Guild Wars 2

It lets you stat swap but that is the only advantage over ascended.

I feel I’m going to have fun with this weapon. Visually and gameplay wise.

PvP just needs some unique skins that aren’t all legendary focused.

S5 brought somewhat new armor skins so they just need to expand the offerings to justify people earning the ascended shards in season.

Some new skins specific to each pvp map could also motivate non-season play.

And I vote for a carrot mace to get things started :p

CnD does solid damage though, depending on your stats.

No, legendary stats are identical to ascended.

You can stat swap with legendaries, however.

Specific builds I can give advice about. Thief generally…not so much. A lot comes down to what they are doing and relying on to survive/deal damage.

The problem with their logic is that gaining stealth has a cost. That cost is the cost of the backstab/stealth attack. But they felt getting multiple tries at it was unfair, thus the cooldown.

I think it would feel a lot less clunky if they just made missing a stealth attack reduce stealth duration. Then the “cost” of missing is significant and doesn’t awkwardly feel like a strange skill specific daze.

Starting Predator now because I like it more.

Condi burst is not worse than power burst. Projectiles have so much hate in the game that extreme range isn’t a super huge issue either. I like the idea of rifle so I’d like to be able to use it in my condi builds.

Last expansion was no condi for thief (staff). I think we are due for a condi friendly (although not exclusive) weapon.

Lightning Shot (auto) – deliver a high speed projectile. Slower reload but fast projectile.

Head Shot (stealth) – deliver a powerful strike that inflicts confusion. More confusion for longer distances.

Tracer (skill 2) – fires a test round. If the round hits your next shot inflicts bonus damage and torment.

Sniper’s Retreat (skill 3) – become immobilized and temporarily revealed. After 3 seconds gain stealth and super speed.

Bullet Shield (skill 4) – aim a directional cone. For the duration of this skill block projectiles by shooting them out of the air. Each projectile you block grants might.

Final Shot (skill 5) – fires a shot that does more damage to low hp enemies. Is unblockable under 25% hp. Applies self vulnerability.

0 second cool down unblockable teleport. Lol.

Obviously, a warrior with all cooldowns expired and focused by multiple people will die. A thief focused by multiple people will die too if critical survival skills are on cooldown. That’s not thief, that’s the game.

If there is a rifle condi variant I will be happy. Right now I have HOPE and Incinerator, adding Predator into that will complete the trifecta of cyberpunk weapons.

But, I worry that the survivability of the spec will suffer compared to Daredevil and with projectile hate being what it is a rifle needs some big impact projectile bonuses to make it worthwhile.

Rotation and sometimes standing on a point to hold it. You said mobility is the key to pvp but really holding map control is far more fundamental.

Mobility is shut down by being able to cover points. Usually bunker builds that can survive long enough for help to arrive are good. Forcing thief into team fights where there is more aoe exposure will limit the thiefs damage output depending on the build. The thief may also be caught and turned into cleave bait.

Thief can’t cover all three points so if you can hold home and win at mid by rotating back and forth between home and mid you should be able to get a decap and force thief into more team fights.

There’s no question thief has high mobility but that doesn’t make the class OP.

And Crinn there is no question badly played is badly played. But good thieves know the limits of what a thief can do and learning those limits is the first step to beating thieves.

Most thieves aren’t good enough that they are “unkillable.” If any player can’t beat a class no matter what then they need to learn how that class ticks.

“Buy a bigger SSD” is probably easier for everyone than doing a ton of work to make a version that can’t play 2/3 of the game modes.

What is an iFrame?

In all seriousness, if you don’t understand a class it will seem OP. Make one and see how OP it actually is.

Mid-season, but they just did a patch so probably not at least until late May or early June.

June 6th, because the day after memorial day would probably be rushing it. Then we get a few weeks of testing and adjustments. Then season 7 sometime mid to late June.

You don’t understand conditions, given your description of condition damage.

Conditions, for example, are not unblockable. Certain skills that apply them may be unblockable for a variety of reasons but conditions themselves are not unblockable. Next, conditions are meant to kill people. You can’t have more cleanse than condition damage potential because that removes all condition classes from effective play. Conditions are applied by using skills which may normally be blocked/evaded/line of sighted or cleansed. Nothing makes those skills more op simply because they apply condition rather than power damage. Rather, certain skills may be overtuned individually and in need of nerfing. Similarly, certain skills may need to be buffed still because they underperform—see all the classes with no viable condition damage build.

