Guild Wars 2

In short, I agree. Trading the ability to stealth for protection seems like a balanced trade in my opinion – combined with the fact that sword is incapable of the burst thieves are known for, it’d be a fun addition to the classes options.

I still insist there needs to be something else to tie the spec together however. Access to regen tops my list, but a “confusion on evade” (it’d have to be more than 1 stack tho, since A sword MH spec will rely on power and crit for damage) seems thematically relevant, fair, fun, and balanced imo.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

Well, now you know I wasnt trying to be a jerk, lol. No hard feelings.

None at all. I feel a bit foolish, but my incorrect info coming directly from the GW2 wiki itself helps a bit.

Softspoken.2410:

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

Softspoken.2410:

I could just be reading it wrong, but it seems someone thinks black powder can block projectiles. It can’t. That’s a functionality unique to smoke screen.

Yes that would explain a lot.

Actually deleted that post because sudden doubts of “What if I’ve just missed it all this time???” combined with the wiki stating Enemy projectiles passing through smoke fields will miss their target.

Of course, as is no surprise when it comes to the fine details on the wiki: that is not actually true. Just tested it in Heart of the Mists: both the ranger and the thief were completely uninhibited by black powder’s smoke field, and shot me down in the usual fashion.

Smoke screen blocked them nicely, as one might expect.

My fault then – I made the mistake of trusting the wiki and seeing the similarities between smoke screen and black powder. Ignore my ranting.

Stooperdale.3560:

Black power is effective against targets within the smoke and not effective against targets outside the smoke. That’s correct. You can still use the smoke field for combos and they may help you. A thief has plenty of ways to work around the perfectly reasonable limitations of one skill on one weapon, not least to shadow step directly to the ranged enemy.

The damage output of smokescreen is not really relevant. Many weapon skills in many classes do less damage than auto-shots. They are there for utility and support, just like black powder.

I listed the damage since I was making a big deal out of the initiative cost – if Black powder hit like CnD and still performed as it does now, my entire argument would be invalid, hence pointing out the low damage.

I’m not asking that smoke field do anything additional – it seems silly to me that smoke fields block ranged attacks, but due to the shape of the smoke field, black powder is worthless for blocking ranged attacks. Other abilities that can counter range have no bearing on my argument – I didn’t claim thieves have poor tools for countering range, or miss the fact that smoke can be used for combo’s, just that an initiative intensive ability that has a “blocks projectiles” effects is extremely poor at doing so due to its shape.

Perhaps the devs just used smoke as a shortcut, seeing as it gives stealth and blinds with finishers – if that’s the case, I’d like to hear it acknowledged by the devs, or at least start a discussion about it. I’d still think the ability is a bit expensive for what it does, but whatevs. I’m not trying to go on a tirade – just curious as to the decisions that led to my current question.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

I didn’t mean to offend. My advice may of been brief, but like it or not that’s the closest you’re gonna get for what you want.

“Ranged attack blocking field it’s supposed to be” eh? I can play the sarcasm game too. No really. I’m serious!

Good luck with achieving your spammable invincible smoke bubble that blocks everything.

A) “Spammable” is a funny way to put an ability that costs 6 init and does 200 damage in a power/crit setup.
B) At some point, the developers decided smoke should block ranged attacks. Then they made a smoke field that was very poor at it, due to its circular shape. Maybe they understood that, I don’t know; something tells me that’s not the case, since its easy to just walk out of the field, it does almost no damage, and is obscenely expensive.
C) It’s unfortunate we differ on opinions here, but I believe that there was intention behind making Black powder a smoke field, and very expensive to use. If I’m wrong, so be it, I’d like to hear from the Dev’s that this is the case. Until then, I believe the evidence points in favor of my opinion rather than yours.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

lern2smokescreen or projectile finisher

Thanks for the wonderful advice. I forgot that I was asking for a black powder buff, and not for the ability to work as it was designed. Your advice also works wonders when I’m fighting 2 players; thankfully, I have infinite initiative to headshot target 2, then refocus on target 1.

In all seriousness though, I’m not talking about smoke screen – smoke screen works the way it was intended. Black powder however, doesn’t imo. It costs half a standard initiative bar, and melee can simply walk out of it to avoid the blind and keep you in melee range. its extremely poor at blocking ranged attacks because of its shape. All its really good for is owning melee that don’t know any better than to exit the field, and initiating stealth via HS – those are some sparse use cases for such an expensive attack.

The current shape of black powder makes it pretty worthless at blocking ranged attacks in PvP, but the circular shape is necessary for it being an anti-melee tool. Seeing as it costs 6 initiative, and melee can simply move out of it and keep you in melee range, can we explore some sort of solution that allows it to function as the ranged attack blocking field its supposed to be? Perhaps shots get stopped at the initial rim of a smoke field, instead of just not being allowed to pass through them?

S/P needs work, but adding a leap finisher to Inf Strike is not the way. It’s already an amazing ability. Gap closing immob for 3 init that set up a stunbreaking, condition cleansing retreat move? Its the only thing I miss about Sword MH.

The Immob from Inf strike + stealth would = effortless back arc strikes with tactical strike.

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

Daecollo.9578:

Confuse your enemy if you evade an attack?

Now this sounds like a game changer. An Acro trait that causes confuse on evade, and a crit strikes trait that gives prot and revealed on crit.

There you go, now S/D has 2 distinct, different playstyles. Your dodgy pirate S/D relies on protection to soak up lesser swings, evades to counter the harder hitting stuff, and the better you place (IE, evading attacks), the more you hurt your opponent via confusions.

Players wont be able to just unload on you towards the end of a flanking strike, knowing that even if a few of their attacks hit the thief is in trouble (thanks to protection taking the edge off their attacks combined with them taking damage via confusion thanks to sloppy play). It also changes the “DPS race” problem I pointed out earlier in the thread – you’re being actively rewarded for good play (evading attacks) outside the evade itself – your level of skillful play is the most important part of how well this hypothetical setup works, and that’s a hallmark of good design.

I agree, though i’m still not 100% convinced in terms of protection on a thief trait (and I still feel like some sort of greater ability to blind would serve a similar mitigation role while not over-stacking with existing capabilities) Maybe not on crit, but perhaps “every fourth attack” or something.

Still, Confusion on evade as a minor is an extremely thematic and mechanically sound trait idea that’s actually worthy of being apart from the sword trait because of its utility on all sorts of builds. Confusion at its core is already well understood and well balanced so I think it’d be a fun alternative minor trait. You can cleanse it, wait it off, or power through, and putting it on evades rather than crits means you’re not going to have the opportunity to mega-stack it. In addition it synergizes with teammates much better than direct damage, and that’s always a good thing.

Though I think renaming it from riposte to “Insufferable” would be more appropriate with that functionality. Fits better with confuse and it makes me lol.

Also, I’d like to note that this has been possible the most constructive and engaging threads on the thief forum in a while. No offense Daecollo, but you’re much better company when you’re being more thinky and less caustic.

