Guild Wars 2

Vast majority of the complaints, are basically on the wvw domain, as such I will only focus on that (as well as where my experience comes from), in pve, I believe it does take quite a bit of effort, but it’s very much playable in pve, I’m fairly inexperienced in spvp, so my comments do no apply to that.

Toughness
Toughness needs to scale better, having toughness doesn’t seem to mitigate much of the damage from burst builds

Culling
Culling will always be an issue, I don’t think many understand that it’s not exactly that easy to optimize and better culling than massive lag fests. However if toughness scales better, BS thieves won’t be an issue (or unfair) to non-gc builds, so culling really won’t matter here for BS thieves, but still gives an advantage to p/d thieves (refer to stealth mechanic for a possible solution).

Stealth mechanic
Because of that I don’t believe channeled abilities should not lose focus on stealth (status quo), and a a form of diminishing returns to stealth (I would suggest a stackable debuff that lasts 4 secs (maybe even 5 secs) that reduces stealth by 0.5 secs for each stack).

If a thief then uses stealth approximately every 3 secs, the thief would lose the ability to stealth effectively after 6-8 times, with each application of stealth giving less and less stealth duration (to avoid the debuff, they would need to stay visible longer after each application of stealth and of course 0.5 secs is just a rough estimation of effectiveness and balance which can be tweaked appropriately, however I would strongly be against a longer debuff diminishing returns timer as playability in PVE would suffer drastically on certain abilties)

Please note this is an entirely new debuff that can work with the existing revealed debuff that prevents stealth.

Damage
With some of the changes above (please note, I understand toughness scaling may be a huge proposition, but a slight increase in its effectiveness in my limited knowledge may not be game-breaking), I don’t believe thief damage (or multiple ability spike damage) needs to be nerfed as it will only be as effective on other GCs (it’s also one of the reasons why thieves target other thieves frequently, and no, I don’t think other GCs deserve better survivability against another GC).

The spike damage will be wholly reduced on those that have a tougher build, and negligible for those who opt to go for a GC build (the scaling may be universal so existing toughness on GC builds will also benefit slightly).

Final Comments
Please note, I’m mostly in wvw, and my comments come from my experience in that part of play. I play both a thief and a ranger in wvw and while recently I’ve been seeing a lot more folks starting to effectively learn how to counter bs thieves, I still do honestly believe even an unprepared player should atleast have a couple of seconds (extra seconds outside the initial burst) if they at the least built for toughness to make a decision or reaction time.

At this point, I’ve caught unprepared players and finished them in a matter of seconds before they were clue-ed in, and I do sincerely believe, that is not fair and satisfying for both sides.

It’s pretty much muscle memory for me. I caught myself pressing f one time when someone else was finishing an opponent I never even touched :P

Though, there are those awkward situations where I accidentally carry a warriors banner around and wonder why my skills look different.

Plok.6145:

I fight for the love of the fight, if you need trinkets or rewards to do wvw, go play WoW.

He wasn’t speaking about himself requiring trinkets. He was talking about dwindling numbers in WvW due to it, the lack of updates, progressions and why the major focus in pve while WvW is being neglected.

No idea, none at all, how you could even remotely think only about trinkets and wow.

Llaama.1735:

If we need more players in wuvwuv I have a very simple proposal that will require about 30 seconds of coding for our friends at Arena.Net:

• Loot bags from players killed in WvW have a 33% chance to include a Black Lion Chest key

<3

Best idea, ever. While everyone else had really good suggestions, the above, would really be sweet. Doesn’t even have to be 33%, even 10% and people will come running. As every 80 who only plays WvW truly knows, you will never see a key ever again once you commit yourself to WvW.

Expanding further on what has been said, especially in terms of urgency. I believe many players here come from some sort of experience, and the ability to read the decline of a game, while never 100% accurate, is however fairly close.

When a lot of these folks say lets look into WvW improvements now and not in Feb, they are genuinely concerned and share a common experience that tells ‘em, it needs to be resolved as soon as possible. Most should already know that once you lose a player, it’s very improbably that player will come back.

