Guild Wars 2

Aveneo.2068:

Tulisin.6945:

Aveneo.2068:

A change in load-order priority and turning ‘model->nametag’ into ‘nametag->model’ should indeed be possible.

Players, even those with enough programming background to know what they’re talking about (actually, especially those people) usually assume the game is put together much more elegantly than it actually is. Some times the smallest things that seem simple and obvious to change aren’t nearly as simple and obvious because MMOs get incredibly messy under the hood over time.

Oh I can assure you that I know what I’m talking about, and I know how much of a mess things can become. In fact, when I was creating Mannimarco Revisited for TES4:Oblivion you wouldn’t believe how many things had to be tweaked in order to get the multi-stage scripts to function properly for most users.

However, I didn’t say it was easy or anything; just that a change in load-order priority should be possible.

Greetz,

Aveneo (aka Miltiades)

Fair enough. Having seen both sides of this fence more often than not perfectly reasonable player expectations and suggestions meet the cold hard reality of immalleable design. I’d hope that GW2 is a next-gen MMO in the sense that is was built to be a living product that can be changed and updated easily for >10 years, but other MMOs haven’t given me much confidence.

Troponin.4081:

The other great thing is, caltrops has no limit on the amount of enemies it will bleed either. So, you can pull 100 enemies over your caltrops and each one of them will end up with 9-12 stacks of bleeds.

Pretty sure caltrops has a 5 target limit like every other AE. If you could perfectly cycle 5 targets for all 14 seconds I guess you could technically apply a bleed stack to 70 separate targets, but it’d just be one bleed stack, not 9-12.

Your build has potential, but I don’t understand Vigor-on-Heal over Might-on-Dodge if you’re going for a dodge-heavy condition build with Signet of Malice, seems counter-intuitive for your synergy set. Also you’ve got 20 unspent trait points. Is this a build for a level 60?

Aveneo.2068:

A change in load-order priority and turning ‘model->nametag’ into ‘nametag->model’ should indeed be possible.

Players, even those with enough programming background to know what they’re talking about (actually, especially those people) usually assume the game is put together much more elegantly than it actually is. Some times the smallest things that seem simple and obvious to change aren’t nearly as simple and obvious because MMOs get incredibly messy under the hood over time.

frans.8092:

Tulisin.6945:

The fact of the matter is that stealth is a short term skill, and not very useful as an escape method without mobility.

Even with Fleet Shadow a 4 second stealth can only take you about to a 1200-1400 range, not far enough to disappear.

Stealth can’t take you anywhere, the only thing that can take you anywhere is mobility. Stealth can influence that mobility via something like Fleet Shadow, but it is still the running around with a speed buff that is getting you somewhere. Stealth can easily cover enough mobility to move out of visible range if you’re using Heartseeker or shadow steps.

I’ve always thought it’d be interesting if it functioned as a whirl or leap finisher, it’d be a good way to give it some more spice without straight up messing with the damage.

Rayya.2591:

But ofc no thieves i meet in fractals yet used that, even if 1 blind at 4 seconds improve party survaivability a lot.

Against what? Blind isn’t useful against anything dangerous with perhaps the exception of high level fractals where trash hits hard, but most of the difficulty is still accomplished by volume and the fractal it’d be the most useful in has blind-immune trash.

But your examples are fair enough, some bad thieves turned you off to the profession, and that is the sad reality.

Eviator.9746:

Tulisin.6945:

I’d go for level 78 exotics over 80 rares. They’re somewhere between in price, but only a couple stat points below 80 exotics instead of a tier below.

Interesting, I couldn’t find lower level exotics with the right stats on the TP, and aside from that they were still quite expensive, >1g a piece. Perhaps I should look again.

They’re generally 75s-1g, compared to 80 rares at 30s and 80 exotics at 2-3g~. For both the rares and the 78/79 exotics, that isn’t really much above their price floor due to salvaging, so when you’re done with either of them you can pull most of your money back by breaking them down.

frans.8092:

The healing from Assassins reward pales in comparison to Rejuvenation,

Assassin’s reward lets you dump ini for healing and scales far better due to initiative synergy and the fact that most thieves don’t invest into healing power. AR usually rewards uptime while Rejuvenation rewards downtime. They don’t really function the same though, and comparing them is like comparing SoM and HiS, vastly different healing tools.

