Guild Wars 2

Another simian circle spank post where everyone pats each other on the back for coming up with ideas to buff thieves that will never happen because none of the posters work for Anet. Colour me surprised.

What makes this one different from the countless others that didn’t change anything?

Inb4 any comments about not leaving comments that are constructive to thread: Mine is constructive because it’s realistic as opposed to living in some lalaland where you think your ideas will actually change anything.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

- treb mist hero essence, prevent opponent from stealing mist hero

That’s part of it’s purpose and why you need to interrupt someone channeling instead of just doing damage.

Maugetarr.6823:

No one linked this guy for arrow shooting?

^ That should sum it up.

I have had this too.

Narcarsis.5739:

Melandru Runes are also a viable option against Conditions. Runes seem to be a lot more of a choice/counter-play option since the expansion than what they used to be.

Thanks for the tip. I’ll give them a try. And that is something I love about the changes since the expansion. Before we pretty much had a few runes that were viable and for Thieves that meant Vamp Runes or be inferior. Now with the changes and removal of some runes we have more options which equals to more diversity among builds.

That’s why you don’t use a gap closer on DH because you know he is standing on those traps and you foolishly fell for it over and over again.

Great write up.

I have been running with a similar build but with Executioneer, Bountiful Theft and Thrill of the crime. The damage increase is multiplicative from traits so with Havoc Master, Staff Master, Bound, Exposed Weakness and Executioneer that is: 1.1 * 1.1 *1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1.75692; giving a 75% damage increase on targets below the threshold. Rune wise I chose Scrapper for a little more sustain and Channeled Vigor, Fist Flurry, Bandit’s Defense, Shadowstep and Impact Strike for utilities. I typically don’t use Bandit’s Defense if I am in the middle of a group if I need a stunbreak and use Shadowstep to get out. Generally I try to avoid those situations though and focus on moving on to an uncontested point instead. The choice between Withdraw and Channeled Vigor is a tough one and the endurance regen is nice as well as the healing burst if your endurance is full. It just means conditions are problem and I have to play smart to avoid conditions. Fist Flurry does a lot of damage if you land it all and this can be hard to pull off so I save it for CC’d targets or after landing the kick in a 1v1 from Bandit’s Defense.

I do agree staff is the better weapon because of the high burst AoE and the simple fact you can contest a point with it since you don’t rely so heavily on stealth. I also prefer the elusive play style over the Knifey McShivdark play style. With it I have managed to sustain well enough in a 1v1 to get that last 2 seconds to decap if I can trick them off the point which is easier since they are under the impression the point is their’s and don’t need to hold it and won’t focus as hard on staying on it. After that unless the enemy is at 20% health it is time to dip out with SS and then swap over to SB to leave them behind to recap and move on to help my team elsewhere.

SlayerSixx.5763:

The changed mist form to aoe life steal. People swapped cuz they can’t crutch on it anymore.

^ This.

Kinda glad they changed it. Before you had to take them because everything else was inferior and thus made you inferior build wise (for certain classes), now we have some choices.

Stand The Wall.6987:

zxstanyxz.8769:

its hotjoin, if you want balanced 5 v 5 team games play unranked… issue solved

Thats not much of a solution. Youre telling me and many others to play something else because, why?

Because hotjoin isn’t designed to be for actual matches now, it’s more for people who want to practice with new builds. Unranked is far better and the teams are locked into place with no spectators.

Ranked and unranked have separate MMRs and each new season resets the ranked MMR once Leagues goes active.

Vault is perfectly fine the way it is. It does do a lot of damage and has that much needed evade frame at the beginning but this move is still difficult to land because of the velocity and very obvious animation. You have to usually lead your target to get it to hit and your target doesn’t always go where you think they are going because of sudden direction changes and just targeting where they are is too slow. This is how a skill like this should be and how power creep on abilities should work. The more rewarding the skill is the more difficult it should be to successfully perform. Plus the whole risk part evens out because it is easy to CC the thief in the air, where stunbreaks don’t work, leaving the thief very open to damage.

