Guild Wars 2

Evilek.5690:

Of course we see zombie zerg with no brain

Jacklo.4230:

Love the videos that are posted… as if only Thief can do 1 vs X
…
Just some random videos of other people playing different classes to good effect.

You know, maybe it really is JUST YOU.

Literally Roguecraft all over again.

Compare and contrast the amount of WvW trolling videos made by Thieves that demonstrate consistent 1vX trolls versus the amount made by other classes. D/D Bunker Eles come closest to the amount of Thief 1vX trolls (lulz, and that’s what’s posted as counter evidence), and guess what the community thought about that. NERF NERF NERF

In fact, find a single video of even the most bunker Warrior, Necro or Guardian going deep into an enemy zerg, for minutes at a time, harassing and downing the commander from within 15+ of even the worst of players. I’m going to go ahead and guess that when other classes try this, they die.

The reason they don’t perform like the Thief, is because the Thief’s mechanics for survival are vastly superior – which allows them to take what would otherwise be guaranteed suicides without any risk at all. The fact that this capacity is available almost exclusively to the Thief is the very definition of being OP, intended by devs or not. I’m sorry, but that’s what it is.

I love my Thief. He’s my highest rank in WvW and the first class I played in my first BWE. But I call it like I see it. Constant invisibility will be endlessly broken or balanced by being almost completely useless in almost any multiplayer game. It’s a dance done by countless video games before this one, and will probably continue because game designers just don’t learn from other’s mistakes. SWTOR’s version of the rogue class was butchered shortly after launch because, like most Rogue/Assassin/Predator archetypes, it was intentionally designed as a troll class. Give me all of the choices – remove them from my opponent. It is the antithesis of a direct confrontation determined by skill and decision making capacity of the participants involved. The same thing happens with non-mmos. Natural Selection 2 nerfed the invisibility upgrade for the Alien team completely for the same reasons. Same old story. Crysis’ stealth is changed up game to game in multiplayer, as did Halo’s, teetering between broken and useless every other game.

Worst still, it’s just as annoying to new players as getting CC’ed for hours on end, because one of the worst game developer mistakes is to make a player consistently feel helpless or powerless – which is what facing an invisible opponent, who controls the flow of the battle, the location of the battle, and the odds of the battle, does.

As much fun as it is for me and my Guild’s Thieves to run around in perma-stealth builds trolling people who don’t see us coming and can’t even escape or kill us in turn – it’s kinda broken.

I sure liked being a Thief when Thieves could contest supply camp cap zones while invisible around 40+ organized guild players – but it had to change because it was really stupid. And that was with one guy just running around in a single area that everyone can see while stealthed.

Ultimately, I really enjoy the class so if nothing’s ever done I don’t lose – but one day I’d like to think my Thief’s performance in PvP is because I’m good or am slowly getting better, not because my invisibility is EZ MODE ACTIVATED. I don’t even consider myself a good Thief, and shudder to think of the type of performances skilled ones can do in WvW.

Low risk – high reward is not good because it removes any decision making process. Anything that has no risk but has the potential of yielding the same rewards as something else that does have risk is obviously the better and more intelligent choice. Why would I ever roam on my <insert class choice here> if I’m slow, can be outzerged and can’t escape from losing battles when I can do so on my <insert class here> and never have to pay repair costs? For the challenge? Because I hate my gold? For the lulz?

kito.1827:

of course it is unbalanced in 1v1 situations, because it is intended to be about TEAMS.
it makes absolutely no sense to balance a team-game around 1v1 – nonsense.

You mean there’s never a time in a competitive match where one guy will meet one guy guarding a point? Or a roamer will intercept another roamer?

People have tried to do all of those things to me and they never work. They need to have me targeted first, and Black Powder fires a blind and a blind field to boot. I like how you also insinuate a Thief will actually HS towards a guy who just walks into the field? I guess you really can counter bad Thieves.