SneakyErvin.3056:

But the thing is, appying them over and over to have any lasting impression drains your ini, which means you deal only auto attack damage.

SB applies AE poison and weakness with ease at a low resource cost. Sword applies cripple/weakness with ease. Dagger with trait applies weakness with ease on auto.

I get the point you’re trying to make, but it isn’t true, thieves are the best at cheaply applying those conditions. Nobody makes a big deal of it, and the traits that make it easier aren’t commonly taken, because non-damage conditions don’t have a very good niche.

Furthermore “you deal only auto attack damage” doesn’t really mean much with a sword when that is already the highest DPS attack, and it is usually the most effective DPS route for dagger.

FWB.1704:

I have this same issue with the thief at lvl 80. I was playing quite well up until 8 with a D/D DB and condition damage build. But my thief can’t handle dungeons at all, I’m constantly dying. Moreover Orr is a huge challenge for my thief simply becuase it’s not possible to dodge / strafe out of harms way enough to survive. Just a few hits from a normal mob is practically a death sentence. Forget about trying to fight the Karka… alot of ppl complain that thief is OP, but that’s only in PvP, in PvE thieves are really hurting… Anet should see this. PvE theives just need an overall survivability boost. A good one at that.

I generally farm Orr with Berserker/MF gear on my thief and finish most fights at near max health, fighting 3/4 mobs at a time. Stay mobile, dodge or evade the nasty telegraphs, and perhaps most importantly bring your targets down fast. The tips given in this thread help a lot with healing you can get without burning your #6, notably Signet of Malice, Assassin’s Reward, and life leech food. If you aren’t bringing down enemies fast enough with DB it may be time to look into a higher DPS setup, or else stagger your death blossoms more to effectively utilize its evade instead of burning out as many as you can in succession (how a lot of people use it). Gear can play a big role as well, just being 80 doesn’t mean much if you’re still in greens.

If you post your build you can get more tips on tweaks to handle PvE better, but thieves as a whole are not in a bad place for PvE.

Wethospu.6437:

Tulisin.6945:

There’s already quite a bit of discussion on this here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Please-fix-people-selling-dungeon-slots/page/3#post1152897

This is reward transfer, not duplication, and is good for the game as a whole.

Good for the game or good for you?

Good for the game as a whole, more goods creates a more complex/powerful economy and multiplies the routes that can be taken to any given goal. It allows all kinds of work to be more efficiently applied and lets people pursue their goals by doing the things they enjoy. More dynamic game, more choice, more fun.

There’s already quite a bit of discussion on this here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Please-fix-people-selling-dungeon-slots/page/3#post1152897

This is reward transfer, not duplication, and is good for the game as a whole.

stof.9341:

Tulisin.6945:

Backstab can be a lot of fun in PvE, and relatively safe, but not effective at all on a large scale. S/P can kill the same mobs at the same pace by standing in place and spamming blind/auto attack … only S/P can do it three mobs at a time. In open-world PvE AE damage reigns supreme.

Yeah but using sword autoattack all day while under the protection of black powder, well, it’s Boring. I mean, sword attacks feel slow and you you do is autoattack mostly and throwing a new black powder every 5-6s.

Which is fine, but a hyper-active build is not really great advice for someone who is already having issues because they aren’t playing actively enough. D/D backstab just accentuates the issues he’s having instead of mitigating them.

Sword doesn’t necessarily require playing passively, you don’t need the blind fields once you’ve learned to avoid via movement, but having that crutch is great for not dying terribly while you learn.

Rainu.6871:

BS build, is good in open world pve and while leveling but is horrible in dungeons. .

It really isn’t. Effectively used BS build works better in dungeons than it does in open world PvE or while leveling. The burst single-target damage lends itself better to dungeon combat than elsewhere. Ineffectively used BS build is terrible everywhere, you just can’t get away with it in dungeons. It isn’t the mechanics in this case, it is the player.

SneakyErvin

t depends what you already have in group, most other professions can apply the debuffs a thief can

It is easy to say this off hand, but thieves are truly unmatched in their ability to easily and consistently apply blind, weakness, poison, and cripple. Nobody cares or really considers it a major thief asset because those conditions aren’t very useful in party-based PvE and just killing someone is far better than trying to debuff them in PvP.

