Guild Wars 2

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

bhagwad.4281:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

bhagwad.4281:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Greeting your team upon entering an arena (=/=greeting upon being invited into a party) usually implies the player is new to the place (tpvp), or worse, new to pvp. No regular player does that…ever.

False. It’s being polite and building a sense of being on a team. A team needs to communicate to be effective. It’s basic dynamics.

Otherwise it’s just a bunch of random people put together on a map.

I’m sorry bhagwad, but that’s the mentality of PvP players. It’s a psycological fact and saying it’s false is just denying the truth. Mabye it’s impolite or unfriendly, but that’s another story.

It’s false because not just me, but other good players also communicate. In fact, the newer you are to PvP, the less you tend to communicate. I don’t know why.

Okay my son, you’re absolutely right as always. Your opinion is the only one. Every other person that says something other has to be false. Seriously now, wake up and get back into the real world.

Just read the comments of others on this thread and you’ll see what is true and what is false for yourself. Good players want to communicate and strategize. Those who’re new may be hoping to simply muddle through and ride the coat tails of the others. They don’t know that unless everyone contributes and communicates they will lose against a good team.

That’s the difference between tPvP and hotjoin after all.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

bhagwad.4281:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Greeting your team upon entering an arena (=/=greeting upon being invited into a party) usually implies the player is new to the place (tpvp), or worse, new to pvp. No regular player does that…ever.

False. It’s being polite and building a sense of being on a team. A team needs to communicate to be effective. It’s basic dynamics.

Otherwise it’s just a bunch of random people put together on a map.

I’m sorry bhagwad, but that’s the mentality of PvP players. It’s a psycological fact and saying it’s false is just denying the truth. Mabye it’s impolite or unfriendly, but that’s another story.

It’s false because not just me, but other good players also communicate. In fact, the newer you are to PvP, the less you tend to communicate. I don’t know why.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Greeting your team upon entering an arena (=/=greeting upon being invited into a party) usually implies the player is new to the place (tpvp), or worse, new to pvp. No regular player does that…ever.

False. It’s being polite and building a sense of being on a team. A team needs to communicate to be effective. It’s basic dynamics.

Otherwise it’s just a bunch of random people put together on a map.

xantosnightwish.5438:

Exactly! At least tell people where youre headed on start! Typing something like “Hey, Im going far pt, mid pt, close pt, treb, orb, etc.” would at least help me make an informed decision on where I should go….

Yeah, this doesn’t require superpowers. I’d like to be able to rate others on their performance in a match. Not on skills but teamwork.

I get that it’s not easy to type during a match. But what about the one and a half minutes before the match even starts?

I doubt if there’s any excuse here.

Does anyone know how frustrating it is to enter a tPvP match, say hello, try and work out a strategy…and receive NO response whatsoever from ANYONE? I mean I don’t want to judge people so I’m trying to understand why this happens? Do they:

1. Not care about winning/losing
2. Can’t type fast
3. Don’t read the chat
4. Hope someone else will reply and the team will form a strategy and they can just ride out the success without contributing
5. Don’t know the map

Now that I’ve started to face premades almost exclusively in tPvP, communication is critical! Who bunkers which point, who attacks what. We have 1:30 minutes before the match starts…for what? Not to sit on our butts for sure!

It’s even worse when some guy comes in at the last minute – god knows what they’re thinking. Do they hope the other team will just lie down and die? This isn’t hotjoin you know.

I feel there should be a rating system where team members can rate others on a 1-5 scale. And instead of the random matchups when you join solo, you should be able to see a list of all the other solo players and their ratings and choose to work with them based on that if you want. This will at least motivate people to think like a team in tPvP.

Even a PUG can beat a premade if there is good communication and understanding. And who doesn’t want to win right? So what gives?

Whenever I go to complete the jungle wurm even in Caladon forest, the wurm isn’t targettable and I end up not getting the chest. I realize there are AoEs, but my phantasms need a target to activate.

I’m sure this is not intended. Perhaps you guys could find a way to fix it?

guza.6170:

exactly, also ppl should get no glory when they loose so they might actually start kittening trying instead of zergin from 1 point to the next. But good luck getting any logic into this dev teams brain.

Then you’ll be punishing solo players for the failure of their team. With all its deficiencies, the current method seems to be the best among the bad point systems.

