Guild Wars 2

Just reroll a full dire P/D easymode condi bunker thief.
Now it’s all about lame condis.

BRB rerolling full dire easymode P/D LOL

I think Pistol Whip is completely fine as it is. You have 2 “free” PW thanks to Steal and Infiltrator Signet, and with 30 in trickery you get a third one really early.

Lordrosicky.5813:

. The ele spec might not be great yet but its totally ridiculous how all the damage is just instant. Anyone can play that spec.

Yes.
And, as anyone can play that spec, also anyone will die in 5s the moment the opposing team focuses the ele.
The difference is that Spirit Rangers, HS Warriors, Necros and Engis will last way longer.

D/P trickery Thief.

Back in April he (the OP) said he mains thief, guard and mesmer.
He probably is either a guard complaining about getting his boons stolen by S/D thieves or a legit mesmer who gets 100-0 in a second by an eviscerate.

I find having only one piece of celestial gear, more specifically the helm, Mixed with Soldier on legs and chest while the rest full zerker, to be the best thing to have. Food is Steak Fritters.
But this thing could have changed with ascended armor: now going zerk or valk legs could be really profitable.
I’m not a fan of using crit dmg gear on chest and helm.
Cheers

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I do have a lot of problems with thieves as an ele. Backstabs will crit you for over half your health regardless of pretty much any build you run, and there’s very little counterplay, because any thief worth any attention will wait until he can open in stealth while you are either distracted or don’t know he’s there, and thus have no chance of an sort of retaliation.
Sure, there’s plenty you can do once you know he’s there (not that it will matter too much unless you’re D/D and can zoom off to save yourself from the spam), but the fact of the matter is that he’d have to be stupid to attack while you can focus on him.

Whether this is because Anet wants hard counters, or because they didn’t realize that being able to hit for 9k damage in stealth effectively hard counters any squishy, is up for debate.

Did you know that it is actually quite difficult for a backstab thief to kill a D/D ele?

PU Mesmer (any kind)
MM Necro

Way below:
Spirit Ranger
Nade Engi

Of course I won’t mention warrior, because warrior.

Satan Blaze.8237:

@maugetarr: i made a small mistake, its supposed to be side strike.
@vincent: food is from yishis, can u give me other alternatives? butternut is much too expensive.

Orrian Steak Frittes (3,5s approx)
Dragon Breath Bun (1,5s approx)

Both are good for BS thieves. I use the first because I like fighting outnumbered.
The build is pretty much what every D/D thief runs in WvW

Aza.2105:

hihey.1075:

Aza.2105:

Keira Ferland.5619:

Lol, backstab is fine as it is. What really needs looking at is S/P and Dire P/P thieves.

So its fine that a attack with no counter play hits a player with 2100 toughness for 4.7k?

Yes, it is.
Learn to play issue.

I do not mind people being in disagreement. But at the very least you can constructively illustrate what you feel the “learn to play” issue is.

It’s learn to play. Nothing more, nothing less.
I thought this too. Then I rolled a thief and fought good players.
Then I started using other classes and rofl stomp backstab thieves with ease.

Aza.2105:

Keira Ferland.5619:

Lol, backstab is fine as it is. What really needs looking at is S/P and Dire P/P thieves.

So its fine that a attack with no counter play hits a player with 2100 toughness for 4.7k?

Yes, it is.
Learn to play issue.

Aeden.5896:

At the very least Last Refuge should behave like Blinding Powder and cancel all in progress/pending actions on proc.

It’s clearly a bug that last refuge doesn’t behave that way.

And that wouldn’t even solve all the problems. For example, if you’re p/d and have a bullet mid-air when LR proc’s you’ll lose the stealth when it hits a target and get troll revealed. It happens more than you would think.

This trait is so frustrating.

It’s not a bug. Blinding Powder is an istant cast ability with no aftercast, meaning that you can activate it whenever you like.

I agree with the second part, this trait hurts “ranged” thieves even more.

I see another “nerf warrior” thread. The thing couldn’t please me more actually.

^
I don’t see any nerf in my suggestion.

