Guild Wars 2

Victory.2879:

Dream on. Put it in the suggestions thread. If you haven’t realised by now:

If it’s not affecting pve/dungeons/fractals NOTHING will be done.

That’s not true. WvW doesn’t progress as fast as PVE content but PVE content is both simplier to design and requires far more attention to be sustainable. Imagine how long people would have stayed interested in PVE with only 4 maps, whereas WvW is still fun with 4 maps.

I know you feel slighted by the differences in content given, but there are very good reasons for it. You must keep things in perspective.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Awesome ideas there, but I’m with SchuMidas. Besides that, the current systems is yet another gold sink and you aren’t ever going to see Anet give up that idea.

Constant crafting wouldn’t be a gold sink done right?

Ascii.9726:

Added lack of rewards for players who do not damage a Tower Lord, but causes damage to the gate/ wall (i.e. Treb operators)

Added small rewards for repairing Gates and Walls.

Added make yaks invulnerable until yak escort guards have been killed.

Yay! I gotta say your list is really good. It had most everything I think WvW needs on it. Now I’m struggling to find anything not listed.

Dovgan.8605:

I would like to see escort guards be useful i. e. allow the escort the ability to revive the dolyak if just the yak and not the guards are killed, in it’s current form the guards vanish when the yak dies making it a useless upgrade(the yak makes it past most NPC threats 90% of the time with no guards, and the guards occasionally get busy and ignore their sworn duty.)

I completely agree with this.

It would help make the camp upgrades more worth it without making the camps harder to take and would help prevent 1-2 people being able to bomb a heavily defended yak. Defenders need the time to react.

Look at the bright side. That is quite literally the only thing Dragon’s Tooth is any good for in WvW.

I’ll fully support a change for this ability to need LOS, but they need to reduce the delay on it while they are tweaking it. If you get hit by Dragon’s Tooth currently then you are terrible.

I support this thread fully. Might I add another?

-Add event bonuses for repairing. Even if it was a small dolyak sized reward an event bonus for every 20 supply used seems fair. If you make this only achievable on a non-contested tower or keep boost it to a supply camp sized bonus.

-Give credit for tower/keep takes to the poor people running trebuchets or catapults. Significant wall damage should be enough to get credit.

-Give a separate event bonus for taking down an enemy wall. Again even a small dolyak sized bonus would do. This would obviously have some sort of limitation or cooldown to prevent farming reparing walls. But treb drivers should be rewarded too.

-Healing X% of somebodies life makes you elligible to receive credit for their WvW kills for a short time (30 seconds?). For example maybe if I heal 20% of a warriors life while he kills 2 peoples I get credit? By comparison I could do 5% dmg to each person and get credit under current system.

SchuMidas.4782:

every mind have a great idea, but Anet only accept 1, theirs

Don’t be so pessimistic. Anet does listen and they have made overall very good changes. There are a couple professions in an odd place right now but that is a natural result of balancing from time to time.

Adastra.9821:

snip

It’s a versatile build that can adjust to the circumstances. For small scale I use scepter/dagger, arcane shield, arcane blast, and signet of fire. Moderate to soft targets fall pretty quickly. Harder targets I build up to 16 stacks of vulnerability on and then maintain 6-10 while I burn them 1 out of every 3 seconds and maintain like 4+ stacks of bleeding on them. Not even using the best Earth or vulnerability runes yet (darn you alts).

I can switch weapons at will and do just fine, the precision/power/condition stat choice means I always hit very hard with everything. I stay alive via positioning, evasion, and arcane shielding.

My build is actually: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhImObkR2wjEAkCtEKIwQRGaIecRDWA;TMAjKOVM1A

For siege and large amounts of people I switch to staff. Utility skills include the pertinent combo at the moment drawn from Arcane Shield, Armor of Earth, Mist Form, Glyph of Storms, and Frost Bow. All depends on how “hot” things are. Likewise I have been known to flip a few major traits for extended sieges. I find for sieges that the bleeds and burns actually help out quite alot. The DOT damage numbers let me see easily what is siege and what is people, as well as where the people are moving to so I can aim followup AOE’s. The 10 points into water is just enough to let me patch people up a bit at need.

Is it your cookie cutter build? No, but then I almost always run unorthodox builds. I don’t feel like I’m just free food. There are certainly things out there that will eat me but overall I feel very capable and I only get stronger with allies.

Auesis.7301:

Ralathar.7236:

Ainween.1953:

Raine Akrune.8416:

Try switching your weapons and builds up. My thief was 100% UNTOUCHED by this update and I’m still out there kicking kitten with my pre-patch build.

When u have a 200 gold build with t3 divinity runes…fire sigil and bloodlust and all is backstab based…u won’t just pass throught a bug…u would be abile to play YOUR KITTEN BUILD cause Someone fixed this bug…

You built around a gimmick build that was destined to be nerfed and then are upset it was nerfed. Simple as that.

I’ve been here since the beginning and thieves became majorly FOTM because they could do some pretty silly OP things. They have been reigned in. PVE has suffered because of it, it will be fixed. These fixes will likely give you better non-stealth play.

Go find the next FOTM and drop 200g into that so you can come back shocked again. Seriously, I want another laugh. Also 200g? Gimme a break. I’ve dropped far more than 200g into WvW.

He’s talking about the Hidden Killer bug. He has a totally legitimate grievance and you jump on his case. That has NOTHING to do with a nerf. Don’t be such a condescending POS.

My apologies, I got lost in the terrible english and grammar and misunderstood. Maybe I’m not as abile as I thought.

Seriously though, it’s a really recent bug. They changed something recently, it just broke, it’ll be fixed pretty quickly. Somehow I doubt he’ll get much sympathy from non-thieves considering they include Engineers, Necro’s, and Rangers, who have had 10 times the buggage to face since step one. 2 of those 3 classes he likely slaughtered on a regular basis with the imbalanced thieves have had.

