Guild Wars 2

The meta is the meta for a reason, it’s because those builds have been shaken out to be the best builds.

In my opinion it’s better to show people what others have found to be working best in game than to not show them. Maybe it can be communicated somewhat differently depending upon game mode.

What I’d like to reduce though, is people glmping themselves. They won’t listen elitists, sure, but they would be more likely to listen to game data.

The problem is also one of the strengths of GW2. Build combinations. There’s a lot of them. Which is good, but because hardly any build templates are viable there’s a lot of noise out there when it comes to builds.

The solution I’m proposing could potentially be applied to each game mode.

To start collect data on builds that are being run, compare them and identify the similarities and where the variations. This should be driven by Gear stats and Weapon sets primarily, and secondary considerations would be for gear mods, traits, and slot skills.

After gathering this build data, put it through our black box system. What the system outputs should be organized data about what builds are used most often and rating builds by popularity.

Display this data in a UI so that people can see for a particular profession what the top 5 or so builds are based upon the primary factors, and allow people to dig into those to see what the most popular variants are.

The problem that this helps solve is players running bad builds. Players can still run bad builds if they want, but at least the game tells them what everyone else is usually running, and the reason people would be running these is ideally because they are good builds.

This idea was originally conceived for PvP, but I think it’s got the potential to work in other game modes too, though it’d be more complicated.

ReesesPBC.4603:

Shinjo.6092:

I will never understand why people think blocking/evading should have the added benefit of taking a thief out of stealth. Blocking/evading doesn’t take a necro out of DS or Lich Mode. It doesn’t take Eles out of fire mode, and it doesn’t cause Engineers to drop their kits. So why should it take a thief out of stealth mode?

You pressed the block button. You don’t have to do it in a special mode, and you don’t even have to go be facing your opponent. You pressed block, and basically you’ve become immune to almost everything a thief can throw at you. And yet people don’t think this is enough? You want the block to take the thief out of stealth as well?

I think a more accurate comparison would be blind although it’s a debuff. Attacking takes it away and so does attacking aegis take it away. If that is too much or gamebreaking than what would the compromise be for both sides? Because having aegis/block negated by simply continuing to attack under stealth to get a specialized skill, backstab, off should have a draw back if you are kept in stealth (or want to be as you put it). Since you are on the thief side how about arguing for the defender’s and seeing it from their point of view? So you don’t want to be revealed then how about a 1 initiative cost per backstab? If you tried 3 times during stealth then it would have already regened the initiative spent so it’s a break even point.

Look at it from a thief’s perspective.

All other professions get to remove blind and aegis for free with auto attacks. Thief has to use a cool down or 5+ initiative to enter stealth then on top of that they have to spam 1 initiative per second in order to land a stealth attack.

That’s extremely expensive whereas it’s free for everyone else.

phaeris.7604:

If a thief hits/gets evaded/gets blocked stealth should break. It raises the skillcap without breaking the profession.

If I miss a skill it doesn’t get refreshed instantly until I land it.

That’ll stop the HS from black powder and hit whilst still staying in stealth nonsense.

Or make backstab use initiative.

This is a straight nerf, it isn’t introducing counterplay and it doesn’t impact skill cap at all.

Straight nerfing classes doesn’t mean it raised their skill cap.

Making stealth attacks cost initiative is a bad move, Aegis and Blinds have to be cleared somehow, while in stealth the only costless skill available is the stealth attacks.

DeceiverX.8361:

Supreme.4051:

Shockwave.1230:

DeceiverX.8361:

Nicely put.

Stealth isn’t OP. It’s the accessibility of it. Nerfing stealth just removes viable builds like D/D into more frustrating ones like D/P due to the fact that D/P thieves also have blind fields to work with, too.

Blind/smoke field access is honestly what makes thieves so strong against non-ranged classes. I occasionally run a really trolly bunker thief spec in sPvP. It’s a full healing power P/P thief which effectively attritions people to death so hard that until they get reinforcements or the capacity to ignore spamming blind fields, it is unkillable. Why? Because I make you miss 100% of your attacks and hit you for 100-200 damage attacks which whittle you down for 15 minutes and eventually run you dry without either running away and resetting or you getting your friends.

And this build is literally just me pressing 5. I don’t even have to try or even play well, and I’ve been kicked from a ton of dueling servers because the build is just so infuriating to play against.

It’s not stealth, but the access to smoke fields and what ANet made absolutely ridiculous blind durations that make these builds so hard to out-play.

For anyone that thinks black powder is OP, you should try kiting around it to see just how much damage you can deal while making a thief waste initiative.

Yes and any thief with a brain won’t stand in the smoke field – he will be gone before you can hit in melee by heartseeker.

Or simply will stand in the blind field but will stick to you and keep applying blinds. A thief can use in one rotation:

Blind on stealth -> stealth on steal = 5 sec blind
Black Powder = 5 sec blind x 4 pulses = 20 seconds of blindness
HiS = 5 sec blind
Blinding Powder = 5 sec blind
Instinctual Response = 3 sec blind
Shadow Refuge = 5 sec blind OR smoke field 1sec blind x 7 pulses = 7 seconds blind
Signet of Shadows = 5 sec AoE blind.

With a SA/init build, by simply facerolling a keyboard through utilities and pressing 5 and 2, a thief can maintain blind at even the highest opponent’s attack speed for over 30 seconds within one initiative cycle while closing the gaps to the target. This isn’t even accounting for thieve’s guild, either.

