Guild Wars 2

First I would go Defense Against Guards, 1 rank Ballista, Guard Killer, then 4 ranks AC mastery followed by more ranks in Ballista and if you are still playing Siege Might. Canon would be WAY down on the list.

Nikkinella.8254:

This just made me laugh. No, just no. I’m sorry. I love ranger but it stands no chance against even a semi-conscious thief.

And rarely ever play my thief, I really dislike the class so I barely play it, it’s not like i’m a pro thief or anything. I’ll never understand why Anet nerfed Rangers. The pets weren’t that great to begin with, was totally unneccesary.

Prior to the latest patch Rangers were sPvP powerful. Sickem with a stealthed jag would clock many thieves for more than half their HP. Pile on conditions while running regen and most thieves (as well as many other classes) melted. Not a lot of that style ranger showed up for WvW, but when I got a hold of one it was a REALLY tough fight. They had nearly as much mobility, very fast escape system on the GS and their regen can be really hard to overcome.

The class needs love to find its place in WvW. It certainly doesn’t help that PvE based players do the “lean back” and barrage which is the same as ringing the dinner bell in WvW.

Dual.8953:

We’re talking Pistol/Dagger. Not the omni thief that has all builds at once.

Missed the P/D portion but my original point stands… a thief in most cases has a stealth mechanic that cannot be dodged. It may be a smoke field, a critter, a door, siege, pet, clone, another enemy, guard, steal, utility skill, blah, blah, blah. Only thieves running very little stealth are going to struggle from a failed CnD.

LilMcGinley.3890:

I don’t really believe in the “2700 sweetspot” in the topics you linked. You need more than that for WvW, that’s for sure and your post here proves that. If you want to do DPS, you have to out DPS your target, if you go Tank you have to out last your target, by working in both, you do neither and become an easy kill.

This is too complex to pigeonhole. Toughness requirements vary greatly based on HP pool, build mobility, play style and dozens of other factors.

Locking into blanket rules about what should and should not be done in WvW is highly limiting and IMO plays right into skilled players hands who are used to seeing forum paint-by-number builds.

DeWolfe.2174:

Like my Staff Ele, good luck taking on a thief with a Staff Ele. If a thief stealth’s in behind you and initiates with a backstab, which is easy to do by the camps, you are done for.

This… right here… this. Do not take a zerg group build (as in lots of big AoE) into a solo/skirmish fight against a solo/skirmish build (as in a high single target DPS) and expect to win. Switch to a bunker/roamer D/D build and suddenly thieves are going to be mostly a non-issue.

Not every build on every class is supposed to do everything.

Burnfall.9573:

Straegen

I play a ranger class, what more Truth do u need?

Isn’t that Rational enough?

What’s more to discuss?

I have more hours logged on my Ranger than any of my other 80s. I know better than to go toe-to-toe with a thief post pet patch. The RRR build before the pet nerf was more than capable of killing thieves since the jag from stealth hit like a truck and wasn’t fooled by thief stealth.

The ranger in that video played poorly… I also don’t understand how a ranger can avoid the GS in WvW due to its very HIGH mobility. Makes ride the lightning look like a chump skill.

Burnfall.9573:

“There is never room for Discussion and Rationality, if one is Enslaved to Denyingl the Truth”

This quote applies as much to your posts as it does anyone else.

Dual.8953:

You could have blocked CnD. Then he can’t Sneak Attack and all his other skills are weak as all heck. CnD’s a melee skill so it should be obvious when a ranged set is trying to use it. Also he can only CnD twice from full initiative. Maybe try kiting.

Except there are plenty of other ways to stealth such as smoke fields (D/P creates them at will), other creatures, blinding powder, shadows refuge, doors, siege, etc. It is also pretty easy to just wait out dodges then CnD. Going stealth is ridiculously easy for a thief and not much another player can do about it.