I don’t get it. More people should always beat less people…so this is working as intended.

Kept disconnecting and even in sPvP my skills took far longer to activate. Here’s a screenshot of when I got disconnected with the error message.

This happened 4-5 times with me today.

Slamz.5376:

bhagwad.4281:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

So what you’re really saying is that retaliation makes this into a cookie-cutter game where many classes really only have 1 viable build available to them.

It’s not like you can deal with retaliation on the fly. I can’t say, “Oh these guys have a lot of retaliation. Looks like I need my conditions!” I have to build for them.

What can I say? Some builds counter others. If you don’t have condition damage, then someone is going to take advantage of that.

shortcake.8659:

bhagwad.4281:

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

The problem isn’t “retaliation builds”. Retaliation is just everywhere. Between various AoE abilities that give retaliation, and Light+Blast finishers that very very often aren’t even intentionally done(tons of guardian abilities plus a very large amount of aoe attacks) throw the boon everywhere. If you think there’s any viable way to keep retaliation off of a large group for a sustained amount of time, you’re deluding yourself. I have and do use “massive hits” but my options there are more limited and mostly on longer cooldowns. A lot of autoattacks are punished far harder even though they do the same damage simply because they’re divided into smaller hits. And condition damage is like you’re just grasping for straws here. I have no way to apply conditions without.. hitting my target. Condition grenades? If you can explain how I can do that without doing the exact same retaliation damage to myself, feel free. Condition pistol? Sure, I can unnecessarily limit my damage to a small target base.

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

Which reminds me of a another option – use retal yourself. Today I was up against an engineer who caused me over 8k in retal! This is a good enough strategy also no?

shortcake.8659:

bhagwad.4281:

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

The problem isn’t “retaliation builds”. Retaliation is just everywhere. Between various AoE abilities that give retaliation, and Light+Blast finishers that very very often aren’t even intentionally done(tons of guardian abilities plus a very large amount of aoe attacks) throw the boon everywhere. If you think there’s any viable way to keep retaliation off of a large group for a sustained amount of time, you’re deluding yourself. I have and do use “massive hits” but my options there are more limited and mostly on longer cooldowns. A lot of autoattacks are punished far harder even though they do the same damage simply because they’re divided into smaller hits. And condition damage is like you’re just grasping for straws here. I have no way to apply conditions without.. hitting my target. Condition grenades? If you can explain how I can do that without doing the exact same retaliation damage to myself, feel free. Condition pistol? Sure, I can unnecessarily limit my damage to a small target base.

If you have any other bad advice, please feel free to type it up. Just stop posting on the forums and leave it in notepad.

I happen to know these are counters because I run a retal build myself and I know what counters me. Condition necros with corrupt boon, phantasm mesmers (especially the swordsman – that guy hurts!), even some pistol thieves who stack massive bleed repeatedly. Shatter builds can cause me pain if I’m careless. Really, there are many strategies to deal with retal. You should tweak your build to work with them.

shortcake.8659:

Between retaliation, every mesmer spec’ing into confusion, and the mass spam of feedbacks/reflect walls, I do more damage to myself in almost any encounter than enemies do to me. Positioning and superior movement be kitten when passive defenses are your biggest enemy. Retaliation’s definitely the worst of them though. As an engineer my best viable weapon options versus groups are grenades or the flamethrower. Grenades throw 3 projectiles at once and flamethrower’s autoattack counts as 10 hits. I wear vit on every piece of armor and I’ve lost 2/3rds of my health just by using grenade barrage on a group of enemies.

I’m not sure why they didn’t put an ICD on retaliation when they put an ICD on omnomberry pie healing. It was the only way I could actually continue attacking in these situations.

Here are a few counters to retaliation:

1. Condition damage
2. Single massive hits
3. Boon stripping

Any of these three are killers to a retaliation build. I understand you don’t want to change your build to deal with retal. But to say that you refuse to have any of these three options in it…is just lazy.

Mattargul.9235:

bhagwad.4281:

Unless it’s a thief who suddenly jumped you from stealth with no warning. If you kill them, humiliation is in order. I prefer to sit next to them while they bleed out.

I would say it’s “bad form” to try and surprise someone like that…but hey! Whatever works right? Just don’t mind the humiliation.

