Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen people make the argument that your targets are “Strafing” (moving left and right), and that it’s intended. They claim you should move closer, causing less arrow flight time, to counter the “Strafing”.

This is a very poor argument to me. This isn’t an FPS, where you can claim strafing is a skill, and counter it yourself via skillful play. “Moving closer” is not skillful play. There is no First person view mode in the game to allow manual targeting. There may be some notable exceptions where the weapons projectiles seem to move exceedingly slow by design (Guardian Scepter, Thief Shbow), but outside of those instances, ranged attacks made while in effective range should be unaffected by “Strafing”

Fellknight.4820:

evilapprentice.6379:

Fellknight.4820:

Raytek.6193:

What PvP rank are you?

I’m rank 30 play a thief condition spec myself and there is nothing i haven’t encountered on my thief that I can’t kill in under 10 seconds. The best bunker guardian with awesome condition removal will crumble before me. I get a 4 second daze from my steal and switch to my pistol’s vs bunkers and burn them down by mixing blind, bleed, and high unload spike dmg while timing my daze with the stolen over the top insane daze for 4 seconds.

My question to you is how little common sense can you have to not realize when your playing something set to monkey easy mode in pvp?

Have you ever won a tournament in another game for real life cash?

Have you ever been ranked by game pro as one of the best pvpers in a game?

Have you come in .01% in the ranking system of any pvp game with over 10 million players?

Because if you have you would never embaress yourself by defending a class this overpowered.

Please, Oh Please, explain to me How you are mixing condition and spike damage in a never before seen combo (against a high armor bunker which likely has multiple condition drops, btw)which makes both so powerful you can “Burn down Bunkers” (Snicker) in 10 seconds?

Do please provide some sort of verification for your list of “acheivements” (Which honestly don’t apply because they’re not in GW2, but we’ll ignore that for a moment). I’m assuming you don’t have any, in which case I’ve done all those things too.

This is by far the worst hyperbole I’ve seen on the boards yet. Your entire bunker busting claim is pure fantasy, or else everyone would be using it. I built P/D conditions back in the day when Pistol Mainhand was considered worthless – every player I killed asked me what build I was running (because they had no idea what i was doing to them), and in a week, it was all over the place. If your mythical build existed, it’d be run by every paid tourney team with a thief.

Go get fraps, go find a guardian on the top QP list, and lets see you burn him down in 10 seconds. Since that isn’t possible, just stop lying.

I’ll give you the same explantion you’ve given(I’n almost all of your post’s defending thief class) to countless logical reasons players have posted to why thieves are overpowered.

Learn to Play!

P.S. why do I need to fraps something 1000 players have already fraps lol. You Tube much?

You mean you’ll decline to explain how your spec works because it doesn’t exist, and you are talking directly from your anus. If your spec existed, it would be everywhere, literally everywhere – a ranged thief spec that shreds any class (even guardian bunkers) in 10 seconds would be run by every single thief in this game. They don’t run it, therefore it doesn’t exist.

Don’t sidestep the issue when someone calls you on your hyperbole – it’s blatantly obvious to anyone who’s PvPed more than a week that you have no idea what you’re talking about – the only one who’s missing that fact is you.

P.S. – You need to fraps it because your claims are outlandish – I want to see you take on a bunker guard in the top 50 QP with your mythical win anything spec, because you’re the one making the (false) claims.

Fellknight.4820:

Raytek.6193:

What PvP rank are you?

I’m rank 30 play a thief condition spec myself and there is nothing i haven’t encountered on my thief that I can’t kill in under 10 seconds. The best bunker guardian with awesome condition removal will crumble before me. I get a 4 second daze from my steal and switch to my pistol’s vs bunkers and burn them down by mixing blind, bleed, and high unload spike dmg while timing my daze with the stolen over the top insane daze for 4 seconds.

My question to you is how little common sense can you have to not realize when your playing something set to monkey easy mode in pvp?

Have you ever won a tournament in another game for real life cash?

Have you ever been ranked by game pro as one of the best pvpers in a game?

Have you come in .01% in the ranking system of any pvp game with over 10 million players?

Because if you have you would never embaress yourself by defending a class this overpowered.

Please, Oh Please, explain to me How you are mixing condition and spike damage in a never before seen combo (against a high armor bunker which likely has multiple condition drops, btw)which makes both so powerful you can “Burn down Bunkers” (Snicker) in 10 seconds?

Do please provide some sort of verification for your list of “acheivements” (Which honestly don’t apply because they’re not in GW2, but we’ll ignore that for a moment). I’m assuming you don’t have any, in which case I’ve done all those things too.

This is by far the worst hyperbole I’ve seen on the boards yet. Your entire bunker busting claim is pure fantasy, or else everyone would be using it. I built P/D conditions back in the day when Pistol Mainhand was considered worthless – every player I killed asked me what build I was running (because they had no idea what i was doing to them), and in a week, it was all over the place. If your mythical build existed, it’d be run by every paid tourney team with a thief.

Go get fraps, go find a guardian on the top QP list, and lets see you burn him down in 10 seconds. Since that isn’t possible, just stop lying.

Raijinn.9065:

Archonis.7249:

lol. If you have a Thief that is spamming HS 2-3 times to catch you.

1. isn’t damaging you.
2. when he gets there he has no initiative to damage you other than auto attack.
3. it is near worthless unless you have 25% health or less.
4. dodge
5. dodge
6-infinity. DODGE.

Selective reading or something. I clearly stated having an even duel with someone then when you both get low (which is under 50% health an more normally 25% or less) the thief can rely on heartseeker. I also stated if all cooldowns are already blown they will all hit and even if they don’t its not like the thief will take any damage with the evasion tied to that crap….yea 3 dodges in a row that’s pretty fancy there. Glad I have THREE dodges to use at any point, yea cuz I never run out of my three dodges.

Let’s clarify a few things.
A) There is no evasion tied to heartseeker. None. Go try it yourself.
B) If all your CD’s are blown AND you don’t have the endurance to dodge, what did you expect? Kill shot will drop you, Crippling leap->blurry frenzy + mind wrack will drop you, Stun->HB will drop you… the list goes on and on and on and on.