Eviator.9746:

For a modest investment you can get level 80 rare armor and weapons with major sigils and runes, and masterwork level 80 jewelry. This will make you much more effective in dungeons (and incidentally WvW). That gear will last you until you get your CoF set, and is much preferrable over the greens you acquired in your last few levels.

I’d go for level 78 exotics over 80 rares. They’re somewhere between in price, but only a couple stat points below 80 exotics instead of a tier below.

slender.1482:

Cempa.5619:

Sigil: Might on Swap+Condition on kill P/D D/D

Thoughts?

I’m using the AOE freeze on shortbow swap. I don’t think i would use d/d at all in p/d build, d/d is more of a direct damage unless you trait for initiative gains for death blossom.

I’d agree on this. If you want AE conditions you can shotgun shortbow, aside from death blossom D/D doesn’t bring much to P/D since they share the offhand skills.

Rainu.6871:

I think a large part of the problem is how many bad thief players there are.

This isn’t really fair. There are an equal amount of bad thieves as any other profession, the difference is that bad thieves can’t get away with it.

Karolis.4261:

P/P is nota a viable condition weapon choise. P/D and D/D is.

And the oft-overlooked SB, especially with Might synergy and Elemental Powders.

Grimaldi.8532:

its the greatest more strategic large scale pvp ever implemented,

It really isn’t. EVE and other games are a lot better in terms of “large scale” and “strategic” PvP, they have better incentivization schemes, more meaningful resources, obectives, better combat dynamics, more viable tactics, and overall superior complexity. What WvW is, however, is extremely accessible, which is a great thing to be.

WvW will never be an amazing example of strategic large scale PvP, but it can definitely be an example of fun large scale PvP that anyone can hop into and enjoy, which is really what they ought to be going for.

stof.9341:

D/D and killing everything with backstab seems to be rather efficient if I remember low level PvE correctly. C&D is a wonderful PvE tool since nearly every mob in the game will forget about you. There’s just some bats somewhere (Charr lands?) that see through stealth.

Backstab can be a lot of fun in PvE, and relatively safe, but not effective at all on a large scale. S/P can kill the same mobs at the same pace by standing in place and spamming blind/auto attack … only S/P can do it three mobs at a time. In open-world PvE AE damage reigns supreme.

As someone else mentioned, if you’re having issues with minor damage then life leech will help, but honestly the most important solution is to stay mobile. Simply circle strafing as you attack ensures that >80 % of mobs simply don’t do any damage, their attacks are that slow and their AI that bad. Let me repeat with bold, you should be avoiding most damage via simple WASD movement, not dodges. It is night and day between constantly moving and standing still. Once you’ve got constant movement down you can start to actively use movement to react to mob attacks by watching their animations. Most professions don’t have to do this in open-world PvE because they’re build to just soak hits, but doing it as a thief means you’ll survive much better and can even drop defensive stats for offensive stats.

Learning to avoid damage instead of soaking it is an extra skill that you have to learn as a profession whose defense is based on evasion, but it pays off well in the long run because skill-based defense ultimately wins out over stat-based defense when the one-shot hits start flying.

bomber.1540:

use 3 for … spike dmg

FS does less DPS than auto attack and thieves don’t have cooldowns as such, so it can’t be used as spike damage. If you want to trade a bit of damage for the other stuff it offers, cool, but it isn’t spike damage.

Dee Jay.2460:

Thieves really aren’t particularly attractive group mates. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do all the content.

But looking at support, just compare the effectiveness of our only real support abilities Shadow Refuge and Smoke Screen with the entire arsenal of a Guardian, the combo fields of an Elementalist or the Shouts of a Warrior.

Thieves seem to be designed in a very “selfish” fashion. Even if we want to build for support our tool-set is very limited.

Much of thief support is designed around non-damage conditions. On paper, Weakness, Cripple, Blind, Vulnerability, etc are the equals of Might, Aegis, Protection etc. The problem being that, in practice, when you actually care about the support (bosses), boon-based support is way way better than condition-based support. If I’m fighting a swarm of trash I’ll take thief AE blind/weakness/cripple any day, but if I’m fighting a boss where those conditions aren’t likely to make much of a difference, I’d much rather have Aegis to soak a missed dodge. Boss design marginalizes thief support.