So, what about an ele who RtL rushes you, KDs you and then proceeds to barbeque your behind before you even get up? Or bunkers who’ll shrug off any blow you land while they laugh in your face? Mez Clone Wars?

Bad form is bad form.

When you can see someone, you can devise a counter. I can evade RTL easily. Getting surprised by stealth is bad form and it deserves humiliation when you still win.

Talmor.9048:

1.5 – Killing an opponent

a) Bad Form – So you killed an opponent? Good job. Do not dance for joy on their corpse or laugh or cheer. Even worse is sitting on their corpse. It is bad form. Just not good karma in my opinion. But that is entirely up to you.

Unless it’s a thief who suddenly jumped you from stealth with no warning. If you kill them, humiliation is in order. I prefer to sit next to them while they bleed out.

I would say it’s “bad form” to try and surprise someone like that…but hey! Whatever works right? Just don’t mind the humiliation.

Zodian.6597:

bhagwad.4281:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

It’s real. It just requires very high rank(70+) to loot or craft.

Are you sure you need 70+ to get this? This is a “precursor” in PvE and I just got “Storm” known in PvP as “PvP Water Scepter” and I’m just r34. Storm is a precursor too. I guess some precursors are rarer than others?

what is pve?

Player vs Environment. The regular mobs you fight in the open world.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

It’s real. It just requires very high rank(70+) to loot or craft.

Are you sure you need 70+ to get this? This is a “precursor” in PvE and I just got “Storm” known in PvP as “PvP Water Scepter” and I’m just r34. Storm is a precursor too. I guess some precursors are rarer than others?

Kreen.3925:

See if you can join a WvW guild or at least a PvX one that spends time there. If you are already in a PvE guild then ask if you can rep your new WvW one when in WvW. Being in a WvW guild will help you alot with finding a party, finding commanders to follow etc and they will look after you and explain things etc (I hope )

Its great that you have decided to try out WvW. Do you mind me asking why this latest patch has given you a reason to do so? Is it that culling is now a thing of the past or some other reason?

Now that there are rewards and progression in WvW, I feel I can put time into it and get something in return

So with the latest patch, I’ve finally got a reason to enter WvW. I know the basic mechanics – basically “Hold onto your Points! Seize theirs!”.

The problem is that it’s huge. So when I go in, I ask “Where’s help needed?” I get a name, spent some time finding it on the map. Then I’m on my way. Usually takes me 5 mins to get there and by that time it’s all over…if I even manage to reach it!

So I figure this would go easier with a party. I ask in map chat if there’s any slot open and no response – at least for the three or four times I’ve tried it.

Occasionally I catch a zerg and follow along…but I don’t really know what’s happening, or why the direction of the zerg changed, or where we’re going next.

So…how do you guys go about it?

As a mesmer, I’m happier with the longer duration of revealed. More time for me to target and damage.

Makade.8042:

This just in – OP exclusively plays overpowered classes, tries underpowered class and is now concerned about future ability to mindlessly faceroll other classes.

I’m the OP and this was pretty funny

You call the ability to stealth every three seconds a “nerf”?

I like the way you think.

Crafting sounds like a such a nice idea and I really thought it’d be cool. But having leveled many professions to 400 now, it seems like a waste. Here’s why:

1. Much less hassle to just buy items off the TP. The mat cost and selling price on the TP is more or less the same as to make almost no difference. Why go through all that hassle then?

2. I use crafting just to level up. I almost never play 60-80 chars. I reach 60 then craft my way to 80 using one of the many pre defined guides like the ones found here: http://www.gw2wiz.com/. I do this because I can, but come on – it’s a bit dumb. All you need is a few gold and you’re done! I’m pretty sure this was not the intended purpose. I’m able to just skip a huge portion of the content by leveling up with crafting.

I guess I expected something else. The truth is that the TP makes it too easy to get whatever you want. When was the last time anyone here crafted a green or a yellow to use on their character instead of buying it off the TP without the added advantage of getting XP, completing achievements etc, or without doing it to sell stuff?

It sucks because it’s a wonderful concept. I just don’t know what can be done to fix it…

Roe.3679:

I kill a very high percent of thieves I encounter while roaming in wvw. Some people feel that Necros can’t roam, but I roam solo regularly with a condition build and I do just fine. But if you read these forums, apparently it’s not even possible. I don’t know where all these super thieves are, but I’m not encountering them on t1.