My opinion on protection is you’ll never have a decent “sustained” DPS build without it (in the lower 2 base HP tiers anyway, from a PvP perspective). You can’t dodge everything, and sitting in the lowest HP bracket with poor access to regen means we generally have to burst our targets down before they kill us. Anything besides an Ele or Guard has at minimum 4k more base HP to eat confusion ticks while they DPS us down.

This means you have to give a thief something to compensate. You can go the route of weakness/blind/harder hits (harder hits in comparison to say a S/D ranger, not a D/D or D/P thief), but then you’re just making a different flavor of burst thief. It would still mean more spec diversity, which is good, but we’ll still be fulfilling the same role – use your tricks to burn your target down before they burn you down.

The protection/regen route would offer an entirely different playstyle and role fulfillment to a thief – Sure, we’ll still hit slightly harder and be slightly squishier than say a S/D Ranger (base HP differences ensure that), but it won’t be so all or nothing – there will be time on both sides to try to compensate and read your opponents moves for an actually engaging, fun fight.

Daecollo.9578:

Confuse your enemy if you evade an attack?

Now this sounds like a game changer. An Acro trait that causes confuse on evade, and a crit strikes trait that gives prot and revealed on crit.

There you go, now S/D has 2 distinct, different playstyles. Your dodgy pirate S/D relies on protection to soak up lesser swings, evades to counter the harder hitting stuff, and the better you place (IE, evading attacks), the more you hurt your opponent via confusions.

Players wont be able to just unload on you towards the end of a flanking strike, knowing that even if a few of their attacks hit the thief is in trouble (thanks to protection taking the edge off their attacks combined with them taking damage via confusion thanks to sloppy play). It also changes the “DPS race” problem I pointed out earlier in the thread – you’re being actively rewarded for good play (evading attacks) outside the evade itself – your level of skillful play is the most important part of how well this hypothetical setup works, and that’s a hallmark of good design.

Daecollo.9578:

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Edit: 3s of confusion might be a bit much unless it’s a proc chance on crit. Remember you’re talking about a critical strikes trait on a weapon with some very good multi-hit ability,

Sounds fun in theory, but wont work in the long run – the current design of sword and this suggestion are too far split. Sword MH doesn’t offer any other damaging conditions – if you’re going to build a spec around a trait that puts confusion on crit in the spotlight, you’re going to run into 1 of 3 problems

- High power/crit builds are constantly stacking confusions that do terrible damage, the trait doesn’t do enough to warrant a complete change in playstyle (trading stealth for your on crit vigor/confusion)
- High condi/low power/high crit builds are constantly stacking high damage confusions, but every other attack does pitiful damage (Sword is all direct damage, which is now abysmall because you have 0 power) – you’re going to be trying to kill players via confusion alone, which doesn’t sound fun.
- You’re wearing a Carrion ammy to hybrid Power/condi as best you can, and have subpar crit. You’re wearing a rampagers ammy maximize crit and still have some power, but your total lack of toughness makes the spec extremely fragile to run.

I liked the original Protection on crit idea, tbh, with just a few other minor tweaks to the class to give Sword thieves a sustainable, dodgy setup that completely eschews stealth in favor or being hard to pin down AND hard to actually kill.

What about Precision/Condition Damage/Toughness gear?

@others
I changed it to 5s with the cool-down so it would favor less spammy attacks.

Runs into situation 2 – your tough to kill, but all of your damage is based on confusion. With 0 power, your sword swings will hit like a wet noodle – I’d have to do some testing, but something tells me it would be more prudent for opponents to just stand still and let you go nuts, cleanse conditions then heal, rather than actually try to fight back – you’re almost 100% reliant on confusion to kill your enemy. It’d be like running 0/0/30/20/20 P/D – you’re a 1 trick pony. Counter that trick, and your basically a gnat – hard to kill but easy to ignore.

Sounds like that -might- be a fun-ish bunker build to run, but you’ve still got no protection, no regen, and your survivability is based on mobility (which means you will lose caps to spec’s that can force you off of a point to survive)

PopeUrban.2578:

rjinx.1378:

Daecollo.9578:

Critical Strikes
En Garde
- Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword and spear by 10%.
- Gain 3s of Vigor and revealed on critical hit with a sword or spear.

/fixed

You know, vigor ain’t a bad idea. I feel vigor alone isn’t enough to justify the almost complete loss of in-combat stealth though.

What about vigor+ something… extra confusion seems better than anything else we’ve spitballed here, and it might be a fair tradeoff for losing tactical strike.

Edit: 3s of confusion might be a bit much unless it’s a proc chance on crit. Remember you’re talking about a critical strikes trait on a weapon with some very good multi-hit ability,

Sounds fun in theory, but wont work in the long run – the current design of sword and this suggestion are too far split. Sword MH doesn’t offer any other damaging conditions – if you’re going to build a spec around a trait that puts confusion on crit in the spotlight, you’re going to run into 1 of 3 problems

- High power/crit builds are constantly stacking confusions that do terrible damage, the trait doesn’t do enough to warrant a complete change in playstyle (trading stealth for your on crit vigor/confusion)
- High condi/low power/high crit builds are constantly stacking high damage confusions, but every other attack does pitiful damage (Sword is all direct damage, which is now abysmall because you have 0 power) – you’re going to be trying to kill players via confusion alone, which doesn’t sound fun.
- You’re wearing a Carrion ammy to hybrid Power/condi as best you can, and have subpar crit. You’re wearing a rampagers ammy maximize crit and still have some power, but your total lack of toughness makes the spec extremely fragile to run.

I liked the original Protection on crit idea, tbh, with just a few other minor tweaks to the class to give Sword thieves a sustainable, dodgy setup that completely eschews stealth in favor or being hard to pin down AND hard to actually kill.

Eduardo.4675:

Daecollo.9578:

Eduardo.4675:

It doesnt make much sense. It only benefits pistol whip build, which already has a evade built into the pistol whip skill already. Plus, it eliminates the proper use of HIS, which is the only reliable cond remover on a build without shadow embrace. And would make SR tricky to use. A PW with high crit chance will generate a lot of revealed debuff, denying use of both HIS and SR, and to the ones that use it, Blinding Power utility. I wouldnt use it.

Actually, it states that its 5s and 5s of revealed, and it won’t proc again if you already have protection, meaning it won’t matter if you use Flanking Strike or PW, it won’t generate anymore or less protection. Flanking Strike has an evade as well.

CnD is a dagger attack, so it won’t proc this trait, so if you wait 5 seconds, use CnD when ya need condition removal and stealth it would still work.

Really? And how am i gonna use proper tactical strike control build if i generate revealed debuff constantly with sword attacks, which are the dps of a S/D spec? This doesnt serve a S/D spec. Only a PW spec, which has no cond removal outside of HIS and Shadowstep, with the latter being very poor at it. That was my point. Deny stealth and you are conditioned in your usage of HIS or Shadow Embrace.

