Guild Wars 2

For single-target, I’d say Thief, Elementalist, Warrior, and Mesmer are all pretty viable. For aoe and/or sustained I would suggest Engineer, Necromancer, or Elementalist (again), and perhaps Ranger.

Out of all the damaging classes, Elementalist, Mesmer, Engineer, and Thief have the highest learning curve—in my opinion—but if you play them well they’re very rewarding classses. Warrior, Necromancer, and Ranger are easier for beginners.

Guardians, while typically a support class, can deliver sustained damage in their own right. However, I don’t have enough experience with the class to make any suggestions.

Personally, I play Thief and I find it very fun. Some weapon sets are much more difficult to play than others, though.

Sebrent.3625:

A good thief always dictates the pace of the fight or resets it. Why? Because if he isn’t dictating the pace he is quite likely to die. Thief is like Mesmer is many respects. This is one of them.

As much flak as I give Thieves, they share many characteristics with the Mesmer. Howver, there is quite the difference in what I hear in TS and guild chat when someone switches to try a Mesmer and when they switch to try a Thief is quite different (and hilarious when they try Mesmer). Most try the Mesmer and it’s immediately “what the …”. When those same try the Thief, they relay back how easy many things are … though those coming from Guardian or something similar do complain about being squishy when actually hit … can’t have it all buds, lol.

That’s actually interesting. I always related Thieves more to Eles, Engis to Mesmers, and Rangers to Necros. I always found the class niches to line up, and oftentimes the playstyle.

Sebrent.3625:

Yes, ArenaNet also mentioned that combat was supposed to such that you saw your opponent’s animations and reacted to them. I’m just wishing they would find a way to marry these seemingly conflicting ideas.

Nothing in those descriptions mentions that the Thief has to give no indicator to their opponents. I’m asking for a 0.5 second to see/hear and react. With most people that’s not useful and far less than most classes give with their big hit abilities.

I’d actually like to see the resurrection of cast bars. From a PvE standpoint, have you ever taken a Guardian with you into AC? It’s a little challenging to see Kholer’s mating dance when he’s covered in bright blue flames.

I also get irritated that several completely different skills in both PvE and PvP have similar or identical animations, sometimes making me blow my cooldown unnecessarily, or waste an essential dodge.

Sebrent.3625:

Kazuhiro.5809:

One more stupid little complaint, Flanking Strikes and Death Blossom make me accidentally jump off of walkways all the time.

LMAO! Come talk to Ranger’s using 1H sword sometime. We’ll start a support group :-p

I enjoy the S/D build for Thieves, but I envy the pathing for Serpent’s Strike. Flanking Strikes always sends me careening away sideways, like my character was just overcome by disco passion.

Sebrent.3625:

What I’d like is for Thieves to remain unique in their gameplay while adhering to some of the key ideas relayed by ArenaNet for how combat in GW2 is supposed to be.

As far as ArenaNet has stated, the Thief class is working as intended. From an older post by Kasama.8941, which I quoted much earlier in this thread:

Interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):

“The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge.”

“…the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

Here’s the description of stealth from wiki:
“Stealth — Thieves have access to multiple skills which, for a short duration, make them invisible to enemy players and avoid aggro of hostile NPCs. While stealthed the thief is not targettable, but can still be damaged by attacks which hit them, and attacking from stealth will break the deception.”

And from the 14th december update notes:
“Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game…”

I’d like to see a Shortbow-centric build just because I’d like to be able to run it more efficiently in dungeons, but I understand where people are coming from when they say it’s a strictly utility weapon.

Also, I agree that I’d like a longer range. Doing events like Jormag make me feel incredibly useless, simply because the ideal standing areas are too far away from the event mob for me to reach. On Jormag specifically, I always end up standing there like a potato and auto-attacking with the rocket launcher.

More ranged options outside of SB and P/P would be interesting as well. I, for one, would like to see rifles for both Thieves and Rangers.

vespers.1759:

Teamkiller.4315:

vespers.1759:

Dasorine.1964:

vespers.1759:

Dasorine.1964:

vespers.1759:

normal? yes. acceptable? no.

the thief class is just the worst thing ever. 8k hits, stealth every 3 seconds… it truly a class for scrubs.

no complaining on the forums because you died to someone is for scrubs, 8k is hardly the highest damage obtainable in a single button press in this game and stealth is easy to counter if you actually pay attention and learn patterns.

let me guess… you play a thief.

let me guess… you play a glass cannon build with no defense who got ambushed once by another glass cannon build who managed to kill you and because you think your the all glorious master of the game that any time you die due to your own build choice everything else must be wrong?

yes but my glass canon ranger does 1k dmg on it’s 1 and 2 skill… not 3-4k and 7k hearts + 8k backstab. i also have no defense whereas a thief can stealth every 3 seconds.

care to continue this debate? nothing you can say can defend the thief class.

