Guild Wars 2

nicknamenick.2437:

Your tooltip doesnt say 750-800. What your total damage is depents on your gear etc. Look at the tooltip damage or base damage and compare it with other skills

And with the rights traits you see rifle does more damage..

I play warrior since headstart. Played both Rifle/x and LB/x builds in WvW for ages. LB#1 does more damage than Rifle #1.

Player.8373:

These thiefs do mass damage and you can t do anything about it. and if you get them low , they will imidiatly get in stealth regain half of their health and you can t do anything about it.

It is called Hide in Shadows, not Shadows Rejuvenation. Its the #6 heal. Its on a 30s cooldown. It got a 1s casttime and a highly telegraphed animation. Feel free to interrupt it like almost every other heal #6 skill.

Shadows Rejuvenation is 300 hps, so in order to regenerate half health a thief must stay ~25s in stealth. O_o

So please get your facts right, then come back.

nicknamenick.2437:

On warrior longbow its around (2x)500 on tooltip.. Thats a total of 500! Not 2x 500.

Tooltips dont kill anyone. Instead you should just go out in the wild and try it by yourself?

My warrior (knights armors, zerker trinkets/weapons) crits for 2 x 700-850 with LB#1 depending on the opponents defense. That’s a total of 1600+ damage per auto attack. Its way higher than Rifle #1.

LB #1 alread got many benefits:

- double adrenaline gain
- double proc chance
- great against aegis
- great when blinded
- crits for 2x 850+ with my Knights/Zerker warrior which is much higher than other range aa (e.g. rifle #1)

IMO making LB#1 hit faster would be to much. Rifle #1 instead needs some love.

Rule of Thumb:

The higher the rank of your opponent the more likely he’s a noob in 1vs1. You only have to fear low ranks except those running without buff food.

I remember 3 bigger updates to WvW:

1. Culling Fix – Actually a bugfix update which made WvW even playable.
2. Ruins – New content but flawed mechanics + no personal rewards. To me as a solo roamer, it was a big epic fail. Nobody really cares about the ruins and you barely find anyone in those areas.
3. Season 1 – No real contents, just carrots on sticks for those who bother about achievement points.

During the same time:
1. A gazillion content updates for PVE
2. New maps for sPVP.

tl;dr The answer is NO, Anet doesnt care at all about WvW.

The bug is really annoying. Worst case is your HP drop from 100% to 0% while running (not jumping) downstairs. This happened to me while running down the stairs at the southern ruins (north).

IMO falling damage should be completely revamped for WvW because it can be abused to bypass downstate in so many ways. Just think about the EOTM map design: Heavy knockback classes like warriors will be king of the hill because the map is full of choke points and inclines.

Even on the current maps its so dump to jump off a tiny incline and die instantly because right before you jump your health drops from 50-30%. IMO you should just die from falling damage when you jump from really high (e.g. the cliff from hills). If you jump from a not so high incline and your health drops to 0% you should be put to downed state.

Ghanto.9784:

It does gets a bit exasperating sometimes hearing people talk about “zerging” as if it’s a dirty word, lol – not that I think that’s what the OP was doing. The whole point of WvW, to my mind, is having BIG battles. If you want to do five on five fighting, go do pvp.

This is not about zerging vs. small groups. Its more about positioning. Currently a zerg runs around in one huge blob, because the game favors this playstyle due to the aoe cap. The more people stand in one place the less likely it is to get hit by an enemy.

A “crowded penalty” would just penalize blobbing, not zerging in general. You have to position your zerg correctly by spreading out in combat instead of blobbing to abuse the aoe cap to your favor.

In games like DAOC there was no AOE cap so blobbing like in GW2 was deadly. It was a common newbie mistake to stand all in one place because a single group could rush in and wipe your zerg in a short time.

Zergs also existed in DAOC although blobbing was dangerous. Instead you had to spread out at the start of battle. Positioning was actually an integral part of the game whereas in GW2 you just stick to your commander while spamming #1.

Cripple is a hard counter to (warrior) mobility skills.

How would you beat a decent mesmer when 2 would be the case?

14k+ Backstabs in WvW might be possible under laboratory conditions. But its definitely not the average case. The most common D/D build for WvW is either 10/30/30 or 0/30/30/10. With those builds backstabs hit fully stuffed 80s for an average damage of 4k-7k depending on your opponents defense. Thats with 105%+ crit damage and 25 bloodlust stacks.

