Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow players and helpful devs!

I have come across a huge problem i´d like to solve.
This all started with me having huge DPC latency on my machine from one day to another. Windwos 8.1 chose to dislike the SATA drivers it ran on flawlessly for 6 months. took me a week to isolate and fix that problem. But the dropouts in audio and video returned, this time it was something USB-related which even ported over to a fresh install of Windows 7. Once again i found the issue, it was the Intel Management Engine (or so i think). Thus reinstalled Windows 8.1 again, and now everything runs flawless again.

Except one thing: Stupid vsync enforcement in windowed fullcreen / borderless fullscreen mode! I can swear i haven´t had this problem ever since playing GW2, and i always played it in this screen mode since the very first beta weekends. Never did i disable Windows Aero in Windows 7 back at that time, thus DWM was always on. After playing half a year on Windows 8.1 in fullscreen windowed mode i haven´t had this problem either, so why do i experience heavy input lag now when running the game in fullscreen windowed mode? The same happens on Windows 7 btw, i´m now unable to play the game in fullscreen windowed mode. I never had this vsync related probem before. Problem is, at least in Windows 7 you can disable Windows DWM aka Aero to force vsync off. I do not have any bsync related problems in fullscreen mode, but that is nuts because i always have to tab out when doing something on my second screen.

My system:

MSI Z77 GD65 with Intel i7 3770k @ 4.5 GHz
8 GByte (4x 2 GBYte) GSkill Ripjaws RAM
AMD Radeon R9 290x @1100 MHz Core / 5600 MHz VRAM
100 GByte OCZ Vertex2 SSD (OS), 240 GByte OCZ Agility3 SSD (Games)
all drivers up to date, no driver change caused the problem, it occured inbetween and not related to a new / altered driver installation and persists ever since.

One last thing: No this ain´t related to overclocking, i tried it and it has no effect. Screen tearing is not present in windowed fullscreen mode but i could swear it was present for 2 years or the input lag wasn´t as noticable on 2 different OS´es.

Can i do anything to optimize my system for playing GW2 in windowed fullscreen?

Ahaha, i´m not alone. Be strong, fellow jumper, for we will overcome even this dark and disheartening time…

but on a more serious side, i doubt they will make the top hlf of the pole solid again. I mean, stuff like that doesnt vanish on its own behalf, collision mapping is most likely removed or added on intention. Sadly.

At least we still can say “I was there”. And maybe we get our own minute´s silence, kind of like “Never Forget… 05-20-14”

Dear ArenaNet,

the former bazaar of The Four Winds was one of the most gorgeous LS events. For me, a big part of the fun was caused by one single, yet rather unintended challenge: Climbing the main sail pole of the Zephyrite airship.

For those who didnt know about that pole, here´s a video i took from my journey up there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qmhkYRROMg

Now you reincarnated the Bazaar as well as spending the Labyrinthine Cliffs a pretty significant stylistic overhaul. Lots of asian stuff here and there. Looks fine and dandy, but thats not the cause of my deep, wholehearted frustration.

You guys were nice enough to put a Master Sky Crystal right at about 1/3 of the main sail pole – which caused me to have a big grin running from left to right ear. I was like “yay, they didnt forget and instead made a real challenge out of it”. Then i continued my hopping tour upwards. A beam there, one pole here… and suddenly fell to death without even realizing why. Second turn up there i indeed realized: You stripped the entire collision mapping off of all poles and beams higher than the spot in my screenshot!

Why? You can go fix this kind of stuff in events, in arenas, in dungeons, wherever else you can possibly exploit it to gain an advantage. But this? Why do you disable stuff thats completly funny, obsolet, does no harm to anyone other than the smashed keyboard of the not-so-orichalcum-balled failing attendee in Applied Zephyrite Jumping?
Whatever you think now, bear this in mind: there is now at least one more very sad Asura in Tyria…

And it returns a 404.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fotfw

not accessible logged in, accessible and visible when logged out. This only applies to the english version of the forum.

I just had my whole guild laughing at me because i couldn access that forum… well, this explains why there are only 6 threads in it now.

EDIT: This indeed applies to all parts of the forum – in FR, DE and ES that subforum is blank, but accessible – but once you try to post, it gives you another 404.

Laughable. There is no such thing as Obsidian Sanctum friendliness. Because every server has their ganking portion.

Since most of those ganking guilds / groups are barely a threat when they have to carry their own weight solo against me, i can´t help myself but feeling somewhat angry. Such cowards do not deserve to stay alive, they do not deserve to get kills. they basicly just win by outmanning, and that doesnt require any skill, which should be the only thing deciding win or loss in a battle.

So once anyone from server X attacks me, i attack back. And if its a group, then – well, then noone from that server will get to the chest without me trying to stop them, as long as i am inside Obsidian Sanctum.

I do love those friendly matings, but you cannot know if one of them is a traitor. Thus at least every mesmer will have to die, otherwise they can call in a whole army.

Say no to ganking and get skills in solo combat!

Jep, seems like we have a compromiss found.

Anyways… two and a half dedicated walls of text later still no red post? Sheesh… whats the best way to attract positiv developer attention?

puppy eyes Can i haz SAB?

Tom Gore.4035:

Which airship is that?

Its is the one located above Stormbluff Isle in Bloodtide Coast. use Deadend Waypoint to get there.

That being said, this airship floats high in the air, absolutely unreachable by any leaping or jumping weapon-/utility-skills. Thus Farothion must have used such skills (seeing he used a female warrior) to reach waterlevel out of map [he basicly crossed the by normal means not crossable border of the map to get below the ground and inside the water], swimming back to where the airship is located, and performing a relog. Upon that, the client will place any character which is located below normal ground level on the highest position with physical collision possible, which in this case is the Aetherblade airship if you placed your character correctly.