Uhhh…yes I can. First of all, glass cannons are really…really…bad to play for a ranger solo. Glass cannon rangers just in general don’t work in pvp, especially not solo.

If you want to play a glass cannon “ranged” class, go warrior. Put on full zerker armor and you’ll be hitting 10-15k volleys and 20k killshots on crit. You can literally one-shot (I mean shot) thieves (and your glass cannon ranger) with that kind of build. How does that kind of damage suit you? Warriors wear heavy, so they have slightly more damage reduction, have 20% more health, and their utility options don’t suck compared to those of a glass cannon ranger.

I was a glass cannon ranger once. I got 2 shotted by thieves, but of course, you can read the long tl;dr I posted just a few posts above.

TL;DR thieves aren’t OP and you need to l2p. This is coming from one who subs a lv 2 thief ONLY for spvp.

i’ll summarize so the others can also have a laugh:

only thieves and warriors can run glass canon because warriors have killshot (IE: the most useless 1v1v skill ever). since every other class is outclassed by a glass canon thief they shouldn’t try and should go bunker and try to survive thief strikes without hoping to kill them.

Actually, the message that was intended for you was more like: “Some classes are more inclined towards GC specs than others. If you’re getting facerolled on a glass cannon Ranger, you should probably rethink your build rather than make grandiose generalizations about an entire other class.”

He said nothing about Thieves outclassing other glass cannons, or that other classes can only go bunker in order to avoid the spike damage. But if you run a glass cannon build—especially a poorly-equipped one—getting spiked down by anyone is the risk you take, be it a Thief or a Mesmer or an Engineer.

I’ve actually been sad that GW2 doesn’t have any kind of equivalent for the Assassin skill Shadow Form, from the original Guild Wars:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Form
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Form_

I think it provides enough precedent for some kind of Thief invulnerability or protection, although the mechanics would obviously have to be reworked for GW2.

A spear on land would be interesting, and might pacify the Thief and Ranger players crying for more weapon sets.

On that same note, it would be great if daggers, swords, staffs, axes, and/or maces were available underwater. I can’t think of any logical reason why they aren’t from a lore or physics standpoint.

I also have to say that I despise playing Ele underwater because I hate the trident skills, and it would be nice to see some kind of alternative. Any alternative.

Kazuhiro.5809:

Yeah, I thought it was rather sad that there’s no reason to having nothing in your off-hand. Some kind of highly specific fringe benefit would be nice.

I was also really disappointed with this, especially since there’s a (lame) unique dual skill for only holding a mainhand weapon. Twisting Fangs and Stab were both mind-numbingly underwhelming.

ensoriki.5789:

Quick Pockets. 15 char.

I love this trait name. Quick Pockets, as opposed to slow pockets?

I think your Open Wounds idea is interesting, sensible, and would reduce the tediousness of big boss fights. I also agree with the change to weakness, since as it stands I find it to be kind of a weak condition.

I disagree with your suggestion for Fear. I dealt with that kind of “unbeatable” fear with the Spiritmasters in Aion, who would turn you into a spirit and send you running in the opposite directions, during which you could do nothing to save yourself. It was incredibly overpowered as PvP cc, especially partnered with allies that could take the opportunity to knock the victim’s brains in. A lot of people also used it for pure trolling purposes, which was as aggravating as it was amusing. I have no desire to see that kind of fear again.

Nostalgic QQ aside, I also disagree with you ideas for Cripple and Blind—although I do think they’re interesting—and my reasons are the same as Drawing Guy’s: there is too much access to cripple, and blind wouldn’t necessarily turn you into a Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Man.

I’ve used…

Female: 3 and 10
Male: 4

My girl, Prosper. I’m so proud of her that I put her picture in the Thief forum, too.

I’m pretty sure the Hall of Monuments title is Ascendant because of the Ascension feat in Guild Wars, which was accomplished by completing the Augury Rock mission in Prophecies, Nahpui Quarter in Factions, or Hunted! in Nightfall. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ascension

I think they should have picked something else for the PvP title. I wear it because I Ascended in all three GW campaigns, and I like the word, but I have not nor will I probably ever earn it for PvP.

Perhaps this is a different issue, but when I exit my game client in fullscreen mode, it doesn’t actually exit, and I end up having to terminate the program via my Task Manager.

This doesn’t seem to happen in windowed mode, just fullscreen.

LordByron.8369:

Rusc.4978:

LordByron.8369:

emikochan.8504:

I haven’t noticed many legitimate complaints in the ele forum.

Also ele are quite accustomed to knee jerk nerf being the most nerfed class since release and often without reason even when it was considered the weakest class it got continually nerfed.

Wat.

Maybe I have a fuzzy memory, but I can’t recall a time when Eles were ever considered the weakest class. I’d say that territory has been left in the realm of Engineers and Rangers, for the most part, although every class has it’s weakling builds.

yes you have a fuzzy memory and you are possibly lazy to not check….

just look at release till about a couple months ago.
For a brief period staff bunker ele was viable as a pure support class……..but was nerfed into oblivion as is happening with D/D (they already nerfed A LOT, notice how people keep complaining….despite they cannot even understand how its been nerfed…..have at least the decency to read ALL patchnotes…).

