Guild Wars 2

Every argumentation against downed state and hard rezzing can be applied to you being outnumbered, in which it gives you great tools to continue fighting.

I’ve lost track of encounters in which I got almost insta-gibbed while being (greatly) outnumbered (even happens to the best of us, don’t be absurd!), then getting banner- or stealth-rezzed to have a comeback with my roaming mates and finally pushing the enemy’s group into defeated by clever gameplay. Also there were some situations in which one or two of your team could tank a big group while I get hard-rezzed by two other allies, thus giving your group a second chance even when beeing outnumbered. (ofc. also applies to my allies and many other players and groups)

You can slow down ressurection from downed state by applying poison; you may use the opportunity to load nukes onto the healers; you can interrupt the healers with CC. Safe rezzing almost always requires to blow at least one high cooldown utility (e.g. stability, invulnerability, group stealth, condition removal, etc) — if not, you sure shouldn’t talk about high quality gameplay…
Rangers’ Sick’em can now also be used to put the “Revealed” effect on a downed player to hard-counter stomp interrupts via stealth.

What you seem to not understand is the fact that downed state reduces the amount of cheesy insta-gib builds / group compositions in small- to mid-scale fights for anything with more than 2 players (1vs1) involved.

Rally-mechanics should be “fixed” (one player rallying from each defeated player), I agree on that. What bothers me, thigh, is: as in almost any “nerf this” or “I don’t want that” topic there is less threading in the discussion but mostly “I cannot have” or “someone stole my candy” without thinking outside of their own little box of expectations and experiences…

Easy to win against bad opponents, but hard to win against anything else if the build does not hard-counter anything else if players are on par skill-wise / does not abuse mechanisms which are often utilized in builds of other classes as well (i.e. cover conditions via sigils and runes and CC spam), thus having a great skill ceiling.
There are so many mechanisms which make GW2 terrible at times when it comes to PvP, but stealth on thieves is (apart from D/P cheese and abuse of shadow refuge in WvW) none of them. It provides potential for interesting fights: timing, anticipation, evasion and burst delivery with equal chances on both sides.
Getting root-stacked, chain-stunned, confusion-stacked and thrown around like a wet noodle is no fun for me. Fighting against good D/D and S/D thieves is, though, because my opponent has to know how to counter my burst and how to counterplay my actions while keeping track of timing, positioning and the opponent’s moves, and vice versa. Something which is clearly lacking in un-fun situations like the above mentioned.

I suggest to ask for fixes to broken mechanics, but not to abandon mechanics just because they are utilized in such broken stuff.

Hey guys, we’re still looking for a kind and warm soul from PS or SFR who is willing to get his or her avatar pushed and thrown around the Obsidian Arena for some fun Bollaball fights tonight (~9pm gmt+1, approx 30-60 minutes playtime). You will be fed the appropriate amount of mango pie and get some pretium doloris, ofc.
We may also provide “balls” for matches of yours, if you’re interested.

Either case: if you’re interested, please give me a short hint!

Oh, and happy new year to everybody, let the head-smashing continue!

Stillmoon.6894:

people never mention any problem with stealth because most people play warrior or guard and cant hardy notice when they are hit by backstab and their attack cleave so if the thief still linger around it can be easily hit by the auto attack.

Backstab builds are more of an l2p / build-related issue than anything else. D/D is fine – you need to take risks and your opponent can influence how often you are able to stealth in a given timespan. Backstab damage is therefore bound to a costly spell (C’n’D) or an expensive utility skill (BP or Shadow Refuge).
D/P builds lack some reliable counter for the majority of classes. You can still build them for perma-stealth without taking great risks or drawbacks, which imho is pretty bad design.

Stillmoon.6894:

- adding a revealed state each time after you use a stealth skill (2-4 second) that way you cant spam stealth and get way with it

The problem isn’t stealth in itself but the ability to either introduce it permanently (impossible for D/D thieves if the opponent has some experience with C’n’D and backstab mechanics) or getting insane benefits from it (~200-300 HPpS seems fine to me, almost guaranteed aegis and protection and regeneration is not)

Stillmoon.6894:

- especially for thief make the heal (hide in shadow) only remove one condition. this is way to annoying since they can easily stealth+heal+regen+remove condition+recover initiative while hiding and the opponent only can madly aoe

Thieves rely either on stealth for condition removal, or they play with mh-sword, which is mostly played in builds which don’t utilize stealth as their primary source of damage. I would even go as far as saying that most sword-builds are more dangerous and harder to counter than backstab builds.
Shadow Refuge needs some tuning, as I stated above, but it doesn’t make stealth overpowered in itself.

Stillmoon.6894:

- a simple way to counter stealth in combat just add a trail of glowing foot mark when stealthed in combat this way we can know where are they going

And what would be the purpose of the stealth effect, then? Showing off that the graphics engine is capable of rendering transparent stuff?

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Engi suggestions
Ranger Suggestions
Warrior Suggestions

Engineer has crapton of (point blank) AoE nukes, pushes, pulls, blinds, blocks to either put heavy pressure on thieves.
Ranger has great access to evades, blocks, soft CC and instant AI (pet), and some nasty channeled skills, which lock on target even when stealthed.
Warrior has absurd amounts of hard and soft CC, absurdly high damage even on tanky builds, and some of the most cheesy builds to lock-down and kill anything.

Yeah, give any of them even more tools against thieves who still rely on stealth for their burst…

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Would you guys like to see more counter stealth play.

No (that coming from an ele). Stealth is not really the issue imho, but some mechanisms make it stupid / boring to fight against:

• low risk skills / combos like Blinding Powder + leap / blast finishers on relatively low cost / cooldown (though I like the cross-class-combos, which my mates and I utilize in small scale fights sometimes as well)
• too strong additional bonuses from stealth (also relates to bullet #1) in some builds (especially D/P thieves with perma stealth builds and PU mesmers with AI-reliant builds)
• full shadow refuge stealth duration seems too long (especially with “Meld with Shadows”)

Stealth, if utilized correctly, is pretty strong, but in itself okay imho. There are corner conditions in which I find it being too strong, but that has less to do with the stealth effect itself but more with abusability of some traits and skills.

Thanks for summarizing some key aspects of solo and group roaming.

It seems that you either play a semi to full range build (i.e. 600+) or haven’t met any (soft-)cc-heavy group yet. CC of any fashion played a major role in any organized fight I participated in; be it snares to force an enemy into melee range, immobilizes to guarantee a spike / get some leeway, blinds to mitigate spikes or CC, stuns and dazes for interrupting a stomp, etc. There are also several ways to mitigate the effect of CC, some of which were mentioned in your post.

But you missed one major point of the above discussion: application, reapplication and stacking of several control conditions is easy pie. Atm there are only few spells which can be used for targetted condition removal, which makes it even harder to counter the conditions which need to be cleansed in case they hit you (which becomes easy with epidemic, venom sharing thieves and the likes).
The main purpose of condition removal spells is to mitigate direct and passive effects of conditions, be it damaging torment stacks or snares which get you in harm’s way (aka major trouble of losing a good chunk of your HP bar).
Once rooted, chances are good to eat another immobilize, and so on. Most builds cannot do much in such cases (even when built for some level of self sustain). Before Anet decided to let immobilizes stack in duration, it was hard but managable on most classes to endure a common 2-3 sec immobilize if it happened to hit you. Right now the situation is a bit different, in that you sit there for the duration of the condition plus any succeeding application; locked in one spot. You cannot break out of it reliably (like a stun breaker does against stuns and dazes), nor can you actively evade (not everyone has access to skill-bound evades) or mitigate incoming damage for much more than 3 seconds.