Unlike how I feel with any other toon, debatably OP profession or not, I never feel as useful in evey situation as I do with my necro. From 1v1s to Zerg fights to sieges, you can do it all. Get a good build ( Nemesis’ fear build is a good place to start) and you should be fine.

Don’t listen to the naysayers, this class has a huge amount of strengths that aren’t often talked about and it isn’t as weak as people will make it out to be.

Thanks, I’ll look into the fear build. I was going for pure conditions, but let’s give this a whirl! Won’t find out for a while till I reach 80 of course. But good to know that many necros things 1v1 with thieves is not a walkover.

I’ve decided to level a necro and am having an absolute blast with the class. I enjoy stacking huge AOE bleed stacks and other conditions on mobs and watch them drop like flies. In fact, I haven’t felt this powerful in PvE with either my mesmer or guardian, both of whom I leveled to 80.

But I also PvP a lot. I run the immortal mesmer build almost exclusively and I’ve played against some awesome necros who inspired me to pick up the class.

But lately I’ve been hearing a lot about how necros suck 1v1 in sPvP and in WvW. I know they’re great in team fights…but I can’t help it. Unless I can hold my own in 1v1 situations I just don’t feel good about myself. I don’t want to travel with a zerg in WvW and if I can’t roam with security on my necro I’ll just feel I made a horrible class choice.

Specifically threads like this one dishearten me since it seems that thieves can gank you and I know that they’re very common roamers in WvW.

With my mesmer build, I don’t fear thieves at all. At all. I’ve soloed a thief and guardian, a guardian and ele, and two thieves in separate encounters and come out on top. For me to feel that my necro will be powerless 1v1 against a thief is really a blow to my self image! I haven’t leveled my necro to 80 yet (I fully intend to) and till that time I’m keeping her out of both WvW as well as sPvP and tPvP. I like to learn to play a class well in PvE before trying them out in advanced play.

But like I said…I’m a bit sad. I want to know this – how much of it is truth, and how much is myth?

All things (including skill levels) being equal, can a necro stand up to a thief?

Kaon.7192:

bhagwad.4281:

Kaon.7192:

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

Note how I said delay the initial stomp, not avoid it.

In most 1v1 situations, if you go down, that is essentially the end of the fight. Any class in downed state will be stomped or just simply DPS’d to death by a decent player at that point. All anyone CAN do is delay when the enemy can land the stomp, hoping that an ally will make it in time for a res.

In a 1v1 situation with Mesmer vs Thief, any decent Mesmer SHOULD be using their downed skill as soon as he goes down, while the Thief is still targetable. Not doing so is a sign of lack of judgement or experience or reaction speed, or any combination of the above, because as you say, when the the Thief cloaks, you will loose your ability to target him with your downed 2.

Against any decent Thief this is the optimal course of action the Mesmer can take, because it will delay the initial stomp by a good 3-4 seconds. Will it turn the fight around? Most likely not. SHOULD it turn the fight around for him? Of course not.

The downed state is a team oriented mechanic. Without a teammate around, when you go down, it is by design that you should end up dead against any decent player. The only thing that some classes have control over, is when, and sometimes where, that happens.

The downed state adds another level of play. If the thief has 200 hp left he shouldn’t be able to stomp me. With stealth, he can. I can delay even invulnerable/stability players. But stealth is clearly something that’s akin to cheating.

Kaon.7192:

bhagwad.4281:

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

All the non-initiative sources of stealth are cooldown-based. So the same argument can be made for the availability of multiple sources of stability/invulnerability for other classes. The Thief has 3 on-demand cooldown based stealths. This is comparable, albeit lacking for the most part, to the number of stability/invulnerability sources most other classes have.

Considering Stability/Invul are the technically superior sources of stomp securing, especially in a team setting, and that we have 0 access to said superior sources that could mean the difference between a failed or successful stomp, which could then in turn alter the outcome of a teamfight, I do still believe this should be considered balanced.

For the Heal button to be available for use it would have to mean the Thief didn’t HEAL in the last 30s of the fight for god’s sake, why would stealth stomping even matter at that point.