P.s. eng never been so weak…nor rangers as i said ….if you just accept baseless complaints you are next and infact you can see “nerf rangers and nerf engineers” posts already

Or, I’m not lazy at all, and you don’t have a good grasp of your class. See? I can make needless insults, too.

Now that’s out of the way, staff bunker Ele was ridiculous. And yes, it did get nerfed—although I didn’t understand the nerf myself, I had my Ele friend explain it to me in its entirety. And I disagree that they make those kind of sweeping nerfs without much (if any) forewarning, as Daecollo said. However, it was a very powerful build. And it’s not totally obsolete; I still see it from time to time, and I see people playing it well. It just doesn’t receive the same massive healing, so it’s more difficult to play.

Eles also have other viable builds—especially D/D, which at the moment is far from being nerfed into oblivion. I certainly see no shortage of it in sPvP or PvE, and no one who has much game experience would call that build underpowered. Nor, in fact, would they call Eles a weak class.

There are also “nerf ____” posts for every class. Every class. Every. Mostly by people that don’t know how to counter them. And if you look beyond baseless complaints, I’m sure you’d see that even with the nerfs to Ele, Rangers and Engineers are still the classes that receive most of the outcry for being underpowered. They’re certainly less powerful as a whole than Eles are.

cesmode.4257:

Guild Missions have been installed in the worst possible way, and we’ll see just how lucky people can get with a precursor from completing. The big draw for me is the chance at a precursor. If arenanet left out a key piece of info, that you can only get a precursor from a certain mission, or the last unlockable, I’ll be POd. They also did say that the entire guild has the opportunity to loot a precursor…kind of grey info. Does this mean that if one person gets it, all get a precursor? Or just the entire guild has the chance(individually).

For me, verdict is still out on those missions. They aren’t traditional raids, but its going to be scheduled content for your guild to complete, which I do not want to base my RL around a game schedule. For me, this is a huge turnoff. If I cannot sign in for a guild mission, I miss out. Even if I can sign in for a guild mission, I don’t want to say to myself "just make sure you don’t get into anything at home that will take you past the start time of that guild mission. " Up until now, Ive logged in whenever I want without fear of being left behind. Now, not so much. With every patch, with the exception of a few, I keep getting a bad taste in my mouth each time, that this game is moving toward a more mainstream MMO rather than a unique snowflake that I thought/hoped it would be.

I agree with you there. In my opinion, guild missions should also have scaled entry fees or smaller missions, so smaller/casual guilds can still partake. I don’t like the “big fish only” attitude that the guild missions seem to have right now.

And while I love the dragon chest update—and I think that needed to be implemented—the new zone capacity limits to reduce lag are frustrating as hell. Especially since my server has a rivalry from our WvW glory days, and our rival server feels the need to send guesters over to max out the zone capacity for events. Because WvW and PvE events are totally related.

And of course, the zone cap doesn’t actually help the lag whatsoever.

LordByron.8369:

emikochan.8504:

I haven’t noticed many legitimate complaints in the ele forum.

Also ele are quite accustomed to knee jerk nerf being the most nerfed class since release and often without reason even when it was considered the weakest class it got continually nerfed.

Wat.

Maybe I have a fuzzy memory, but I can’t recall a time when Eles were ever considered the weakest class. I’d say that territory has been left in the realm of Engineers and Rangers, for the most part, although every class has it’s weakling builds.

Black Frog.9274:

Rusc.4603:

But the correct plural form is “Thieves,” not “Thiefs,” following the rules that govern over other -f words in English, like “calf,” “scarf,” and “wolf.”

Like many other things in English, this isn’t a rule, just a pattern within a subset of words. It’s not true of “chiefs,” “beliefs,” etc. (http://www.scrabblefinder.com/ends-with/f/). In fact, more words ending in F don’t use “-ves” than do. The subset is mainly “-[short vowel sound]-lf” endings and is a direct result of changes in speech patterns from old/middle English, which would have had an extra syllable sound at the end of the pluralized word, e.g. “shelfes” sounds like “shelf-uss” in the middle English and became “shelves” later on. However, even words that fit this pattern don’t always get the “ves” ending— e.g. “Gulf” and “golf.”

I didn’t mean to imply that the rule was true for all -f words, just some of the others. Thank you for taking more time to explain it, though, since I didn’t articulate it very well.

I don’t think I can express how amused I am that there’s a thread about proper grammar.

But the correct plural form is “Thieves,” not “Thiefs,” following the rules that govern over other -f words in English, like “calf,” “scarf,” and “wolf.” Courtesy of http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thief:

thief [theef]
noun, plural thieves.
a person who steals, especially secretly or without open force; one guilty of theft or larceny.