If they do by some miracle manage to smack me out of the field, that’s why I have Blinding Powder and Shadowstep. BP even gives me the initiative to start the combo again. I’ve even gotten immobilized in the smoke field and HS still goes through and makes me invisible. Lol.

Exactly how many 4s immos, or stuns, or chills do most (bad) Thieves believe people get? According to these (bad) Thieves the counter to D/P 5 2 spam is CC, but also you need CC for Blinding powder, but you also need CC and AOE for Shadow Refuge, and I can have all of these on me to use as I see fit.

Those things don’t kill me. I either shadowstep or switch to shortbow and IA away from any damaging attacks that might be incoming. If I have D/P I just press 3 to tp right on top of him regardless of chill or cripple. I can even use 3 to shadow shot over to an innocent bunny or a random drake.

The Thief’s greatest power in WvW isn’t even being the best at 1v1. I’ve faced players who can defeat my Thief. The reason I consider it my best roaming class is because I can choose to disengage at will. There’s no inherent risk in anything I do unless I choose to take the risk. When I go invisible there’s 360 directions I can go in and multiple actions I can take. I might be setting up a lethal backstab… or I might be running to hide behind a hill.

I can do whatever I want – slower classes don’t have that choice. If a Thief is defeating you in a 1v1, most classes have to pay repairs for their loss. On my Thief, I leave without any inconvenience beyond lost time. I’ve died occasionally, but only because I chose to be risky. I’ve gotten bloodthirsty, thinking I can get that last hit in, only to get in over my head. It happens. I just recognize I made that choice. I could have used my stealth to escape, or my initiative on running away. I don’t even have to change up my build – full zerker at the moment. When I’ve run all DPS setups on my Guardian I find my capacity for risk free roaming significantly diminished.

Unless I go in over my head my opponents can at best force me to reset. I can still run around behind their supply camp until they get bored and leave. I can intercept reinforcements for a battle and harass them again and again even if I never “win”.

Such is the power of mobility and invisibility combined. There are plenty of builds that troll mine on the field. I just choose not to fight them. No amount of protection or healing will save a Guardian from 10 men wailing on him. But by stabbing an innocent frog I can avoid 100.

They don’t know what to do with stealth and so they add lame gimmick item that may or may not exclusively counter stealth.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

I am one of the few that will say this trait has saved me more than gotten me killed. However, I still believe that it should at least ignore the revealed mechanic.

I’ve also had it save me a few times but it’s only ever when I’ve been using a tankier gear set or get lucky.

I suppose it might be intended that it’s only there to help you if the have the necessary stats to make use of it considering its tree but it kinda sucks there’s a trait that can end up messing you up.

I am feeling this too. There need to be multiple ways to work towards Ascended items (I’d prefer it they just had the same stats… too late for that now). There’s only like… 2 ways to works towards a type of gear? Guild comms and laurels for earrings and Fracs and Laurels for rings. Terribad distribution.

This addition is incredibly amusing. Revamping Thief too hard? Add gimmick item that only realistically works against the annoying abilities of 1 class and a few abilities of a second class.

BALANCED AND USEFUL ITEM

Frenk.5917:

Do you think we’re OP? Roll a thief and let’s see if we are really OP as you say.

What if he rolls Thief and realizes it’s even more OP than he thought originally?

L2P and all that nonsense aside, I would also recommend that everyone that hates Thieves roll one.

At worst, you’ll learn new things about the class and the playstyle so you are better prepared to counter it, even if you end up thinking it’s not so OP. At best, you’ll realize it’s horribly broken and revel in the free loot bags and no repair costs.

In my own personal perspective, I haven’t even really bothered too much with my other toons in WvW after I got my Thief to 80. Less money wasted on repairs and trolling others is way too much fun. It’s also pretty handy to save your friends’ backsides when they get are getting butchered by a Thief. You can come from Shadow Refuge like Batman, one hit down the Thief and save your friend. Best fun I’ve had in WvW.