As much as I love balanced small scale fights of groups with well-thought-of builds and great players, as little it has to do with the intentions of this topic. we’re talking about cheese like LB-bola-warriors and groups with venom share thieves, and insane stuff like immobilize stacking on already immobilized foes / allies.

There are reasons for non-stacking hard-CC in GW2 and DR or auto-stunbreak on incoming dmg in other games. Why does all of that not apply to the most powerful soft CC in this game? The CC spam and lack of targetted mitigation in GW2 is the key point of negative comments of almost any “better” player and group I had a chance to play with or against. Some tend to abuse it, wheras others try to point out potential for more fun and challenging ways to play the game.
Just think about it in this way: Would it be less challenging and fun for all players involved if immobilize-stacking wouldn’t exist? Would DR or on-hit-breaks on immobilize put any class /group at a (severe) disadvantage against any other one? (and so on)

Good luck in dodging everything in small group fights. Let’s see how you can dodge every possible stun / snare there… /rolleyes

I’ll fix that for you: every server = noobs with numbers! Your point being?

Every side in this match has presented hordes of players with much potential for getting better (i.e. shown bad performance). There is no reason to praise one side over the other ones, really. Stupid blobbing and PvD / golem rushing from all parties involved, makes this match one of the most boring matches so far for me.

It would help if immobilize breaks on receiving damage (just like aegis is removed if you get hit, or blind is removed if your attack connects).
Snares are great ways to set up your burst, but it shouldn’t make you a sitting duck for 2+ seconds of spike damage. It isn’t even a matter of being outmannered (though this is where it becomes most obvious); Just look at warriors and thieves and their ability to lock down enemies for the full duration from 100% to 0 even if they slot several (instant) condition removals. Immobilize removal seems to be lowest priority for the game, which in most cases leads to awkward situations like removing the vulnerability of C’n’D, cripple / weakness from warrior skills or one or two stacks of random bleeds, while sitting there in 3+ seconds of immobilize in which you can’t do many things but eat all the stuff that gets thrown at you. It currently is stronger than most hard CC in that you cannot break it reliably, it is stackable, and there is no serious mitigation like stability is (I like beeing able to snare enemies even when they have stability up, but it shouldn’t drive mindless lockdown gameplay).

In a game where damage mitigation relies on active game play, there is nothing worse than beeing locked down, thus removing the active part for one side.

juno.1840:

1. Zerg’s clash in open field
2. Pop Tornado
3. Rip through opposing zerg line
4. Unorganized zerg line to break into chaos due to knockback and fear of the epic ele-nado.

This is how you shouldn’t use it, because – as you already stated – you’ll die.

You gain insane attribute bonuses in tornado form, so why not use it to augment some spells with long aftereffects, like meteor shower? You can position yourself near the enemy’s back line (the ones who in most cases won’t have stability), channel meteor shower onto the melee ball’s track, pop tornado form and giggle over your 4-7k crits for every second meteor while blinding or launching the enemy’s casters into some necro wells.

In small scale combat however, you should always pick either FGS (that damage and mobility!) or the elemental (air elem provides some nasty CC), because tornado is easily kitable and makes you free fodder for everyone with a brain.

Etay.8096:

Thank you for the help but im not sure how can i get 30% or more crit and 2.4k armor at the same time? which armor set do i need to get?

It’s pretty easy to achieve with ascended trinkets and some celestial gear.

You also don’t need ultra high power stats if you know how to stack might via sigil of battle and fire-blast-combos (and you can use the greatsword elite for some additional power and to cause severe damage from 900 range).

Etay.8096:

youre right but i never get how people manage to remember all the other classes skills and rotation when i get into combat with someone its really hard for me to track what they are doing

You get to know them if you play the classes / builds yourself, or if you play against them on a regular basis (the new arena in Obsidian Sanctum is great for duels, practicing and trying out new gear). Also most of them are obvious (hammer warriors, eviscerate, kill shot, heartseeker-spam, engineer CC skills, necro marks, mesmer phantasms, etc); Condition burst skills on the other hand… Well, let’s leave it at that.

You may also try to record your fights and analyze what you did good and what you could do better next time in certain situations (e.g. don’t waste a condition removal if you only got vulnerability on you, dodging too early, using armor of earth when you fight against a build without hard CC, etc).

Etay.8096:

I tried many builds and spend all my money on armors
mostly played pvt d/d with several a little crit

Playing ele in almost any “viable” build successfully requires good reflexes, fast skill activation (clicking skills is a big no-no), a sense of good positioning and movement (keyboard-turning is a show-stopper) and some knowledge about your enemy’s class and play style (since any non-one-trick-pony-build won’t kill anything besides pure glass thieves in a single attempt you have to react sometimes).

The well known 0/10/0/30/30 cantrip D/D build is still playable, as well as 0/10/10/20/30 or 0/20/0/20/30 are. Just aim for something around 2.4k armor, 2.7k power, more than 30% crit chance, as much crit dmg as you can get, 400 or 600 healing power and some boon duration (e.g. via 2 runes of the water, 2 runes of the monk and 2 runes of the traveller). The basic burst rotation is something like air -> air-3 -> air-4 -> air-5 -> fire -> fire-3 -> fire-5 -> fire-4 -> earth -> dodge roll into ring of fire -> earth-4 -> earth-3 -> armor of earth -> earth-5 -> lightning flash onto enemy -> water -> water-4 -> rinse & repeat.
Because most opponents know this rotation the will probably evade or kite every key skill in this rotation, so you have to become creative:

• use a dodge roll with evasive arcana in fire attunement to set an enemy on fire for a firegrab (don’t use firegrab in your first go, because it will be dodged 90% of the time)
• receive a fire aura by leaping through a fire field (ring of fire or burning speed) with activating the second step of magnetic grasp (earth-3) which grants swiftness and fury with Air-I and protection with Earth-V
• don’t waste auras only for their traited effects if your enemy seems to know what he’s doing but use them situational (frost aura against ranged builds, shocking aura against melees without stability)
• crit often to get vigor with Arcane-VI, which allows you to dodge more often
• stack might when possible, but don’t force yourself into it
• dodge roll into the enemy in air attunement for an AoE blind
• use updraft as an evade when immobilized
• etc

I’m currently using sth. like this (not optimized because I always forget which equipment I currently wear). The more you get a grasp on how to act and react in certain situations and against certain professions, the less built-in defense is required to be victorious on D/D ele. Always keep pressure on your enemy even when you drop low. Learn some rotations and get to know your skills – Use them both offensively and defensively; whatever is required in certain situations.

Monkeymonger.9235:

If at least people would start trying to learn the couple of viable condition specs in this game instead of writing amazing arguments like “stupid condition spam. gg”.