We are a generation of players that has seen the fall of many mmos, believe it or not, folks are actually using that experience and are trying to express themselves. I sincerely hope, Anet looks into WvW improvements, as I too share the opinion, that things will fare badly overall if WvW goes ignored.

naphack.9346:

vsutra.8214:

Aysnvaust.7046:

Columba/ GekoHayate/ whomever else:
Thief perma stealth has NOTHING to do with exploiting a culling/renderin bug.
If you still believe in this fairytale, roll a thief and try for yourself.
A thief with the right traits and weaponset can stay permastealthed easely, totally legit, no rendering issues included.
The only thing that needs to be fixed is permastealthed thiefes stopping groupes from capping points. That is a totally different thing, and I agree that ANet should fix this.

I’m a thief. Lvl 80. It is a fairytale, unless your definition of perma vastly differs than what it actually means.

try the following skillbuild:
0-20(2,8)-20(5,10)-20(6,9)-0
last 10 points as you wish, prime candidates would be:
-remove a condition every 3 seconds while stealthed
-heal whenever using initiative
-regenerate during steath(weak compared to the other ones)
-alternatively, put them in critical hit for a “classic” backstab build

weapon set dagger+pistol
just use 5 skill, heartseeker, turn, heartseeker for combo finisher stealth.

Sources of initiative:
2 upon using stealth(every usage of hs)
2 upon activating signet(we will use signet of malice and at least one other active signet for that purpose)
2 every 10 seconds(trait)
1 every 10 seconds(infiltrator’s signet)
1 every 3 seconds during stealth(trait)

now just keep using black powder and 2 or 3 heartseekers, while spamming the signets whenever you need some extra initiative. Permastealth.

I stand corrected then, that is truly close to atleast perma stealth lol, I would never think to be annoying like that. But yes, after looking at this and the video someone posted, while I maintain it’s not too difficult to counter, but that is not how holding a camp should be in any way.

teg.1340:

vsutra.8214:

People tend to forget, BS thieves actually need full exotics before they are even a threat, pre-80 they can possibly 1v1 other sub-80’s, kill ‘em moderately fast if the opponent is clueless. Otherwise, you’ll die more than you kill and you will be targeted by other thieves more often than not, since you go down in one hit.

every profession has to be 80 in full exotics to be competitive.

and the problem why many thieves go down very fast is the fact that they run fully glass canon. the’re able to run fully glass canon because they can disengage from combat whenever they want due to stealth. thats unique to thieves. every other profession will be perma death while running fully glass canon unless they hide themself in zerg. thats why all classes but thieves stack toughness and vitality on there items. they trade damage for survivability thus dealing fewer damage.

To me this is the source of all the issues with thieves in WvW.

A guardians wall of reflection works less if they are not on exotics? Mesmers portal is less effective? Group buffs, heals, etc. A thief brings little to nothing to WvW without full exotics. That’s a difference.

You’ve made some fairly generalizing statements, every other class is perma death on class glass cannon builds, if it’s that bad, as you say, isn’t human nature to change to something else? No? Cause those glass canons are effective in some way as well? Yes?

However frustrating it was to die on my ranger in WvW, I still never considered that it never contributed to wvw, matter of fact I really felt my ranger has contribute greatly to WvW, especially and during the leveling up period. On my thief however, I felt it contributed nothing to WvW except free badges during the leveling up period. That, is the difference between a thief poorly geared, as opposed to other classes.

If however, I played my thief wrong during low lvls in WvW, I stand corrected.

Aysnvaust.7046:

vsutra.8214:

I’m a thief. Lvl 80. It is a fairytale, unless your definition of perma vastly differs than what it actually means.

Don’t know what exactly you are trying to tell me, just to make it clear:
Thief, lvl 80, just like you^^.
If I want to, my char stays permastealthed for hours. Other players will see signs of me refreshing the stealth, but not the char itself. That’s my definition of thiefes permastealth in GW2.