You should also use your endurance more effectively – HS when your low and CnD are the priority skills to dodge when fighting a D/D thief – if you didn’t waste it on autoattack and dancing dagger, you’d have more left over to play more intelligently.

I’ve had numerous issues with skills not firing (although my client realizes I pressed them), and made a post here on the boards. Since then, I’ve seen other posts to the same effect. If I can’t count on my skills to fire 100% of the time when I hit them, I don’t see how you expect me to have the confidence to spend tickets on a tourney – It’s not enjoyable to lose a fight in a hotjoin because my skills aren’t firing properly, but I can live with it.

What I won’t live with however is losing a paid tournament because I can’t count on the game to accept and process commands properly. This isn’t a once in a while thing – at least once per game (usually more), I’ll watch my skill bar respond to a button press, and my character do nothing. This might have been an issue before the dec 14th patch, but it certainly wasn’t to this extent, because I didn’t notice it.

Please stop breaking sPvP worse with each consecutive patch. I’d rather play stale content that works, rather than a progressively kittentier game with more features. Please also let us know what your timeline is on fixing this – this can’t be a “Next patch” fix, it needs to be hotfixed ASAP.

Bunker guardians are the worst to fight against – Unless you can stun/daze them and burst them down from 60-70ish %, you’re guaranteed to see the words “Block” or “Immune” while you watch them heal to full – over and over and over and over again. At least when I fight a bunker Ele I feel like if they were to screw up, the fight would tip in my favor.

I’m having similar issues with instant abilities, most notably my Heal (withdraw) and my primary gap closer (Infiltrators strike). Every time these lag/fail to fire its infuriating, because it changes the entire flow of the fight.

I would try something like this –
Thief; No stealth Pistols
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqY6alYmKP3dS6E9JFxWBg6z4riVXQ3DuaVtC;TwAgyCqoSykkIJbSukkJt+YEweh5CA

I ran this for a bit yesterday – seemed like it might be effective, but tbh, I didn’t test it too extensively. Could probably use some tweaking around the runes, and maybe those 5 points in DA (4 init on heal from 30 Trickery means you can spam Unload almost endlessly). Still has trouble with conditions, but more focus on damage should drop your target more quickly, meaning your shadow return should deal with most of the conditions you’ll get stacked on you (and you can switch assassins reward for pain response). Stack a couple bleeds, drop caltrops on point to either force them off/punish them for staying on. Once they’re bleeding and a bit low, switch to P/P, steal for the poison, and go to town with unload. The 10% from pistol mastery, 10% from not-full-endurance, and the 1% for each initiative stacks nicely to make the pistol hit relatively hard (considering your lowish power and crit).

This isn’t meant to sound rude, but on paper, that thief build looks unplayable. Perhaps I’m wrong (and I will be testing it out tonight to see), but it seems there’s just an overall lack of damage, and many wasted talent points. I’ve run almost 0 power P/D builds before (specifically with a Sham Ammy too), and nearly every point in Crit strikes is wasted – you’ll be hitting non-glass cannons for 100-150 (iirc), so your crits will be adding 70-100 damage, and your crit% isn’t great to begin with. Low base condition damage + base length bleeds (you’re 5% short of an extra bleed tick per pistol shot) is just more and more time for you to slip up and get pasted by a glass cannon, or for help from the opposing team to arrive.

The condition removal is also a bit lacking – in any other build, it would be fine, but this is an attrition build (and a slow one at that), any class that relies on condition damage is going to eventually overwhelm you once you’ve popped BV and shadow return.

Lyssa’s rune seems nice, but the on heal effect can range from nearly useless (might, fury), to situationaly useful (swiftness, regen), to amazing (protection, stability), and therefore can’t be relied on in a fight. Although the spec doesn’t rely on stealth, you can still get forced off the point by enemy AoE, and not using stealth at every opportunity for Sneak Attack seems like it’s going to slow down this already low damage spec even further. Shbow is going to be an initiative hog, since the autoattack will hit like a feather.

Don’t get me wrong, I do hope my take is off – I’d love to run something new and effective.

7)KB/KD/Pull/Launch
- Bring these in line with regular stuns. ATM, these skills are basically “Stun Plus”, as there is a delay before a stunbreaker can be used to escape.

So, I’m going to go ahead and list my expectations for the January 2013 patch. They are primarily Thief fixes (focusing entirely on sPvP), with a few general game fixes. Agree or disagree, please be polite in your responses – I’d love it if Anet could use this as a benchmark for progress.

1)Dagger/Pistol
- The root on hit of shadow shot needs to be removed- what is the point of a gap closer that allows your target to open up the gap again?

2)Sword/Pistol
- Something needs to be done with Pistol Whip. It has a list of small issues that make it a waste of initiative in most scenarios. It does less DPS than auto attack. The last few swings can be walked out of. The root begins after the stun attack has completed, but the evade doesn’t kick in until the first swing (which is a big window for a squishy class like thief). There are many potential solutions; I’m not going to suggest any, but it needs something.
- Black powder needs something small – either a small damage bump, a very slightly bigger AoE, or to have its init cost reduced to 5. Half of a standard initiative bar for a smoke AoE that any130 range melee classes can stand outside of and still hit you is a bit much.

3)Sword/Dagger
- Flanking strike is just a mess. Its like Pistol whip’s loser brother. The pathing/targeting is no where near as good as the ranger equivalent. The overall damage for the skill is subpar for time and initiative spent (in a set that already has poor damage options). The evade portion of the skill is gone well before the second (and more powerful) strike lands, leaving the thief open for a beating. Due to the length of the animation, the “boon removal” part of the first strike is kind of pointless (In the current meta anyway); Any class that is boon reliant is applying them constantly – flanking strike is a good way to ensure your target has 2 or 3 less boons then they’re used to, but it just isn’t usable as a means of stripping boons from a target completely (due primarily to the long animation time of the skill, and to a lesser extent the init cost). Fixing this would require playtesting, so I’m not going to make any suggestions, but there’s no question this needs to be adjusted.