Condition and hybrid necro builds were viable in duels and small skirmishes before dhuumfire and torment. Currently they are faceroll against most other classes. You can set up pressure by just auto-attacking (for scepter-necros this adds up to about 10+ permanent bleed stacks and ~1/3 burning uptime) and pop either corrupt boons on boon-reliant builds or signet of spite inbetween. Both are very hard to see and don’t require preparation like most power build bursts do.

Monkeymonger.9235:

It would be the same as being angry at a physical damage warrior to pick axe or hammer.

Let’s not use warriors as reference for balanced gameplay, shall we?
Anyways – melee warriors can be easily kited and have very obvious skill animations. Heavy-dps builds using axes are very squishy (while hammer builds are not) and lack strong control, so it becomes a readable fight in which both parties can look for certain animations, anticipate, and use movement to avoid some of the damage and control aspects. However against most condition specs it becomes a game of RNG and lucky dodges / blocks because of the lack of skill indicators, lack of reliably condition removal and re-applicability of certain conditions.

Monkeymonger.9235:

Condition specs become useless in zerg fights and loses a lot of effectiveness even in 2v2 against good opponents.

The OP stated that he was not talking about zergs or any form of large scale combat, but about small scale and duels. Just look at how many conditions one can dish out at a given time and how much can be mitigated by condition removal. Due to auto-procs and AoE condition application it is an uncontrollable mess. Besides: you cannot control which condition gets removed. It is not just about some bleed stacks, poison, torment, burning and fear, but mostly about immobilize and confusion all stacked together without a chance to reliably remove the condition which currently hurts most. Especially outnumbered you can be the best players in the world – it doesn’t help when you get snared to death (yeay, immobilize stacking!), but only remove that one stack of vulnerability. It is just stupid.

Monkeymonger.9235:

There never has been any condition meta in wvw.

And this is why you only ever see solo-roaming mesmer running blackwater or blackwater-perplexity, every necro traiting dhuumfire-terror and using sos, every engineer slotting p/s-ip-bk-tk-eg-perplexity, and every fourth warrior laughing at you with lb-s/s, etc…

Monkeymonger.9235:

Even while roaming the vast majority of players run physical damage builds and as of late i encountered more sd than pp engis.

Some of our engineers switch to direct damage builds because they get bored by the cheese condition gameplay we have atm. There are still some direct damage builds around, but most of them are warriors, and ofc the occasional d/p-thieves (some of which seem to try out s/d-s/d or s/d-d/p atm)…

Julie Yann.5379:

Even my Warrior can stack burn, poison, chill, torment, bleeds, and vulnerability.

You forgot cripple, immobilize and confusion as well… It is just stupidly easy to apply most conditions for some classes / builds while beeing extremely tanky. There are several issues which cause this severe imbalance:

• guaranteed auto-procs like Dhuumfire, Incendiary Powder, Barbed Precision, Sharpshooter, etc (yeah, they require some precision, but this is easy while still being tanky) even from ranged auto attacks
• some of them have reduced duration in sPvP where stacking condition damage and additional condition duration are much harder to achieve, and even there everyone is playing condi atm
• imbalanced condition removal vs amount of lethal condition application (ranger really lacks effective removal; low base-hp classes struggle even when they stack condition removal and use light field combos)
• non-telegraphed skills / lack of animations and tells (e.g. necro signs, most engineer bombs and grenades, signet of spite (it still does not show up for me!), deathshroud-fear, etc) which make it impossible to reliably dodge, blind or block hard condition application like you can do with most direct damage / cc skills
• random condition removal (except for stuff like ele staff air-4 and warrior warhorn-4 controlled condition removal is very hard to do)
• strength of some conditions (immobilize- and confusion stacking) which are not only influencing the fight but decide them pretty early

There are some things which I think the balance team should consider:

• immobilize may break when you receive damage
• confusion may vanish like blind when your skill connects with a target (which punishes skill-spam but does not punish active gameplay as it currently does)
• either condition application may be removed from auto attacks or auto-procs may be removed
• buffing condition removal on some classes for a wider variety of builds
• reduce condition removal on others (nerf cleansing ire and dogged march as well as similar traits on other classes)
• make condition burst skills like SoS and CB more telegraphing (most power burst skills are easily recognizable already)

Truebanana.5936:

But it doesn’t work well at obsidian sanctum for duel, most of people don’t want to try to fight.

Maybe we can meet up for some twink-duels someday. I have everything at 80 except for my ranger (currently lvl 63), but only feel comfortable on ele and guardian – would be fun to get to learn my other characters as well.

Truebanana.5936:

maeggle, i tried to fight a guardian from your guild few minutes ago, was it you ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3xj7suly_U&feature=youtu.be

Nope, but I feel that I did poorly on training our guys and gals when I’m seeing both hammer and staff on a guardian. Fortunately not that many of our players have that CoE helmet on…

You may recognize me by my asuran elementalist in her Arah gear, a fugly norn guardian with some Marge-Simpson-esque hairdo or my sylvari thief who misses her C’n’D in blinds.

Truebanana.5936:

My alt is finally lvl 60 ! It’s time to break some kitten , don’t run from me ! xD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdege42jC2g&feature=youtu.be

A-of-T! A-of-T! A-of-T! Quality gameplay since 2006.

Vincent.9621:

On the same way I remember having 5 bookah chasing me off through half of the map! Imagine all the points your amazing group lost while doing that!

Says a SiNner after the raid group of yours walked an extra mile to steamroll me while duelling… We all have that moments, though.

maeggle.6021:

We’d like to arrange some quaggan ball matches (players from both WdR and MS so far), for which we are looking for a player from Augury or Baruch who wants to be our ball. We’d appreciate to provide a quaggan-ball-ball (player) for you likewise.
If you’re interested in getting knocked around, or want to kick some defenceless quaggan, please leave a note or message me in-game!

Still looking for a ball

Same old, same old…
Anyways, I wish everyone a great weekend and an awesome week with nice fights, intense sieges and many fun moments!

On a side note:
We’d like to arrange some quaggan ball matches (players from both WdR and MS so far), for which we are looking for a player from Augury or Baruch who wants to be our ball. We’d appreciate to provide a quaggan-ball-ball (player) for you likewise.
If you’re interested in getting knocked around, or want to kick some defenceless quaggan, please leave a note or message me in-game!

We’re currently looking for an asura /quaggan ball for some bollaball matches tonight (after 9pm GMT) from either Augury or Baruch (preferably a regen-warrior). If you’re interested in being mildly beaten and tossed around the Obsidian Arena, please give me a short shout or contact me via PM or in-game tonight!
We’d also like to provide some asuras / quaggans if some teams from AR or BB want to play some bollaball in return…

Sorry, meant to quote Anicetus’ post. Fixed it

Anicetus.1253:

Skilled S/D roamers crush you within 0.2 seconds.

Most s/d burst setups are noob traps, relying on downing a single target within 0.2 seconds, which requires one to be in control of the opponent. This is not always the case, especially when roaming in WvW. Skirmishes and imbalanced fights require some defensive options if you want to survive anything but arranged duels.