Further, while you seem to think that adding more cleanse is the answer it won’t actually help new players, new players won’t actually take the cleanse because they are new or playing bad builds. Plenty of builds have significant condition damage management. Newer players don’t take those builds or use them well and end up dying to condition damage. Adding more cleanse will just remove condition build viability while not doing anything for newer players.

No, because that limits condi players to one per team. It’s an artificial limit that deserved to die in a fire.

In one of the recent AMAs with the Balance Team I asked and the response was that they felt there was no “cost” to using the stealth attacks (i.e. no initiative cost) and felt that instead of making it cost initiative (impliedly thereby requiring a rebalance of the initiative costs across all skills) they imposed the cooldown as a compromise “cost” for using the skill.

I’m not sure that the Helseth pubstomp was a huge factor here since I don’t think the lack of a use cost on the ability really made a difference in that match. (I’d have to go back and watch the video of that match to be sure though).

I don’t care about ESL honestly. If people don’t want to play ESL then why care if a game has it or not? Prestige? Because the game is considered “balanced?” Because the game has talented players to compete against?

Balance will never be perfect or easy to achieve. I can play chess if I want perfect balance after all. Talented players might be a draw but I wouldn’t want to play against people who spend all their waking hours on it. People who care about ESL and don’t play ESL are like disappointed sports fans who like watching more than they like playing the game.

Class specific MMR is also a problem here. Someone might get to gold and then swap to their favorite but not quite as well played class. If they can’t drop in ranking at some point this produces more subpar results in matches.

I’d say that what S7 needs is a way for the system to handle outliers where there is large rating disparity. Maybe a modifier that reduces negative volatility based on number of games played. If you play, say, 120 games you shouldn’t have to win 80% of your games to maintain your rating. This at least would let top players play more often without fear of sliding down rapidly when they “only” are winning 60% of the time.

I’ll give you a baseline power based D/D to get started. You will want to change things up once you hit 80 for HoT. You may also want to give D/P and P/P and P/D a try to see how you like them. There are also condition damage variations you may want to try in the future.

I’m leaving the weapon/armor/trinkets blank. Berserker stats will do more damage but make you vulnerable. Assassins stats are similar as well. Starting out I’d add in vitality and toughness (soldiers stats) and then replace the pieces until you are comfortable with the damage survivability you are getting. Maurader stats are ultimately what you want but those are more expensive.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl0MhSnYhTwyJQ/EH0ElPMSjyQHATYE07rg4IA-TxAEgAInAAgHAQ++DAA-e

Have fun and please feel free to follow up with me in game if you like.

Trickery line first.

Neither NA nor EU can claim to be better. Sure individual players at the top may be better or worse but hard to attribute that to the entire continental servers they play on.

All this drama over who is rated better, who deserves their rating and who doesn’t….feels like a reason to have EU vs NA tournaments. If you’re not going to do that then might as well not speculate over this. Especially because “my nation is better” and “this race is better” are already seeping into the comments.

Forsty.7968:

saerni.2584:

I think this is how rankings work out:

Bronze: Trash

Silver: Trash

Gold: Trash

Platinum: Trash/decent

Legendary: match fix/good

i fixed it for you

If you think there is no difference between bronze and gold then that is your problem. Also, bronze players lack experience and skill. This doesn’t make them “trash.” If you know you are dealing with newer players you should try to help them get better. You may think “that’s not my job” but if everyone thinks the same and no one helps…these players won’t get better. Calling them trash only makes it more likely they will quit playing pvp before they play enough to get better without anyone’s help. Then we get players who complain about population issues in pvp while attacking entry level players.

Rewards drew in new players last season. If we want those people to stay and get better we need to work on our collective attitude towards inexperienced players.

Oh I agree that the closeness of matches should change the rating loss to encourage people to push themselves. I even made a thread about it.

Perma stealth thieves? Were a thing for a half ineffective second before a nerf took thief traps out of that build.

It’s like you don’t play pvp and just picked up a list of random forum complaints. Druid can sustain well but is hardly unkillable. Warrior is a bit overturned but that is better than underviable like it was before. Conditions aren’t even half of builds played right now.