To add to the list, Karl thank you for your work on the Daredevil. I spent most of the weekend playing the DD in pvp trying out different builds and weapons but primarily went with the staff to see what it was all about as well as the utilities.

The Staff is well developed in my opinion. The autoattack chain does good damage and the Vulnerability stacking you can do with the final attack in the chain is good for 1v1 and team fights. Getting a Whirl finisher and reflecting projectiles is a bonus. Weakening Charge serves well as a gap closer at closer range and does decent damage too, even more if you can position it. I thought making it like the Warrior GS would make it better but without a CD keeping it from being spammed I can see where that make it unbalanced. Debilitating Arc gave me no problems, serving as an extra evade and worked great for breaking out of Ranger’s Entangle and other immobilizes, plus an extra 8 Endurance when traited. Compared to others I found Dust Strike to be fine. It crited generally for about 1.5k and casted fairly quickly for a targeted ranged attack with a blind utility. I found like Weakening Charge it works better when positioned right in group fights. 8 Endurance when traited as well. Vault is the bread and butter of the weapon. Unlike others I found the velocity to be fine but the range bugs and not hitting for the full area of the targeting circle needs to be worked on but other than that the skill is perfect. It requires skill, with the velocity of the attack, to land it on moving foes but hits like a Backstab when you do. The only thing I would change on Vault is to make it a Blast Finisher instead of a Leap.

Physical Skills are a great addition and I found them to be good overall. The heal heals for a lot and the endurance regen is great but with the long channel it is not viable for pvp without some sort of protection. Maybe add a 2 second Protection buff when channeling? Fist Flurry into Palm Strike is good and the five attacks are difficult to pull off but not impossible. When it did the damage was insane and while I was using I thought it was a great way for thieves to deal big damage with a move that requires skill on the player’s part and doesn’t require stealth. The Elite is another one of those satisfying combos that is fun when you uppercut a Charr and make him do backflips in the air.

The “dodges” functioned well and I enjoyed them all but there was a bug I found with Bound. It says it is a Blast Finisher and it functions like one to trigger it ie. having to land in the field to trigger it, but instead it was doing a jump finisher. So like if I bounded into a Fire Field it would give me Fire Aura instead of doing Area Might. Personally I think Bound should be a Leap Finisher and Vault be the Blast Finisher. It would synergize so much better with everything.

They said +x damage; x >= 20%; so Unload could get at least 20% or more so here’s a chance to figure out what percentage of increase would make unload worth the INI cost.

Because if you get the kills and win the fight for the point you are going to get points for capping the point after is the reasoning behind it I believe.

Elxdark.9702:

For god’s sake people, you can’t say #4 is fine, it’s the most kittened trait in thief lines.

Could you elaborate on why it is?

@Nyx

I have noticed you keep saying things like “it’s simple” and “you don’t understand it” and I want to go into the parts where I believe you are misunderstanding it.

First, it’s not about whether it could run on an i7 or not. That is really pretty negligible at this point without having an algorithm to run. What is missing is an algorithm and that is where this problem gets hairy.

Can you make the algorithm for it?

This isn’t a thing about doing it for free or not. If you can just submit it as your application to get a job at ANet. They’re hiring. If you can do a better job then by all means apply and take the dev’s job and make the game, in your eyes, perfect.

But let me guess, you can’t because you don’t know how.

If you don’t know how to make the algorithm then in truth you don’t know how simple or easy it is. Even for a mathematician. If making these types of models was easy they wouldn’t get paid so much for coming up with them. Insisting that it is easy doesn’t make it so and you have no idea how hard or easy it is because you don’t even know how to begin to make a model mathematically for even one 1v1 duel much less every game on every map. So please stop insisting that this is easy and people don’t understand it because without at least a firm understanding of Differential Equations and Combinatorics you yourself don’t understand the subject either.

Also, stop comparing this to chess.