It would offer a different playstyle for a weaponset (you know, spec diversity, what the community as a whole is in a clamor for). The same way some people like to run conditions D/D just for deathblossom, you could slot this trait and turn S/D into a dodgy, consistent damage setup that makes heavy use of Inf strike and Flanking strike rather than just the current control/heavy stealth style S/D has been pigeonholed into.

Love the concept. I’ve been clamoring for a sustainable, dodgey Sword thief for a while (you know, kind of what a sword thief appears to be on paper until you get a better understanding of the games mechanics.)

Only issue I see is, without more consistent access to regen (and at least 1 way to get stability, even it’s a single use utility you have to use intelligently), you’re still just in a DPS race. Thieves main survival mechanic is unchanged (avoiding damage entirely via mobility/evades/stealth) – protection will allow you to eat the less powerful attacks (something a thief can’t really do at the moment) and save flanking strike/other evasive tools for the big swings, but you’re still just cutting the outliers off the bell curve – fighs will be longer and more consistent, but largely the same IMO.

Protection helps you in said race, but sustainable ranger specs work because they’re constantly gaining protection, doing consistent damage, have great access to the harassment style of conditions (cripple and poison) and most importantly, they’re regenerating health like crazy (via their HoT style heals and good access to regen).

tom.7468:

Take a look at this,
Base hp
Warrior, Necromancer 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist 10,805

Guardian will have the worst survival because they lack the mobility of a elementalist and the stealth of a theif. how the kitten is this a fair nerf? any profession can stack toughness this sacrifice other abilities.
And heavy armor make almost no difference. If you don’t stack toughness there is no difference.

Because what Daecollo is suggesting would increase Guardian damage reduction 8% across the board when protection wasn’t up, and would leave it as it is now when up. Other suggestions (my own included) are different, but his suggestion would only make guardians (and every other class) slightly tougher as a base.

Daecollo.9578:

Boon removal just takes away from builds, only Necromancers and Thieves need boon removal, and they pay heavy prices for it.

Boon removal needs to be accessible by every class – some classes should specialize in it more (Thematically at least, Necro’s, Mesmers and Thieves), but everyone needs a way to strip some boons – just the same way everyone carries some condition removal, but some are better at it than others.

The problem is, “bunkering” is defined primarily by your access to protection, regen, and to a lesser extent stability (Access to Retal is nice too). There are other factors (How well you can heal, immune/block/evade skills, condition removal), but there’s a reason that an ele (lowest base HP and armor) can bunker in a way that a warrior can’t – they can generate near constant uptime on the “Bunkering” boons in the game, and constant medium length applications of said boons makes boon removal on them a joke, unless you can strip every boon in 1-2 actions (this is probably less true after the Feb 26th patch, but ANet’s overall design philosophy on bunkers remains the same).

Protection is a ridiculously powerful buff. Its the equivalent of roughly doubling your base toughness – there isn’t another boon in the game that grants as much power in a raw stat equivalent (even fury is only 20% crit, which isn’t anywhere near an additional 916 precision). A buff that powerful should be used like a miniature"Oh kitten!" button – it should be used in addition to dodges and immune/evade/blocks to blunt the damage on big hits, not something that you specifically spec your class to have up nearly 100% of the time.

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

I don’t have time to read 7 pages of idiotic banter, I’ll just sum it up in easily understood language.
WvW – culling is issue. It not thief player fault. Is Anet fault. Blame Anet.

PvP – Suggestion Dumb. Might as well take weapon from warrior, clone from mesmer, attunement from Ele.

If you honestly think stealth should break on damage, you do not understand the most basic mechanics of this game.

Verisuvalise.3615:

" Join a PVP game". It doesn’t say anything about dueling, so how was I supposed to know?
_________________________________________________________________

PvP: Player versus Player
Duelling: Pitting a single player against another single player in a competitive environment.

This still constitutes PvP. ‘Join PvP game’ really just means ‘give me the option to fight other people recreationally’

also.

You need a thicker skin. This is 2013, mate. Some kids talking smack on a video game shouldn’t cause this sort of backlash — I can only assume you are a grown adult person, and are thus relatively ignorant to the methods of todays generations — Video game vulgarity is the least of your worries.

---

“Currently, however, people have no right to a duel – you are appropriating servers for your own personal preferences. While I agree that dueling should be in the game, in the meantime, it isn’t – that means every time you’re dueling, you’re using a server for something other than its intended purpose. "

---

I would like to point out that, with over 150 constantly active servers, even the first 50 are hardly ever full. I have literally never seen the total amount of players equate to more than 50% of the fillable space. Some players (usually those more inclined to learn their profession extensively) would prefer to test their limitations in a controlled, calculable way, with potentially predictable results. This is achieved by joining empty servers with friends and experimenting — The sort of experimenting that CANNOT be achieved in an 8v8 zerg, and the sort of experimenting not worth throwing MMR away for. These players are not inhibiting you, or anyone else, from doing what you want.
Which makes me question why you’d prefer to take these options away from them.

If you accidentally join a duelling server, just leave. 10-20 seconds later, you’ll be good and ready to be stomping faces in the game mode you wanted. But its not their fault for you being too lazy to pick a real server.

Hell, personally, I’ve NEVER used that ‘Play Now’ button — But that mostly has to do with my undying love of Battle of Khylo.

A) Don’t make excuses for kittens. It doesn’t matter what the current cultural norm is – it could be better. We’re far from perfect as a species, and eliminating mouthy douchknockers would be a step forward, however minor. Telling someone they should have “thicker skin” is counter-productive – we should be working on ostracizing kitten to eliminate or educate them, not making excuses for them.

B) I understand people need to test specs, test 1v1’s, and hone their skills. Dueling servers should certainly exist. At the moment, they do not. Just as people who are dueling are “using the servers for their intended purpose” (by your definition), someone who disrupts one is also “using the servers for their intended purpose.” Understanding on both sides is the key – don’t troll duelers, don’t be a mouthy kitten if someone ruins your duel by accident. Mistakes can happen on both sides. If someone is purposefully being an kitten on either side, by all means, demean them – but if someone’s kittengery is in question, try being nice first.

C) I have no problems exiting a dueling server – when I join 4 6+/10 server in a row, and they’re all dueling servers, it can get frustrating. Its not the dueling players fault; its not my fault; its Anet’s fault – that doesn’t make it any less aggravating however to have wasted 5 minutes of my time – if I make the mistake of playing the game and accidentally ruining your duel, I’ll be apologetic; Unless you’re an kitten, in which case all my annoyance at Anets failings and my wasted time will have immediately found a new target. The issue here is duelers will tend to treat you like the scum of the earth for “ruining their duel” when all you were trying to do was PvP.

leman.7682:

evilapprentice.6379:

AGAIN,
Nobody has a right to duel.

Stopped reading there. How can you even say that? You seem to be very angry about the whole thing and it started with a very simple problem.

I should clarify, because my initial post was not clear and that’s my fault. Anet most certainly should introduce dueling. I 100% understand the need for dueling.