The same mechanic could be used to reach the top of the lighthouse or the top of the tower near the mystic forge in the former Lion´s Arch.

Its debatable if such practice is a bannable offense. I am a extreme-JP´er myself, so i adore stuff like this, but its clearly a grey zone, since it CAn be abused to gain unfair advantage over other players.

if (and that is totally possible of course) i was wrong with that, then Farathion must have found a spot somewhere around the airship which will change the flight path of a leap skill slightly. Those spots do exists, i once got elevated high into the air after being pulled with opposing thief´s Scorpion Wire, dying from falling damage in the consequence.

in any case i am 100% sure that Farathion did NOT reach this spot by usual jumping / use of skills/items/environmental weapons. There have to be bugs involved.

but that inevitably brings up the question: Why kitten does everything have to be rewarding to be worth playing instead of simply playing for fun. Seriously, this mentality makes game business a tough one.
But i guess i´m the only one who played the SAB simply and exclusively for lolz and personal kitten (´cause Tribulation mode was, well, kinda tribulating, thus challenging)

1+2)
The rewards in the first iteration were the same. Bauble aquisition was as easy as in the first iteration, you just had to do a fullrun, and you could do it just once a day instead of farming a section of a level over and over again. THATS what was broken in the first place, the “i-must-farm-dis-thing”-mentality. In second iteration the rewards were perfectly balanced and apropriate. If anything, the firts time it was way too much you could acquire with way too less effort, again drawing too much “i-must-farm-dis-thing” into the SAB. Even though i was quite disappointed about the removal of obsidian shards, too, its not that much of a no-no here as there are enough other ways to easily acquire them, albeit not as easy as it was using baublebubbles.

3.)
W1 was too short and too easy, W2 with its length and difficulty was perfectly fine, although W2-2 was indeed drawn out too long. Since the whole thing got nerfed by making all inbox-rewards accountbound, why the hell would you even want to complete it within 15 minutes? granted, the problem of disconnects should really be addressed here and that can be easily done by saving the waypoint progress until you reset the instance by changing characters. But aside from that, W2 was what W1 could have been if it wasnt just meant as an April Fool´s joke.

4.)
Thats also good as well. Difficulty should increase, thats the case in any video game. For those who want it supereasy, there´s Infantile Mode. but normal should be challenging at the very least, with Tribulation mode being for those hardcore masochists. Once again too many players went into SAB with “i-must-farm-dis-thing” instead of “let´s-play-dis-for-fun”.

I had tons of fun solo. I had tons of fun in groups (guild groups here, but still – i didnt join any foreign group when W1 was released either.) Especially in groups the SAB shined. There´s tons of deaths, fun, and malicious joy when a wild rabbit appeared after digging and kicked a mate down into the endless abyss below, or when you got random-owled midflight in W2-2. Hilarious all over again.

So i do hope if Josh and his team decide to release W3 that its difficulty is at least on the same level as W2. And i do hope people stop going in there and feeling entitled for having the biggest reward for lowest skill. No “i-must-farm-dis-thing” anymorte please, as that ruins great content such as the SAB.

Thanks alot, spyritdragon!

Zaxares, the only reason SAB lost some popularity with W2 was because oft the increase in difficulty. Many simply didnt want to or couldnt increase their jumping skills, thats all. Granted, W2-2 was a bit too long, but W2-1 and -3 were fine. W1 was way Zoo easy, and Josh better keeps the difficulty on the same level as W2. Could even be harder. For those who want easy mode, there`s still Infantile mode after all, isnt it? But oft course that wasnt accepted cause it didnt give the same rewards as Tribulation mode.

If only ArenaNet or Josh himself would at least clear out the worries that SAB won`t return…

Oh please tell me you can remember where that mention happened.

I´m eagerly looking forward to any news regarding SAB, even if its just a drunken´s story of a myth regarding the legend of a hint about SAB.

Come on A-Net, please tell us something. Anything! I mean, even Lord Vanquish´s twitter account has been abandoned since octobre last year. That for sure cannot be a good sign. Please don´t let the greatest addition to GW2 die so silent. (to the SAB-haters: Simply don´t play it. You may go brainless zerging to farm for lootbags, but that isnt everyone´s favorite either.)

Pretty please?

Video is done. Could upload it now… please be so nice and dont exclude EU out of this.

oh crap. Blackgate is just reachable from US region. I´m EU. And i can tell you the exact way how i reached that place. if needed, via series of screenshots.
EDIT: or even better: via video on youtube. no exploits needed for that, just a degree in applied jumping

here´s the shot.

Only 5 months? kitten, i miscounted that.

Oh i know that twitter account of Lord Vanquish. Problem is – he has been cut silent since octobre last year. And one could interprete that last tweet of him as an eternal slumber. Geez, ArenaNet please!

i cannot understand why people just say “No” to SAB. Its okay if you dont like it, but you dont have to play it! if you like it more to run around in circles, farming in brainless zergballs, then fine, i dont like that. but i don´t tell them to not do so. the SAB should return, and who said it should have replaced the bobbleheads? Also, its way more than just an april fools release, since it got its own chapter in the Living Story last septembre.

Hey there!

Please give us at least a hint when we can await the next iteration of the Super Adventure Box. I mean, last year it was on April 1st, too. Then, exactly half a year afterwards on Septembre 3rd we got the second world. So it was almost crystal clear that we´d get to play world 3 today. But no. Instead we got bobblehads (which, as i have to add, are hilarious and were a kittening great idea. I certainly laughed out loud, travelling through many areas just to see those heads on mobs).

