Guild Wars 2

Or this could just be lag.

Kintari.4172:

I could be wrong, but I think most people just dislike being globalled, or even close to it.

Which begs the question… what are people doing when thieves go stealth? Are you all just bending over or what?

I know when I face off against a thief and he goes stealth I dodge forward. Forcing him to turn around and reposition. More often then not this SIMPLE maneuver causes his CDs to go to waste and now I have the advantage.

OH NOES TEH THIEF WENT STELF I’S GONNA BACK PEDDLE NAO OH NOES I DIED GONNA WHINE ON TEH FORUMS NOW GG /logout

The backstab thief’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. He has to be stealthed. If you deny him that you win the match. The problem is people freeze up or they have the situational awareness of a lemming.

You’re given 2 weapon sets for a reason.

If you’re auto attacking for 10+ seconds waiting for CDs to pop… you’re a bad. Learn to swap. Combat can be fast paced if you pull your head out of the sand and stop with all the butthurt.

Everytime I see a post about how people spend most of their time auto attacking I physically wince. Because I feel so sorry for your teams and guilds to be cursed with such self pitying drama queens.

Reach down, grab hold and be a man.

Adapt, overcome or GTFO of the way.

And do not talk to me about ele’s.

An ele crying about thieves is akin to rich people crying about taxes.

A double dagger ele not only has amazing dmg and absurd mobility but also sports 17 seconds of immobilize/knockdown that he can divy up any way he sees fit. Once the ele population matures and begins to get good st what they’re doing you will, mark my words, see no end of crying on the forums.

Ele’s are, bar none, the hardest class to master. The learning curve is insanely high. Which is why so many people cry on.the forums that they’re weak. Ele’s aren’t weak. They’re complex and unforgiving.

What I can do on my D/D ele completely trivializes my D/D thief.

It’s insane people haven’t caught on to how OP ele’s really are.

If a person blows all of his CDs to get a ginormous backstab… more power to him.

The problem is if you nerf backstab base dmg you are, in fact, FORCING players to play glass cannons. Instead of creating diversity you are stagnating it.

“Wait, what? That’s weetahded!”

Allow me to explain.

I currently play a D/D 30 crit, 20 shadow, 20 acro, signet, Power/Tough/Vitality build. My primary source of damage is backstab dancing & I’ve gotten good at it. I can go toe to toe with bunker builds and help tremendously with defending positions.

If you kill BS you kill this build. I’m not doing anywhere near 13k crits. More like 5-6 at best. I’m an “outside the box” player but if you nerf BS you are FORCING me to go Glass Cannon to stay competitive. Put a cap on BS dmg, I’m for that. Or diminishing returns on crit dmg stacking. But don’t nerf base dmg.

You have to look at the bigger picture here. The recent GS nerf for Guardians is a prime example of ripple effects that take place when drastic ability nerfs take place. You hurt builds that weren’t intended to be hurt.

I run full Knights + Vital/Pow/Tough for my trinkets. Use Wurm on my armor slots and double Bloods for weapons. 30 crit, 20 Shadow & 20 Acro. Malice, Shadow, Power & Prec signets w/ T Guild.

I’m exceptionally difficult to kill and do more than enough dmg to take down bunker Guards, Mesmers & Engis.

This idea that you “go DPS or go home” is a myth.

Armor reduces damage just an FYI.

This patch did nothing, absolutely nothing, to keep Ret from being up nigh 100% of the time.

It was in fact only a small part of many Ret builds so why people are bemoaning this patch in relation to Ret builds is way beyond me. I personally believe Ret will be redesigned to a function similar to that of Aegis but with damage. With that in mind this is just one step in a long chain of steps to be made if they intend to curb Ret up time. It’s not like this patch all of a sudden stopped Ret builds.

If you ACTUALLY believe this stopped anything in relation to Ret… you’re completely out of the loop. Completely. And by the looks of the forums that’s pretty much 99% of posters; to include everyone so far in this thread. The only thing this patch accomplished was to kill the DPS of Wrath and create a great swell of butthurt with people who can’t cope with learning a new button configuration. Nevermind the fact that if you’re THAT incapable of learning new keys you can just change the binding.