Maybe it isn’t clear, but I’ll try to explain it with an example:
Say, you (thief) are fighting another thief.
During the fight, you decide to use your Steal ability on him. The moment you press F1 to trigger Steal, he goes into stealth (say, with Blinding Powder).
Your Steal will then go into full CD.

Whereas if you try to steal from an enemy outside of your reach, it will just go in a five seconds cooldown, with a message saying “Target is too far away” (or something of the likes).

What I am asking is to make the Steal ability go in kitten cooldown (or no cooldown at all) if you do not have an enemy targeted.

style.6173:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

style.6173:

Easy fix for the issue. It should have 2 parts.

1. Puts you into stealth for 3 seconds at 25% health ignoring any existing revealed status
2. Next attack does not cause revealed flag

Play around with the recharge to make it balanced and this should work for everyone.

2. Consecutive Backstabs?

you are missing the main point though. That’s why you adjust the recharge. It’s not like someone can plan for 2 backstabs (and not everyone uses dagger mainhand). Sure it could happen once in a while, but it isn’t that big of a deal.

Actually it is. You CAN plan for 2 backstabs pretty easily, and doing so in the current condition meta is even easier: you could just wait for the conditions to proc the trait: getting 2 consecutive backstabs would be cake for experienced players.

thefantasticg.3984:

Yeah, I don’t have a Problem with #2a or #2b attacks. I use #2a to get out of combat quickly, wait for the boss to nail its big attack, then use #2b to get back in it (or if I know someone is about to lay down a field). Works fine. To use #2b as an extended leap it has to be off of auto-attack and you have to whip the camera around to use it like that. No one I know uses it like that…

Every decent pvp and wvw player uses like that.

I would consider adding 1 or 2 stacks of Torment on the Leap attack.

Shatter Mesmers need to be zerker to be any effective.
Zerker mesmers are completely shut down by any kind of thief.
Also, people have stopped running glass cannon builds in WvW, so even if you are full zerker, it would require some time to actually kill someone.
It’s a boring meta, but that’s what we have.

DanielGames.5198:

I really should be watching my health and counting down the internal cooldown :P However I find that this trait procs just as I’m casting CnD. So not only am I revealing myself at low health, but I just wasted 6 initiative.

Here are some suggestions that are stealth based:
1) Keep the trait as it is but give the player a 3-4 second boon where hitting from stealth won’t give them the revealed debuff but will still unstealth them.
2) Gain a few seconds of protection the next time the player is in stealth when below a health threshold (has a cooldown).

The first suggestion COULD be potentially broken: assuming a D/D thief, he could potentially proc Last Refuge→Backstab→CnD→Backstab. All this in 2 seconds. And I could already foresee “good” thieves getting the advantage of this. Of course it’s risky, but it would be a borderline OP burst.

The second one is easier to implement and would be quite good actually. It is stealth based too, so maybe could please the devs.
Gonna add this to the OP later.

The easiest build to play as thief is condi P/D, x x 30 × 30.

Playing 0 30 30 10 0 D/P is kinda hard at the moment due to the fact that people have started to know how to counter this spec and you need to be really good to achieve something other than killing upleveleds or zerker rangers that are catching up to the zerg.

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There actually Are range markers in this game.

Simplicity.7208:

At 25% you use blinding powder. If you’re disabled and a warrior is wailing on you, PBAoE blind. If you’re fleeing and it procs, smoke field for blast finisher/heartseeker. Still gives the stealth if you want it, doesn’t reveal you when you don’t.

Maybe you are confusing Blinding Powder (which is the skill that procs now) with Black Powder (which is a smoke field).

The access to stealth would be limited to those specs which run Dagger as main hand, but that’s basically what I suggested in the open post ^^

K U T M.4539:

Try dueling a full dire mesmer running pu who has 2k condi damage pre-might.

I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun.

Dire is completely bad for any condi based mesmer. A full dire mesmer would have 10% critical chance at best, thus the clones will not proc bleeds and won’t put any pressure on you. The only thing which would damage you is the Torment (Scepter #2, easily dodgeable) and the Confusion (Scepter #3, easily dodgeable and interruptable). Maybe you would get hit by some Staff clones’ autos for a 1s burning, but that’s it. They of course will be tanky, but are not a threat at all.

oZii.2864:

It only fits the criteria of low risk high reward in a 1v1. That is why conversations around 1v1’s are silly.