So, without wanting to dismiss the bobblehead-idea as stupid, i can´t help myself being a little bit disappointed. The SAB was one of the best, if not the best releases ever. It is way more fun than zergballing a marionette, invaded main town or a certain queen´s jubilee. It is way more fun than grinding a route of champions, doing the same wordlbosses over and over again or running a dungeon for the bazillionth time.

Please, give us a single hint! Not exactly a “When it´s ready”, a bit more of course… you know what i mean. Please!
Those who support this appeal, please help keeping this thread on the first page.

Greetings,
TheBandicoot

Well, there is a lot of uproar recently about the Obsidian Sanctum JP. I can understand it, certainly. Back in the days when i was young, unexperienced, innocent, i had the same problems. I was PvE´er by heart and soul, didnt have a clue about PvP ´n stuff.
But yet i grew accustomed to it.

The Obsidian Sanctum is kind of an Hide and Seek game. One has to learn the Hide-part, then its much easier to do the Seek-part. So learn to hide, learn to jump, to be agile in air and on ground. Then you can fasten your seatbelts for engages initialized by you.

And now here i am, Toxxa, Kodash Thievess, eagerly seeking for fairlay, duels, good sportsmanship. But i also have my dark side. Justice can sometimes only be served by revenge. By devastating entire guild groups, for the sole purpose of stopping them from getting through. Thus i invented my own OS JP etiquette. My own codex.

1. Never start a fight. If enemy engages on me, oh hell sure i´ll call out for war.
2. Server x camps at y location? Fine then. Fight, split them up, kill them all, and kill anything belonging to their server until outcry is big enough to let them know they ain´t gonna do their camping-stuff with Toxxa. Yes, this puts me onto their niveau, but no, i do this alone or with much less people than they have.
3. Never kill Green Arrows. Only if they engage, rez their fallen mates, or if they´re Mesmers capable of beaming up entire armada of unsymphatic enemies. Reasoning behind this is simple: even if they wanted to, unless they´re very experienced and/or almost lvl 80 they cannot hold their own. Feels like beating kittens if you kill Green´s for no reason.
4. Win by outsmarting enemy, not outcheaping them. There´s enough of OS JP campers who only know how to fight and win by using as many knockbacks, pushes and pulls as possible near any lethal height of a cliff. If there isnt a cliff availiable, they´re gonna die in pain.
5. If i am in revenge mode, i still keep my manners. So anyone inviting me to ask me if i´m so kind to let them pass sure will be allowed to pass in peace. But those who invite just to unload half their vocabulary of insults ranging from family insultments to racism will be reported appropriatly. And they shall not pass.
6. Die like a man and don´t run like a mouse. In even fights, fair fights, i don´t follow the oldest and most reliable of all Pirate traditions – running away. Thats a no-go for me seeing most thieves do this and don´t have any fighting honor. But if i am outmanned, or my suddenly appeared wild opponent runs a cheese build, then i answer with stealth or cheese.
7. Duels are holy. I don´t interfer with them, i don´t interrupt them. If its one of my server about to loose, and his opponent engages to finish him, well thats a total different story… most of the time ending with two of my server being alive, but none of theirs. And i love to duel, too, because they are the best opportunity to try and sharpen my skills. There is a lot to learn left for me!

That is all. Thats how i act and react. Calling Obsidian Sanctum a second home already, you´d not be so wrong if you compare me to a mix of Batman and Freddie.
So whenever you have Kodash in your matchup – just like Elona and Jade Sea as of now – watch out for this cutie.

Toxxa end.

I feel ashamed for them… i´m on Kodash, too, and i know that guild you speak as well as most people who formed it, but i´m a duelist through and through, thus despising any griefing or server-farming actions (only doing that alone vs multiples IF they deserve it – kinda eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth). I even rejected a guild invite back when that guild was created. Now i know it was for good, measured by my own standards of course. They clearly have experience in Obsidian Sanctum, and the best way to deal with them is to avoid them. Don´t fall for their baits on cliffs!

I can give you some tips. They don´t matter if you are casual or hardcore. Just basic stuff about the Obsidian Sanctum, as i´m quite familliar with it.

1. Make use of the Stealth Wells. There are three wells located in Obsidian Sanctum which give you stealth for 5 minutes. The first is located in a small cavern which can be reached from the ruins inside water near the main entrance hall. Second one is located up the pitfall right next to the entrance to the spiral tower. And the third one is located above the animal arena, hidden in the backyard of the chest ruin.

2. Use stealth / mobility skills to reach them. Most classes have access to one of either. If its just you vs multiples, try to outsmart them. Use your anti-falling-damage-trait to mitigate being pushed over cliffs / outright jump down the cliffs to save some breathing room.
If its some of you vs multiples of them, split up . They cannot hunt down all of you at once. Try to break their group formation.

3. Learn speed jumping. Sounds stupid, and isnt a certain glitch or bug. By speed jumping i mean general JP practice and knowledge. The quicker jumper definitely has an advantage over his pursuer.

4. Get in touch with certain places where you may be able to use skills to short-cut parts of the JP. Best example here are leap-skills like Warrior Sword #2, Guardian Greatsword #3, Elementalist Ride The Lightning and so on… this ain´t bugusing.

5. Get used to GW2´s physics and mobility skill behavior. Most leaping skills (like those mentioned above aside from RtL) which are untargeted are dependant on the character´s movement speed. Warrior Sword #2 will bring you the furthest when out of combat and under influence of Swiftness, but will do almost nothing when chilled. Use your mobility skills when your movement is the least impaired!