I don’t see any skill involved in playing sth. like this (e.g.: earth -> arcane immobilize -> air attunement: burst -> fire attunement: rof, arcane blast, phoenix, fg -> air attunement). It’s a skill sequence which could be set up as a macro, which will kill most things in one go if the initial immobilize hits, but if one survives the burst, you only have your arcane shield and 2 +1 (vigor) +1 (updraft) dodges left, while being on almost full cooldown. I don’t see how this results in more skillful play than skill management and some reactionary gameplay which most balanced builds (both d/d and s/d) aim for. Skill is not just about getting your combos and chains right, but also about reading your enemy and decision making based on his or her input as well. That, or you’ll become the victim against any decent player…

Tikitaka.1340:

Add me in the game and find me, my name is Tikiitaka.

Since we will fight again next wvw-week, I’d be glad to have a chance to play against you (if you’re not running s/d or a trickery build – they are hard counters to my d/d-ele build ).

majos.8503:

Also you have reason, annoying to fight your blobs… full of necros…

Whenever I run near our zergs I only see lots of rangers…

majos.8503:

About siN, we are sorry.. we try to run alone… but it’s not easy…

I know you do, as well as most other groups do. I wouldn’t be offended if it was the other way, as well, anyways. One of the thrills lies in the odds and chances. Sandwiching and situational joint venturing are strategies which are sometimes required to achieve a common goal, or just for the fun of it.
Also there are too few objectives on the maps currently, which makes spreading out very hard for anyone who’s looking for fights and captures. I’m looking forward to the EotM map, which seems to implement some interesting changes that may promote different targets for different groups and play styles.

majos.8503:

I just can say one thing… You did an amazing job Kodash by far the best German server on EU league! You improved a lot, A LOT!

You have to be kidding. This week was one of the worst gameplay-wise — there was no motif, almost no skill and the team play was lacking.
Yes, we got some reinforcement (e.g. [ADAC] transferred back to us after a long break on AM, now organizing public raid leads during our off-times), but overall I’d say our overall performance wasn’t that great. Most of our bigger groups were free loot bags for any organized group of the opponents; karma / wxp trains don’t provide any incentive to invest in personal and group play skills. Some of the effects one could see during this week…

Also many of our small scalers are on break, were in the queues, or didn’t have too much fun anyways.
Speaking for myself, this week was pretty frustrating. Guild raids were low on numbers, our group play was lacking. Small-scale-wise it was either stomping zerglings or spiking the back line of guild groups (which was fun at times, but doesn’t live up to a decent 4vs4 or so); duels were mostly against dhuumfire-terror-necros running spite signet (srsly…), perplexity engineers, hambow warriors and blackwater mesmer builds. Open field duelling has become so dull, it’s just sad.

The new arena in obsidian sanctum looks promising, and I want to thank every duel partner whom I had a chance to fight and talk with. I hope we all can elaborate on making the arena a great place of fair competition and a great training ground for every oldie and newbie interested in duels and group fights.
Sad thing is the current mentality of some players, who zerg the entry zone in huge groups, or some guild groups (which I had lots of respect for in the past) who chase and stomp people who want some “fair” fights in the arena. Some players already organized in guilds to advance in their “how to farm 1 with 15”-skills even further. Maybe the players involved should improve their PvP-skills, so that they don’t become free loot bags whenever they are dragged away from their group… At least it would make it fun times for both sides at the cost of neither.

Well, forgot what I wanted to say in the beginning: thanks to the groups which used all of our weaknesses and showed us how it could be done better. Not the ideal training ground, but I don’t blame you for our shortcomings.
What I always liked about siN is your zerker-style. I don’t know of any other guild dishing out such heavy damage — unfortunately we got sandwiched one too many times by you and other baruchians, which made you one of the most unfun opponents during this match. As soon as you or we engaged, there was always another group popping up from behind.

Haltair.3062:

It seems that just Coarr finds easy to kill Shadows…xD

I’m sorry to tell you, but you really need to step your game up. I didn’t lose a single fight against any of OdS, even when I was engaged at low health and everything on cooldown… I think your attitude is alright, but your group is not the force you see in it. Thieves are easy to start with, but hard to master in PvP. Farming zerglings is nothing which helps your group in improving your skills and reflexes.

(continuation)

Umut.5471:

Currently I would prefer playing warrior

There are some warrior specs which are total cheese (means overpowered and easy to play to be very effective), and something has to be done about it. I wouldn’t consider warriors as the anchor point for balancing decisions, though.

Again, I don’t want to reduce the effectiveness of condition builds, but I want there to be less reliance on auto-procs and more emphasis on clever skill use. In the end this would also mean a reduction of effectiveness of some condition removal tools to compensate for that. I want to be rewarded for timing condition removal as well as I want to be rewarded for clever snares and CC to set up a direct damage spike / evasion of such. Right now I don’t feel rewarded for sitting out bleed, poison and burning stacks while waiting for signet of spite / corrupt boons, or the other way around, but it is just a continous stream of conditions and cover conditions, which makes me more and more reliant on support of a friendly RNG god than my personal skill and experience.

Umut.5471:

ccs are spammable but stability has short duration and long cooldowns.

You have a point here, which is why many of us ask for diminishing returns on CC-spam. The thing is, that most of the really nasty CC skills (earthshaker or skull crack on full adrenaline, guardian wards and static fields) require melee range (well, earthshaker is pretty off here, but anyways) (less than 600 units) or require the player to run into a wall.

Umut.5471:

also don’t think condition ticks as seperate strikes, a thief can hit 10k damage in single strike, and can spam #2 to continuously hit instant 4-5k but condition skills hit about 3k in 5secs(burning ex.). So whole 5x burning ticks belong to just a single strike compared to direct damage. 5x burning ticks=damage of 1 skill over time. You can’t say condition skills are spammable, because instant, direct damage is spammable too.

I can avoid most direct damage spikes via evades, blocks and blinds. What I cannot avoid, is getting critically hit every once in a while, though. DF and IP both trigger on crit (even from fast auto attacks), and only then they are put on a short ICD (10 seconds). Most of thieves’ direct damage output can be drastically reduced by turning around, applying weakness, applying the protection boon or frost aura if one cannot dodge / block / outrun them.
Ofcourse I can dodge signet of spite, tainted shackles, corrupt boons, grenades and the like, but in the end I will get stacked with a broad variety of control and damage conditions from attacks, which also can crit (and deal direct damage as well), which will put extra condition pressure on me. I always slot some good amount of condition removal / reduction when solo-roaming, and I sure know most skill animations so I can try to dodge them, and I try to be clever when and how to remove conditions (e.g. blind cover condition can be removed by attacking, don’t use pulsing condition removal in pulsing condition sources, etc), but in the end it is just too much tankiness and random-procs in WvW to put down most condition specs with my semi-balanced burst specs. My understanding was, that condition builds should win fights of attrition, but right now I can get condition-bursted from 16k to 0 in 4 to 5 seconds. Most direct damage specs cannot do this even when they land their burst (except D/D thieves, shatter mesmers, GS/Axe+x warriors, or guardians and engineers on full glass)… I also tried to slot more vitality, but even 18k HP won’t cut it for me.

