to do this, we need to be more flexible about what we consider “good” matches. under the old system, “good” matches were essentially “the best possible” matches. under the new system, “good” matches may sometimes have to be merely “not horrible”, because one of the things the new system does is spread the pain of bad matchups across all the servers, rather than just a few that were stuck perpetually in bad matchups every single week under the old system.
-ken
I think these were all great points ken. I also see some problems with the blowouts. From a rankings perspective, the best server should win and move up. Yet, there is a handicap in terms of the way the points work out. And in the end the best server really needs to win by a sufficient amount to justify its superior position in the rankings in order to move up.
This system ostensibly works well, if we assume that most people who are playing have the goal of achieving maximum server points. ANet has done a great job of tying loot and wvw rewards into this to encourage that goal for players. Unfortunately, when a server is dominating a match, people stop having fun on both sides, as they really don’t get enough time in meaningful fights. The lootbags also dry up for people on both sides. One side totally outnumbers the other and people on the losing side quit because they can’t kill anyone when completely outnumbered. Then people on the winning side get bored and quit too, due to the low population density of competition, there are no lootbags for them either. Then you wind up with server ratings that don’t actually represent the server’s potential, because players on the server are not just trying to advance their server rating, they are trying to have fun with the limited time that they invest into the game. You also wind up with situations where the winning side intentionally makes strategically poor decisions, (like bigger guilds not anouncing to everyone that a 30 man zerg is invading x tower), because they want a chance at an actual fair fight. So from the algorithm’s perspective, the sporadic drops in play on the winning server, coupled with occasional coordinated and successful rushes from the losing servers, start to make the servers seem more evenly matched than they really are. The algorithm then pushes them closer together so that a similar matchup is more likely in the future.
So I guess what I’m getting at is that you have the potential for odd feedback loops in this system, just as in the old one. The variability may remedy this to some extent. But I think, when it comes down to it, the problem is really a massive disparity in populations between servers.
I think allowing free transfers under limited conditions may help as well. For example, if a server loses 3 matchups in a row, maybe allow guilds to queue up for a limited number of free transfers to it in the following week. Or you could have the cost of transfers scale with wvw rankings, so a losing server becomes more desirable to a moderately sized guild that is tired of blowouts on major server. I think the problem with this system as it stands is that it doesn’t account for the impact that it has on player behavior. Players do not like blowouts, and will react to them accordingly, either wanting to leave losing servers for ones that win (which I believe would be bad for wvw as a whole), or wanting to leave winning servers for ones with more challenging and consistent matchups (which would be good for wvw).
Ideally, wvw should be working towards a condition where numbers are more or less equal across servers, and superior tactics and coordination are the main drivers of success. At that point, I think this system would become fun, and achieve the stated goals of exposing players to different playstyles (rather than different sized zergs).
Also, some people have suggested ANet may have ulterior motives in all of this…that’s just silly, they are trying to fix big problems in a complex system. The best we can do for them is give them simple and honest feedback.
CD-SOS-SBI were matched for months and TC is closer in rating to SOS than SBI is. Your example is the system actually working. The problem is SOS got so used to easy wins that now they’re facing opposition more suited to them, they’ve all packed up and gone to PVE. CD is a different story, their matchup this week is rough.
As a TC player, I’m seeing this whole thing from the other side, and I see SoS trying, and even doing very well during their active hours. The problem is numbers – same as in the matchups you described. This is also why CD is doing so poorly in this matchup. The thing is it’s not fun to play when you know that no amount of skill will make a difference considering the numbers of players (as I felt last week vs SoR). Now on the winning side, I’m feeling that it’s no fun to win when you know that numbers are the only reason you won…
This is not to mention that during off hours when TC is dominating all the borderlands, the only competitive map is EBG, and the queues are ridiculous. Meanwhile the borderlands are nearly empty and completely blue. The only action to be had in the borderlands for the winning team is killing NPCs and escorting yaks. Maybe defending camps occasionally from solo players trying to flip them. If there is a group of 20 opponents on one of those maps, it’s a race to get to them to try to get a hit in. Someone mentioned getting dragon coffers as drops in wvw…the problem is the only kills I’m getting these days are centaurs. So I may as well be doing pve.
Another thing about higher ranked servers is that part of coverage is defending what we’ve already got. Being a good citizen on these servers includes boring stuff like sentry duty. Sentry duty is usually broken up by the occasional roamer or spotting a zerg. So it’s not completely boring and you get to feel important occasionally…yet that sort of thing so rarely happens in these matchups, but to maintain a decent ranking we’ve still got to play those roles, or we’ll lose stuff to ninja rushes. But since there aren’t enough people on the opposing teams to challenge various areas on various maps consistently, sentry duty just gets even more boring. And so then the game becomes – wait until the opponent is too bored to play, then score some points.
This all assumes that our goal is to have the most points, and it’s not. I don’t care how many points my server has, except that I want to have roughly even matchups. I want to be challenged when playing, not handed an easy victory or inevitable defeat. SoS gained ranking points last week, so one might assume that they are happy that they got paired up with TC and SoR then…similarly I’m sure CD will improve their ranking this week. I can’t imagine any of them are pleased by this, because they just want to have fun playing, not to win with no fun.
whelp newest update from Tarnished Coast, we pretty much have everything except for EBG right now. And there’s an hour queue to get in there.