Imagine if this game had no loading and you could essentially swap characters on the fly, free trait resets, and a bag with all your armor and trinkets ready to go.

1v1’s would be counter picks that is why this is silly to bring up because 1v1 balance in gw2 would make things worse it would never end and who is even the final word on 1v1 balance?

I fight a pu I can roll them with my necro or grab my P/D perp thief and CnD clones till I win, I fight a P/D thief I go get my necro or play sword/dagger thief, I fight a necro I go get my warrior with zerk stance and a hammer and mace shield, I fight a ele I can run hambow, never ending cycle. Dueling Servers? Really can’t believe those are even brought into the discussion well one that hopes to be serious.

I agree with you that when someone becomes somewhat skilled at playing his spec, he will start losing only to hardcounters of said spec (unless the opponent greatly outplays him).
Still, it is not something that mustn’t be appointed. GW2 is NOT a team based game – you could play it in many ways, some of these are “solo playing”. Solo roaming is one of these, and I find it greatly entertaining.
There are counters for every spec, but so far PU is the one with the lesser amount of counters (the only one being condi necro, and even then it would be hard for the necro to kill him).

Qaelyn.7612:

And how many “low risk, high reward” near-immortal stunlock warriors are there running around in PvP or WvW? PU mesmers are one of the few builds keeping them even slightly in check. Nerf them and we’ll have even more.

Uh? Stunlock warriors? Care to explain?
The only “low risk, high reward” warrior spec is Hambow, which has absolutely 0 mobility in WvW roaming and thus you will hardly see Hambows around.
Another exception would be the cheesy GS/Sw+Sh uncatchable spec, but that is just meant for trolling and getting killed by it would mean that you are really bad.

I like the change about swapping Protection for Swiftness.

Josh Davis.6015:

Last Refuge is something we’ve been talking about quite a bit internally, and we certainly don’t like the way it can occasionally unintentionally punish players.

We’d like to keep the minor traits in Shadow Arts thematically the same (stealth based) rather than simply providing boons or something similar. Keep that in mind when you’re suggestions changes for Last Refuge.

Thanks for the feedback!

I appreciate the fact that the balance team is looking into this issue.
Still, I find that, no matter what, giving stealth to the thief unintentionally is really risky.
Giving stealth to the thief but locking him out of his weapon skills for the whole duration (3s, 4s if traited) could be even worse than the main issue, and I think it’s out of the question.

I’ve tried thinking about everything stealth based, and nothing viable has come into my mind.

Possibilities were:
a) _ to stealth yourself and to shadowstep away from your enemy_ (like Hard to Catch), but seeing the feedback on Hard to Catch I think this would make the thing even riskier (and you could still proc Revealed unintentionally if you were about to use a ranged attack).

b) Make the trait proc Shadow Refuge instead than Blinding Powder
This would be interesting, because even if you get revealed as soon as the skill procs, you could still get the last pulse of the Refuge as stealth. Of course the CD should be increased, but I believe this to be too much (a free Shadow Refuge on a 5 point trait is too good).

The last solution would be to change the trait entirely or making it a Major Trait. The things I mentioned above, included those in the open post, should all be quick to implement.

Azreell.1568:

This build is built solely for trolling and 1v1s.

Beyond that the build is useless in all other aspects of the game.

What amazes me is that it is even being brought up at all by players in this forum. It is IMPOSSIBLE to balance a game around 1v1s and would unbalance the game even further if they tried.

Balance for all games center around group play. No matter what game or what patch there will always be certain specs or classes which fundamentally do better then others in small settings or 1v1s.

If you are not new to mmorpgs then most of this you already know.

My suggestion for balance is this:

If you can’t handle or aren’t mature enough to handle loosing 1v1s to a duelist based class perhaps you shouldn’t be dueling.

