There comes a point where there is too much damage to really do anything about it.
As you say, a glass cannon thief deals damage in a few huge hits. By nature, that means you’ll want to use blinds, blocks, and dodges over retaliation or passive damage reduction.
Depends on what they are running. I use a glass cannon PP (and DD) which isn’t a very popular build among thieves and two bursts of unload will literally kill me if the target has retaliation on it, even if I start the first unload on full health.
What is one of the guards had an extra CC (knock down… chill?) with a decent cooldown that would promote the attacker to be keen on stability / a well timed dodge.
I wouldn’t want it too intrusive or annoying, but at least raise the skill cap a single person needs a touch to kill those yaks solo / duo.
Try playing in Tier 1 against Sanctum of Rall right now. They have an average of 5 players guarding a yak as well as guard upgrades. Giving the guards extra CC makes me cringe, because… how skilled exactly do you want me to be to take down a single yak? Im already getting crippled, blinded and immobolized in front of 5 enemy players and you want the NPCs to bring more CC
Warrior is possibily your best option from those 3. They are popular in dungeons and bring alot to the table. Necros don’t. Thiefs do bring alot, but they are not liked by the “passionate” dungeon community. All classes are good at levelling. Id say warrior is best for levelling because it has both excellent AoE and excellent single target damage. Thief has excellent single target and modest AoE. Necro has excellent AoE and terrible single target damage.
Thief is considered the best of the roaming classes in WvW, with perhaps Ranger behind that. But Warrior is highly underrated in this role. They are very mobile, have high survivability and high DPS. Its just easier to get away with stealth is all.
All classes have more than 2 viable builds. Necro probably has only 2 (IMO), because I only find Power Necro or Condition Necro decent. Minion master is not good at all. Although I used to run a hybrid “tankcromancer” build that isn’t mainstream and did find it exceptional in small fights (1v3s etc). Necro does have a place in a zerg/guild/organized group though and provides important condition support/pressure that a zerg/guild/organized group needs. Necro isn’t very good at roaming though. Thiefs and Rangers both tend to melt them.
Don’t know if you guys know, but killing the guards grants 11WXP per guard now, making it all the more tempting to kill them first rather than ignore and kill the yak only.
Totally for forced respawns. This can also be used to comm enemy zergs position and other game breaking components and I see these things happening alot.
Mesmers. I lose 80% of my fights against them. Compared to every other class where I win 99% of the time. I just avoid them in WvW. I need to learn how to beat them. Tell me how to kill them pls.
In WvW I usually roll blinding powder, shadow step and signet of shadows. I find most of my opponents are smart enough to pull me out of SR so I don’t use it all that much. With hide in the shadows, CnD and steal I still get alot of stealth. Its pretty borderline though, SR is so tempting to take, but what to give up. I need 25% mobility, an instant stealth (blinding powder) and a gap closer/decreaser/troller (shadow step).
Run with the zerg and spam AoE. Running solo yields alot less badges. Every major zerg fight that happens you can easily pick up 30 badges. But running solo you kill on player and have a small chance of getting a badge, move to a supply camp and kill NPCs and you have a small chance of getting a badge. See what I mean?
Rewards very meh I expected at least a guaranteed rare like a world event chest. Takes a bit more time to level than doing a couple of the easy events and far less reward. Is what it is I guess. I played wvw before the change and will still play after just thought we were finally getting something interesting but just more lackluster additions.
Dear god a guaranteed rare every chest would be a bit much don’t you think? I mean those events that you are talking about can only be done once a day each for that rare. Many people can level more than that, And also that would mean that wvw is as or more rewarding as pve and i think we have established that that is a big no no around here.
But there are what, 15-16 of those world events? Try to level 15-16 times in a day in WvW…
If you say so. I personally think its pretty skritthouse. Being outmanned on 3 maps almost 24 hours a day is fine for a while, then it just gets old. Trying to run havoc and every yak I come across has anywhere between 5-15 SOR players standing right near the yak, I try to flip a camp but I have to kill 10 mesmers first and then there guild mates who come running in for backup after Ive killed a couple of them. Sure, there are some fun fights, nothing like killing six players whilst running solo, but at the end of the day I think its pretty skritt.