Sanduskel.1850:

permastealth easy mode

Whats that? Please explain.

I solo roam with various professions in WvW since this game came out 500+ days ago. From my perspective most people in WvW are generally very very bad in 1vs1. People who die easily to thieves won’t last that much longer against other roaming professions.

Against a thief the average people tend to make so many mistakes. I could facepalm every day. Its more than obvious they dont really have a clew about how the thief class actually work.

- I see people hitting in a shadow refuge long after the ring is gone.
- I see people jumping behind you when ss away so you can easily jump back and finish his mate off.
- I see people not spamming #1 while you use stealth during combat.
- I see people waste their cooldowns when they are blinded.
- I see people stop attacking when I use blinding powder while stunned.

The day Anet listens to all those forum warriors will be the day where skillfull gaming will end. At that point I will have to leave.

Let me get this right: The couch was gone because he uninstalled GW2 and switched to ESO? =)

Evasive Powder Keg is indeed comparable to thieves Last Refuge. No minor trait should have negative effects. Hopefully Anet will rework all those broken minor traits very soon.

Breaking stealth through dodging is so frustrating to me. Sure you know it happens so you can try to avoid dodging at all while stealthed. But there are situations in PVP where you just have to dodge, e.g. to prevent CC right after using Elixir S toolbelt.

Hi,

Evasive Powder Keg is the explosives minor trait which creates a bomb on dodge. This is fine in general but extremely annoying while using stealth skills like toolbet Elixir S. The bomb on dodge will immidiately reveal you if enemies are around (breaks stealth). Even if there are no enemies around the bomb is visible to other enemies so they get a clue about your position.

Possible fixes:

1. Bombs from Evasive Powder Keg doesnt break stealth.

or

2. Evasive Powder Keg doesnt trigger during stealth.

I stopped playing my engi a few weeks ago because this issue bothers me so much. A fix is highly appreciated!

teg

There’s way more +Condition Duration than -Condition Duration, e.g. you get +30% Condition Duration as a trait stat alone. Food counters food, runes counter runes, but traits clearly favor condition builds.

E.g. a warrior get +50% bleed duration but I dont know a single profession with a -50% bleed duration trait.

Get rid of PPT at all. Focus on PVP part instead of PVE part of WvW. Restrict the use of siege in open field battles. Remove stupid zerg blobbing. Just play for the sake of fun.

/solved

The OP is entirely right in what he’s saying. In order to get the most WXP you have to PvD and flip camps. This shows perfectly how screwed the whole WXP system is.

WvW is a mixed PVP/PVE zone but Anet seems to only favor the PVE part. Player kills should be worth much more WXP but it should be devided to all attackers instead of just giving a low flat amount of WXP to all taggers.

I dont think stealth in this game is overpowered. I play both thief and other professions without stealth. As a non-thief I have defeated many thieves in WvW while sometimes I get defeated. And its the same while playing my thief in WvW. So at the end it looks quite balanced to me.

The main problem is that its quite annoying to play against thieves in GW2. Although you have good chances to win / stay alive against most thieves it’s freaking annoying due to the high amount of in combat stealth. The same is true to PU mesmers imo.

But I wouldnt say that other games stealth mechanics are much better. Unlimited out of combat stealth is also extremely annoying because you never see them coming. At least in GW2 you see thieves coming (most of the time).

Grumpdogg.6910:

Unfortunately the evidence mounts. Arenanet stated that the account-bound WXP change would be tested as part of the Edge of the Mists map testing.

The Edge of the Mists testing has been “concluded”. These WXP changes were not tested…

Anet doesnt care about WvW. Thats no news. In 500+ days of GW2 there were 2 (in words TWO) “real” WvW updates: (i) WXP and (ii) ruins.

WXP is something most other RVR based games have from the beginning. It doesnt change a thing besides making siege even stronger.

Ruins are a complete joke. They look great but the mechanics are aweful. There’s no personal reward (WXP) in capping ruins + you cannot flip bloodlust buffs alone. You have to coordinate all roamers in the ruins which barely ever happens on my server. So long story short ruins are empty most of the times. The best part of the ruins are the two guards for an extra 200 WXP. O_o

EOTM again will not change a thing about WvW contents. Its another map which is not connected to the rest of WvW.