Zacchary.6183:

Yeah, well if you expect us to play without stealth then you are pretty much telling us to up our game while making it easy for everyone else.

As the Thief is now you probably shouldn’t play without stealth – it’s drastically ingrained into the class’s design for both offense and defense. The point of the thread is that such a class is broken by design.

Travlane.5948:

a crutch for poor play? hrm…u do realize that thieves defense is soo low it basically turns every other class /build into near bersker style when playing against a thief right? or is that just normal / fair bc thief means soft? tsk tsk. tell me the trade off for the lack of defnse….lack of hp….lack of invulnerabilty…..and only slightly above average dmg now. i gotta say they are behind mesmers in dmg….and myabe tied with warriors….so id love to know why you think thieves shouldtnt be given something good? or did i misunderstand your post? sorry if i did but seems like u were saying thieves rely on steawlth bc they are bad?

The reason Thieves have poor health is because anything else combined with stealth would be even more hilariously broken. It’s also the dilemma with stealth classes – invisibility is so powerful that balancing the class is a stupidly complex dance.

I don’t even know what to say about “slightly above average damage” or “every other class is zerker”. It’s true that you have a low health value – but that’s why you have more abilities with evasion frames and easy access to invisibility. I don’t have much of a problem surviving for extended periods time in battle thanks to stealth.

What I am saying is that bad thieves really do need stealth because without such a powerful mechanic they’d actually have to learn how to play the class and respond to an opponent’s actions instead of always choosing the pace of the engagement. That’s why they need to make fun of those threads and put down stealth detractors. It’s a threat to their “Elite Ninja Skills” that, deep down, their performance hinges on a completely one sided mechanic. IE. Roguecraft syndrome.

This is untrue, as I’ve experienced myself. People might attack where they think you are, but you can still dodge while in stealth, as well as use abilities like Shadowstep or Infiltrator’s Arrow while stealthed.

bhagwad.4281:

Actually I enjoy 1v1s. It’s just that I feel that every class should be able to spec a viable 1v1 build if they want. I’m ok with a particular build being team based and a particular build being 1v1 based.

But to slot an entire class and say “it’s only good for team or 1v1” is I think bull. Like people say that warriors are great in teams. Or thieves are only good for 1v1s. I think that’s a problem.

Both warriors and thieves should be able to spec themselves to be team players or 1v1 players as their tastes dictate. You shouldn’t be able to say “Well you’re a warrior. Obviously you lost to that mesmer. What do you expect?”

I agree 100%. If this game were more like other games, with a holy trinity where each class has a very clear and different role the argument that “this class is meant to 1v1” might hold some water. Unfortunately, that’s not what I was led to believe in the pre-release time. Not to mention that nowhere have I seen that it’s the developers intention for some classes to be flat out worthless in some contexts.

If they want more viable builds in PvP and especially in TPvP they have no choice – they need to give each and every class a diverse toolset so they can adapt to different scenarios. If one class if flat out better at one role you can bet that the best players will choose the best class for the needed role. Twice as important if money is ever on the line.

IMO, time spent on killing classes that often run bunker builds, like the Guardian, is time best spent killing cows and taking supply camps.

Scout out your opponent’s build with a single attack. If he looks hard to kill just run away and look for a better opportunity later. That said, if it’s the thrill of the hunt you’re after – don’t necessarily blow all your best tools immediately. People are wary of thieves and will often take a defensive cooldown to use when you try and burst. If they do use it – don’t worry too much. If you feel you are losing, pull back and when you get a breather try again. At worst, you’re really aggravating, at best, he slips up and you get a kill.

Zacchary.6183:

Let’s remove stealth too! I mean its also OP right?
CRYFEST! READ ME NOW!

That thread is more about invisibility as a mechanic than a Thief thread.

Thieves that rely on invisibility as a crutch for their poor play feel addressed personally by the posters, of course.