If he’s in WvW, just buy some rares and/or run a different build for a short time. If he is in PVE then 200g isn’t even a fraction of what 200g is to a WvW player.

Ainween.1953:

Raine Akrune.8416:

Try switching your weapons and builds up. My thief was 100% UNTOUCHED by this update and I’m still out there kicking kitten with my pre-patch build.

When u have a 200 gold build with t3 divinity runes…fire sigil and bloodlust and all is backstab based…u won’t just pass throught a bug…u would be abile to play YOUR KITTEN BUILD cause Someone fixed this bug…

You built around a gimmick build that was destined to be nerfed and then are upset it was nerfed. Simple as that.

I’ve been here since the beginning and thieves became majorly FOTM because they could do some pretty silly OP things. They have been reigned in. PVE has suffered because of it, it will be fixed. These fixes will likely give you better non-stealth play.

Go find the next FOTM and drop 200g into that so you can come back shocked again. Seriously, I want another laugh. Also 200g? Gimme a break. I’ve dropped far more than 200g into WvW.

So what I hear from this thread is that there is now room to buff thief in PVE in other ways.

Dasorine.1964:

Ralathar.7236:

Anet is doing a great job so far overall. Lets give them some credit and have some faith eh? You wouldn’t be playing this game if you didn’t like it.

That is also just your opinion, my opinion differs in so much as so far there has been no real success on Anets part either content release wise or balance wise.

As such your presence here would either be masochism or counter logic. Unless the base game is at such a level as to keep you anyways, in which case you are hardly put out. Furthermore you like it enough to be active on the forums.

Dasorine.1964:

Unfortunately when they gave us a bad idea I and at least some others tried giving them alternative methods of dealing with the issues, instead they scrapped their flawed blanket nerf and randomly chose a different blanket nerf without actually telling us why.

1. It’s assuredly not random.
2. They don’t tell alot of times because a millions forum warriors like you are waiting to argue them and tell them how wrong they are for every minute change.

And its not changes I dislike, its poorly thought out changes that have little thought put into them that I dislike.

Having admitted that you don’t know why the changes were made you cannot possibly know if they are poorly thought out or not. Nor do you know how much thought was put into them. You have contradicted yourself.

And also you don’t balance someone by nerfing on the basis that sometime in the future you may possibly buff them in other ways. That is not how balance should work.

It’s actually one of the very best methods to achieving balance, but it’s normally poorly received. Nerfs and buffs are always best in incremental steps where you can then observe the real world effects of each change before proceeding on. Even the most talented of people can’t predict the savvy adjustments some of the player base makes.

There have been many cases in the past of classes in MMORPG that have been sleeper overpowered for example. Being rather ignored and overshadowed mostly until something else gets nerfed out of being FOTM. Then suddenly something that has been around for a long time gets heavily abused as the new FOTM, though it was nearly completely ignored before.

I’ve posted so many times on different ways to fix at least some of the percieved issues with thieves but between non-thief players that can’t cope with the stealth mechanic at all trolling and ANET’s apparent disregard for a large portion of profession abilities what I’m left with is flickering hope that this is a two time goof only, which in of its self is not enough.

You’ve posted your OPINIONS on different ways to fix thieves “perceived” issues. Just from this quote alone it’s easy to see that you are not exactly unbiased in your opinion.

I’ve been on both sides of that fence before, but as I stand now 10+ years into the MMORPG experience it’s alot easier to see the possible failings and ignorance of both myself and others relative to the developers. They still make mistakes, oh goodness do they, but the playerbase honestly makes them look like complete rocket scientists by comparison with their lack of touch with reality and obvious biases.

Only an extremely small % of the playerbase provides actual good advice on a regular basis. That may or may not include you or me.

Anet is doing a great job so far overall. Lets give them some credit and have some faith eh? You wouldn’t be playing this game if you didn’t like it.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Folks, be careful, we don’t want to disturb it. Here we have a fine specimen of the unique Ferrous Cranus, renowned for its unwavering stubbornness and inability to form coherent arguments. While we may all wish it to truly act on its threats to leave the game, the Ferrous Cranus rarely is able to resist the lure of continued obstruction in the forums.

http://tinyurl.com/dhxf3

Been a long time since I’ve seen someone else reference a Flame Warriors Archetype. TY sir, you warm my heart.

Dasorine.1964:

problem is if these are the sorts of changes they are going to be making (and the “buffs” are not at all definite, most likely they will never happen), profession wide nerfs that aren’t fully thought through damaging all sorts of builds that are generally seen weaker, making entire trait lines less desirable and still not fixing any of the actual perceived issues.

What exactly did this 1 second longer reveal fix that was so much of an issue that isn’t still massively present? Compared to all the many many area’s it actuall broke?

If you take that view then no game will ever satisfy you ever because you can literally look at any moderate or larger change in that light. Very very very very few changes are ever undone in the MMORPG sphere.

You’d be better applying your energy towards helping propose and supporting good ideas for moving forwards. Currently the game does not have bad balance. If they go down a dark path and you are right? Nobody wins. Might as well work to support the other possibilities eh?

Because pointless pessimism, is pointless? I mean your comment isn’t even constructive. Even if you are right it’s just empty and has no positive effect.

Dasorine.1964:

Ralathar.7236:

You got nerfed, it was coming. You’ll get nerfed again. It’ll happen. You’ll also receive buffs in separate areas. This is called balance. Undoubtedly you’ll cite the time frame between now and then, but this is the penalty of being able to ride high so long on gimmicks, just like the HB warrior.