6.Final tip is death-rushing. Prepare to to lure the camping group or at least most of them as far away from the spawn points as possible. They´ll follow you and hunt you down, but than instantly port back and instantly make your way through the JP. Best chance is if you do this when you already clicked the Waypoint so you have that dialogue window open.

Take this from a semi-renown, semi-experienced thief with lots of JP-love and a boatload of successfull duels (of course there´s at least nearly the same boatload of fails, but after all thats where you learn from, right? ). Eventually you´ll break their blockade. And if you dip deep enough into the the teories of applied jumping, there´s much more for you to learn and explore, especially in Obsidian Sanctum!

[DARQ]Toxxa end.

Harper.4173:

Regarding other classes and how they measure up to warriors – this is where most people go the wrong route.
Instead of trying to offer suggestions on how better to bring all classes up to the " OP level of the warrior " they go the easy route and scream out " WARRIOR OP NERF PL0X".
Because it is easy. It’s facile – instead of offering ideas on how to improve your class – that you are unhappy with – simply point the finger at another class and call it out for being OP – demand that it be nerfed.

As colesy nicely stated above – there are classes that FAR outdamage the warrior. There are classes that bring far more utility. The warrior is a sort of a jack of all trades. That’s why he’s popular – but with this popularity also comes the false impression that the class is OP.

The bottom line is this – warriors are fine where they are.
If other classes have it tougher – they should be buffed – but don’t fix what isn’t broken.

is that so?Then please tell me, which classes FAR outdamage the warrior. To my knowledge there aren´t any. Thief single target DPS only is slightly better, not far, and warrior cleaves.

There is a reason why most speedkills where it comes down to DPS bring mostly warriors. That reason cant be that wariors are outdamaged by FAR by other classes.

Additionally, warriors are completly and utterly broken right now in PvE and WvW., yet people still want to see classes like thief or ranger nerfed.

Go on, enlighten me please.

All the traits / skills you named work exactly like they should as far as i know.

No movement speed enhancing boon, skill or status exceeds 133% or +33% of movement speed. Being in combat means you have 66% movement speed.

In combat total speed stats:
Base 66%
Passive speed bonus 82.5%
Swiftness ~88% (66% and 33% of 66%)
Fleet Shadow 99% (66% and 50% of 66%)
Super Speed 133% (66% x2)

You never exceed the 133% mark. Try it out, last time i tried Fleet Shadow will not let me move faster thn a swiftness user outside combat, but in combat it will. And i am certain that super speed works the same.

Thanks, already found it by accident… found that shop in Tribulation Mode and couldn´t resist to touch that log ^^

Now all i am missing is the third and last song, i guess its located in W2Z3… just like the elite skill (pobably). Any intel on the third song someone?

may i ask where you found that 123 song? I only found the 332331 song so far and bombed the hell out of W2Z2 literally ^^

It has vanished 550 gold because the buy order i deleted didnt return the gold. Same happens for aborted sell orders – the items vanish.

Statement please!

Exactly that. Stuff you remove, be it a buy order or item to be sold simply vanishes in thin air. And still no twitter, not a single notification that it´s being worked on.

There lies the problem – it didnt even appear in my pickup list. Why does stuff like this always have to happen when i really really need everything to work -.- To even increase the damage its Sunday and i doubt they have people working on Sundays.

Trading post has had a hiccup right now. Some people experience it as that weird “Your account has to be upgraded”- issue. But i did experience it in now missing 550 gold. I decided to abort a buy order i placed earlier today, but after the item diappeared from my list i did not receive the gold. Same happened to a guild mate. In the same turn i´m also not able to buy anything from the TP.

Can this get resolved quickly please? 550 gold is a steep amount i dont want to lose because of a server hiccup. Also i did abort that buy order to simply buy said item directly – which i cant without the gold. Well done.

Greetings, TheBandicoot

That option metioned by Pennry is also a nice one. Whatever you do, ArenaNet, please dont give any disadvantages to the legendary owners with a transmuted legendary.

Pennry.9215:

[…]

1. Even if someone – like me – transmuted their legendary, we might still want to change stats to use that weapon on another build. Just because i gave my Bolt Berserker´s stats it doesnt mean i won´t want to be able to change stats on the fly whenever i feel like it.

2. Its not about the stat upgrade to ascended because, as you said yourself, if i want that so badly, i could just use a generic ascended weapon to get its stats to use with my legendary weapon. The point again is that transmuted legendaries still should get whatever change is introduced to non transmuted legendaries, whether we want to make use of those changes or not doesnt count. Transmuted Bolt is still a Bolt so i should be entitled to be able to change the stats of my Bolt just like evereyone else with a non transmuted Bolt will be able to.

3. Yes, i know how transmuting works. You retain the functionality of x and gain the look of y (or vice versa). Thats also why some months ago someone was able to reskin his Dreamer with Rox´ bow but it still shot rainbow unicorn projectiles – that paricle effect was or is tied to the weapon, not to the skin. The same reason why transmuted Twilight or Sunrise dont get recognized by the forge. Anyway, it should technicly be possible to simply revert those transmutations or compensate owners of transmuted legendaries otherwise. All what counts is that anyone and vereyone who owns a weapon with purple name should get the same changes, benefits and / or disadvantages applied period.

4. The lack of someone from A-net posting on this issue – especially since it is posted mutliple times in multiple locations all over this forum – is indeed a bad sign. That either means they dont have this issue sorted out yet or it means they are working on a fix for this issue, knowing a serious kittenstorm will arise on september 3rd.