/Pistol will make killing mobs a breeze. Use 5 for constant blindness application. If you take a Dagger main you can use 2 inside of the smoke cloud for stealth and a free backstab while the mob is constantly getting blinded. Once you can time their attacks you can take /D as offhand and just avoid their attacks while backstab spamming.

It does? I know when I play I don’t find it much work. If I have D/P I just press 5, then 2, use utilities and dodges while I don’t have initiative. If I have /D in WvW, all you have to do is chain CnD fluffy bunnies and random Moas. In SPvP I might actually have to land CnD on moving targets, but all melee classes need to be up close to hit.

If anything I find playing a stealth based Thief too easy compared to relying on evasion to survive. When I’m visible, everyone follows me to finish me off. When I’m invisible – not everyone is gonna make the correct guess as to which direction I went off to. This makes it easy to juke large numbers of enemies, even large zergs.

World of Roguecraft does an excellent job of ripping stealth and stealth based classes a new one. Although many of the complaints were leveled at the specific Rogue class of WoW, most of its concepts and arguments could easily apply to a WvW thief.

I have yet to play a single multiplayer game where the “stealth” class, powerup, or item goes unmodified after initial negative feedback. Just recently the invisibility in Natural Selection 2 got completely nerfed – and the Operative/Smuggler class in SWTOR was butchered.

This happens time and time again, but game devs never learn. Giving one player invisibility over others is nothing more than a troll mechanic, it gives complete control to the invisible player and removes control from the visible one. It’s as annoying to new players as excessive CC is and the class based on it stands as an outlier – he alone is master troll, taking few to no risks while reaping all the rewards. It’s much harder for newer players to adapt to.

Same old story.

Balancing mobility and evasion is much easier than invisibility and less frustrating to fight against since at least you can tell what’s coming or what happened. This makes newer players less ragey.

Also, stealth classes are kings of open world PVP. It’s why I always preemptively roll one. The ability to choose your engagements, avoiding bad ones and only selecting good ones is MASSIVE. It’s like having Mutalisks in SC2… except that in these games the Mutalisks can straight up kill the opponent head on as well.

Edit: Making stealth less binary would probably be better received and might even be easier to balance. Something like stealth making you lose target, becoming unable to be targeted and gaining transparency with distortion. This state could come with a buff like “Hard to hit” or something, that passively reduces the damage you take simulating decreased accuracy. The idea would be much the same – stealth increased the thief’s survivability and can be used offensively but the opposing player can now respond to more of the thief’s actions.

This means that stealth would be a pattern of interaction between players, not just a one-way “i troll u lol” type of deal.

FirstBlood.7359:

The D/D elementalist excels in all aspects of pvp: great sustain in close combat, boon support for his team, strong utility such as knockdowns and great mobility with RTL. Currently, this build has no weakness.

That’s the point being made. The changes Anet has to do should be orientated towards bringing the OP spec down.

The point being made here was by the players in SOTG, all high quality players, that pointed out that the changes to cantrips may not be enough to quell the Bunker Ele (the OP build) and Grouch noted how the changes to Mist and RtL would impact every /D Ele build, regardless of whether it’s a bunker spec or not. This sounds illogical because Anet has gone on record stating they want to make more builds viable in spite of toning down OP ones.

Following this premise, they should be taking steps to mitigate the power of the Bunker Ele, instead, they make a change that will most negatively impact other /D builds, which are few in number already since everyone loves the FOTM and hopping on the troll train.

How does making a change that weakens all Ele /D builds encourage people to use unpopular /D builds over the FOTM?

^ Basically.

The players in SOTG basically called out Anet on the flaws of their plan – they probably won’t even do enough to discourage Bunker Eles and they then went ahead and damaged the potential viability of other /D Ele builds.

So if you go in and the opponent dodges the attack you are in combat for 40s with less survival mechanics and armor than already squishy thieves. Non Bunker builds would often use both Mist Form and RtL to compensate – as their own survival schemes, but both got hit.