It’s not just the dueling fact.
I duel PU mesmers all the time in the OS and they drop like flies because they are all cookie cutters.
What we (or at least I) are appointing is the completely low skill floor to play this spec, since it is a low risk, high reward build.

It’s a trait in the Shadow Arts traitline – as such, it must do something related to the “Shadows”.
An AoE blind would be the best thing in my opinion. It wouldn’t have any sort of drawbacks and it wouldn’t be difficult to implement, and would completely fit the “lore” of the class.

I’ve always seen the “Slice of Candied Dragon Roll” as sushi o.O

Iavra.8510:

sinject.4607:

i think ileap needs to be nerfed like infiltrator’s strike was.

i don’t see how making inf. strike useless and then letting mesmers do the exact same kitten is fair at all.

Well, that’s because iLeap:
- has a cd
- needs a target in 600 range to make the chain skill available
- has a much shorter time window to use the stun break

And it doesn’t remove a condition.

Arkantos.7460:

ok the one Thing is clear

but you rly think giving thiefs a new stealtrait, will solve thatproblem
we already have 8 average traits with steal and you cant invest that much Points to make steal more useable

…. now im talking about traits….

Regarding the traits, I’d move the 1500 range steal to Acrobatics, so that you could make a build totally centered on the Steal skill.

Aveneo.2068:

You want to know what’s currently OP? It’s those ‘Boom&Zoom’ Warriors!

A PU Mesmer does not kill you; your own stupidity does. The key to winning is to stop acting like a zergling that’s mindlessly mashing buttons.

Best post 2014.
Please refrain to post in this thread again. You clearly have no clue even what a PU mesmer is.
There IS a reason why PU is banned from renown sPvP dueling servers.

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

I like #2. It will not give the clone you will spawn a Leap finisher, but you would still get it when you swap. I would actually even remove the Leap finisher entirely.
However, I believe that it would suffer of OP issues: if I’m fighting a mesmer and I see a clone suddenly leaping towards me, I know a shatter or BF combo is in the air. Having the clone spawning right near me would make it harder to see.
Personally, I’d appreciate #2 if they put a CD of 1,5s to the swap skill (like they did to Temporal Curtain), so that people could still react to it.

I believe this trait needs complete rework.
True, there HAVE been times in which it has saved me, but there were also a lot of times in which I have been killed by it.

Last Refuge (Shadow Arts Minor Adept Trait):
Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches a certain threshold.
-Health threshold: 25%

Let’s see WHEN it is a good trait to have.
1) if you are already stealthed and are running away. It is "good", because if it procs, it will extend the stealth duration and will blind nearby enemies, thus improving your chances of escaping.
2) if you are disabled. It is good because you would enter stealth and will blind nearby enemies, thus improving your chances of survival.

On the other hand, let’s see WHEN it is a bad trait to have:
1) If you are not disabled and are attacking your target. Your next attack will give you Revealed, and since you would be already at low health, you would immediatly need to back off from your target. Failure to do so usually results on your death.
2) If you are fighting alongside a nearby thief who is attacking his target. Same reason as above, but of course the victim will be the other thief. Results here could be even worse, because the other thief would get Revealed out of nowhere and most times he will be dead before he realize what happened. If the "user" is experienced, he will know what happens when it procs, and AT LEAST it will give him time to react or to understand what happened. But if it procs and stealths a nearby thief (assuming him to be a SA based thief, thus with stealth as main defense), he would rarely understand why he got Revealed. Even worse, the other thief could waste a lot of initiative trying to get into stealth again, adding to the problem.
3) (minor issue) If you already have Revealed, the only thing this trait will do is to blind nearby enemies, thus greatly limiting the effectiveness of it.
In a way, when this happens it would be a good thing for you, because you would be ensured you wouldn’t face the #1 issue, which is far worse.

This problem applies to every area of the game, be it WvW, PvP and PvE.

In my opinion, I find that traits should always be a "win-win" situation. That is, no matter how powerful, there shouldn’t be situations in which having a particular trait would dampen your survival BECAUSE of the trait itself. If such situations exist, the trait should be changed. The fact that Last Refuge is a MINOR trait, and as such it is mandatory for every thief who specs into Shadow Arts, greatly adds to the problem.