This again highlights your lack of understanding on this subject.

Chess is, as difficult as it is to master, is really a very simple game compared to GW2. GW2 is a far more dynamic game than chess. First, chess is turn-based and GW2 isn’t which puts them into different leagues when it comes to possible games and positions. Chess can also only move one piece per turn and each of those pieces has only a small possible amount of moves. Even the queen at any one given time has less than 1000 possible moves and when discussing possibilities that makes that number very very very small. GW2 has 10 players moving at all times at the same time with far more possible moves. And it’s not as easy as understanding the computer program to make the model because the program is not the model, the human brain is. The reason I enjoy PvP so much is that it is a creative human mind behind the other object on the screen instead of a machine running an AI algorithm to determine it’s next move.

How easy is human creativity to model?

So chess with it’s inherent limitations makes it far easier to model than a more dynamic game like GW2 when considering the human factor. Take the article you posted about the chess thing, it has the total possible logical positions was guesstimated at about 140 million and this seems like a really big number, but it isn’t. It seems big compared to things like the number of dollars in your bank account but compared to the number of events in the universe it’s really very small. Then that is just different positions. The number of logical games only game in at about 4 million. Again, compared to possible events in the universe that number is tiny.

Now before you go into saying that you didn’t bring up possible events in the universe let me just state that the comparison is there to highlight just how small a number of things that is being calculated here compared to the infinite possible numbers we could compare it to and how that is the determination of how large or small a number is. It is based on what you compare it to. Looking at it this way the chess problem is not hard to solve and is probably why it was the first functioning AI created that can now run on your smart phone.

How many possible positions are there for one game of Kyhlo over a 15 minute period? Keeping in mind that those positions for the chess question overlap geographically and are based on turns ie. time for GW2 so simply saying all of the possible locations to stand in x10 will not solve that problem. Especially when considering time as a 4th dimension in your model along with acceleration ( as considered by the scientific definition for a change in the velocity vector) due to changes in direction, conditions like chilled, crippled and slow and boons like swiftness and quickness.

So consider an answer for that. How easy is it to come up with that? Because that would be just one step in determining a model for this.

You could have just picked a different class in that time allotted since you were one of the two thieves instead of QQing on the forums about it. That’s why that time is there, to make changes.

More likely intentional since they had to move the range increase from Ricochet to Ankle Shots in the coding since it actually does increase the range and not just affect the tooltip so that thieves could still trait for the increased range. Then they just forgot to fix the tooltip.

Uhm, yeah it does.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

Then staff is bound to suck and players are going to continue to stick with d/p SB. Maybe the spec traits would work enough for thieves to use it. But it doesn’t change the fact that staffers want to look cool over making the profession better. So if we get melee staff and it ends up how staffers wanted it, it has a high chance of turning out exactly how I said it would. And when it does, I will remind you guys so the same crap doesn’t repeat itself (hopefully).

So where is that reminder?

Why should I do the reminding when most of the thief community is already singing “s/p DD meta!”. Told you staff would suck. :P

The rifle would have sucked too and probably come with kittentier traits because unless it came with infiltrator arrow it wouldn’t take shortbow out of the meta and would have just been a slightly longer ranger p/p.

And honestly, until it’s played the staff being good or bad is an unknown.

And you gotta admit those traits and utilities are pretty kittening awesome.

If it was designed right rifle wouldn’t need to replace shortbow. Shortbow can be pretty good in any fight if played properly. In fact, if rifle was designed as a sniper-themed weapon, you could use the rifle to get players’ HP down from afar and if they get close just switch to SB and finish them off.

You can already do that with P/P. When traited with Ankle Shots the difference in range is about that of a melee attack and there are plenty of videos of people nuking people’s HP with the pistols post patch.

Gray.9041:

Seabreeze.8437:

I thought this was supposed to end the fighting…

In any case, I’m super excited for staff. It looks as though it was designed for PvE, which is precisely what I play, so it totaly works for me. I couldn’t be happier (well, the animations could be better tbh, but it still looks good).