Uncle Salty.6342:

Read through some of the replies.
Most said no because

• GW 2 is casual friendly
• Anet wants to bring the community together
• Not everyone is a hardcore fanatic

What Anet has done recently:

• Laurels. 1 per account per day on daily completion. (Takes 1 – 2 months or more for what’s worth getting provided you finish it religiously everyday.

• Guild missions. Small guilds, sorry this content is not for you.

• AC revamp. Cool new design. Casual newbie? Sorry m8, no stepping stone dungeon for you. Go beg for some help. Otherwise form a party of similar situated newbies and spend 2-3 hours in there and you might not even complete it!

Most of these issues don’t affect me. But, it all seems very contrary to what they’re preaching and implementing.

Don’t go all putting the blame on elitists. Some of you are just overstating the issue as if it’s the new fashion in GW2. It’s hip to be ‘casual’ hur hur hur.

I actually agree with you: what Anet seems to want the community to be like and what they’re implementing in said community seem to be two completely differnet things. The difference between “what should exist” and “what does exist” is a big issue with me right now in the realm of GW2.

However, gearcheck isn’t going to help close that gap.

ProxyDamage.9826:

There is no legitimate and reasonable argument against it.

There’s no legitimate reason for an inspect option, either. It’s all opinion on both sides.

ProxyDamage.9826:

“People will be elitist!!!”

People can be elitist right now. And so what? Don’t play with them. You’re decrying the attitude of people whom you are trying to play with, but you’ll still play with them because their very attitude demonstrates they’re competent, and therefore assure you a nice piggy back ride. And don’t say “no that isn’t it!”, if it isn’t then why are you playing with people you don’t like? Even for the most neglected of dungeons/areas you can easily cobble together a party with whatever specifications you wish. If you don’t like a group’s attitude don’t kittening play with them.

The same argument can be made towards people who want inspecting, right now. If you’re so confident of your own skill that you demand that the other people in your groups meet a certain gear requirement, you should be able to “cobble together” a group full of people that you already know to be skilled players. If you’re not sure that someone has good enough gear for you, don’t kittening play with them.

ProxyDamage.9826:

“I don’t like people knowing my gear!!!”

That’s as legitimate an argument as someone saying they don’t like people knowing their character, so you shouldn’t allow people to see other person’s characters. It doesn’t affect you in any way. You’re creating a problem that doesn’t exist. Deal with it.

As of right now, inspecting gear is a community problem that doesn’t exist. And it would affect everyone, since you’d be able to look at everyone else’s gear.

ProxyDamage.9826:

“I don’t like it!”

Don’t use it.

Feel free to point out your own arguments, but rest assured I’ll point out they’re equally flawed. Maybe there is a legitimate argument against gear/stat inspect, but I haven’t heard it yet. Every single argument I’ve ever read against it is ignorant and misguided at best, and utterly mentally defective most of the time.

While I appreciate your passion for your opinion, I disagree with your opinion, and your willingness to bash everyone else’s. I think the legitimacy for the “no inspection” argument can be found in the fact that it’s not currently in game. Although “preview features” got added late—and I’m all for a gear preview for other players’ gear—inspecting can allow for a very personal look at someone else’s thought process. That isn’t something that can be easily deciphered from a glance, especially if it’s not in line with the “meta” builds. I know lots of people that don’t run the standard build for PvP or PvE, and they do just fine on their own because they understand their class. A gear inspection doesn’t tell you that.

On the other side of the same coin, there are a lot of idiots that run around with full exotics, mucking up everyone’s day by overpulling. Or killing themselves over and over again through stupid mistakes. Or they AFK without warning and for minutes on end. Or they don’t follow directions for boss fights. Those are people that can totally ruin the harmony of a good group, even though they have good gear. I’m sure you’ve seen them before; we all have.

Also, if you’re going to bring up logical fallacies, we can start with the “don’t like it? don’t use it” argument. You can choose not to inspect others, but unless you can totally opt out of inspection altogether, you’re not really removing yourself from the process. And even if you can opt out, you’d be ostracized for choosing not to show your gear at all, so the same problem exists.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Honestly, most of the people I see complaining seem to be the kind of players that know they’re bad, and are afraid that if other people learn that, they’ll be unable to piggy back off of competent players anymore. Truly my heart bleeds for you.

Really, stop. Your heartfelt sympathy has me weeping, just as I weep for your inability to find players that can play to your obviously reasonable expectations.

I disagree with the idea of inspecting.

Aion is a game where your character profile—skills, gear, and all—is on the Internet for all to see. I played Aion for 2 years. The community was snobby, cliquish, and juvenile. I had a static group, but God help the people who just hit the level cap and didn’t have the money for the newest skills, or casual-core people who didn’t have time to grind for gear.

I don’t want any part in another community like that, and that’s exactly the kind of community that loves to use inspecting.

