Guild Wars 2

I don’t get it why you guys are so hellbent on revealed on block.

It makes absolutely zero sense. You are currently crying from a class that requires a lot of player focus to play right. If ANet actually makes this change, not only the good ones, every thief will wait out your blocks in stealth. And you’ll still get humiliated.

What will you cry for then hm?

or you know, just don’t press space randomly <o>
I don’t even know how you guys manage to get caught midair/for what purpose. I’ve done hundred of matches as every class and i’ve never been caught midair

On which map this happens more often? <o>

Same on my thief, I thought they fixed this last time around. If I’m trying to teleport somewhere from a bad angle (keep in mind the endpoint is the same) I’ll lose 6 initiative and nothing will happen.

I don’t know how hardcore the security algorithm is in there, must be something hard to change for all the platforming in the game, certainly hard to test out but it’s kind of irritating.

Obviously I’ve learned to live with it but its weird nonetheless :P

Funny, I asked for this change 3 months after launch (they implemented it then, iirc) and my crippled guardian was leaping for 20 range. People called me silly.

Where is your God now? :P

If you cri for nerfs on thief but never have played one lately, go back to LoL. No need of your nonsense on these forums…

Don’t bother to respond to Gabriell, he’s not really putting arguments, he’s just trolling.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

But as far as adding reveal to whiffed attacks? We can take that hit with the new changes.

Most good thieves do not give up their location by attacking a blocking toon, or better yet, they don’t even stealth while someone is blocking in 1on1. Its better to wait it out and re-engage while the target has a huge cooldown.

…but that’s smart play, not a bug <o>

It’s like blaming mesmers for using Portal or blinking on the Z axis …

oh wait …. most of you actually do this.

You guys talk as if only the thief is getting a 3rd full trait line <o>

Gabriell.4856:

Ravenmoon.5318:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Nope did not get owned by a thief, sorry conspiracy theory thieves. Only thief to own me in recent days was a really really good sword/dagger one and even then after 3rd encouter he had some major hard time with my ranger. On to the subject:

Ok, a-net, you got some explaning to do.
A while ago you said yourself you want to move away from hard counter gameplay into soft counter style, so player skill has bigger say in result of pvp encounters then their build.

And for most part you’re keeping true to your word – quickness and berserker stance becoming boons which can be stripped or corrupted, elite specs filling gaps base professsions had etc.

….except thieves.

Shadowstepping. Stealth not removed when blocked or evaded, basilisk venom piercing stability, phletora of instant casts including a heal skill that breaks movement inpairment and has massive evade, initiative unaffected by chilling or interrupt induced skill cooldown.

So where exactly is the room for “skilled counter gameplay” against a thief who knows his stuff in pvp? Cause so far all i see is the “hold the point and survive for as long as possible”.

Learn to play or make a thief before jumping into conclusions.
The only reason basilisk venom pierces your stability is because the thief was savvy enough to strip you of your stability. Yeah, its the first boon you lose when the thief Steals from you. There is a boon priority, Aegis and stability are the first in line.

Also, since you seem to know jack about thieves – Larcenous Strike steals your might with priority. So you better off not stacking it. Its the #1 reason all D/D cele eles cry from S/D thieves. They give them might stacks throughout the fight. No blame from me though, its the build that uses the same skill rotation vs any other opponent.

Also if only 1 thief managed to beat you “in months”, then by logic thief is fine no? Clearly your “skill” gives you the upper hand.

You conveniently ignored half of his issues…good job.

Yeah because his other suggestion is silly.
As i stated in the thread right next to this one, I’ll quote myself

This change is totally kittened. Skilled thieves currently wait out your blocks because if you were skilled yourself you’d know that blocking lets you know the thief’s position. Change that and yeah you’ll kill scrub thieves i guess. Though you should be able to takeout scrub thieves even now because they don’t think much.
The following week the good thieves will stab you brutally again and because you don’t know how to protect yourself properly you’ll come to the forums again begging for backstab nerf.
Maybe create a thief and see how “ridiculously OP” it is before judging?

Pardon me for choosing not to repeat myself earlier.

choovanski.5462:

Emi.4152:

Mrbig.8019:

Panic strike thief is like the strongest 1vs1 build in this meta.

If u give a thief enough time it will even kill almost all cele builds aside shoutbow ( debatable).

I’m seriously questioning the skill level of the average poster in these forums, altough it’s not really that much about playing the game but mostly about knowing it.

Stop

I’m not sure I agree with you. I feel that cele ele and especially cele engineer have the upper hand in a 1 v 1 situation, shoutbow… true, debatable, med guards… x.x

jumping on them after they’ve been fighting for a while… that’s another story no?

add passive aggressive comment here

choovanski.5462:

I don’t agree with condition 4, but 6-10 need to happen. you are bad at the game if you using your burst skill when you are under those conditions and you deserve to fail. aegis, blind, block, evade- those are all ways someone can out play you.

