Guild Wars 2

I would remove the swap-time timer on weapons and allow thieves to freely engage or disengage at will with whatever weapon they choose. This fits the idea of using whatever skill, whenever you need it, in exchange for initiative and not being bound by cooldown timers.

I would also reduce the base timers on non-basilisk’s venom to 30 seconds to differentiate between elite and non-elite venom skills.

I would also buff the damage of unload slightly and improve the speed of the projectile for body shot. I would also convert body shot to a knockdown w/ vulnerability.

If a thief prioritizes stealth in some fashion they may be unkillable if they maintain the ability to disengage. That said, they likely won’t be able to kill you. In a pvp or wvw context, waiting for another person to show up may tip the scales in your favor, or they may make a mistake and get killed, or you can disengage and move to another objective.

If you want to win “1v1” vs a thief like this, luring them into a camp in wvw (with NPCs that stun) and then forcing them out of stealth will likely finish them quickly. Stealth disruptor trap is a solid counter as well.

Depends on your build. Cloak and Dagger is very effective, as long as you don’t miss/get blinded/blocked.

I will admit that stealth is much less available without shadow arts (deception skill % recharge reduction + stealth on steal helps a lot with maintaining stealth).

Stealth is defensive, so builds that use blind (D/P) or dodge (staff for DD, sword builds) will need stealth less and probably not take the shadow arts line.

anduriell.6280:

saerni.2584:

Yeah it looks like a standard trapper thief. Your main mistake was standing still, once you were caught and immobilized you build up to a large number of stacks really quickly, largely on account of what may have been double needle trap. There is a drop needle trap on heal ability.

Key to dealing with this build is a lot of condition clears applied at regular intervals and applying AoE damage. This build is probably fairly tanky but needs to be on top of you. Your options are to use a stealth disabler/skill, just AoE the area around you, and to try and stay mobile around that AoE radius to avoid getting hit.

You also, in that video, hit your heal waaaaay too late and were unlucky to have just used your 3 skill and didn’t use any other skills to get out of immobilize. You were down at like 20% when you hit that. At the rate you were loosing HP you should have triggered it around 50% or so.

Also, not that familiar with druid, but where were your condi clears? It’s like you didn’t have any at all or very few from what I can see.

@ Fat Disgrace — Bleed/Poison from Needle Traps

All my skills cleanse + i had the trait that passes 3 condis to the pet periodically. However the trait is just rubbish as you can see, it takes 10 full seconds to act.
The thing is that the thief could keep DPSing me while in stealth, even did stomped me and didn’t reveal until so much later. It kept killing players all around.

It is not about when i hit the heal, this attack built 10K/tick condi damage in just one attack, it’s about during all the attack the thief was no visible but around dealing damage. And we know that build can stay invisible as long as they want. And because they can deal damage while in stealth they don’t need to come out. In other words: God Mode.

That is not fun.

And as I said, he basically has to stand on top of you to deal all of his damage. If you either move out of the way or pressure him with laying down AoE’s then you can beat him or fight him off. He isn’t invincible. He doesn’t have stability. He can be forced out of stealth. Counter play is available.

I’ve fought this build before, a few times, the perma stealth is annoying. But you can generally ignore them and move off a slight kittenances are they will have blown most of their traps, and therefore most of their DPS, and won’t be able to follow you without dropping more traps uselessly behind them.

The key thing is that you either chose, or were not able, to cleanse immobilize. If you had you would have taken almost no damage and laughed.

Yeah it looks like a standard trapper thief. Your main mistake was standing still, once you were caught and immobilized you build up to a large number of stacks really quickly, largely on account of what may have been double needle trap. There is a drop needle trap on heal ability.

Key to dealing with this build is a lot of condition clears applied at regular intervals and applying AoE damage. This build is probably fairly tanky but needs to be on top of you. Your options are to use a stealth disabler/skill, just AoE the area around you, and to try and stay mobile around that AoE radius to avoid getting hit.

You also, in that video, hit your heal waaaaay too late and were unlucky to have just used your 3 skill and didn’t use any other skills to get out of immobilize. You were down at like 20% when you hit that. At the rate you were loosing HP you should have triggered it around 50% or so.

Also, not that familiar with druid, but where were your condi clears? It’s like you didn’t have any at all or very few from what I can see.

@ Fat Disgrace — Bleed/Poison from Needle Traps

One potential option would be to include collections that unlock once you have an armor set. The collection would award variations on that armor set that include more revealing or less revealing, trench coat or not trench coat, etc.

Giving players more options based on current armor sets would probably save a decent amount of development costs simply in terms of time. Just an adjustment of the skin you already have and addition of a small amount of collection content (which is already being done for the legendary collection development).

I disagree that P/P is incompatible with condi. Try building around using Head Shot and the interrupt-torment trait. Add in some stealth options for sneak attack. Maybe a hybrid build would be a decent choice given the synergy across the pistol skills.

D/D or D/P are both options for hybrid because they offer dagger attacks which you can trait for poison and D/D has bleed-evades. The lack of teleport may be difficult given the class, but there is no reason not to give it a try and see you like it.