4)Dagger OH
-Dancing dagger was over zealously nerfed. While I agree it needed some adjustment, 50% of the damage was an extreme overcompensation for a company that claims to like to make “small, consistent changes”. There’s 2 easy ways to fix this.
a)restore 25% of the damage (making it a 25% damage nerf from the original DD damage).
b)Leave the damage as it is now, but remove the cast time, reduce the init cost to 3, speed the projectile up, and reduce the cripple to 4s base.
I prefer option B, that way DD can be used as it was apparently intended, as a utility. Its current incarnation is easily dodged, init expensive, and does kitten damage – you’re better off just hitting HS most of the time.

5)Pistol/Pistol
- Dev’s, we don’t care that you like Body Shot; its worthless. I know that seems harsh, but we’ve had numerous posts on the boards, showing mathematically how worthless body shot is as a weapon skill, and its still there, patch after patch after patch. It is a mathematically provable waste of initiative in 98% of scenarios, yet the dev team clings to the skill for some unknown reason. This is a major deal, and ties in to my next point
- Pistol/Pistol is a confused, poorly designed weapon set. With Body shot being a mathematically provable waste of initiative, We’re left with Vital shot (and sneak attack), and Unload; 2 polar opposite skills. Vital shot (and sneak attack) are condition damage attacks, they gain very little from high power/crit. Unload is a Power/crit attack…and gains absolutely nothing from condition damage. What? Headshot and Black powder shot are good utilities, but they’re just that; utilities. Their damage doesn’t contribute meaningfully no matter what the spec’s focus (either condi or power/crit). Fixing body shot into something useable would at least help nudge the set toward coherency.
- Pistol/Pistol has ZERO access to any of a thief’s survivability mechanics. Any dagger OH spec has access to stealth. Any sword MH spec has access to Infiltrators strike. Even Dagger/Pistol can access stealth via Black powder->HS. Pistol/Pistol has no built in access to stealth and no escapes, making for a very easily caught, squishy thief.

6) Obstructed
- Its been 4 months – Ranged combat should work. There’s really no excuse. I’d say about 20% of the time, my ranged attacks are “Obstructed” or “Out of Range” for no reason whatsoever. That number should be 1%. Who wants to play a game where the mechanics cant be trusted to be consistent?

Please add or comment as you like, but keep things civil.

More and more often lately, I have instant skills just outright failing. Examples: Withdraw, Roll for initiative, Infiltrators strike. Skills without cast times that do nothing when pressed. The biggest culprit (and the most noticeable) is withdraw – I’m not performing any other actions, I hit 6 – i watch the skill button react…and…nothing. Then I spam it 3 or 4 more times before it activates. Everyone else is moving and acting normally (I’m not getting any rubber-banding or my client playing catchup to the server), it just seems like the skill doesn’t properly register. This has caused my death a number of times; sometimes I can understand (a Ping war between my opponents client and mine, the strike that killed me “landed” before the server acknowledged my press of withdraw), but frequently, that is not the case. I stand in AoE, take a few more hits, or get CC’d waiting for withdraw to activate. Whats going on? Anyone else having similar issues?

Down state will never, ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever,ever, be gone. I don’t know if I put enough emphasis on that, so re-read it if you need to.

The current balance relies on downstate – the biggest drawback to going burst/glass cannon is how having to stomp the player afterwards. Burst thieves would actually be OP without down-state. They could maul a player, restealth, then maul another player. The reason you don’t see this happening now is because any glass cannon that goes for a stomp usually ends up on the ground next to you a second later, as it was designed.

@EaGrimdarK.7849

Sigh. Bunkers dictate how other players build, that is why the meta is bunker dominated. If bunkers no longed existed, but Burst was untouched, you’d see alot more hybrid builds out there – you can beat burst with a hybrid build by having good reflexes and outplaying them. You can’t do the same with bunkers.

Yes, I speak english – Cav’s initial statement seems to be a slightly poorly worded “Why are there so few functioning cookie cutter builds, rather than a ton of effective, viable builds”. If he meant otherwise than the sentence structure is very clunky.

It’s funny that you call my ability to speak English into question – the sentence “I’m not even touching that one” has a negative connotation. If you wished to agree, you could have easily just typed “I agree.” Additionally, if you don’t find the following quote condescending, I’d hate to converse with you on a regular basis.

“Its BAD that theres only a handful of cookie cutter specs? Its clear where your MMO background lies, cookie cutter is BAD. Cookie cutter = no skill players pigeonholing the meta, you literally stated one thing you wish there was more of that would actually perpetuate two of your other issues. Hmmmmmm. LOL”

I get it, you’re an internet tough guy; don’t sweat it too much, many people are. Years of forum browsing around your formative years must have left you without a vehicle to express your opinions unless they are accompanied by dismissal, snark, and condescension to the point where you don’t even realize it. All I can do is hope you grow out of it.

EaGrimdarK.7849:

I dont see a single glass cannon thief in tpvp, and in spvp half are death blossom scrubs, aka not glassy. ANet has stated that spike builds are meant to be doing what they are doing, and honestly the players need to l2p if they want to survive the spike trend.

Most thieves run Glass cannon in tPvP – If it wasn’t clear, OP was talking PAID tourneys (you know, the ones that count). Not that I’m echoing his complaints, just clarifying

EaGrimdarK.7849:

What bunker dominated meta? o.O I mean, with a post like this you should do some research..

You don’t run paid tourneys without bunkers. Everything else is negotiable (you can try a little of this, a little of that, etc), but you absolutely need bunkers to have a chance at winning against an equally skilled team.

Its BAD that theres only a handful of cookie cutter specs? Its clear where your MMO background lies, cookie cutter is BAD. Cookie cutter = no skill players pigeonholing the meta, you literally stated one thing you wish there was more of that would actually perpetuate two of your other issues. Hmmmmmm. LOL

The way you’ve angrily and condescendingly agreed with his point here only leads me to believe you misunderstood.

EaGrimdarK.7849:

“only one map/game type” not even touching this one.

Why? alot of players want additional game types – running the same type of map gets boring.

EaGrimdarK.7849:

Yes, please, go back to LoL, thats a great balanced game. Sorry you cant just search a gw2 build on mobafire and insta-pwn with the current op champ like in LoL.

I don’t play LoL, but its lasted as long as it has for some reason. Perhaps you’re not a fan, but perhaps there’s something to be learned from its success.

Just to clarify, I don’t necessarily agree with OP, but I’ve gotten sick of the condescending tone.