Currently, however, people have no right to a duel – you are appropriating servers for your own personal preferences. While I agree that dueling should be in the game, in the meantime, it isn’t – that means every time you’re dueling, you’re using a server for something other than its intended purpose. It’s not another players job to make sure you aren’t using a server for something other than its intended purpose.

That being said, there’s no need to be a dick on either side – if you’re dueling and someone kittens it up, explain to them that you’re dueling – if they apologize and leave, leave it at that. If they’re an kitten and continue to kitten up your dueling, that player is at fault.

leman.7682:

OP, you found out you were mistaken. Empty servers are used for dueling.

Now, if you could, stop arguing and let go.

AGAIN,
Nobody has a right to duel.
While its generally considered polite (and I agree with this sentiment) to not kitten with duels, no one is required not to.
Coming from the position that he was in the wrong technically is incorrect. He was wrong in that he did not understand the general etiquette, but all he did was play the game – He’s not wrong for playing the game.

Larynx.2453:

Jasper Jadeite.7820:

Very eloquent and articulate evilapprentice. You speak for me too. FYI everyone I wasn’t interrupting duels. I was just trying to cap at the most 2 points so my time would not be wasted.

Or just join an actual server and not waste their time. When people like you join dueling servers, I just swap over to the other team and we kill them until they leave.

But -they- wasted -his- time, and your position is that of an entitled prick. Why is it you’re not admonishing them? The game doesn’t have any set dueling servers – every time he joins a game and people have decided to appropriate the server for dueling, they’re the ones wasting his time. Just because they’re the majority doesn’t mean they’re in the right. Like I just said, they are not entitled to dueling servers. If he spent 2 minutes finding and joining a server, why shouldn’t he get some glory out of it before leaving to find greener pastures? He isn’t even interfering with their duel, he’s just playing the game the way it was designed.

Is it someone’s job to transcribe these interviews and post them on the boards as text?
If not, it needs to be.

Amaterasu.6280:

Why would you even use Fleet Shadow? :|

Every other trait seems like a better option.

In PvP, fleet shadow is amazing – its practically required to get behind a good player who knows to keep moving when a thief stealth nears them. That’s why they changed Fleet shadow to 50% when they gave other classes a 25% movement speed signet.

That’s what your auto-attack is for – if you hit the second attack in the chain, congratulations, you hit the thief.

The first 4 opinions are ludicrously hilarious in my opinion.

If duelers are polite, I’ll gladly just leave – I don’t need to waste my time and theirs. When people turn into kittens however, I will spend my time ruining yours – you can’t report me for playing the game after all. You don’t have any right to a duel – that’s not how this works. You’re asking me a favor when you ask me not to interrupt your duel – not a big one, but a favor regardless. Mistakes happen; its just as frustrating to me to spend 2-3 minutes getting into a game and to the action to find out people decided to just start dueling as it is to have your duel ruined – If I kittened up a duel, and you aren’t a whiny kitten, I’ll apologize and leave. If you’re a condescending prick, I’ll ruin every single one until I get bored.

Now of course, all this needs to be tempered with common sense – if the game is 10 minutes in and the score is 30-20, I’ll just leave. If I look at my mini map and see 4 dots unmoving outside the action and 2 running around, I’ll just leave. If you guys had a slow game and decided to start dueling in the middle (so the scores make it appear as though its a real game) don’t get pissy if I jump into the action before realizing its a duel. If you’re running some sort of “guild event” and the scores make the game appear real, don’t be an internet tough guy and tell me what an kitten I am for playing the game.

And just to clarify, I haven’t clicked “Join now” since September. I don’t ever pick a server that’s not at least 6/10, or 10/16 (though joining an 8v8 is a rare occurrence for me). I’ve hit 4 6+/10 duel servers in a row – that’s 10 minutes of my day wasted. I still generally hit 2-3 duel servers out of every 10 joins. I understand people want to duel, just dont be a prick about it. You aren’t entitled to it, so don’t act like it.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Harrier.9380:

Over last couple days we’ve seen more dev posts on this forum than past 3 months altogether. We really appreciate every post Tyler and Evan made.

My question is, can we expect this level of communication with PvP community to keep up? Or are you doing this just to calm us down a bit, after last patch nearly caused riots, and we’ll be back to usual silence soon enough?

Former would of course be preferred, and I’m pretty sure community’s attitude towards devs would quickly improve if you were to keep it up.

I believe it will be a little of both. Because of how our workflow is setup, right before and after a patch we sometimes have more time to post. Between patches, we’ll all be very busy. We’re always trying to find ways to improve our communication. I’ve been trying to spend more time in HotM to make sure there is some dev presence during primetime.

Its very easy to improve communication – hire someone who’s job it is to communicate. I understand that sounds condescending, but it isn’t meant to be – I understand you guys probably don’t want to spend the money, but its fairly obvious its needed. It needs to be someone’s job, exclusively, to interact with the boards.
Communicate progress to players, comb the boards for good suggestions, explain the logic behind your decision making, and so on. The biggest problem this game has (after a lack of a PTS) is a lack of transparency.

Most players (myself included) were under the impression that this patch was going to be “The Big PvP patch” – a community manager could have easily informed us to the contrary weeks ago, and most of us wouldn’t have felt betrayed. I’ll be the first to admit this patch wasn’t so bad, but the combination of another buggy/broken rollout combined with the sudden realization that it wasn’t the big balance patch instantly soured me – I got over it, but I imagine alot of players didn’t, and didn’t stick around long enough to find out that they were wrong.

A PTS and someone who’s job it is to keep the community informed would go a LONG way in building my (and I assume many others) confidence in Anets ability to eventually turn this into an Esport thats exciting and fun to play.

I5 overclocked running at 4.8ghz stable
6990+6970 crossfired running stock

Most of my settings are set towards the middle, AA off, shadows off, draw distances all at max.

Sometimes, the game just decides its going to drop from 60 fps to 15 – it could be because i called up a menu, because I’ve dodge rolled, because I’ve spun the camera too fast, because the on screen combat has gotten intense – these are scenarios that randomly make the FPS drop. Alt tabbing fixes the issue, but it’s hard to play when it turns into a slideshow, and you don’t always have time to alt-tab.

Anyone have similar issues, and any fixes?

First and foremost, your role is burst – there is no way around that. I’ve spent months trying to find some sort of survivable/hybrid spec (think like a Ranger using S/D and doing moderate, consistent damage), and it just doesn’t exist for thief. We don’t get protection or stability, our access to regen is subpar, our evade move (flanking strike) is a joke compared to how the Rangers works, and no immunity skill – without those boons, a consistent way to ignore damage (evades, blocks) and no immune skill, its not worth trying.

That said, you can do good burst damage without being a 2 shot wonder – this is what I’m currently running, and I like it.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaN3cS6E/5Ex+hey9gpGtp6MopNB;TsAg0CnoSykkIJbSukkJtsYYxECA
(might have to copy/paste into address bar to get the link to work).