There are properly a few roles for thieves. (1) Cap/decap, (2) +1 damage, (3) +1 support.

I divide +1 into two categories because, as with the DH fight, sometimes the primary role should not be to add damage but to help other players do damage they otherwise would not be able to apply.

Thief is primarily about being able, limited by initiative, to use any ability at any time. This means applying immobilize, cripple, stun/daze/stone at will or close to at will (including basi-venom). If you need the other player to push, lock down the enemy and blame THEM if they can’t shoot a sitting duck.

On DH, Basi-venom, scorpion wire, unload, swap to staff, vault back in direction of his traps (but not into them). Note, trait for trickster so recharge on wire is 16, wear down their blocks and keep pulling them.

Use: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

First, don’t run zerker. Especially because if you are dead or trying to avoid becoming dead you have less time/focus on doing damage. You can do plenty of damage without running a so-called “glass build.”

With your link: Don’t take Shadow Refuge, it generally won’t give you an in combat advantage. Also, don’t take improv. — take executioner.

That build has a lot of deception skills so taking SA and using concealed defeat is better. The main problem with that build is the lack of synergy (it uses neither the reduced recharge trait for deception skills OR for tricks and then uses mostly deception/trick utilities. You need a build that compliments. Like taking BT in DD line and then using physical skills like Bandit’s Defense and Channelled Vigor. Unhindered Com. and Escapist’s Absol. are enough condition clear imo.

Or you could do this:

Guild Upgrade: Forward Scouting I, II, III

Each rank of Forward Scouting allows a guild to spawn a banner usable only by a player currently representing it on the map. Banner lasts for up to 3 hours and is destroyed on drop. The banner grants the following abilities.

(1) Enemy sighted! — Mark your position with a pulsing beacon visible to guild members. Sends a chat message to guild chat with the numbers of enemy players within player’s line of sight (close enough to see server affiliation).

(2) Scout’s Imperative — Grants banner bearer swiftness, stability, and immunity from movement impairing conditions.

(3) Scouting Post — Grants stealth until an enemy comes within 800 units of player. Player is immobilized for duration of stealth. Player is revealed for 1 minute after leaving this mode. Scout can use other banner abilities and remain in stealth.

(4) Radar Beacon — Drops a radar beacon [imagine engineer turret]. Radar beacon marks enemy positions within 2400 units. Only one beacon may be deployed at a time.

(5)Symbiotic Rewards — applies “Scout’s Honor” buff to allied guild members. Buff gives scout kill credit for any kill tagged by allied guild members. Buff lasts for half hour.

As general advice before any build is posted —

Thief is very good at disengage–reengage as a tactic. What I mean is that a good thief can stay alive and avoid the fights that will be lost. Case in point from WvW yesterday: I was unable to solo defend against a group of 5-8 people running around taking camps. But after they took a camp two of them took interest in trying to kill me (I had been harassing the group without being able to kill anyone because I was being careful and escaping before it was too late). The two were left behind by the group and I killed them.

Likewise in sPvP you can either distract multiple enemy players to give your team a better chance at taking points and winning fights generally OR you can disengage from losing fights and capture points to put pressure on the other team. Thief is also generally good at +1’ing a fight, waiting for the right moment to step in.

Essentially what I’m saying is that, regardless of what weapons you are using, mobility and having the ability to disengage is essential. Dodge, steal, teleport, stealth, etc. can all be used to help with that. As to personal skill I would say just practicing and knowing “when” is the right time to pull back and having situational awareness to avoid being overwhelmed by 3v1 is an important skill to have. (Which in a word is “timing”).

WvW thief is primarily useful for taking out enemy players and helping groups take out enemy players. By this I mean that we can either hit single targets or use our abilities to ensnare people so they get hit by the groups damage. This is effective as a tactic in both smaller and larger group fights. A second use of thief is to take advantage of mobility to intercept wvw objectives (stopping yaks into objectives, chasing down solo camp capturers, scouting enemy positions).

An individual guide to fighting is harder simply because even picking a specific weapon set each person is going to have their own style. That said, what I think is universally true is: learn your limits. Thieves have exceptional disengage but don’t over commit. And slot Shadowstep.

I would suggest increasing the damage a bit on SB #2 and increasing the duration of the bleed. Also, I would increase the duration of the poison field by a few second for #4. Other than that it is fine.

Currently the rewards system offers comparatively very little. Much of the “reward” comes in the form of currency that can only be spent on a limited number of items. Many of these items are poor substitutes for what can be earned in sPvP, Fractals, Dungeons, or Open World events, especially in the newer zones.

Rewards come in many forms. While basic crating resources are plentiful in the bags players drop there is a lack of rewards in terms of (1) special WvW exclusive finishers, (2) special WvW only skins tied to WvW rank, (3) drop rates for better quality gear.

The fear is that better rewards will push people into WvW to farm each other as opposed to playing the PvE content. This is a legitimate concern. If the rewards are too good the players who want to take advantage will do so quickly and flood the market or for some rewards not participate in the market. What is clear, however, is that no matter how legitimate the concern is, WvW rewards as currently balanced are very low. Further, there is no comparable economic concern with adding in skins and finishers as rewards.