Just be patient, you’ll get more build diversity out of this in the long run. Oh and don’t cry about not getting love faster enough. A Ranger will kill you for that lol.

Those “gimmicks” where the things least effected in fact some of/most of them completely unaffected by the wide nerfing. The nerfs hit the area’s where thieves where on par or slightly below the majority of professions.

This isn’t the last change. I mentioned that. Just one of the steps in the way there. I can see why they went this way first. There will be more room to buff up those affected while focusing the next set of nerfs upon the gimmick builds directly. This was a needed step.

Most likely when they nerf those gimmick builds they will be underpowered for a bit until they buff them back up again in different ways.

I do have to admit, I always find the arguments for blatantly overpowered skills and classes amusing. TW is still good, adjust and move on.

I will agree however that mesmer needs an elite skill that is on a shorter cooldown and reliably useful however. It just doesn’t need to be time warp.

Adastra.9821:

Ulion.5476:

The total dps of arc lighting is like someone spamming dragon tooth every 6sec but arc lighting does not miss. It is nice to hit 3-5 enemies with it. With this changes make all air attunement weapons have the highest auto attack damage against multple opponents.

On my usual scepter build (note I even use the air X trait), dragon’s tooth crits for 4k while arc lightning does 2k on a full channel. Dragon’s tooth isn’t channeled and you can use other skills while it’s on cooldown. Arc lightning’s damage is pathetic and it’s not easy to hit multiple targets unless you’re in the perfect position. FYI arc lightning will only hit up to 2 additional targets. Its damage and multi-target buff still doesn’t justify me using it regularly and so it’ll remain a filler while everything else is on cooldown. The uselessness of this skill is only rivaled by the scepter water auto, but I’m fine with that since I only go into water attunement for its heals.

The usefulness of arclightning pretty much requires you to play to it’s strengths. When you do it can be really good.

1. You have an instant DD and instant blind made to be used with it. Blind is very useful for stomping btw.

2. It does lots of little small hits so it’s perfect for on crit effects. This is likely why it’s in the precision focused tree and has a 60% chance to cause vulnerability as it’s last minor trait.

3. Instant skill such as all the arcane skills work well with it. Arcane shield is defense/offense that doesn’t interrupt your flow of damage. Arcane missle adds to your ranged spike damage. Arcane power can be used in combo with Arcane missle, the DD, and then other skills of your choice.

4. You are considered to be channeling so all channeling buffs including toughness from the 10 point earth major trait apply. This also includes the air based Zyphr’s focus, giving you 100% endurance regen as a 10 point major trait.

5. Have you tested the damage of it while built for it? (10% more dmg while in air, 20% faster air cooldowns, 20% more damage to foes under 25%) I also have bleed procing so I get 5% more damage to bleeding foes from salt stone. As well as the burning based damage boosts and 30% chance to burn on crit.

I mean yeah, I still think Scepter needs a little up tweaking. But Arc Lightning isn’t really bad off. It’s other parts of Scepter that need the real love. I still melt people all the time with my air scepter Ele. Arc lightning provides the steady DPS, I burst with arcane missle and lightning strike, give myself a little more durability/dmg with arcane shield, and usually set them on fire early with signet of fire.

1. Quickness being as powerful as it was kept you from getting the buffs you needed for more than 1 build.

2. Warrior is still perfectly fine in WvW and PVE.

3. Why would you choose to sPVP on a gimmick build that is almost certainly going to be nerfed and THEN complain it got nerfed? That’s as silly as the Mesmer thread about Time Warp.

You got nerfed, it was coming. You’ll get nerfed again. It’ll happen. You’ll also receive buffs in separate areas. This is called balance. Undoubtedly you’ll cite the time frame between now and then, but this is the penalty of being able to ride high so long on gimmicks, just like the HB warrior.

Just be patient, you’ll get more build diversity out of this in the long run. Oh and don’t cry about not getting love faster enough. A Ranger will kill you for that lol.

Threads like this is why I don’t listen to most people talking about mesmers. So many cannot appreciate how strong Time Warp is even after a 50% nerf.

Every profession argues that they are underpowered and every nerf is uncalled for. Mesmers are more complicated than most professions and less overtly powerful. So the quotient of that is slightly higher.

Take your medicine and expect a few more key nerfs to specific areas of mesmer power so they can shore up the entire rest of your profession without you being insanely overpowered.

Solo.9027:

Arc lightning change makes scepter somewhat attractive but theres still the speed/inflexibility of dragons tooth dragging the weapon down. The rest of the ele changes are bug fixes in my opinion, still glad to see them.

Now i’m waiting for the undocumented patch notes thread.

Actually Arc Lightning just got really good for me. My setup is glass cannon/mobility S/D and I carry a staff around too. I went for precision/power/condition damage and I cause vulnerability, bleeding, and burning on crits.

Having arc lightning hit multiple people is a very nice buff. I really like having less reason to switch to staff. Now S/D is even more viable for small groups. Staff is still needed for any big groups though :/. Until Dragon’s Tooth isn’t kittenedly easy to avoid that will be the case.

Cactus.2710:

That’s just stupid. You can’t blame players for following the reward path that ANet laid out for them. In fact, LOTS of players predicted this would happen and practically begged ANet to reconsider how they set up these rewards. This falls squarely in ANet’s lap.

If you make keep takes worth stuff, people flip em. You make people worth more, people trade kills or set up meat grinders and farm 1 specific keep or tower and let the rest of the map go to heck. Try to make it where there is no incentive for either and it’s all about fun? WTF where are my rewards!!?? What’s the point!!??

There really is no winning with this generation, both younger and older folks. Nobody wants to take responsibility anymore because we’ve been taught we can always blame someone else.

StormageddonBK.9842:

Ralathar.7236:

Now you more properly appreciate one of the big difficulties with giving players freedom and choices, people today more often than not take the “easy” route to “win”.