Meanwhile, all of those skills allow for stealth with dagger mainhand.

Blind application is blatantly overbearing, especially since 12 seconds of that application doesn’t even come from needing blind on stealth/steal traiting.

And for many instances of fighting blind thieves, if you cannot burst them, they lose the fight. With so much anti-burst potential due to the blind application it has, a good D/P faces no counter when engaged by melee-based opponents when played well. No counter. Not even a skilled play can counteract this. There is literally NOTHING an opponent can do about it except take the hits, try to get at a ranged advantage, and do SOMETHING.

I have nothing against thieves and stealth. I main thief and love the class. Blind application is just too accessible, though, and if fixed to have a duration of say, 1 second on many of its applications, the capability of a thief to excel to such extents would be inhibited on one of its more overpowered builds while not affecting the other ones. D/P blind builds are worth complaining about, while you never see anyone complain about D/D (except noobs that get gibbed by burst signet stabbers and don’t understand the level of sacrifice the build makes to achieve those numbers).

I don’t care about WvW at all, but if that was in PvP I’d ask the following questions…

Why not time some CCs, especially after Blinding Powder and the thief coming out of stealth?
Why not use soft CCs when the thief has no condi removal and no teleports to flee with?
Why not interrupt HiS, it has an obvious animation?
Why be worried about stealth on steal blinding, when it only blinds the area the thief teleports from, not to?
Why not pull or knock the thief out of SR? Or AoE the SR.
Why are you worried about Signet of Shadows applying a blind, when it’s a weak combat utility?
Why stand in Blackpowder when you can attack from outside it?
Why not use skills that apply numerous strikes quickly vs blind?
Why not use skills that make you immune to blind (invulns, zerker stance)?
Why not time a condi removal if you need to land a hit?

Not everyone has all those counters available, but they have most. It will help you to learn the above plays if you don’t know them.

Stealth has numerous counters in the form of various AoE’s and cleaves. Stealth attacks have various counters in the form of personal defenses.

You can track stealthed players various ways, such as auto attack chains or using a channel skill before they enter stealth.

You can identify when a stealthed player is near you via blocks/invulnerability skills, such as Aegis, Shield Stance, Illusionary Riposte, distortion, obsidian flesh, renewed focus, etc.

If you are trying to play a slow fight vs a thief or mesmer and running out of cooldowns, then you are usually fighting them wrong. In most situaitons you need to be aggressive vs these classes, because these classes have to be aggressive in order to be viable.

Stealth is not OP, it’s not invincibility, you just need to learn to play agressive vs a thief and mesmer.

DeceiverX.8361:

Carighan.6758:

Terrahero.9358:

And the last one has got to be a joke, you silly person :P

Well, in a way.
Long-term stealth like in WoW is used to force initiative. The idea is to always be the one to pick the fight (in return you’re weaker, so you’re forced to pick a favourable context where your victory is guaranteed – easiest example is when the target is distracted).

Stealth in GW2 feels more like a defence. It’s on two rather fragile classes (well, Mesmer more because Clones don’t fulfil their originally heralded function of confusing players since thy’re blindingly obvious), and it’s used to break target lock and force the attacker(s) to fall back to using non-targeted attacks to continue the assault.

As such, what would it’s “counter” be, other than simply attacking?
To turn the question around, how do you counter death? By not dying in the first place, correct. There’s no rezz from dead, either, only from downed. If our rezz skills worked on dead targets the whole dead-thing would lose all meaning (see: Keep Lords, which is just silly).

Stealth might be problematic in balance but mostly because it can be obtained as a combo field (and quite frequently so). Like with conditions and boons, it’s a case of being too weak but way too common.

In itself, having a “counter” would be illogical however. The point is that there isn’t a “oh my target stealthed”-button on every player’s hotbar. If there were, there’d be very little reason to stealth in the first place. Unless this costs a hotbar slot, and then players wouldn’t equip it, and still complain (see: Vitality vs Conditions).

Nicely put.

Stealth isn’t OP. It’s the accessibility of it. Nerfing stealth just removes viable builds like D/D into more frustrating ones like D/P due to the fact that D/P thieves also have blind fields to work with, too.

Blind/smoke field access is honestly what makes thieves so strong against non-ranged classes. I occasionally run a really trolly bunker thief spec in sPvP. It’s a full healing power P/P thief which effectively attritions people to death so hard that until they get reinforcements or the capacity to ignore spamming blind fields, it is unkillable. Why? Because I make you miss 100% of your attacks and hit you for 100-200 damage attacks which whittle you down for 15 minutes and eventually run you dry without either running away and resetting or you getting your friends.

And this build is literally just me pressing 5. I don’t even have to try or even play well, and I’ve been kicked from a ton of dueling servers because the build is just so infuriating to play against.

It’s not stealth, but the access to smoke fields and what ANet made absolutely ridiculous blind durations that make these builds so hard to out-play.

For anyone that thinks black powder is OP, you should try kiting around it to see just how much damage you can deal while making a thief waste initiative.

Have groups of engineer’s learned to run experimental turrets and thumper turret for perma protection on their parties finally!!! Plus Tool kit of course to repair the turrets.

The most exciting thing about this event to me is the prospect of seeing thieves playing with no latency. Best buff ever.

We need two formats lol, one where teams are people that have chemistry together and one where it’s just a bunch of the best players who don’t normally play together thrown together. EU would shine in the chemistry teams, NA might shine in the more individual format, and China.. Well Idk?