Remember though that the servers we are currently facing were wearing the outmanned buff for a long time during our reign of dominance. Personally, I and my guild are enjoying being on the other side of things solely because we don’t have to deal with Queues anywhere. I believe that we JUST created a queue on Eternal battlegrounds after getting a large portion of our guild in already. I don’t think that EB has had no queue anywhere near primetime in all of JQ history before now.
Lots of good fights though this week. Anet’s “optimizations” were obviously rather useless for the scale of fighting that we do up here, but I hope lower tiers at least received some benefit from it. IMO what Anet needs is a good ol’ hardware transfusion, A.K.A. More servers/better servers. Until then, the Lag monster will always be the strongest enemy in T1 WvW.
I don’t recall BG or SOR having outmanned buff on a minimum of 3 maps 24 hours a day every day for weeks on end, including weekends, ever. Not in the time I have faced them. I also recall it being a struggle to find the resources to have 1 player escorting a yak, let alone 15. Sure they had less numbers turn out and experienced outmanned buff more often then we did, but not to the extent we are facing on a daily basis. Can’t wait for reset and fingers crossed we drop down and play other less populated servers, because T1 is just ridiculous for JQ right now.
What server are you on? First thing I would say is forget about being helpful to other players and learn some “farm paths” where you can do events. I have a few loops I do. Once you learn these paths, then have a think about how you can contribute to your teammates a bit more. In general, it can be more efficient levelling a thief in a small havoc group (IE 5 player party), however, if your in a party of inexperienced players I would say they will actually slow your levelling down.
My strategy for stat increases on my thief atm is to level guard killer. This allows a very slight increase in killing guards which makes flipping sentries and camps slightly quicker. Once I get up to the one that takes like (75 levels?) I might switch to mercenaries bane.
EDIT: Also I find the borderlands better than EB. Borderlands has a bit more open space. The quality (skill) of player in the borderlands tends to be higher than EB though.
If you say so. I personally think its pretty skritthouse. Being outmanned on 3 maps almost 24 hours a day is fine for a while, then it just gets old. Trying to run havoc and every yak I come across has anywhere between 5-15 SOR players standing right near the yak, I try to flip a camp but I have to kill 10 mesmers first and then there guild mates who come running in for backup after Ive killed a couple of them. Sure, there are some fun fights, nothing like killing six players whilst running solo, but at the end of the day I think its pretty skritt.
How are you forced to play PVE? I never do PVE now and i have over 2million karma just from WvW, and Dungeons NPCs dont sell trinkets.
Not sure why you mentioned dungeons, because they are PvE as well.
Then read my posts above because you missed the point, whoooooosh.
Read. Still not seeing why you would be bringing up Dungeons as a separate entity, as opposed to open world. Because both are PvE and the OP is talking about only wanting to WvW and not PvE, which includes both Dungeons and Open world.
I’ve already resigned to the fact that I will never have a precursor drop. I’ve played around 3000 hours in this game and I have one legendary of which the precursor was purchased off the trading post. I’m pretty sure I have a better chance at winning the lottery.
Why hasn’t it been reduced already? Not good enough that it wasn’t fixed in this patch or even the previous one.
I’m not a developer, maybe ask them. Sounded like they identified it as an issue after a lot of people complained about siege so they payed more attention to it. But that is only conjecture.
I play between 60 and 80 hours a week purely in WvW at the moment and Im still yet to be killed by an AC or even killed partly by damage from AC. I must be OP, nerf me please.
Nah you’re just on an arrowcart 60-80hrs a week so you don’t die =p That or you have the situational awareness of helen keller and didn’t notice the rain from above.
I just look at the red circles yo. I pride myself on this apparently difficult artform. Also I don’t like to man AC unless I really have to as it doesn’t really fit my playstyle and I prefer to be fighting. Depending on my class I will stand underneath AC fire for a ram. Currently the ram goes down well before I need to back off. Rams, do you even lift?