Zikory.6871:

IMO the other classes blast finishers are much more useful at the start of a engagement then a thieves cluster bomb. Having all your classes save/waste blast finishers anytime you need might/healing/retal is quite wasteful. Having thieves ready to blast these fields give other classes much more control over the fight.

I am not debating that a thief isn’t useful in a zerg, I think it is but it is not a strong utility zerg class. Their base mechanic (stealth) is mostly useless outside of skirmishing.

Mesmers are clearly the utility winners, but Necros condition management, Guardians everything (stability, retaliation, boon-a-palooza) and Eles pack siege capability and fantastic aura sharing are far higher on the list than the thief. Throwing a bone to the Ranger, they have the best water field in the game.

Renxian.6982:

Evasion is not the same as mitigation, evasion is 100% reliant on player input. Every class has access to evasion. Stealth does not mitigate damage. Thieves take 100% damage while stealthed. Shadow’s rejuvenation is a regenerative effect not a form of mitigation. You only heal if you are already damaged. It does not prevent or reduce damage in any way.

Call it what you want, but stealth lessons total damage but does not eliminate it which is mitigation. Stealthed players can still be effected by AoE, conditions and skills activated before stealthing but targeted skills after stealth are no longer effective.

Renxian.6982:

There is a big difference in survivability between a PVT thief and say…a PVT Guardian/Warrior/Mesmer/Engineer/Necro. Even in a full bunker gearset, a thief isn’t tanky. Saying that stealth is a form of bunker is straight stupid. It is in no way shape or form even remotely close to invuln/block/aegis/protection. One requires you to actively avoid damage through positioning and evasion, the others allow you to passively ignore damage.

Few of those abilities happen passively. Given your narrow definition of mitigate invuln, retaliation and blocking wouldn’t fit since they eliminate not mitigate damage.

Bunkers use a variety of skills and traits to MANAGE incoming damage. Stealth does indeed manage damage. That is why thieves can be ridiculously hard to kill. Harder to kill than any bunker when played well. Whether it is retaliation or stealth both skills actively reduce total incoming damage whether you want to admit it or not.

Renxian.6982:

A bunker guardian is scary. A bunker thief is a loot bag.

Putting blinders on to other ways to play a class is limiting yourself. Have you ever tried a healing thief build? One of the best thieves on EBay runs a D/D S/D healing thief build that zerg surfs with excellent results. The build is viable and I would say exceptional for skirmishing. Even my own K/D ratio is respectable considering I solo/skirmish 80% of the time.

Zikory.6871:

More Thief QQ? Can you keep this in the thief section please. We complain about Badges of honor and JP griefers here!

I don’t think this is really a QQ post. The request is reasonable, would not unbalance the skill and basically doesn’t call anyone out. As a primary thief, I can see why it should be changed as the current mechanic does feel cheap and lessons skilled play.

Zikory.6871:

More Thief QQ? Can you keep this in the thief section please. We complain about Badges of honor and JP griefers here!

The WvW area really does need a Class QQ section.

Zikory.6871:

PS: Not USELESS in a zerg at all. Just cluster bomb alone makes them one of the strongest utility classes. Don’t pigeon hole your self into a cookie cutter build. Thieves are quite useful out side of doing just damage.

I agree they are not useless but they are also not one of the strongest. Their blast finisher is nice but doesn’t compare to guardian, memser, ele, necro and others utility. Even the ranger ranks above them in some circles thanks to healing spring.

Direwind.8409:

The most mobile class in the game
The class with the most and highest damage potential
The class that cannot be caught in combat or out of combat
The class with the best or close to the best talent synergy
The class with the (lets not lie here) overpowered Stealth mechanic
(perma in combat stealth anyone)
The class that is as easy to play as a warrior.

1. Not the most mobile class in the game… at least not definitively.
2. Not the class with the highest damage potential (not even close as AoE rules in DPS)
3. I catch them all the time in and out of combat.
4. Guardian… seriously… guardian
5. Not the only class with stealth and the mesmer veil does it on a grand scale
6. Easy? Depends on the player. I find most classes to be pretty easy to play.