I just got owned by a CD thief in the CD borderlands in a 1v2, and that probably got them some good points. Unfortunately the reason I got owned is because, due to boredom I’ve taken to solo roaming on a lvl 8 naked necro…also the other guy that got owned was a random lvl 40 ranger, also solo roaming.
I’m just pointing this out because one of the things that ANet said was a stated goal of these matchups is for the lower tiered servers to get a sense of how the higher tier servers play, and learn from their amazing strategy.
Unfortunately what winds up happening is the higher tier server brings their A-game for the first few hours, then they just start tooling around because there are not enough opponents to fight. So not only do the higher ranked servers get a boring matchup. The lower ranked servers wind up losing to a bunch of people’s alts that they don’t even have all the skills unlocked on, simply because of numbers. They will win an even match, because of course I’m an underleveled noob, but they don’t get even matches for the most part….and either way it’s not really fun for anyone.
As a TC player, I don’t really care about the points moving up or down, but TC is now severely outmanning SoS and CD. It’s not a fun matchup for anyone.
I was on the receiving end of this last week vs SoR…and now on the giving end, I see it’s not really fun at all. Sure we were happy to be winning again, but then the game became about spot the enemy zerg, and race over there to whipe them hopefully before the other friendly zerg gets there. There is really not much challenge, and I anticipate the main challenge this week will be keeping people interested in wvw.
A few things about the original post stood out to me so I’ll address each, as someone who plays both mesmer and thief in equal amounts in wvw and pve.
One, you start saying you’re not here to whine, and although you phrase it fairly politely (which I do appreciate), you’re still asking for a nerf. You also started your own thread for this, when there is a nearly identical thread like two posts below, and hundreds of similar threads on the thief forums….so just know that it will likely be received in kind. Also, many posts in both the thief and mesmer forums offer simple counters to thieves, and as mentioned here, mesmers have them in droves. I would really appreciate if before demanding nerfs, you would check and look for counters on the forums. As a fellow mesmer player, I hope you would understand the frustration of having your core mechanics nerfed into uselessness…the confusion nerf for example was completely excessive, and was there just to appease complainers who couldn’t master concepts like “stop auto-attacking” (also a heavyhanded super-nerf to glamour builds, which were sort of op’d in wvw…but could have been handled better).
Second, you said that you are pretty confident in most 1v1 and 1v2 scenarios. Yet you are simultaneously complaining about the one class that gives you trouble, being OP’d. Yet you have a build that is consistently able to simultaneously take on two opponents. Do you not see the irony there? Now I get that it all depends on the opponent’s skill level, and once anyone gets to a decent skill level, working with a build with a high skill ceiling, 1v2s or 1vXs become possible. Still, every build has a few builds that give it trouble, and in a balanced game, this is how it should be…unless it is an intentionally balanced build that then should be balanced by having a fair shot at any class, but having to work for it.
Lastly, thieves don’t really give decent mesmers a hard time. Just had a short duel with a mesmer in wvw on my thief and wound up running away. Between the chaos storms/chaos shields, phantasm damage, distortion and confusion, it was difficult to bring him down at all, meanwhile I was taking all kinds of damage every time I uncloaked. I played well with terrain and positioning, using line of sight to avoid greatsword hits, but still wound up having to run for it. I was outplayed by someone who knew his build, and being a half decent thief, I managed to get out while the getting was good. Your build seems like it’s in the mid-range with armor, but otherwise fairly survivable, as a mesmer player, I know that mesmers can also be very survivable. I also know the joy of using focus to pull thieves out of shadow refuge, among other things. I also know about using blink and staff 2 to chase down fleeing thieves and elementalists. I also know that mesmers can pack either very good consistent and easy to apply single target damage in a phantasm build, which will completely protect you from a thief…or that mesmers can do amazing burst damage with shatter builds, which will outright kill a thief. You just need to land one shatter.
regarding lore, that’s just silly…everything in this game is magical, but thieves shouldn’t be? they’re like ninjas and theyy have ninja powers, which are often magical. ANet gets to set the lore in their own game, and if they decided thieves are a blend of physicality and magical stealth/teleports, it’s really up to them. And it’s hardly genre shattering.
regarding “perma” stealth. there’s no perma about it. Every form of stealth except the heal gives away the thief’s location. So chaining these together gives a rough sense of the thief’s location to anyone watching…unless the thief is very skilled at hiding, or those looking don’t know what they are doing.