My thief got hit by churning earth for 15.2k damage lately. Just saying…

Forzani.2584:

That is nothing like GW2 restealthing….not even remotely similar. Kind of silly to compare it.

It was you who brought this up but never mind. =)

Forzani.2584:

Daoc did have a ‘Vanish’ skill that was very expensive. Higher ranks were usually the only ones to purchase it.

You couldn’t stealth and restealth multiple times in a fight.
Your movement while stealthed was snail paced. Which kinda makes sense.
A hard counter is when someone can actually see you while stealthed. GW2 doesn’t have that.

IMO Stealth in DAOC was far more horrible because you could stealth endlessly while out of combat. Many places in RVR were full of stealthers just sitting stealthed waiting for a victim. As soon as you crossed the area as a non-stealther a gazillion stealthers poped out from nowhere attacking you (and themselves afterwards).

Btw Vanish was available for 30 realm points, so you could achieve it with RR4 (pre new frontiers). That was a pretty low rank.

I dont see WvW dying on my server. But it gets veeery old. Same old content since 500+ days. Ruins update was a complete fail (deserted most of the time). I’m a 100% WvW player since headstart but my playtime gets lower and lower. I will probably take a brake until EOTM releases or ESO arrives, whatever comes first.

I don’t care about seasons. Achievements are carrots on sticks. This game needs new real WvW content. And I dont mean a new bunch of WXP abilities. But new maps…

ESO ships at 14/4/4. So to me its very obvious when the next WvW patch will go live. Dont expect anything until end of march.

Yaro.3251:

Because illusions are no more than killable conditions.

Now I’ve read everything.

Geiir.7603:

As I said, I don’t complain about it. I just put it out there for people to see that backstab is far from the hardest hitting ability in the game.

My thief got hit for 15k damage from churning earth during a zerg fight lately. I never saw a thief backstab me for more than 7k. Nuff said.

Arlette.9684:

I mean, backstab is next to spammable. All the warrior abilities you listed require adrenaline hence not exactly spammable.

Backstab requires stealth. Stealth requires a lot of initiative and is counterable. CnD costs 50% ini. If you dodge CnD the thief lost 50% ini and cannot backstab. So nop, Backstab is far from spamable.

Warrior burst abilities on the other hand are indeed spamable. Adrenaline gain is super easy compared to what it was before. You gain adrenaline when you hit someone. You gain adrenaline when you get hit by someone. You gain adrenaline via Berserker Stance or Signet of Fury. You are able to gain adrenaline through shouts… My GS/LB warrior gains 100% adrenaline so fast, its unbelievable. Often the LB burst is still on cooldown when adrenaline reaches 100%. lol

Artaz.3819:

1. You can trait Steal to be 1500 range with Long Reach – I run this with my thief when glass cannon backstab because you need it (you don’t want someone interrupting the key sequence combo – see below) so the whole ‘see the Thief coming’ is a not a true counter.

Thief in the screenshot got Mug so its much likely he runs the cookie cutter 10/30/30 build, so no Long Reach otherwise he would either miss Hidden Killer or Shadow Rejuv which I would consider a really bad build for WvW.

2. You can activate (push the button for) Cloak and Dagger and before the actual swing connects, then quickly activate your F1 for Steal in the middle of the activation. Because of this there is virtually no way for you to counter insta-Steal and Stealth (along with things like Bountiful Theft or better Thrill of the Crime to make the next hit far more devastating – but I prefer Hidden Killer so you can run a good full power/Valkyrie/Berserker set and still land auto-crit backstab for even harder damage)

Its not that hard to dodge that combo if you see it coming. Thief first presses CnD, then Steal. As soon as you see CnD (flipping dagger animation) you have to press dodge. I know for sure its possible because I see skilled roamers every do who manage to dodge my initial combo. I also pull it off by myself. Guess what? Even as a thief you have to deal with other thieves yourself.

3. The next step is Backstab and you only have to be in the behind 180-degree arc behind the target which is easy to do 95% of the time (lag works both ways).

Even if you eat the whole initial combo (steal -> cnd -> backstab) all you have to do is pull your out of jail card (elixir s, endure pain, block, invis, blink away, then heal up).

Most people in WvW tend to panic as soon as they get big damage in a short time. You have to practice which exact buttons to press in those situations.

Another mistake is that most people just try to run away from thieves instead of putting damage pressure on the thief. Thats in epic fail.