There should be at least three finishers available for purchase for bronze, silver, and gold ranks. There should be at least one new armor skin (light, medium, heavy) available to those at bronze ranks or greater also purchased using badges. There should also be a new tokens earned for winning matches that can be spent on new WvW weapon skins. (“Eternal” weapons named after EB perhaps).

This proposal on rewards also needs to take into consideration the players incentives to do “well” by holding more PPT and winning fights. Players need to feel they are working towards larger rewards while being given small rewards along that path — as with sPvP reward tracks. For this reason the solution should be a mix between rewards during the match and rewards after a match is over.

The latter is easily described: gold, silver, and bronze reward chests. These should be awarded to those who complete a decent number of daily events during the week. An option is to make a special Weekly, as opposed to Daily, that once completed flags you for the reward chest for that week. This can include a counter of X number of dailies, number of players killed, supply spent. An example of possible rewards — Gold: 100 badges, 10 laurals, chest of exotic gear, 2500 WXP. Silver: 50 badges, 5 laurals, chest of rare gear, 1000 WXP. Bronze: 10 badges of honor, three chests of standard gear, 500 WXP. These could include tokens, as suggested above, for the purpose of specially purchased weapon skins.

The former requires more detail and complexity. Players often will play early in the week and then stop playing as either their lead is firmly in place or their loss is all but guaranteed. For this reason it is important to increase the rewards earned over time and also to incentivize the process by which those increased rewards are earned.

Another consideration is the rewards side of server imbalance. Taking no specific proposal as guaranteed, as should be the base line assumption under the circumstances, this proposal addresses the issues it is capable of addressing. This does not mean using a reward mechanic to attempt to balance the server population and time coverage issue. What it does mean, however, is that the rewards system should not unduly reward a lack of play. Because the chest at the end of the match mechanic rewards more passive play, such as one small group capturing the entire map at night, the other reward system should focus more on rewarding active play.

There should be two PPT bars. The first is the normal PPT bar tied to weekly rewards and winning, or not, the match. A second bar is filled and resets on a half-hourly basis. This bar does not fill based on objectives held. This bar fills solely based on PPT earned from killing other players and the rewards scale based on the number of points earned overall. I’ve attached a spreadsheet detailing a possible set of rewards for this.

This proposal attempts balance by not being better than the rewards for doing a couple of 5-10 minute fractals and promotes the beneficial “active” gameplay. It also scales down so that the rewards aren’t as significant when activity levels are lower. Players should have to earn PPT for their server during the event period to earn the reward chest.

I’d like to take a moment to show my intense disapproval of players in general who (1) emote to taunt or mock their opponent — especially after winning. It doesn’t matter what your build or skill level is.

This doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate your victories. /cheer /bow are always options for this kind of thing. Either that or don’t say anything at all. If someone goes down without a fight I honestly don’t have the time to waste on emotes. If someone was really good/skilled/difficult to beat then a respectful “well fought” works.

If they are using Lotus training then they are vulnerable to anything that can apply immobilize or cripple. D/D is also extremely range limited. Just stay about 500 away and range them down. Maybe use pistols. Use stealth and teleport to confuse them and stay out of their AoE.

And don’t stand on top of them. Hit and run with sword-dagger/pistol would probably work fairly well.

That you fail to kill a D/D thief using DB says: (1) you didn’t have sufficient stun/interrupt built into your build; (2) you failed to time your attacks to take advantage of stuns/interrupts you did have; (3) your issue lies with strong evade capacity of the thief (not a condition specific issue); (4) your heal/condition clear is insufficient generally; (5) the circumstances disfavored you (utilities were on recharge, low health, low endurance, +1) such that winning was already less likely.

And again, if you can’t kill a condition thief it is because you are not bothering to even try to deal with it in the first place. This is understandable because odds are, most thieves don’t run conditions. However, understand that deciding not to theory craft a response to a condi build is on you. Blaming condi for running a “non-meta” build you are uncomfortable fighting and didn’t prepare for is…not the best position to be criticizing others from.

So I’ve done some sPvP to compare. I would say that the loss of damage is fairly significant compared to WvW. That can reduce the effectiveness against certain classes. This is not about being meta or not. This is about how, you, as the player, want to play. I like the challenge of playing the “non-meta” build. If a build is less effective then it must take more skill to make it work in general, logically speaking.

Jana, the P/D teleport is useful for people who are chasing you into melee range (like warriors) and don’t have enough gap closers. It can be more effective to use in those circumstances. Rather than “spam” it can take a lot of skill especially if they are moving around a lot to properly time. If they have ranged weapon then it isn’t needed.

But seriously, you can “spam” any ability, on any build, and it can be effective on any build. Counter play involves seeing them spam and then doing what is necessary to avoid it. Dodge roll through a few spammed Shadow Strikes = no condition damage, no teleport out of melee range, and less initiative to spend. If you die to spam you messed up.