Only 15 points into crit strikes might seem silly, but it works. Fluid strikes is kind a kittenty minor trait (how often are you over 6 init when you’re spending 6 or 9 init just to stealth), and while executioner is nice, you can offset it with other minor traits (Exposed weakness and hidden assassin). the loss of the major master trait kind of sucks, but it’s not spec breaking.

Shadowshot finally working correctly is pretty amazing – it’s 100% a superior gap closer to HS when your target is over 50%, and only does slightly less damage unless your target is under 25%, while also having double the range, not being affected by snare/root, and a blind attached. It also automatically does 10% more than the listed damage, as your stab arrives just as you blind them (with exposed weakness) if your target has no conditions.

Lotus poison and black powder give you a solid way to mitigate damage in melee while setting up your stealth combo (and increasing your damage 10% thanks to exposed weakness).

Devourers venom is awesome – now that poisons don’t vanish on missed swings (kind of old, I know, but I took a big break), venoms are a step closer to being useful. While a stunbreaker is Mandatory in competitive play, some classes don’t (or simply can’t) cram in a reliable way to break immob as well. 5 seconds of immob every 36 seconds will let you go nuts on a target if they can’t break it.

Also, if you’re not a fan of the venoms, you can switch em out, and replace Quick Venoms with Dagger training – thats 5% more damage all the time, and 10% more when your target has a condition (nearly all the time) – those 15 points moved from crit strikes to Deadly arts results in 15% more damage all the time, and all you lost was 20% more damage on targets under 50%, and 10% damage while over 6 init (again, not something you’ll see often in my experience).

Now for the spec’s shortcomings – without Fleet shadow, you have to run SoS, which eats up a utility slot. You’ll find it harder to get behind targets while stealthed with SoS than with fleet shadow, but all that lovely regen should help mitigate that.

I have a hard time finding a spot for shadow refuge in the spec, which hurts. Shadow refuge is a great tool in TPvP, and you will miss it at times.

You’ll find yourself a little initiative starved at, especially if you get Knocked out (or otherwise CC’d) of Black powder before you can stealth (you just spent 6 init to stealth and got nearly nothing for it).

All in all, I find it fairly effective – I still hit pretty hard, stealth on demand (IE you cant block/evade/immune my ability to go into stealth like you could with CnD), regen in stealth which allows you to absorb a bit of the random AoE you’ll be eating while positioning, and solid CC. It’s also worth noting that while the 300 toughness from shadow arts isn’t anything amazing, it’s alot better than running base toughness.

tl;dr – Try spec. Is good. Many reason.

NevirSayDie.6235:

These are some pretty odd expectations for balance changes. Warriors need changes, I’ll give you that, but I’m not sure where you’re going with any of the other professions:

—Thieves are sitting good as a mid-tier profession in tournaments and are still way too much of a noobstomp profession in hotjoins and WvW to consider buffing. They’re still used by good tournament teams as well.
—Rangers are still sitting great as a top-tier profession in tournaments and have at least two tournament-viable builds.
—Necro axe has needed a huge buff for a long time and this probably wasn’t enough.
—Players can’t obstruct other players, so portal is unaffected by that. I’m impressed that you expect to hit more than three targets with mind stab in PvP. Mesmers are still top-tier in tournaments.
—Guardians received some bugfixes.
—You seem to have trouble fighting engineers. They’re generally considered one of the worst three professions, although I’ll agree that they’re better than most people give them credit for. I haven’t seen them called OP since last August.
—Ele sustain was nerfed pretty directly. Eles will still be very good and will probably maintain their position as the widely-accepted “best” profession.

For thieves, as far as I’m concerned (as a thief player), its not about being ineffective – its about being a boring, 1 trick pony which always plays the same exact way. Speccing for survivability is a losing proposition – you lose way more damage than you gain in survivability, and you end less effective in almost every single situation. This leads to a handful of burst specs that all play the exact same way – Burst, port away when your target immune/evade/blocks, pop back in and burst when its over (If it’s a sword/dagger ranger, don’t bother). Hope you don’t get AoE’d or targeted by another player.

Play a thief for a week and you’ll learn how to guess what they’re going to do just by glancing at their weapons. Even if its effective, its extremely boring. Sword and Pistol MH specs are entirely missing from the game because they’re quantifiabley worse than a Dagger MH burst spec. There’ll doubtless be a few posts from S/D and S/P thieves who point out how well the spec works for them, and great for them; it doesn’t change the fact that if they learned D/P or D/D they’d be a more effective team asset.

It’s all about spec diversity – there’s currently NONE, because if you want to run in TPvP, you need to be running your classes universally recognized BEST spec, because your opponents sure as kitten will be, and you’ll need yours to even compete.

This also applies to warriors (who from what I can tell need a buff) and rangers (who are currently very strong, but stuck running 1 of 2 specs to be considered so).

Geewoody.2017:

How would a PTS improve things if the current patch is just as broken? It’s not like this this patch is worse than the last patch.

Plus, the sPvP community is so small I really doubt a PTS is viable. >.>

In many, many ways. And if Anet builds just a little trust with the remaining players, even a small community will contribute.

1)Image – If a patch completely fails on a public test server, nobody really cares. That’s the point of the test server. When patch after patch after patch after patch fails and breaks the server players play their characters on, it leaves a bad taste in players mouths, and a negative memory of Anet. If someone asks me about GW2, my first thought is how kittenty these patches are, time after time – that would be a less prominent memory if the patches were only disappointing, not disappointing AND buggy

2)Quicker content delivery – Shockingly, your more hardcore playtesters tend to be honest. They’ll be the first to come to the boards to explain why the new changes to their most favorite class are balls-to-the-wall ludicrous, and shouldn’t be included in the game. Armed with this info, Anet wont need to be so careful with these small, slow changes – they can be more adventurous on a test server, and let the players vet them. You can use trial and error on a test server, you can’t on a live server.

3)More playtesters – The community, finally having access to a test realm, feels a bit more confident after the dozens of mis-steps by Anet, and actively use the test server – this gives them confidence that balance changes and bug fixes will be delivered more rapidly.

Combined with better community interaction (this is a must, as well as a test server), this should result in faster content delivery, higher content quality, and less buggy patch drops – basically, everything the PvP community is clamoring for.

Look at RIFT by Trion Worlds as an example of how its done right – they were CONSTANTLY tweaking their classes, listening and interacting with their community, and kept a very well liked and constantly used test server in this exact manner. Nearly every single one of their patches were considered to have “Brought the game better balance”. Granted, they were a bit slow, but they were HUGE in comparison to what Anet has been delivering to us on a monthly basis, usually having given 2-3 souls a major, positive overhaul and examining under-performing and poorly thought out skills in all of a classes other souls.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This has been fixed with the latest patch. Spirit Watch back on.

Do you test? How is it that
EVERY
SINGLE
PATCH
is launched with a litany of bugs and non-functioning content? Upon signing in to post this comment, I was notified that guild quests are ALSO bugged. Have any of your programmers, designers, or managers ever taken a computer science class in their lives? How is it none of this is being tested, or is your testing process so poor that an average player hits an untested case roughly 2 minutes after logging in?