I’d agree there, but I wish the Elite Skill’s animation wasn’t so PvP-centric.

There might be some PvE content that has downed state creatures like in those Toxic Alliance events.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

Then staff is bound to suck and players are going to continue to stick with d/p SB. Maybe the spec traits would work enough for thieves to use it. But it doesn’t change the fact that staffers want to look cool over making the profession better. So if we get melee staff and it ends up how staffers wanted it, it has a high chance of turning out exactly how I said it would. And when it does, I will remind you guys so the same crap doesn’t repeat itself (hopefully).

So where is that reminder?

Why should I do the reminding when most of the thief community is already singing “s/p DD meta!”. Told you staff would suck. :P

The rifle would have sucked too and probably come with kittentier traits because unless it came with infiltrator arrow it wouldn’t take shortbow out of the meta and would have just been a slightly longer ranger p/p.

And honestly, until it’s played the staff being good or bad is an unknown.

And you gotta admit those traits and utilities are pretty kittening awesome.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

Then staff is bound to suck and players are going to continue to stick with d/p SB. Maybe the spec traits would work enough for thieves to use it. But it doesn’t change the fact that staffers want to look cool over making the profession better. So if we get melee staff and it ends up how staffers wanted it, it has a high chance of turning out exactly how I said it would. And when it does, I will remind you guys so the same crap doesn’t repeat itself (hopefully).

So where is that reminder?

It looks great.

On question I had was does the stun on Palm Strike trigger two Pulmonary Impacts if it interrupts when traited?

GrandHaven.1052:

ragnarokda.1805:

I think of them like Mesmers. They’re annoying if all of your skills needs a target or can be body blocked. If your build primarily does damage in an AoE then they’re easier to deal with IMO.

Yeah true, don’t have issues on my engi, but good lord i am having issues with them on thief.

Yeah, those pesky pets get in the way of almost every Shadow Shot.

abc.5790:

Tao.1234:

Dawdler.8521:

sPvP is the one area in the game that might actually gain something from f2p with few ill effects. PvE doesnt need it and WvW would probably get choked by it (so many spies).

Well except that you would be bombarded by a million gold sellers as soon as you enter the mists.

Yeah, Gold sellers who write stuff like:
-Sorry for bothering you but, would you like to buy gold? Visit us at blablabla.com

For sure, politeness is different than in other games lol.

Hmm, not enough errors in your English to make it believable. It’s more like “dear sirs, plz buy golds pls. Trust sellers five starz many honesty and happy customer”

LMFAO! xD!

Sekai.2987:

philheat.3956:

Evan Lesh.3295:

The rest of this feature is now being turned on.

It’s good but there is no really much time at the end of the game to see every stats and analyze it.

So i hope you can in future add a match history and maybe some general comparison between teams (damage team red, decap team red, healing team red, ress team red, downed, stomp ecc.)

true dat , the 10sec ? you have after a match before you get ported to the mists isnt enough time to check out your stats , extend that to 30-60sec or the new feature is preaty useless

^ This.

Also it would also be nice if there was someway that how many top stats awarded to each player showed up on the scoreboard at the end as well.

Yay!

+1

/15chars

Yes, Ricochet is gone and they already commented why. More QQing will not change it back nor get you a new answer. Either find a new game or a new build/profession.

Friday PoI stream is when they reveal stuff.

Enokitake.1742:

philheat.3956:

Staff = bad
Healing = bad
Utility = cool
Elite = super cool

Yeah, pretty much this. Will need to play it live to make final decision on this (…since Anet’s apparently finalized our class not having the option of a decent 1200 range weapon, or even the optional 1,050 range we previously had…)

Elite is kitten kittening nice though.

…also where are the traits?

The optional 1050 range is in Ankle Shots, it’s just not on the tooltip.

It’s a video game, it’s not real.