Why? it’s a nice counterplay for 2v2s and team fights.

Apply Poison before the enemy goes down to counter the hard revive. Or have 1 person on the team apply some damage.

Kukchi.6173:

Shockwave.1230:

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Credibility isn’t necessary when there’s an encompassing logically sound argument being presented. Initiative is not flawed simply because it doesn’t offer an overall advantage to the thief. It simply complements the play style of having to quickly react and predict your opposition’s decisions .

You’ll notice that a thief can use significantly less weapon skills 2 thru 4 over time than all other profs. At this level of design that is the main balancing factor. Any perceived problems with the thief are lower level concepts that should be dealt with on a per skill/trait basis.

increasing initiative cost on skills is a good way to start. Increasing the cooldown on some utilities and reducing the teleport range of some skills might offer some balance.

You should challenge yourself to play some pvp at a high tier with multiple meta thief builds. This will help you understand if and where those suggestions are necessary.

Kukchi.6173:

alchemyst.2165:

It looks like the OP doesn’t know much about the thief class. You say you have a thief, either you’re lying or it’s a lvl 2 thief with 3 hours spent on it.

Honestly I’ve heard the “I play a thief so it needs fix” argument too many times, people need some more originality coming up with arguments for thief nerfs.

Seems to me People who hate the truth only hear hate when the truth is spoken. I have played my thief for over 200 hours i will even provide a screenshot of my character for the non believers. I am pointing our fundamental flaws in this class and i am tired of all those cheese thieves with no skill abusing their spammable skills. http://i62.tinypic.com/2ujku4w.jpg Here is proof that I thief.

Credibility isn’t necessary when there’s an encompassing logically sound argument being presented. Initiative is not flawed simply because it doesn’t offer an overall advantage to the thief. It simply complements the play style of having to quickly react and predict your opposition’s decisions .

You’ll notice that a thief uses significantly less weapon skills 2 thru 4 over time than all other profs, even if they wanted to use more they can’t. At this level of design that is the main balancing factor. Any perceived problems with the thief are lower level concepts that should be dealt with on a per skill/trait basis.

Fuji.6284:

Silentshoes.1805:

With an accurate MMR system, really good players will never get a match.

Maybe after waiting an hour in prime time they will find 9 others at their level.

That’s absolutely why you have tiers that considers the amount of games you’ve played, the amount of games everyone’s played, and win/lose ratio. It may not always provide an even match up but it sure hella beats the current system. However, it may be a little too late unfortunately. The whole system’s been this way since launch (over 2 darn years now), only favoring and sustaining a small community of the same players that’s always done well.

I think we’re all on the same page. Matchmaking needs improved and the population needs grown.

Shouldn’t be done for team queue.

You can’t even know someone’s rank anymore anyways, so how do you know the people you are in solo queue are below whatever rank? Finisher’s don’t tell you, I had my finisher set to rabbit until I got my shark.

How do you know you aren’t just playing with someone who’s playing a class they aren’t too familiar with that’s rank 80 in solo queue?

How do you know you aren’t playing with a really good rank 1 that is using an alt account?

ANet did a smart thing by hiding ranks from people. All they need to do is improve their matchmaking and foster the growth of the PvP community and you won’t have as many issues where you’re matched up with people that are outliers in skill compared to everyone else.

AoE and Channel skills counter stealth quite nicely. Stealth is not invulnerability.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Shockwave.1230:

Zacchary.6183:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior greatsword units per second is 105 when used on recharge
Thief Heartseeker units per second is 150 with base initiative regen

Both profs can easily maintain a +25% movespeed buff too with either a trait, utility, or runeset, so no difference there.

Thief also has shortbow, which is also 150 units per second (can’t be impacted by move speed) and can allow them to traverse vertical terrains with pathing.

Numberes don’t lie, 150 from thief > 105 from warrior, move speed buffs impact skills from both profs.

*Pretty sure while it’s up though, Fiery Greatsword Provides the best mobility in the game.

You forgot to add in the banner swiftness and charge.

If you’re only building for mobility and nothing else thief still wins. (Perma swiftness + initiative Regen rate of 1.566 per second when optimized for more heartseeker , withdraw and roll for initiative forward, shadowstep.) I’ll do the math later today, but if I recall correctly it’s over 300 units per second.

In terms of mobility on viable combat builds thief also wins.

Bursting a fleeing thief > Bursting a fleeing warrior (with their hp pool, armor, and healing signit ticking away). Highest unit of landspeed means nothing when you’re in downed state. Warrior is THE BEST for landspeed.

How are you catching a thief to burst them? Thieves are the most slippery prof in the game, only Mesmer comes close to matching them.

Capital letters doesn’t make the warrior more mobile than the thief.

Zacchary.6183:

Shockwave.1230:

Warrior greatsword units per second is 105 when used on recharge
Thief Heartseeker units per second is 150 with base initiative regen

Both profs can easily maintain a +25% movespeed buff too with either a trait, utility, or runeset, so no difference there.

Thief also has shortbow, which is also 150 units per second (can’t be impacted by move speed) and can allow them to traverse vertical terrains with pathing.

Numberes don’t lie, 150 from thief > 105 from warrior, move speed buffs impact skills from both profs.

*Pretty sure while it’s up though, Fiery Greatsword Provides the best mobility in the game.

You forgot to add in the banner swiftness and charge.