/rolleyes

sorrow:

Since I’m to lazy to upload a video…

Read as, “I can’t make the Thief look OP so I’ll claim laziness”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPL3_uEyGM

Fight #1 3v1. Yes, the Thief was soooo OP there. /rolleyes
Fight #2 2v1 vs. Glass cannon Thief. Clearly a severe case of OP. I see what you mean.
Fight #3 2v1 vs. fleeing 1/2 dead opponent…
Fight #4 2v1 vs. another 1/2 dead opponent…

And that’s just the first 5 minutes. Any class can run around looking for numbered advantage against weakened opponents. He, in fact, avoided 2 confrontations because of this. The video was funny, that’s about it. All it illustrated was HS is strong as a finisher…. which is exactly what it’s designed for. In fight 2 he tossed 5 HS’s against his opponent and it still didn’t go down.

All this video did was validate my post and invalidate your whining.

sorrow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

Love this video… oozing butthurt from an elementalist who’s probably all sad face because the most intricate class in the game is too hard for him to wrap his brain around. Cherry picked fade in and/out’s… awesome evidence you got there. I can make a naked Engi look like the most devastating force on the field with Cherry picked WvW footage.

All in all you need to spend less time on the forums saying that FIVE OF THE EIGHT CLASSES IN THE GAME ARE OVERPOWERED and spend more time learning the game you’re getting bent out of shape over.

/discussion

I love how Sorrow listed 5 of the 8 available classes as OP. I find your name quite fitting to your perspective.

People whining about Thieves need to roll one then post unedited videos of them face rolling matches. I want to see it. Until then your whining is simply that: whining. I play a Guard, Engi, Necro and Thief. Thief is bar none the most risk vs. reward oriented class I’ve played. It is also the most twitch focused.

Heartseeker got fixed, no one in their right mind spams it and if they are chances are they will lose. It’s the most efficient way to be inefficient. You’d get better DPS spamming Cluster then you would seeker. People aren’t encountering this phenomenon, they’re still riding the cry train from 2 weeks ago and referencing videos that are no longer applicable because they got rolled.

I dunno where this “there is no risk” garbage is coming from. As a D/D or P/D thief I die quite a bit. I see my fair share of pavement. What I don’t see are fellow thieves dominating the boards as often as you people claim.

There are good players and there are bad players.

People on the forums, my self not excluded, tend to fall into the mediocre crowd. I’m telling you now, if you keep getting rolled by any given class… you’re bad. Practice more and adjust your builds and, more importantly, habits.

When my best friend started pizzing and moaning that Mesmers were OP he didn’t find a sympathetic ear from me. What he got was me telling him to stop acting like a lone wolf and getting picked off because despite his misconception, he’s not Chuck fuggin Norris.

Nevermind, someone linked a source. I’m posting on a phone.

It’s a fixed amount per hit. So it’s not efficient against big hitters. But attacks that hit in multiples, like flamethrower or hundred blades, it works well. It’s modified by your power. Every 1k power = +150 dmg + a base dmg of 250ish. Dmg is mitigated by armor.

Definitely solid against a multitude of builds.

Learn to LOS like a boss.

lol

I don’t go anywhere alone. Guards are designed to run with a pack. If you’re trying to run lone wolf you rolled the wrong class.

The reason healing power by and large sucks is because it was a design decision.

In order to keep with the tenet of “skill is king”, maintain a fast paced PvP experience and eliminate the trinity paradigm you have to kneecap the **** out of healing. It’s the only way the system works. If you boost Healing Power across the board you basically turn the game into pre BC WoW without consumables. That’s pretty much what happens. And I dunno about you guys but 5 minute long duels let alone group tourneys isn’t what I signed up for with GW.

If instead you turn healing into a utility, an easily regulated utility at that, you then get GW. By kneecapping healing you definitively put a timer on encounters. SOMEONE is going to die in the next 10-15 seconds and the deciding factor is skill, luck and a knack for predicting your opponents next move. If you arbitrarily start pumping value into healing ratios you completely undermine game design.

I hope to g-aw-d ANet ignores players whining for healing boosts.

Also, Rifled Turret Barrels doesn’t effect condition damage from turrets. I’m not sure if that’s intended or not. Seems kind of lame for a tier 3 trait if you ask me.