That said, shortbow’s spammable blast finisher can still offer some really awesome utility, thieves just lack easy and attractive combo fields to utilize it with. Quickly stacking >10 Might stacks for the entire group via fire field or some of the most powerful group healing via a water field is where the thief can really shine. But most thieves don’t take +boon duration or +healing because those fields aren’t organic to the thief, so specializing in them without being able to ensure they’ll be around is folly.

The solution? Some more boon potential on thief weapon skills. I’d like to see a Focus and Torch off-hand with some more support/boon based skill. Either that or rebalance bosses to make Blind completely trivialize them like Aegis does.

Red Falcon.8257:

Might not be the end of the world, but it’s a much better switch for your melee setup than the nerfed SB (and to think SB used to be the “mandatory” secondary before the nerfs).

I disagree, they don’t really fill the same roles.

As a swap SB offers: Mobility (both evade and travel), utility, burst short-range damage, decent conditions, excellent AE potential, and thief’s longest range set.

As a swap P/P offers: Less damage, malleability, and mobility than your melee set, but at a range.

P/P isn’t “good for damage”, it is “good for damage when melee isn’t an option”. SB brings things to the table that your melee set doesn’t.

I don’t have a problem with the idea that ranged weapons sacrifice damage for the safety of range, but people way overestimate the situations when that is actually a good tradeoff. P/P sacrifices mobility and utility as well, which means you’re even less likely to be able to maintain the range which it its only useful attribute. For a final insult to injury, P/P is shorter range than most ranged sets in the game, so it has no place as an option if you’re being kited. If you can’t catch them with melee, P/P isn’t a solution to that problem.

Sil.4560:

The problem as I see it is that the Thieves I have encountered have been in stealth for much longer than the three seconds you describe (or at the least certainly longer than the duration on their skills would suggest), to the point where I have watched them vanish in front of a group and despite multiple eyes scanning in a 360 degree radius, was never able to spot them again. This is not another “L2P” incident. If stealth is as short as you suggested, it should be an easy matter to spot the fleeing player to pursue.

This could be one of a few things:
1. Dropping another stealth ability before the first one wears off or shortly after.
2. Moving out beyond visible range during the duration of stealth and/or moving out far enough to fast-travel due to losing combat state.
3. Breaking LoS, so even if they’re not vastly out of range they’re not visible when they reappear because they’re behind a rock or ledge.
4. Letting a thief stand in a SR for full duration, the only way to pull “long” (13~ seconds) of stealth out of a single skill.

The fact of the matter is that stealth is a short term skill, and not very useful as an escape method without mobility.

Strutter

Steal could do with some work. It can be handy sometimes but if it were a utility skill it would probably never be picked. It doesn’t seem worthy of being the thief’s primary selling point or namesake.
…
Last but not least, Hide in Shadows is a very useful skill that serves a few purposes. The other options are alright but i think they need a bit of a buff to make up for the lack of stealth, which in my opinion is too good to even consider giving up for either of the other skills.

Steal has always been hotly debated. It comes down to the fact that Initiative and Steal constitue the thief profession mechanics, and in that light they’re quite significant. Steal is also extremely useful due to being instant, even without all the trait bonuses. The one big issue Steal does have is that it doesn’t mesh well with dictating non-melee range.

As for heal skills, heal skill choice has a lot to do with your synergy set. HiS is amazing with heavy Shadow Arts, but has the longest CD and lowest healing potential to compensate. The other two heal skills are equally amazing, but have different synergies. The thief’s three heal skills are one of the things I think are balanced almost perfectly, each one has its own stand out situations, tons of potential, and they don’t step on eachother’s toes too much.

Imperatora.7654:

also because I can get double sigils compared to SB.

This isn’t an oft-mentioned reason to use P/P, but it is something at least. The problem is SB and P/P don’t really fill the same role, so they aren’t usually matched against eachother.

Auesis.7301:

Also, just don’t mention anything about you being a Thief. That oozes “I’m not confident in myself”.

I don’t put my profession in my LFG message because it doesn’t matter. If they respond asking for it, it isn’t a group I’m interested in. There are some professions that excel at particular roles, but if you’re already doing a pickup group then everyone being not-terrible is far more important than composition.