This change in mobility very literally pigeonholes WvW roamers into rolling thief. As if the amount of classes that can roam effectively needed to get smaller.

Which is what happens when you allow classes to be the “best” at different roles. Nobody uses them for anything that they aren’t best at. So for all intents and purposes we end up choosing the class – not the player, as is what happens in so many other MMOs and part of the reason I chose GW2; to get away from bad game design.

As if the terrible state of PVP weren’t a giveaway, I see I made an error.

Non bunker Eles often depend on RtL to not explode. One would think it’d make sense for the class with lowest base health and lowest armor quality to use mobility to compensate, but only thieves can be mobile, apparently.

Somehow Anet have assembled a balance team so incompetent they make me wish Relic were in charge of balance.

Objective: Nerf Bunker?

Troll glass cannon builds

ARENANET

I guess that’s why players are stuck with a boring, stale metagame that lasts for months on end.

Guess Eles aren’t allowed to roam effectively in WvW. Only Thieves are allowed to do that. Thanks for making it so clear cut for me. I’m glad I have a thief.

Master of Timespace.2548:

^^ a zerger whose group got trolled by a decent roamer thief, har har.
Man, gotta love the nooblets who think they are entitled to stomp everything because they have more people.

^^ thief who thinks he’s skilled when he’s really just using abusing a broken game mechanic
Man, gotta love the nooblets who think they are entitled to stomp everything because they rolled thief. /imitation

Say small scale battles —> thief defender says you are a zerger.

I like this post, because it perfectly represents the thief abuser. No actual arguments and poor reading comprehension. His only true weapon is to attempt to insinuate his opposition is incompetent.

Thank you for your contribution.

Nothing has changed. P/D thieves still laugh at anybody trying to kill them in small scale battles, and thieves still get to pick and choose their conflicts better than any other class.

So keep leveling up that thief alt since nothing will ever change. No game developer seems to understand that stealth is a bad mechanic in multiplayer games like these.

There is no sensible discussion because Thieves are clearly all just better players than the rest. It is they who need to learn to fight Thieves, Thieves shouldn’t have to learn how to do anything. It is intended and logical that stealth must have no risks associated with it, and no counter mechanic for foes to exploit.

The correct course of action is to L2P.

A stealth class, that is.

When every nonzergian in WvW decides to use the power of stealth, that’s when the real fun will begin.

Fixing the issue with culling will happen, and we will see how it turns out from there.

If it’s still risk free and EZ mode, then other methods have to be tried.

2-3 seconds of “true” invisibility, with a small distortion of sorts appearing in the general area of the stealthed character for subsequent seconds. Untargetable, but enough to have at least some idea of whether you are fighting thin air or your opponent is getting basilisk/thieves guild up and running.

Saying 1v1s don’t matter blows my mind. 1v1s happen – and they are an important part of any game, even a team oriented one.

When you have classes that are so obviously better than others at roles you get… what we have now. A boring game. Static meta. Never changing. Just bring that bunker ele/guard always, all the time.

When people play PvP and see which class is best 1v1 guess what happens? Time to roll the FOTM. Hence, PvP filled with thieves and mesmers and D/D Eles all day every day.

It’s no wonder the Mists sit empty. Nobody wants to play a game they know they are going to lose just because the class they chose isn’t up to the task. Maybe if Anet didn’t go around implying we could choose different roles in a single class the detractors would have a point.

I’m a happy little Warrior running around trying to do some PVP’ing. Just trying to have some fun. Oh, look, a Mesmer sitting on a point/killing cows! Time to fight? Nope, time to turn tail and run because I rolled the wrong class. Exciting gameplay, indeed. :\

Bumped because it just happened to me. Completed the zone, no mail or chest. Tried to leave the zone and reenter and also went back to the char select screen. Nothing.