I do actually agree with you. If they made it so if you missed a backstab, the 1 key would just turn back into a normal auto attack, that would make a lot of sense to me. To lose stealth or even gaining revealed in that situation seems too much though.

the thief should be absolutely revealed from stealth. they landed an attack on the enemy, an act that under normal circumstances would remove stealth. however since their foe managed to mitigate the damage though a blind/block etc the thief is allowed to stay stealthed. the thief is being rewarded because they are playing badly and their foe is playing well, which is completely the opposite of what should happen.

it’s blatantly unfair mechanic where a bad player is not punished when they make a mistake.

This change is totally kittened. Skilled thieves currently wait out your blocks because if you were skilled yourself you’d know that blocking lets you know the thief’s position. Change that and yeah you’ll kill scrub thieves i guess. Though you should be able to takeout scrub thieves even now because they don’t think much.

The following week the good thieves will stab you brutally again and because you don’t know how to protect yourself properly you’ll come to the forums again begging for backstab nerf.

Maybe create a thief and see how “ridiculously OP” it is before judging?

Already gave the vid to few buddies who started playing Gw2 recently and wanted to PvP as rangers. Since I’m terrible on ranger I gave them your vid. Its both fun and educational.

I think Gw2 needs more edited PvP vids like this one. Streams are cool and all, but back in the day when I played Lineage 2, pvp vids were source of fun and they were really well edited. Good vid > stream for learning purposes as well

Skilled rangers are cool as kitten. Nice vid
Your video makes me want to finally finish my ranger xD. Really nice vid!
Too bad I don’t have so much free time nowadays v.v

I have one major beef with your vid though …. WHY ONLY 7 MINUTES :UU

/signed – 15 char

Mirrodin.8729:

Volrath.1473:

Ofc thieves should be punished for missing attacks!! After all, all other professions get punished with conditions for missing their skills right?!… Right?!….

/facepalm

not with conditions but every other class is punished by missing EVERY skill, meanwhile, whats the cd of weapon skills?

-warrior misses his burst? BOOM no adrenaline, means no extra regen (which is traited in shoutbow)
-necro goes lich and gets blinded? or thief goes on stealth? good you have no helpfull skills, lich has high cd or misses everything via blind, plus lich only way to defend himself is kill before die
-mesmer misses his clones? have fun waiting for more pets unless you want to use your dodges

and so on, thief has a lot of mobility with the ability to spam weapon skills, not true?
you have a signet to recover initiative, and if traited you can recover initiative on stealth, meanwhile other classes have to sit, and wait for cooldowns on their weapons,.

i agree chill needs to add some effect to weapon skills on thief, like add 1-2 initiative cost and force the thief to disengage

- warrior refills adrenaline super fast o.O especially with 5 second weapon swap the bars are full in no time, which, just like thief’s initiative is a unique class mechanic

- Thieves do not do damage while blinded, also when a thief misses you, you get a nice “Miss” text floating over ur char from the angle the miss was made. Same if you evade or block a stealthed attack.

- Mesmers (shatterers) get their clones back up in no time and can distort, providing invulnerability

The only problematic out of stealth attack is pistol fire. You pretty much see where bullets are coming from but you can’t target the thief until they get to hit you. Meanwhile you ate bunch of caltrops and the thief is still stealthed. Its kind of annoying
build for sure but at this point if this gets addressed the condi thief will be gone. (caltrops revealing thief and whatnot)

Every attack out of stealth attack is melee. Backstab has 1/4 second cast time so its not instant. When you get the Miss text you must turn around and drop your burst or leap away. Every profession has access to gap closers. You know its not a crime to use those to run away. You only need to win 2-3 seconds before you can see the thief again….

Or well idk, maybe I’m some kind of a masochist. I absolutely love fighting versus other thieves because the combat is so fast paced and you have to guess and predict what the other guy is doing what when from which side (you don’t want to dodge toward them) it gets the adrenaline pumping. Its also very nice when they pop SR and you AoE the kitten out of that circle and in few secs the said thief reveals as downed. Best feeling ever.

Did they alter some changes after the stream. I’m pretty sure I saw panic strike on critical strikes master :O and they were talking about making it less RNG-ish

ResJudicator.7916:

You’ve kinda just outed yourself as someone who doesn’t know your own class… Most of the top thieves are running DP panic strike, which is Deadly Arts + Shadow Arts + Trickery. What the new changes will let you do is max out shadow arts for free. Also, taking SA will be even less of a sacrifice once they decouple stats from traits.

What you should be saying is that no sane thief will camp stealth in a conquest game, which is accurate. But SA still offers a lot of passive survivability even if you’re not camping stealth, and it also further reduces the counterplay to stealth.

Panic strike will move down to Critical Strikes as Master trait. At least from what was shown on the 4 hour stream some weeks ago.

No sane thief will invest in shadow arts. For the simple reason that thieves atm are either go burst or go home. Nothing else works…i assume after the trait update thieves will go deadly arts/acrobatics/trickery and/or replacing one of those for critical strikes(for panic strike and hidden killer/executioner) and overall higher critical rate.