As for the logic on their end? Thieves are worse than other professions on average. Not because thieves are a worse profession mechanically, but because they take more input to get the same output as other professions. It is straight up easier to survive and do your job as a profession that relies on just soaking up hits to survive as opposed to evading them. Looking in from the outside, it means thieves can’t survive as well as other professions, which is true on average even if it isn’t true mechanically. A well played thief is awesome and brings as much to the group as any other profession. A poorly played thief brings almost nothing, while a poorly played guardian is an amazing group asset.

It is just a sandbox area, there’s tons of stuff out there, some of it may be from unfinished content but most of it is likely just the devs screwing around in the empty space.

Binary Rain.4869:

Does anyone know if the second strike on flanking strike is suppose to be blockable? I have seen it blocked so many times….

It is intended. Only the initial strike is supposed to be unblockable as per the patch notes when they made it that way.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Here you go, thanks. It probably was over 8-10 seconds, hard to say. I just
want to confirm it was possible.

Definitely possible, assume the thief only has a pool of 12, even.
0 seconds – Thief hits with C&D for 6 init, gains 2 back from init-on-stealth trait. Thief is at 8 initiative.
3 seconds – Thief hits with C&D again as revealed wears off, thief has regenerated 3 stealth during those 3 seconds so he’s at 11, C&D’s net cost of 4 brings him back to 7.
6 seconds – Repeat, thief is at 6 initiative (same calc as before, 5 gained, 6 lost)
9 seconds – You get the idea. Thief lands the 4th C&D at the 9~ second mark and has 5 initiative left.

There a couple traits the thief could also use to actively increase initiative, and if those C&D crit they could also grant another initiative point via a passive trait, but the only things really necessary are fairly standard stealth traits.

Edit: Forgot a thief running those traits would have 4 second stealth, but you get the idea.

“In a row” is deceptive. If he was just timing C&D to be used every time stealth dropped then you’d see 4 C&Ds “in a row” but over a >10 second period. And honestly over 10 seconds the cost of C&D isn’t that bad, especially since a successful C&D can be traited to refund some of the cost. At that point C&D can be made initiative stable which means you could do an unlimited number “in a row”, it’d just be over a long timeframe.

The problem with people’s initiative calculations is usually that they say “that’d cost >20 initiative and thieves only have 12-15!” when they’re talking about a period so long that the thieves’ effective initiative pool is really much higher thanks to regeneration. If you’re talking about a 30 second fight the thief doesn’t have 15~ initiative to burn, they have 45~.

Adaneshade.2409:

Blind is no where near as game changing as an unblockable strike, one that has a boon strip tied to it in addition.

You’re right. Blind is much better.

FS’ unblockable nature and boon removal are only defining for it because thieves lack those attributes elsewhere and FS is spammable.

ZLE.8293:

Tulisin.6945:

ZLE.8293:

.If leap attacks doesn’t qualify as target requiring i don’t know what does.

For thieves? Infiltrator’s Strike is a good example. It cannot be manually aimed, it requires a target if you want it to hit something. Same with Steal and Infiltrator’s Signet.

Those are NOT leaps ,but Shadowsteps.You can leap-travel with HS,because it’s a Leap(Leap:fast jumping you know).You cannot travel faster forward with Inf Signet,because it’s not a Leap,OK?

You said you didn’t know what a target required attack was, so I explained it with some examples. I never implied shadowsteps were leaps, my explanation was quite the opposite, even.

Laika

Technically, this is false. You can very well hit your target with IS, should it be in the sword’s AOE cone. You will obviously not teleport forward, but IS is a sword AOE attack just like everything else, so if you used it near a stealthed player they would be immobilized and sustain it’s paltry damage. Not saying you benefit much from this, but it happens.

You’re right, the sword attack still works as it normally would. Good examples are hard to find in thief skills. Necromancers have some better examples of true damage skills that straight up cannot do anything without a target, even if you have an unstealthed enemy right in front of you.

Red Falcon.8257:

Sacrificed my vitality trait for 10% pistol dmg and geez.
4k to 6k dmg consistently per unload, autoattack crits for 1.1k

Still far less DPS than melee equivalents. It is still a good set for sacrificing mobility, utility, and damage for the safety of range. The problem is that sacrificing mobility, utility, and damage for the safety of range isn’t worthwhile in most cases.