Most people in WvW just stick to the zerg. They are completely clueless in 1vs1 situations. Thieves on the other side are the supposed roamer class.

Switch Axe 11111111111, switch GS 32111111, switch Axe 11111111, pop stability, 11111111

Awesome footage!

Ragnar.4257:

You don’t even need to watch their boons closely, you just have to watch your own health bar.

That might be true for ele skills but its false for certain engi skills (e.g. Flamethrower 1, Grenade Barrage).

Sjaakie.1470:

Anyone with the developers ever realized that it is an unfair fight if you can not see them because of the loadingtimefailure and the high output on damage?

Instead of running to the forums crying for nerfs, you should better analyze what has happened to you.

Let me help you out a bit:

Steal → CnD → Backstab

That means the thief was visible to you and at < 900 range away from you. Steal teleports him right to you. CnD hits you + stealth. Backstab from the back deals great damage.

Next time when a thief runs to you, you should be prepared for this combo. All you have to do is dodge the CnD.

Don’t expect your holy glory ascended stuff alone save you from death.

This game favors huge zergballs in each and every aspect. Anet doesn’t care. Don’t expect to have a large impact on the outcome of a zerg vs zerg as an individual (unless you command). Retaliation is just one factor.

That’s why I do solo roaming 95% of the time in WvW.

@mango – I have to fully agree.

Mesmer is the only profession who is capable of bypassing most core mechanics of this game (at least partly). Stealth is just one example of many:

Stealth → Mesmer deals damage from stealth without being revealed
Projectiles → Mesmer can hide behind clones so the clones eat all projectiles.
Bouncing Projectiles → Bouncing projectiles are less likely to hit the mesmer due to illusions.
AOE cap → Illusions count into cleave (3 targets) and AOE caps (5 targets), thus make it less likely AOE hits the mesmer or other players around.
Targeting → Illusions (other than pets) are included into the ‘Target Next enemy’ cycle (TAB), thus make it much harder to target the actual mesmer
Blind → You blind the mesmer, but eat damage from illusions. You blind illusions but get damage from the mesmer.
Weakness → Same as blind.
Aegis → Aegis gets immidately canceled by illusions.
Interrupt → Interrupting the mesmer doesnt have any impact on illusions and vice versa.
Retaliation → Retaliation damage spreads all across mesmer and illusions, thus barely useful.

bOgz.7263:

teg.1340:

Thieves deserve to have the best stealth ingame because the whole class is centered around stealth while mesmers are centered around illusions.

But no profession should deal damage from stealth without being revealed.

I assume you’re referring to illusions doing damage and not revealing the stealthed mesmer?

stealthed rangers doesnt get revealed while pet is eating u
stealthed thief doesnt get revealed if u trigger his trap

No. I referred to all professions. Nobody should deal damage from stealth without being revealed. Just read my posts carefully. Its all there.

Thieves deserve to have the best stealth ingame because the whole class is centered around stealth while mesmers are centered around illusions.

But no profession should deal damage from stealth without being revealed.

Nobody should deal damage from stealth without being revealed. This is heavily used by mesmers but should also be the case for thieves, engineers and rangers.

Stealth should also affect illusions, pets and turrets, so if a mesmers uses stealth all illusions also stealth + stop attacking. Problem solved.

Solo roamer since headstart, 4 toons, WvW only:

/age 791 hours in 501 days
/deaths 675
/kills 11.493

When Mesmer uses stealth all illusions should also stealth and stop attacking. Every damage done from stealth (either mesmer or illusions) should trigger revealed.

Same changes should apply to Thief + Thiefs Guild and Engineers + Turrets.

If you make a mistake, you can either improve your gameplay or go to the forums and cry for nerfs. I play different kind of toons in WvW regularly – mostly doing solo roaming (warrior, thief, ele and engi). I’ve learned alot by playing different chars and constantly adopting new strategies and playstyles.

I could facepalm every time a thief finishes a downed player while another player is running around hitting thin air.

Manuhell.2759:

teg.1340:

johnnymiller.5968:

We all knew the thief was there but had no answer – one or two hits & you were down then the thief vanished before anyone could try & counter.

Thats the most common mistake. Thieves are not gone when they vanish. You can counter him even if he is stealthed. Just think about what he will likely be doing next. I won’t give you more concrete advices. Go figure it out by yourself. Its not that hard.