The key skill in perma-stealth is black powder, which drops a red circle on the ground, that the thief has to heartseeker through multiple times if they want long term stealth. aoe the circle and you make the thief run out of initiative and lose stealth, run away, or hurt himself. Stand in the circle, and the hs will hit you causing the thief to be revealed.
shadow refuge gives a long stealth, but is a clear tell. big aoe dots on the shadow refuge hurt. put one down covering 3/4 of the sr and you can guess where the thief is. pull/push the thief out before sr is done, and he becomes instantly visible.
really, there are so many ways to handle thieves. so it really breaks down like this: noob thieves can annoy/gank noob players if they’re not careful. good players can kill noob thieves. good thieves can kill some good players if they make mistakes or build too glassy. good players can also force good thieves to run away. Good thieves are mostly not dying, because they know when to run, and have the tools to do it. When good thieves make mistakes with awareness, they can get cc’d and die.
there’s a third option, don’t allow one server to have more then twice the numbers of the other two oppositions combined on one map at a time, would spread the population out across the maps, and cause guilds to spread to other servers to avoid queue’s.
that’s only fair to servers who are losing the blowout. for servers that have queues at all times, it means making it virtually impossible for people to play wvw at certain times (because the opponents don’t have anyone on). It also allows the possibility of an “all NPC” defense strategy.
The problem as I see it is that ANet is treating the differences between servers as purely quantitative, when really it’s qualitative. As far as I can tell, T1 used to be about massive zerg vs zerg fights and ensuring round the clock coverage. Some people really like this style, others don’t. Plenty of people wanted the option to have a mix of zerg and small-group tactics, which is what T2 is like, but also with decent coverage. T3 is a lot of that but with less coverage still. People in each tier were mostly working for the medium term goal of winning and holding keeps, but weren’t usually really trying to move up the ranks as a server (except maybe the tier 1 servers).
This is why I compared it to separate leagues in sports. People playing in rec league teams do not want to go up against major league teams…at least not on a regular basis, and vice versa. The problem with that analogy is that in sports, everyone fields the same number of people. In WvW we also have to deal with a huge disparity in population, which makes these matchups more uneven and unfun.
So I know people have suggested that the numbers need time to play out, so the system can settle into some sort of equilibrium. Unfortunately, what I’m seeing, looking at the top three matchups right now is that servers that SoR and Fa are actually losing points because they are dominating, but apparently not hard enough. Meanwhile, severely outmanned servers like SoS are gaining points because they are hanging in there just enough. Unfortunately, this seems to mean that until SoR ensures that SoS can’t even make it out of their spawn alive, the two will continue to converge, points-wise, making this sort of matchup more likely in the future, not less.
Similarly, FA is falling in ranking, despite dominating their matchup, again making such a matchup more likely in the future. What I’m concerned with here is that blowouts do not seem to be a temporary thing until the system settles down, the system seems to be converging on increasingly uneven matchups.
Regarding the actual wvw gameplay, can’t comment there…been working on map completion this week…also rediscovered my interest in tower defense games.
I rarely look at those tags, and generally will try 1v1ing anyone…but one time I got drawn into a vicious rivalry with a crabtoss champion.
numbers are a real advantage in real war, but they require more planning and are less mobile, requiring supply trains to keep them going. the reason for this is that people in the real world take up space and consume limited resources, neither of which happen in gw2.
The problem for a game like this is if friendlies can body block friendlies, this leads to an obvious trolling scenario. likewise, if there is some disadvantage to a large group, there becomes an incentive to make sure that everyone pulls their weight (so, no trolling by accompanying a group, but not helping). This would also encourage experienced players to yell at inexperienced players, who are making the game harder for them, but not pulling their weight. The bottom line is there are many ways to maake the game not fun.
I would like to see disadvantages to larger groups, but I’m not sure what the answer is…maybe bigger maps? So the massive group can’t make it to every battle?
defender and disenchanter can be good in boss battles or phantasm builds, and if you make a build around them, some of the signets and mantras can do well pvp.
In wvw you can make great use of blink and portal, as well as null field and feedback.
Even mimic and arcane thievery can be great there, especially if you build for it.
so there are some obvious choices, but the others work well too.
Anet just caught a break with the announcement at E3 that TESO won’t be out until Spring 2014. Personally I hope Wildstar and Archeage come out well before then.
Yep I think that is why they are taking their sweet time and ignoring the angry customers.
Why don’t y’all just leave now. Free up a queue slot for someone who actually wants to be there.
Then you could stop coming on the forums and spouting drivel too.
you must be on a tier 1 server…there are only occasional queues in lower tier servers, which is why they’re getting steamrolled.
All I know is after a weekend of fail, TC managed to get a 60 man zerg together in SoR borderlands, and as we were running into their garrison, the servers went down. Not going to insult them, I’m sure its not intentional and servers on this scale are very complex and tough to keep up. but still….
Anyhow, let’s move the QQ back to our thread. Even if it was TC and their BFFs at FA against SoR, this would still be a blowout.
hehe…yeah you are right.
The fact is TC does ok during prime times for us, and we can slowly win stuff back. Unfortunately, as soon as there is a lull in numbers, it all goes south. It’s sad too because I seem to be winning most 1v1s and even do well when outnumbered 2-1 vs SoR. Most of them seem to build very glassy, which makes them scary in giant zergs but easy targets in small groups. The problem is, we’re often outnumbered 10-1.
Regarding the power of the 2v1…to my knowledge we have not been actively going after most SoS stuff. Today, we took SoS’s hills from SoR, but I have avoided even stealing camps from SoS. Doesn’t matter much though, they really don’t have the numbers even in their prime time to take heavily fortified keeps back from SoR.