There are bad condi and bad power build thieves. All the weapon sets play differently. There are “low skill” abilities like shadow shot. You don’t see me complaining about that though because I’ve noticed that I can dodge when I see the blind effect before the teleport.

Low skill play (like spam or over reliance on one skill) can be countered with a little thinking.

Either people claim P/D is too weak or that it is too strong. This says to me, people who know how to play it can kill people. People who don’t know how to play it can be killed.

Anecdotally. I put out an initial “burst” of damage assuming all my conditions land. Over time this burst goes down a lot. I need to actively continue attacking, revealing myself and exposing myself to attack, to maintain decent damage — which won’t burst again for another 30-40 seconds.

At this point I think given that 95% of new thiefs play D/P it is high time to put to rest the idea that “bad players” go condi. Bad players? None of the 95% are bad? Really? The odds are so unlikely especially given the hate that still irrationally goes against a legitimate build/playstyle. There are bad players who play D/P, should we insult that build because of it?

I’m talking about trailblazer armor vs dire armor. Two weapons of trailblazer is worth it. Not more.

Are you calling for carrion armor to have more condition damage? That seems fair if you discount that carrion already gets a boost in the form of direct damage. Carrion works for hybrid builds, such as with sinister armor, with varying degrees of critical chance, vitality, or toughness. Hybrid armor can counter high condi clear and high armor builds because it does both damage types. That is the trade off.

Before diamond skin was changed, for example, a pure condition build could not reduce the tempest/elementalist below 90%. Fundamentally impossible. Now that’s changed but it shows how minimal the direct damage is for a pure condi build. Hybrid gain’s all the benefits of condi power AND gets greater direct damage. There’s your trade off.

I don’t find the need to spec a glass build on my power-thief build. Similarly, I don’t build a glass build on condi.

I still reject your argument that thief A (power) does the same DPS as thief B (condi) but thief B gets more defense. I think thief A (power) gets more burst DPS than thief B (condi), which means that thief B can either (1) add in more dps by going sinister, (2) add in more defense by going dire, (3) middle ground with other hybrid armor. So either thief B gets more defense due to lower DPS or equivalent DPS/armor/defense depending on armor/stat choice. I have yet to see actual substantiated proof that a thief hitting a heavily armored (3k+) target cannot still out DPS a condi build with no hybrid damage.

Just need to limit the vendor that sells the new armor stat set to those with HoT. The HoT vendors are already limited to those with the masteries and only those with HoT have the HoT masteries. Problem solved.

Almost all applications of conditions from stealth take a thief out of stealth and add revealed debuff so that is already the case.

In the PvP context all the super tanky armor has been removed as I understand it to promote more fast paced play. This doesn’t mean that a meta in which people can tank longer is inherently bad, it just means that for the purposes of e-sports and pacing for individual matches they wanted to increase the risk for everyone. Therefore why dire and now soldiers are not available in those matches.

Thief is the most limited HP class. Full dire produces HP of around 20k. Many classes get far more than that and need not used vitality granting armor. The same is true on the armor side as well. Thief bunker is, the least, or one of the least, “bunker” of the bunker builds, which is perhaps why I am less concerned with it.

Also, as an example, the HoT armor set that adds condition duration in exchange for less vitality/toughness actually REDUCES my overall damage. I have two of those for weapons, because that optimizes my damage — but a full set that reduces my hp/armor literally reduces my damage. I’m not wedded to the idea that I need maximum tank and damage…but the alternatives either require I take stats that don’t matter to me (like precision) or get less damage than Dire offers.

No, that is exactly what you mean when you say “the condi-build never have to sacrifice survivability to gain the level of damage they can put out” — meaning that, for the survivability, you think there is “too much damage.”

And I’m asking what in particular you think needs to be changed to bring them into “balance.” Just saying “balance it” doesn’t help Anet or anyone understand what is being proposed as a practical matter.

Poison has always been 33% reduction in heal power. Do you think the 33% itself is overpowered? Is it the duration of poison some skills apply? Torment, same questions. Is it the duration or the damage or the mechanic you think shouldn’t be as strong? Taunt, is it the duration or the mechanic itself?

And to answer you Vincent — your bolded text says “too much damage” and I attempted to debunk the idea that, in fact, the damage was all that strong. Conditions can be blocked/evaded/passively cleared/actively cleared. Another implication of your bolded text is that there isn’t enough condition clear. I can’t speak to every classes condition clear. For thief we have many active utility clears and semi-passive condition clear traits (trickster, shadow’s rejuvenation, escapist’s absolution, pain response).

Maybe the issue is less our condition clears and more fundamentally our low base HP which makes conditions more effective even with a substantial number of condition clears. Conditions are very powerful against a low HP pool. Maybe, given that there has been noticeable power creep where other classes damage is concerned, we should simply ask for more base HP to deal with conditions. (It takes time to press active clears, and even a single extra tick of conditions will impact low HP classes more).

Impair in what way? If we are talking about balance we should know what the problem is exactly. Is it damage we are talking about?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The cheesiness of a condi-build is not because their target has no cleanse, rather the fact that their build is so tanky while dealing a lot of armor ignoring damage.