That’s why I believe it needs a rework.

Now, let’s see what we could change in order to fix this problem.

Many people have asked for it to remove the Revealed debuff.
This change would fix the #3 minor issue I listed above, but would worsen the #1 issue.
True, it will "cure" Revealed, so you would always benefit of the "full" effectiveness of the trait. However, it would potentially increase your Revaled time if you are timing your attacks in the proper way.
I’ll provide an example:
Let’s assume a D/P thief. The thief has just backstabbed the enemy, thus getting Revealed and exiting stealth. The thief now casts a Black Powder (off hand pistol #5 skill), and proceeds to autoattack the enemy, planning to Heartseeker through the Smoke Field when the Revealed debuff expires.
IF this change would be implemented, there is a chance for the thief to proc the trait while autoattacking, curing revealed but giving an additional 3s (4s in PvP) of Revealed upon landing the following autoattack, thus messing with his rotation.
-->let’s discard this change, as it could potentially do more harm than good.

Another possibility is to make it that the stealth you get from it would be "unbreakable" for the whole duration.
While this would solve all the issues I listed, this change will make the trait too good, as you could attack your target while stealthed for 3s (4s if traited) withoug worrying about getting revealed.
-->So let’s discard this change too, as it would make this trait ridiculously OP.

The last thing I could think of, is to change the "stealth" part of the trait, making it only work as an AoE Blind rather than a AoE Blind+Stealth
This thing would solve all the problems, while still being a good thing to have as a low HP proc trait
There wouldn’t be situations in which you would die because you wouldn’t get revealed out of nowhere. At the same time, nearby enemies would still get blinded, so it will improve your survival anyway (which is what you would want from a 25% HP proc trait).
-->This change would make this trait actually good to have, and would completely fit a Minor Adept trait in terms of cost-effect.

Any other thoughts are appreciated. If any other good solution would be posted, I will add it to this post.

EDIT: typos

The Game Slayer.7632:

Dakarius.3284:

This skill is an elite skill that stuns for 1.5 seconds on a 45 second cd with a 1 second cast time. It also doesn’t stack with other stuns. The problem is it doesn’t measure up to other stuns let alone other elites.

Examples of better stuns:
-Signet of Domination (3 second stun, 45 second cd, 1200 range, is a signet, 1/4 second cast)
-Magic bullet (2 second stun, other effects on bounce, combo finisher, 900 range, 25 second cd)
-Static field (2 second stun, 40 second cd, 1200 range, combo field)
-Earthshaker(1-2 second stun based upon adrenaline, 600 range, 3/4 second cast, 10 second cd)
-skull crack(1-3 second stun, 10 second cd)
-Whirling strike(1-2 second stun, 10 second cd)

Basilisk venom was fine as an elite when it was unbreakable, but as it is now, it’s meh as a stun and lacklustre as an elite (this is important as it’s thief’s only underwater elite).

I suggest either increasing the duration to 3 seconds, or reducing the cd to around 25-30 seconds.

i disagree completely. It’s an elite skill which extremely blows out every other one in terms of CD. kitten cd is amazing. the stun is at a good level, 1.5 isnt too little nor is it too high.
And i see almost every thief use it. Why buff something already widely used? so people can never use daggerstorm ever again? or thieves guild?

Each of our elites has its uses, but I agree that BV could take some love.
I think even a 1s UNBREAKABLE stun would be ok.

The fact that most thieves run it does not qualify it for being good. Most eles use Tornado in PvP, yet all Elementalists’ elites are awful.

BV is usually taken in PvP for Lyssa Runes anyway.

I dueled Doiid (a mesmer from Red Guard) a couple days ago at the windmill. He was using a PU hybrid. He had nearly 500 condi damage, and since he had many zerker pieces his vitality/toughness were not so high. The fights were fun and short and while it indeed felt powerful, his build was BALANCED. There were weaknesses which could be used to kill him (as I did after a couple fights).