So, maybe I’m wrong about this so someone please feel free to correct me but what exactly is the point behind Burn Duration? I’ve been testing it out with 2 runes from each of the 3 (there’s actually 4) +duration Burn runes in conjunction with the +20% duration trait giving me a +65% Burn Duration and I can’t see any change at all.

I mean in damage. Oh, the “debuff” icon lasts longer, there is no doubt about that however it doesn’t actually tick more than it originally does without the +duration. I’ve tested this with the Rocket and Flame Turret as well as 4 and auto attack burn from Flamethrower. You don’t get any more ticks of damage; the “debuff” icon just lasts longer.

Sooo… is there a point that I’m missing or what?

S/D’s biggest problem is that it relies on other abilities to make PW 100% effective. You’re either Scorpion Wiring someone, Infiltrator’s Striking someone or using Haste. Haste seems to be the most popular choice. It’s an expensive toolset to use to get the same damage that you could get cheaper and easier with any of the other toolsets.

Can it work? Yes. But it’s the most situational of all our toolsets.

I’ve yet to see FS hit anyone in PvP that wasn’t AFK, stunned or in a downed state. If they just accidentally tap any of their movement keys in any direction, it misses.

Edit:

Or if you’re in the middle of a zerg. Odds are you’re gonna hit SOMEONE.

I’ve never had issues. No clue what you might be doing wrong. SB + Cluster spam wins the day for me every time.

Hyperbole is fun.

TL;DR version @ the end

========

The amount of Drizzt fandom in this thread is surpassed only by the sheer amount of wrongness there is.

Let’s forget that the entire Homeland series ever took place which explicitly depicts the decades of warrior training that Drizzt undertook. We’ll just pretend that never happened. The 3rd ed. rule set places Drizzt as a 10 Fighter, 1 Barbarian and 5 Ranger. Per Salvatore that is his most accurate depiction because of the restrictive nature of dual classing in 2nd ed which placed him solely as a ranger (which Salvatore opposed). The one level of Barbarian is there to depict his time during Sojourn alone in the Underdark and the subsequent 5 levels of Ranger represent the time he spent on the surface as a devotee of Mielikki.

Dual Wielding became popularized as a “Ranger thing” in 2nd ed. explicitly because of Drizzt and his popularity in the late 80’s mid 90’s amongst nerds everywhere. It’s been a signature toolset of the genre ever since but it’s a stereotype founded in falsehood. The vast majority, and that’s not an exaggerated generalization that’s a fictional genetic truth of the genre, of Drow are ambidextrous. The odds of a non-ambidextrous Drow being born is akin to an albino Drow being born. They’re turned into slaves or Driders.

Pre 3.5 there were no Rangers in the Underdark. You were either a Fighter, a Cleric, a Thief, a Wizard, a class combination thereof or a slave. Rangers were explicitly woodland warriors. And pre 1986 there were no “dual wielding rangers” they were founded on Tolkiens ranger which was a model of Aragorn. They were bowmen who fought with great swords (Strategic Review Volume 1 pre AD&D)

TL:DR

Dual Wielding was a Fighter thing, not a “ranger thing” before readers started confusing Drizzt the dual wielding Fighter for 80 years before he saw the light of day with Drizzt the novice Ranger (with 75 years of Fighter experience pre surface) they read about for the first time in The Halfling’s Gem.

You’ve just been served by king nerd.

Where’s my ****ing cookie?

= )

Too many people don’t get it. = )

S/D sucks so hard but you work it pretty decent.

I would take Mug over both traits you took in deadly arts. Traps really aren’t that great in PvP and Sundering Strikes is hands down a PvE trait. Most fights are over in seconds, you’ll never get a valued return on Sundering in PvP. That’s a sustained DPS trait. I’d sooner take venomous strength.

Traps really suck in PvP. PvE they’re awesome. Sword and Dagger is bar none the lamest weapon combo we got. I’m all for accepting a challenge and trying to make odd combinations work but S/D is hopeless in PvP atm. I eat S/D’ers alive.

Stop fighting thieves?