If you’re only building for mobility and nothing else thief still wins. (Perma swiftness + initiative Regen rate of 1.566 per second when optimized for more heartseeker , withdraw and roll for initiative forward, shadowstep.) I’ll do the math later today, but if I recall correctly it’s over 300 units per second.

In terms of mobility on viable combat builds thief also wins.

Can’t have Feedback on builds in this thread, it’s a Mesmer skill..

#o.O

T raw.4658:

Shockwave.1230:

Fyi for anyone struggling against the build, Sizer’s Build is fairly sustainy, so like any other sustain build the best way to counter it is via spike damage.

The difference between this build and say a Warrior build is that a thief will have more access to endure pain (evades), but less survivability when it’s not available.

For whatever class you’re playing learn how to time your spikes, and learn what the windows are available for applying damage.

It’s important to know that perma vigor means recharging your dodges every 5 seconds. Vigor + feline grace means recharging dodges every 3.5 seconds. A thief can Dodge 3 times in a row with this setup, if they have signet of agility they can Dodge 6 times in a row if they use the signet.

The other important thing to know is that, after flanking strike there’s about 1.5 seconds between evade frames and spamming the skill.

The final important thing to know is that after an infiltrator’s return to teleport away a thief is likely to feel safe for 1-2 seconds. So you potentially have another window here to utilize depending upon your cool-downs.

Basically analyze the player, keep these Windows in mind, and don’t worry too much about counting dodges, stay focused on when you have a window of opportunity.

This build is still on a thief so it will always have the option of running away.

This highlights the problem with this build. To counter you need to play well above the thief who can just spam evades the reset/disengage.

This build is just as kittened as your standard cheese builds that are OP cept it’s viable in a tPvP setting

A thief can always disengage and reset unless he/she chooses to give up the initiative/cooldowns of mobility for more damage. That is not exclusive to Sizer’s build. Normally thieves can have a lot of utility, damage, and mobility in combination. What this build adds to that combination is sustain, which is unlike any other build that currently exists, besides the meta D/D ele (which has a tradeoff of some mobility for team support).

Warrior greatsword units per second is 105 when used on recharge
Thief Heartseeker units per second is 150 with base initiative regen

Both profs can easily maintain a +25% movespeed buff too with either a trait, utility, or runeset, so no difference there.

Thief also has shortbow, which is also 150 units per second (can’t be impacted by move speed) and can allow them to traverse vertical terrains with pathing.

Numberes don’t lie, 150 from thief > 105 from warrior, move speed buffs impact skills from both profs.

*Pretty sure while it’s up though, Fiery Greatsword Provides the best mobility in the game.

Fyi for anyone struggling against the build, Sizer’s Build is fairly sustainy, so like any other sustain build the best way to counter it is via spike damage.

The difference between this build and say a Warrior build is that a thief will have more access to endure pain (evades), but less survivability when it’s not available.

For whatever class you’re playing learn how to time your spikes, and learn what the windows are available for applying damage.

It’s important to know that perma vigor means recharging your dodges every 5 seconds. Vigor + feline grace means recharging dodges every 3.5 seconds. A thief can Dodge 3 times in a row with this setup, if they have signet of agility they can Dodge 6 times in a row if they use the signet.

The other important thing to know is that, after flanking strike there’s about 1.5 seconds between evade frames and spamming the skill.

The final important thing to know is that after an infiltrator’s return to teleport away a thief is likely to feel safe for 1-2 seconds. So you potentially have another window here to utilize depending upon your cool-downs.

Basically analyze the player, keep these Windows in mind, and don’t worry too much about counting dodges, stay focused on when you have a window of opportunity.

This build is still on a thief so it will always have the option of running away.

This discussion was had last month or the month before, can’t recall.

Thief can use less weapon skills than every other profession over the course of a minute long fight. The longer the fight, the more severe the disadvantage is to the thief.

This shows initiative is not the root cause issue that people think it is. People who complain about the thief’s burst capabilities refuse to accept that this is by design.

Kukchi.6173:

Before new classes are added why not balance the ones we have now. Why add more? It will only make it more complicated. Guardians do everything the dervish did. /endthread

Adding a new profession is mutually exclusive to balancing existing professions unless you choose to make it otherwise.

I’m not sure how ANet is structured internally, but they definitely have a balance team. Introducing a new profession would involve the balance team and utilize some to there time, but it is not the balance team that is doing the entire development effort of a new profession, just the balance part.

Sword Pistol

0/6/0/0/2 and play with the rest of your points as you want. The more glassy you can play and still survive the better.

In case you weren’t sure yet by other people’s answers it’s thief, with off-set Shortbow.

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

I honestly can’t draw any conclusion at all between Necros of GW2 and Dervishes. I think its just grabbing at straws because Necros would look cool with a scythe. No doub,t weapons don’t have to be exclusive, no weapons are exclusive. That being said, dervishes would be really hard to implement given that the “enchantment” in this game is based on boons largely, and that while some classes have “selfish boons” I.E Spectral Walk or Warrior Stances etc, having a class who’s skill pool is made of Special Status’s and Boons etc would break the equilibrium of the game, or what ever the game has that is close to equilibrium.

It may work if said enchantments are treated like boons and can be stripped ripped and corrupted (Porn name inc) like normal boons.
Forms wouldn’t be an issue as we already have a ton of forums no biggy.

I hate the argument about how there is no grenth, no balthazar, no underworld etc.
There is proof all over the game that the Gods are there, they just don’t care or can’t intervene with whats going on in Tyria.
The Underworld is MORE prevalent in GW2 than in Gw1 in the sense that I can’t go 15 feet without finding an Attax or Shade or a “Portal to the Underworld”. It’s like freiken pouring over into the realm of the living.