Daeqar.8965:

I didn’t watch your video,

The mentality of the Thief defender. “I don’t know what they are talking about, but should defend this class anyway”.

I don’t know what the rest of your post has to do with anything – someone said Thieves can’t solo towers when they obviously can, but I like your example, because if a thief is caught in the act he can stab a guard and run, or hide and wait for the person to go away, or prep an attack. The person coming to defend has to wonder which of the everythings a thief can do in stealth is he gonna do, versus any other class where we can plainly see if they are running away or not so he can go do something useful for his server instead of being tied up by a single thief.

Straegen.2938:

Its not a skill argument it is a every class is not supposed to be able to do everything debate.

So how does “classes aren’t the same” translate into “our class should be broken and that’s fine”?

Classes can’t be different and still be balanced? You know, like all the other more sensibly designed classes? Thieves have to be special?

You can use the same bad logic to justify Warriors being unbeatable in 1v1s because hey, they’re WARRIORS! They are supposed to beat up everyone in a straight up fight, especially thieves if they are caught!! Thieves should just stealth around them, you know, ACTUAL sneaking!!!

Dual.8953:

Yes. List everything that any class can do with enough skill.

Ah, the “everyone just needs skill” argument. It just so happens that those people in the woods hacking at dolyaks are thieves for lore reasons? It’s not that, for example, a random Necro caught in the middle of nowhere by 2 or 3 guys is completely fubared vs a thief who just stabs a deer and runs away?

For the zerg thing, you realize that thief is the successor to they class whose job was to, shadowstep to key targets in the enemy party, burst them down then shadowstep back right? Also Assassins where tankier then Thieves, sporting things like sustainable enchantments that gave them a 75% chance to dodge attacks.

Thieves are supposed to be sneaky, sneaking around the enemy territory is sneaky, so excuse them for not running around like a drunken norn warrior looking for a brawl.

I didn’t realize “sneaky” meant literally zerg diving and doing whatever. Fascinating.

It’s like thieves don’t tire of using the same arguments. Right here it’s “thieves are supposed to be broken”.

Sorry, not buying.

Thieves could solo towers just fine:

And how is killing supply runners and zerg reinforcements PvDoor? lol

Thieves really like to pretend that killing people EZ PZ doesn’t matter, I see.

So killing Dolyaks, soloing camps, harassing supply runners, killing zerg reinforcements and previously back flipping towers all alone endlessly with nobody to stop you doesn’t contribute to WvW? Wow, could have fooled me.

Thieves are the literal troll class. Mess up? No problem, reset the fight at your whim. Enemy zerg coming? No problem, stab a rabbit and invis away. Downed a player around too many people? Go zerg diving, stab his corpse, get your kill and leave. You know, just like all those other classes that can go high damage, overextend into the enemy team and escape without repair costs. Oh wait.

RTL lets Eles do the same? UNACEPPTABLE NERF NERF NERF NERF

At least you could see whether the Ele was going to flee or keep fighting vs having to guess if the Thief is just trolling away or applying Basilisk and precasting CnD for you.

The real problem here is that thieves actually believe that being able to do whatever they want against anybody else without any risk involved isn’t the very definition of being an overpowered class, just like the rogue archetype has been in basically any other game.

Ah, the L2P and “all thieves are just better people” arguments. What would a thief discussion be without these?

More likely – bad players are getting held up by an overpowered class.

The L2P and “people are garbage” observations go both ways. Just so happens thieves are the exception to the rule and are solely populated by good players? LOL

This is World of Roguecraft all over again, even repeating the same arguments.

If Anet hasn’t done anything at this point I would hazard some guesses:
1. They plan on revamping the thief. I don’t think this will happen.
2. Spvp is all that matters (lol) and thieves aren’t so bad there. I mean, who would guess that the most annoying classes in a “sit in a circle” gamemode would be the ones that can… best sit in a circle? Thieves would be broken here as well if their survival lines of mass stealth worked in circles.
3. They have no idea what to do.