This is human nature, to win, and win most efficiently. This is why a lot of us level up to 80 and want BIS gear, not for fun but to win (for many this is fun). If I can zurgball for 2 hours what took me 2 days to do then I’ll choose the 2 hour method every time (for me that’s 6 hours less grinding so it’s a no-brainer).

The system ANet setup is to give a reward for each win, this means the more wins you get per hour the better-off you’ll be, so ANet either made a mistake in their design or they want this.

That’s actually a lie, human nature is to survive and procreate. Winning is something bred into us by society. Realistically when the goal is to have fun it doesn’t matter if you win or lose if you are having fun. The preference is actually a mix of both or it gets boring always losing or always winning. It’s the challenge, the drama, and the back and forth turmoil along with the rush of competition.

The only reason people have more fun “winning” to the extent people do today is because of brainwashing and a select portion of the population trying to compensate for their own insecurities. Oh and btw if you want to win buy X product or service. You don’t want to be a loser do you?

1st I want to mention that this is the players fault not Anets. Yes Anet designed the system that does in fact encourage it to a degree, but the players choose to do it. If people were not total cowardly, instant gratification, skilless kittens you wouldn’t see this.

Now you more properly appreciate one of the big difficulties with giving players freedom and choices, people today more often than not take the “easy” route to “win”.

2nd it has been mentioned several times that Anet actually wants to add more incentive to defense and supportive roles. Unfortunately botters screw us all over on that. We can’t even have Dolyaks because, once again, people.

So yes, Anet made changes and people are trying to exploit them (though they could just as easily do a good defense and earn points) but we, the players, are to blame. Not Anet.

This is what happens in mainstream games. When games were less mainstream you’d see alot less of this kind of stuff and people self-policed alot better.

Arrow carts makes sense since they shoot up and over. Catapults were always a cheap and far too easy method to defend a tower that costs a single person.

It was flat out imbalanced.

Also, massed arrow carts put out 10 times the damage a catapult could ever hope for. If you don’t know this you’ve never experienced a proper lord room meat grinder where arrow carts kitten people in mere seconds regardless of build.

This will just mean it takes 2-3 guys on arrow carts, which can be counter-sieged by catapults, to defend a door.

Also, this may be a surprise to most folks, but castle defense is not a desirable position. It’s desirable if a fight happens in the short term only. In the real world things like food, disease, morale, etc are all serious concerns and most sieges never made it to battle before surrendering. The attackers actually have most of the advantages real world.

However we play a game revolving around combat. Keeps are still a major defensive boost, towers are still a moderate defensive boost. You just gained more counters is all.

Also, word to the wide, keep that cata around inside to counter enemy siege. Or a well placed treb at certain towers/keeps.

The devs are not stupid and will wait to see the result of the culling + revealed change, as will all reasonable people.

Truth be told though thieves are going to need stealth adjustments regardless if they hope to have a larger variety of build options. Stealth is a nice mechanic but it is also extremely limiting due to it’s obvious power in current form.

Thus future changes from here won’t likely be nerfs, but instead moving the power around. Which will nerf some very specific builds, buff most others, and create overall much more variety.

Preacher.9018:

What i`d like to see more is actual divercity and alternative – current presented perks are basically linear upgrades – while it would be better if people could specialize in one at cost of another, and such choices actually make some kind of difference.

This. I like being able to specialize. Being able to get it all makes it not special.

Unique builds for each siege:

Repeater Ballista: This ballista has half the cooldowns of the normal ballista but does 50% less damage.

Lightning Ballista: This ballista does 30% less damage, however the bolts it fires are 100% faster. No more infanty running sideways being able to dodge your shots!

Fight in the Shade Arrow Cart: This arrow cart covers the target area for twice as long per shot, but has takes twice as long to cooldown per shot.

Make it Rain Arrow Cart: This arrow cart has 50% larger AOE’s but does 30% less damage.

Grapes of Wrath Catapult: This catapult actually has a useful secondary fire!! The grapeshot fire mode fires significantly more rocks the the normal catapult, has a tight spread at a distance, and a loose spread up close. Additionally these rocks damage walls slightly. However it pays for this by doing 20% less damage with the normal shot.

Smokebomb Catapult: This catapult’s secondary fire mode fires a giant smokebomb that does 25% of normal damage and blinds all enemies in the area for a few seconds. However it does 20% less damage with it’s normal shot.

Mad Cow Trebuchet: The diseased cow now adds a few stacks of a short duration confusion as well as the normal poison. However it does 20% less damage with it’s normal shot.

Explosive Cow Trebuchet: The diseased cow now explodes upon landing, doing direct damage as well as it’s normal poison cloud. This does about 1/3rd of the normal shots damage. However it does 20% less damage with it’s normal shot.

Golems

Blitzkreig Golems: These golems move much faster but are 20% weaker in every other way except HP. They have 50% less HP.

Battlerager Golem: These golems do 50% less damage to doors but 50% more damage to people. Additionally they have 50% more hp and are more heavily armored. They also move as fast as a normal player without swiftness

Juggernaut Golem: These golems have 100% more hp and are much more heavily armored but do 50% less damage to doors and people.

This is of course me throwing out quite a few ideas. Many of them could be made specific to a certain type of siege or not used at all. I might not have thought of some things at all. I just want to add more variety to the siege game.

I would like to see them implement a new crafting profession focused on making siege. My inspiration for this is old school Dark Age of Camelot and them implementing it in their game.

I think it’s very important for everything to be made be a side-grade or minor improvement. I don’t want power creep giving us better than superior rams. But I do think the current siege system could be fleshed out to be more interesting then “basic ram” vs “superior ram”.