Shadow arts will still make no sense in conquest unless you really want to kitten off someone but you can forget about winning the game.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Nope did not get owned by a thief, sorry conspiracy theory thieves. Only thief to own me in recent days was a really really good sword/dagger one and even then after 3rd encouter he had some major hard time with my ranger. On to the subject:

Ok, a-net, you got some explaning to do.
A while ago you said yourself you want to move away from hard counter gameplay into soft counter style, so player skill has bigger say in result of pvp encounters then their build.

And for most part you’re keeping true to your word – quickness and berserker stance becoming boons which can be stripped or corrupted, elite specs filling gaps base professsions had etc.

….except thieves.

Shadowstepping. Stealth not removed when blocked or evaded, basilisk venom piercing stability, phletora of instant casts including a heal skill that breaks movement inpairment and has massive evade, initiative unaffected by chilling or interrupt induced skill cooldown.

So where exactly is the room for “skilled counter gameplay” against a thief who knows his stuff in pvp? Cause so far all i see is the “hold the point and survive for as long as possible”.

Learn to play or make a thief before jumping into conclusions.
The only reason basilisk venom pierces your stability is because the thief was savvy enough to strip you of your stability. Yeah, its the first boon you lose when the thief Steals from you. There is a boon priority, Aegis and stability are the first in line.

Also, since you seem to know jack about thieves – Larcenous Strike steals your might with priority. So you better off not stacking it. Its the #1 reason all D/D cele eles cry from S/D thieves. They give them might stacks throughout the fight. No blame from me though, its the build that uses the same skill rotation vs any other opponent.

Also if only 1 thief managed to beat you “in months”, then by logic thief is fine no? Clearly your “skill” gives you the upper hand.

Because stealth. Not active blocking

TheBlackLeech.9360:

T raw.4658:

I think we’ve hit just about every ability a thief has in this thread now.

I think I even saw someone say pistol 5 is OP….

All this is now is kitten session about thieves from people who obviously need to l2p.

I’m one of the people who believe thieves’ stealth needs to be nerfed, and I’ll duel you any day of the week to prove that i don’t need to learn to play.

It really is L2P issue. Yeah you’ll beat him, what will you prove? You’ll prove that thief is not the solution for every build and you are too thick to realize that.

Stealth has been nerfed (revealed) since launch. Currently the revealed buff lasts full auto-attack chain. Buffing it anymore would be ludicrous.

Channeling skills are following thieves in stealth. Homing skills (like guardian’s blinding blade) are perfectly capable at pinpointing the thief’s location. Fire/Air procs show exactly where the thief is in stealth, while the thief is taking damage. So don’t tell me its god mode/invulnerability.

And lets not forget that every block/invulnerability channel lasts longer than stealth. So why do you even care if a thief is smacking you from behind procing your blocks? Its not like you can turn around and break your cast. Your channel has to finish in order to use the next skill. Or you get interrupted, somehow.

As a thief myself I’ve probably been killed in stealth more often than I have been killed while revealed. However sometimes i get lucky port and manage to heal up in my downed state before you guys notice im down

Evidently this is a L2P issue. Every skilled player I fought and lost against has been able to trace me with relative ease.

And if you don’t have a thief and you haven’t played in the recent months, just quit this thread. You know jack about thief. To all of you I can only say “try hards”.

And don’t you forget the fact that most blocking skills at launch used to root the caster in place. Now that you move around like mosquitoes its a bit hard for the thief to tell when exactly you are blocking, especially as asura engineer on wrench. This skill is pure hell and with really kittenty tell … with a joke of a cooldown…

Supreme.3164:

Regardless of what work or not, the aim of the thread is add counterplay to thief stealth.

There is no reason why a thief should remain stealthed while attacking a blocking target or a target that manage to dodge your backstab. It’s not fair that I use a high CD utility/skill and I still can’t hit the thief as he remains invisible even after the failure

There is no reason why a thief should be able to sit in stealth for as long as he can in order to recover , a period of time where thief cannot be harmed, that’s invulnerability in practice.

The thief can effectively avoid damage unless the enemy manages to land a lucky hit (which btw won’t reveal the thief from stealth)

Yes you can absolutely hit the thief, don’t be silly/whiny. Press your god kitten auto attack … believe it or not, thief is so much paper, few well-placed auto attacks are more than enough to gut it. Add a single fire/air proc and you’ve won….

^ are you really implying that warriors and guardians have issues fighting thieves o.O Given the amount of heal shoutbow provides or the stunlock hambow provides. Those 20k HP monsters in heavy armor are absolute hell to fight off as a thief and i mostly avoid them if they have no berserker amulet because I’d be better off decaping some other point….

Also keep in mind that a good thief always attacks a target he knows he can get down. So it might seem to you that they kill everything, but really most attacks are well planned out beforehand. As I said above, if it takes too much killing someone or no chance of winning just wait out a +1 and mostly move away.