Bumping this, because I’d rather not see it fade into obscurity. As ridiculous and improbable as this is, I’m hoping ANet will at least comment/notice the issue. As of yet, no one has given me a logical reason as to why this disparity between Stun and “Stun+” exists (people have explained the mechanical reason, but no logical reason is should continue to exist).

The difference has a large gameplay impact – when a burst Warrior stuns me and goes for Frenzy→HB’s, I rarely take more than a swing or 2 – I break the stun (Using my stunbreaker) and escape, as was designed. When a burst ele hits me with updraft, I might as well wave goodbye to a chunk of my health as they execute their pre-determined DPS rotation. Its almost as if they know for a fact where I’ll be long enough to get their rotation off, because there’s a delay before it can be broken. It’s silly, and should be fixed. (I’m not singling out just Ele’s, lots of high power/crit builds with a KD/KB/Pull/Launch can pull this off. I’m also not complaining about Ele’s using updraft – it’s not their fault its poorly designed by Anet)

Marked One.3125:

Yeah, i always loath watching my character fly in the air whilst i spam my stun-breaker. I figured the reason was Anet had patched something in regards to people exploiting jumping in and out of water to avoid CDs when using skills a few months back or even during BWE’s (correct me if I’m wrong). The time/money saving method was to simply prevent skill usage while you’re in the air. There’s probably other reason like using some skills in the air could be ridiculous or game breaking (jumping HS anyone?). The correct method to fixing it could be done in several ways but all would take much more time/money to implement. But again, time/money, and the fact that only people who are quick to go for the stun-breaker will notice this is another reason Anet won’t fix it any time soon. I would be surprised if it’s fixed by the next big patch given the last patch was basically tying up loose ends on a bunch of skills that should have had combo fields/finishers at launch, some lolbuffs, and the new mesmer pimping skills.

I think they will eventually get around to it though since they did fix BV but that didn’t involve being in the air so it was an easy fix that impacted most of the player base.

Well, that’s not really acceptable for an “E-sport”. Creating new issues every time you fix something isn’t acceptable, and it’s all Anet seems to do. Anets “Slow and steady” approach works well if you’re making constant changes, but once a month tiny changes “Just to see if they work out” is ineffective. Put up a test server – throw in some crazy changes and let the players test them, I’m sure they’d be eager to play when it means better balanced, functioning content on a quicker timeline. Worked well for RIFT (whether or not you liked the combat in that game is irrelevant, making sweeping changes and letting the playerbase vet them and fine tuning from there worked well).

Is Anet even aiming at E-sport anymore? I hear it brought up by players on the boards constantly, but their actions recently say otherwise. Thief got a bunch of underwater combat fixes (Read: PvE Fixes), and a couple token PvP changes, but they left a number of broken weapon skills and an entire non-functional weaponset for PvP unchanged. I’m sure other classes have gripes too, I don’t know their mechanics as intimately and am not qualified to comment.

Recently.1043:

Builds that revolve around CC-chains sacrifice something to achieve that (usually strait up damage but sometimes survival as well) If you have stability, you basically made them sacrifice that damage for nothing.

Yea you cant activate that stun-break/stability until after you land, but you can negate EVERY FOLLOWUP CC AFTER. Alternatively, lets say someone stuns me. I can immediately activate a pure stun-break that doesn’t give stability, then be hit by another stun afterwards, and i’m still stunned.

Stun-break is 1 time, instant solution to a stun. Stability might come out a little slower than a stun-break on a displacement skill, but it will also protect you from any follow up cc. Seems completely fine to me, and is the reason why i pack stability into most of my builds.

In the current burst-bunker meta, you don’t need a “CC-Chain” to drop or seriously hinder a player. There are builds for multiple classes designed to just dump damage as quickly as possible. The counter to these sorts of builds is to make them waste their big CD skills/enabling utilities by dodging, blocking, going immune, etc. If someone tries to stun you to set up this sort of play, hey, you’ve got your stunbreaker. If you are instead Knocked back, or launched, well hey, sucks to be you. This obviously is not a problem in hot-join. It takes coordination, and timing – the kind of stuff you see in tPvP.

Why do I have to convince people that all CC should be the same? One of the most attractive parts of GW2 PvP to me was “No gear grind”. Everyone on the same level. Why would people argue that some classes should have better CC (not better access, just better) than others?

MaXi.3642:

not only stunbreakers and stability counter this… try to use blind its more effective then it looks like

I’ve already addressed this, so I’m just going to straight up copy/paste my previous post.

“I’ve seen some responses along the lines of “You should just avoid KB/KD/Pull/Launch (Dodge roll, blind), or neutralize it before hand(Stability)”

If that’s the case, why does any class get stunbreakers? Why aren’t they just dodging all the stuns, or blinding their target first, or throwing stability up? All those tactics work for stuns, Anet’s attitude could have been “Well, if you get stunned, eat it, you should have dodged/been immune”.

But wait, it isn’t.

The developers realized you couldn’t possibly dodge/blind/immune every source of control removal (Stuns, fears, etc), and gave every class stunbreakers. A separate class of control removing abilities that aren’t countered by stunbreakers the same way stuns are is broken and should be fixed."

Poxxia.1547:

Nah … now I am running a class with multiple KB/KD/Pull/Launch … so now they are perfectly fine.
On a serious note: You want more access to ways to counter these mechanisms? You are aware, that stability does work on several of them while stunbreakers only work on one, right? And I am not sure how you would implement it … if fx a mesmer is pulling you off the wall, and you in some miraculous way manage to press your stun breaker. Would you then be teleported back up, or would you rather be “free to fall down”? I understand the frustration (and share it at times), but I am not sure how to “fix it”.

I don’t want more access to counter mechanisms – I want all control depriving mechanics on the same playing field. There shouldn’t be two classes of control depriving mechanisms in the game – one you can counter instantly (stuns), and one you can counter after a delay (KD/KB/Launch/Pull). I’m not saying a stunbreaker should counter the effect entirely, just return active control to the player immediately.

MindlessRuff.1948:

evilapprentice.6379:

MindlessRuff.1948:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’ve seen some responses along the lines of “You should just avoid KB/KD/Pull/Launch (Dodge roll, blind), or neutralize it before hand(Stability)”

If that’s the case, why does any class get stunbreakers? Why aren’t they just dodging all the stuns, or blinding their target first, or throwing stability up? All those tactics work for stuns, Anet’s attitude could have been “Well, if you get stunned, eat it, you should have dodged/been immune”.
But wait, it isn’t.