Anywho back on topic, yeah it would be great to have Dervs/ Sins/ Monks/ Rits back.
Engi is not a Rit, Thief can’t even lick the Sins boots, Guards have nothing on Monks.

Giving dervishes exclusive access to unique boons sounds cool, but doesn’t that kind break the continuity currently established?

Even aegis, which is primarily used by guardian used by some other professions too. Maybe introducing the Dervish would be a good time to introduce a new boon?

Mishee.5719:

Azo.5860:

Nerelith.7360:

kokiman.2364:

Shockwave.1230:

They can do subclasses at some point too, adding new professions does not have to be mutually exclusive to subclasses. ANet still needs to add new professions to the game at some point as well.

Do you know why we dont have subclasses? Because of the balance. Do you think that the balance of GW2 right now justifies a new layer of complexity? I think the balance team right now has a lot problems balancing the game for all 3 gamemodes.

You would think after 2 years they would have the classes better balanced, why does this game feel like the longest alpha in the world>? Not Just not ready for release, but…Not ready for beta.

Shockwave.1230:

Shockwave.1230:

Being a Guild Wars 1 vet, I’d like them to do a throw back with one of the new professions they bring in at some point. Dervish is the main one on my mind, with ritualist being a close second.

How would both of those profession be unique in GW2? What would be their class mechanics?

Go play Guild Wars. You’ll see that BOTH of those have better mechanics, and are more fun to play than anything currently in GW2. And let’s Not forget The Assassin.

The Assassin is not a Thief.
The Dervish is not a handicapped Elementalist.
The Ritualist is not anything like an Engineer.

These three classes should be in the game. That Anet doesn’t want to givethem to us, is just a sign that they rather keep putting out Living Story. I am pretty certain that even though they claim that the new season has " Permanent Content" there is no new class, or race, or weapon in the thing, maybe new skills? can I Hope?

If Anet does only 1 thing…. I would come back to play Like I used to, and I am sure many of those that have left, if they heard it, they would come flocking back, In droves….

Sub-classes.

What second thing could they do? Bring back Dervishes, and Ritualists and Assassins.

But…. that would be hard. And it seems that the only hard thing Anet considers doing is putting out skins On the gem store.

Mesmer is not Mesmer..

gw1 mesmer more&less http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Effective_mesmer_guide
gw2 Mesmer, example in GvG Veil bot.. (except veil there is no seat for mesmer)

by randomly i saw thsis link.. mostly agree on them about mesmer.. http://www.toptiertactics.com/14669/guild-wars-2-how-arenanet-ruined-the-mesmer/
————————————
however we can say Guild wars `2` is not Guidwars1 (just new game.. who use guildwars tag) [anet would use another name than guildwars it would better i think]

Yeah, Im currently playing the mesmer as my main. But after reading this, I can’t really stop the tears from coming. I want my lyssa loving back!

So if they even think about taking back dervish, I really really hope that they don’t change them all that much.

Sidenote;
Weapons for a possible dervish in gw2 should be.
1. Scythe (daa), A little bit of everything.
2. Spears; Single target, conditions.
3. Greatswords; Cc/tanky.
4. Stavs; Support:ish. Ench…etc.

These are interesting weapon choices, would the spear be 1 handed or two handed in your mind?

Scepter could be a 1 handed option, but maybe Dervish could be the only profession that only uses 2 handed weapons.

Nerelith.7360:

Askherion.4935:

Shockwave.1230:

Balance Philosophy

• Selfish boons, unlike Guardian and Elementalist.
• strong direct damage melee cleave, some bleeds / Torment
• soft cc (blind, weakness, chill, cripple) and some hard cc (short duration kd, pull behind?, immobilize wall?), and higher frequency access to swiftness to keep melee range
• noticeably fewer gap closers than the warrior
• get in, keep the enemy in and take them down before you go down.
• minor team support, via targeted condi removal (burn, chill, cripple, immob)
• weaker vs heavy ranged damage

Lore

• to avoid the issue of the Dervish being tightly coupled to the human Gods, Dervishes in Elona would have taught Wind Prayer and Earth prayers and Mysticism to the other races with the help of Asuran Elementalists (Vekk?) identifying the link between the prayers to the wind and earth magics .

Am I the only one that reads “necromancer” in his description? The necro is known to be selfish (Blood is power for might, Spectral Walk and Armor), has access to lot of bleeds (even Power specs have bleed on crits), DS gives torment. Soft and Hard cc, necro has the wells for this, staff marks, dagger 3 for immob, and the scepter for cripple, axe 3, focus 5…. It has a lot fewer gap closers than warrior (DS2, and a grab with Spectral Grasp). The philosophy of “get in, keep the enemy in” follows the same train of though and thus is also typical of necromancers. Swiftness… You have Spectral Walk, Signet of Locusts, Warhorn 5 and the Quickening Thirst and Speed of Shadows traits. For condi removal, Unholy Martyr helps along with a Well of Power and Plague Signet. As for weaker against ranged damage… This is vague to me, but given the low numbers of gap closers, I say it’s true as well.

What lacks is what many necromancers have been asking for for a long time now: a melee cleave weapon. You basically want a necromancer with a scythe. For the “dervish-specific” skills, well, humans have them as racial skills. For the other mechanics they had in GW1 (e.g. enchantments), it can’t be done in GW2.