I still don’t understand why the thief gets such hate. Guardians kill WAY more players and are far more powerful in WvW. Thieves don’t even dominate in any one place. They can be frustrating on a rare occasion but are mediocre in 95% of the game and marginally powerful in the other 5%.

Geiir.7603:

If the toon in any way could feel the backstab the thief should get revealed. This does not apply to blind since he simply missed the attack. So I do agree that block should trigger revealed.

By allowing players to remained stealth on failed attacks, it lessons the effectiveness of both block and blind. Dodge should also be in the discussion. Good defensive play should effect the attacker. As it is now dodges, blinds, blocks, etc are a minor inconvenience to a stealthed thief rather than something they need to pay attention to (stealth, safely spam 1 key until the big hit lands regardless of the defenders evasiveness).

The attack intent really should be the trigger. If the thief isn’t paying attention and loses a stealth and BS, that is on them. Those defensive mechanics should effect a stealthed player more… IMO.

Agreed. I can often keep swinging until the block goes off and the BS lands. IMO the same should apply to blindness. Basically any attack successful or not should trigger the reveal.

The change might not be so simple in the code though.

Agriope.4523:

Somewhat related question, and not looking for teh trollz: Are there still any servers who by-and-large can and do appreciate roaming groups and what they bring to WvW?

I don’t think there is much love for skirmish teams or roamers on the servers I have been on. Most are either apathetic or in some cases openly hostile particularly when a larger guild is trying for a big objective (such as “EVERYONE TO MY TAG NOW” or “if you leave the commander, YOU WILL DIE!” messages).

Most of the blob players see keeps and towers as the point makers but a 5 man team flipping 2-3 camps per tick is frequently generating a lot more points per player than a zerg. Our team can usually keep 3-5 camps on a map flipped at any given time plus we often cut off reinforcements by sitting between a contested waypoint and the closest spawn.

Renxian.6982:

It takes more than some PVT gear to make a char a bunker. There is a reason that guardians and Ele’s make amazing bunkers and thieves may as well not show up if they are bunker.

I disagree with this. Healing thief builds are dangerous because they can survive over an extended fight and are not as susceptible to AoE or being burst down. Stealth is a form of bunker just like retaliation and blocks. Thieves may not be face tanking like other classes, but they can still mitigate a considerable amount of damage.

I run a mix of Knights and Cavaliers as well as go 30 in SA with Shadow’s Rejuvenation (unbuffed 2700 toughness, 100 CD, 2k power). While my initial sting isn’t high, my sustained DPS is good and survivability is very good.

Aeolus.3615:

Armor plz… , and that is not much with 3.7k armor, sometimes i still get ~8k backstabs

I call shenanigans.

For a thief to do this much damage against that much armor means the power has to be ridiculously high. The player would need to have stacked a high crit dmg stat above 100 and have a power rating around 5k. The base damage before armor and power get pulled into the mix is around 6k and that presumes a fully zerk thief with a perfect hit. To add an additional 2k to that number the power has to be greater than your armor which may be possible but not without a good deal of external modifiers (bloodlust, 25 stacks of might, vuln, etc). Any thief running this level of extremes is going to be incredibly delicate with virtually no toughness or healing capacity.

I am all for more elite skills but they should probably start adding them to the classes with notoriously weak elites rather than the one with the best elites.

The two most requested WxP features, account wide and a reset. Both of which are pretty unlikely because GW2 doesn’t care about WvW players or at least that is what Kanye said.

IMO, it is a good idea to have a reset for badges.

A decent necro that isn’t in full zerg mode, is a bear to take down melee. I usually strafe them and see what they are made of. Good ones force the fight into range since marks/wells are thief bane. Once it gets to range the fight is tricky because the health point pool on a necro is fantastic. By the time I whittle one down, usually someone else has joined the fight one way or another.

Aberrant.6749:

Bad Vs. Bad – Thief wins
Ok Vs Ok – Thief prolly loses but runs away
Good Vs Good – Thief probably dies
EPIC Vs EPIC – Thief in the corner crying “please make the bad man stop” while rocking back and forth.