Troll less, you can’t move faster than the mouthbreathers click. I hope noone dies soley to an arrowcart but to say they don’t drastically change fighting is a lie. If you weren’t in T1 I’d give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you haven’t seen 15 arrowcarts raining from the sky.
Personally i’d rather they empower player aoes, not siege that begs for fov exploits.
Mouthbreathers… love that term. Yeah they changed the way I play. I don’t just ignore them now!
I play between 60 and 80 hours a week purely in WvW at the moment and Im still yet to be killed by an AC or even killed partly by damage from AC. I must be OP, nerf me please.
Nah you’re just on an arrowcart 60-80hrs a week so you don’t die =p That or you have the situational awareness of helen keller and didn’t notice the rain from above.
I just look at the red circles yo. I pride myself on this apparently difficult artform. Also I don’t like to man AC unless I really have to as it doesn’t really fit my playstyle and I prefer to be fighting. Depending on my class I will stand underneath AC fire for a ram. Currently the ram goes down well before I need to back off. Rams, do you even lift?
I play between 60 and 80 hours a week purely in WvW at the moment and Im still yet to be killed by an AC or even killed partly by damage from AC. I must be OP, nerf me please.
I think its a great time for PvE players to go to SOR and enjoy the awesome buffs their WvW crew are providing them. Get in now PvE guys, before SOR hits full status.
SOR, its great you got a chance to win now. But don’t gloat too much. Your not making more friends by being bad winners. Just enjoy your wins. Its only a matter of time before the next bandwagon movements make a difference. Its been happening in WvW since day 1. It will continue to happen no matter how much you tell yourselfs otherwise. And at the end of the day do you want you server and/or your guilds to be remembered as the guys that took winning with some graciousness or the ones that were terrible big mouths when they finally got their win?
For the first question you asked, my personal answer is whenever I am putting points on the board for my server. There are a few exceptions to this such as contesting a waypoint or pulling a group away from a important fight (IE camping garrison entrance for players rallying to defend hills and pulling alot of aggro from it). I mostly solo roam these days if you haven’t figured that out. Also, to point out, often I find killing a player to be a waste of my time so I often avoid the situation when I have other tasks in mind.
I really feel for the OP. Being a ranger, he’s got roughly zero tools to counter that other than blind luck. I mean the thieves will tell him he DOES have counters such as wolf fear, but again it’s pretty much blind luck. Certain classes have better counters to stealth than others. Rangers are definitely on the bottom of that list.
Stealth classes have always been a challenge to fight against in MMO PvP. I must admit GW2’s version is my least favorite out of them all.
I find rangers quite good against thiefs tbh. Especially when they can res so fast. Underwater I find rangers are actually impossible to kill, whilst on land a ranger is a 50/50 in an evenly skilled fight. A couple of things that are really helpful…
Using Hunters call right before a thief stealths and the birds will flock in on the thief, deal damage and give away their position for a reasonable period of time. This can do around 5k damage and if they were relying on that stealth to survive they are as good as screwed. Also if the ranger does get downed, they have access to thunderclap that denies a finish from stealth and can get their pet to attack until Lick Wounds is available. Greatsword provides alot of good utilities including a block, cripple, evade, daze, swoop (gap closer) and stun. Throw in a GS with entangle and/or Hunters call and the thief is in trouble. If you run SB, try to bait out an early dagger storm and immediately switch to GS so that his ranged damage negation is negated for the rest of the fight :p And a trap is always good.
My understand was you need 20 points in trickery to get permastealth. I cannot recall, but Im fairly certain you need points in trickery. If so, what are the screenshots for>?
Nope. With 15 in trickery you get a higher initiative pool, but there’s nothing there to refill initiative faster, which is the real key.
The screenshots are just to show a build capable of “permanent” stealth that has decent survivability and high damage. Check the traits/utilites and how they interact if you’re interested how it works, substitute shortbow for the s/d combo. There have been several comments about how thieves need to be glassy to do damage, or do weak damage when built for survival and stealth. Of course, a rifle burst will hurt, but will be unlikely to insta-down how it would with a berzerker geared build. With that buffer time to react and so many sources of escape/evasion/blind/etc it is extremely hard to score a kill unless you hugely outnumber them or get really lucky or vastly outskill them.