A power-build has to trade survivability for damage and their damage is mitigated by armor — this is not the case for condi-builds, that’s why it’s cheesy.

Let’s talk hypothetical DPS numbers here.

A power-build can trade some DPS for survivability. What it gets out of that is the ability to hit a target for a longer period of time and overcome their evades and blocks. While the DPS might be lower vs. a target just sitting there, the overall damage dealt is greater given that sustain.

Now, a condition build is going to out damage against a zero cleanse build assuming they dodge and block. This makes sense because they are focused on avoiding melee damage only. Now if they run any sort of condition clear the power-build is going to out damage the condition build. This makes sense too.

Convert condition damage numbers to total final damage. Opening attack is around 20k without cleanse. Let’s assume 25k. Cleanse should cut that damage down to 8k, depending. You want to claim condition damage is too strong when a power build with decent sustain (marauder’s stats) can hit 8-10k repeatedly in a short time frame?

If condi thief is cheese then might as well just say you would like all damage conditions removed from the game.

I’m going to contradict OP and suggest that rather than discounting a build as “cheese” you can, and should, consider all your options.

P/D can seem “easier” because it shoots from a distance and has stealth access. Projectiles, however, can be blocked/reflected/dodged. Thus while the entry skill doesn’t require much the actual application of the build to more skilled opponents takes some getting used to, and dare I say it — actual skill. D/D condition spam also takes skill when you think that most opponents aren’t stupid and are going to hit and run to avoid taking bleed spam to the face.

Most people seem to think that every thief does and should play glass. It frustrates them that condition builds have stronger hp/armor and can put out damage.

A final thought — I play P/D, I think it is fun to play, I think it is dangerous, and more importantly I can tell you that I can kill most people in WvW. I kill druids, scrappers, and dragon hunters. Are they easy kills? No. Can I kill them? Yes.

Straegen.2938:

If you are wrecking thieves with a condi thief build, they suck. Thief condi application is far below several other classes that run in sPvP. If a thief cannot handle another thief condi, they have no prayer of handling the other heavier condi applicators.

The first decent power thief that runs Escapists should annihilate most condi based thief builds given equal skill levels.

A lot of thief condition clear requires dodge and/or hitting/being hit. For this reason a well applied attack + stealth/evade will seriously hurt them. I’ve run conditions using pistol/dagger for a long time. Some classes require different strategies to fight when it comes to how they clear/avoid conditions and knowing thief should be the easiest part of main-ing one.

Also, I think you are mistaken about our condition application’s potential. Combine a poison field, lotus training, and venoms and see how much damage you can put out.

Currently you can trait for blind on stealth, effectively making CnD a blind as well when timed correctly (not revealed).

Currently my maximum closing distance is roughly…5100? If we are dreaming of course I’d take a teleport to target built in on body shot though. Maybe instead of immobilize it could be a teleport to target and poison

People complained about condition builds for thieves before Anet rebalanced and created a more condition heavy meta.

In a way, I think this arises out of a mindset that says “if I dodge it or stealth out of an attack that is my skill” and “why should I have to clear a condition, that isn’t skill, it’s just a button press or a passive.”

Now, I think that if Anet converted the condition dealing skills to pure damage skills with all the damage up front these “condition” builds (across classes) would be equally powerful. I think people don’t like knowing they are losing health and being unable to do anything about it. It prolongs their mental suffering over having taken a hit. They think to themselves unconsciously “why am I still taking damage, I’m not getting hit.” Of course, without condition clears they have already lost that health, losing it slowly is just an illusion at that point.

Thieves also have a strong sense of pride in their personal skill with the class. Sometimes it is a shock to people that their build they usually win with was completely destroyed. Going after a thief thinking “easy kill for me” and being surprised they aren’t running a glass direct damage build is one thing. Not being able to adapt after the surprise is the real issue.

S/D, P/D, and D/P all have something in common — they all have a built in teleport.

S/D does it by jumping in and out. D/P does it by direct to target assault. P/D does it by jumping away from target. Each players well with the idea of the main hand, that is, swords and daggers need to be close to hit and pistol needs range to reduce damage while hitting the target.

D/D has HS, a poor comparison to an on demand teleport. And, technically, the comparison should be to DB given we are talking about the 3rd slot ability. One option is to create a “tag” skill.

Assassin’s Mark — bleed your foe and mark them for death. Gain the ability to Shadowstep to your marked foe for 7 seconds. Range 1000.

As to P/D I don’t think it need to be buffed that much. Of course I’d like to see Body Shot move a little faster through the air, but shrug.

Galandil.9641:

Straegen.2938:

A DH of equal skill on a decent build will generally wreck a thief at least in 1v1.

So much this.

Anyone claiming that he can beat regularly DHs in 1v1 with any thief build, has faced only really bad DHs.

I’ve faced good and bad DH’s. As a class they are tougher than most to beat — but not unbeatable. I say that as a P/D thief running a very synergized build.