The developers realized you couldn’t possibly dodge/blind/immune every source of control removal (Stuns, fears, etc), and gave every class stunbreakers. A separate class of control removing abilities that aren’t countered by stunbreakers the same way stuns are is broken and should be fixed.

Stun breakers do work on the control abilities you mentioned at the start of the thread, you just have to wait until you hit the ground until you are able to use them.

Which is exactly my point. “You have to wait.”

You should not have to wait any amount of time before hitting a stunbreaker. Would it be fair if you have to wait Every time a warrior Frenzy->HB’d you? Or a thief BV->CnD->Steal->BS’d you?

No, It wouldnt. So why is it fair for KD/KB/Pull/Launch?

A thief can’t knock you in the air like a guardian can though, and a warrior can’t do it if he is planning to HB you.

…what does that have to do with anything? The specific mechanics aren’t in question. I’m not saying “Remove all KB/KD/Pull/Launch” from the game. I’m just saying make it so that stunbreakers break them, Just like they do stuns, at any point during the effect.

MindlessRuff.1948:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’ve seen some responses along the lines of “You should just avoid KB/KD/Pull/Launch (Dodge roll, blind), or neutralize it before hand(Stability)”

If that’s the case, why does any class get stunbreakers? Why aren’t they just dodging all the stuns, or blinding their target first, or throwing stability up? All those tactics work for stuns, Anet’s attitude could have been “Well, if you get stunned, eat it, you should have dodged/been immune”.
But wait, it isn’t.

The developers realized you couldn’t possibly dodge/blind/immune every source of control removal (Stuns, fears, etc), and gave every class stunbreakers. A separate class of control removing abilities that aren’t countered by stunbreakers the same way stuns are is broken and should be fixed.

Stun breakers do work on the control abilities you mentioned at the start of the thread, you just have to wait until you hit the ground until you are able to use them.

Which is exactly my point. “You have to wait.”

You should not have to wait any amount of time before hitting a stunbreaker. Would it be fair if you have to wait Every time a warrior Frenzy->HB’d you? Or a thief BV->CnD->Steal->BS’d you?

No, It wouldnt. So why is it fair for KD/KB/Pull/Launch?

I’ve seen some responses along the lines of “You should just avoid KB/KD/Pull/Launch (Dodge roll, blind), or neutralize it before hand(Stability)”

If that’s the case, why does any class get stunbreakers? Why aren’t they just dodging all the stuns, or blinding their target first, or throwing stability up? All those tactics work for stuns, Anet’s attitude could have been “Well, if you get stunned, eat it, you should have dodged/been immune”.
But wait, it isn’t.

The developers realized you couldn’t possibly dodge/blind/immune every source of control removal (Stuns, fears, etc), and gave every class stunbreakers. A separate class of control removing abilities that aren’t countered by stunbreakers the same way stuns are is broken and should be fixed.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Every class has access to Stability in some way. Sure some classes need to sacrifice more to access it, but that is why every class is so different.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability

Thieves do not have access to stability. Unless you’re suggesting slotting daggerstorm, then dodge-rolling out of it. 8s of stability on a 90s CD.

The existence of stability does not negate the fact that some CC is stronger than other CC. I doubt ANet designed KD/KB/Push/Pull to be inescapable for x Seconds when applied.

Dual.8953:

I think the reason they can’t fix the CCs that render you airborne is because you can’t skill in the air, and judging by the nature of teleports, I gather you can’t air skill because you’d be able to teleport in mid air and do things like blink anywhere. (even into keeps)

That sounds like an Anet issue that should be fixed, asap. I can understand that kittening about 1-2s of lost control sounds like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but in the current meta, 1s of lost control can easily be the difference between you at 80% and you fighting not to get stomped.

ANet already decided that inescapable CC was too strong (BV Change), whats with the hold up balancing all the other inescapable CC?

Counter play doesn’t factor into this – you could counter Basilisk Venom any of the ways you just described, but it was still changed. You can’t dodge literally everything, and some classes have poor/no access to stability.

Once you’re hit with a KB/KD/Pull/Launch, there is a certain amount of time (usually around 1s, but some are longer) where your entire ability bar is locked. Stuns are in the game because CC is a vital part of coordinated MMO PvP; Stunbreakers are in the game because it’s silly to completely take a players control away without some way to counter it. Why are some “Stun like effects” better than others?

How would you feel if 3 out of 8 classes were given a stun that stunbreakers had no effect on? Would that be fair, or balanced?

Pray.9751:

by not being able to fix it … simple as that

I don’t follow. “Not being able to fix it”?

People aren’t going to cry if Snowball mayhem isn’t perfectly balanced. When designing a new PvP mode, you have to take every single classes myriad of abilities into account. How do you think CtF would work here? My guess is extremely poorly, because mobility is a survivability mechanic for a number of classes.

These skills are still better than stuns, as there is a delay before you can use a stunbreaker to escape one. In the current Burst/bunker meta, 1-2 seconds of 0 control over your character is long enough to watch most to all of your health disappear in a tPvP setting where players are coordinated. There is also a disparity between the amount of KD/KB/Pull/Launch between the classes – this results in classes with better access being stronger in group play.

You decided Basilisk venom was overpowered by depriving players 1 second of inescapable CC, how do you justify KB/KD/Pull/Launch still working this way?

-D/P’s Dual skill still roots on hit. 4 months in, it still roots on hit. kittening hilarious

-P/P got token buffs that in no way addressed any of its issues. It’s still a kittentily designed set. No access to Stealth (a thiefs primary defense, and a strong offensive tool). Body shot is still mathematically provable as a waste of initiative. Its garbage and something needs to happen to it. With Body shot being worse than worthless, the entire set is confused – the OH skills are utilities, so that leaves you with a condition based auto and stealth attack, and a power/crit based dual skill. The auto-attack is severely underpowered without access to stealth for Sneak attack. Changing Body shot to something worth spending initiative on would help nudge the set toward some sort of coherency (either a BIG damage buff, or condition apply on hit).