And for the lore justifications… I am really not convinced. I don’t see Asuras teaching stuff to other races for one, and translating prayers to magic so that other races can use it doesn’t make sense to me.

Dervish are not necromancers with scythes, you really should play The original game, and create a dervish, then create a necromancer, you will see they are different, and No… people wanting to play a dervish are not stepping on Necromancer toes. the scythe is not a weapon that " we asked for it first." The Scythe has always been a dervish weapon.

Correct, but to his point about other professions doing what the Dervish would do, that is true of any profession change or addition. Since launch every role in the game has been fulfilled that will be in the game. Healer and interrupter aren’t a part of the game’s design like the original guild Wars.

So as I’ve mentioned previously it doesn’t toaster what the profession change is. There will be overlapping roles.

If you’re saying that’s an argument against adding a profession you’re saying you are for not changing the game from a profession stand point.

Orpheal.8263:

@ Shockwave:

Personally I don’t care about your obsession with Dervishs.
As much as you want them back in the game, as much I don’t want them back regardless of what you say.
So discussing with me over Dervs getting added is pointless, because whatever argument you will bring,I can tell you, the already existign classes could do it also and it would be just easier for Anet to improve the existing classes and let them progress via Sub Classes, which in the end would lead to the same goal, like what you want, but just with taking a different path, which I think is on the long run for the whole game absolutely better, than to put into the game just a boring old GW1 rehashed Clone.

Fact is, you will never see Dervishs coming back as 100% GW1 Clones. Deal with it.
If ever something dervish based should get added to this game, it would just make only sense to improve the Guardian with it, because from all existing Classes, the Guardian already feels the most like being the Dervish-Descendants.

• They have Virtues, which are exactly the Sacrifice Boons- Gain Bonus Effect Gameplay
• They have a 2H Weapon, with that they can deal a whirling attack, see GS 2, so saying Guardians are no Dervs, because they don’t whirl is childish nonsense to whoever argumentated with this point before and if you just don’t like that skill, because its animation uses a Greatsword over a Scythe, thats your personal problem. But the fact stays, its a whirling attack …
• Guardians have the same holy zealot fire theme, as like Dervishs, that causes their foes to suffer on Burnings
• The only thing that they haven’t from Dervishs are their Avatars, but as said, this feature got recycled into the Human Racial Skills

Anyone can apply your own argument to any of your suggestions, I’m not trying to convince you though.

I haven’t been posting to copy paste them in. What I’m posting are things I’d like to see in the game’s future, because I see how fun it’ll be. ANet can take or leave my suggestions, it’s of no loss to me if they don’t use them.

I’ve already adequately countered these reused arguments, no additonal comments necessary. Check my prior post if you’d like.

I am glad you continue to post though. It provides more visibility into the lack of meaningful objective counters, plus the more attention the thread gets the more influence the topic gains. Thanks for that and for allowing me to critically think and problem solve regarding this topic.

Orpheal.8263:

- snip -

Non of the counter-arguements here make the Dervish mutually exclusive to Guild Wars 2.

• The Human tie-in can be dealt with in various ways, such as the one mentioned.
• The scythe is not suddenly a bad idea because of other cleave weapons. ANet could have just done 1 bow weapon, and called it a Bow, but instead they have a Shortbow and Longbow, because they are different weapons.
• Elementalist having element magics didn’t stop dervishes from having prayers in Guild Wars 1, further discussion not necessary.
• Boons are like enchantments, and the dervish always had selfish enchantments, which is why one of the philosophies mentioned is selfish boons. Flash enchantments were basically stances that could be stacked, not sure the relevance you were getting to.
• Sacred themes existed in the monk as well, and kind of in the Paragon too. Monk, Paragon and Dervish were in Guild Wars. In Guild Wars 2 Ranger and Guardian share a spirit theme. Ranger also shares the element theme with the elementalist slightly. Thief and Mesmer share the trickery theme.
• Necromancer only scythes is strictly your opinion, there’s nothing to counter and no substance objectively.
• Some professions can play similarly, the heavies in Guild Wars 2 do if you choose to do so. In GW1 warrior existed before the dervish, it already had a major role the dervish would take on. In fact, any change to professions, be them sub-classes or new professions, the roles already exist, so no matter what roles will be shared (as some of them already are).
• Scythes being farmer tools has never stopped fantasy settings from making them cool and fun. Soul Eater or other various animes are good examples, Guild Wars is a good example.

Ultimately what the Dervish being implemented comes down to is the devs being convinced it would be good for the game, and that there’s demand for it. There’s no counter-argument that stop someone who has there mind set on something. Look at some of the devs’ actions, stealth for example has loads of haters, yet the devs have there mind set that it’s a good thing, so they haven’t removed it, they’ve just tweaked it since launch. I’m in the camp that the Dervish would be awesome, and I can see ways that it will be. Would it need work? Like any other profession, yes.

Erukk.1408:

The wind and earth prayers I can understand, but I think the weak part of your lore argument is the mysticism. It was the main attribute of the dervishes, and they wouldn’t really be able to teach it, since it all played into the gods and the dervish’s faith in them.

The asura, or any other nonhuman races really (minus the sylvari), might acknowledge the gods’ existence, but they don’t really have any faith in them, and that is one of the key factors of what makes a dervish a dervish. If all one needed was some expanded air and earth magic to play a dervish, it would just be an attunement handicapped elementalist wielding a scythe.