So, ArenaNet, i beg you, PLEASE shed light on this issue and finally answer the question!

Stealth has enough counter. As i said, there is already so much AoE and PBAoE going on. Aside that, you simply dont need a direct counter for something which only happens 1-2 seconds and frequently.
Also you haven´t read that a thief stealths for one out of two reasons: to setup an attack – he will head for your back, thats why you WILL hit him with AoE and your so called 1-spam. Or he disengages – in this case you successfully made a thief flee. Thieves have their strength in solo and small group roaming, have their weakness in big groups and zerg fights.

All you want is to not adapt and learn to fight a thief. Why are there so many thieves losing? And i see a lot of them downed even in WvW. Still every class has something they´re best at, and for thief its escaping. Accept it. I also have to accept that i am squishy as hell and cant properly fight a guardian as glas cannon, thus have to get better at it.

Meh, enough with the thief bashing already. Do at least half you ACTIVELY play a thief to even know what you are talking about? Stealth is only short duration, User gets “revealed” when breaking stealth through attack, and inivsibility does NOT equal invincibility. Athief that stays in stealth by restealthing every time it almost runs out is a thief who does absolutely nothing. No damage, just plain adsence, thats all. Time your CCs. A thief “trolling” or even downing and finally killing multiple people can do so because those multiples dont work as a team. Don´t blame the thief because of your lack of teamwork, and before you start about how he can escape every time, he cannot. He cannot escape everytime.

Stealth is a thief´s specialty. take away that and you´d also have to take away ele´s incredible self-healing on literally every fourth skill. Take away guardians insane blocking, invulnerability and blinding capabilities. And that list would go on for every other class.

Stealth enables a thief to run from any situation. Yes, thats right. But you forget that warriors, guardians and eles can do the same if they want to. All the teleports don´t do kitten(self-censored) about a target which can just run faster than you. And there always is a class best at something, why cant the thief be the best at escaping? Thats the theme of a thief, you know, go in, do stuff, go out. Unseen at best, alive at worst.

Stealth is not being removed on hit because of several reasons. It´s only applyable for short durations. because you can get hit by so many things ingame. AoE´s, weapon swings… if you want to have stealth removed on hit, make all skills require a target because otherwise a thief won´t be able to stealth at all. And let´s not forget about the everlasting bug of channeled abilities being locked on a stealthed target.

Revealed is your opportunity window. It´s long enough to react and fully balances stealth considering the previous points. Revealed not happening because of a blinded, blocked or invulnerabled backstab / tac strike has its purpose, because those are easily applyable as well for certain classes. This is the only point where some balancing is needed. maybe stealth should be removed, but only add a 1-second revealed for proper balance.

And last but not least – i cannot stress it enough – an invisible target is still SOLID MATTER. As such, it can be hit by anything. Use your sword or whatever melee weapon you have, and those with pure ranged setups, its your choice! A thief in stealth is going for one single thing: Your back. So you know where he wants to go. learn to predict it. Yes, thats basicly L2P i´m telling you right now. But its fact.

One last – really the last – point is as follows: if thieves and their stealth where that OP, why is a good thief not able to kill anyone? because melee thieves have their downsides just like every other class. They suffer to anything AoE or PBAoE focused like necros, guardians, engineers and elementalists, and they suffer to classes with AI-controlled minions like necro, mesmer and ranger because you cannot troll a AI.

The time of thief´s OPness is long over, stop beating a dead horse. There are a lot other classes right now which are certainly more OP in specific builds than the thief is. But i do not complain. I adapt. Go on, do the same, for once.

They are working as i´m saying. Everything else might be up to your connection / pc not being able to handle the additional strain of that mass of players, period.

Those pads are working as intended, perfectly fine.

Both pads – those for horizontal leaps and those for vertical jumps – are triggering every three seconds regardless of your position. Thats been introduced to reduce the lag you are speaking of because ArenaNet knew the JP would be flooded with players. As such, those pads dont trigger on player contact but in intervals.

Regarding vertical jump pads: They save your last movement done on them and when they trigger, you jump into that direction. This is as well done on purpose, you can actually decide which way to fly. That also may explain the different jump heights because a directed jump isnt as high as an undirected one.

Regarding the horizontal leap pads: The leap also happens on a three second interval and the direction is based on where your character is facing. Only problem is that if you stand too far on one side of that pad, that facing direction gets skewed downwards, thus the leap is kicking you downwards.

TL;DR: Think twice before hopping on any pad. Hop on it right after it triggered, then take the time until the next trigger to determine direction based on the intel you just learned.

Saint Scarlet.2906:

If you don’t want to suffer lag don’t blob up. It’s been known for ages that the more people in a certain area causes lag. So if you have a 60 v 30 fight the guys with 60 are gonna have far more lag than the 30. People bring it on themselves by not splitting up into smaller groups. If everyone ran in groups of 20-30 you’d get no lag apart from when you get a 3 way battle(even then if it’s small groups it’d be minimal lag).
The power to fix the lag is in your hands.

p.s. I know some peoples answer is gonna be “but they blob up, so we have to”, no you don’t, they blob up you still have 2 roaming forces doing the work, plus you’re 20-30 man group stands more of a chance of using skills than the blob.

Sire Killem All.8746:

upgrade ur rigs …. not down grade the game

You two do realize that your statements are not correct right?

First, for Sire Killem All: So you want to tell me my PC is too weak when the lags occur. Ok, then tell me please how in hell shall my PC be responsible for skill lag when i am as far away from the zerg battle as i can? You have to differentiate actual lag and FPS stutter! lag is when actions are not responsive because of high latency. FPS stutter, wrongly called lag, is when your PC is too weak to handle all the action on screen. FPS stutter =/= lag.