How do you not have a public test server? How did you put together an MMO in the first place with this kind of work ethic?

Considering the extremely poor quality, speed, and content of these patches, I think we should all be investigating the phenomenon of this game actually working in the first place, rather than complaining how each and every patch is over-hyped, under-delivered, and deployed completely untested.

Is it more money? Because if there’s even a hope that you can deliver on PvP promises with more money, I’d probably be down. I can’t speak for others, but I bet I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Is it better staff? There’s got to be a few good computer programmers playing this game, I’m sure they can forward you some resumes from their pool of respected colleagues. Same goes for PR reps, community leaders, playtesters, and so on….

Is it more playtesters? Just set up a test server, any dedicated PvP community will playtest your changes for free if you give us the vehicle to do so (seeing as it would result in faster, more balanced content delivery).

Is it advice? I mean, the boards already throw it at you in spades, so I imagine it’s a bit hard to digest it all, but there have been plenty of excellent suggestions here that have gone almost completely ignored.

So tell us, what is it you need to finally get PvP on track? Please, let us know – we’re all very interested in finding and fixing the issues that leave us disappointed patch after patch after patch after patch after patch…..

Shisx.1658:

Did they over hype the class changes? yes

Would i rather have them make changes on a small scale rather than drastic changes? yes

I’m all for small scale changes, but the current pace of said changes is a joke. There should be a test server, and changes this minor should be introduced on a weekly basis to the test server – who cares if you break a class for a week on a test server, that’s the point of it. Let the players vet your changes, and deliver them in an acceptable timeline. It worked well in RIFT – regardless how you feel about anything else in the game, they had the right idea there. Constant tweaks to bring the game closer and closer to balance, a test server that players were excited to play on (because it meant their classes were being fixed) basically acting as unpaid playtesters, and most importantly, communicating with the community.

Nearly everyone was expecting this to be a balance patch. How did we come to be so mislead? Why isn’t there clear, constant communication between the players and the developers? Why does Anet feel it acceptable that most classes have at best 2 spec options (But usually 1) that is considered the clear “best” for TPvP 6 months in? Ladders and matchmaking will be fun for 2 weeks, before people remember that they’re still fighting a bunch of clone classes run by different players. Without spec diversity, this game might as well be an FPS.

Larynx.2453:

evilapprentice.6379:

aaron.7850:

dont worry, private servers are coming soon, and people will be very willing to spend their money on a standard feature that should have been here in the first place

in the mean time, if you join a server with 4 or less people, just leave as you most likely joined into a dueling group

I’d agree with you wholeheartedly if the game wasn’t F2P. In the spirit of being fair, I won’t fault Anet for asking me to pay money for a private server when they don’t ask me for 15 bucks a month just to log in.

Regardless of that fact though, I agree dueling should have been included at launch, and not available just via private servers.

Really? GW2 is F2P? So why did I spend $60 on this box?

Sorry, I was referencing the 0 dollars a month I play to access the servers they pay to maintain, and the fact that the gem store contains nothing that will give another player a bought advantage in PvP, and not to mention the fact that the only gameplay difference between a brand new player and a rank 80 PvPer is experience (and how pretty they look).

daydream.2938:

yap this is annoying , here is something you can do to mitigate this experience.

DONT USE THE JOIN NOW BUTTON.

manually select a server with 12+ players and join that. If you want 8vs8.
Or scroll down and look for a 6+ 5vs5 server.

I Haven’t used the “Join now” button since a week after launch. If you’d have bothered to read anything I said, I pointed out numerous times how I’ve been picking 6-8 player 10 man servers and finding out everyone is dueling in them. Does anyone use Join now?

Wispy.8679:

Trap rangers are currently considered a very strong build and Beastmastery rangers can be very effective duelists due to the amount of pet damage in combination to the huge amounts of regen available to them if the opponent doesn’t focus the pet down. These 2 rangers builds are strong in 1v1 scenarios, a skilled ranger will win most of these duels, and traps/entangle can provide good teamfight aoe and control, but they are far from being so overpowered that they are uncounterable. Power rangers, even the red one, still are very weak though. The amount of damage they provide in comparison to running a tanky spec is not worth their glassy nature and often are free kills.

The thing you need to know about pets are though, they are hilariously unreliable until you have a lot of experience with them. The pathing for pets is still quite horrible and can be kited reasonably easily and the f2 skills have a long delay, require the pet to run all the way to an enemy if you have them targetted and frequently don’t go off. That’s not to say, pets are useless. I run drakehound/wolf and the interrupts and cc they provide as well as decent damage output can make or break a fight for me. They just take a while to get use to and could use some AI improvements and are vulnerable to aoe.

Mobility, specifically with your weapon set would be horrible, with Sword or GS rangers have access to leaps which can help and WH for speedbuff so it is possible for a ranger to have pretty good mobility but it requires the use of certain weapons.

The current meta trap ranger build is usually the link below with the occassional trait moved around. Copy and paste the url if it doesn’t work.
http://www.intothemists.com/calc/index.php?build=-FV-FkBF0FFz-v2ZEF-0;9k2D;2TT44;117A28A;4K-k6aZk6jwmAjwmA2VQ

Thanks for the information, and the link. The build therein is close to what I’ve been running, and makes immediate sense when you’ve run a ranger for more than a few minutes.

I haven’t had the chance to gauge just how well my pet is doing, because I’m usually focused on thinking about what ability I should be using next (something that becomes more fluid once you have some experience with said class), but if what you say is true, Ranger is only a few needed pet functionality buffs from being an extremely versatile and powerful class.

The long cast times on pet CC seem almost necessary – if they were as quick as player abilities, the class would (Seemingly) be severely OP – being allowed to Pick your CC options separate from your spec, weapon skills and utilities would be extremely powerful if the pets had a short activation time on said skills.

I’ve also noticed that escaping melee isn’t quite as effortless as with my thief, which is a big deal when you’re running Shbow/Axe-torch, though I think a few tweaks to my utilities and more experience might mitigate that a bit.

Also, concerning power rangers, who would pick anything over the green/white ranger? He came with own full sized zord and long flowing locks of magnificent black hair.

aaron.7850:

dont worry, private servers are coming soon, and people will be very willing to spend their money on a standard feature that should have been here in the first place

in the mean time, if you join a server with 4 or less people, just leave as you most likely joined into a dueling group

I’d agree with you wholeheartedly if the game wasn’t F2P. In the spirit of being fair, I won’t fault Anet for asking me to pay money for a private server when they don’t ask me for 15 bucks a month just to log in.

Regardless of that fact though, I agree dueling should have been included at launch, and not available just via private servers.

A little background – I main a thief, and haven’t played in about a month (waiting for the PvP update). Rolled a Ranger today because they play like I assumed and hoped a sword thief would play – durable, dodgy warrior.