While other builds engage all types of targets…D/D cele ele can keep point contested in 1on1 indefinitely vs most builds (except S/D thief because they rob them of their boons and chill them and immobilize so they can’t dodge heal so easily)

P.S: Wouldn’t it be awesome if thieves could get 3k+ HP heal on dodge xD

Rezzet.3614:

Ravenmoon.5318:

You guys are so bad you don’t know what is OP and what isn’t.
Turret engi used to be op. The most cheese comp at the time was to run 5 engineers and wreck everything.

When was the last time you saw a team winning with more than 1 thief?

What a sad little thread….

Turret engi was only OP against Condi only runners, i won against several 5 engi parties myself

the biggest L2P case in the game and anet listened to the brainded scrubs running glass builds now that is Sad

And here you are rooting for the same thing.

How many top leaderboard players are exclusively thieves? Not much, not much at all. Because thief does not wreck everything and anyone.

Few months ago, 5 out of 10 in top 10 were turret engineers.
Do maths…

Or wait, maybe there’s global conspiracy between us thieves. “We shall never appear on the leaderboard, for we might eat the nerfbat. Learn it, live it, love it!”

You guys are so bad you don’t know what is OP and what isn’t.
Turret engi used to be op. The most cheese comp at the time was to run 5 engineers and wreck everything.

When was the last time you saw a team winning with more than 1 thief?

What a sad little thread….

D/D eles are the first to die on an S/D thief xD I suppose you really are crying

P.S: Also, shadow shot is blockable skill, so is headshot. And they cost initiative nonetheless. Don’t twist it around. If you block Cloak & Dagger, the thief does not stealth. Boom, there goes 6 initiative.

Also with all the AoE that goes around in Gw2 sPvP nowadays, going melee is extremely difficult. So most thieves run capture points and leave the fighting to the classes with 20k+ HP. The good ones at least.

Thief is not the weakest class. Thief has aces against any other berserker player, but they are by far not OP or kitten like most of you try to put.

Endless teleports? Please … blow initiative and utilities to teleport around and you are sitting duck. What can you do with low initiative and utilities in reuse? Absolutely nothing, that’s what you can do. Pray for your passive traits to trigger on time. That’s all you can do

And please, the guy above that played thief 2 years ago. You do realize the fact that thief has been nerfed almost exclusively on every patch every since. Did this thought ever cross your mind? When was the last time you saw pistol whip thief owning everything in 2 attacks? The player skill bar in thief is super high. A single mistake can get you killed. Don’t twist it around because it is a fact. The thief has no blocks so if they kitten up and you know how to press anything other than auto attack, you win.

Also your last post clearly show how bad you are. There is a window in flanking strike animation where you can absolutely destroy the thief. And the thief can do nothing about that.

Again, learn to counter it and wait it out.

I love fighting S/D thieves. You just have to bait them spam #3 like losers and soon after they are sitting ducks because guess what. No initiative. It is vital to thief’s survival. More so than heals to be honest.

Also there will always be a class that runs faster than the others. Take that away and warriors or mesmers will happily take that spot. Would you complain about them then? Or you’ll chill when everybody moves like a turtle and they remove dodging, because clearly dodging speeds you up for a second, thus unfair …

Jekkt.6045:

ravenmoon^
please give us a more biased opinion.

shadow shot has no cooldown, it costs initiative yes but you can use it right again
shadow shot – enemy teleports away to kite – shadow shot, see why it’s unbalanced? you make a utility teleport that is usually on a 35-40s cooldown useless.

stealth by leap is 3+1 not 2+1…

and yes, thief has no actual cooldowns on the weaponskills, cooldowns here mean that you need to time when you want to use a specific skill, not that you need initiative. so what does that actually mean? on a fresh air ele you have a blind on a 8s cooldown and a daze on a 25s cooldown. need your daze? use it, then you can’t use it for another 25 seconds.
on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?

thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes (excluding medi guard because of the heals). you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

thief is both viable as berserk and also as condition with the only difference that the condition thief needs more stealth and is therefore not desired in a game mode that makes stealth capping impossible. i saw plenty of condi thieves in stronghold and they seemed to work out very well.

what kind of argument is this? every class without utility skills is a sitting duck. but not every class can go in stealth without utilities.

landing a backstab is not as hard as you wanna make it sound, in fact the areas that trigger the “back” of backstab apply to more angles than the “not back” part…

so you wanna say that thief doesn’t have damage and gap closers? and condi builds generally wreck all berserk builds, i have yet to come across a build that has enough condi cleanse to “yolo” something like a condi engi or condi ranger.

as if 50% of the other classes’ utility skills were not completely useless or niche.
think about it before complaining. thief doesn’t need “huge boosts” at all, thief needs to get finally balanced by either putting it down to the level of other roamers or by powercreeping them up to the level of thieves.

more than 2 years and the excuses why thieves are oh so fragile are still the same while the problems that this class brings are also still the same.