The 2v1 worked nicely in the old system, where Dragonbrand, TC and FA were somewhat evenly matched, but one would tend to pull ahead. teaming up on the winner kept the game relatively even and interesting.
No I am on FA we have a 50k lead in points right now. It’s boring.
Ah….we miss you guys. If we had you in the matchup instead of SoS, it could have made for an interesting alliance, and maybe together we could be keeping SoR in check. Guess it’s always a possibility..
You can’t expect me to participate in WvW when we conquer all of the map when I am able to play. This is just a slaughterfest for my server and is not fun. I didn’t even play last night like I usually do every night.
I assume you’re on SoR…I spent a few hours today winning back parts of TCBL from you guys, we had garrison, we were escorting yaks there, building it up…We tried to ninja hills unsuccessfuly and then made a solid play for bay. At each point we were outnumbered, but we hung in there. Then I log off and come back like an hour later, just in time to see garrison go down, and the entire map is green.
I know this is not fun for anyone…SoR gets to feel superior for like 2 seconds, before they realize that it’s not even tactics or player skill that are winning the games half the time, it’s just superior numbers.
I feel like they’ve just decided to take over maps in brief shifts and then quit, because it’s not fun for them either…as defending stuff and spawn camping are the only things to do.
Someone also mentioned allying ourselves with SoS…that’s not really an option either, They can barely manage to take a single tower on their own map much of the time. We pummeled them last week when they were matched with us and FA…now they have to deal with this. It really makes it less fun for everyone involved. This has nothing to do with their skill level either. When we were well matched with SoS in terms of numbers, we had some good battles…this just rarely happened because they don’t have the same wvw population as us, and much less than SoR.
I understand that this will possibly change a bit over time – but frankly where my server stands right now in the rankings, I imagine we’ll be going up against the top tier servers fairly often, and losing like this (constantly outnumbered 10-1) is really not the kind of play that I’m looking for.
^and here’s the thing: as a TC player, I want to be in T2, and not T1. I don’t want to move up to a more competitive tier, where wvw participation becomes an obligation. I also don’t want to always have to wait for a queu when wvwing….or alternately, falling horribly behind when our bl is underpopulated. I don’t want to always have to be a part of a giant zerg ball. T2 was the right balance of these things for me.
Going up vs SoR I know that to have a fair chance, we would have to lose all that. we would need to accept wvw as an obligation while playing, and we’d have to populate the server enough (even though capped already) so that wvw would always be full…and then we’d have to deal with queues all the time in each BL….if we had all these things going, we may be roughly evenly matched, or at least it would be more competitive. unfortunately, wvw would also lose its appeal for me. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with SoR, but it’s not for me. So now we either need to change or get used to losing a lot.
So, let me make sure I understand this “stabilize” argument…since the points on the server are (loosely) determining the matchups, then as people who are getting dominated will lose points and eventually will more or less be matched up with their peers, while those who are dominating will gain points and then be matched up with their peers…and in the end we’ll wind up with a roughly stable system that is not too different from 1 up 1 down, except that they don’t always move up or down.
So then as TC is currently placed, we need to consider that we will be going up SoR and other higher tier servers fairly frequently, so we just need to figure out a way to handle them. The problem as I see it is that TC is really struggling for coverage compared to SoR…yet, we have people on other servers trying to move to TC and unable to because it is overpopulated. So it seems that a server that has more of a mix of pve/pvp and wvw players is penalized because it is impossible to get the wvw population necessary to provide consistent coverage. The way I understand the situation; if we really wanted to be more competitive, the most obvious solution would be to convince pve/pvp players to either play wvw or leave the server – this seems absurd, but is really our best shot at competing. I think ANET needs to solve this problem, or the reliance on numbers and coverage alone in WvW before we can see games that are both varied and competitive.
I’m on TC, and I can say that I really did enjoy a few parts of the matchup with SoR right after reset…when things were still sort of uncertain, and we did have some interesting back and forth. Now SoR has dug in, and playing wvw is more frustrating than it ever has been for me. I imagine others are just as frustrated because I am seeing fewer people from our side (or maybe I just never noticed such a huge disparity in numbers before).
I feel worse for SoS, as they were already having a hard enough time staying in the game vs us and FA last week. This week they are just getting trounced…every time I’ve seen an SoS today, they’ve had an outmanned buff – even in their own borderlands, which was completely controlled by SoR. I imagine that players just got sick of it and stopped playing.
I like the concept of switching things up, but as others have mentioned, the disparity in skill is one thing, and that turns a close fight into a victory/loss that may be educational for both sides. The consistent difference in coverage makes it impossible to come back from losses well, and the main calculation from our side seems to be: can we flip this tower before the massive zerg shows up, because we’ve only got 15 people and if they get here we will definitely lose. I can only imagine for SoS it is more like “is it worth trying to flip camps, or should I just run some fractals?”
I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining too much, I respect the decision by ANET to try this out, and I am truly impressed with the coordination that SoR is showing, and have nothing but respect for them…it just feels like major league vs minor league vs little league (please don’t take offense, SoS…I’m not referring to skill, really it’s mainly a coverage thing). It’s a real shame too, because forming an alliance with SoS might have been a great way to handle it, but they are understandably demoralized and not consistently showing up in numbers that would make a difference.
