’d much rather them just forget stealth all together and make us more mobile fighters. Similar to how assassins worked in the original guildwars.

So much this. Stealth is very overpowered in this game- it was badly implemented right from the get-go

style.6173:

Amante.8109:

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

This ^^. The rest of the arguments in this thread miss the point. Shortbow #5 is the only thing that keeps thief from junk tier. It also only works in a well coordinated team. In any other game mode, play a different class.

Shortbow 5 and shadow arts stealth resses.

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

To be clear; I’m talking about stealth for the team, and even if the mesmer takes the elite and Prismatic Understanding, the stealth from refuge and the smoke-field is way beyond that.

thief has no portal, no aoe invul

This is not usually how arguments work. Powerbottom said that thief is so strong in teams because of stealth (for resses and whatnot) and mobility. You argued that mesmer has more stealth than thief. Powerbottom replied that, to the team, thief has much more stealth than mesmer (assuming meta builds). For some unknown reason, you decided to then bring in portal and aoe invuln, which has nothing to do with powerbottoms original post. This just doesn’t make any sense. Besides, a mesmer can not bring both high stealth and aoe invuln which trivializes your point even more. Thief has team stealth- it is one of the reaons why thief is important for teams, especially in combination with shadow arts which makes thief a good resser.

Kocoff.7582:

Aenesthesia.1697:

Daendur.2357:

there isn’t a skill that prevents a warrior’s eviscerate

Hello, my name is DODGE.

The problem with stealth is that there is little to no counter to it. Reveal will provide a hard counter (too hard, by the looks of it) and, of course, thieves will have to be completely rebalanced to take this into account. Otherwise, it will be seriously nerfing thieves.

But look on the bright side of life, this will seriously kitten Mesmers

Actually, Daendur is right. There is no skill that prevents the use of a Warrior’s Eviscerate. Dodge is something you use when Eviscerate has been used and is coming at you.

The only thing that could prevent the use of Eviscerate would be a stun, but this pales in comparison to preventing the use of Backstab.

Holy christ, you understood exactly what he meant. Eviscerate already has 20000 more ways to counter.

Sagat.3285:

Babylon.8972:

Yeah, its very sad thiefs cant be anymore class with no counterplay. Year ago thieves can disengage with stealth any fight they wanted, they could reset fight with stealth whenever they wanted, they were allowed to stay invisible for 20 seconds and wait all cd’s recharged. Its not anymore possible and its very healthy change for pvp balance

In advance don’t bother with this guy it’s not worth it.

Explain why.

Cynz.9437:

Doubt it…. it needs dmg mitigation mechanics… Atm we are getting carried by vamp rune safe net but w/o it the class is simply unplayable in pvp.

Anet won’t nerf other classes, so thief generally needs some defensive passives… as much as it is cringeworthy….. There is no point to roleplay high skilled thief when everyone else is overloaded with passives. After all we do pvp to win and not feed enemies. Right now thief design is to feed enemies kills. Period. Crappy design, imo, but it is what Anet desired apprently.

Doesn’t mean it should stay that way. One of my suggestion was to introduce “cheat death” mechanic which will have long ICD and will bring thief to 10%? HP by attack which otherwise would have killed thief.

Also, we need protection and more condi removal.

Thief doesn’t need more passive survivability through procs or invulns, some of the other classes need LESS of it. Raising HP pool is also stupid because it doesn’t promote skilled play at all. Protection doesn’t really suit thieves, but maybe. As it stands, in my opinion, shadow arts needs some change. Some traits should probably be added there that gives defense outside of stealth. Acrobatics is in the same situation really- it also needs changes and removed passives (hard to catch and don’t stop). You have to remember that in a team, thief is SO important, but mostly because of stealth and mobility not necessarily combat effectiveness.

sinject.4607:

all thief needs is a small buff or so while seeing:

• elementalist heavily nerfed
• necro slightly nerfed
• mesmer even more slightly nerfed (very little needs to be done with them)
• ranger’s Beastly Warden fixed and also given slight counterplay
• elixir engineer getting toned down

elementalist is self-explanatory at this point. there’s so much wrong with it you can start almost anywhere and bring a valid argument to have whatever it is you choose get nerfed.

necro is bad as well, not as bad, but definitely a problem. celestial necro is essentially a not-as-mobile celestial ele in terms of being faceroll-strong against both power and condition specs. MM necro needs to be toned down as well a la turret engie. nobody appreciates AI being viable especially when it works unfairly well against unarguably harder to play specs. turret engie being axed out of the meta was one of the best things to ever happen to pvp, and nearly nobody will disagree with that. there should be no difference when it comes to MM necro.

mesmer could see mindwrack damage get nerfed and a slight nerf to PU. that’s it.

Beastly Warden is one of the most obnoxious things in the game and was banned from the upcoming 1v1 tournament for good reason. It’s broken usage (going through evades/blocks/blinds/invulns) of course makes it unbearably awful to play against but even still, without any counterplay it’ll be too strong of a mechanic regardless of it being fixed. It’s so strong that the entirety of the ranger meta is shaped around it.

elixir engineer will probably be one of the new meta-dominating builds once we see ele/necro/mesmer/burn damage (btw, burn itself isnt broken it’s how certain professions can apply it) get nerfed. doesn’t seem like many people are aware of it now, but it’s ridiculously strong against anything that isn’t ele or necro and surprise surprise it runs celestial and can maintain 20+ stacks of might by itself.

i cannot stress enough how much of this can be solved simply by removing celestial. this amulet alone has done more damage to pvp over the past year and half (or so) than anything else i can possibly think of. it’s usage is completely binary. it either enables ridiculously strong builds or doesn’t do anything for a profession.

seeing celestial just removed entirely (or nerfed considerably) would do a lot of good for the professions i’ve mentioned using them, as it would help reduce the amount of profession-specific mechanics that need to be nerfed for the sake of celestial builds not to be overpowered.

If you did all this while buffing thief, thief would be absolute godmode. Ranger is currently in a worse position than thieves by far for anything other than 1v1. I can’t comment on all of the classes, but i will say this: mesmer does NOT need its damage nerfed. Since the mirror blade nerf mesmer has lower dps than it has ever had on a mesmer meta spec. Mesmer needs a nerf to its survivability (pu, blind spam) and POSSIBLY its burst setup- aka confounding suggestions.

Oh yeah i remember the leap backwards skill, why couldn’t we have gotten a dagger on chrono with that skill