Like I said, it’s multiple sources. If it’s not heal it’ll be something else. One way or the other a thief is very likely to be able to stealth during any fight. And that is something other classes cannot do.

More importantly like I mentioned earlier, stealth has no counterplay for classes whose downed skills require targeting. Even invulnerability and stability have counterplay. You can move away from them. But with stealth, you can’t.

Give me an invulnerable opponent stomping me over a stealth guy any day. Absolutely any day.

Kaon.7192:

Another point I would like to mention is that most other stomp securing mechanics counter your target’s allies’ attempts to save him/her as well. Whereas in a stealth stomp you are still vulnerable to every form of cc in existence, and one of the major pillars of stealth, confusing your current position, is rendered moot due to the fact that they know exactly where you’re standing for those 3 seconds.

Immunity from the other CC effects that players throw at you is often the difference between a successful stomp and an unsuccessful one. And the prospect of taking a player out of play for certain is most definitely worth blowing a long cooldown utility. If not, you wouldn’t see stability/invul stomps in the current meta to begin with. The thief has 0 access to reliable stomp securing options like invul and stability, so in return, we’re granted a semi-reliable way of securing stomps that only works on a subset of classes that stability/invul works on, but can be activated more frequently at the cost of our actual combat effectiveness. This alone was not enough to make up for the lack of a reliable stomp securing mechanic, so they also gave us one of the only ways to save teammates, with good coordination, from these stomp securing mechanics, which is also stealth.

This combined with my posts above is why I believe stealth stomp is more or less balanced in its current state.

If something is not 1v1 balanced, it is not balanced.

Kaon.7192:

bhagwad.4281:

Taril.8619:

bhagwad.4281:

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

• Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
• Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
• Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

Kaon.7192:

bhagwad.4281:

Taril.8619:

bhagwad.4281:

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

• Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
• Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
• Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

Zikory.6871:

bhagwad.4281:

This is clearly unintended.

How is it unintended? Its been in the game since the start. If it was unintended they would have addressed the issue and made changes. They haven’t…Stealth stomp isn’t something that came about due to other changes they made in the game, its not new…

By that logic any bug that hasn’t been fixed so far was intended…

ensoriki.5789:

I find stealth stomping is mediocre as hell outside of 1v1 and usage of Shadowstep or Shadow return + some kind of instant movement skill.
Why? People just blow up the corpse with aoe sometimes and or CC.
Very common in spvp. In WvW I never saw it common, not that it didn’t work, people just wouldn’t utilize it to marginalize a thief’s efforts.

You lost me at “outside of 1v1”. Who cares about non 1v1 situations?

Taril.8619:

bhagwad.4281:

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

• Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
• Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
• Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Taril.8619:

bhagwad.4281:

Simple answer – none of them are spammable. These are skills with long cooldowns that require me to carefully save them till needed. Not like stealth which thieves can enter into at any time.

What does that matter if you only care for 1v1? Blowing a cooldown to achieve a stomp which has little to no counter.

Unless you were infact talking about team fighting in which Stealth Stomp is easily counterable.

Stability stomp? You mean mantra of concentration? – You’re joking right?

I said that Mesmers have access to Stability stomp, I never mentioned how viable running with Mantra of Concentration was.

Also, both haste stomp and stability stomp have counters in that I can target them via my downed skills no matter how fast or how…stable.

Note the part when I asked about not just how you as a Mesmer deal with these stomps, but how you feel about other classes defences against what you have the capacity to do as a mesmer (A lot of classes use CC to avoid stomps, which don’t work against Distortion/Stability stomps for example)

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight. That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

It’s ok to be invulnerable or untouchable or stable for a short while provided those skills are rarely used and you have to save them up. It’s not acceptable for something like a stealth stomp to be so easily available to a thief with no consequences (read opportunity costs)

swinsk.6410:

Stealth stomp has counters. You gotta use knockbacks or knockdowns…

Just nerf it tho. Might as well just remove the stealth key from the thief so everyone can go around killing them.

Let’s punish any player who decides to play this class because we all hate stealthing.

Knockback or knockdowns….when I myself am in a downed state as a mesmer? Are you high sir?

Taril.8619:

bhagwad.4281:

I think we should make it clear that we’re only discussing 1v1’s. No one is interested in team fighting. As a mesmer, two of my main downed abilities require a target to activate.