Same bug here…really want that crabgrabber tag
interesting….thanks for the education guys, I suppose it works really well in condition/tank builds?
I rebound my utils to q,e,z,x,c so they’d be near my fingers. works out nicely and I’ve always got blink at the ready.
You can ignore utilities in PvE if you want to be a mediocre damage class…really though, the mesmer utilities are some of the best in the game, don’t know why you wouldn’t use them.
OP – you seemed hesitant about the reaction you might get from people here. I hope you were pleasantly surprised…we can be very helpful when asked politely. I play both thief and mesmer, and as a mesmer, I love taking on thieves…I’m fairly tanky though. As a thief, I really hate going against mesmers.
I’d like to add that there are two main archetypes to look out for in wvw/pvp: Stealth based (dagger/pistol or dagger/dagger) and dodge based (Sword/Dagger). They play very differently from eachother.
People have pretty much covered stealth, but here are a few other things. Our heal that stealths us is a bit longer cast-time (1s) so if you see that hand going up, you might be able to interrupt it.
Also mesmers have the best counter to shadow refuge. Thieves usually use it to get out of tough situations, or to res a fallen comrade, or pull off a stealth stomp. If you see it go down, and are running focus, you can immediately drop into the void to pull the thief out of it, and they will lose stealth. For that matter, if you see them pull out their gun to fire black powder as d/p, they are about to heartseeker through it to stealth. You can drop ItV and pull them out, and then it’s just a harmless heartseeker (never pulled this off, but I believe it’s possible…if you catch the blackpowder before it’s completed. Doing this will leave the thief unstealthed and low on initiative…if they haven’t already, they will start blowing cooldowns on utilities to get into stealth. Chaos storm also fits nicely over our stealth fields, and can do some nice bonus damage.
Regarding the acrobatic builds – they are sooooo glassy. They can steal boons, which is amazing, but they rely heavily on evades and mobility to stay alive, and mesmers can counter this somewhat. Flanking strike hits somewhat hard, but it is easily telegraphed and gives you a second at the end to pull off a shatter, or blurred frenzy. It also usually telegraphs larcenous strike…so if the thief is being uncautious, they might spam right into LS, which roots them for its 1 sec casting time. If you have that blurred frenzy going, that’s some solid damage right there…immediately dodge/roll afterwards if the LS hasn’t been used. The other thing to know is that these builds tend to be strong vs boons, but light on heals and weak vs conditions. So staff works nicely here, as long as you’re not giving away any amazing boons. Confusion is also very effective, as this is a melee pressure build, and rellies on fast attacks and constant evasion up-time. Most likely, the thief runs away, when damaged somewhat and they will be very capable of doing this. Mesmers also have several good gap closers, so focus pulls, iLeap, and blink can all help you…but if you don’t catch them initially, you should probably give up the chase. Osicat on the mesmer forums has some video tutorials about catching runners….that sort of tactic may work somewhat with an s/d thief on the run, though there will be less room for error.
I think GS is a solid weapon choice and good for dealing solid aoe damage at range. for my tastes though, the gameplay feels limited and somewhat boring. I can certainly see why people use it, though. At lower levels, I imagine the damage differential isn’t noticeable, so it probably seems like an all-around inferior weapon, but it does good damage, and being ranged, lets you build somewhat glassy.
in pve? havent seen it much in wvw or pvp….in pve you have enough control over a fight that you don’t need utility as much.
try it out…I dont believe it works with bleeds/poison….once you try playing with it, you’ll see how (not) good it is….there are very few specific builds that use it, but it usually switches thief to hard mode.
tag means hitting a target so that when they go down you get credit (and loot) for the kill. It does have to be over a certain amount of dmg…but I dont know exactly how much.
also if you are in a party, it counts the total party dmg to see if people get loot, then anyone in the party who hit the target once gets loot. so it pays to party up.
not that bad with medium survivability the key is either mobility or stealth. to avoid focus fire.
I like to
go after damaged targets (either with shortbow, or teleports)
go after guys in the back of the enemy zerg, or on its flanks (out of position).
use shortbow and spam cluster/poison
use shortbow and spam blast finishers on friendly fields to give allies buffs
spam cluster/poison into a battle between the two enemy zergs, then cloak, back away and stand there while I pick up lootbags.
the hard parts are when the group has to run through aoe siege…make sure to save up dodges for this as you can die easily here.
the other issue with som, aside from reduced utility compared to the other two heals is the cast time. som’s active is painfully slow. in a thief that can barely afford to get hit twice, you start casting after getting hit once, and during that time, you’ll take at least 3k damage. it looks great on paper, but in practice, the signet feels clumsy and hard to use well.
I play a mesmer support build, focused on giving loads of boons to my team and aoe healing, while doing decent dmg. the other types of useful support are things like elementalists dropping their water fields and lots of stuff guardians do. there are many ways to support a team for every class. the problem is that the game does not help you out much in terms of user interface that gives feedback about the quality of your support. for example, a guardian might drop aegis on a teammate, but won’t easily know if that aegis just blocked 100 or 6k damage. the second problem with support is that those roles are not really rewarded in game (in terms of getting credit, exp, and loot for kills). so it’s not realistic to go full support, unless you’re just a generous person.