My general strategy, to the extent that one strategy fits all DH players, is to expect that the first HP bar is probably going to be healed. The plan is (1) Burst, (2) Sustain, (3) Burst. Sustain comes from a lot of different abilities. The stolen item from them is a good daze, switching to shortbow is a good evade/blind. Etc. Usually, given initiative and some utilities as the baseline, I get my burst back before they get their heal back.

The rest is positioning. Some will try to run and gun (with longbow) for example to run down their cool downs. You need to be able to apply your second burst as soon as it is available. Don’t get caught, Unhindered is great for that, so is shortbow 5.

Essentially — scare them into / make them blow their cooldowns, keep calm and go to evade/stealth/outmaneuver, re-burst to finish them.

Shadow’s Embrace and Escapist’s Absolution might be a little too much condition clear.

An alternative is taking Concealed Defeat (-20% recharge on shadow abilities) and swapping in Shadowstep (condition clear and teleport w/ a stun break on both activations). This gives you the stun mitigation you may desire.

Not that I run into that many of them, but a condi longbow warrior has, in the past been an interesting fight in WvW. Unsure on the build or its current viability. The cost for ascended is significant enough that you want to be running the full exotic version for a while to make sure you want to commit to it.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ is a good place to start for seeing what works “on paper” and then testing out the gameplay in sPvP Heart of the Mists or in WvW.

WvW wise: people often make the mistake of running around in glass. Glass works for some people on some classes but isn’t for everyone—especially starting out. A good rule to start with is that you need somewhere in the range of 3000 armor. It may be too much for an experienced player but you won’t die nearly as easily. You should also focus on staying alive and mobile — nothing kills you faster than being locked down and focused by 3+ players.

Basically, my advice is that gearing a character relies on multiple factors: player skill, player experience, build, and playstyle. Start from what you need to do, survive, and then slowly reduce your HP/armor until you have just enough to not die and do decent damage at the same time. (Note: a build that can take a few hits and then hit back decently well will usually beat a glass cannon that can’t take any hits).

Flexibility and mobility are what make the thief “fun” to play for me.

Each thief build/weapon set comes with abilities that combine damage with mobility in some sense. I would also throw in stealth as a “mobility” ability in the sense that being invisible can help with being in the right position to attack or escape. Usually, you can control where you end up in the fight and if you are good predict where they will end up.

When I fight other people, the “better” ones are usually the ones who are mobile and “dance” around like a thief has to.

If you are asking about more “group” utility, I would also say we have strong abilities in this regard. Take our cc venoms (immobilize and chill venom + basilisk’s) and venom share them in WvW in a small group or large zerg. Either way you will have guaranteed a few deaths on their side because a player could not escape / stay mobile. Our group utility is both about taking down players that fall behind the rest (assassination) and also ensuring that a few players fall behind in the first place. (Note this works wonders on break bars, generally).

Current iteration +1 point per kill to servers claiming kill.

I suggest the following enhancements to PPK in WvW.

Defenders Pride:

WvW Tower Passive Slot: +1 extra point per kill at claimed objective.

Assaulter’s Fury:

Kills within an enemy tower/fort are automatically an additional +1 point.

The outcome is that attackers have a “bonus” for taking down defended towers. Defenders can also make defending more valuable point wise. This still maintains a relatively small number of points per kill. It also rewards activities different from spawn camping (not that that was the original goal of this suggestion).

Another aspect of these changes that is not PPK could be on the rewards side. Each buff could grant additional loot chance from players killed. Either magic find or could also be more WvW focused and steal supply on kill.

This is clearly intended. A single person would never cast CoR within the 0.5 seconds CoR cannot be reapplied. Therefore a change that restricts being hit from CoR for 0.5 seconds after being hit by CoR ONLY affects groups hitting a player with CoR.

True, but the center event in the old borderlands was always “on” because the players could always attempt to hold it. I think that the minor buff wasn’t strong enough an impact. The current laser event, however, is both too strong in terms of effect but also less useful because it is only active for a portion of the whole time.

When I roam I look for things that I can do. Disrupting supply lines, taking a tower quietly, in EB grabbing dredge or ogres or frogs. I want to do things that help my whole team in a way that empowers them. For example, taking frogs allows other players to push on camps and towers and spend less time defending against attacking NPCs.

My alternative works because it empowers players to attack a wider part of the map more quickly or defend more quickly as the case may be. Weakening enemy gates by damaging them, however, is a less interesting way of enabling other players to do things in my opinion.

Aeolus.3615:

My option would be take north camp to somewhere else, push keep to north (change keep design to something more pleasent), and make a big castle at the center with several floors, like a babel tower, and with no strong easy gimmicks to win offcourse….

A change keeps design in new BL to somethign more real structure design, and remove weird gimmick would be apreciated Anet, Tks.

From the sound of it, if I’m interpreting you correctly, this seems to be aimed more at Eternal Battlegrounds and Stonemist Castle. Otherwise you would be talking about removing or significantly changing the borderlands which, while a possibility for ANET to consider, was not the focus of this thread.

I like the idea of making SMC into a three part “tower of babel” where each floor can be captured and attacked internally. Outer walls, inner gates, and three keep lords on the three levels of SMC that must be all beaten in order to capture it. Not a bad concept and it would be a fun competitive setting.