If you prefer P/P backup to SB backup you weren’t really utilizing the good parts of SB backup anyways. SB’s strengths don’t lie in its damage potential (although it has great damage potential, and far better than P/P against multiple targets).

Daecollo.9578:

Anything that relies on using your healing skill is terrible, you end up using your heal when you don’t need it and killing yourself.

That all depends on the situation you’re using it in. You can get by just fine with having your heal down most of the time in PvE, for instance, especially if you’re spamming it every time it comes up. This sounds more like a PvE support idea anyways. That said, unless you’re using a bunch of signet synergy you’re probably better off just using Withdraw for heal spamming. 3s more CD than even traited SoM, instant activation, and arguably a better active unless you’ve got a lot of signet traits, especially since you won’t be benefiting from the SoM passive at all.

enji.7459:

If you had a crappy rig. Kind of hard to “block/dash/dodge/etc. when you see him cast x spell” with them off.

I’ve never played a game (at least not one with action based combat) where changing spell effect settings made it impossible to see ability tells, it just got rid of extra random crap. Turning them down always made it easier to see what was really important. Most of the most important dodges in GW2 don’t involve a great deal of particles, for instance.

Adaneshade.2409:

PvP is not all about dps. Flanking strike has use in it’s current implementation as an unblockable boon strip. If it were made easier to land it would simply be too OP, much like other abilities we have already are.

For instance: you are fighting a bunker class, lets say a warrior. He pops regeneration then goes into shield block. Thanks to us having one of the ONLY direct damage unblockable weapon skills from any class. We can still strip that regeneration off.

This would be completely OP if it were a guaranteed, easy to land ability. Because it requires some aiming, it’s currently balanced.

It’d be no more OP than, say, Black Powder. It is a utility skill with mediocre damage. The only difference is that skills like Black Powder can effectively deliver their utility at any skill level and then grow with player skill, while FS can’t effectively deliver its utility at low skill levels, and at high skill levels is still directly hindered in that role by poor mechanics.

enji.7459:

So, in these games in the past where people had to turn off spell effects (many of which clued you into as what spells/builds they were using) to get a playable game, there were no disadvantages?

In most of the games I’ve played where that is an option it was mandatory to have it off to be competitive. Fancy spell effects throw out tons of useless information when all you need is the lowest setting to get the graphical indications on what is going on. Unless, of course, giant glowy balls of light are the only graphical indication anything is being done.

Completely ignoring culling and even though my system can handle it, I’d still turn off spell effects if it was an option because it’d be easier to see more important things like red circles on the ground

krixis.9538:

as a P/P glass cannon unload focused crit machine

P/P is some of the best thief single target ranged damage, but it isn’t good damage on the whole. There’s also no need to use SoM if you’re going to be doing ranged damage anyways, you’re sacrificing damage potential for the safety of range, you might as well use HiS for more damage.

And you absolutely can go glass cannon as melee and not die.

ZLE.8293:

.If leap attacks doesn’t qualify as target requiring i don’t know what does.

For thieves? Infiltrator’s Strike is a good example. It cannot be manually aimed, it requires a target if you want it to hit something. Same with Steal and Infiltrator’s Signet. Most leaps do not require a target, if you don’t have a target you can manually aim them and successfully hit the first viable target you encounter.

Majik.8521:

Tulisin.6945:

Majik.8521:

4. The guys that are lvled up need to be adjusted. the lvled up guys just die way to quick.

There are actually some sweet spots with the proper gear where you’re relatively powerful when upscaled in WvW. The primary reasons upscaled people are weak are that they’re less experienced, don’t have max gear for their level, and don’t have access to traits. The first two are entirely on the player for learning how to equip and play their profession, the last one is the primary level based power scaling method in WvW. What do you propose is changed?

really not sure what they could do. it may be just like you said. maybe people are not keeping gear up to date as they lvl which might be throwing things off. but just seems like i hit them way harder than i do others.

You usually do hit them way harder, but it isn’t because the scaling mechanisms in place aren’t sound.

Bast Bow.2958:

How about turning it around shall we?