I like your interpretation on Mysticism. Instead of faith in the human gods, it can be driven by faith in something. Each of the races have something they believe in from the dream to the eternal alchemy.

I disagree with the argument that about Dervish being a handicapped elementalist playing with a scythe, because that same argument can be applied to Guild Wars 1, yet the profession was unique and fun.

kokiman.2364:

Shockwave.1230:

They can do subclasses at some point too, adding new professions does not have to be mutually exclusive to subclasses. ANet still needs to add new professions to the game at some point as well.

Do you know why we dont have subclasses? Because of the balance. Do you think that the balance of GW2 right now justifies a new layer of complexity? I think the balance team right now has a lot problems balancing the game for all 3 gamemodes.

Honestly, I’m not a fan of the subclass idea at all in this game, because I feel like secondary professions was a better idea. That said, some people are a fan, and there’s nothing for me to say negatively about the idea as it potentially can be implemented well, but to your point it could also not be implemented well.

kokiman.2364:

Shockwave.1230:

Being a Guild Wars 1 vet, I’d like them to do a throw back with one of the new professions they bring in at some point. Dervish is the main one on my mind, with ritualist being a close second.

How would both of those profession be unique in GW2? What would be their class mechanics?

For the Dervish one thing that could be done is they’d have their skill concepts, and their profession mechanic could be Wind and Earth Prayers. Depending on the prayer their skills, which wouldn’t change in animation or the main concept would just change in combat effect and particle effects. Maybe they have a wall skill concept that effects movement speed, so when imbued with Earth Prayers the wall does immobilize, or if imbued with Wind Prayers the wall does chill or swiftness.

Imbuing prayers could be done in a way that they can be imbued into skills only every so often with strong effects. It could be that the prayers have a cast time, and while being cast the dervish gains boons, like stability, protection and retal for earth or stability, swiftness, and regen for air, then their next several attack have some effect depending on the prayer. This can be played with various ways, prayers could last a number of attacks, a certain duration, the magnitude of effects could be increased/decreased depending on the number of attacks/duration.

Imbuing prayers into skills could be done similarly to the elementalists attunements instead though, where you swap between prayers but have a second or so delay until prayer actually takes effect. Thinking through that, with no recharge on swap, it could allow you to queue up and time swapping between prayers and try landing different combinations of effects as you use your attacks (because your attack concept doesn’t change much between prayers just the kind of effect that goes with it).

Kain Francois.4328:

I’d rather they integrate the Dervish into an existing class, with the addition of Scythes as a new weapon.

The following isn’t directed at you specifically, I’ve just seen a couple of posts saying do subclasses instead of adding new professions, so apologies if this is coming across as ranty.

They can do subclasses at some point too, adding new professions does not have to be mutually exclusive to subclasses. ANet still needs to add new professions to the game at some point as well.

Being a Guild Wars 1 vet, I’d like them to do a throw back with one of the new professions they bring in at some point. Dervish is the main one on my mind, with ritualist being a close second.

I personally don’t care about the counter-arguments, as I’ll re-counter them to highlight why the game needs this awesome profession. I just am bringing up the Dervish, because I have a vision for ways it could be implemented, I see them clearly, and they’re really fun on my mind.

Balance Philosophy

• Selfish boons, unlike Guardian and Elementalist.
• strong direct damage melee cleave, some bleeds / Torment
• soft cc (blind, weakness, chill, cripple) and some hard cc (short duration kd, pull behind?, immobilize wall?), and higher frequency access to swiftness to keep melee range
• noticeably fewer gap closers than the warrior
• get in, keep the enemy in and take them down before you go down.
• minor team support, via targeted condi removal (burn, chill, cripple, immob)
• weaker vs heavy ranged damage

Lore

• to avoid the issue of the Dervish being tightly coupled to the human Gods, Dervishes in Elona would have taught Wind Prayer and Earth prayers and Mysticism to the other races with the help of Asuran Elementalists (Vekk?) identifying the link between the prayers to the wind and earth magics .

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/peel+off

Phrasal Verb:
peel off
1. To leave flight formation in order to land or make a dive. Used of an aircraft.
2. To leave or depart.

Just a friendly fyi, that is all.

In my experience turret engi’s counter berserker builds really hard, except zerker warriors.

Too many words in the OP.

I’m guessing thief was running pistol whip, and spammed it 3-4 times, and I’m assuming this was a hungry warrior that ate them all. Potentially while he was using stability as I would think he’d notice if he was getting stunned.

1v1 between those two specs, D/P is superior. 10/30/0/0/30 on S/D and it still favors D/P, but it’s a closer matchup.

S/D is meta bcs of cleave in the meta. Full Acro Trickery traits is meta bcs it helps with sustain.

D/P is viable in a coordinated team.

S/P is viable as well.

2/6/0/0/6 is the other trait spread that you’ll see in the meta for d/P and S/D. I don’t remember the trait splits for pistol whip atm.

Shortbow is still pretty much mandatory for the 2nd weapon.

Pvp and WvW are very different. WvW has zergs and havoc groups that are important.

Pvp has bunker, sustain, and glass builds.

The question you should ask yourself is how do you like to play, what kinds of mechanics do you like, and what kind of role do you like to play.

From there we can provide some insight on what you are likely to enjoy.

Pvp builds generally aren’t good in PvE, but they aren’t bad. Really PvP builds just aren’t optimal in PvE, but PvE is so relatively easy in comparison you’ll be fine as long as you Dodge, blind, or evade 1 shot abilities.