Svarty.8019:

I don’t think the OP’s idea would provide the solution we all want.

Here are the facts, as I see them (feel free to challenge them);

• It feels like a chore to do the event when there are no enemies on the map anyway,
• When there are large groups in the event, it IS fun,
• Killing mobs for cogs in small groups/solo is tedious, but,
• Killing 1 or 2 mobs for cogs is tolerable,
• The centre event is intended to pull enemies out from behind walls for fights,
• The centre event is intended to give small groups a chance to make an impact,

With these in mind, how can it be improved?

I’m not sure, from what you said above, what it is that you feel “we” want and therefore I have no idea how you feel my alternative does/not meet those goals. I’ll make some comments on the above assuming that the “centre event is intended” reflects your opinion of what the community wants. I will also assume that “small group” is sized at about five players, each with an average of 20 supply (taking into account the gaining of supply on spending it and increased carrying capacity).

Certainly the idea is to pull people out from behind the walls. Both events accomplish this, the difference is to make the event less about completing a PvE event and more about creating a PvP player driven event that is always active. (Can also add in a self reward aspect where individual players are rewarded for turning in power cores to their node). An additional feature could be that power cores “deplete” over time and every 10-15 minutes a power core is removed from each node and reappears on the ground in the center of the map.

A small group could easily open up the pathways to their side (only 5 orbs needed, one per player—could even plan to have a distraction to draw away NPC guards and players), and then run over to a previously closed off tower and capture it with a couple of superior catas, or take a camp and then a tower. This is an impact appropriate to the game mode. Currently a small group of players can clear the center event in 15 minutes and then the center stops being a draw. Sure there is more “impact” but I think the better option is making it a constant draw for player combat.

A comparison was the buff from controlling the center of a borderland. Small groups of players had a minor but team wide effect by capturing the center. As opposed to a massive strategic weapon or a minor buff, improved mobility is a much better incentive for roamers and larger groups alike.

I’m not sure I agree. For one, weaker servers will always have difficulty unless the other side gets overconfident and doesn’t log in as much. If they don’t log in as much a smaller server will still have a chance under either the original event or my alternative. The difference is that the original is less WvW driven and more PvE event driven in flavor.

My proposal is not aimed at the larger issue of server population imbalance. Weaker servers is a serious problem, of course, but the solution to that isn’t so much in map design as it is in working on balancing population across time zones, IMO. Previous design changes were aimed at making server transfers a long term method for addressing the problem. In the short run, of course, we ended up with the same population balance issue (especially with time zones) and people have a lot of emotional attachment to their servers regardless of rank.

The laser event has been described by various players as one of the less fun and more PvE aspects of WvW that should be removed. With the constructive feedback ideal in mind I have some thoughts/suggestions on an alternative should the event be removed during the WvW rework that is allegedly underway.

To me, the real question is not should the event be completely removed, but rather what should replace the mechanic. At this time the center of the map provides an open area that does not necessarily facilitate/encourage player vs player combat for more than the event time period (and even then arguably less so because it often becomes a race to kill NPCs rather than competitive killing of other players). The center of a map in EB is aimed at promoting competitive king of the hill gameplay (hold SMC and have better ability to attack the entire map). The center in the Desert Borderlands also looks to “attack the whole map” but it is a primarily PvE event (a laser that attacks) instead of relying on players to attack as with SMC (there is no NPC run treb. in SMC for example).

I propose altering the “flow” of the overall Desert map not just according to who controls particular towers and keeps, but in part based on control over a “team node.” The node would be one of three stations in the center area, one for each team near their entry point (or near the Hardened Ramports for the “home” team). Each device would have three levels of control, each activating a new level of effects. I propose L1—opening up barricade portals for your team; L2—speeding up travel in the center of the map; L3—activating special portals to allow your team to bypass the center of the map.

Each level of control is unlocked by picking up power cores initially dropped on the ground (no NPC you need to kill). Each level of control also unlocks some additional defenses for the team node. L1 should be comparable to a fully upgraded camp, L2 should be like a tower without walls, L3 should add in some barricades that restrict, but do not eliminate entry (i.e. creates choke points but does not block off the node completely).

Players can go to an enemy node and take a power core from the node (channeled skill). There are only enough power cores available to get one team to L1, one team to L2, and one team to L3. A node can, however, hold all the available cores with no ill effect (ability to deny the other teams access to the portals For example, 5 cores = L1, 10 cores = L2, 20 cores = L3 for a total of 35 cores available on the map.

I tend to find other thieves annoying because many of them will run away if they can’t one shot you. My build is designed around positioning (keep them in one spot and stay out of their “ideal” spot) so other thieves that use daredevil unhindered will generally pose the most issues. (I play condi so I tend to have more sustain than a glass canon build).

I need to play around on my staff/sword/DD/DP build more in the post-HoT game. I’ve had some luck with tank/evade builds with signet of malice. (Took out a ranger while solo capping a WvW keep). Generally the flexibility of thief is that sustain can come from evade and heal, stealth and heal, or life steal/heal on hit/crit.