Umut.5471:

Plus you have permanent options to reduce condition durations to -65% which means -65% less ticks=65% less damage + less passive conditions/ccs. But I don’t see an option to permanently reduce direct damages to -65%.

Most condition specs have at least +50% condition duration via traits, runes and food. Those buffs are soft countered by runes of Melandru (or sth like that), -duration food, and sometimes via traits (only affects CC conditions). Soft counter means, that they add and substract to and from the relative condition duration: If you have a total of 170% condition duration, and your opponent has 65% condition duration reduction, then you still have 105% worth of condition duration. If you spec into additional condition duration, it is highly unlikely that your conditions -- if not removed — won’t tick for at least the base duration.

Umut.5471:

I’m currently playing as condition build but I would definitely prefer power based build in wvw if necro had new weapon types. Damage over time isn’t even preferable to instant, high damage in wvw. You have to try condition necro for a while in wvw zerg fights just to see how underpowered it is. Use a mark in enemy zerg and watch condition ticks, it stays for 3s max.

I always try to keep in touch of what and how other players play the game, so I know that too many condition specced players are suffering in ZvZ performance. But I also know that condition hybrid necromancers (with an emphasis on conditions) are the most rewarding and easiest build style for them in small scale fights and duels, which is why you find so many necro roamers with condition burst + control specs.

Conncept.7638:

Firstly, the developers have made it very clear they intend to make kills and combat matter more in SPvP, it isn’t an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. When they do, the thiefs current ability to kill and especially to deny kills will not be in any way balanced.

I intented to point out how the current “balancing” was done, which does not neccessarily reflect my opinion about certain aspects of the game. Therefore I — playing on Kodash where we also earn a great deal of world points via small to medium scale combat (player stomps, dolyak & sentry kills, etc) — agree with you that there are imbalances which should have been dealt with a long time ago.

The ability to escape difficult situations is none of them. We all known there are certain professions and / or builds which are better at disengaging than others. Mesmers, thieves and engineers have some (more or less) reliable ways to stealth for a long duration (more than 3 seconds), warriors have insane mobility by picking some nice traits and equipping a GS, a mainhand-sword, a horn, a hammer or a combination of those. Sometimes it requires some actual skill and situational adaption to get out of a rough situation, but I wouldn’t want to cap any of that for some reason like kill denying.

Anet already nerfed RTL on ele for 2 stupid reasons, one of which was his ability to disengage rather easily (the other one was far-point rushing in tPvP, if I remember correctly). They severily crippled on of our x/d-eles’ major engagement tools; I wouldn’t want another class / build-spectrum to suffer in “honest” combat situations just because the same mechanism could be abused for easier disengagement, thus eventually denying a stomp.

Umut.5471:

@maeggle currently most of players use -condition duration runes/foods plus they have aoe cleanse options it’s so rare to find a group that can’t cleanse your conditions.

The usage of -condition duration food is a direct consequence of some conditions beeing far too powerful (especially in solo- and small-scale-roaming – e.g. 3+ seconds is certain death to any spec who can put out 3k+ HPpS damage) as well as every other condition player using veggie pizza or koi cake.

Umut.5471:

wvw isn’t like spvp in which conditions are powerful.

You can achieve far more attribute points in WvW than in PvP for condition damage while having even more +condition duration. Where is this less powerful than in PvP?

Umut.5471:

It’s only good if they don’t cleanse your conditions(with newbie builds) else it’s far from good.

Cleanses are on high cooldown, so are condition removal spells which remove one or two conditions per activation. Most builds also cannot use light fields plus whirl finishers (projectile finishers in light fields still don’t work reliably), nor have they reliable ways to transfer conditions to inattentive condition spammers. On top, condition damage has no real passive counter-play like “weakness”, which greatly reduces direct damage. Also I can dodge / block / blind an earthshaker, backstab, burning speed / firegrab, mindwreck, etc if I pay attention to what my opponent does. What I cannot do, is dodging that 4+ seconds of burning every 10 seconds or the bleed-stacking on crit of such skillful play as pressing #1 repeatedly from 900+ range.

If you run with unbalanced groups sometimes like I do (e.g. ele, thief, necro) most of the time, it doesn’t matter how good you may be and how many condition removals you have slotted – at the end of the day the group of condition bunkers will most certainly “win” if they dodge every once in a while. Auto procs via traits make it way too easy to apply heavy condition pressure without punishing bad or inattentive gameplay.

I know there are some professions and mechanisms which make dealing with conditions very easy, but please also keep in mind that gameplay in WvW is not like tPvP where you’re always running with a fixed group composition to directly counter the meta. There is not always a guardian with SY and CoP, a staff ele, a mesmer with shattered conditions, or a warhorn-traited warrior around, in which case condition burst become super nasty on most classes (especially the ones with low base HP). I’d like there to be less hard counters (like condition spam is currently to most eles, guardians and thiefs) and more attentive gameplay required for condition builds.

Nova Stiker.8396:

• Conditions do not punish failure. You can dodge skills that lands a condition but it is LESS punishing to miss skills with conditions than with just regular power.

It’s why traits like Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder are overpowered, often taken in every build, even power based builds.

From my observation this is true. It is just stupid that you need to only crit once every 10 seconds to apply insane burning (4 seconds + condition duration, which often means 6+ seconds of burning for 780 HPpS). One only has so many condition removals / cleanses to survive the never ending stream of condition spam, it is just too much.
Condition application should require more attention than just spraying the ground with AoE and hitting some ranged auto attacks, especially with all the possible +condition duration gains in WvW. I wouldn’t mind if condition duration or strength would be slightly increased if all the auto-procs would be removed from the game. It’s just stupid how easy it is to apply heavy condition pressure on a target by just auto attacking. If you miss one, there is no ICD, which makes IP and DF so insanely strong. It has no penalties which adds to the cheese gameplay which we have right now: everybody and his or her mother running condition bunkers (with some precision mixed in) or condition hybrids, because it is so stupidly easy to win against most direct-damage specs (except for warriors maybe).

Conncept.7638:

So why is it okay that thieves be the only class that can build to live through anything? It’s not, either all classes should be able to or none, and in my opinion it would be better for the game if none.

sPvP = Point Capture Mode = Area Bunkering.
Stealth does not contribute to captures, nor does it prevent the enemy from capturing a spot. D/D and D/P Thieves cannot bunker a spot because they lack evasion, protection, stability, regeneration, aegis, other forms of blocks, reliable blinds, healing while being able to contribute to a spot (see previous note), a big health pool and some armor, etc etc etc; all of which are somewhat neccessary to bunker a capture zone.
I guess Anet will provide some changes when / if they introduce a TDM-mode in PvP as they see fit. In my experience backstab-thieves can be hard opponents when played properly, but they are less of a threat compared to many other things currently in the game. Try it out yourself: Against bad players a D/D thief is really effective… But the more AoE, condition pressure and CC is flying around, the harder it gets to even survive so long to down an enemy – let alone stomping him.