-Pistol whip still does less damage than our auto attack, all for only 5 initiative. Targets can just walk out of it. It has its uses in coordinated team play, but it’s more often than not a waste of initiative.

-The improvisation change is just hilarious. The skill is still completely random, and cannot be relied upon. Coordinated team play needs skills that can be relied upon, not luck-of-the-draw traits.

-Steal randomly obstructed by thin air (I’m not 100% sure whats causing it, could be a block being incorrectly reported, or trying a steal at max range on a target moving away from you. Either way, it wastes a 45s CD)

-Flanking strike still doesn’t work as well as Rangers equivalent in accuracy or evade duration (though I will admit, it “feels” more accurate in the dozen games I played tonight using S/D). The evade fades well before the second swing, its just silly. Now the evade time itself is fine, the second strike needs to be delivered more quickly and reliably.

Non Thief specific gripes
-Ranged attacks are still randomly obstructed by thin air, rather often. 4 months in and you don’t have something as basic as ranged combat working correctly?

On the plus side, they fixed underwater combat! I’m sure we’re all pumped for the numerous underwater combat issues that were fixed – underwater combat is the heart of competitive play, these changes will make it so much easier every time Capricorn comes up on the tourney rotation.

I can’t do this much kittening without at least acknowledging the positive changes. Improved slow pulse is nice, and new fleet of foot is nice. It’ll unfortunately be used for “run away until my CD’s are back up” thieves, but it’s intended to give thieves who use stealth offensively to be able to maneuver behind their targets more reliably; with the new speed signets for other classes, it was a good call. New Ricochet has potential, but its hard to gauge with P/P being sub-par, and P/D only having 1 skill that will take advantage of it (remember, body shot doesn’t count as a skill.)

Akumetsu.8591:

basilisks venom (bv) is amazing it allows you to succesfully use your opener unhindered or save a team mate. it actally has many uses beyond just kill some one that i find thieves useless unless under a few circumstances to be under par compared to bv.

How does one use BV to “Save a teammate” thats specific to BV? Sure, pulling a frenzied warrior off of a teammate for 1.5 seconds is useful, but you can do that with other tools, sometimes alot more efficiently. Scorpion wire comes to mind as vastly superior (and if you bring Thieves guild, one of the summoned thieves will -also- use scorpion wire). In the right situations, you’ve also got tripwire, headshot, the stun from PW, the immob from Inf strike…

BV is honestly kind of underperforming, for an elite skill anyway. The 1s cast time severely limits its tactical usage.

Grimwolf.7163:

Personally, I think the best compromise might be to remove stealth from Cloak and Dagger so you just can’t spam the crap out of stealth whenever you feel like it, but up the Thief’s health to middle range like the Ranger and Engineer. Maybe even trade places with the Mesmer in that regard since they’re WAY harder to catch and hit than a Thief even now.

You’d have to rework every Dagger OH weaponset, the CD of every utility/heal which offered stealth, and every single stealth trait. Those were all designed with “CnD grants stealth” in mind, and they’d be severely gimped without it.

With your suggestion, you’d be better off removing stealth from the game, and giving thief access to protection, stability, regen, and immunity skills. They’d also have to rename the class “Swashbuckler”, or something, because we’d become dodgier, squishier warriors.

Ethics.4519:

rchu.8945:

stof.9341:

Short anwser : No.

Long answer :

Hell no.

+1.

If they want to alter a class defining skill, then I want other classes suffer the same fate. You nerf one, you nerf them all. And thief as a class already been nerfed numerous times.

I don’t agree with OPs idea, however I disagree stronger with you. Thief and warrior probably have the ONLY class-defining mechanic working properly right now. Actually, it’s only warrior, as thief’s class-defining mechanic (stealth) is more OP than intended with the culling situation, while all other professions seemed to be bugged in some way. Ranger’s pets are horrible (don’t even get me started), mesmers’ phantasms and clones seem to be buggy and still getting nerfed, engineers have kit bugs, eles (can be argued both ways) have certain issues with attuenment slotting, necro pets have horrible AI as well.

So until ALL professions class-defining mechanics are fixed, don’t wish that other professions have “the same fate”

Mesmer clones and phantasms seem to be working so well that Anet decided to nerf them a bit, so I don’t know if I’d count that as “Not working correctly”. Necro’s class mechanic isn’t minion summoning (its a facet of the class, not the defining mechanic). I can’t speak for warriors, but I’m getting “Obstructed” on steals against non-dodging targets in range, on open terrain, so there are bugs with steal. They’re not extremely common or gamebreaking, but from what I understand (and I could be wrong) most other classes don’t have gamebreaking, extremely common issues with their class-defining mechanic.

Frizz.6704:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m actually eternally grateful that Anet decided against Range focused and Melee focused classes. It causes too much circular design.

Your standard range focused class is going to have ranged attacks as their DPS focus, with some melee escapes, and speed boosts. Now you have to design all your melee around that fact – they’re going to need gap closers, snare cleanses and roots. Of course now your ranged class is going to need a root breaker , or else they’ll get owned every time melee gets close and roots them. How many of each does each class get? Where does it stop? What about your other "Primarily Ranged’ Classes (usually casters)? What about the interaction between Melee classes; can this speed boost designed to allow class X chase down a ranged player be used in an undesirable way against other melee? Its hard to find that perfect balance, and fights start to boil down to “well, He had ability Y off CD, and my ability Z was on CD, so he won”.

At least here you have options. You can also tailor all your utilities and traits to keep Ranged up as long as possible – that way, if you blew all your tricks and your opponent is -still- in melee with you, you’ve got that option to switch, rather than just getting pasted.

So on the one hand you talk about the incredible complexity and huge number of scenarios that can play out when you have ranged\melee classes, but then state that you have more options without?

In this case, Complex != Good. Its overly complex, and generally leads to “Trump” abilities. Ability X is designed for “Ranged Class” to snare melee classes. Ability Y is designed for “Melee class” to drop snares and boost speed, so they can close with “Ranged Class”. Do this 3 or 4 more times, with slightly different parameters (Knockback, Roots, Daze, and so on and so on), and what you end up with is a predetermined advantage for whichever player has the most “Deal with my opposite class” skills up when combat starts.