As far as I’ve seen, the people who do most of the moderating on the forums are completely separate from the game devs, so I’m guessing that a great deal of on content on the forums gets ignored from anyone who can actually impact game changes.

If that’s not the reality, that’s certainly how it feels. I see many and more thoughtful, productive threads get completely ignored by ArenaNet, and even the most massive threads don’t seem to get much (if any) feedback.

It’s possible that I’m biased and they’re just low on manpower/time, but anymore I feel like they just don’t care about what people say on the forums. The changes I saw in the latest patch seemed to pretty much ignore the vast majority of playerbase opinion.

I’m not a fan of WuvWuv, but I actually like D/P a lot. It provides excellent damage with crits and a surprising amount of CC through blind and daze.

Crafting is a typical way to get on-level armor, and I craft armor for my alts.

On my first character, I either ran around with under-leveled armor until I found something better, or I bought it on the TP if I had the money.

Since it has a “range” of 900, I’d like to see it as a ground-targeted skill, which could then be put at the feet of anyone you like for a blinder. I don’t think this would be OP at all, since it does cost half of the standard initiative bar.

Personally, I mostly use Black Powder in PvE settings for blind or to get a Backstab. As a PvP skill I feel like it has very little utility compared to others that I could spend that 6 initiative on.

Kyrion.2749:

Silver.4798:

I don’t think the F1 ability is “useless,” esp if you spec for it.

Well, IMO, that’s exactly one of the main problems with the thief class, that everything is pretty useless unless you spec for it.

Sure, Steal may be useful, WHEN you spec for it. But example, a Crit/Shadow/Acro build literally has ONE single trait available to improve steal (and only if you spec 20+ in shadow).

When I play the thief class I always get the feeling that I’m being punished for what I COULD do, rather than for what I can actually do.

For example, because thieves can add an extra stack of venom, and share venoms, the devs balanced venoms taking into account these circumstances… That leave us with venoms that last… 3 seconds… Thanks devs, but what happens to thieves that choose not take those traits? Essentially 4 almost-useless skills, that’s what happens.

The same happens with steal, if you take every available trait to boost it, sure, it can be arguably good, but if you choose to build in other ways, the base Steal ability is pretty lackluster.

I feel your pain. It seems like you can’t really have a jack-of-all-trades build for a Thief, you pretty much have to spec your build to take advantage of something specific.

I changed my build so that I no longer used Mug, and I was extremely disappointed at how much more useless Steal was without the damage. Mostly, I just use it for a gap closer now, and it’s a bonus if I happen to steal something useful. I’m still tinkering with my build, but I feel like without a lot of points in Trickery or Deadly Arts, it’s pretty much just a gap closer with benefits.

Hearkening back to the complaints from betas that were never listened to, it would be nice if steal was less random and more versatile. While you can predict what a certain mob type will give you with Steal (i.e., ghosts in AC give you the Skull Fear), on the whole it’s like playing Roulette with the main class mechanic. I’d like to see the commonly-offered suggestion of options for the f-keys: f1 steals a weapon or something similarly offensive, f2 steals a stun or other cc, f3 steals a healing or regen item. This change would give Thieves a little more control over what they’re doing, and would make the mechanic more helpful, entertaining, and unique.

stone cold.8609:

I just tried out the new changes to stealth at Orr and am very troubled by them. I main a thief and run a PvE/dungeon stealth heavy non-burst crit build. With the new stealth aggro mechanics, I cannot drop/manage mob aggro with stealth anymore or choose where and when I want to engage. The mobs are now very good at tracking me as soon as I come out of stealth and immediately attacking. They also seem to pursue me for longer distances after I emerge from stealth although I could be imaging this.

I haven’t had a chance to try stealth ressing with SR, but I am very concerned that it will no longer be effective as well. Since this was one of the better dungeon group skills, I am wondering how viable the Thief will be in dungeons post patch.

From my limited playtime, this change has really broken the stealth mechanic and one of the biggest sources of surviablity/utility to the Thief class.

I actually thought I was imagining it too, but I feel like resetting mobs are much faster when they latch onto me after I pop out of stealth, and from farther away. I was getting frustrated yesterday because I tried resetting a vampire bat with stealth twice (I was typing to a friend), and it kept aggroing on me again from about 30 feet away; far enough that it should completely forget I ever existed.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that.

Columba.9730:

Ranger pets can’t see through stealth yet, With 50% run speed thieves are usually far away

First of all, the 50% run speed that I’m assuming you’re talking about is the Fleet Shadow trait. There’s two problems with that: (1.) it’s in the Acrobatics line, which is one of the least-used trait lines and (2.) even in the Adept slot, it’s competing with the 50% falling damage reduction trait, the “might upon dodging” trait, the “vigor upon healing” trait, and the trap recharge reduction trait. So even when Acrobatics is used by a Thief—typically for caltrops kiting builds—that particular trait is never present. At least I have yet to see anyone use it.

If you’re talking about the passive speed on Signet of Shadows, Rangers have an equivalent speed signet, and neither signet provides a 50% speed increase.