It’s not impossible to kill a decent thief, if they decide to engage you in combat, and I’m not saying it should be made easier even. What I am saying is they should not be able to stay inside enemy fortifications indefinitely.
So are you saying that that trait build can provide permanant stealth?
In no where did I mention that rifle warriors are meant to 1v1 thief , the OP was complaining about not being able to burst thief down with an entire group of 10-15.
Rifle warrior has THE highest ranged class in the game, and can blow up a thief up in the time he is revealed.
Back at ya there, with the learning to read deal. I wasn’t talking about 1v1, and the thief in that video was NEVER revealed. Apparently you also missed the part where I said I play both warrior and thief, I know what they are capable of. If you have 10-15 people to back you up, the thief can simply NEVER be revealed. If you engage in a small group, prepare to be bursted down, or surprised when your volley doesn’t hit nearly 10k, or he simply evades then entire thing. This build isn’t glass, which you would have seen, had you actually read my post.
Warrior may be classy, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything. If, however, you meant highest ranged damage, I’ve a static-discharge grenade engineer build you may like to try.
Edit: added pics
My understand was you need 20 points in trickery to get permastealth. I cannot recall, but Im fairly certain you need points in trickery. If so, what are the screenshots for>?
I think the casual is the target they need the most. Casuals will only bother playing when they are winning and well ahead. But the issue is its not rewarding. They are interested in their carrots. WvW is harder than PvE. They would rather chase the carrot in PvE which gives better rewards than the harder to catch carrot in WvW that gives less rewards. They would rather be farming CoF runs every 5 minutes earning 5-10 gold per hour than playing WvW earning 1 silver for an event that required them to ouplay and kill players who are probably better than them.
In no where did I mention that rifle warriors are meant to 1v1 thief , the OP was complaining about not being able to burst thief down with an entire group of 10-15.
Rifle warrior has THE highest ranged class in the game, and can blow up a thief up in the time he is revealed.
L2Watch Video.
As Oozo pointed out, the thieves were never visible, so there was no chance to use Volley or Killshot.
He was never visible in the video, but his position was. Most forms of CC would have made him visible for a long time. The build he is using, he probably has around 15k health and not alot of toughness. Given some CC and a few hits he would go down. His permastealth build is reliant on permastealth for survivability. Take away his ability to use stealth and hes dead. Essentially, the players that were there had no clue what they were doing.
Well WvW is PvP (I hope), and pvp is in fact killing other players.
So indeed I think killing players should be rewarded more than any other thing.
I hope you are meaning the way in which you kill those players.
We should absolutely try to penalize somehow the zergy gameplay while incentive the medium and small scale pvp.
Am I wrong with this assumption?
WvW is about more than just PvP. Winning in WvW requires people building things, repairing walls, scouting, escorting dolyaks, etc. We want to continue to improve the rewards for doing those things as they facilitate the rest of your server capturing locations and killing foes. If you are helping to win the match, we want you to see rewards for that.
Any thoughts/words on the prospect of introducing WXP boosters and/or crafting recipes like the current ones with Karma (but WXP instead)?
The problem we have as BG is that a lot of our players are fair weather fighters, sad but true -_-
Its sad and true and I really hope Anet does something about it because its something that is to do with the way the game is designed at the moment. That said, I love having the outmanned buff with not alot of people on the map. I am actually personally liking the current situation with JQ not being able to field large numbers all day long and being an Oceanic I can usually get outmanned buff on all 3 borderland maps. The best times I have had in this game aren’t running with huge mega zergs or taking down a well defended keep, but the small victories I have had like the one I had today where I managed to pull of a 1v6 and killed all 6 players or the 1v2 to take SORs titan right on the tick.
All your PPT are belonging to us (JQ garrison too).
Grats on fighting doors.
It’s a shame really, BG/JQ are NA servers with NA guilds but yet they force us to PvDoor. Sounds like a server with a lot of heart!
No one forced you to pvdoor.