You thieves aren’t OP anymore somehow, but say Elementalists are. But all the elementalists are saying: ‘No we’re not OP, all you lads and ladies need to learn to play the game right and find a way to counter it. There really is a way to counter it. Majority of GW2 players: You really need to try harder and then you will find a way to counter it.’ So….. What would you think about that?

Cool example because this is exactly how elementalist mist form works near structure doors in WvW. It, like stealth, is incredibly powerful if nobody tries to counter it. These are not mechanically powerful abilities as much as they are abilities that derive their power from behavior. It isn’t on the person using the skill to have weaker skills, it is on the person fighting the skill to know how it functions and how to react to it.

ZLE.8293:

Tulisin.6945:

Hopes.4512:

The fact that I can be hit with abilities that “REQUIRE” a target while I’m stealthed… is disheartening.

This is not true, target-required attacks will not hit without a target selected, so they can never hit a stealthed target.

IT IS true. I have been hit by Eviscerate and Backstab thousand times.you can make the following test with some friend: Let him Shadow Refuge and stays at the center of the SR field.You go in Stealth and start spamming 1 at the place he must be.Or use Eviscerate towards that place if you are with warrior.You will see…

Neither of those attacks are target required attacks, why would stealth prevent them? Hopes claimed that target required skills could hit stealth, which is not true.

Majik.8521:

4. The guys that are lvled up need to be adjusted. the lvled up guys just die way to quick.

There are actually some sweet spots with the proper gear where you’re relatively powerful when upscaled in WvW. The primary reasons upscaled people are weak are that they’re less experienced, don’t have max gear for their level, and don’t have access to traits. The first two are entirely on the player for learning how to equip and play their profession, the last one is the primary level based power scaling method in WvW. What do you propose is changed?

Victory.2879:

You should NOT be able to stealth when you are downed.

The thief #3 downed skill is an entire 2 second stealth on a 20 second CD and is laughably easy to counter.

I’ll never understand why for most skills everyone wants the professions to have different approaches and mechanics but equal power levels, whereas with the downed skills the call is for everything to be homogenized so everyone has similar skills.

Chamone.6890:

Go stealth, sneak up on zerg, launch daggerstorm, run away before you are un-culled.

Not to make this thread about thieves as well, but this is a terrible tactic and a bad example of exploiting culling.

And you don’t need two thieves to permastealth.

Thenoob.1480:

Thundar.3910:

Play whatever class you would like, with any spec you enjoy, however you enjoy it, as long as you have 10-15 supply, you are useful and an asset to your team.

Incorrect.

No, Thundar is right, enjoyment should be your number one concern when choosing a profession not just because that makes sense in the context of playing a game but because players that enjoy what they’re doing are more motivated and more likely to play WvW. A mesmer is completely useless in WvW if they don’t log on when they hate the play style because they didn’t choose a profession they enjoyed.

xx/xx/xx/xx refers to your trait lines, your primary method of specialization. Honestly if you’re just leveling up and exploring the profession you’re better off taking traits/skills that seem interesting and trying to find a play style you enjoy. When you get to >70 you can start looking at effective builds people have developed, but building towards one of them from the second you unlock traits may diminish your enjoyment and exploration of all the thief can do.

Hopes.4512:

Thieves are far from OP. They’re actually broken from the “Thief Players” perspective. When a Thief goes stealth they can still be targeted by “TARGETING ABILITIES”…. I’m not talking AOE’s, but Actual abilities that require you to “Click” or “Select” a “Target”…. Going invisible renders “NO TARGET”…. Yet Thieves still get attacked by them… Yeah…. they are far from OP.

This isn’t true, as I mentioned in the other thread. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get target required abilities to hit stealthed targets.

Hopes.4512:

The fact that I can be hit with abilities that “REQUIRE” a target while I’m stealthed… is disheartening.

This is not true, target-required attacks will not hit without a target selected, so they can never hit a stealthed target.

The problem you’re having is getting used to the fact that most GW2 attacks are not target required. That is just how the combat system works. Being able to hit stealth with free aimed attacks is exactly how it should work given GW2’s combat system and implementation of stealth.

teg.1340:

DanH.5879:

i want to protest, because thieves are nerfed to the ground because of your culling problems !

nop. they got nerfed in spvp, not wvw. lol

And the changes had nothing to do with culling anyways.