Second, pets can’t technically “see through” stealth, but AI aggro tables no longer reset immediately upon stealth, so the pet is more hesitant to leave, and they can then regain aggro the instant that a Thief drops out of stealth. Considering that most stealth skills last only 3 seconds (another reason that Fleet Shadow is almost never used), that’s a significant advantage.

Finally, this discussion is about the PvE aggro tables, not the relationship between stealth and ranger pets. I made this post so that you would hopefully refrain from other equally baseless and unrelated comments, so please try and stay relevant.

Account.9832:

BrunoBRS.5178:

“oh what’s that, you need to use death blossom to AoE bleed your enemies? i’m sorry, the battles take place on tiny bridges, so either you risk falling off and spending the entire battle dead on the bottom of the pit, or you ignore your condition spec and spend the battle spamming backstab”

This is a symptom of a bigger problem in GW2, related to falling in general.

• If you’re a player, your own (automatically aimed) abilities can make you fall to your death.

• If you’re an AI-controlled monster, you get a “safety net” (invisible wall) that prevents you from falling off ledges even if players deliberately use a knockdown / pushback skill on you.

Apparently “player fun” ranks below “mob survival” in Arena Net’s design priorities. Go figure…

Actually, this was done for a reason. As content designer Jeffrey Vaughn commented on another thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/knock-Backs-over-a-cliff):

1) It’s too easy to exploit, since AI creatures aren’t aware enough to a avoid being backed up to a cliff.

2) What happens if you knock an enemy into an bad spot and their corpse had an item you need? Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.

Sinner.7139:

Currently thief is like a bad joke for PvE. Yes, we do decent DPS if specced for it, and we can (if traited) do a few extra dodges. But we have zero survivability beside dodging, stealth is useless after last patch, our main heal (crit heals) is nerfed to uselessness.

I heard some dev saying that each class should have several good builds to choose from. Well, lets start by giving thief a single good build for PvE, because right now thief is 100% redundant for PvE (as in, no role to fullfill).

Its also very hard to motivate why any group, no matter the content, would pick a thief before another class. Maybe if they know they will die a lot, and need stealth-ressses. But then, everyone can do that with spy-kits.

Basically, thief feels like a warrior, but:
- less weapons and skills
- worse healing
- lower health
- lower armor
- less support
- no tanking ability

And warriors complain? :-)

I agree that I feel like Thieves are being pigeonholed into a D/D—SB spec. However, there are a few viable choices available at the moment, and if you don’t like the way your Thief plays in PvE, it’s very possible that you just haven’t found the weaponset that’s right for you. Playstyles seem to vary widely between weapons. Personally, I use D/P for single-target combat and SB for kiting or multiple targets.

If you’re having lots of problems in general PvE, a build with 30 points in Shadow Arts does wonders for PvE survival. You might also look into the Acrobatics or Trickery lines, which both have a lot of neat stuff that (in my opinion) gets very underused.

cheezwhiz.9517:

Quells, the biggest problem I have with a thief is the difficulty with aggro.
Disclaimer: I don’t farm fractals or run dungeons with any frequency. I enjoy just playing for the sake of playing. I’m a casual-core gamer.

I’ve noticed you have to get a tremendous distance away from most enemies to truly break aggro – that is, be able to heal automatically, change skills and gear, and interact with vistas. This is tremendously problematic with vertical distances.

Example: I’m currently standing on a krait tower in the Mire Sea. I can’t get the vista, yet there are no enemies attacking me. Presumably that is because a single krait midway down the tower is still “in combat” with me. I will have to go back down, killing every krait on the way, before I can find the one that is preventing me from getting this vista.

The stealth aggro nerf didn’t fix this. Thieves have had problems with stealth breaking aggro and causing enemies to heal, yes, but does making the enemy stop right on top of us really benefit us in this respect?

If I were to try fixing the aggro problems, I would be looking at two things:
1) (For thieves, specifically) Is there a way to make enemies react more slowly to a thief’s exit from stealth?
2) (In general) Is there a way to remove a player’s “in combat” status after that player has not been involved in combat after a certain duration?

The first would (in my opinion) remove a lot of the hurt from exiting stealth and allow thieves to have more flexibility in when they exit stealth.
The second would clear up problems like my krait tower situation.

And now I’m off to find that blasted krait.
Edit: Turns out it was a barrel of supplies. Yeah, that’s right. Inanimate, passive objects have aggro tables.

The supply barrel part of that made me laugh, but I get your point about aggro. I get annoyed with the aggro drop (or lack thereof) all the time, especially with the new “no using waypoints in dungeons when a party member is in combat” rule.

Generally, I think Thieves still do fine in PvE. It’s one of the most well-equipped classes for mapping, kiting, and all-around adventuring.