But it doesn’t need to crit and shouldn’t and here is why I think it shouldn’t. In addition to getting it from a Physical ability you also can trait it for whenever you interrupt. The staff has a fair amount of knockdowns. Those can interrupt and add that extra damage to the hit already.

Also consider if you take the new trait line and Trickery but instead of adding Acro to the mix you instead go with DA.

Now I know Acro synergizes with it well but Lotus Training in the new traits adds daggers that apply damaging conditions as well as being a whirl finisher (poison and burning bolts) when you dodge and Impairing Daggers does them as well making a possibility for a Cele or Carrion thief.

So keeping that in mind with Pressure Striking, Sleight of Hand and Mug you have a steal that can interrupt, apply poison, weakness, torment, do damage from the Mug, steal health and endurance and do Pulmonary Impact.

That plus any knockdowns that interrupt clearly shows why it being able to crit with damage that is comparable to Shadow Shot would make Pulmonary Strike too OP.

A rifle can be fired from the hip too. Though it’s not optimal for either. I mean was the last time you saw SWAT fire a shotgun from the hip?

Just got out of a match and saw a long list of Top Player awards for all kinds of things I have never seen but didn’t see them listed on the patch notes. Is this mentioned somewhere I missed?

Improvisation is great as it is. Please don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken. That 20% chance to get all of your deception skills reset is far better than just getting one skill guaranteed to reset imo.

When they release Leagues. Other than that I have no idea.

They are bringing back dishonored.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

yolo swaggins.2570:

And don’t feed me the bs that you are “only arguing because evidence shows it’ll be staff”. It is only where it is because because the part of the community that really wants it have hyped it into the sun.

You have no clue. You don’t know where it is and neither do any of us because none of us work for ANet and have no idea what they are planning and why they are planning it.

I understand and respect your passion but this is just a crybaby post because people didn’t agree with you. Ever since that picture was datamined it has been one QQ post after another about that Rifle not being implemented. You were hoping that everyone would agree with you and then all of the hype would change ANet’s mind but if that was all it took then FG would have been reverted and Ricochet would be back but they’re not. Sure, our opinions matter but in the end the final say so is theirs.

Quite frankly if this is how [Teef]‘s Liaison handles himself in public over a disagreement it’s no wonder the guild is floundering the way it is.

Maybe if the people I was arguing with weren’t so closed-minded I wouldn’t have to resort to ad Hominem just to break through that dense barrier of theirs’. And it isn’t like you guys were going to really discuss it anyway. It’s like those anti-thief threads where if you are not agreeing with the OP you are a blind zealot.

Also, I doubt a few notes from self entitled pricks really counts as “floundering”. However I still sympathize with the leader, catching kitten from leeches after you’ve slaved away would kitten off anybody.

But considering the lifecycle of guilds in this game, [Teef] has done pretty well. I would like to see you make a guild closing in on 200 members without buffs or forced rep in a span of 3 months.

Alright, I was wrong for saying that about the guild and I do apologize. I shouldn’t have said it.

However, you are behaving in a childish fashion over this. You just threw out the “people being closed-minded” response which is the typical response I have seen time and again in political arguments which always boils down to “I’m calling you closed-minded because you aren’t seeing things my way”. As I said, I respect your passion about the profession but on this you are like that kid in the store laying on the ground screaming and kicking his feet.

The evidence is there for a staff, whether you want to believe it or not. Since that evidence has been found ANet has not said anything about what is coming. It has neither confirmed nor denied nor said they are going forwards or backwards based on hype. Other than Rubi making a joke to not answer the question nothing has been said. To say that people being excited or not about a staff is influencing ANet is said without any basis in fact because nobody but the people working on it know. The evidence is there and you are rejecting it all you can with something bordering on extreme zealotry.

Working in game development I can attest to the fact that what players say on forums is not super high on the chain of command when it comes to implementing things. Players want all kinds of stuff and they are never satisfied. The developers make the decisions based upon their vision for the game.