So…

As a Mesmer, what are your thoughts on Distortion Stomp, Stability Stomp and Haste Stomp (Since Mesmers have access to all 3 as well as Stealth Stomp) keeping in mind what not only your class can do against them but also every other class can do against it be they downed or not?

Simple answer – none of them are spammable. These are skills with long cooldowns that require me to carefully save them till needed. Not like stealth which thieves can enter into at any time.

Distortion – 60 secs CD (plus you need at least 2 illusions to make it last 3 seconds with the illusionary personna trait)

Haste (I assume time warp) – 210 seconds

Stability stomp? You mean mantra of concentration? – You’re joking right?

Also, both haste stomp and stability stomp have counters in that I can target them via my downed skills no matter how fast or how…stable.

I think we should make it clear that we’re only discussing 1v1’s. No one is interested in team fighting. As a mesmer, two of my main downed abilities require a target to activate.

It’s pretty clear that stealth stomping is something that the designers overlooked and which will be fixed soon.

Zikory.6871:

bhagwad.4281:

For those who’re saying there’s no way backstab can hit for 14k, that’s nonsense. When I was running a GC mesmer, this happened to me. And I’m a r34 player – I know what’s reasonable damage and what isn’t. But this post isn’t about whether or not BS damage is OP, so let’s leave it at that.

Literally happened withing half a second down from 100% health. I no longer run this build, but seriously – it astonishes me that people who’re supposed to be familiar with the thief say it can never hit for that much.

Remember this is sPvP and everyone is fully ranked up.

Couple things, your rank means nothing, stating your a r34 only means you have spent time in sPvP, it doesn’t adjust your stats in anyway or reflect your skill.

Also no one stated 14k was not possible, we were stating that back stab alone can not do 14k. Things like full bloodlust stacks, high stacks of might, and Vulnerability stacks, along with how the thief was traited (which your post doesn’t reflect) could possibly boost back stab to do more. Noting that a thief (by him self) can not stack 25 stacks of might and put high stacks Vulnerability on prier to the opener.

Sorry but your image doesn’t fully support your argument.

I never wanted this to turn into a backstab damage thread. The fact is that it can easily do 5-6k and a skill that offers such damage potential should not be spammable with no costs.

Like I said, I want even ranged stealth attacks like Sneak Attack to come under this umbrella. It’s a bit ridiculous to see the shots coming and having the thief still stealthed and untargettable.

Dasorine.1964:

you have to get the perfect situation to hit that hard and be full out GC yourself and as others have said, other classes can hit just as hard with less limitations.

No class can hit that hard without me seeing them coming a long way off.

Anyway, this is not about whether or not BS damage is high. That point has been done to death elsewhere. This is just for those who say this damage can never ever happen. Here’s another one with 10k damage. I didn’t even see the thief or know he was there.

We can discuss a lot of things about stealth mechanics, but please don’t say that this kind of damage is impossible or even rare in regular sPvP.

For those who’re saying there’s no way backstab can hit for 14k, that’s nonsense. When I was running a GC mesmer, this happened to me. And I’m a r34 player – I know what’s reasonable damage and what isn’t. But this post isn’t about whether or not BS damage is OP, so let’s leave it at that.

Literally happened withing half a second down from 100% health. I no longer run this build, but seriously – it astonishes me that people who’re supposed to be familiar with the thief say it can never hit for that much.

Remember this is sPvP and everyone is fully ranked up.

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

A backstab can hit a light armored class for 14k damage. So it’s just plain wrong to say that the damage is low. Let me know if you want screenshots.

Go ahead. Like I said, make an argument. Be sure to provide some trait and gear info though and not just damage numbers.

We’ve already established that it’s “light armored”. Unless you’re saying that light armored glass cannons are not viable in sPvP that is…

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

I thought you’d say that. And my response is my post is not just about BS. It’s about any stealth skill like Sneak Attack (which is also ranged).

Btw, saying you have to pull of multiple backstabs to skill someone assumes you’re relying on just one skill to down a person. I think most thieves are more skilled than that.

Ugh, now you’re just going in circles. I’m done here unless you can make a more convincing argument other than you can “spam” stealth skills and that stealth skills deal “massive damage”. If it’s not giving thieves OP damage potential or OP defense penetration, then a nerf isn’t necessary.