Umut.5471:

Every new condition cleanse option is a nerf for wvw necros, we have to learn to live with that.
Conditions can’t stay longer than 1-3s on enemy in wvw due to massive area cleanses. And we have to play as condition necro because it’s the only viable and ranged build for necros. But it’s constantly losing efficiency due to more cleanse options with every patch.(plus buffs to cleanses of other classes)

You have to be kiddin. In small to mid scale (1 – 10 per side) conditions are a huge deal if you don’t bring some warhorn-traited warriors with you. They are borderline op right now due to the spammability and unavoidable auto-procs which most of the condition builds trait for (especially in 1vs1 up to 5vs5 with epidemic). When roaming almost any enemy runs some condition or condition-CC-hybrid build because they are so effective while being low risk (being ranged while dealing equal HPpS damage to most offensive direct damage melee builds and add to even more damage over time).

Bigger guild groups usually pack so much condition remove because the CC conditions are almost instant death if you don’t remove e.g. immobilize, fear and chill as soon as it hits your team.

Umut.5471:

We have to stay ranged because of the lack of stability.

So does every other class than warrior atm. At least you can trait for stability whenever you enter Death Shroud, theoretically resulting in stability-uptime of 30% and more… But oh well, it is hidden inside the last tree, which favors power builds. So either go hybrid, power or abandon some of your condition burst potential, maybe?

Umut.5471:

We have only melee power weapons yet we don’t have the stability to get in melee range in wvw.

Axe skills work at medium range (600 units), focus works at 900 units, warhorn offers PBAoE cripple and an AoE interrupt at 600 units. Dagger #2 and #3 also work at medium range, making its auto attack the only real melee skill for power necros. You can also use death shroud and lich form for ridiculous damage at up to 1200 units range, as well as staff for hybrid builds.
Most other classes also don’t have great access to stability and stun breaks, but they work around that by kiting and outplaying their enemies in other ways (movement, positioning, blind, chill, cripple, immobilize, condition transfer, boon ripping, etc).

Umut.5471:

We are golf balls to be played with hammers in zergs.

You have several options as a necro in ZvZ or GvG, like movement and situational awareness, or stability provided by your allies…

As for the new healing spell: It is extremely bad on any class. The CD is high, its effect very low compared to almost any other healing skill in the game.

Unpredictability.4086:

Don’t forget, Antitoxin spray is an AoE heal, whereas Consume Conditions only helps you.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Antitoxin_Spray

The primary heal is only applied to your character; nearby allies are only given the secondary heal for each condition removed.

If more than one person runs it, it is even less valuable because it greatly reduces the healing potential for the second player.

Junkpile.7439:

I ust can’t figure out how you pros can even hit thief?

You don’t need to have a target selected for most attacks to work. Every cleaving attack, PBAoE and ground-targetted AoE will still work against invisbile players. If you hit something, the hits will show up in the battle log, and in case of an attack-chain (many #1 skills have different effects if you hit an opponent more than once in a row) you may also be able to watch the skill animation to tell if you hit something.

Also it was stated already, that most thieves who use stealth need to be in melee range (130 units which is really close) if they don’t use high cooldown utility spells.
D/P builds are cheese, and won’t do be able to do enough damage over time if you’re not afk-ing. For D/D the most common rotation is pretty obvious: Mug, Cloak’n’Dagger, get behind you, Heartseeker, #1, #1, #1, C’n’D (or any other stealth skill), rinse and repeat. You can dodge, blind or block C’n’D easily which will waste 6 initiative (= 6 seconds) for nothing.
If the thief is low on health, he will try to use the stealth for some health regeneration. C’n’D cloaks for 3 seconds. Just count to 2.5 and then dodge (or in case you lack the endurance, just turn around for some mediocre damage income and laugh at the thief). If you’d wait another 0.25 seconds you can also dodge C’n’D attempts if the thief isn’t going for the backstab but tries to regenerate more health in stealth.
If you have minions or pets, you can also try to position yourself at the same spot (slightly in front of them), so that the backstab will hit the pet or minion instead.

Always remember, that D/D and D/P need to be in melee range to do damage. The damage is greatly reduced if you don’t get hit in your back. Just anticipate where the thief is and penetrate your surrounding with conditions and / or (melee) dps.

Also: track shadow steps. If the thief returns to the origin of a shadow step, the white circle (indicating the shadow step origin) will vanish.

Sanduskel.1850:

And yet another example. A a thief, this overweening arrogance against other “baddies” is embarassing. Why aren’t these baddies complaining the same way about other classes? Logic please.

They do, they just don’t understand the mechanics and requirements. People used to QQ about eles being to strong, they cried about shatter mesmers (aka one trick ponies), they cried about 100b-warriors – all of them are mostly in-your-face-dps or nothing. Then all those things got nerfed or people learned to hard- and soft-counter such builds. Now everyone runs some sort of auto-proc-reliant condition or stunlock FotM build and feels great by stacking 4 to 5 heavy dps conditions on a target (almost) simultaneously. Those are the same players who cry about backstab hitting for 7k every 4 seconds while their conditions and range-aa eat through 10k HP in the same time without requiring melee range, good positioning and an afk-ing target…

Stx.4857:

Oh and 7k backstabs on a target with armor? Please.

I can hit as high as that with my D/D ele… if the enemies are stacked it will hit up to 5 targets for a total of 20-40k. Well of suffering, traited life explosion and lich form #1 from a well-specced power necro can do the same from 600 – 1200 range. A balanced shatter mesmer build is able AoE-damage ~10k with a full mind wreck shatter.
Ele and necro don’t have access to stealth without assistance of their team, but they also are not as squishy as most thieves to be as effective. Stealth is powerful, yes. But so are the skills, traits and mechanics at your hands. Just use them wisely. Why waste your staff#5 if you know the thief hasn’t used his SR yet?

Julie Yann.5379:

That is exact;y why they are hated so much. Also because they often sneak up on you unseen with a surprise attack while your are busy fighting someone else or at a vista or mining a node. Cowards without honor, the whole lot of them (well 90% of them) There are some respectable ones out there that will stand up to you face to face. Those I enjoy fighting.

I agree that most thieves are just bad players – being successful against unexperienced players is so much easier when using stealth mechanics. But this also applies to condition spamming engi and necro faceroll builds and CC-heavy warrior builds. They are extremely effective against most players, but in contrast to condition and CC spam, stealth burst is more easily countered by blocks, dodging, blinding and movement (create gaps and turn around – don’t run away) because backstab has a range of only 130 units and requires the target to expose their back or flank for full damage (otherwise it hits like a wet noodle).

What you describe are situations in which the thief is super effective. He can focus a single target and put some heavy pressure on it if the team does not assist, but has a hard time if he gets pressured slightly.
There are many faceroll and troll builds around at the moment, for almost every class; I hate them and I don’t play them outside the sPvP lobby. D/D thief is none of them and requires some skill and experience to be effective against better players, while D/P is just cheese. The latter will be hit hard by the balance bat in a few weeks, which is great.

If the two players are on-par skillwise, the thief is almost always at a disadvantage.

Hi there!

JonofPDX.2068:

I know they aren’t considered power characters, per se, but they intrigue me.

They are two of the strongest professions for both PvE and WvW (if played “properly”). Ele has some hard time in PvP and small scale WvW atm, but I hope Arenanet will give us some buffs in the near future to get us on par with other strong classes.