My suggestion regarding this matter is this one though:
Make it so that the boons you get while in stealth will proc only if you haven’t already one of those. This way you couldnt stack “perma” Protection or Regeneration.
A lot of other traits already use this format (such as Shadow Protector, one of the Thief’s Shadow Arts traits), so it shouldn’t be hard to implement.

Victoitor.2917:

hihey.1075:

(the only reason PU mesmers are so popular is because necros are not common roamers. If necros were more common they would be forced to take more condition removal to survive their condition bursts)

Sorry but this doesn’t work. I am engy full condy burst. Tried Grenades/Bombs, Bombs/Toolk Kit, Grenades/Tool Kit. I open up with 5 conditions including very high damage burning, bleeding, confusion, blindness and torment. I still have no chance against them.

Necro condi burst >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Engi condi burst.
They’re not even comparable. Confusion does not work against them as they can simply stop doing anything and let their clones/phantasms kill you.

Jackums.3496:

MM Necros have no stunbreaks

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Traversal

The necro burst spec would be the perfect counter to PU. I ve roamed with some good necros and believe me, those mesmers didn’t stand a chance. You just need one immobilize, then they pop Spite Signet and go cheesy mesmer.
However, the lack of survivability of necros makes them really rare in wow, thus the PU mesmer (and engi) meta.

How could you even make other setups more useful?
If zerker will be viable there is no way that PVT will ever be on par with zerker in terms of usefulness.

I liked the suggestion of increasing the attack speed of bosses and general mobs. That way staying alive with zerker would be difficult at least, as you couldn’t just rely on dodges and vigor.
And lol to those who consider pve challenging

(the only reason PU mesmers are so popular is because necros are not common roamers. If necros were more common they would be forced to take more condition removal to survive their condition bursts)

Jackums.3496:

PU Mesmers are good for WvW roaming and nothing else. They have zero chasing ability and their burst (ie. Illusionary Counter and confusion) depends on you attacking them. Just ignore them. I don’t see much point in balancing around a troll build that’s essentially useless in every aspect of the game other than roaming.

The fact that they have 0 chasing ability is wrong.
Most PU use Traveler rune (which is extremely good for them, as both the boon duration and conditions duration are really nice). Plus they have blink, an immob from sword or another blink from staff.

They are actually quite good at chasing. They are not like thieves or warriors or gs rangers, but they definitely don’t lack out of combat mobility.

(assuming a D/x thief who mainly focuses on backstabs) Every experienced thief user knows that if you are not able to land your stealth attack during a 1v1 against any opponent who knows his stuff it’s almost as bad as getting revealed.

When I started playing thief (so when I was very bad) I wrecked other bad players by just spamming 1 when I was stealthed.
Now I think twice before trying to backstab a skillful opponent. If they block me or evade me, they will turn their body and the following backstab will hit for 50% of the damage, dealing poor damage and getting me revealed.
This looks like a l2p issue. Try to roll a thief and spam 1 while stealthed against a decent opponent. You will literally kill yourself.

Cynz.9437:

hihey.1075:

Oh gawd, they killin my AI with AoEs! Must nerf!

i play thief and i find aoe spam kittened, what is your point?

I don’t know if this was intended since the beginning, but I for once like the high number of AoE skills.

Most things couldn’t even be approached if there weren’t AoE skills: think about Spirit Rangers, MM necros, most Mesmers. Even Thieves with Stealth are countered by AoE.

Imagine a match with 3 MM necros, one mesmer and one Spirit Ranger. If there weren’t so many AoEs you coulnd’t even approach the point (and it would still be a pain to fight those specs even if you have plenty of AoEs).

You NEED AoEs in this game, especially on autoattacks. If every skill would have been like Thief Dagger #1, it would be impossible to fight some specs.

Oh gawd, they killin my AI with AoEs! Must nerf!

Master of Timespace.2548:

Pretty sure you guys mean tags instead of kills.

How could you say something SO rude?
It takes a lot of effort to get a kill, especially as a tank guard.

/laugh at those “100k kills, 3k deaths, I have a 33k K/D ratio, yo!”

Genotix.6804:

Yeah i agree that is a very good matchup and the fact that we didn’t have a matchup thread proves that people enjoy more fighting in game and not at forums:)
Keep it up.