In GW2, if I’ve decided to diversify and make sure I have both a Melee and a Ranged weapon equipped, I can still play a crazy melee focused character, but if all my “catch up with that Ranged Class” skills are down, I have the option to switch to a well designed ranged weapon, and still have a chance – I’m not free pickings just because my “Catch up with you” utilities are on CD, and that’s a good thing.

Centaur + Withdraw = Nigh perma swiftness (30 points in acro makes it permanent), AND it helps out your team.

Recently.1043:

HS spam only seems bad because its spam-able due to initiative.

For example, i’m a warrior and i use sword/shield so my sword 2 skill is fundamentally the same as hs (gap closer to target + damage). It has more gap range and way less damage, but its functionally the same. The difference? i can’t cast it 3-4 times in a row.

The initiative resource system, while unique and interesting for the thief class, just dumbs down the class really, since you are always gonna choose to use all your initiative on the most cost effective skill (for bs theives, this ends up being hs, for a d/d condition thief, this will be death blossum) and only use that skill to the exclusion of every other skill. So lets say for example, they nerfed HS into the ground. Something else (maybe CnD) would just end up replacing it, and thieves would spam that instead. This is the downside to the initiative system; theres no real cost-benefit – just choose whatever the best skill is, and spam it.

If you look at D/D direct damage, its not even a cost effectiveness ratio – there’s no other skill in the weaponset that does a good amount of damage immediately (CnD->Backstab requires positioning and timing, something you may not have). If your low and I’m afraid you might hit your heal soon, its spam HS or let you heal.

Also, you can’t compare Warrior Sword 2 to Thief Dagger 2 without acknowledging the other differences in the classes. In a fight where both you and a thief are equipped exactly the same (same runes, same sigils, same stat boosts from traits), your warrior has 8k more HP and more total armor. If the thief can’t deal damage a bit faster than you over a limited time (Not higher DPS over an extended period, just higher burst), he’d have to play nigh perfectly to win the fight.

I’m actually eternally grateful that Anet decided against Range focused and Melee focused classes. It causes too much circular design.

Your standard range focused class is going to have ranged attacks as their DPS focus, with some melee escapes, and speed boosts. Now you have to design all your melee around that fact – they’re going to need gap closers, snare cleanses and roots. Of course now your ranged class is going to need a root breaker , or else they’ll get owned every time melee gets close and roots them. How many of each does each class get? Where does it stop? What about your other "Primarily Ranged’ Classes (usually casters)? What about the interaction between Melee classes; can this speed boost designed to allow class X chase down a ranged player be used in an undesirable way against other melee? Its hard to find that perfect balance, and fights start to boil down to “well, He had ability Y off CD, and my ability Z was on CD, so he won”.

At least here you have options. You can also tailor all your utilities and traits to keep Ranged up as long as possible – that way, if you blew all your tricks and your opponent is -still- in melee with you, you’ve got that option to switch, rather than just getting pasted.

Toughness could do a better job against Direct Damage I agree, but having toughness effect conditions would just be silly. Conditions are supposed to be the counter to high toughness, and tbh, aren’t that bad.

Visionary.5681:

TheGuy.3568:

I’m sorry but this is garbage every class has access to stealth, stability, or invulnerability.

I’m guessing by the tone of your post, your incapable of mature discussion. I’d just like to ask you to explain your arguement in terms of Necromancers.

They have access to 3s of Stability through a Grand Master Trait, in a trait line which is very rarely used. The vast, vast majority of necromancer specs are unable to gain this ability without making them remove 30traits from a benficial line. Then spending them in a line with little to no synergy in their build.

Compare what i just mentioned to Thieves who can all stealth stomp with ease and no penalty.

You’d consider this perfectly balanced?

If not then this thread and discussion has validity, reguardless of if you agree with the posts made in it.

Stealth stomp is far more accessible for a thief for a number of reasons.

- No access to stability
- No immune skills
- Lowest Base HP bracket
- Their defense is reliant on dodges and stealth
- Very poor access to Regeneration (about the only consistent access is using Stealth and Shadow Protector, or HiS)

Asking any class to stop what they’re doing for 3s to stomp sucks, but it sucks the worst on a class that can’t guarantee that stomp via stability, Can’t use any of their defensive abilities while stomping (as opposed to throwing up Endure Pain, or Protection, or Regeneration before hand), and is in the lowest base HP bracket in the game.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill

Most of your suggestions sound insane. That’s not be insulting, they just do. I don’t know engineer well enough to comment on specifics, but in general – if the class needed as many ridiculous buffs as you’ve suggested (50-100% damage boosts on multiple abilities, 60-75% CD reduction on multiple abilities, targeted KD turned AoE, 50% faster skill activations, damaging conditions turned into control effects) then it would have to be in an uplayable state right now. Not hard, not underpowered, literally unplayable – a free kill. Seeing as engineers are not currently in that state, alot of your desires just come off as ludicrous.

Could be that there are some good suggestions in the Wall of Buffs, but like I said, I don’t know Engi well enough to comment on that.

Oxstar.7643:

I think we can all agree that the entire point of being “downed” is to be able to fight back and have a SLIM chance at surviving.

But thieves and elementalists negate this basis. What I’m getting at is how thieves can finish in stealth and elementalists can pop vapor form to become untouchable. This is an unfair advantage that makes it almost impossible to fight back (yeslol I have elixir S – Doesn’t make me feel any better about it).

What I plead for, silently (except now) and personally is that activation of any form of stealth or invulnerability should block or interrupt finishers. We should all have a chance to fight back to our last breath, regardless of what class we are.
Who agrees?

My 2 cents.

All classes are not on equal footing when it comes to Armor and HP, your suggestion would be imbalanced. For you to have a “Chance to fight back” against any person who downed you, your downed abilities would have to be roughly effective across all classes. Lets take a warrior glass cannon and an ele glass cannon as an example; if you do enough DPS to the warrior to threaten him while downed, you’re going to WRECK that Ele, who starts at ~80% less base HP and lower armor.

The point is, Elementalist was given the lowest armor and HP in the game, yet his method for stomping is the same as any other class. Without some mechanic which Ele’s can use to get stomps, they’re at a natural disadvantage – Anet decided to give them those skills because without them, it’d be imbalanced against them.