I dunno what to tell you mang. I get rocked by Condition Necros all the time. You know what I learned? To ****ing avoid Condition Necros.

P/P for PvP, SB for PvE IMO.

Rocking out a couple Unload’s on a speed proc is just butter.

As a side note, this language filter is insane. Why is g-im-ped and g-aw-d filtered out? Talk about taking PC to the next level…

Ashanor.5319:

Finally the reason D/P is inferior DPS wise is because of the time it takes you to do things as well as cost. Using your own crazy azz rotations above, you’d be out of initiative long before D/D while taking longer to do the same exact damage that D/D can do. Also assuming that you have a complete kitten who doesn’t know to move out of smoke when he sees it.

Slightly less DPS for multiple blinds? Don’t forget your dual skill is a blind and doesn’t do that horrible of damage either. Personally I prefer D/P.

I’m not contesting that BP is completely faceroll awesome in PvE. In fact, my original post above states this implicitly. However, BP is hands down, the single easiest build to avoid. Explicitly BECAUSE of BP.

I’m not entirely sure why D/P is becoming more and more popular in PvP but I can tell you one thing: I’m glad for it. D/P thieves are so easy to avoid and spot it’s mind boggling how they manage to dupe anyone into their grasp but hey, that’s just me. I’m telling you, as I said previously, the more mature our playerbase becomes (experience wise) the harder a time D/P thieves are going to have in PvP.

The problem is that in order to get any real value out of D/P you have to hope that your opponents stay within BP’s tiny radius for the majority of it’s duration. If they don’t and you’re using BP and then instantaneously firing of HS for the stealth then you’re wasting init vicariously. You mind as well be a D/D thief if that’s how you’re using it. THAT is the problem. You have to get actual value out of BP which in PvP is really really hard against experienced opponents. If you manage to go toe to toe with a melee who’s either naive or completely idiotic and doesn’t immediately back off as soon as BP is dropped, then yes; you are going to own his face.

The problem is you have to hope he’s either an idiot or a newbie. One of those two things will be rectified in time. The other will quit or reroll.

In order to get the most bang for your buck you have to have at least 2 seconds of actual use out of BP before combo’ing it. So you’re looking at a time period of 5-7 seconds to get a full rotation of BP+HS+Backstab with value out of BP. In the same amount of time I can drop 2 CnD’s with backstabs and the target is dead. Not wounded… dead. And I can do it with losing less then a 3rd of my initiative pool and 2 BLINDS in the process completely free.

To get the same effect out of BP+HS your spending more time (because of the extra HS step) and your initiative pool is completely tapped.

There is one and only one situation where D/P completely blows D/D out of the water and that’s defending a point against multiples of melee’s. One more time, melee’s. And they have to be stupid enough to stand on top of you the entire time. If you can manage to get the planet’s to align and grant you that situation… you will be a kittenong mortals.

Until then, you’re a g-im-ped D/D and not even remotely close to the survivability of a P/D.

HackerTeivospy.2031:

Smoke + HS + Steal = 6 overal cost

DD

CnD + Steal = 6 overall cost

First off, who the hell are you playing against? Who uses steal as a follow up to CnD? Secondly your math is wrong. CnD with trait is 4 Init not 6. Steal w/ trait would put that @ a total cost of 1. Your first example should be 4 BTW. Smoke -6, HS w/ trait -1 steal w/ trait +3. Total 4.

Finally the reason D/P is inferior DPS wise is because of the time it takes you to do things as well as cost. Using your own crazy azz rotations above, you’d be out of initiative long before D/D while taking longer to do the same exact damage that D/D can do. Also assuming that you have a complete kitten who doesn’t know to move out of smoke when he sees it.

I run a Pistol Dagger 30 crit, 20 shadow, 20 acrobatics. Backflip heal, Speed Signet, Scorpion Wire, Haste and Storm. Very fast paced, very quick and highly confusing for enemies. Running into a group, CnD target, Sneak Attack, 3, Scorpion Wire, CnD, Sneak Attack, execute then steal back into the rear of the herd is a favorite trick of mine. Literally separating the weak link from the herd.

It’s an unconventional build for P/D so it’s easy to throw people off balance. A lot of mobility. Very fun. Not the uber killer but exceptionally annoying.