I find it hilarious that people willingly choose to fight doors/guards and then turn around and complain about fighting doors. Or how 120man EU guilds move to NA brackets that have very little dedicated EU playerbase then complain about not getting good fights.
I would try to defend them doors, but SOR are so serious about winning that they will use eyeinfinity or zoomhacks under the pretense of it being eyeinfinity to wipe siege and the players manning them when those players cannot be seen normally. I guess Ill have to settle for playing legitimately.
We are forced to PVDoor cuz there is no-one to fight. Also, I’m sure a few people on every server might use eyefinity or zoomhacks, but that is not what makes you tick at 400PPT throughout the day. I just think it is so funny everytime someone calls hacks in any game. The only ones that seem to be truly legitimate are FPS games. Other games, it might be 1 in like 1000 people that use some small hack.
No point fighting/defending if your going to use eyefinity or zoom hacks everytime you attack something is there? I mean even with greater numbers you still need to take this unfair advantage over other players. Im pretty sure SOR would be winning regardless, so Im unsure why you have to bring up winning when this isn’t the issue… the issue is that people are using eyefinity to gain a very big advantage over both BG and JQ. As players with integrity there is nothing we can do about it but play the game and do what we can. If your that eager to have an unfair fight, than best of luck to you and those guilds that are doing it.
Thing is, eyefinity is not an exploit, it just enables people with larger screens to see more. It isn’t that much more, just enough for those with large screens to not have a asura fatter than they are tall.
From what I am seeing from Sanctum of Rall players, it is either a huge amount more or they are using a different external program, they can literally fire over any wall and hit the other side of the wall. Are you an eyefinity user? As I don’t currently use the program I can only go by what I am seeing and it seems like a massive advantage, but without using it I cannot be sure that they are actually using this and not something else. And to point out here, yes this is only coming from SOR. I do not see Blackgate or Jade Quarry players using this.
I’ll call your bluff.
Get a hold of me in game and I’ll give you the info to my 2nd account. Follow me in WvW for 15 minutes and I will show you no less then a dozen players from JQ/BG with fishy arrow carts.
Not that this is the point of the thread, but Id like to see this. In 15 minutes? I have an appointment in 15 minutes, will you be on after that. Ill add you, I have my doubts you can show me any. PM me your alternate in here and Ill add you and whisper you when I get back from my appointment.
Petee you gringo, where are you? No PM, not online. Did I call your bluff?
Thing is, eyefinity is not an exploit, it just enables people with larger screens to see more. It isn’t that much more, just enough for those with large screens to not have a asura fatter than they are tall.
From what I am seeing from Sanctum of Rall players, it is either a huge amount more or they are using a different external program, they can literally fire over any wall and hit the other side of the wall. Are you an eyefinity user? As I don’t currently use the program I can only go by what I am seeing and it seems like a massive advantage, but without using it I cannot be sure that they are actually using this and not something else. And to point out here, yes this is only coming from SOR. I do not see Blackgate or Jade Quarry players using this.
I’ll call your bluff.
Get a hold of me in game and I’ll give you the info to my 2nd account. Follow me in WvW for 15 minutes and I will show you no less then a dozen players from JQ/BG with fishy arrow carts.
Not that this is the point of the thread, but Id like to see this. In 15 minutes? I have an appointment in 15 minutes, will you be on after that. Ill add you, I have my doubts you can show me any. PM me your alternate in here and Ill add you and whisper you when I get back from my appointment.
There have been copious screenshots in these forums including comparisons between a regular view and eyefinity and its quite clear from them that eyefinity gives vastly larger field of view. And eyefinity is a program that is external to gw2 so it is an external program and it gives an advantage over regular users who are not using this. As I don’t know how much of an advantage it is and can only base of what I am seeing and a few videos and screenshots I cannot be sure how much as perhaps I am comparing some things I am seeing which may or may not be FOV hacks. So the question for Anet is, is this an exploit. I mean, people have been banned in the past for utilizing things that Anet implemented, because it was not intended to be used the way it was. The same goes with eyefinity. I have my doubts that Anet are intending to give players who use it a massive advantage over everyone else. So my question is, is it Anets intention to give eyefinity users a massive advantage over everyone else?