^fair enough…though when I play p/d (mainly in pve) I use 3 defensively as well, which makes for more interesting play…not sure how much this hurts my dps.
i tried p/p a bit, but it really does involve a lot of 3 spamming, which was boring for me. If you like the ranged approach, try p/d, which is a bit more viable (as a condition build). it also has more interesting game play. still not the best weapon for pve or pvp/wvw, but if ranging and kiting is what you want, it’s a good option.
as others mentioned, there’s also the shortbow, which is great for aoe dmg.
There are a few bunker condition thieves out there, who get their damage through bleeds, either with p/d cloaking and then attacking, or with d/d and spamming death blossom. Both of these still rely on stealth for survivability, though they do stay up longer than other thief builds. The hard thing is they have to work twice as hard for kills, since they can essentially take twice the hits of typical thieves…so instead of 3 hits to death, it takes 6. So imagine a glass thief takes 5 seconds to win a fight or stealth/retreat. During those 4 seconds, the thief may have to react to 3 attacks and keep from dying….it’s doable. Take the same scenario and replace with bunker condition spec, this may take closer to 20 seconds to win, and during that time the thief has to avoid 12 attacks. The thief has to outplay the opponent for much longer to win, and if they fail, they still can’t take many hits, except they’re being forced to face many more hits. This is why thieves go with glass builds…even when they try to go condition tank, they usually realize that they’re still glass, just more of a hard-glass pistol than a glass cannon. In addition, as a thief you quickly realize that a thief condition/tank build does not compare to engies, necros, rangers or mesmers in terms of condition damage or survivability.
I think you misunderstood, I was saying that if you tried to make an s/d build around signet of malice, you’d still wind up relying a lot on stealth, and thereby not benefiting from the attacks.
In p/p I can see how it sort of works, but that build seems very boring to play.
I know the s/p version is popular in pve, but that is also kinda weird in other settings.
I think it should scale with healing…it’s just hard where healing is in shadow arts. If you want to play, say an S/D evasion tank; you can’t really buff healing much, since you need points in acrobatics. So if you take the traits to have solid healing, you’ll also have access to stealth, and skills that make you heal/reset on stealth. Maybe if they lowered the scaling a bit and just made it a solid heal on hit.
I wanna emphasize something in the post I forgot to say. In this post he mentions the average thief has 12k hp, which is only around 100 vitality above the base hp. Essentially full glass cannon unless the thief is running alot of toughness.
Any of the other classes mentioned as examples of people who could counter what I did would have been horribly slaughtered by that situation if they were glass cannon. The possible exception is a heal/toughness bunker guardian who is also running contemplation of purity. Even then it would be a to the wire race between them dying to incoming damage and them getting the heal off because they would still be right within range of more incoming damage no matter what class they were facing.
The key here is that to survive a situation such as that you have to stun break, remove your conditions, and heal within a very short period of time. Both Shadow Return and Contemplation of purity accomplish the stun break and condition removal instantly, advantage being that shadow return teleports you out of incoming damage while contemplation leaves you in it with an aegis and regen as your hope/prayer to survive long enough to pop your heal.
Ok Ralather, we get it, your combo was so amazing that no class could beat it, and since a class managed to survive it, it must be overpowered. You win, ok? We all concede that thieves are overpowered because you didn’t win one time. But now you’ve got this victory to lord over us thieves…and while I use my social evasion skills to run away from this thread and never return. Please feel free to gloat in your victory, or just marvel at the irony of it.
one general recommendation for a thief switching from pve to wvw is to pplay a few games of hotjoin pvp first…
my reason for this is that there is a weird nervous rush that happens (at least for me) the first few times I play pvp in any game. it is hard to see past the nerves and stay calm, and therefore harder to stay in control of the fight. Pvp throws you right into a fight, so you can get this out of your system in an hour or two.
in wvw, there’s lots of time without seeing other players, or running to an ovjective…and basically that momentary panic will get you killed, then you still have to walk back to a good spot, and you’re still going to panic again…the nerves will still go away over time, it just takes longer, due to the down-time.
I play d/p and shortbow and have enjoyed doing runs in cof, ac and coe. zerky thieves are actually very solid dps in cof, and terrific in ac. the trick in all of those pve areas is understanding the battles and knowing when to dodge. this is important for all classes as 5% of the attacks you face can one shot kill you….it’s doubly important for thieves where that goes up to 25%.
as people mentioned the fotm in cof is lots of warriors and a mesmer, maybe a guardian running p1 in speed mode. though thief can keep up and contribute…even excelling in parts, many of those groups will kick you outright, because they want their easymode speed run and don’t want any deviation.
thieves are also very solid at farming events in orr…their aoe spam on shortbow means lots of tags and loot.
then again, you could always farm the borderlands.
so i guess the question for you is what is more important? maximum gold per hour? or getting decent gold per hour while playing the thief?
what permastealth really offers is great scouting and low-profit trolling (such as following a group and waiting for someone to make a mistake). Neither give thieves much in terms of loot, exp or glory, but they do take time. Scouting is useful to everyone in a server, doesn’t really annoy individual players all that much, and makes the game more tactically interesting. it lets thieves play an important group role, while also requiring patience and restraint.
all of the other complaints about getting out of tough situations or doing op’d damage as a surprise, those are issues with stealth as a whole. take away perma-stealth and those would still be issues….unfortunately, as others have mentioned, they’re not really balance issues, more l2p issues.
hi mechant, welcome! wish I could get my wife into the game..