We can all just roll thieves until Anet gets the picture.

^ Yup. That’s the best hint of all that thief is broken. Everyone’s playstyle has to center around beating theirs. Why shouldn’t it be the other way around? Thieves are just better people and deserve to rule combat? Nope, everyone is wrong, it’s ok that thieves can do whatever and still swim in badges.

These people even think 1v1 is all thief has, and act like other classes aren’t limited to niche roles, because sharing stealth and venoms is useless afterall. Poor thieves.

Moddo.7105:

That is not a straw-man as it is not a argument but a question. See in english language the “?” denotes a question.

Why do you expect a thief defender to understand what a strawman is?

These people actually believe it’s fine that they can do whatever they want when roaming and that they get to troll everybody else in WvW.

My biggest questions: if your game cannot handle stealth properly, why include a class based so heavily on abusing stealth in the first place? If your game is based on combat, why include an archetype based on avoiding fair combat at all?

Boggles my mind how devs never learn.

Karolis.4261:

Read what u just wrote …. Its a THIEF class and THIEF goes solo.

You haven’t explained why this is fair for the other classes.

IE. “why would I roll anything else but a thief if I want to do things away from the zerg?” is a bad question for the game to cause.

Thieves will continue to have a monopoly on open world roaming, and this is somewhat unfortunate. They will also continue to, for all intents and purposes, to monopolize high burst damage, since there’s very little risk in doing so for them and other classes that choose to go high burst have easier to read and slower to perform combos and typically are easily bested by the thief glass cannon builds.

So much for “bring the player, not the class”.

Phillipidies.3204:

AOE the house! I’m constantly amazed at how few people do this. 1v1 you’ll probably just chase him away,

I believe that’s party of the problem people have. AOE’ing the house will almost rarely result in the Thief leaving it before it dissipates. Even if he is downed he still gains 10 seconds in stealth for this friends to come help him.

It also effectively allows him to do whatever he wants. He can leave or try to setup another backstab, you have little way of knowing which because even a Thief at 10% hp deals the same damage as a Thief with 90% hp, so another backstab could easily finish the fight in his favor.

The Thief suffers little risk for his attacks and for losing a 1v1. Other classes die and suffer repairs. The Thief leaves and /laugh. I imagine this contributes greatly for the frustration plaguing the other classes.

I’m going to continue leveling my Thief.

I too am pretty confused by the patch notes, especially after hearing the Youtube interview.

They said they wanted to encourage different viable builds and during pre-release stated they wanted people to bring the player, not the class. Their “visions” for the classes are not compatible with these sentiments. Making one class have a monopoly on roles effectively makes it so you bring the class – the player behind it is ok too but we seriously need that Guardian Bunker. We need a Necro to kill boons.

Ex. If Thieves are to have a monopoly on high burst and roaming why would you use an offensive build on other class?

They also seem to intend the Warrior to be very bad at dealing with conditions… Why? Because they have a high health pool? Being unable to deal with many conditions effectively eliminates some roles for Warrior players, limiting the amount of viable builds they can take. Everyone will always take Mending for the condi removal. This creates stale, stagnant gameplay.

No “holy crap guys, this tpvp team just started bunkering with Warriors, LOOK AT THESE BUILDS” because Warriors are less efficient at it than Guardians or Eles and can be blown up by conditions.

Needless to say, I’m growing disillusioned with the PvP team. Watching tourney streams is going to continue being boring.

I enjoyed hearing that they intend to make more viable builds for each class but I have no idea how they plan on doing so if L2P is the response to certain elements of the game.

For instance, I always run the same “most powerful” stun break/invul utility in every build as a response to massive burst combos. This, in and of itself, is a limitation to different viable build options and, therefore, a balance issue, as a game that has many viable options is more balanced than one that doesn’t.

Overall, it is good to have open communication with the devs, and hopefully they will continue to participate.