The real issue here is that conditions are cleansed on down, for some reason. Perhaps it was playtested and decided that conditions persisting to down would be OP for other classes, but for a thief, it’s a huge detriment. If you invested time and initiative into stacking 8-12 bleeds on your target, its disappointing watching all those stacks (4-6k is a low estimate for your average sPvP spec) vanish when your target is downed. It makes preventing a quick res almost impossible.

I don’t quite understand why conditions are cleansed on down. It gives a big advantage to Direct Damage. Furthermore, you spent those resources to stack those conditions, why is your opponent getting a free cleanse all?

LittleRaven.7319:

If p/p was suppose to be a condition weapon then why does its traits go into crit?

If Sword was intended to be one of our 3 available main hand weapons (and remember, thieves have the least weaponset options in the game), why doesn’t it get a trait at all?
Who designed Last Refuge? Its poorly designed and usually ends up ensuring a thief’s death rather then helping them survive.
Why does Hard to catch leave us CC’d after the shadowstep (I’ve never used this, but these are the reports I’ve read).
How does Richochet Even exist? 5% bounce chance on pistol shots AND its a Second Tier Trait?

The designers are human, and make mistakes. Furthermore, there are only so many trait slots, some things might have ended up where they were via process of elimination. Claiming that the placement of the trait is a sign of intent from the developers is ludicrous at best.

Bug Fixes Bug Fixes Bug Fixes.

We all talk about the need for balance (and it’s there), but there’s a good number of both general bugs and class specific bugs. We’re nearing 4 months since release, the amount and severity of the bugs we’re dealing with is unacceptable.

It’s also affecting the meta. Who knows what new tactics/specs/weapon sets might be viable if only we could rely on ranged attacks to hit over open ground, and for traits and skills to work the way they’re written, 99.9% of the time? That’s not a sure thing, but I Imagine things working the way they’re supposed to will at least open up some new options across all the classes.

Once bugs are fixed, we can focus on the meta and balance issues.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

The ring doesn’t last for very long, and if he tried to weaponswap/ whirling wrath or zealot’s defense, it’ll be down before he gets back. If he tried to use any other weapon, especially the hammer, he wouldn’t have time to land the moneyshot third hit by the time you got out of there.

If you have any ranged attacks at all, I’d suggest a throwaway shot before you launch in with your main stuff if he has aegis, but if a guardian knows your combo, all he has to do is queue up the number of blocks required to completely negate it. I suggest rooting the guardian and going in close if he has a hammer, since you can lay as much as you want on him and stun him before the third hit.

We were starting fights from across the map, and JI’s range beats anything I’ve got. Like I said, I don’t consider it OP, and part of the reason it works so well on me is my spec and weapon choices. Once I’m in it, I’m trapped and my options to avoid it (under optimal conditions for the Guardian) are slim, but them’s the breaks. My build is squishy, but very avoidance focused, so I was focusing on trying to escape rather than just dropping a black powder and neutering him. Thanks for all the Info though.

Yeaaaah, No Knockback either (Thief). Tried to headshot him, but seeing as it was duel, he had aegis up. I suppose it was just “impossible to counter” thanks to the duel conditions (He was guaranteed to have Aegis up), and my classes lack of Knockback and Stability. As for dodge, I saw that in a separate “bugs” post on this forum, but I got bounced on every dodge attempt (at one point, we were just trying to see how I could get out of it).

Out of curiosity, couldn’t he just walk back into the bubble after a knockback?

Ah, yeah. I don’t get stability. Oh well.

Fought a few duels against a Guardian today, and came to the conclusion that its impossible to avoid Ring of warding + Judge’s intervention. I could be wrong, which is why I’m posting here.

-If you’re dodging at the time, you end up bouncing off the wall. You can’t dodge around in the ring because you hit the wall and get knocked down.
-Movement based heals and stunbreakers bounce off the wall

The only thing that seems to work is teleport based abilites (you end up knocked down at your destination, but you exit the ring.)
Is there any way to escape it? I’m not crying that the ability is OP, and I understand the point of the ability is to trap someone. It shouldn’t be simple or easy for any class to just escape it (you shouldn’t be able to just dodge roll through it), but there should be some available counter to it. Not everyone gets teleport based abilities/stunbreakers. Are there ways to escape it I didn’t try?

FuVirus.6398:

evilapprentice.6379:

FuVirus.6398:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’ve seen a random trick shot fly straight up into the air on what looked like the center of the point once or twice, but it only sticks out in my memory because I’ve literally only seen it once or twice, and I thought to myself “Where the heck is that shot going”?

I do like how you insinuated that thieves are somehow knowingly abusing this bug (like the Guardian block bug, which required the player to attempt to get the skill to bug out) rather than just, you know, using one of their better weapons for fighting Mesmers. In fact, against your typical Mesmer, a trick shot attack being eaten up by a node rather than say, a phantasm or clone, would be detrimental.

Quick sidebar, how in the world are you getting hit consistently for 4k by a shortbow? If the shot is indeed bouncing off the cap, you’ll take a maximum of 2 hits (you, the node, you, the node).

If i get hit once by an auto attack its a 2k crit on me, im glass cannon. So 1 shot bouncing off the ground and back to me will do 2x 2k = 4k.

running 3200 attack and 50% crit damage, I don’t see many 2k crits. I guess if I have a couple stacks of might and 25 stacks of bloodlust.

So, when you fight a thief with some power stacks (or 30/30/0/0/10 total glass cannons), they deal 4k to you on double crits. That’s very different than your “every time a thief shoots me with his bow on a point i take 4k” statement. Don’t embellish, it weakens your argument. which is overblown and alarmist to begin with.

I have 912 toughness they have max power/crit damage and bloodlust stacks. I get 3-4k each time. Besides you’re missing the whole point, attacks are bouncing off a capped node which is a bugg.

I’m not missing the point at all. It’s a bug and should be fixed.

Claiming its the ‘STUPIDEST BUG EVER’ however was overblown (there are ALOT worse bugs), and insinuating that any class (you chose thief) was purposely taking advantage of it (should we just not use our AoE weapon to deal with a class that spawns and relies on tons of NPC’s?) was unnecessary. Like I said, all the hyperbole just weakens your point.