By the way, I was not implying that I only use backstab as my source of damage, I was implying that Killshot can potentially one shot a light armor class while backstab cannot, but I get the impression that you think a backstab can be a near one shot kill since you seem to be convinced it does SO much damage.

A backstab can hit a light armored class for 14k damage. So it’s just plain wrong to say that the damage is low. Let me know if you want screenshots.

Lucky Shot.7650:

I main thief and I do agree with TC but instead of revealed on block I’d rather have stun 3 secs on block, after all you’re hitting a hard wall with your attack, it should throw you out of balance. Revealed on miss or evaded is fine though. Being able to repeat BS indefinitely is not fair especially taking into account we can stealth 100% of the time as things work now and we don’t even pay a price to stealth aside for some trivial initiative nobody cares about or some low cooldown utility.

Not getting revealed on a failed backstab is not the only thing I would change though, there are a lot of thing about thief that are op and/or do not make sense:

I’d lower BS damage. I hit for about 6000-7000 with backstab, that is way too much. I also play warrior, and I hit for about 1500 with Chop. Now, BS deals FOUR TIMES the damage that Chop delivers, that is clearly op due to the amount of damage and it also doesn’t make any sense: how would a tiny dagger deal four times the damage an axe deals? And don’t try to sell me the “but backstab is harder to land because you have to be behind an opponent, you have limited time and you have to be close range” argument: guess what Chop also is hard to land since you have limited time (opponent killing you) and you have to be melee range.

Heavy armor should negate any form of dagger damage: a lightweight weapon couldn’t in any way pierce through a steel plate. Go knife your car’s engine and try yourselves. I did, and guess what my car still works and my kitchen knife shattered, mom was really angry. Heavy Armor should also negate shortbow damage for the same reason.

I’d remove Break Stun from Shadowstep. We already have plenty of stun breakers assigned to our best utilities. Also, I’d remove cure conditions since it doesn’t make any sense: in real life, when people teleport they don’t heal their wounds…

… nor they do when becoming invisible, so why HiS should remove conditions?

Damage also should knock us out of stealth, it should require a lot of concentration to keep such an op spell up, so any damage should shake our focus and thus remove stealth.

When set afire, bystanders should be able to see the flames when we’re stealthed. How do we cloak fire is beyond me. Similarly, when stealthed armor and weapons should stay visible.

While stalthed, people should be able to target us with tab or by clicking where we stand even if invisible. After all, physically we are still there.

I’d halve our base HP also. A thief, a thin and fragile fighter, has the same HP as a guardian, a heavy armor wearer trained to fight on the frontlines. How they came up with our base HP is beyond me. Also, for the above statement, 10 vitality should raise our HP by 1 point , since I, for instance, hang around with 18000 hp.

I think everybody who doesn’t agree with TC knows not being revealed on a failed backstab is op but is fine with it because they don’t want to give up their opness, otherwise they would actually have to learn to play the class, low skilled players that now can beat everything just because they play an op class would be forced to quit thief of learn to play.

Instead I’m more concerned about keeping balance since now thief is clearly op as you can easily tear trough any bunker spec, and that’s why in tPvP you can only find five thieves teams. Seriously, in tPvP thieves are everywhere. I’d happily welcome any nerf that makes thieves more in line with other classes, so pvp will be more challenging for me since I’m getting tired of winning single handedly against other teams in sPvP, provided they don’t run thieves.

I’m the parent poster and this is pretty kitten messed up. You’re probably joking of course, but one never knows…

You are joking right?

addikt.1270:

bhagwad.4281:

Everyone is only talking about BS. But my main point is with any stealth skill like Sneak Attack using a pistol. That doesn’t require positioning now does it?

yea! lets just nerf everything a thief has. because you cant handle it.

Red herring or strawman. Not sure which one

Dasorine.1964:

it also doesn’t do much damage and because its multi hit it would burn through your main complaint ANYWAY.

My main complaint is spammable skills that have no CD. If I have a projectile absorb dome for 1 second, it’s useless because the thief can simply rehit the skill with no downside.

How about making stealth skills use initiative if not a cooldown?