Ideal cost of this siege ranges from less than current normal siege to more than superior versions of current siege. All relative to how powerful it is.

Ideas for what you could craft: Each of them having multiple levels all the way up to final effectiveness (and tradeoff).

Common themes through all siege weapons:

Siege: Focused killing other siege and enemy towers/keeps. Siege ballistas would cause 50% more damage to all, but 25% less damage to people. Siege Rams would do slightly increased damage of normal rams and protect the ram driver from a small % of damage, Siege Cata’s and Trebuchets would do slightly more damage to all but reduced damage vs people.

Razor: Every shot causes stacks of bleeding, if a shot already caused bleeding it would double it. However direct damage is lowered. It would do overall more damage to people, but at the expense of doing it over a little more time. In addition all except arrow carts would cause a few stacks of vulnerability on every shot or double the normal vulnerability if it already caused it.

Plague: Every shot causes stacks of posion, if a shot already caused poison it would double it. However direct damage is lowered. It would do overall a fair amount more damage to people, but at the expense of doing it over a more time. In addition all except arrow carts would cause short duration weakness and crippled on every shot.

Flame: Every shot causes stacks of burning, if a shot already caused burning it would double it. However direct damage is lowered. It would do overall more damage to people, but at the expense of doing it over a little more time.

Frost: Every shot causes a short duration chilled. These would be deployed to assist in area CC of enemy groups. Reduced direct damage.

Shoddy Shoddy siege takes 50% reduced supply and is cheaper to make, however all stats but range take a 50% penalty. Useful for low supply situations, intimidation, or finishing off the last little bit of that gate or wall without wasting full supplies.

Deadeye Deadeye siege has 20% additional range, but direct damage is lowered. Not available

Durable: Durable siege has double the normal hit points. However the siege does reduced direct damage as a tradeoff.

Quickfire: Quickfire siege has reduced cooldowns on all shots, but does reduced damage as a tradeoff. In comparison to a normal ram the Quickfire ram would do slightly more damage over time, however other siege may make better use of alternate firing mods.

How about you autoloot WvW tokens, separate from the ones we have currently. You can then turn these in for loot rolls at an NPC which uses the loot generating RNG. You could adjust the amount of tokens based on the loot tables you would have been using before. This would automatically adjust token numbers based on any MF like the underdog buff.

You could even make classes of WvW tokens. Trash, Common, Uncommon, rare, etc. Based on what you would have gotten.

This allows you to still autoloot, avoids the encumbered, keeps the feeling of loot gambling, and lets you pick up the bags and not miss tons of bags. Because I’ve lost tons of bags in some winning fights because I was not willing to stop winning just to pick up my loot bags. It keeps the same exact rewards that way too.

Khayoss.2019:

Reading this thread so far should be an object lesson to some here on EBay. This is what it sounds like to complain to Yaks and Mags about their players having no skill and simply overwhelming everyone all the time with their guilds of only thieves and mesmers. It’s blanket statement exaggeration and in poor sport.

This time we’re on the other side of it… being the larger server. Our “groups” probably look like faceless skill-less masses of whirling button mashing roflnoobs to a server with a lower population, the same as Mags and Yaks looks to us though un-objective eyes. We know what we are, and we know what we normally face from a higher population server up a tier. So remember that and keep classy while we are in this matchup, the next, and so on.

I agree for Yaks, but not for old School Mags. Mags has been the only server I have faced which I have ever thought ill of and it has nothing to do with numbers. But that is a story for another time. I won’t discuss any of that in this thread. To head off inevitable de-railing this has nothing to do with current day Maguuma.

On a side note, I have actually faced servers which fit your sarcastic description to a T, so they do exist. Your point on perspective is valid however.

gebrechen.5643:

As a thief player I can say the topic is not that far from truth. I play P/D atm – but tried D/D for a while in wvw.
There are few classes you should avoid because they counter you, but most of the other professions are easy to kill because of stealth in combination with lag/culling/performance in wvw.

The problem with fixing this issue is that thieves are squishy without stealth and the whole profession is balanced around the stealthing abilities so you can’t just take away stealth or change it without destroying the whole profession (the stealth nerf in pve is really bad and I paid with going down in boss fights a lot today)

I think it would be fair to cut down the stealth ability a bit but give something new to thieves which does not make them easy prey.

That’s what alot of people want, most don’t just want thieves nerfed into uselessness. They just want viable counterplay that isn’t "better be X/Y class/spec. Unfortunately alot of thieves out there don’t want to have to earn their kills.

Syeria.4812:

elkirin.8534:

I have noticed the organised guilds leave scouts scattered around to counter the change, congrats to anyone fully organised.

I have also noticed that the potty mouthed trash talkers in team speak complaining about late scout reports or a lack of scouting do NOT tend to do any scouting at all themselves. They have become more prevalent since this change.

I have zero problems with the new system but would either like rewards added for those that scout. OR have guild leaders start dealing with the teamspeak/chat abusers that make people not want to make a scouting announcement in case they amp up the trolls.

I’d love to see ways for scouting to be rewarded, but that’s unfortunately not very feasible. There’s really no way for Anet to know whether someone is actually scouting and contributing rather than just sitting around semi-afk or even feeding false information. If someone can come up with a rewards system that’s not going to be an easy target for abuse, please share it because it would be great to have a way to make scouting worthwhile to the individual doing the scouting.

Actually there is. Add an NPC that you can talk to that will “raise an alarm”. This alarm would give approximate enemy numbers based on the surrounding area. Alarm is conditional and the reward/alarm message is based upon whether or not the objective is being attacked, how many are in the area, and damage done to the tower.