Waste 8+ initiative (if u spam that) to come at me, and i’ll bury you. No initiative thief is bad. You should feel bad for ever suggesting spamming shadow shot is a thing. Spamming shadow shot is like spamming heartseeker. Only noobs do it and it is not a thing. Also the range is not 1200. So not that great. Its like a normal leap, not really a teleport…

If we are going to talk about ele vs thief, please shut up. Ele has 20 weapon kills that provide defense, cc, condi, damage and support, thief has 5 and initiative bar that is for both weapon sets. Fresh air gets instant cooldown refill. They also have blocks and blinds and toughness. Thief has none of that (except blind). You actively mitigate damage, thief doesn’t. If you don’t get this concept, don’t post here any further.

I play various classes, and I yet have to be intimidated by a thief. I don’t play ele because in every MMO i hate casters. They feel lame to me. Gw2 is no exception, but I have every other profession. Never picked my build with the thought of thief around. Push swiftness and wait 2 seconds….not a rocket freaking science…

Obviously the OP has only seen thief UI on screenshot.

Non-CD teleports? What?
Thief can go into hiding indefinitely? What? :| Every stealth skill with the exception of the SUPER OBVIOUS shadow refuge is 2 seconds. 3 if you’ve spent 3 points in shadow arts. Which gimps your build in any game mode. (Except in PvE but we are not talking about PvE)
Thief has no cooldowns? Wtf?

Guys most of you are oblivious beyond the point of someone wasting their time answering you.

Thief doesn’t get punished for making mistakes? Oh please … thief is the most punished class for making mistakes. Yes we can teleport woooo /o/ so amazing. But so can elementalist and mesmer while having overall better defenses (distortion, blocks, tougness, counter). OH OH no, it must be the OP stealth right! RIGHT?! Well, guess what happens when a necro or ranger or mesmer or pretty much most of the classes start to CHANNEL skills on a thief. Do you give 2 kittens about whether thief goes into stealth or not? Of course you don’t. “This is how the game works”, right?

And thanks to thief being viable only in berserker amulet, it is paper.
If you can’t wait out for 2 seconds to burst down a thief, I’m sorry to inform you but…

You need to learn to play.

Thief with no utilities is a sitting duck. If you can’t beat a thief with no utilities, you are bad, and you should feel bad.

Once in stealth the thief has to find your back AND smack you, all this in 2 seconds. Hitting on the side or in the face out of stealth is bad and not as painful.

Take that into consideration before the next time you cry.

What a thief has in teleports and stealth other classes have in raw dps, cc, condi or gap closers. Learn to use those maybe? A condi build absolutely wrecks a thief. A trap condi ranger absolutely disables thief and guards a capture point.

Do discuss the fact that thief actually can’t do anything other than burst. Thief traps and venoms are bad and other classes excel at that. Think about that before complaining about nerfs. If anything, certain aspects of thief need huge boost.

Or better yet, make a thief and go ranked.

Here’s a little secret. Most backstabs can be avoided just by using swiftness. MAGIC

Funny how people cry from perma stealth in forums yet I am yet to see a perma stealth thief. As a thief myself who always goes after the enemy thief/ranger in spvp and so far winning most fight offs i haven’t seen a perma stealth thief. Thief that stealths and runs away – certainly! A thief that stacks leap combo finishers? Obviously. Hide in Shadows heal thief? More than half of them have this but do you know what? Anything other than shadow refuge lasts 2-3 seconds (you can get extra second if you kitten up your build with shadow arts), it is super easy to wait out 2 second for the thief, especially if you have access to swiftness/gap closers.

Its not like stealth prevents you from taking damage. And if you let a thief combo leap around you without stepping in the blind field or cleaving around it, its all on you.

Its really simple. The ToL builds are not the best builds in game. People at ToL excel at the classes they play and they think they have a good synergy that allows them to quickly capture and hold points as the conquest mode demands.

Nothing to do with whether a class is good or bad. There are some outstanding rangers in this game. Guess they don’t do ToL. Some rangers actually destroy thieves if the thief is not on their level, believe it or not

I assume it was designed to make more interesting fights by matching people on similar or close levels. However, since not many take participation in PvP this idea had to be scrapped I guess although people already grinded their ranks, so removing the system completely is a no go.

At worst it gives you something to look forward. The dragon rank stomp banner is dope. So is the phoenix as well

I’ve won with 3 thieves in the team. Totally rekt the enemy and outrotated them. Only bunkers can stop good thieves and the enemy team had only 1 and we were ganking him

Jim Hunter.6821:

Ravenmoon.5318:

nacario.9417:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Toxsa.2701:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Well as a thief I don’t mind the channeling. What really grinds my gears is that the channeling follows you. So if you channel me you know where I am at all times because your character automatically adjusts to me which kind of defeats the purpose of stealthing in the first place. But oh well, If they do this I guess everyone and their dog will complain about how OP thief is.