For those experiencing “Out of memory leak” type error messages when they crash on Windows 7 32 bit systems I found this solution:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2246915

No negative side effects as of yet. I used 2900 instead of 3072 and got the same result: can play for extended periods of time without crashing.

In this article by Sirlin, found here: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/fail-safes-in-competitive-game-design-a-detailed-example.html, he discusses how fail-safes can allow a competitive game to have good balance between characters with very different capabilities and mechanics (class mechanics and different builds in GW2). He argues that this promotes diversity in the game, and as discussed in another one of his articles (http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html), a game with many viable options (in this game, using different classes with different builds) is better balanced and has more depth. A balanced game being one where I can choose to be any class and be competitive, and a deep game being one that is strategically interesting to play even after players have had time to “figure it out”, which doesn’t occur if there are very few viable options.

The concept that promotes this diversity is a fail-safe: a game system that gives all characters equal access to an unusually large number of safeguards and shared defensive abilities.

How does this apply to GW2’s pvp?

I would argue that Arenanet have already implemented fail-safe systems within the game. All classes currently have access to dodging, which allows you to avoid any incoming damage. Many classes also have utility skills that give invulnerability or stun breaks.

The flaw I see in these fail-safes is that in the context of the game, they can be easily removed or in the case of utility slots – hurt build diversity. Let me explain, by applying it to a perceived annoyance in hot-join: unavoidable burst damage by certain classes, namely backstab Thieves and shatter Mesmers.

In theory, the dodge ability should make these high damaging abilities less of a big deal, since any ability you don’t like to get hit by, you dodge. In practice, classes have found it easy to remove the ability to dodge, namely through CC, have multiple abilities that you must dodge, or have abilities that are instant cast or cast out of stealth, removing the player’s ability to know what to dodge.

Currently, the highest damaging bursts are done when you are CC’ed. A thief may use venoms to keep you in place. A shatter mesmer will stun you with pistol 5, and use sword 3 to immobilize you.

Since Arenanet have already put the dodge mechanic in place, perhaps we can use it to mitigate the annoying burst, instead of having to tweak numbers constantly. For instance, allowing a full bar of stamina to dodge out of a stun could be a way to mitigate low risk – high reward combos. They would require players to set targets up for the combo, and give players an opportunity to interact with their opponent, as opposed to simply bending over and taking it, something most players do not consider enjoyable.

Alternatively, instead of dodging, players have the option to take defensive abilities on their 7,8,9 slots. This is also a very good solution, you could argue that high burst builds are no threat with the proper skills. The only problem with this solution is that it hampers build diversity. When running into hot-join, the first concern I have with the viability of any new build I make is “can I survive a backstab thief, shatter mesmer or GS warrior?” This means that, if I’m an Ele, I will always take Mist Form, Lightning Flash or Armor of Earth, instead of trying other skills. This limits my viable options, making a rather shallow game experience.

How can we apply this to bunkers? Recently, Arenanet nerfed certain abilities, both to handle burst and to weaken bunkers. They took the number tweaking approach. I currently do not know whether these number nerfs have altered the viability of bunkers in Tpvp, as I’ve not had the opportunity to experience the effects of these nerfs first hand, but another solution might have been to expand on the stamina bar.

For instance, we can use the stamina bar defensively… but what if we could use it offensively as well? Currently, not all classes have reliable boon stripping. Perhaps boon duration might be less of a concern, if all classes have some way to remove boons reliably. The classes that do have boon management, often rely on utility slots to do so.

Most discussions I’ve read on these issues advocate a number and ability changing approach. Could there be another solution? Can we apply these fail-safes in other areas of the game, in order to promote more viable build options between the classes? What do other players think?

What’s the solution?

So what happened to the issue plaguing 32 bit systems? I’ve been crashing for months now and can barely play WvW. Just lost credit for a Stonemist Castle cap because I crashed.