Mostly agree. A lot depends on when the fight starts because a very good thief will frequently hit when a target is wounded or otherwise engaged. It also varies greatly on armor… Good or better players with high armor are nearly impossible for a thief to kill regardless of thief skill without a substantial advantage at the beginning of the fight.

Ross Biddle.2367:

So in conclusion, there are plenty of “official” ones, and countless more non-guild, pug, or casual 5 man groups out there.

Yeah, it’s so dead it’s walking.

Pugs and casuals get crushed most of the time by numbers. We (as in most “official” 5 mans) can survive being heavily out numbered because we are all on the same voice channel, have tons of cross class combos working and actively use target calling. Without that high level of coordination, best to just zerg.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

so because to YOU (which is wrong by the way) that you think they only excel in one area it means that it is perfectly fine for them to be so obscenely overpowered?

A group of 5-10 thieves will do more damage/kill more people of varying other classes then the other way around. Why? the obscene spike damage combined with the broken stealth means they could easily target the same people, kill that person in SECONDS and repeat the process, might be harder against Bunkers but when they have the obscene damage, broken stealth and the 25% speed increase they will win in more situations then they lose.

If they are so weak elsewhere (which they aren’t) buff these areas and nerf Stealth, Damage and movement speed.

I have never seen a thief group do worth a crap in 5v5 or GvG. Spike damage is great until a guard/ele combo drops 25 stacks of might on everyone in the group, a fire field pops up with a blast finisher going through it and a ton of AoE stuns hit the ground. Field combos are devastating and make thief spike damage laughable.

Thieves are a component of good skirmishing and a top ranked class in WvW roaming. That is their role much like the necro/guardian is powerful in zergs. Thieves are not invulnerable gods capable of killing every class solo. High toughness in particular is virtual immunity against a thief. No decent guardian walking around with 3000+ armor is worried about some unkillable solo god.

XII.9401:

Roll a thief, get farmed by them or leave the game. I thought Anet’s position on the matter for a year made it clear for everyone?

This only applies if said player is inexperienced, up leveled or simply a poor WvW player.

Best class in the game with the most kills on probably every server, Guardian. We know the player with THE most kills across all servers is a guardian. I will put Alt Healing up against stealth in 3+vX any day.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The last i checked it isnt just solo they do this, i have seen groups of 5-10 thieves all running the same noob-fest perma stealth builds doing it. The class is broken BECAUSE of the perma stealth, increased movement speed and the stupidly broken damage. ONE (or more) of them MUST be changed. It is that simple.

Except it isn’t that simple. Teams that drop a mix of fields, group heals, control, boons, AoE and conditions win more often than not. Guardian retaliation, alt healing, control and shouts are far more dangerous in skirmish play than stealth and spike damage. Ele AoE and fields, also incredibly powerful in skirmish. Thieves struggle to stay on top of teams dropping crazy amounts of control and AoE.

There are a few thieves that play astonishingly well (EBay has a S/D D/D thief that is amazing) but most of them are solo because the thief is primarily a solo class with very limited cross class benefit. They don’t do well under heavy AoE without a lot of other class support.

That said my point still stands… the thief class excels in pretty much only ONE aspect of the game (solo WvW). Just because a necro (who kills vast swarms of people in zergs) or similar zerg class cannot go toe-to-toe with a thief 1v1 is intentional and IMO correct. Classes have their roles and for the thief it is WvW 1v1 roaming and skirmish support. Want to argue the ranger and engi get short ends of a stick, I am with you.

1. PvE in this game is so ridiculously easy almost nobody wants to repeat it. Oakheart = kite until dead/dodge vines… easy.

2. see #1

If we are going down this road then we should blow up ALL bunkers as well. Nothing more annoying than locking horns with an Alt Heal Guardian running full tank and have absolutely zero ability to kill them 1v1. Who wants to trade blows for 10 minutes only to have the fight settled by the first person who has a friendly or 100 show up?