Lol.

If S7 implements the sigil changes then you will get your wish for change.

I actually don’t mind the pvp scene atm. All this doom and gloom coming from players who quit is actually really funny. Like you aren’t playing therefore the game is dead. Right…

I think this is how rankings work out:

Bronze: weak map awareness and weak mechanical skills. Some players will have either moderate map awareness or moderate mechanical skill but not both. Players will often be overwhelmed even when playing otherwise high potential builds. Rotation will generally not happen. Teams need to be told where to go and what to do.

Silver: moderate map awareness and moderate mechanical skill. Players still need help planning and moving around map properly. Sometimes will struggle with survivability in group fights.

Gold: generally good map awareness and mechanical skill. Generally can survive in a group fight for a longer period of time. May have top tier mechanical skill or map awareness but not both. More likely to run into anti-meta builds and other customized play styles.

Platinum/Legendary: high mechanical skills and map awareness. Generally hard but fun to play against.

If you are stuck in silver then you are not doing something that is keeping you there. I had bad placements and climbed from low silver to t3 gold.

Working as intended. Abet wants the top players to play. Top players need someone to play against. At 1450ish you are fair game unlike people in bronze who shouldn’t ever fight top 250 people.

I fought a couple of top players this season and it was a lot of fun. Sure my team was dying but fighting top talent is good experience for getting better mechanically. It pushes me to get better

Obviously if they just die it won’t help your team. The people who are here are talking about 1v3 and staying alive.

Totally possible with the right mindset to kite three people. Line of sight can do wonders.

As Umbra said, you don’t need to do damage or take a lot of it to distract the enemy. Going 2 or 3 v 1 to let your team hold points and cap special objectives is really useful in some contexts.

Any class with large AoE that sneaks up on you will hurt your team a lot.

I’d love to fight it more often. I’m all for popularizing things that are under used

Care to talk a little more about the play style and matchups?

Conditions only kill faster when cleanse is overwhelmed. Ironically because cleanse exists it has to burst in order to do damage before it gets cleansed. Higher cleanse post HoT requires even greater burst.

Remove condi cleanse for damaging conditions and then nerf conditions to do damage over time. That is the only real way to balance conditions the way you want (slower TTK). Otherwise, burst away

Hi all. We are one week from the end of sPvP Season 6. As thieves we have had an interesting time this season and I thought we should have a thread commemorating and discussing how the season went for us and for thieves generally.

To start, a little thief history. This season was the birth and death of the infamous ghost thief. A spillover occurred when traps, previously underused, were buffed with additional condition application. WvW players began protesting the ability of thieves to permanently stay in stealth with the damage potential of the traps by running groups of them in WvW. Perhaps because of this some thieves tried to make the build work in pvp with predictably bad results. Lower damage, the need to stay close to targets on point, and likely unfamiliarity with the build made it essentially useless beyond trolling bronze players. This all came to an end when the cries were heard and traps were needed by adding a revealing damage component and an arming time to thief traps. This resulted in the effective removal of the infamous ghost thief from even trolling gameplay in WvW and pvp.

Now some general history. Season 5 was marred by MMR manipulation. Not many matches were required to be placed on the leaderboard and MMR volatility increased significantly over time. This meant good players would duo queue at off hours for a few games. Their high volatility would give them plenty of MMR even for beating much lower players. They could also get away without playing many games in this way so many top spots were filled by alts. Getting a title was therefore made more exclusive by players effectively stacking the leaderboard to keep others off it. The MMR manipulation also inflated the ranks of higher level players by giving them “harder” opponents to beat who were actually not nearly as good as their rank suggested.

To fix this, Anet removed MMR time volatility and increased the minimum game requirement for leaderboard placement significantly. People felt the population went down in season 6. Mostly, they cited the drop in MMR as evidence. While fewer players may have played in season 6 compared to season 5, it appears the MMR drop had more to do with the volatility and minimum game changes, which effectively weeded out players who should not have been as highly placed last season.

Now, let’s look at some thief builds. The most common thief build continued to be d/p power. The damage output of a well played d/p thief is one of the best in class and overall this set provides high value gap closing, interrupts and stealth on demand.