JonofPDX.2068:

Now, I know that generally speaking racial skills are weaker than class skills. But I’m wondering if the Asura racials fit one of those profession archetypes better than the other in a PvE focused character? And if so, why?

Asurans’ elite skills are somewhat lame in combat (though the mini golem suit is fun as hell for both roleplaying and trolling around), but radiation field and pain inverter are strong utility skills on some necromancer builds (radiation field pulses weakness and poison which reduces direct damage on you and reduces healing of the enemy, both working as cover conditions if your enemy is able to remove some conditions, pain inverter can be used as a source for the confusion condition). As an elementalist you’d probably want to pick some more useful skills, though (cantrips, arcana skills or Lightning Hammer for some more direct damage).

I play both an Asura ele and an Asura necro – in my opinion the skill animations for the ele are outstanding and way better than the lame hand-raising of a necromancer. If visual appearance is important to you, I’d suggest to play an Asuran elementalist.

I don’t often do PvE-stuff, and I did the map completion stuff a long long time ago, however I didn’t have any problems with sth like one of my WvW roaming builds (modified for easier equipment acquisation). I know there are those hardcore players who like to run total glass, but you should equip some condition remove and stun breaks / teleports to get out of rough situations. Ele is no cake walk, so you should get into stacking rotations, train your reflexes, train effective positioning (use line of sight, height differences, range, etc) and never ever spam skills which could – wisely used – save your character’s life in critical situations (e.g. use updraft as an additional dodge roll or interrupt).

Dee Jay.2460:

Good game design is to force players to make decisions, trade-offs if you so like.

Thieves, rangers and necros in their most popular builds have the least efficient condition removal tools at their hands. One condition every three seconds with the current clusterkitten of condition spam which some classes can put out every few seconds is just insufficient. The healing skill which removes burning, bleeding and poison is on a 30 seconds CD. Most ways to enter stealth are either high cooldown spells or cost a lot of initiative (this does not apply to most defensive D/P builds, which will fortunately be corrected in December anyways). D/D thieves can use C’n’D but it is very unreliable and susceptible to positioning (especially range and LoS against gap closers), blinds, blocks and evades at 6 initiative per activation. D/P cannot do anything else than using backstab, which might hit hard, but perma-stealth builds have no room for optimal damage output anyways. (heartseeker-spam does laughable damage if you just turn around instead of running away from the thief)

Dee Jay.2460:

• Stealth removes Conditions
• Stealth heals
• Stealth makes you invisible
• Stealth sets up your burst damage
• Stealth Blinds your enemies
• Stealth (can) increase your Initiative regeneration
• Stealth increases your movement speed
• etc.

You have to trait for it, which means a somewhat defensive play style (e.g. 0/30/30/10/0). My D/D ele has a higher spike potential with a more defensive build (stats, boons and utilities)… just lacks the stealth if no smoke field or AE-stealthing friend is around.

Dee Jay.2460:

Point being, going Stealth is ALWAYS the best possible choice for a Thief.

You haven’t fought a (decent) S/P-thief then, I guess.

Dee Jay.2460:

He doesn’t have to make choices about offensive or defensive pressure. All he has to do is ensure he can Stealth as reliably and as frequently as possible.

Believe it or not, as a D/D-thief you are not that great at stealthing as some would think. C’n’D-rotation is obvious in most cases and the stealthing healing skill has a long casting animation which one could try to interrupt.

Dee Jay.2460:

On that note, using Stealth should deplete Initiative…not add to it.

This issue doesn’t apply to most effective builds. D/P won’t be that effective as a troll build after 10. december, and does almost no damage anyways. C’n’D, black powder, heartseeker and cluster bomb already come at a very high price if the fight does not only last 3 seconds – please keep that in mind always when arguing against stealth itself.
I think we can agree that there are some broken mechanics currently, but if Anet will deploy the announced changes, this issue will be fixed in a clean and effective way.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I still think the problem is shadow refuge. I have no problem with the short duration stealths of thieves mesmers or engi.

Imho this is a valid point. Long duration stealth (especially perma-stealth) in a setting where you can enter and exit stealth multiple times in a short period of time is kinda ridiculous.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

It is a absolute must have utility for any build.

I don’t slot it most of the time, because there are many better utilities for different builds and play styles. It is a nice utility in team fights with a squishy co-player, but comes at the cost of an additional stun break, venom or sigil. Shadow refuge’s effect is also hard-countered by some CC (i.e. knock-back, blowout, pull and push). Unfortunately some classes don’t have reliable CC-skills against it, but shadow refuge also works like a soft CC against the thief or his allies in such a way, that you know he cannot leave the circle without getting the “revealed”-debuff. Put down some AoE pressure or run in circles while using a cleaving auto attack to find the cloaked enemies – Just try to play builds and classes you find hard to fight to find out about their shortcomings and counters. Many players know them and will use them – just watch and learn, or try to find it out yourself.

Julie Yann.5379:

This. Plus I don’t think any necromancer should complain. Condition necro is really strong (as conditions in general are strong in the first place)

I main an ele and a guardian, and play all the other classes regularly to keep in shape and getting to know the current cookie cutter builds and try out some fun stuff sometimes. D/P thieves are cheese and everyone abusing it currently should die in shame. It’s far from effective in terms of actually killing players, but super annoying to fight against if the thief does not commit himself to the fight but retreats frequently.
Most condition remove from thieves revolves around their healing spell (two of which remove 3 fixed conditions each) and stealth if they trait it. Also they can use some shadow step spells to remove conditions, but that requires them to return to the starting position of their shadow step (indicated the white circles on the ground).

Condition specs can unload heavy condition pressure on a target without having a target – if a thief, relying on stealth for condition removal, gets condition pressure, it’s almost always gg for you. Power necros have some great defensive elements against thieves as well: blinds, untargetted AoE pressure, movement “indicators” via staff marks, hard cc via fears and warhorn #4, soft cc via snares (immobilize, weakening -> less dodging and direct damage output, chill) and so on.

Julie Yann.5379:

I still come across some godly thieves that can take on 5-6 people (average to really good), kill them all and vanish into the scenery with no less than 50% HP. Not as often as it used to happen but stealth is still broken for those that know how to use it.

It actually is not. Good opponents will give good thieves hard times in 1vs1; and especially in group fights thieves have a hard time if they don’t get support from boon-support builds because there is so much AoE going on.

If you’d tell me, some PU mesmer specs out there are brokenly overpowered, then I’d totally agree with you (almost guaranteed aegis and protection via stealth while phantasms and clones do damage and apply heavy condition pressure); but stealth on thieves? Either hard to play for them if you know how to counter them (especially D/D thieves), or just silly (D/P – but lacks the damage output) and not worth the time and effort.

As always please remember: turn around and try to face the (invisible) thief. If he cannot hit you from behind or from the side, more than 50% of the damage potential is gone. PBAoE blind also helps if the thief is stealthed and wants to backstab you or if he wants to use Cloak&Dagger on you.