I think it may be fun in a duo thief team to go either d/p and s/d or two d/p.
d/p gives you a great toolkit – gap-closers, interrupt, blinds, burst, perma-stealth (dark field + 3 heartseekers = lots of stealth).
s/d gives a “tanky” style of play that is very different and tough to play well.
the two together lets you do hammer/anvil tactics, where the s/d keeps the opponent busy, while the d/p whittles them down with the shortbow, before surprising them with a burst. s/d also gives boon stripping, allowing you to take on bunkers.
dual d/p means even easier access to perma-stealth, as you can share dark fields and shadow-refuges. if you coordinate, you can both burst someone at once, which can be very powerful.
either way, I’d recommend shortbow as the alternate for both as it gives lots of mobility on map…you can have races. you should be able to take camps together, kill dolyaks and take on the occasional stragglers in a zerg, etc.
I’m no pro, but I’ve been listening to the soac elementalist podcast…they recommended paying attention to water. water attunement lets eles heal up and reset fights. when they switch out of water, you have 10 seconds to get them down.
the other thing; vs scepter/x, watch out for phoenix in fire..it moves slow but at short range it can hit you, and hurts a lot.
people have been making s/d builds rellying on evades and teleports…it’s still hard in wvw when you get focus fired on.
The problem with thieves is that no matter what you do, you’ll still be somewhat squishy (especially if you put 0 points in shadow-arts -so no traited toughness). In wvw there tend to be situations where superior numbers are focus-firing on you. For example in a zerg v zerg fight.
Shortbow doesn’t have the range to stay far back and spam enough damage to be worthwhile, so you kinda need to be up close. d/d absolutely needs to be up close…and if you’re not stealthing, then what; death blossom / heartseeker? These will get you targeted.
So now you’ve got a group of players focus firing on you and you’re already the squishiest class, even if you built (somewhat) tanky. So either you evade forever…which is impossible with cc. Or you have at least some access to stealth as a defensive tool. Think of it as /drop target. The goal is not to cheaply perma-stealth, but just to get people to switch targets so you can stay alive in a zerg v zerg battle. You need a way to reset aggro, if not the whole battle. S/D’s 2 skill gives you this option as well, so that may be more up your alley than stealth.
Even the D/D condition tank videos that I’ve seen out there use stealth once in a while to reset fights or get out when things go bad. These builds don’t really get the massive burst backstabs anyway, so even using the occasional backstabs isn’t really a “cheap” tactic in them. As you’re someone who is trying to play an “honorable” rogue, I think you should give s/d a shot, and see how it works for you.
Otherwise just accept some stealth as a defensive tool (if only that)
This post has taken a broader turn, and seems to be about whether thieves should be able to reset fights, stay stealthed and wait for inconvenient moments to strike. People have also talked before about counterplay…how the most important thing in a mechanic is whether it is fun to play against.
I was playing as d/p this morning with two guild mates, and we were trying to do some simple stuff like run supply. This other d/p thief kept following us like glue and attacking as we ran, looking for an opening. I brought him down to 25% or so several times, but we couldnt get a hold of him. By the end, we got to our destination, but each of us had been downed at least once (though not killed). At hills, a bunch of people joined in the chase and we found the thief and got him.
This whole experience was fun…much more fun than just running supplies, being paranoid about a thief behind us made for interesting gameplay. And I’m sure it was fun for the thief too. I was occasionally frustrated, but I’m glad I got to go up against a well-played and determined thief.
I also recently helped defend garrison, as the other server was trebbing the inner walls from afar, while the entire zerg rushed in. They left 3-4 people behind manning the trebs. I went in with some fellow thieves to take them out. The other thieves died, but I stuck around and kept dropping thieves guild and cluster bombs on the trebs, then stealthing and running away. Meanwhile, a guardian and necro kept ccing me. They even downed me in a shadow refuge, and I managed to port and heal to full just as the guardian was running toward me. I didnt single handedly take out the two trebs and their 4 defenders, but I did bring one down to 10%, while my server zerg whiped up their zerg and then came and took out the trebs. I like to think that my harrassing slowed down the treb shots a bit, and I certainly had fun.
I also think that in some way, the guardian and necro who were ccing me had a lot more fun than they would have without me there. then they would have just been sitting there watching someone else fire a treb.
so my point is that thieves in wvw create interesting and fun counterplay, even if you can’t reliably kill them…they are balanced enough so that they punish stupidity or arrogance, without really being able to single handedly turn the tide of a battle. I also think that we (or at least I) die plenty, same as other classes…though it may just be because I’m a noob.
So yeah, thieves are not all that squishy. People just play em squishy.
We’re getting side-tracked a bit here, but sure, you can make a bunker/glass anything…me I like bunkering on my mesmer. Thieves though, even when bunkering require a lot of active defense, as you mentioned – evades, because even a bunker thief doesn’t have the vitality/toughness to take a proper beating.