Brassnautilus.2941:

Kaon.7192:

Brassnautilus.2941:

Kaon.7192:

because every other damage heavy skill will be put on a cooldown after getting dodged. Why should we get a second, third or fourth chance?

war adrenaline moves that missed don’t burn their adrenaline, and they can swap to redo (just in a different form) with no CD.
seemed fair and square to me.

Oh but you’re forgetting swap has a CD.
And this is offset by the fact that the only heavy damage burst skills for warriors are eviscerate and kill shot, and those two are not exactly chain-able for obvious reasons.

And to be clear I’m not claiming warriors not loosing adrenaline after missing is balanced. Quite the opposite, in fact.

like people already told you, adrenalin moves required no positioning and there’s no limited window to perform them. Stealth is only 3 sec (since our trait is currently bugged and does not give the 1 extra sec), and bs required positioning within that small window.

Make killshot and asseverate must be from the back.
how about misses or blocks drain half of the adrenaline that was built up?
or, how about give wars a 3 second window to use adrenaline moves, and if not performed within that time then the adrenaline goes away, that’d be fair huh?

Everyone is only talking about BS. But my main point is with any stealth skill like Sneak Attack using a pistol. That doesn’t require positioning now does it?

Since thieves can choose when to go into stealth, if warriors have the same choice then no one will complain if they have a 3 sec window to activate their adrenaline skill. And if you’re comparing the two, you should be ok with stealth skills having a 2 second cooldown on miss/block/evade.

Dasorine.1964:

Also the phrase “Your bad and you should feel bad” comes to mind.

Backstab already has a lot of downsides that other comparable skills do not, coupled with the differences between the thief and other classes that have potent skills there is already lots of downsides balancing out backstab.

It really is easy to avoid, against many you’ll be able to almost totally nullify its damage using just wasd with no dodging or skill use.

As I said, this is not just about BS but about any stealth skill that can be spammed ad infinatum.

Daendur.2357:

bhagwad.4281:

Daendur.2357:

bhagwad.4281:

Daendur.2357:

The whole thief class doesn’t have cooldowns on skills… why tu put cooldown to backstab ? just because it deals more damage ? we already said that that damage is there because of a state (stealth) and position requirement.
So no, I wouldn’t agree with a 2 sec cd on bs.
tbh if you, as a mesmer, die by a thief, there’s something wrong with you, not with BS nor stealth.

Backstab uses initiative just like every other thief skill? As far as I know that’s not the case. Am I wrong?

Backstab is available only from stealth. How do you gain stealth ?

I see…so if CnD merely gave you access to BS without the stealth you’ll be completely ok with that?

Ahem..ahem.

With increased BS damage, to balance the lack of surpriseness, yes. Of course multiple times in a 3-4 secs window.

So the cost of CnD is not just for BS as is, but for stealth as well. Given that you can regenerate initiative when going into stealth and also recover initiative while in stealth, that’s not really a very high cost at all…

Out of all the posts here, not one person has complained about the cost of CnD. Because it’s minimal. To say you have a god given right to land a BS multiple times for the pittance cost of initiative is entirely disproportionate.

Also according to many posts here, there’s no real surprise since you know exactly where the thief is headed and when…

No? It doesn’t work that way?

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

Let me replace “back stab” will killshot and see how it sounds:

I am talking purely in terms of balance. What is considered skillful or unskillful is irrelevant here. As of right now, I can killshot to use up your block or to get rid of blindness on myself and then I can killshot again for damage. What is game breaking about that? It does not deserve the nerf you’re suggesting unless it makes my damage out put so great that it’s over powered.

Doesn’t work no? I mean even killshot being blocked has a CD. If you’re ok with steal skills having CDs, then we’ve found our solution!

That’s a bad example. Kill shot is a ranged attack, it doesn’t have to hit their back, and back stab only deals 2/3s the base damage that kill shot does. Rifles also deal 980-1200 damage while daggers do only 920-980. On top of all that, if the warrior has Attack of Opportunity they’ll likely inflict 10% more damage. You need to pull off multiple back stabs to kill someone, it is no where near comparable to kill shot.

I thought you’d say that. And my response is my post is not just about BS. It’s about any stealth skill like Sneak Attack (which is also ranged).

Btw, saying you have to pull of multiple backstabs to skill someone assumes you’re relying on just one skill to down a person. I think most thieves are more skilled than that.