Pray tell how is that possible? How do you stay in stealth for hours? Unless you’re exploiting some bug, I really don’t see it. If that’s the case, thieves can hold camps indefinitely and even for hours, which does not happen.

Aysnvaust.7046:

Columba/ GekoHayate/ whomever else:
Thief perma stealth has NOTHING to do with exploiting a culling/renderin bug.
If you still believe in this fairytale, roll a thief and try for yourself.
A thief with the right traits and weaponset can stay permastealthed easely, totally legit, no rendering issues included.
The only thing that needs to be fixed is permastealthed thiefes stopping groupes from capping points. That is a totally different thing, and I agree that ANet should fix this.

I’m a thief. Lvl 80. It is a fairytale, unless your definition of perma vastly differs than what it actually means.

Columba.9730:

Fiction.6418:

I have fought many of these thieves, my opinion is.. wow you guys actually have problems killing a thief even in stealth? L2p

Looks at signature, yep as expected.

Actually, thieves inherently just know how to counter other thieves. It’s not that he’s defending the act, he’s merely pointing out that it’s not that hard to take that thief down. Something I noticed people rarely observe is, thieves actually target thieves a lot, at least that’s my experience.

How many here can truly say they have never killed a thief in stealth? Random aoes, wild-swinging melees. Poof, there appears a thief, one arm stretched pining for the day when he was in stealth and not laying down in the mercy of his opponents.

Thieves like to move from cover to cover, even in stealth. while culling issues of course exist, but half the time I notice people just throw up their hands and scream in frustration when the thief is actually just hiding out of your los.

People tend to forget, BS thieves actually need full exotics before they are even a threat, pre-80 they can possibly 1v1 other sub-80’s, kill ‘em moderately fast if the opponent is clueless. Otherwise, you’ll die more than you kill and you will be targeted by other thieves more often than not, since you go down in one hit.

Thieves also have the lowest HP among all classes, and sorely depends on it’s tricks to survive (which I admit it has many). PVE can be frustrating if you don’t really learn up on how to play a thief.

Take what most people say about thieves with a grain of salt, yes, when fully geared, thieves can pretty much insta-gib you if you aren’t prepared. A bs thief automatically learns to hide, that’s just it’s nature, cause this insta-gib cuts two ways, he can kill in a few secs, and die in the same amount of time or less.

I strongly suggest you play a thief, only to see how ridiculously unaware vast majority of players are, they know you are thief, they see you shooting ‘em with a sb, but they choose to attack a guardian, and you just switch to d/d and kill ’em in a couple of seconds. That’s not a broken thief mechanic. That’s human stupidity. So, again, take what folks say on the forums, with a grain of salt.

Other classes are very viable as well, with the sad exception of ranger, you have to be really focused, obsessionally aware of your surroundings at every moment, and instantly adaptable in WvW. Rangers are fun, strong in pve, but plays poorly in pvp in most builds.

Rangers aren’t really that bad, while I don’t play the style most people do, and I don’t use sb so the recent nerf to it never affected me.

I mainly go lb/axe/wh or lb/gs and I really enjoy the ranger gameplay. To be honest, I felt a little useless in the early stages, but once I started gearing up little by little, there was a huge difference.

Please note, I’m almost always in wvw and rarely do anything else, so I wouldn’t know whether ranger sucks at outside of wvw. But in my experience, it’s a fairly decent profession in wvw and I’m happy with it.

I do agree that pets need to be fixed however. Pets in the vast majority of situations are trivial elements that add little to no contribution at times. Their abilities need to be faster to be predictable, as it stands now, it’s god-knows-whether-that-kitten-went-off state and you just lose interest in using it’s abilities after sometime.

Other than pets, I just wish rapid fire starts off with a slightly higher dmg, than it currently does. Just funny when my normal attack does 800-2k, and my rapid fire starts with 300-400 and if the target manages to dodge and get out of los from it, that whole skill just did 300-400 (and my pet is prolly dead from aoe, or is still chasing the target without hitting it even once at times)

Got my support and respect Bahaness o7