Let me put it into perspective for you. Let’s say you were the one in charge of making the new elite spec and you wanted to make a sniper and give a rifle. On the forums, though, there is this huge outcry for an OH sword because everyone wants to be a ninja instead of a sniper. Would you cave in and do the OH sword or continue doing what you have envisioned with the rifle?

Next there is the money issue. Just because some player made a list of ideas for a rifle and you could just take those doesn’t actually save money. Those developers get paid the same regardless. They are getting paid whether they are creating ideas or borrowing them from players. It doesn’t save money. Maybe time but not money.

Lastly, the role is made to fit the class into some new role for HoT PvE content. Sure it will be “balanced” around PvP but the spec is not being made for new flair in PvP. It’s being made for group PvE content.

Lyger.5429:

Shadow.1345:

Lyger.5429:

Why is this skill not baseline, it’s a joke as an acro adept.

Because it would make Backstab more OP than it already is.

Lets be honest thief is far from OP atm, this would barely change anything. Lets stop being fine with the way things are and actually accept buffs if they happen to come our way.

I didn’t say thief was OP but backstab hits for a lot of damage, has no CD and it’s only regulation is being in stealth and hitting the target anywhere but in the front. Add in that stealth moving faster is baseline will make it easier to land.

Lyger.5429:

Why is this skill not baseline, it’s a joke as an acro adept.

Because it would make Backstab more OP than it already is.

Gray.9041:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sagat.3285:

uglydan.1638:

More likely they haven’t even started on thief elite spec.

If they take a break after Herald’s POI I’ll believe you.

Keep in mind they still have forge, berserker, and the druid that could all come before whatever we’re getting.

Edit: I think they’ve actually been on it for a while because shortly after they mentioned HoT, one of the devs at a convention said they were most excited for the thief elite spec, which leads me to think that we might actually think it’s pretty cool but the rest of the community might think it’s OP so they’re keeping it in reserve.

remember that this is from the post expecting Dragonhunter to be a crowd-pleaser.

take with many pinches of salt.

It also said “Mesmer specialization should shake up the sPvP landscape the most” and after playing with Zeromis over last weekend I can agree with that statement.

yolo swaggins.2570:

And don’t feed me the bs that you are “only arguing because evidence shows it’ll be staff”. It is only where it is because because the part of the community that really wants it have hyped it into the sun.

You have no clue. You don’t know where it is and neither do any of us because none of us work for ANet and have no idea what they are planning and why they are planning it.

I understand and respect your passion but this is just a crybaby post because people didn’t agree with you. Ever since that picture was datamined it has been one QQ post after another about that Rifle not being implemented. You were hoping that everyone would agree with you and then all of the hype would change ANet’s mind but if that was all it took then FG would have been reverted and Ricochet would be back but they’re not. Sure, our opinions matter but in the end the final say so is theirs.

Quite frankly if this is how [Teef]‘s Liaison handles himself in public over a disagreement it’s no wonder the guild is floundering the way it is.

yolo swaggins.2570:

It might be my personal opinion that rifle is a better option but I am not pushing my preferences like its fact. I’ve spent the majority of my time telling you that what you think is going on is not really going on. I already know the actual elite weapon is up in the air but I am not going around claiming that coincidences are forms of proof and judging people’s credibility by their moods.

Secondly, do you expect me to think you’de care what I have to say? Everyone who has argued for staff has used so much confirmation bias and are so desperate to roleplay Ryu Hayabusa that they’ve convinced themselves that melee staff is more or less confirmed. So they continue to hype the hell out of it based off of tiny samples and possibilities thinking they are absolute in their logic. The hype feeds off itself.

Now if I were to question you about your proof, you’de reply by saying something along the lines that it’s mere existence is proof enough. You guys have done it before. The fact is a single picture, model and an existing possibility based off a tiny sample size does not mean that melee staff is the imminent result. It doesn’t even prove its more of a possibility than any other weapon. Its just an idea, a concept, just like that fan made rifle idea.