Second, for Saint Scarlet: You share a similar point of view with Sire Killem All. But you as well forget one single fact: The fact not everyone is in the blob. Those who are outside of it experience the exact same lag problems as those inside the zergfest, no exceptions. Those inside the zergfest may have the additional problem of their system being unable to handle the action at 60fps. So, long story short: You may decide to not blob up, but if everyone else does, you will still have the lag problem because this affects the whole map, no exceptions!

Do you understand? While its of course in ArenaNet´s hands to finally install real servers instead of amigas, its still in the hands of the players to just stop idiotic zerging. 1vs1 causes the server work for 2 units. Two players who only see each other in battle and themselves.. Easy one. But now look at a 2vs2. The server now has to process data for 12 units. Positioning, direction, action, all of this has to be calculated and transferred to 4 clients separatly. Now imagine the famous zergbattles of 40+vs40+…

So, there definitely has to be something done to strongly discourage zerging, although i was under the impression that the possibility to cause huge lag for everyone would be discouraging enough. Although the lag is what benefits zergs the most – individual players have no chance to do anything.

You cannot stack stealth using the leap combo unless you dont hit anything! Its a neat addition, but thats all. Nothing overpowered there.

CnD costs 4 Init when succesfull, 6 when wasted. BP Shot / HS costs 7, doesnt matter if successfull or not. I dont see a problem there besides CnD being more risk/rewardy.
And, just to make it clear, i use S/D and D/D. D/P is not what i use, so please dont think i defend that set because i am biased towards it.

Sunflowers.1729:

If I was a dev (and I know a few people who would be horrified at that suggestion), I’d change backstab to say “Damage is increased by 15% if wielding two daggers”, then reduce the base damage by 15%.

That would be okay, as long as it still keeps the 200% damage from actally stabbing the back.

Gamblit.5041:

Not a problem, here is a guy that uses BP+HS everytime his reveal is down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wns5Ca98qF8

He doesn’t even waits from 3 second stealth often. Initiative regen is not a problem for Thieves.

Nope, but he also runs around a lot doing nothing, or helps with other stealth skills to gain initiative. D/P does not need to be tuned down!

Gamblit.5041:

Solution could be found here:
a) Make BP+HS add reveal debuff on damage,
b) BP+HS combo only gives 1-2 second stealth.

Your a) is totally kittenkitten as it makes a leap combo trough a smoke field totally pointless. I think you get that.
Your b) might be more applicable but that leap actually only gives 3 seconds, thieves have a trait to increase steslth duration but it doesnt apply here – and three seconds is barely enough to reposition for a backstab if the target is moving and has a little bit of skill. Thus, the current stealth duration is perfectly balanced.

I want to see you bursting someone down the exact way you are describing it, Gamblit.
And yet it still requires to make use of the full duration of stealth, which is three seconds by the way, not four.
You do not understand its a thieves class mechanic to pop in and out of stealth in a rapid succession, right?
Your rotation implies the thief only uses Auto Attacks, Heartseeker and BP Shot in the exact same pattern all over again, no variations allowed. Then the initaive regain is barely enough to keep it up, yes. But there are other weapon skills to use which also use initative.

Cloak and Dagger may not guarantee stealth, but it costs less initiative to use – just 6 or 4, and is way more useful against minion classes (Necro, Mesmer, Turret-Engineer) and in surroundings with many other targets. Other than that BP Shot / HS is a stronger tool, i agree with that. But its not that more mighty to require a nerf, period. You still forget that a thief needs to be paper thin armored to do alot of damage, thus their class mechanic, stealth, is one of their only few defensive capabilities, and thieves pay for their high singletarget damage when they use this weapon set. It is well balanced. Other weapon sets just seem to be underwhelming because of the 4s revealed (which still isnt justified as it did more collateral damage than fixing a problem it was intended to fix).

Meh… i absolutely adored S/D as it was. I hope this new “buff” to Flanking Strike doesnt block that skill for the same duration as Infiltrator´s Strike gets blocked by the Return skill. There should be te possibility to dismiss it if it will stay for long. if it just stays as long as the regular #1 chain skills, it´ll be okay as it wears off before i have to worry about it.

it does not need a tune down! Black Powder / heartseeker-Combo uses 9 (!) Initiative for non-IoS-users and 7 initiative for IoS users. Thats pretty much balanced for regenerating in stealth, gaining 2 might and losing one (or two) conditions, provided they are specced that deep into SA.

And additionally, your argument is even worse, Master of Timespace.2548. While thieves are able to stealth almost always at will and an ele is not able to mistform at will more than once every 60 secs, mistform still grants invulnerability, and stealth does not. People need to eliminate that short-sighted mindset stealth would make a palyer invincible. And i second this: A thief in perma-stealth may be around you, you may not see him, but for the very same duration he cannot do any damage. And additionally, perma-stealthing also costs a lot of initative and / or usage of utilities.
A thief remaining in stealth most of the time may be hard to kill, but he won´t kill you either. That IS balanced. Don´t forget about the existance of bunkers, who are hard to kill 1vs1 as well! They are not invisible, yes, but instead they can damage you all the time and they can contest stuff.

Is it a problem if a paper thin amored thief does huge damage? No it isnt. Start to train your reflexes and / or get a better connection, swing your sword through thin air, stay mobile… a d/d backstab burst thief is so easily countered its not even funny. But nerfing this class to oblivion just because certain people are not able to keep up with it is ridiculous. I mean, am i entitled to have several other classes nerfed because i cannot beat them? For example, i have a hard time fighting necros and guardians. Do they deserve a nerf? What about condition engineers? Shall they be nerfed just because of the sheer pressure they can apply?