LOCO.1785:

Jammypack.3018:

Know what’s fun now? Using Cloak and Dagger on a mob, then positioning for a side strike and getting clubbed in the face and knocked down before you get your stealth attack in. This could be the worst “rebalancing” I’ve ever seen in a game that nobody even asked for. Good thing they buffed Krait though – that was a real eff’ing issue right there.

How am I meant to interpret this bolded part?

Because what you’ve said right here is not true. Mobs do not attack you while you’re in stealth. So you can still use C&D and backstab as per usual.

I know he amended that statement, but I’ve actually seen that problem since the patch. Mobs hitting a stealthed player has always been a problem with channeled skills, but I mean completely new skills that will start, lock onto me, and hit me after I should have been invisible.

I’m sure that it’s an unintentional side-effect from the new changes, but it’s annoying nevertheless.

I really don’t mind the change from the “resetting mobs” standpoint.

However, while I understand Kasama’s point about Thieves relying too much on stealth and not enough on movement, this seems like a pretty kitten poor way to encourage people to play smarter. I feel like the point of stealth is rather negated when I have to dodge roll to avoid new attacks when I should theoretically be invisible.

After killing Teq, I got bored and started wandering around the nearby landscape. That’s when I stumbled upon this weird bug: it’s giving me a “strong current” message as if I were swimming, although I’m clearly not.

Sorry, I’m not sure if this counts as “character art,” but I saw this when I went to visit Lord Faren in my home instance today.

Also, can I mention that I find it very disappointing that Faren doesn’t share any special dialogue with my character? They were BFFs in the Noble storyline, after all.

The underwater breather is not showing up on my character’s face in sPvP, neither in the lobby nor in the underwater section of Raid on the Capricorn.

Server: Sea of Sorrows
Location: Kessex Hills (Delanian Foothills, respectively)
Problem: At the end of the “Acccompany the Lionguard patrol” event, a group of bandits is supposed to spawn (led by a veteran Mickey the Stool Pigeon), and defeating the bandits triggers the conclusion of the event. However, the bandits are not spawning, resulting in the event stalling where that fight is supposed to take place.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

coughs

hack

weeze

ROFL. I think that’s the best forums post I’ve ever seen.

Hjordis.9672:

For the sake of completeness, the OP responds to this, which will definitely be the last post the OP writes in this forum.

Regarding the incident in question Gomoratoad is right.

What I wish to comment on here is the definition of ‘maturity’ I find here. ‘Maturity’ appears to mean ‘feeling entitled to judge others and their actions by applying personal normative concepts as universal truths, inventing the persons in question, their motives and the facts in the process’. It begins by assuming that everybody who posts in a gaming forum is a ‘he’, which already demonstrates discernible concepts regarding who plays video games and who should play video games, concepts the ‘mature’ speaker is entitled to be the judge of. Along these very lines ‘maturity’ means knowing, defining and enforcing the way players have to deal with their characters, how to relate to them, which decisions are the right ones – clearly not only in the context of a given game but also regarding real life. Accordingly, ‘maturity’ means, for example, knowing what other players experienced (’ at the first sense of unfairness’), in other words, ‘maturity’ means that facts are what the ‘mature’ person believes and makes up, in contrast to, say, asking and enquiring, which are clearly ‘immature’ practices. The remarkable intellectual and philosophical profile of ‘maturity’ is matched by equally sophisticated rhetorics which consists of bullying, derision and repetition of ‘facts’ in order to provoke me-too statements from equally ‘mature’ participants. This is an infallible practice as ‘maturity’ is a widespread phenomenon in gaming communities.

As my concept of maturity is a different one I also, come to the conclusion that I am not ‘mature’ enough to handle this forum where ‘maturity’ apparently is both the accepted method of truth-finding and the guideline of social conduct.

Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?

This is the Internet; people judge you based on what you say, and how you say it. There are no other cues, verbal or nonverbal, to use otherwise. So rather than actually address any of the specific accusations of immaturity—like a rational and competent adult—you’re using very vague and technical phrasing in order to make an irrelevant point about the philosophical definition of maturity.

No one is going to try and translate that enormous paragraph of babble; it’s not interesting enough, and it simply looks like you’re trying to make yourself sound intelligent by inflating your language. And since that’s our only ground for judging you as a person, you seem to be ruining your own case.

Also, it is a valid assumption to treat all posters as male in a gaming forum, since gaming is a vastly male-dominated industry. Although I have to say, that little nugget of your post was quite entertaining.

Server: Sea of Sorrows
Location: This was at the end of the Clown College instance in the Human “Missed Opportunity” storyline. One of the children apparently remained hypnotized.

I keep coming across NPCs in game that are misnamed in some form, so I thought I’d start posting up screenshots when I see them.

If there is already a thread about this, I couldn’t find it, but sorry for the redundancy.

Server: Sea of Sorrows
Location: This guy was in Divinity’s Reach, guarding an entrance to the Great Collapse. Pretty sure that’s not where Gossiping Citizens should be.

stof.9341:

your attack is low on your screen. Are you using Steady weapons which have a very low base damage?