The reliance on a particularly active defense requires thieves, even bunker thieves to take stun breaks and reset tools…as you mentioned, you use hide in shadows as your heal, not signet of malice…why? because even a bunker thief is vulnerable to spike damage, and occasionally needs to get out of combat.
By the way, I appreciate that you’re taking non-standard builds, and having fun with them…that’s great. I also think it’s great to ask for advice on how to beat a specific skill/tactic. Here, I felt like the tone quickly deteriorated into QQing about how overpowered thieves are for being able to run away.
the thing about cooldowns vs initiative, is other classes wind up having “rotations” of skills, rather than spamming one skill. While this can pass as “skill” it still amounts to making sure you used all your skills on one weapon, then switching to another. There are of course more and less skillful ways of accomplishing this.
With initiative, the designed intent was to allow thieves to always have access to the best tools for a given situation. So no cooldowns means we can spam skills. Having the ability to spam skills also encourages us to do so, when one particular skill is the best for a given situation.
People complained about heartseeker spam, for example, but when an opponent is swifted, running away and low on health, heartseeker is the best tool (for d/d; as long as it doesn’t leave the thief overextended with no initiative), and spamming it makes sense.
spamming generally means one of four things,
1) there are no better uses for initiative in this moment, and there are no reasons to save it.
2) one skill is so much better than the others, that there is no reason to use them (one could make the argument that fs/ls fit this bill).
3) The other skills are so much worse, that it is not worth using them (one could also make an argument for why s/d should rarely use 4 and 5 skills).
4) The player is not thinking, and wasting initiative on the easy approach, rather than the right appraoch.
That 4th one is a dangerous trap for thieves, and it allows other players to exploit our mindless spamming by changing the situation so that continuing to spam is the wrong approach. Confusion vs s/d would be a good example of this (though, I think it was excessively nerfed, any other cc, like immobilize would also work well). Kiting and avoiding attacks while responding with ranged may also force the s/d thief to adapt or perish. Also consider that this gives Necros a much needed counter to at least one brand of thief…as they can turn boons into conditions.
There are generally two approaches to selecting utility skills:
1) Make you more specialized – compliment the build by taking more stuff that furthers your build’s main goals.
2) Make you more well-rounded – counter your builds weaknesses by giving you tactical options for difficult circumstances.
As a general rule you can also design builds to be flexible and able to adapt to a variety of situations, or highly specialized. The flexible builds should have a chance at defeating a variety of opponents, while the specialized builds should have a better chance of defeating a narrower range of opponents, while being vulnerable to others.
What the OP described is a thief who had a skill that helped him to handle a specialized build, not by handily defeating it, but by running away. The OP also listed all of the classes that he easily pwns with his build, and seemed to concede that necros have a right to win or challenge him, but thieves don’t. The problem here as I see it is that the OP used a very specialized tactic, that is in itself overpowered, except for the fact that it has a limited range (which balances it). The thief, seeing that he would not be victorious against this approach, decided to use a general utility skill to get away.
The OP also seemed annoyed that the thief was able to do this after being brought to very low health. What he does not seem to recognize is that it is very simple to bring a thief to low health. Any class can do it, any variety of ways. The goal of the thief is to make sure that the other class is dead before the thief. The challenge for the thief is in knowing how far to push this and how quickly to disengage, lose all of his offensive potential and go on defense. Of course, getting a guardian down to 5% health is a very different story…a guardian at 5% health has likely used all his heals and utilities and is practically ready to die, unless an important skill comes off of cooldown. A good thief at 5%-10% health, on the other hand, is experiencing a somewhat common situation where an escape is urgently required, but that assuming it is effective, the thief will survive. This tends to happen during chained CCs, when skills like shadow-step are particularly useful…is it fair that thieves can do this? Well it’s just as fair as guardians being able to tank through it, while still having a dps. It still leaves thieves with an important defensive option sitting useless on a long cool-down, and therefore being forced to decide whether to re-engage without an escape from CC, or to let both sides reset.
s/p is also very boring to play…it’s like warrior mode for thieves in pve. the /p is nice in general, but the rooted pistol whip just makes it boring and generally unworkable in pvp/wvw.
i’m not sure how to fix this, but I think maybe switching pistol whip to something with less damage, more utility and no self-root, would be a good way to balance out the whole set. everything else in there is great, but relying on pistol whip spamming for dps makes s/p not fun to play, and either overpowered (when whip did more damage) or underpowered (in its present state).
here are some possible ways to do that- make pistol whip be a medium-dmg short stun that also transfers a condition to oponent. this sort of mirrors the new s/d changes, so thieves could use this is a counter condition build, or just an interrupt focused build. survivability comes from blinds and interrupts and condition cleansing.
yup, the thing that balances it is the long cooldown on haste + the loss of endurance/endurance regen. by the end of that combo, the thief would have no initiative, no dodges and one unused utility skill. he could still juke around with sword 2, or swap to shortbow to run away, but he’d definitely be more of a sitting duck than your average burst thief.
look at the chaos maestro post…there are several variations on support/tank mesmer builds. regen + other boons + frequent aoe heals are all very possible.