Honestly, you should play a thief to comprehend the kitten (self-censored… i absolutely adore the forums censoring system, so insert any word you may find fitting here) you are talking about. One additional second of revealed, again, does NOT prevent a thief from perma-stealthing, nor does it really make him less survivable in my oppinion. What it does is a blatant nerf in sustained DPS of the thief. So ArenaNet should either revert the change to revealed – or buff backstab by 33%, which would make the thief burst even worse for the person who is being hit by it.

What i see here is another person who thinks stealth equals invincibility. But it does not. The thief, albeit not visible, is still vulnerable. I cannot stress this enough, just swing whatever weapon you have and in case of ranged weaponsets without ground AoE just stay mobile. A frontstab is only half as effective as a backstab.

Issues.5789:

Edit: I personally like the 4 second stealth change, as 3 second was very very OP imo; thieves just don’t want to admit it because they liked perma stealth and backstabs lol.

Wait. How in hell do people get the idea a 4s revealed will stop thieves from perma-stealthing? It NEVER stopped perma-stealthing because you can still perfectly time CnD to restealth and you can still chain smokescreen/shadow refuge/ smokescreen! What makes you think a 4s revealed is preventing thieves from doing that?

All this nasty 4s revealed does is nerfing the damage output of players who play their thief like it is meant to be played. Quickly entering and leaving stealth. This nerf hit the wrong side of the coin, so to speak.

It should be reverted in EVERY gamemode and instead it should be applied whenever the stealth “boon” (that nice little symbol you have when you are stealthed) disappears, no matter how, be it because it ran out or because the user broke it with an attack.

And while i am at it… i seriously ope this patch will finally align thieves with other classes in PvE, mainly the currently existing trinity of guardians, mesmers and warriors. Nothing a thief does is what a thief excels at, thats why almost no group asks for thieves – or any other class besides the trinity. I dont want to be a rezzing bot or the stealthing kitten to bypass trash groups, i want to bring something to the table. And currently its neither superior damage, support or control. ArenaNet, please make us thieves and the other missfits worthwhile to be taken in a dungeon group!

Ursan.7846:

Highly doubtful. I know for a fact if you transmute the Legendary Sunrise/Twilight with something else, you can’t combine them again for Eternity.

That happens because you keep the skin, not the weapon. If you´d transmute the skin of the Super Greatdsword onto your Twilight, you´d keep thr weapon itself and thus the ability to fuse it with Dawn.
The same applies for the fractal capacitor: since you transmute a skin onto it, the back stays the same and thus is still be able to be infused. However, as already stated, the process of infusing the capacitor is using the mystic forge, and all processes in the mystic forge create a new item, losing all properties of the ingredients. bad, if you want to keep the skin. but it does have a good side: After infusing ascended items they are account bound and not soulbound – so do not throw away used ascended rings. if they are not already infused, you can infuse them in order to use them on another char.

of course zoning out to trade the baubles for a bubble and then zoning in is a possibility. but we still look at a huge amount of baubles in a narrow time span – half an hour for 14 baubles? A quick run takes about 14 minutes excluding rapids, and then you still have to collect 1750 baubles while the run mustn´t exceed 30 minutes. I´d like to know how that can be possible – certainly not this way. thats why i´d like to hae some intel from Giles.

Not possible. Even if he does two complete runs to get a total of 14 bauble bubbles just from the rewards that leaves us with a total of 14 baubles to be baught with baubles. So seven bauble baubbles to be baught per character – thats just 1750 baubles each character has to collect, an amount which is not only blocked by the limited storage space of the purse but is also not even obtainable since there are not that many baubles to collect in one playthrough.

No, Giles Marchand.6970 seems to have another way and i´d like to know that please. Getting a stockpile of those neat 8bit swords for my mesmer is just too much of a time investment for me. Yes i could buy them if i had the gold, but i am also not the richest person – and there seems to be a time efficient way to farm them ingame. So, please, Giles Marchand.6970, explain your way

Giles Marchand.6970:

I have two character and I get 28 baubles a day from the two and it takes me a little less than an hour. That’s two days per skin, it isn’t a grind in my opinion.

Please share this knowledge with others who want to get the skins (and some more for later, personal use) but havent much time to create a ludicrous amount of alts or use one slot for delete/create character farming. How do you get 28 bauble bubbles on just two characters in one hour?

Scholar? Why not divinity? Don´t play much sPvP yet because i still have to figure out how to play the thief properly – whatever i do it ends in me dying to any class played by a half decent player in WvW – but seeing that being above 90% is rare (at least for me) i´d choose divinity. Meh, i have to learn a lot…

BTW, i didnt want to sound that rude to you, Coloxeus. My wording isnt exactly the best because my english vocabulary tends to be a little bit narrow. That said, what you do is possible because you have the skill to do it, not because the thief is overpowered or because you abuse some mechanics. ArenaNet should consider bringing the thief back to former glory especially in PvE and a little bit in WvW/PvP instead of further nerfing it.

Tried the build, interesting playstyle – even though i ended up confusing myself with all the jumping and porting around

Its not OP – it has a high CD. The thief already got a nerfbat it didnt deserve. Its just the people who simply cannot manage a stealthed enemy. if that is OP, then bunker Ele´s and -guardians, condition necro´s and -engineers are OP as well. And dont get me started about toughness/healpower hunters with sword n dagger. But yes, the thief is overpowered, sure

Eithera.1548:

Hello fellow thieves,

Being interested in this build myself, i watched this video multiple times to figure it out, and here’s what’ve i guessed : http://tiny.cc/c82ruw

Runes/sigils/amulet included, i’m pretty sure at 90% that he’s using the exact same one.