More enemies worth more than few.
Under attack is worth more than in the area.
A less damaged objective is worth more than a heavily damaged one. (early callout)

Also messages would be something like:

Quentin tower reports many Ehmry Bay nearby, tower secure.
Quentin tower is under siege by a horde of Ehmry Bay and is heavily damaged.
Qunetin Tower is all clear for the moment.

If you leave the actual callout in the hands of a quickly run NPC calculation then the incorrect information would be hard to plan. You’d literally have to use a spy to ring the all clear and then bum rush it with a zerg.

To prevent spamming there would be like a 3 minute cooldown on the npc callouts, with the exception of major state changes. Example being All Clear >>>> under attack would instantly recharge the callout ability.

FYI I want to stay away from giving exact numbers. Players will figure it out but generalizations broken down by few (1-15), many (15-30), and a horde (30+) allows for more flexibility for the attackers.

Truebanana.5936:

Need a rainbow sword for over 50 players, to see them at 7am from the best server xD

I would be amiable to a red set of swords.

White Sword = 1+

Orange Swords = 15+

Red Swords = 30+

oZii.2864:

What you are saying with supply is with any class I can take a scenario and say if I had 12 of X class it could do this better than any other class. If I had 12 eles they could totally make manning defending siege impossible thus rendering it ineffective. Thats basically what you said.

12 of all the same class would destroy alot of things and 12 thieves running together is dangerous for the thieves themselves, why because thats 12 chances to get revealed buff when you dont want to. You could be laying down shadow refuge to stomp someone but at the same time accidently revealing you partner who is actually try to cloak and dagger someone else.

I would steer clear of 12 thief group like the plague.

While I understand your point your ele comment is wrong. Proper siege placement helps alot. There are locations they cannot hit, my main is an GC Ele and clearing siege is actually a specialty of mine . Eles are very good, however, at hitting the locations where siege is vulnerable to attack troops. This is all besides the point though.

+Point being+ that while other classes can do some other stuff better, supply is the lifeblood of WvW. Easiest way to teach the importance of supply is pretend that it makes your entire BL 25% more effective at offense and 50% more effective at defense.

Without constant supply you will not hold objectives. Without supply sieging objectives is very difficult. You’ll need enough supplies for both at any given time or you will lose ground steadily until you are at the breakout event stage. This is a fact of life in WvW. The only time this is not true is when the match-up is incredibly imbalanced.

If you can, consistently, continue obtaining supply and denying the enemy supply you have quite a significant advantage in that BL. Supply camp captures for 100 supply whenever large groups happen to roll around is nowhere near equivalent to having supply camps stay within your power for periods of time and is not enough to sustain either an offensive or defense.

Also, pay attention. I did not say a group of 12 thieves running together. I said a coordinated group of 12 thieves working in pairs. Not willy nilly solo scrubs thinking they are good because they are thieves. That’s 6 pairs, there are 6 supply camps. Thus 2 thieves to a supply camp. As the situation requires the thieves are well capable of being mobile to help overpower small groups that may attempt to defend or take a supply camp. Also the 2 supply camps in your own territory many times do not need as much babysitting, possibly leaving 1-2 floating pairs.

You are also not looking to stack stealth here. This is not based around a prolonged offensive. These are quick strikes with high damage meant to take out camps and people quickly. You coordinate damage, you do your job, you get in and you get out. If you need to stay around long enough to start dropping multiple houses then you stayed too long. Mobility and damage are your weapons in this endeavor. Stealth is primarily there to set up your initial strike and to ditch any zergs that try to hunt you down.

I agree with 15 people required for Orange swords. I wanted to raise the amount for white swords but when I really thought about it 1 is the right number. Anything like 5 or higher would make it far too easy to stop ninjas.

zen.6091:

Ralathar.7236:

For instance this quote. People think way too small scale, too short sighted, and too “ermagerd he kilted me”. One of the truly powerful things a thief can contribute to WvW is that a really small number of thieves can SHUT DOWN supplies in a borderlands.

….

Has it occurred to you that there’s a lot of down time in between flipping camps and yakslapping? Even more so now that the supervisor buff is fixed and flipping a buffed camp is virtually impossible without massive lifestealing.

There is also alot of downtime in escorting Dolyaks, but it is another undeniably important thing that can turn the tide of a battleground. I have personally turned the momentum of an entire BL solo by running yaks on my warrior for 45 minutes straight before.

Yes, some of the more effective objective based things have downtime, may be more boring, are more expensive, and are not properly rewarded. But they can still win entire BL’s.

But it’s not like the thieves won’t be getting kills from the solo’s, duo’s and small groups looking to play with the camps and yaks.

Downed state Vapor Form is fine. Vapor Form being able to enter keeps and towers through portals is messed. Yes, I know ele’s can be made of paper. But you also have access to lightning flash, ride the lightning, and mist form. Learn to temporarly switch utility skills to safely enter and learn WHEN to use each. You’ll never have an issue entering a keep or tower again unless it’s guarded well enough that only a thief or mesmer would get in with stealth.

I do think that Grasping Earth needs to be available like a half second earlier though.+

The scary thing is the current thief problem isn’t even good players for the most part. The class is far and away not being used to it’s potential in WvW and is still seen as OP.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

thieves are easy to handle.
no one should be killed withing the first 5 seconds of a thief encounter.

All you got to do is dodge, dodge, stun, stun, immobilize/daze. and if you are not built that way then good for you since you picked a build that actually does something for your server in WvW.

Thieves that are built for the sole purpose of 1v1s in WvW is pointless. Sure a thief can kill a dolyak fast, but so can any other profession.

The only reason why you see people cry about thieves is because people use thieves to do 1v1 ganks. I’m sure any other profession has the same potential gankability.

For instance this quote. People think way too small scale, too short sighted, and too “ermagerd he kilted me”. One of the truly powerful things a thief can contribute to WvW is that a really small number of thieves can SHUT DOWN supplies in a borderlands.