In the end, it boils down to “do something and hope it works”.
You can’t properly counter something you can’t see, despite all the thieves saying so – because you don’t necessarily think as the player using the thief do.
Basically, you are not him, and that’s enough to make that “think about what he will likely be doing next” useless without any visual cue .
That’s also why we don’t have instant healing skills and skills with relevant effects are usually quite telegraphed – you are supposed to see them, to counter them.
Trying blind guesses isn’t about competition: it is mere luck.

I referred to those outmanned scenarios where 1 thief kills multiple enemies. In those scenarios with the proper strategy no thief would never ever kill a single player if they know what they are doing. It has nothing to do with hope or luck. It’s a guarantied “not loose”. The single reason DD thieves sometimes win outmanned fights is that enemies are clueless – trying to fight all by their own.

johnnymiller.5968:

We all knew the thief was there but had no answer – one or two hits & you were down then the thief vanished before anyone could try & counter.

Thats the most common mistake. Thieves are not gone when they vanish. You can counter him even if he is stealthed. Just think about what he will likely be doing next. I won’t give you more concrete advices. Go figure it out by yourself. Its not that hard.

Just wondering: How many days before Elder Scrolls Online does EotM go live? It’s the first new WvW content besides the ruins fiasco.

I thought the same about stealth as you until I played a thief in WvW for myself. Stealth is powerful but not that OP as you might think. Every time a thief wins an outmanned fight it’s because his opponents doesnt play together. Thieves can so easily outplayed but you must not play all for your own. It’s not that hard as you might think.

In a 1vs1 situation its just a matter of timing: Dodge/ Block initial combo, then count to 4.

Thieves a great in killing the clueless. But its extremely hard to kill the good ones. Interestingly even after one year most players I fight in WvW are clueless.

The answer is simple: just ignore the boring stuff and do whatever is fun to you. Computer games are made to have fun. Thats why they are called: games

I see so many scouts in towers and players pushing doliaks while roaming. Most of them are free bags in the wild. It’s so sad. Your skill will never increase as long as you shoot your arrrow card from behind a wall.

Hopefully Anet once introduce climb wall skills so roamers can relieve those sad souls.

Map looks great but there are way to much areas where you can fall off the map during combat.

Knockback into death sounds like no fun to me. Warriors just have to use Rampage for 20s of stability and a knockback on 6s cd. Add Kick, Stomp, Hammer and Balanced Stance for another 3 knockbacks + stability.

Hammer trains will be converted to knockback trains.

I would like to see some trait like this:

Evasive Boons (5s cooldown)

Gain a boon on every dodge. Dodging also triggers Revealed for 3s.

Dodge forward: Swiftness (8s)
Dodge backward: Protection (4s)
Dodge left: Vigor (5s)
Dodge right: Regeneration (8s)

You get constantly crippled because its hard to avoid killing clones by accident. Most damage skills either cleave or have an aoe dmg effect. Projectiles hit clones if they stand between the target. Bouncing skills easily kill clones. Even many mobility skills (leaps etc) hit clones between the target.

All those skills kill clones accidentally, thus cripple you. Since Crippling Dissipation doesnt have a cooldown, you stack some heavy cripple if you kill 1-3 clones at once.

I have to admit that Moa isnt widely used, but when you get moa’d its a pain in the kitten . Casttime is long, yes. Cast animation is not that easy to see on asuras. But even if you save a dodge/block/evade just in case you get moa’d: you cannot avoid what you cannot see. There’s no counter against moa from out of stealth.

How do you put distance between your opponent when you get constantly crippled from illusions? How do you survive 10s of moa against a condition mesmer? If you get moa’d at 60% hp with plenty conditions on you, what do you do?

How do you catch a mesmer at melee range while illusions constantly cripple you? How do you put enough pressure on the mesmer while negating heavy damage from phantasms? How do you handle high stealth uptime while illusions put damage on you?

If you actually manage to catch the mesmer at melee range he has plenty of tools: knockback, block, blink, stealth or just evade like crazy with the 5 point minor perma vigor trait. Did you mention that Anet has nerfed perma vigor for plenty of professions recently? So please dont tell me that mesmers were nerfed many times, because so does other professions. Mesmer was buffed actually with the latest patch while others got nerfed hard.

The main problem for me is to put enough damage pressure on the mesmer to force him into defensive mode. Maybe its just my personal problem. Thats the reason of this thread. I want to hear the oppinions of other non-mesmers.