Oh wait … they already do :p It’s fascinating how many baddies this game has.

The real interesting part is usually it’s the thieves who make those QQ threads first
How many posts about this stealth stuff being brought up? At least 50 times no?
Also so many nub thieves make a thread about how OP Rapid Fire is LOL..

Rapid Fire is OP. But since its the only decent source of damage for longbow ranger most people don’t complain and think this is acceptable.

And yet any competent thief should be able to beat a glass LB ranger, and the only situation Rapid fire is complained about is when the ranger is full glass.

I’ve never said it is impossible to kill a ranger. Pretty much agree with what you said but that just shows how bad the ranger design is. Mostly bad abilities with few overpowered ones. Yay balance!

Same could be said about thieves…

Doubt it. Most thief skills are good and can be a game changer if used right. I thought we are over the idea of “heartseeker spam ftw!”. I thought we figured out that this is not an iWin button and any semi-braindead opponent that has cooldowns can decimate such thief.

I don’t think a thief can keep anyone perma blind unless you are silly enough to walk into their blinding powder. From the weapons you only get blind from sword (while stealthed, so really hard to do), the shortbow which decimates your initiative, shadow shot that’s somewhat spammable. There are also 2-3 utilities but idk its borderline impossible to keep someone perma blinded with dodges and whatnot while maintaining some survivability as a thief (stun breaks, shadow step, refuge)

Now, if you fight multiple thieves, given they have teamspeak (or just play well together) they could permablind you working as a team. But a single thief?

nacario.9417:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Toxsa.2701:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Well as a thief I don’t mind the channeling. What really grinds my gears is that the channeling follows you. So if you channel me you know where I am at all times because your character automatically adjusts to me which kind of defeats the purpose of stealthing in the first place. But oh well, If they do this I guess everyone and their dog will complain about how OP thief is.

Oh wait … they already do :p It’s fascinating how many baddies this game has.

The real interesting part is usually it’s the thieves who make those QQ threads first
How many posts about this stealth stuff being brought up? At least 50 times no?
Also so many nub thieves make a thread about how OP Rapid Fire is LOL..

Rapid Fire is OP. But since its the only decent source of damage for longbow ranger most people don’t complain and think this is acceptable.

And yet any competent thief should be able to beat a glass LB ranger, and the only situation Rapid fire is complained about is when the ranger is full glass.

I’ve never said it is impossible to kill a ranger. Pretty much agree with what you said but that just shows how bad the ranger design is. Mostly bad abilities with few overpowered ones. Yay balance!

You got it all wrong. Old MMOs (before the post-wow MMO boom) MMOs were (WoW included) heavily grindy. I mean … it took months to get a single level in EQ. Months of hardcore grind to get level/gear in Lineage 2. Newer MMOs are not as grindy and more rewarding. Whether in single or co-op mode.

And it all makes sense. When all of us were 10-15 year old we could’ve sunk the required time without blinking or regret. Now that we are older we as player seek simpler games. We do search for GAMES. Not grindfests.

From my POV, I’ll never ever play game or content that requires me to organize 40+ man raid or some kitten like that. I just don’t have the time and by now, frankly, I don’t have the nerves for it. I have relatively stressful job, bills to pay, family to see and in all this I have few hours at night of playtime.

I’m actually glad that Gw2 is more open to people like me. And I (and I assume many others like me) search for games that fit into my tight schedule to relief stress.

I may not have thousands of gold or all the available legendaries or <insert something timegated>, but I’m happy with the way things are in Gw2.

Saiyan.1704:

Rainbow Eyelids.8461:

any channeled ability shouldn’t be able to target after going into stealth. wut?

And stealthys shouldn’t stomp people nor rez their allies. Technically we know where you are so why should we continue to let that happen too?

This looks like a losing argument for you sir

How about this explanation for you:

…
…
…

Magic!

Sagat.3285:

Really…damage has nothing to do with this…

FSG #3 &4,swiftness stacking,staff fire #4,Lighting Flash it should be possible don’t see the point.

You do realize that im on that slope within 5 seconds from the start right? Its basically 2 dodges and 3 shortbow blinks. At worst I should’ve seen him walking toward the point, not winning quarter of it no?

Though I wouldn’t know how fast ele can get there, that’s why im asking. He didn’t seem to use an elite on me so might as well have been the FGS but certainly not lighting flash. Never saw him using LF throughout the match.

I’m talking about the start of the match on Legacy of Foefire. The match started, as a thief I ran far (toward waterfall) dodging for swiftness and using my maxrange shortbow #5 to get there faster but by the time I climbed the first slope (directly opposite our spawn) the elementalist in particular was already there.

How is this possible? I didn’t report the said player because I’m not sure he was exploiting but this has never happened to me before. Usually, at worst I race with the enemy player to the capture point (or better said, I see them running toward the point), but that ele had completed 20-30% (if not more) capture by the time i got on the slope.