12 Thieves working on the supply camps/yaks of a map pretty much limits a server down to 1-2 possible supply camps even if they guard them. If they bring enough to guard more than that then the opposing zerg will roll over the now much smaller force.

But people don’t use thieves like that often. Because they are too busy LOLLERing all over the lastest victim they killed in under 5 seconds from stealth and possibly before they rendered. Or they are too buy laying down significant condition damage without breaking stealth at all. Or the more team play ones are too busy rezzing dead people in the middle of enemies while stealthed.

No, the potential of thieves is actually severely underutilized in several ways and they are STILL a problem. I think that says enough.

Daeqar.8965:

When it comes to thieves in WvW, they are what is likely the best class at executing a losing strategy. That strategy being lonewolf PvP in a large scale gametype.

If you want to move around the field alone, quickly, and potentially pick off stragglers, I can’t think of anything better than a thief. This does have some niche value in WvW for things like murdering dolyaks at low personnel costs, but if even a disproportionate fraction of a server is running these lonewolf spec thieves, they will get absolutely destroyed in WvW by the server running a tight, unstoppable ball of team specs like hammer warriors, guardians, eles, necros, etc. that support each other and play together. If folks ditch the narcissistic attitudes, they would realize that thieves are actually a very limited value class when it comes to winning WvW. The game is called Guild Wars for a reason.

Pretty much the only opportunity a thief has for a useful role in that winning, tightly-knit teamplay is just for on-demand blast finishers with shortbow. (No permastealth or burst combos here.) Bring two shortbow thieves: role filled. Everyone else re-roll a more useful class or be a scout/dolyak-killer (better yet, let pugs do it) and miss out on all mega-bag drops.

Actually no, small groups of thieves can dominate the supply game. The supply game has a major impact on the overall war effort. A properly coordinated force of about 12 thieves that are working in duo’s can completely shut down the supply in an entire map while still causing chaos. They can also potentially ninja supply camps at will if people do not guard them

These same thieves can also take out solos and small groups of players who would be reinforcing objectives or retaking said supply camps.

Thieves are actually one of the most effective classes in the overall war effort used properly. But most people just use them as LAWL kill machines due to their current low risk high reward design. Thus they are ironically seen as near worthless because people don’t use them to achieve the right goals.

You folks need to learn how to think objectively. In a reasonably balanced match such a coordinated thief team would cause a landslide victory. Not by vaping players, or towers, or keeps, but by controlling supplies by playing to the classes strengths of mobility, zerg avoidance, and high damage. Supplies control how easy and hard it is to keep all other objectives.

This is why most players travel around in a zergball and blindly follow. They look for kills and keeps. This is why it’s up to the commanders to look for objective play and strategy. This is why most thieves are ineffective at WvW. The average players thinks about WvW in all the wrong ways.

Eliyahu.1467:

Straegen.2938:

This has been said before several times, but stealth is not an issue at all in sPvP. The only reason it is a significant issue in WvW is culling (soon to be removed) and Power/Crit stacking. Put a soft cap on Power/Crit and suddenly super builds that have insane damage out of nowhere no longer exist.

The reason why it’s not an issue in sPvP is because you can’t cap points while stealthed, which leads to poor objective control with a roaming class — not exactly the best combo.

In WvW, the ability to cap points is not important as there’s almost always going to be other people with you when you’re taking an objective. Killing and disruption is a lot more important in WvW and you are free to stealth as often as you like.

As to Power/crit stacking, thief damage is not and has never been the problem. Thief damage is fine as is. The problem is stealth granting ridiculous survivability and sustain.

Aye, the problem is not that they are paper thieves that blow people up. The problem is that they are paper thieves that blow people up and stealth gives them moderate to good survivability. PLUS they have really good mobility.

It really as a risk vs reward thing as has been mentioned many times.

Xsorus.2507:

the game isn’t really designed like the way he’s suggesting, Its an excuse used in every game that’s had stealthers

“Well, Such and Such stealther is meant to be amazing in 1v1”

Completely ignoring that my Stealth can do 1vsX and do much better then other classes as well

Actually the game this is templated after, Dark Age of Camelot, did just that. Stealth in that game quite literally had next to no escapes, tiny ranged damage, and no aoe ability. Also low mobility and though could perma stealth they could not stealth in combat and damage popped them.

Thieves in this game are capable of everything.

Ok, lets not be silly. WvW was based both spiritually and literally on DAOC. As a veteran player of DAOC the amount of similarities and things that transfer over is striking to the point many people got the feeling of playing a new and updated DAOC.

Also as to the point of stealth, you are going to have three possible outcomes. One is you keep your current stealth game, culling is fixed, and you are screwed if you are not in stealth. Two is that the importance of stealth is reduced, thieves get a little more defense, and thieves become an overall better and more versatile class. Three is the removal of culling literally breaks stealth burst builds because people can actually kill what they can see.

Puru.4217:

Even in regular pve it’s bad in comparison to most classes, of course the class till shred through everything but it’s honestly far from being glorious.

In fractal/dungeon it’s honestly terrible. The class barely brings anything to the table and this is my main problem. To be honest i’m pretty sad as i find the one handed sword hilarous to use and pressing f2 with my river drake.

I’ve never had any issues with PVE content on my Ranger. Normal PVE content that is. I actually find him more efficient than many classes at it while using a variety of builds. Then again I usually get alot out of my pets. If you are not using your pets correctly you will indeed be sub-par.

Traps, Power, Condition Damage, Bunker, Ranged, Melee, Support. I have personally verified these as viable and competitive options in general PVE and PVP.