In second place was staff thief, often paired with D/P. This build brings the high evade and aoe cleave that combine to make this thief quite a strong team fighter. If well played this build can do a lot of damage while stalling for time. Less viable in theory since the changes to vault, in practice it is still strong enough to come in second in popularity.

In third place is the D/D condition evade thief. This build brings the same evade potential as staff, albeit with less soft cc. This line of builds has numerous variations but the main advantage this build has is damage with being hard to pin down. Unlike staff, however, this build lacks some of the escape mechanisms and has only one evade skill that can be overcome with proper timing. The build is popular in bronze/silver due to those players being unfamiliar with conditions or unwilling to plan for sufficient cleanse in their builds. This build has potential at higher level play but requires something extra to make it unpredictable enough to work.

P/P showed up a few times but is arguably the odd power thief out. Most P/P thieves lack the evade or stealth capacity and will be easily ganked while they spam Unload. Still this set showed up mainly in bronze and silver. I think this set has potential but needs some theory crafting to make it more useful at higher levels. I would say that D/D power is in a similar place but requires more skill to make it sing compared to P/P.

Sword/X remains in a bad place. Few tried running it and I haven’t seen it attempted in a ranked setting.

Last, P/D remains an underused set in PvP. I will only note that I’m in T3 gold and have only played P/D the entire season. I have over 150 ish games in season. This is viable and I hope more people try it in the future.

Yeah, it’s a very RNG skill especially with the newer utilities in Daredevil. I assume if you run a core build it won’t count them but if you are DD then it is 1/6 chance per category. Mostly it’s useful if your utilities span at least three skill types.

I wouldn’t swap classes in ranked after you rank up on one.

Support classes are good but rely on the team being somewhat good. I.e. If your team dies before you can support them. You are better off playing a class that can both support and do decent damage. Dragonhunter is a good example of this.

Engineer (scrapper) can be great support and decent damage but is a bit harder to play. Druid also has a pet to do damage and solid support and mobility.

Try out the classes and pick one that fits your play style. If you want to learn thief and are in NA just pm me and I can help get you started.

Offense counts decaps. So it’s not as pointless as you seem to think. Revives can matter because getting off a revive especially on a support ally can really turn the tide.

I’d like to see the percent of team screenshot and not just the one where you got top stats.

I’m confused about if they actually changed anything...but I’m glad things are working for you now.

Volatility is down but close to the top there are wider gaps in available players.

I’ve probably lost 23 Ish? I think more people’s MMR has settled down and that’s why high gold is getting into top players atm. There are a number of people who shouldn’t have been plat last season due to the number of games requirement and high volatility for not playing. That in turn inflated the number who reached platinum based on beating "gold" players who later fell to bronze.

Losing large mmr at this point is more a failure of the algorithm in dealing with close games and the determination that you were more likely to win based on an overly simplistic comparison of mmr.

Steal / drop trap and wait half a second. Burst attack and hope they don’t dodge immediately so the trap finishes arming. Wait too long and you won’t get a stealth attack.

The traps might work better on D//D build that stealths, traps, then starts a DB rotation. That way losing stealth doesn’t matter and you mainly just use it to lay the trap down. Still not as effective as it used to be with arming time.

I’ve used stun breaks in the past to get out of taunt. Shadowstep for example. In theory it should work to break the taunt because taunt is hard cc.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Taunt

Well that’s an argument for removing DH as a class too is my point. You can’t just ignore a DH built to sustain either, but your complaint is a thief build that actually can be ignored with sufficient cleanse. Just push it off point with some aoe.

It also goes down to sustained immobilize or timed stuns. I played a game once where I caught a d/d condition thief with an immobilize after their dodges ran out. I just kept immobilizing him and he died going “wtf is that immobilize.”

That’s a legit tactic though. I mean Derek can stalemate forever on DH versus a team trying to 2v1 him on their home.

It doesn’t even take a perma evade build, you just need to have good spatial awareness and know your class.

My computer is probably good enough to handle it…but I need to look into a second monitor to help manage everything.

I’m also a streaming newbie, so I’d need to mess around with Twitch settings and the like. I’ve done a little streaming using the basic options in the NVIDIA application (I have a 1080) so maybe we can set up a test stream and go from there.

Fair enough, although a top 150 Ish warrior was running a hybrid mace/shield rifle build that was devastating the other day. Wouldn’t discount it at high levels.