The main reason the thread was not made on the first day of the matchup is because we’re all waiting for the day ANet will shut down this section of the Forums.
Since this could happen any moment, people are a bit relentless to open new matchup threads.

Good matchup so far. You are really pushing GH to an extreme, we’ve had all maps queued for quite long today. Too bad NO ONE is in the OS though.

I agree, and I think the major reason for their ugliness is that they are too “big”.
The aetherized pistol is no exception though. In my opinion, the only cool skins are the Krytan Pistol and the Pact Pistol.

keoma.5210:

Players on my ignorelist should not be able to use my siegecraft. If a building (keep, camp, etc.) is owned by a guild, players on the guild leader’s ignorelist should not be able to use the building’s resources.

Great, so now troll guilds could own a 1700sups Garri and don’t let anyone use them.

Disclaimer: PvE only people, please don’t even bother with this thread as this is not what you are looking for.

So far I’ve played (at least in sPvP) every class with the exception of a necromancer.
Engi being the latest: I’ve created my engi 2 days ago and I’m quickly levelling it (lv 65 now). However, I’ve levelled it through sPvP alone (guess it was about time to use those 100+ glory boosters I had uh?).

I’m currently playing a 30-10-0-30-0 build, with Grenade, Bomb and Tool Kit as utilities (turret as heal and supply crate as elite). Weapons are Pistol/Shield.
So far, I consider the engineer the “easiest” class to play, because, despite being a complete noob at it, I could simply use every skill I had off cd and still be really effective at holding the point. You just need to save your blocks and your interrupts for clutch situations, but that’s it.
Of course I’m bad – who wouldn’t with only 15 hours of play time in a class? – but this is the first class I’ve experienced this with.
Spirit Rangers are similar, but once their spirits are killed (which is quite common with all the AoEs going around in PvP) they are total crap and there are lots of counters to them. With engi, the only thing I fear are necros: every other class I see coming at me while I am holding a point is a complete laugh: just spam every bomb/nade you have off cd, mix it with F2-F3, Pistol #2 and #3. Heal up, use your elite for an istant iWin button. If you get knocked back, wait for their stability to expire and regain control of the point with your many knockbacks.
And team fights are even more easy, because with all your AoEs everything will just melt to my conditions, all while spamming nades and bombs on points whenever they are off CD.

Eles have the same amount of skills at their disposal, but if they press all the buttons randomly they will die even faster, and their Attunement Cooldown locks them out if they miss a key skill. Engis don’t even have to worry about this.

In my opinion, this class is hard to play for beginners of the game, because you need to press lots of buttons quickly. BUT if you have already experience of how to play this game, you won’t have many problems with it.
OF COURSE there is an infinite amount of better engis than me, and OF COURSE people who know when to use a skill are way better than me. But, as I said, this is the first class which you can just press everything and things still die. APM are way higher of course, but APM =/= Skill in competitive play (imho).

The variables I have to consider when I’m playing a different class (such as Mesmer or Thief or even spirit Ranger) are almost infinite. When I’m on my engi, I just rush for the point (unless there are 3+ people on it), press everything at my disposal and watch things melt. I can even force a decap if 2 people are defending a node actually.

Of course my experience is quite limited (played hotjoin the first day and solo queue the second day), but these are my impressions. I’ve always seen the engineers as the highest skill ceiling class in all areas of the game, and this discovery really surprised me.
Playing D/P trickery thief or Shatter mesmer has turned out to be incredibly more difficult than engi so far.

The reason I included WvW in the title is to include roamers and duelers from WvW, as this will be one of the things I will do once I reach lv80.

Please note: I’m not saying that the engi takes no skill, that things should be nerfed (well, I think passive crit procs should be removed entirely but that’s a different matter) or anything. This thread is NOT a rant and I still consider myself a noob engineer.

TL;DR: Not a rant; rather a surprise to me. People say that engis are the most difficult class to play. After having played 7 classes in PvP, I found out that condi bunker engi is the only class which enables you to do well if you just spam everything you have not in cooldown.