Markus.9084:

Nope, I mean : I had the option “stomp : press F”, I even made the nice animation before the stomp three times… Each time noting happened

The situation you describe sounds just like what my friends and I experience rarely. Cleave or AoE damage on top of the downstater usually helps (but unfortunately does not grant bloodlust score) to finish them off.
As I said, if some player uses exploits, he or she must be punished for it. Unfortunately there is an issue with the game itself which sometimes leads to such situations in which you cannot successfully stomp someone (even if the “stomp” action shows up).

If you are sure someone uses exploits or abuses glitches, you should write to <exploits@arena.net>, the time stamp when it happened, where it happened, further information like guild tag, player description (rank, race, profession, …) and so on, with screenshots or video proofs attached (if possible). I heard that this might be the most reliable way to inform anet about exploits, glitches and cheaters.

Markus.9084:

Congratulation to the guild Turns up [TP] fom kodash for using obvious hack…
They just ignore it, heal until they can get up, and run.

I think we can agree that they aren’t that great or skilled (and what not); If one or many of them did use an exploit there’s nothing to defend.

What has happened many times to my enemies, allies and even myself is getting downed in places which either glitch the character into the ground (can neither be stomped nor resurrected by allies), or the character shows up in the wrong spot (also unable to be stomped and rezzed if you don’t find their “correct” location). This has been a documented issue for the last months now, and still hasn’t been fixed (properly).

“Blind” does not prevent you from a successful stomp btw, so you’re good to go with the condition on you while stomping.

Junkpile.7439:

You didn’t meet SFRJ or DVG guilds? They are like new red guard.

I did, but they didn’t leave much of a mark. Mostly roamed with small numbers (1 – 10) this week, so I cannot say anything about their large scale performance, but when focused by one or two of us they didn’t shine, and even in even- and outnumbered encounters (not in our favour) I think my peers and I never died in a fight with DVG or SFRJ guys involved. Mh…

KarlusDavius.1024:

May the respawn points be with you!

I didn’t need to care about them too much this week.
Thanks anyways — maybe some of our next opponents can persuade me to waypoint once in a while.

Morinmeth.9823:

I came here to laugh at the people taunting my beloved piken square about our weekend performance >.> Good job everyone

May the PvD be with you!

Graendall.4765:

the arrowcarts were just so god kitten ed many

There was no defensive siege inside bay, and the spawn tower was only equipped with non-superior ACs and on or two trebuchets – Nothing which would hold of a group of 20+.

I only encountered your groups in our third of the map (mostly DSun + Necr + others), mabe it was bad luck for both of us, then. For us it was mostly attacking one objective in enemy territory, then porting back to defend the camp, bay or the tower against 40+ of mixed guild groups, which wasn’t exactly great for explaining and training some basic combat mechanics to and with players who are new to WvW and PvP.

Graendall.4765:

it just happens that in this match-up if equal numbers or higher you run..

There were 4 or so groups of 15-25 players each from Kodash on JS borderlands yesterday evening. I mostly saw [Necr] running with [DSun] and some other guild tags which were 40+, I guess? We even engaged you with 10-20 peeps because we hadn’t found a matching group for our offhanded starters raid with [KRS], anyways. Neither yours nor our groups disengaged early in any encounter I experienced.
Mentioning yesterday evening in regards of running away from fights is inaccurate, to put it mildly… /shrug

Anyways, good luck and have fun to everyone in this match

If you like some semi-offensive gameplay style, you may try sth like this - It provides good group support via shouts and has nice damage mitigation due to blinds, blocks and condition remove (light field + whirl finishers <3), and it will just cost you some badges of honor for an additional soldier’s gear, some coin for runes of the soldier, and some laurels / FotM tokens for more defensive rings.
3k armor and ~18k HP is absolutely fine for starters in most situations, even for a full melee player. You might also try a combination of GS and Sword/Focus for some more situational self-protection (blinds, projectile block and melee block) before switching to the almighty GS/H.

Just imagine your enemies in 1vs1 or small group fights to be like boss fights with more dynamics. Learn key skills and common behaviour (most builds and players play pretty obvious and have some kind of spike-rotation which can be easily countered by dodging, blocking and blinding, as well as CC skills).
Guardians are not that great at escaping if they don’t slot teleports and leaps, so just run in smaller groups to have someone backing you up (e.g. thieves and mesmers are nice for target resets) while getting used to all this stuff. Don’t hammer out your skills, but use them for what they are good at and get used to kiting and dodging; Learn to use line of sight and range to your advantage; Dodge through enemies to break their skill activation (many spells won’t cast then / hit you) instead of moving away from them.
Also a hint to counter thieves: Most builds lose at least 50% of their effectiveness if you face them. Don’t get them in your back, and their damage drops significantly. Most necros and some mesmer builds are very hard to counter – It is up to you to figure out if you want to fight or kite. Many Eles can be handled by using CC and blocks against them. Some warrior builds are out of hands atm… Rangers with LB → stay close, rangers with condition builds: face them, dodge their pets; Engineers: kite, kite, kite, prepare your burst and CC – if you get an OD on conditions, just back out – condition spam is pretty common nowadays, no need to waste your small HP pool on easy-mode gameplay.

They should do this on 1st of April – Would be hilarious if it was just for one day. Otherwise it would lead to constant griefing, and some spells wouldn’t make sense anymore, because they currently have positive effects on allies and negative effects on enemies, which then would have to be applied to both groups.

Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!

Am I outnumbered yet?
No…

I don’t know why you’re not there
I give you my attention but you don’t care
So what is right and what is wrong?
Gimme a sign

Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, uh!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, uh!

Oh, I don’t know, what can I do?
Whom else can I hit, it’s up to you.
I know we’re three, just me and you two…
Let’s have some fun.

Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!
Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, uh!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh, uh!

Am I outnumbered yet?
Am I outnumbered yet?
Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!

Don’t hurt me…
Don’t hurt me…

I want no other, just you three and me,
This is our fight, our we-time!
We are together, I’m in for harakiri.
Yet, this stomp is mine!

Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!
Am I outnumbered yet?
MMO, don’t hurt me,
don’t hurt me no more!

Am I outnumbered yet?
Well, obviously I am,
much thanks for the bäm

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

we had Kodash blob pushing from the camp

We were 40 Kodashians (public raid) there – shouldn’t be a big deal for a “zerg busting” guild like yours…

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

Man kodash defend this north camp on their Bl like crazy…

We needed supplies, you just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thanks for the fights on Kodash borderlands tonight. We had quite some fun, despite the constant lags and constant distraction in our third of the map, which kept us from putting up some pressure against Bay.

Haltair.3062:

Those runes became more and more popular in the brotherhood during last weeks. …

Runes of the Traveler are awesome for some roaming builds (e.g. on thieves who do not run the kitten D/P-hit-and-run-stuff), but swiftness gives you 8% more speed, which an organized group should be able to sustain nearly all the time anyways. Fleeing enemies should’t be an issue then.

As much as I like some of our opponents, currently it is just one huge lag fest and blobbing for most parts. I wasn’t able to solo-roam so far, but with skill delays and all the big groups running around, I guess I wouldn’t enjoy it too much anyways.

At least I’ve seen many new faces on our side who show great spirit and strength – if some of them stay in WvW even after finishing the achievements, there’d be one more very happy Asura on Kodash.