Yes, this please. Almost everything on my list is no longer able to be completed.

The GW2 combat mod can accomplish this, but I think it is technically against the ToS. It would be nice for this function to be built into GW2 though.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

How about this as a fix to Thieves and Stealth

Lets keep in mind thieves are NOT particularly good at sPvP, PvE or in zergs. One could argue they aren’t even average in those three aspects of the game. The ONLY place they excel is in solo play. That is it… one place. So the “fix” is to remove the one place the class excels. Sorry, the answer is and should be no.

The “fix” is simple and I will state it again. Stop taking powerful PvE, sPvP and zerg classes/builds into solo WvW and expect to best a class built around solo WvW play.

Wild Bulbasaur.1938:

Gotta hand it to BP, you guys do a good job holding down your Borderlands!

It is easier when a server doesn’t really care about EB and leaves its defense to many of the newer WvW players. Many of our larger guilds ignore EB much of the time and value our BL above all other maps. Many do get a bit cranky when the main EB keep comes under fire though.

I know I stopped going to EB out of frustration since many of the players are learning the ropes there and I have limited patience for losing defensible positions (such as a fully upgraded and sieged Mendons).

The combat log in this game is horrible and without a doubt the worst of any AAA MMO I have ever played. I know games have to ship with features turned off or reduced but this is a commonly shipped feature of almost every MMO out there. With almost a year past, it is time to implement this primal feature.

A list of the basic items in a combat log:

• Time stamp
• From player (doesn’t have to be by name)
• To player (doesn’t have to be by name)
• Skill name or id
• HP effected positive (heal) or negative (damage including condition dmg)
• Specific modifiers such as crits
• Downed/Death notices

In addition, the combat log should have an export/log to file option that saves in a CSV, XML or similar format.

vT… love those guys. Their hammer skills are impressive. I don’t remember TRI but we mostly hang out on enemy BLs and tend to avoid home BL and EB so our paths may not have crossed.

My suggestion don’t roll into town with a powerful zerg class and complain when a powerful solo class destroys you in solo play.

Want to find the real OP in the game, look no further than Alt Healing/Retaliation. Easily responsible for 10x (and probably more like 1000x) kills over stealth. The first Ultimate Dominator wasn’t a thief and to my knowledge no thief is even close.

Doing this likely violates the letter of the law, but I don’t think it would violate the intent. If they ever banned someone for auto-picking up bags especially before they heavily cracked down on legit cheaters, I would have a serious problem with said ban.

As with most things in life, use at your own peril even if that peril is extremely minimal.

Its a nice bonus but I would rather have put the points elsewhere. The reveal is very short and condition removal is too heavy in zergs for the damage to last. The first four levels are very good though (not as good as the top guard skills though).

kurtosis.9526:

Guardian. Staff #1 + Retaliation.

First player to 250,000 kills = Staff Guardian. Also the Red Guard GM, but he still beat his Necro’s to that achievement. Don’t think RG runs engi’s, but not sure about that.

That achievement was from play time much more so than a limited range AoE ability. Alt Healing in a group is obscene allowing them to lead from the front and Alt Healing works best with a hammer not a staff. Retaliation does indeed dish out massive damage in zergs but I don’t know if it counts as a tag.

Staff 1 doesn’t stand up to the numerous AoEs a D/D ele can drop but both classes suffer from relatively short range AoE which does limit the tagging.

They should have designed the system using the GW method which is templates. Players could save, load and even share template codes. There was no cost to change skills/traits around which encouraged experimentation.

TheStarflyer.9641:

/no, wvw does not need anymore pve or pvd(door)

Agreed.

I think a decent approach would be to add multiple objectives both for defense and offense. For example on a servers BL, two keeps and two camps could be selected as high value targets (big points for defending/taking) during a tick. If two of them fall, the offense gets the points. These objectives change each tick, the rewards for “winning” the objectives are high, these objectives would be highly visible on the map and the objectives would be varied (capture the flag, defend the flag, escort, find the spy, hide and seek, etc).