Now, I know some necromancers do this by abusing spectral walk, but I don’t recall elementalists having similar skills.

If it matters, the ele seemed to be a staff bunker because he wasn’t doing much damage to me but i didn’t do much to him either.

Was he using some sort of an exploit or staff ele do this kind of kitten?

Oh please … stop talking about money cost. They don’t hire freelancers. They have a workforce that is getting payed regardless of what they are doing. It’s called salaries. Stop involving economics in everything for kittens sake. Some creeps derailed my Dx12 thread with talks of economical gains while it doesn’t really cost them more or less to do some kittenty update.

And the most important factor … the happier the userbase, the more filled ANet’s pockets are.

Xom.9264:

Not a single necro in the top team comps…. there is a reason for that easy to counter class.

L2P

Did you quickly forget about Nos? He’s also the main target in every team fight while the rest of Abjured comp supports him. At least that’s how it was on their old composition. They only show abjured on finals now and I never watch until the end because it gets very late in my country. (I live in EU)

Forgotten Legend.9281:

i’ll tell you what… remove the ability of a stealthed character from “finishing” a downed character, and then i’ll agree that stealth should break target tracking for channelled skills.

anything that prevents capturing a point should also prevent / break a “finish him” channel, too, including the “start to channel finisher, then port away, then port back just before the channel ends” exploit that i’ve heard about.

Um … that’s called safestomping. Every class has one. Whether you go mist, or invul. Actually the stealth safestomp is the most fair of them all, since you know, you can CC the thief, while you can’t push an engi or misted ele.

Centurion.7296:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I can’t wait to hear OP’s great idea on how to deal with someone that decided to leave a match or had to leave the PC, thus seeming afk.

There are several discussions busy atm on what Anet can do to stop 4v5, for example if a player just leaves an ranked and unranked match then they should get penalized, like the dishonor stystem but something that actually exists, if they just leave by clicking the leave button then they should not be alowed to join a new one for an hour or more, if they just had to suddenly leave their pc and “thus seem afk” then they will be kicked out by the system but, only problem is what to do with people who intentionally just sit on the map and shout random comments at their team, only salution may be to kick them out if the whole team reports the person then penilized him like unable to play for 24 hours or they can implement an system similar to the AFK one but this would just check that if the person is not bunkering a point , have not attacked someone and have not moved a certain distance they should be warned and 10 seconds later kicked and then penilized.

Threads relating to PvP problems:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/AFK-in-matches-1
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/4v5-In-Ranked-Needs-Solutions
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/is-sPvP-really-that-dead
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PvP-solo-at-the-lowest-point/first#post5093088

And these are just the new ones.

Ravenmoon.5318:

You know, some things are out of ANet’s hands.

But that’s none of my business.

Nothing is out of their hands, they are the molders of their own world thus they can change anything if they would like to do so, even maybe making it impossible for people to hack the system. Like if the program’s code has been changed in anyway then the game wont launch.

Ravenmoon.5318:

On topic, you maybe forgot the 3 huge sPvP revamps the game has had? Also Guild Wars as a franchise has always been PvE-centric with huge lore. PvP in this game, as in every other MMO is just to keep community entertained while they produce more content. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Yeah ofc they should focus more on PvE 3/7 (PvP 2/7 and WvW 2/7) but Id expect from them to atleast fix one of the game modes that they intend to advertise with refering to tournaments. Now ofc the AFKers wont effect the tournaments directly, but will indirectly by giving the community and the world a negative opinion on PvP thus making PvP less popular and then they can have less people attending the tournaments which would mean less advertisement for gw2/Anet/NCSoft.

Also I never had a bubble for you to pop.

I suppose a thank you is in place because you took the time to answer me, buut I think a dishonor system is inefficient. From your suggestions it won’t stop people from leaving you in the cold for 4v5 in a way that … DCs happen, people leave the PC etcetera etcetera.

And the people who usually “afk” because they don’t like the team (they don’t really afk, they are just kittens) well they’ll usually be aware of the systems in place and go around them. I mean .. would you rather have a headless chicken running around the map or an AFK guy. To me there is no difference. They are equally useless.

All these draconian laws would alienate real players, just like game DRMs alienate real gamers. Check out that Witcher 3 … it has no DRM yet its turning huge profit atm. For the first time since forever I went and bought physical copy (compared to digital one) because of the awesome package and “thank you” letter. It’s just basic psychology. Too many rules takes the fun out of things.

IMO, ANet should just straight-up copy systems from other PvP-centric systems (LoL, Dota 2, HoN, Hearthstone). Implement tiers/leagues. Make going into sPvP easier (should be possible with 0 PvE experience). Obviously, the higher the tier, the lesser the chance you would get a bad matchup. Natural selection at its finest.

I can’t wait to hear OP’s great idea on how to deal with someone that decided to leave a match or had to leave the PC, thus seeming afk.

You know, some things are out of ANet’s hands.

But that’s none of my business.