ATM, I suck with ranger – having to think about what each skill does before you click tends to do that to you. But On paper, ranger seems amazing.

First of all, your pet is independent of you – they bring their own spec and CC to the table. I’m currently running 0/30/20/10/10 Shb/axe-torch with 2 wolves. That means that while I’m condition/toughness focused, my pets do decent direct damage, and bring a single target chill, an AoE fear, 2 cripples, and 2 KD’s to the table, entirely independent of my weapons and utilities.

Secondly, they have insane condition options (compared to my thief at least). With Shb/axe-torch, a trap focus (Burning and Pit), and my current pets, I have excellent access to Bleeding, very good access to poison and cripple, good access to burning,, ok access to chill, 2 KD’s and an AoE fear. That amount of CC and damaging conditions seems ridiculous. They also have an immune skill, seemingly decent condi cleansing options, and player-dictated access to quickness without the downsides (pet switch 5 point beastmastery talent)

Third, they (seemingly) have great heal options, good access to regen and protection, and are mid range with base HP.

Obviously, I haven’t assessed the class in game – I’m not a very good ranger yet (I dont even know if my spec is solid), so I have no idea how powerful they really are, hence this post. One of the biggest weaknesses I’ve noticed in the ranger is mobility – they’d make a poor roamer in comparison to my thief. If ranger is still considered a weak TPvP class, can someone please point out to me why?

Caffynated.5713:

Or they could let people play what they want to play instead of forcing them into the game size that you want. If people actually wanted 5v5 instead of 8v8, the 8v8 servers wouldn’t be the only ones consistently full.

What people want and what makes sense don’t always coincide. Please cite the current popularity of reality TV as my source.

I still don’t understand how a game with E-sport aspirations would design a bunch of maps and classes for 5v5 tourney…and then decide casual players should 8v8 on said map. The classes and maps are balanced around 5v5….why is 8v8 even an option? “Casual” shouldn’t mean “worse” by default, and that’s what allowing 8 players on a map designed for 5 is – worse.

aaron.7850:

dont worry, private servers are coming soon, and people will be very willing to spend their money on a standard feature that should have been here in the first place

in the mean time, if you join a server with 4 or less people, just leave as you most likely joined into a dueling group

I’ve never opted for a game with less than 5 players, and even the 5-6 range is only chosen out of desperation. In the last 3 days, I’ve been joining 7-8 player servers that are exclusively dueling (always 10 man servers, 16 man is just dumb), 3 or 4 jumps before I can find a game where people are actually playing.

If I’m looking to play for an hour, and I spend 10-15 minutes looking for a game, that’s an issue – its blatantly obvious people want dueling Anet, just add it already and stop diluting the already lackluster PvP experience for those players still holding out hope you’ll one day soon get your kitten together.

its un-kittening-believably annoying to have to hop in and out of 3-4 servers on average to find a server that isn’t just people dueling.

Its un-kittening-believably aggravating to hear people kitten and moan because “They were 1v1ing dude!” I Don’t scan my chat log if it the scores on both sides appear to be a real game (IE, the score isn’t 10 to 5 with 2 minutes left). I don’t “owe it to you” to make sure you’re actually playing the game, and not just dueling.

I want to play the game. I don’t want to spend 10 minutes between server hopping and waiting a full minute (Every kittening time) for my client to tell me that 8/10 I tried to join was full.

And a note to the duelers – do try to be polite. I understand its frustrating to have a duel ruined, but mistakes happen. It’s just as frustrating for me to spend a few minutes getting into a server and then to the action to find out you all suddenly decided you wanted to try some 1v1’s as it is for you to have your duel ruined. If you act like a kitten, I will play the game the way it was designed and try to kill the opposing team. If you’re polite however, I won’t waste my time and yours.

Bug fixes – this one is big. The game should not be as buggy as it is at this point. It’ll never be perfect, but we aren’t even close to acceptable at this point.

Skill and trait redesigns – every single class has at least a few weapon skills, at least 1 (usually 2) entire utility skill lines, and a number of traits that are severely under-performing or downright worthless to slot. There are always some skills/weapon skills/traits that are going to be regarded as slightly better than others, but the current gap is ludicrous. We can’t really talk about long term balance until classes have more spec diversity, and that involves giving player different skills/traits worth using. I’ll wait until late march for a big balance patch if they give us better built classes to toy with. Spec diversity = deeper gameplay = more tactical options = better game.

Bunker and Burst both nerfed – IMO, the current incarnation of Bunker is boring as kitten to play against, and the burst required to counter them trivializes the game to a severe degree. Both need to be toned down so fights are engaging and exciting, but take longer than 5 seconds and are shorter than a minute and a half.

Boons and conditions adjusted – survivability in this game is heavily tied to boons. That’s a big part of the reason why an elemantalist can bunker where a warrior can’t – lowest base HP and Armor in the game doesnt matter due to the amount of healing and protection up-time the class can generate (along with other factors, like block and mobility, but the boons are a big part of the equation). The current boon stripping options for most classes are hilariously limited – if you cant strip a ton of boons in 2-3 seconds, the class that relies on them re-applies them so quickly that stripping them 1 or 2 at a time is barely noticeable. It’s going to be a delicate balance, because too much boon stripping will have the opposite effect (completely neutralizing classes based on said boons), but a better balance needs to be struck.
As for damaging conditions, the current meta is pretty focused on cleansing them. You don’t run with 0 condition cleanses, because in any sort of group fight, you’ll find yourself bleeding, poisoned, crippled, blinded, and weakened in about 8 seconds. Access to damaging conditions has to be broadened a bit, since there are so few of them and its so important in the current meta to be able to cleanse constantly. Conditions cleansing on down needs to change too – condi players already trade all burst capability for their conditions, there’s no reason downed players should get a free cleanse all. I can’t really suggest any sort of fix for this, because its a complicated balance; Anets decision to have some conditions stack duration and others stack intensity makes it even tougher to strike a balance that feels fun and dangerous without being OP.

Choops.3710:

Ah ok, I misunderstood what you meant, my apologies. I see your point, and yeah, that does suck. Hopefully more viability can be brought to a variety of profs/trait lines.

It’s cool, just wanted to clarify – I’m not going to try and claim thieves aren’t useful (they certainly are, their burst is insane), its just about not being fun or dynamic in any way.

What kills me is looking at Ranger S/D – it just looks like exactly what I thought thief S/D would be, and more importantly, what Anet made it seem thieves using a sword would be like – tons of evasive moves with extremely low cd (when spec’d for it, which allows it to compare to the init system thieves use), each with some sort of minor flavor – either a positional escape and leap finisher, or poison. Tough, consistent damage without too much burst which requires finesse to properly use. Looking at thief S/D, its kittening pathetic to compare the 2.