I’ve done this too many times, Gray. Melee staff has no foundation because it is entirely fan driven with confirmation bias as it’s fuel. You intentionally leave out things that would harm your speculations. For example, that thief with that staff in that picture could also be a rev since red and black is also part of their original concept art. Compare the color scheme of the rev concept art with thief concept arts and you get one picture with black and white and just a LITTLE red. What if… that picture was meant as an idea for rev’s staff spec? That possibility is there because the color scheme matches like how the possibility of thief getting staff is there because elite spec weapons are not entirely exclusive.

And if it were true, your whole collection of “proof” and speculation would get blown out of the water. Again its a possibility but it goes to show how fragile your “proof” is. Just understand that I took the same path of logic staffers have, just not so much hype.

You keep talking about confirmation bias however you are completely overlooking very glaring points that show this is not the Revenant based on your own bias against the staff.

1.) With the last beta weekend all of the 5 spec lines had been done and that picture was not included.

2.) Revenant wears heavy armor, not medium armor. The pic clearly shows medium armor.

3.) Revenant wears a blindfold. The picture clearly shows eyes with every other part of the face covered which is the opposite of a blindfold.

4.) Herald was revealed and the elite gets a shield which completely destroys the speculation that elites will not get the same weapon.

Unless you can come up with evidence beyond the colour scheme is similar to the revenant you really don’t have much to stand on so stop telling us about a confirmation bias when the evidence supports it being for the thief rather than the revenant. Also you would need to come up with why there is no blindfold which is included in the character creation as the equipment choice and just about every picture except for the herald concept art.

Not everyone that is saying staff is saying it because they want it or want to be ninja. They are saying it because the evidence supports it so far. They already have prepurchases of the xpac which means they are moving forward so it is very unlikely they will change gears from what we have seen in the data mine because of forum posts. They are past the point of no return and have to move forward and changing from what they have would be moving backwards. In fact the ninja wannabes are asking for OH sword so they can dual wield katana. Furthermore, a 1200 range weapon isn’t the only thing the thief is lacking either. Unlike other melee classes thief lacks a 2-handed melee weapon. The profession also lacks stability, invulnerability and knockbacks.

Addendum: I am neither team rifle nor team staff, I was actually hoping for a focus OH to give more of a Shadow Mage thing for the thief but evidence points towards staff.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

Then staff is bound to suck and players are going to continue to stick with d/p SB. Maybe the spec traits would work enough for thieves to use it. But it doesn’t change the fact that staffers want to look cool over making the profession better. So if we get melee staff and it ends up how staffers wanted it, it has a high chance of turning out exactly how I said it would. And when it does, I will remind you guys so the same crap doesn’t repeat itself (hopefully).

I think you let your liason position in TEEF go to your head because nothing we say or do is going to make ANet decide what to do with their elite spec decision for Thief. You’re acting like we are making ANet make their decision yet nobody was talking about melee staff until the datamined picture came out. But go ahead and remind us all you want but it’s not like you really did anything to contribute for good or ill on the design of the thief.

Hype, or the lack thereof, has made anet reconsider things. An exodus has made anet attempt a 180 in how they handle a certain profession. So assuming all this melee staff hype affects anet’s decisions, we all know who to look at and why for not encouraging anet to do better.

So what you are saying is that all the rifle hype before the datamined image was found shortly after the June 23rd patch made ANet change their mind and implement staff instead?

Also if that were the case then why hasn’t ricochet been reimplemented after all those pages on that one thread as well as all the other times it has been mentioned? What about the queuing issues with solo vs. premade and queuing outside of HotM? Why hasn’t all the hype or lack thereof changed that?

yolo swaggins.2570:

Shadow.1345:

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

Then staff is bound to suck and players are going to continue to stick with d/p SB. Maybe the spec traits would work enough for thieves to use it. But it doesn’t change the fact that staffers want to look cool over making the profession better. So if we get melee staff and it ends up how staffers wanted it, it has a high chance of turning out exactly how I said it would. And when it does, I will remind you guys so the same crap doesn’t repeat itself (hopefully).