To my knowledge Necro marks hit everything that walk over them and epidemic can be evil. I do not know if they count towards the tag though… I presume they do and if so are probably the king of zerg tagging. I don’t have an 80 necro so I cannot say with certainty.

Thief (SB) and ranger (axe) both have an auto attack that bounces between targets making both good taggers. With the ranger penetrating arrow trait, rangers can tag about as good as any class at medium range and with the LB can tag a lot of targets at long range. The thief Dagger Storm elite tags a ridiculous number of bodies.

Elementalists are mid range AoE machines. Guardians and warriors can sit on the front line and tag a lot of targets but get stalled at choke points. Warriors with a bow could be good taggers… never tried it though. I don’t know a lot about engineers but I suspect the grenade variety can collect a fair amount of bags. Mesmers, I do not know their capability.

Pretty much all classes look like bag collecting machines when built for it. Out of the box, the thief is probably the easiest though since the SB base skill works in lag, the SB has a built in AoE and Dagger Storm is a ridiculously good tagging elite.

My guild runs 3-5 man most of the time. A couple of us will break into the zergs when the others aren’t online but if we can field 3 or more we skirmish. We rarely have more than 5 and I cannot remember when we had more than 6.

Mesmer should draw or win most fights given equally well skilled players and solo builds. The mesmers ability to reset the fight gives them a massive advantage in 1v1. Necros shine fighting large groups where many of their abilities can effect a large number of players not in solo play IMO.

1k+ hours, 22k+ kills, ridiculous number of PvE world events done and 0 precursors. I have probably gotten a couple dozen exotics in total. Nobody in my small guild has seen one either and we probably total around 8k hours in the game.

Loot in this game blows and IMO a weak part of the game. None of my gear across my 80s is from loot drops.

Miss Firesss.3704:

You know, I never see “Good job defending/taking DH.” It’s always " you only kept/got that because of another server."
DH is doing a great job so far this week, and I think we deserve credit where credit is due. Just my humble opinion though, take it or leave it.
GO DH!

Uhm.. this thread is full of DH kudos from all the servers. If you have never seen “good job” posts it is because you aren’t reading. Also it cannot be a “humble opinion” if the sentence before it congratulates yourself on a great job. I am pretty sure that is the exact opposite of humble.

All that said, yes DH is proving to be very capable and evenly matched with the other servers. I thought for sure BP would pull ahead during the weekdays but your coverage is keeping ours in check there as well.

I like the idea in general but in a sense it creates YAC (yet another currency). Gold, laurels, karma, badges, influence, guild merits, glory, gems, XP, WxP, lots of token variety and even skill points I am not looking forward to YAC.

New players must be completely overwhelmed with the ridiculous number of currencies needed to acquire items, skills, etc.

Based on your criteria I would ignore the thief, ranger, necro and engineer. The guardian is a premier group class but low mobility hinders roaming. Still worth considering though. The warrior can be iffy but fun if that is a favorite play style. The mesmer is a utility class with decent all around ability.

The elementalist still remains the jack of all trades in this game. High mobility, great siege, good group buffs, decent condition removal, good damage and can solo fairly well. To play a D/D really well is more difficult than other classes, but when they are played well they are a handful and then some.

Just tested against Anz door and yes I can CnD off of doors. Didn’t try siege but that probably works as well. IMO this is a bug.

Arrows on the door should still work since there is no overhead obstruction. As in fire an arrow up and falls onto the flame ram. What shouldn’t work is hitting catas in a tunnel or under a bridge with an AC behind a wall.

In the new system taking a dive so that a server might beat up on less populated one is pretty low.

Prior to the random ranking addition this might have been a legitimate tactic. Some matchups became stale and some servers got stuck with a very strong server for weeks or months (over 3 months my server got wailed on by the same significantly stronger server). This tactic could have allowed a respite from that matchup, but that is no longer an issue.