Enjoy.

Impossible. Take a little closer look

To be specific, if he doesnt want to share his build, its his choice, despite being a cheap and selfish one. especially when bragging about it with a video. But anyways, showing a video of a build in sPvP makes it rather easy to decipher what build is being used – and i do it because he is so not-nice to post a video about a build but not telling detail about it.

sPvP has fixed numbers, no health buff from WvW.

He doesnt get initiative on steal, so no points spent in trickery.
He doesnt get swiftness on dodge, so no points spent in acrobatics (second fight)
He heals in stealth, so 30 points spent in shadow arts and using shadow arts´ XI.
He gains initiative entering stealth so he uses shadow arts´ V.
He cleanses conditions when entering stealth, so he is using shadow arts´ IV.
He poisons his target using steal thus there are points spent in dadly arts.
But his target doesnt get weakness when its poisoned from steal or dagger AA-chain, thus only 10 points spent in deadly arts (second fight)
He doesnt have traps, target doesnt get vulnerability on crit, steal doesnt apply a longer poison, thus i think the only logical thoice is deadly arts´ III
This leaves us with 30 points spent in critical strikes.
His backstabs dont always crit, but all his attacks seem to get stronger when target is below 50%. I am almost sure this indicates a usage of critical strikes´ XI.
After experimenting with the numbers, i figured he uses critical strikes´ VI in both fights i analyzed.

The build is a 10/30/30/0/0 in the fight with the elementalist, 0/30/30/10/0 in the fight with the mesmer, with acrobatics´ II.

Knowing the build he uses enables you to play with the different gear setups and runes to reach the number of health points.
He uses berserker´s amulet with berserker´s jewel in both fights and vitality-neutral runes. However, to figure out which runes he uses and which sigills is a harder one. Sigil of fire / sigil of air are definitely in use, but i am not sure about the runes and the other sigils.

But, anyways, this is the most part. Any questions?

In my oppinion it didnt change anything but make the viable and not cheesy / cheap builds useless or at the very least a lot weaker.

Let me summarize:

Chaining CnD perfectly to pseudo-remain in stealth? Still possible although this was the target of the changes to Revealed.
Hopping in and out of stealth as fast as possible just to benefit from certain traits and to pull of the respective slot 1 stealth-skills? Not possible anymore although this clearly wasnt meant to be blocked. Sure, one can just adapt to the extra second, but then its still a massive nerf to everything related to entering and leaving stealth and thus making a lot of thief builds a lot weaker – unjustified.

In the end i think this will even increase the cheap steal-mug-CnD-backstab-and-then-heartseeker-until-sunrise-players, just because spamming heartseeker now doesnt have any rivalry DPS options and is indeed the most effective which it should´nt be. Congrats, ArenaNet – not to sound like a kitten, but whatever you intended to fix, you misses your target royally. At least if your target was not to make thieves even more unwanted in PvE groups or pidgeon-holed into a one-button-spam to maximize DPS if we want to DPS.

Raine Akrune.8416:

rootnode.9546:

Ah this thread is comedy gold. So you can’t faceroll anymore and have to time your attacks better?

That’s my thinking as well. So your telling me I can’t jump in and out of stealth so people can’t see me while I kill them? This class sucks…lol

Kidding of course, my thief was completely unaffected by this update thanks to my out of the box thinking.

Yes, you cannot jump in and out of stealth as fast as before. This nerf hit those the most who really just stealthed to get a quick stealth skill of like tactical strike or a backstab. It actually didnt hit those it intended to hit: this was meant to block / hinder stealth spamming / chaining, but instead it ruined the thief completly in PvE – remember, we are already not very welcome in groups and now we get even less survivability and damage – and while the thief is still playable in WvW / PvP with that longer revealed debuff the effectivity of the Shadow Arts traitline got an even more intense nerf. This cannot be what they wanted to achieve, i simply cannot believe that. The explanation we got for that is just plain hilarious and a blatant lie because THIS change affected stealth reliant professions much harder than if the revealed buff would just appear upon end of stealth, regardless how it ends.

But anyways – since you seem to know very much with your out-of-the-box-thinking, enlighten me please – How do you play your thief to be totally NOT affected by the recent changes to Revealed? Honestly, all those people telling that have yet to prove their oppinions. Build, Armor, Playstyle, in that order, please

PS: That question goes to anyone who thinks the thief is not in a worse shape now / who think these changes were totally needed!

if you wanted to do the most damage a thief could do while still providing a little bit of offensive support it was to get into and out of stealth as quickly as possible using CnD and Backstabs right away. Between A CnD / Backstab-Combo there was at least one full auto-attack-cycle fitting in perfectly. But now? The thief already was on the low end of popular professions for harder content like Fractals above lvl 30. But now? Where does it shine at? Damage? No way, not anymore. Support? Class other than thief will do.

Revert the changes on the Revealed-Debuff as fast as possible. Make stealth not stackable (and thus let Shadow Refuge apply ist Stealth duration once, could even use some sort of “tv-out” skill animation), make the Revealed Debuff appear every time you leave stealth, no matter how you leave it… but do NOT keep this totally garbage of a “fix”! This broke most rotations and builds on both the PvE and WvW side.

So, aside of that i´d like to ask fellow thieves what you do in high level PvE content such as Fractals.