Now I wouldn’t expect it to be exactly the same – thieves damage should probably be a bit higher (to compensate for the lower HP, kittentier heals, and lack of immune skills), and have slightly less survivability (mostly already in place due to the already existing lower base HP and kittentier heals), but its baffling to look at a setup that is pretty well balanced between offense and defense (a spec that thief desperately needs to be more dynamic both in PvP and from what i gather, PvE) and fits so well thematically with the way they represented the class being handed to a different class. Seeing Serpent’s Strike and Stalker’s strike work so well when flanking strike is such unadulterated garbage is pretty infuriating.

Choops.3710:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m going to make the (undoubtedly unpopular) argument that Thief is a pretty kittenty class in sPvP. Their only current effective role is burst, and while they can do it well, it makes the class horrifically predictable, and BORING to play. In any sort of organized play, your survival mechanic is either “Do a ton of damage and escape”, or “Hope someone more threatening than you is targeted, and there isn’t a ton of AoE going off between you and your target”.

There’s little point in playing S/D, S/P, P/D, or P/P. Sword mainhand can work to varying degrees, but its clearly not as powerful as Dagger mainhand. Without stealth, S/P loses access to ALL of a thief’s defensive traits, stealth in general, and has less burst. S/D has all the positional requirements and high Init costs of D/D, without any of the damage – sure, you can use the daze in a coordinated environment, but you’ll often find a nasty backstab followed by HS on a target being FFd works just as well in most situations, and is better generally as well. P/P is useless, and P/D is WAY too slow, predictable, and easily countered for tourney use, not to mention the spec relies on using stealth as much as possible, making it a sub-par choice for conquest play. On top of that, no immunity skill and generally poor defensive abilities outside of stealth make D/D or D/P the very, very clear choice. They’re predictable and pretty easily countered by any player with half a brain, so if you don’t seriously gimp your target on opening, its generally a downhill battle from there, IMO of course.

Let’s also mention that we have 2 utility lines that are generally acknowledged as underpowered – traps and venoms. Both need some serious tweaking to compete with our other utilities.

just lol. The only effective role you have may be burst, but good news, you do it extremely well. You have ways to reset fights, you have insane mobility allowing you to get to the top of structures in an instant, despite similar type skills not working like that for other professions and of course you have stealth. 2 useless utility lines you say? Engineer’s turrets and gadgets say hello. Should there be more diversity in builds? Yes, of course, for everyone. But the whole ‘thieves are kitten in PvP’ argument is just lol worthy. You’re pigeonholed, but you’re extremely good at the thing you’re pigeonholed into. Other professions wish they could say the same.

I freely admitted that thief burst is awesome – doesn’t make the class fun to play, or even well designed however. Everyone wants their class to be good at something, but its extremely boring when nearly every single fight you engage in goes the exact same way. There’s not much variation in “do as much damage as fast as possible, then run away if it isn’t dead.” It also doesn’t excuse how underpowered/poorly designed every other weaponset is compared to dagger mainhand, and how useless a thief becomes the second you take stealth away (seeing as there are 3 weaponset options with no access to stealth, this is a big deal). There’s also something to be said about predictability – play a thief for a few weeks, you’ll learn to predict what they’re next move is with a fair amount of accuracy.

I also never claimed that the thief’s broken utility lines were any more or less important than other classes (you used Engineer in your example), its just a fact – One I’m sure many other classes share. They should all be fixed, I’m just making the case for thief because I know them well enough to know what utilities are worthless via first hand experience.

You define kittenty as “Ineffective”. I define kittenty as “Makes the game boring”. Playing a build that handles nearly every situation identically, using only 1 or 2 of its weaponsets attacks because those are the only ones that are worth using and they’re leagues better than the other poorly designed options (In addition to only 1 or 2 of the possible weaponsets, because the others have glaring design issues), it gets old quick. I’m sure alot of classes would love to pigeonholed into burst…for the first few weeks. Being powerful is fun – playing a binary spec where nearly every fights outcome is determined in 5 seconds using the nigh same exact strategy isn’t (to me at least).

Utilities with boon stripping are an amazing idea, imo – they’re generally on longer CD’s, give you the option regardless of weaponset, and are sorely needed. A little bit more boonstripping on weaponsets is probably also called for.

It’s a tricky situation, as many things in this game are. For classes that can give themselves a handful of boons for a long duration, the idea of more boon removal seems cheesy. They are likely using an ability (or comboing with a trait) that has a long CD, so to lose those boons so quickly seems cheap. On the other hand, there are classes and specs that just spam short duration boons nearly as quickly (and in some cases, even more quickly) then they fall off, resulting in a class that constantly has 3-5 boons up, and stripping them removes their access to the buff for all of 5 seconds.

Boons are ridiculously strong in this game – more so than in any other MMO I’ve ever played. Easy access to boon stripping would completely nullify some stronger specs which rely on these builds to be very powerful (perhaps OP, but that isn’t my call to make). While I agree the game needs better access to boon stripping (especially on utilities), it’s not going to be easy to balance.

I’m going to make the (undoubtedly unpopular) argument that Thief is a pretty kittenty class in sPvP. Their only current effective role is burst, and while they can do it well, it makes the class horrifically predictable, and BORING to play. In any sort of organized play, your survival mechanic is either “Do a ton of damage and escape”, or “Hope someone more threatening than you is targeted, and there isn’t a ton of AoE going off between you and your target”.

There’s little point in playing S/D, S/P, P/D, or P/P. Sword mainhand can work to varying degrees, but its clearly not as powerful as Dagger mainhand. Without stealth, S/P loses access to ALL of a thief’s defensive traits, stealth in general, and has less burst. S/D has all the positional requirements and high Init costs of D/D, without any of the damage – sure, you can use the daze in a coordinated environment, but you’ll often find a nasty backstab followed by HS on a target being FFd works just as well in most situations, and is better generally as well. P/P is useless, and P/D is WAY too slow, predictable, and easily countered for tourney use, not to mention the spec relies on using stealth as much as possible, making it a sub-par choice for conquest play. On top of that, no immunity skill and generally poor defensive abilities outside of stealth make D/D or D/P the very, very clear choice. They’re predictable and pretty easily countered by any player with half a brain, so if you don’t seriously gimp your target on opening, its generally a downhill battle from there, IMO of course.

Let’s also mention that we have 2 utility lines that are generally acknowledged as underpowered – traps and venoms. Both need some serious tweaking to compete with our other utilities.

Are you guys talking TPvP or hotjoin?

Vena.8436:

evilapprentice.6379:

This question isn’t sarcastic, is all this praise based around quickly popping Paid tourneys? or were there also bug fixes I’m unaware of?

I think its more that 1v1 teams is actually fun.
You don’t need to wait for eight teams to show up.
1 ticket to play, to win 1 ticket to keep playing, is fine.
Fun.
Its quick. Its easy. And I don’t need to be queuing up for randoms in 5v5 hot join.

The changes to kits, bundles, and several trait/bug fixes, while probably not immediately relevant, have probably add some wobble to the meta, or might.

I missed the 1 ticket price drop. Good to know. Thanks.

This question isn’t sarcastic, is all this praise based around quickly popping Paid tourneys? or were there also bug fixes I’m unaware of?