I don’t follow any of these “fundamentals” and I do perfectly well.

They must not be fundamentals.

Sword + Dagger or Dagger + Dagger w/ Heartseeker spam.

Have fun.

First, Heartseeker doesn’t auto crit with the above example provided. I knew that right off the bat but I tested last night just to be sure and it did not crit 100% of the time. It crits a lot… but so does everything when you’re stacking precision in conjunction with 30 point crit line.

So that’s simply not true.

Secondly, anyone who’s sticking around for BP is an idiot or stunned. No one with even a modicum of experience against thieves is going to stay melee when BP pops. It’s far too situational to take full advantage of. It’s primary use in PvP is for coordinated team play with other Thieves. Two GCD’s and multiple Thieves stealth for a nuke bomb of epic proportions.

It’s a sight to behold.

But it isn’t the awesome sauce that its being made out to be in this thread. In PvE that’s another story. Very VERY good ability set. But in PvP, as the population becomes more experienced you’ll see it less frequently used outside of concerted efforts.

I see no problem with either of the OP’s issues and, for the record, no amount of experience makes bad ideas good. An idiot who plays 1,000,000,000 matches with an 98.7% win ratio is still an idiot. I’m not saying you’re an idiot I’m just saying that stating “credentials” is irrelevant.

It’s the content that matters.

With that said, if people want to spam heartseeker… please, for all that is holy, encourage them to do so. Single handedly the worst DPS option we have. Let them spam ‘til they turn blue. I’ll face off against a heartseeker spammer in preference to any other class skill combo this game had to offer.

The only people they kill are bads.

Period.

Secondly, complaining that an alpha maneuver (in this case PW) is OP in conjunction with a utility on a CD (Haste) is completely obtuse. Every, I repeat, EVERY class has similar combinations. If this was something that could be spammed you would have merit.

But it can’t.

Someone decides to spec into one of our worst weapon combos on the off chance they can score an insta gib every once in a while. Get over it. Let them have it. Sword + Anything sucks outside of PvE.

Haste is fine. Until it can be spammed I don’t see a problem here. Just people complaining because they’re not fitting it into their builds while other people are sacrificing the slot to do so and that’s driving them insane.

Again, get over it.

I have the engineer goggles on my thief. = )

You know when you shift click on a map and you get this gigantic pulsing red symbol that pops out. It’s a very clear marker right?

THAT should be your DEFAULT symbol representing “YOU ARE HERE” when you go to the map. The current symbol for “you” on the map is far far faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too subtle. I can’t count, quite literally, how many times I’ve pulled up the map, looked around to see what areas I have left to clear, and then had to close the map and reopen it JUST to reacquire where the **** I was on the actual map to begin with.

The same goes for group mates. Not kidding you, this conversation happens at least 4 times a night on vent:

“Where are you?”
[[insert location]]
“You know the drill, figure 8’s until I spot you”

And that is exactly what the person does, they run in figure 8 patterns in order for the pin point blue dot that someone thought would be a good enough party member marker to stand out on the very colorful, and beautiful map.

Long story short, I should not have to look (I mean actually LOOK) for either myself or my party members on the map. It should literally be a 5 second process. Pull up the map, there they are, here I am, here I go. Done. End of story.

Not an MMO version of ’Where’s Waldo?’

Dee Jay.2460:

Just consider for a moment how popular Sword/Pistol would be without Pistolwhip. How popular would Dagger/Dagger be without backstab?

If the loss of a single ability has such a detrimental effect on a specs popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.

This is one of the most ridiculous lines of reasoning I’ve ever read.

E V E R Y build of E V E R Y class revolves around 1 or 2 abilities and everything else on the bar is utility. This sentiment can be applied to everything that is GW2. It’s assanine. If this were WoW where you had 2x dozen+ abilities at your fingertips at any given moment (not including consumables) THEN and only then would this line of reasoning hold value. But when any weapon combination in the game yields a paltry 5 abilities your line of reasoning is invalidated.

To put it in perspective, here is the WoW equivalent of your statement:

“If the loss of five abilities from a build has such a detrimental effect on a spec’s popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.”

That’s how ridiculous you sound.