Thief isn’t optimal in WvW really either, because WvW is largely zerg v zerg (my experience on SB I server) , but it does have a strong place in small scale fights.

For WvW and PvP you can run the same kind of build if you’re in a group, but 1v1 shadow arts thieves have an advantage in WvW.

For PvE S/P reigns supreme, invigorating precision and signet of malice let you play like a Warrior with the sustain you have, but you’ll still get 1 shot if you don’t avoid those.

Thieves aren’t that useful in zergs, you can be a blast battery with cluster bomb in zergs. But your real value as a thief in WvW comes when you run in a havoc group. A 5-10 man group that runs around grabbing objectives that the enemy zergs leave behind. A pvp meta thief build will thrive in that situation.

For PvE/WvW I recommend thieves run as much zerker gear as they are comfortable with. Supplement any non-zerk pieces with something having vitality. Valkyrie is a good option

It is capped, 25 stacks

/endtrollresponse

Do something to impact might stacking. A lower cap is just 1 option.

Get your mechanics down and learn to rotate. Focus on rotating, not team fights. Eventually you’ll get a handle on when to stay for team fights and when not to.

Zelulose.8695:

I am mainly for preventing thieves from stealthing long enough for their healing skill to recharge If a thief refuges after a withdrawal they will have 20 secs of stealth while their healing skill is only on a 15 sec CD. Their regeneration in stealth is bad enough. This is really what resets a duel. Also, they just stealth for 10 secs to reset the duel a second time.

This applies to wvw and in spvp for capping points specifically if the enemy player is killed by the thief. If a player can be killed by a stealth spamming thief, it wont matter that stealth can’t cap. The thief will just kill the player and take the point after that player is downed.

A 20 second refuge means 3 trait points at least down the Shadow Arts line. The shadow arts line is only useful for roaming and a 2v2 or smaller scale skirmish that is not near an objective. It has a very specific strength and is bad otherwise.

3 trait points into SA means you miss out on either damage or utility from Trickery, Critical Strikes, Deadly Arts.

This arguments sounds like a complaint that the game isn’t balanced around WvW roaming, which is intended by the devs. It’s obviously not fun for the majority of the player base to deal with, but the devs aren’t willing to do very much split balancing specifically towards WvW, if they’ve even done any.

Thieves are just as essential as guardian in a team comp, because of their mobility though. Not because of their spike potential. If ele still had a 15 recharge second rtl, it would be ele that was required, bcs their team fighting is better than thief.

ANet decided they only wanted thief to be the king of mobility. Reality is they could have made another class the king or multiple classes even if they wanted.

As for the rest of the OP’s complaints, 1) is true of any class. If you are caught with cool-downs or an engi or Mesmer gets the jump on you with stealth, you can go down quickly. It’s not thief exclusive, any profession can get the jump on someone, classes with stealth are able to do so frequently is all.

2) thieves do not have huge healing power. Withdraw is good with evade builds because it Heals more than His over time assuming no Poison, but it doesn’t heal for a lot. 4k is a decent weapon skill critical, when countered with Poison 3k is potentially an auto attack critical.

3) WvW I care nothing about. I’m not sure why you’d be losing 2+v1 against a thief other than bad play. If the complaint is about them running away, they lost. Non issue in my mind. If you’re chasing them, that’s your issue, you’re falling for them baiting you.

4) Mesmer’s and engineers are able to provide AoE invisibility for 5 seconds. The two of them can chain it for 10 seconds to the same number of players as a thief can. Thief SR gives 4 seconds of stationary invisibility then 11 seconds of free roaming stealth. An engi and Mesmer chaining stealth doesn’t require being stationary. “But it requires 2 ppl instead of 1!” So? Those profs have tradeoffs to make up for the extra 6 seconds indivually. Engi is better at contributing to team fights, and Mesmer is too.

5) There is nothing in point 5, it’s just an opinion vs bad play. A bunker won’t die quickly to backstabs, and no one stays in black powder.

Points gained per node please

Swap to short bow whenever you’re not sure if you should swap to shortbow.

If you’re not sure if you’ll be effective on D/P, it’s probably due to valid concerns. Shortbow will still let you get a solid spike in with clusterbombs and teleport.

Good sigils to use on D/P or SB are Rage, Air, or Fire. Generosity and Energy can be good on SB, Intelligence is somewhat challenging to optimize on D/P yet can be good.

Don’t use lyssa. Use Hide in Shadows for condi’s. Use either Strength, Scholar’s, or Pack runes.

Josh Davis.6015:

Great responses, all. Really impressed with the turnout. Posts like the ones from Holland, SuinegTsol, and pierwola (to name a few) are exactly the type of high-level role discussion we are looking for.

As a note, I want to be very clear that we’re looking for comments from all game modes, PvE, PvP, and WvW included. Don’t be shy.

I’ll be going through the thread quite a bit today, distilling your thoughts into something a bit more digestible that we can talk about on stream.

Thanks!

While I understand that you are not going to talk about the even higher level discussion areas that some of us are bringing up regarding pvp, I certainly hope these don’t get brushed off.

Many of us were hoping tomorrow’s livestream would be pvp oriented, but clearly that is not the intent.

Some people in the thread are confused.

Ele being viable is what everyone wants. No one wants it’s diversity to be limited to a 0/0/2/6/6 Celestial ammy, strength rune, battle sigil template.

This issue isn’t exclusive to ele though. Similar issues exist for warrior, engi, thief, etc. Might stacking is the main reason this template is top tier.