On topic, you maybe forgot the 3 huge sPvP revamps the game has had? Also Guild Wars as a franchise has always been PvE-centric with huge lore. PvP in this game, as in every other MMO is just to keep community entertained while they produce more content. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Toxsa.2701:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Well as a thief I don’t mind the channeling. What really grinds my gears is that the channeling follows you. So if you channel me you know where I am at all times because your character automatically adjusts to me which kind of defeats the purpose of stealthing in the first place. But oh well, If they do this I guess everyone and their dog will complain about how OP thief is.

Oh wait … they already do :p It’s fascinating how many baddies this game has.

The real interesting part is usually it’s the thieves who make those QQ threads first
How many posts about this stealth stuff being brought up? At least 50 times no?
Also so many nub thieves make a thread about how OP Rapid Fire is LOL..

Rapid Fire is OP. But since its the only decent source of damage for longbow ranger most people don’t complain and think this is acceptable.

Well as a thief I don’t mind the channeling. What really grinds my gears is that the channeling follows you. So if you channel me you know where I am at all times because your character automatically adjusts to me which kind of defeats the purpose of stealthing in the first place. But oh well, If they do this I guess everyone and their dog will complain about how OP thief is.

Oh wait … they already do :p It’s fascinating how many baddies this game has.

Muchacho.2390:

It shouldnt be a DM map but an anihilation map (also once you die you stay dead , no respawn etc.). Would make the map much more fun.

Yeah i support this. Its more like team deathmatch. Split the game mode into rounds (say whoever reaches 5 first wins), whoever dies stays dead until next round. With a timelimit of 20 minutes, then you look at the score. This would be an amazing game mode.

Noha.3749:

Tips vs S/D Thief:

Close the distance to the Infiltrator Strike return point, putting their ability to reset slightly but meaningfully less efficient.

You outsustain S/D if you keep them from resetting, unless you are something way too glassy. Also, in sPvP they do less dmg than in WvW so dont panic if you get jumped.

This is a good tip, granted you see where the return point is.

Zephyra.4709:

Full zerk LB pew pew ranger aka the collector of salty orphan tears.

Watch & keep distance from the thief, that is, if he’s focused on other things… count his evades & if he’s used withdraw (heal) then it’s time to hit that rapid fire button.

No joke, many go into panic mode and you know you have them whilst your pet either cc’s them or chases their sorry booty. Nothing better than a point blank shot mid casting their shadow refuge. Gg. That or “Sic Em’” works wonders.

If he’s focused on you I personally always take RaO (stability to avoid Bas Ven) and prior to starting the match if I see a thief or so on their team “Sic Em”. Even a well timed Entangled can be a life saver.

If from far away auto attack the thief; force them to waste their initiative/evades, make sure you know what your pet is doing too.

Terrible advice. “Full zerk pew pew” ranger is kittens tops (5 hits, dunno why forum censors kittens). Less if fire/air procs. I know that from experience because I’m the one that shuts down rangers on enemy team. If they are alone, they are no match. Not even with all their pet CC.

I don’t know why people support this opinion. 5-6 secs invulnerability? Please … I love it when you guys pop this ability. Its your only savior and when you pop it I just C&D and LOS you while it ticks off without getting a single hit from you. And then I quickly shadow step back at you.

Am I missing something?

The only way a pew pew ranger could win an S/D thief (or i suppose any thief in particular) is by catching the thief offguard with no endurance and/or initiative. In every other scenario the thief can disengage if it gets too hot. At worst it can evade through your rapid fire, making you waste opening strike.

On topic now, every condi class destroys thief. I have really hard time fighting mediguards. I win sometimes but mostly am forced to disengage and move on and stalk the guardi to be on low hp for surprise kill.

I’ve proven myself difficult to mark necros because i roll over their marks, they get popped and i get nothing, completely smacking them with my rotation.

Condi rangers with spirits and CC pets are very annoying and sometimes i have to disengage multiple times to win the fight if im really into winning the fight.

Hambow warriors are so so (~~~). It basically depends if they manage to stunlock the thief and proc fire/air.

Bunker guards, while not an immediate threat, it takes forever to take them out to the point that there is no point engaging that build because the 2-3 minutes(sometimes even more) you waste on it could be utilized better somewhere else on the map.

Panic strike thieves are annoying but the S/D always seem to have the upper hand.

Fresh air ele is a good counter thanks to the insane fire/air procs they pull, but if they make the slightest mistake they are dead.

So yeah, if you really want to shutdown an S/D thief … I suppose condi shortbow ranger, mediguard, fresh air ele if you are a good player and hambow if you want to generally be more effective.

Bleed stacking sword warriors are quite evil. Put more tank on it and just spam that bleed. Eventually the thief will run away. Last time I met one I had like 15 stacks of bleeding after a minute into the fight. Not a nice feeling.

ChoChoBo.6503:

range them.

As an S/D thief I don’t see how is this a legit advice o.O An S/D thief does not lack gap closers…