Trying to do “too much” and not taking advantage of synergy traits (reduced recharge on skills) is what I try to avoid when designing builds that can win. My advice on mesmer is to stay extremely mobile and stealth a lot. I think using either sword or d/p (for direct damage builds) and a lot of teleports would be helpful (maybe with a swap to sb with energy sigils to help maintain evades while waiting for their stealth to go down).

The most helpful criticism is, often, constructive criticism. For that reason I decided to do some thinking about what kind of gameplay content makes sense for WvW. This thread is for commentary and for anyone else to make suggestions for what kinds of things they would like to see implemented. This is not a thread for bug fixes or for changes to existing content. There are plenty of feedback threads related to problems with WvW design generally, balance, and glaring problems such that it is inevitable that those concerns will at least be looked at in the near future™.

My proposal relates to the concept of borderlands generally. In some respects the borderlands are designed to give a lot of advantages to the “home” team by placing them nearest to the largest and most connected fortress. I like the contrast between the Eternal Battlegrounds that treats everyone the same and is a very open world king of the hill battle and a contest in a borderland where I feel the “home” team should be structurally advantaged—given that each gets their own borderland.

My proposal is a new map designed as follows:

The map should consist of six towers and two keeps—major and minor. The major keep is closer to the spawn point of the “defending team” and the minor keep is close to both spawn points of the “attacking teams.” Both keeps are only accessible via the rear gate found in each of the associated three towers—you need to break into a tower in order to access the keep. It only takes one tower to be able to attack the keep. All the towers lead to a different gate or wall section of the keep, but all parts of the keep are accessible once a tower has been taken. Taking a keep is required to attack the other towers and keep. Access to the open center area, where you can attack two of the three towers, is available through a drop-ship mechanic. The waypoint mechanic whereby a waypoint is only accessible to the team whose base is nearest remains. Waypoints are available in keeps.

This proposal attempts to force the attacking teams into a contest and opens up new opportunities for large scale group combat in the wasteland between keeps.

It wasn’t working yesterday, maybe it got fixed? I’ll check later I’m not able to play atm.

Shadow’s Embrace – Does not remove condition’s listed upon application of stealth.

This is comparable to Shadow’s Rejuvenation only granting initiative after three seconds. Either ability should apply initially and then subsequently every 3 seconds as described.

Ex. (with SA) CaD = 1 condition removed on application, 1 additional condition removed after 3 seconds. With SR, initially gain 1 initiative and then after 3 seconds gain a second initiative.

I’ve looked on guardian and warrior as example comparisons. All of their condition removal skills are the same post-patch. They remove ALL conditions regardless of type. Rather than making all condition removal situation specific and forcing people to deal with movement conditions differently they only applied this change to thieves (unannounced I might note).

Not all classes should play the same. That said, making thief the only class that has to deal with the bifurcation of movement and damage condition removal is something worth mentioning in the patch notes.

Further, condition removal, regardless of whether bifurcation is here to stay, should apply immediately upon stealth and not after multiple seconds. That is probably a bug and should be the focus of our complaints. (As mentioned previously, removing just damaging conditions might help us a bit by prioritizing them. The only issue is making sure the removal timing is functioning as intended).

Anet probably thought to include more condition removal in other lines and then made SE less powerful in order to not make it unbalanced. What this did, however, was make it so that Shadow Arts and some other condi removal tactic (like using traps or the evade removes condi trait, are now more obligatory.

Returning SE to removing conditions upon stealth and would go a long way. I’m open to keeping movement condition removal and mitigation in other lines (evades remove crippled for example). It’s annoying when you have to spend time getting into stealth, then wait a few seconds for the bleed/burn stack to disappear, then attack and hope the delay in removing the DoT condition didn’t disadvantage you. That’s a lot of time to remove one condition that is easily reapplied a short time later.

Unlike a passive removal a stealth based removal relies on timing. This extra requirement makes removing a condition instantly much more justifiable.

Timing, positioning, skill order, etc all matter for condi-builds. The tired “no skill” statement is often made by people who forget that condition builds rely on more than just “the same attack / avoidance pattern.”

For one, my attack pattern and choices may differ significantly depending on who I’m fighting. I may have to respond differently to avoid taking damage. Also, I have to make sure to not let them interrupt my conditions. Pistols for example have line of sight requirements and projectiles can be “blocked” by other players. I need to be able to hit the intended target to maintain my dps at a level they find threatening.

It will be interesting to see how a bunch of zerker people who claim “no skill” react when they switch over to try “the new meta” (assuming they feel it is op) and learn they suck at it.

Just make them take conditions, and convert each damaging condition automatically upon application to a new condition “Corrosion.” Corrosion would work because with the stack limit removal it would make sense to just combine all stacks together. It also serves to make role-play people happy by not bleeding inanimate objects.

It might take a little work but I think the coding effort would address an inconsistency between condi and pure damage players when it comes to turrets. WvW players would also appreciate this especially because a condi build might help kill a lot of players, but make them useless against the cannons/ac’s/etc.