Dungeons are another beast altogether and we are not the only class/spec that has alot more issues in dungeons. I expect pets will get some sort of AOE damage reduction in dungeons eventually, or some sort of 1 shot protection.

Raven Paradox.1860:

A thief without stealth is the equivalent to a necromancer without conditions. It’s just not going work…

Actually this has been done in games before. It goes by the name of melee DPS. You are made out of glass and you get gap closers and maybe a single escape, but you do very high damage.

It’s a viable archetype that has been done effectively many times before.

Spyder.9713:

You ppl are kitten for this… u do releize that stealth exsist in almost all morpgs?? U all think its bad on here then dont every play daoc or wow, prob just rage quit lol… the thiefs job in pvp, wvw, whatever is the same as any other game… they are there to thin the herd, just like a lion, do u think he goes after the biggest strongest wildabeast in the herd no he goes after the weak sickly one… that is the thief, shame on u ppl!

Actually the stealth in DAOC, as much as I hated them, were really well balanced for open world combat.

Lets do a short comparison:

Dark Age of Camelot stealth:

Pros:

Could pick their battles
Could avoid zergs
High opening damage
Capable of quickly killing light to medium targets
High melee evade
Permanent Stealth
Could use poisons
Get out of jail free card (Vanish)

Cons:

Fragile and easily killed if caught in the open
No ranged damage of note
No AOE damage of note
Stealth breaks on damage
AOE was thus a big worry and you had to chose approach routes carefully
Many classes were designed with the ability to find and pop stealthers
Almost all Burst damage tied to stealth
Damage while visible largely relied on poisons or reactive abilities from evading
Reactive abilities could easily miss and were unreliable
No reliable hard CC
No capabilities outside of Vanish
Vanish had a high cooldown
Locked into your specing choices until later

Guild Wars 2 Thief:

Pros:

Could pick their battles
Could avoid zergs
High opening damage
High all around damage
Capable of quickly killing most targets
Incredible mobility
Permanent Stealth
Could use poisons
Get out of jail free card = stealth + mobility
Get out of jail free card = available at most any time to a good player
Some attacks do not even break stealth
Nobody can remove you from stealth
Many benefits from being in stealth
Stealth is spammable
Skills can be changed out on the fly
Culling X10

Cons:

Fragile and easily killed if caught out of stealth
Stealth is not permanent, but instead of a relatively short duration

You see some problems there? The main balancing factors such as lack of AOE damage, much much lower damage after opener, very limited escapability options, lack of ranged damage, etc are not there. The tradeoff of permanent stealth was that you couldn’t stealth in combat and could be popped out of stealth by 1 point of damage.

The Guild Wars 2 Thief is a much much stronger class than stealthers in Dark Age of Camelot ever were.

roamzero.9486:

Ralathar.7236:

My defensively spec’d Engineer has been dropped in under 3 seconds by a thief before. All vitality and toughness. I literally got to see the final heartseeker and that is it. No other classes has ever taken down that engineer even close to that fast. Heck I’ve eaten damage from groups of people and survived before on that build.

The general design of the game seems to be that every build has a hard counter, even ones stacking vit/tough. If vit/toughness couldnt be countered by extreme single target burst then the game would just gravitate towards becoming Bunker Wars 2. I think more players should accept that fact (and I dont even run burst thief btw, though I love defensive builds).

I have no issues with having a hard counter, but lets face it there is a difference between having a hard counter and being destroyed in seconds as someone built completely towards toughness/vitality.

Keep in mind as well I give up alot of damage to go that spec (I actually think a few bunker builds should give up more damage), yet my thief actually dies less. More mitigation is great for playing bait and soaking damage, but ultimately my thief has more survivability while playing glass.

Thieves will not be balanced until they give them a bit more innate defenses and lessen the defensive abilities of stealth. I like that it gives people a jump on others, but right now it’s giving equal amounts of both offense and defense when used properly. Make them build for each like everyone else.

Honestly I rolled a Axe/Axe, Greatsword Ranger that also carries a longbow in her inventory not too long back. Offhand Axe actually isn’t bad at all and paired with mainhand axe you have a fair amount of improvised AOE damage. Not to mention that Whirling Axes is an ace projectile reflector that does fairly good damage and applies vulnerability. Obviously the immobility is something you take into account before using it.

Ate up quite a few people in WvW even at lower levels while leveling up. Being able to projectile reflect at will really trashes peoples day when you’re a class with fairly beefy ranged prowess. I used Longbow/Axe/Axe for the ranged engagements and Greatsword/Axe/Axe if I expected closer range foes.

I also suspect people are not getting thier mileage out of the pets. Our selection of pets is incredibly versatile. From the buff-centric Red Moa/Stalker setup, to Lynx/Eagle burst, to Fern Hound/Brown Bear support. With myriad other options abounding too.

Rangers are far better off and far more versatile than people give them credit for.

Also I want to mention that it is viable, though much more difficult, to play a skirmish/movement based thief. Withdraw, roll for initiative, hidden pistols, shadow step, steal, infiltrator’s arrow, heartseeker, infiltrator’s strike, shadow strike. These are your available movement abilities. Utility skills are changeable to situation on the fly. One moment I can be built for general combat and the next maximum zerg vs zerg standoff ability (2 rolls + hidden pistol if I want to DEEPLY skirmish). Just by changing utility skills. I can carry an additional weapon if I wish to add another layer to that as well.

The disadvantage to that build is that you can actually be caught and killed if you bite off more than you can chew. You can no longer LOL stealth away, unless you break combat by retreating far enough away and change skills and/or weapons. Though admittedly shadow return jukes are normally very effective.

Playing with stealth? Laughably easy with any build. Condition builds deal alot of damage without breaking stealth (poison/caltrops), backstab builds are LOL easy with minimal timing/target selection, survivability builds are laughably hard to kill.