On the dagger and pistol I was using the adorned skins, which look the same, because I think they look fancy. For the shortbow I was indeed using a Steady, which I must’ve grabbed because it matched. So I feel like an idiot. But thank you for letting me know. q.q

For the first time, I decided to try a build utilizing a backstab spike. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that I was only critting for 600-700 damage, even though it seemed that I should have been hitting much harder.

When my friend tried the exact same build (including the same gear), he was critting for 6000-7000.

Did someone at Anet misplace a decimal point?

I included a screenshot of the questionable backstab crit, as well as my gear and attributes, so hopefully you can see why this was ridiculously bad damage.

Apparently, if you’re dead, your resurrection bar will decrease if your corpse takes damage.

I died in AC in the trap corridor, and a trap kept spawning underneath me, taking large chunks out of my bar as my teammates were trying to resurrect me. We were laughing about it in vent at the time, but this in combination with the waypoint limitation is going to seriously hinder most (if not all) groups in dungeons. It’s also going to significantly decrease any fun that could be had, especially with any inexperienced players.

I feel like this problem is going to become infinitely more annoying, now that they instituted the new feature where no one in your party can use waypoint if someone is still in combat.

Kasama.8941:

Interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):

The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge."

“…the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

Here’s the description of stealth from wiki:
“Stealth — Thieves have access to multiple skills which, for a short duration, make them invisible to enemy players and avoid aggro of hostile NPCs. While stealthed the thief is not targettable, but can still be damaged by attacks which hit them, and attacking from stealth will break the deception.”

And from the 14th december update notes:
“Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game…”

I’m afraid that I don’t quite grasp your problem. From those quotes, stealth is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. Outside of Shadow Refuge, stealth is short-duration, and is most often used for positioning and mobility.

I’ll say it again: the whole niche of the Thief is infiltration and guerilla warfare. If stealth no longer existed, why would the Thief exist? The class would go from a fragile spiker to a Warrior made out of newspaper.

For stealth to receive a sweeping nerf, Thieves would need compensation. Most likely, Thieves would be given a shadowstep mechanic like Assassins—which would allow a Thief to just teleport away. And then the forums would see incalculable rage about how no one can catch them and it’s so unfair and why can’t they just commit to fights. Removing the stealth mechanic would just be trading in one escaping problem for another.

Kasama.8941:

Now look at these resent videos I picked randomly from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9grDRzNT_wg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4m2mGDUL38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7OYniHrGqE

The thing to notice about these videos isn’t only that the Thief is able to have stealth up for what seems to be next to permanently, but also how easily the Thief is able to escape once low on health. That shadow stepping makes the Thief able to easily escape AoE attacks and snares. … And that on top of all of this, the Thief can also use skills like Dagger Storm to avoid damage, or Thieves Guild as pseudo clones for distraction.

About the videos: the stealth in the first was a far cry from “next to permanently.” In the second and third links, a lot of those deaths looked completely avoidable. And I would have been more concerned if the Thief hadn’t been able to escape, since that’s the playstyle for the class.

I’d also like to mention that Dagger Storm does not give invulnerability. More often that not, I see Thieves just pop DS for a second or two, and then roll right back out of it because it makes them too vulnerable. And Thieves Guild is less distracting than Mesmer clones: they are distinctly different from the player.

Kasama.8941:

This is how the majority of Thieves play: Stealth…attack…stealth again to regain positioning…keep attacking…then [after he’s dead] stealth/shadow step away, or start attacking [his] ally…If [you get to low health] use shadow stepping/Dagger Storm/Thieves Guild to get away, go back into stealth…hide until your health is restored, proceed to attacking again.

A competent player can counteract this with traps, wells, or other ground-based effects; heavy aoe and/or condition damage; blocking; invulnerability; channeled skills (which continue to hit a thief after they have stealthed, revealing their position); shatter burst; immobilize; daze; stun; and dodging. That’s all I could think of off the top of my head.

Kasama.8941:

Am I the only one who can see the contradictory between how ArenaNet wants the Thief to play, and how it is actually played?I’m not sure how anyone (other then a Thief maybe) can justify stealth…as being balanced.

The only contradiction I see is the lack of promised versatility. And non-Thieves can’t justify stealth because they’ve never used it. People should only contribute to this conversation if they actually have experience with the class, so they know what they’re talking about.

Kasama.8941:

I mean, how are you suppose to fight a profession that you can’t see for 80% of a fight, and who can easily escape you during the 20% window where you actually do see him? How is this fun to play against?

You fight stealth by thinking critically, the same way you counteract any other class. I don’t think it’s fun to play against bunker Eles, trap Rangers, or Guardians, but I’m not over on their forums crying nerf.

I don’t usually use my elite skill underwater, since spear skills usually give me enough survival, and the elite choices for underwater combat are seriously limited.

But if I have to pick, I use Basilisk Venom.