I think you let your liason position in TEEF go to your head because nothing we say or do is going to make ANet decide what to do with their elite spec decision for Thief. You’re acting like we are making ANet make their decision yet nobody was talking about melee staff until the datamined picture came out. But go ahead and remind us all you want but it’s not like you really did anything to contribute for good or ill on the design of the thief.

This thread has pretty much changed to an argument between yolo and sebradle which is pretty much just sebradle saying “evidence points to staff” and yolo responding by throwing himself down on the ground in the middle of the aisle and throwing a temper tantrum. Can we just get a mod to close this?

EDIT: @yolo The dev team and the use of a melee staff are not bound by your imagination and what has been posted. It’s a videogame set in a high fantasy realm, it has the capacity to do anything the dev team makes it do.

None of our speculations mean anything. Truth is we don’t know until it gets announced. In the time I have played GW2 I have seen a lot of speculation that everyone was so sure of. You know like that Ice Bow 4 nerf that everyone knew was fo sho gonna happen. It was such a sure thing someone even made a song about it and then announcement came and Ice Bow 4 got buffed.

It doesn’t matter how bad you want rifle or that someone made a list of things for rifle skills for the thief. ANet is gonna do what ANet is gonna do. Rifle or staff or whatever we don’t know until it is released.

What we do know is that there is a picture of a person in Sneak Thief armor with a staff and it has the same colour scheme as the thief stuff and that holds a hell of a lot more water right now than some old kitten post some player made of his dream sniper skills for the thief. Some name drop of some guy that someone said Reaper was based off his idea doesn’t hold water for me until I see a Dev say “we got the idea from this guy”. Then even if they did it doesn’t mean a sniper is what they have in mind for the thief. In fact if anything a sniper has more in common with a Warrior (a sniper is a soldier after all, not a burglar) or an Engineer (sniping requires math to calculate for gravity, wind speed and direction, air pressure and curvature of the planet plus optics equipment in most cases) so just because some players have been speculating about thief getting a rifle and you wanted it and some guy made a list you liked doesn’t mean you are going to get it.

Those things listed to support the rifle aren’t evidence. Show me something datamined to support thief getting a rifle that has come since HoT was announced and then you have something until then staff has more evidence.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Thief-Acrobat_

I don’t want ninja stuff, I want that ^

@OP thanks for summing up why I am glad you don’t run ANet.

None of the people playing hotjoins or going to the custom rooms to do their dailies have any effect on unranked and ranked matches. Sane people while playing matches in unranked and ranked aren’t sitting there being bothered by people getting their daily done in a hotjoin or custom arena. It’s nowhere in our minds. People that worry about that kind of stuff are probably also worried about gay marriage ruining marriage for straight people. In other words, unreasonable people with irrational fears.

Removing rewards from them doesn’t make PvP better or the que times any faster, it just punishes people who play the game casually or prefer the PvE side of the game. In my mind there is nothing wrong with those people. They just prefer to do different things and though I have no hate towards them I would prefer they not be on my team when I que up solo because they won’t be as good a teammate as the people queuing up to play PvP. Forcing those players to do a grind to get rewards from PvP is not going to make them join the PvP community, it is going to make them resent PvP.

PvE’rs are PvE’rs and PvP is not some new concept GW2 came up with. It has been around for years and they know of its existence. They just have no interest in that type of game mode and if they did they would do it instead of getting an easy daily from the custom arenas made for them.

Everyone was so sure Elementalist was getting a sword and Ice Bow 4 was getting nerfed too. With the datamined image of a thief with a melee staff, not a caster one, at this stage chances are high that it will be a melee staff.

Novuake.2691:

Empty promises. 2 weekly balance patches never happened. Stop saying stuff that you can not possibly stick to.

Actually on that one they have done patches every 2 weeks since the June 23rd patch.