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DE issues in wvw


kiranslee.4829

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Complains about Deadeye and mentions Vault...

Oh boy, this is going to be every other thread about thief.

Vault is a Daredevil only weapon skill. Deadeye can stealth and, yes, stealth is a strong source of salt, until you realize that stealth is an opportunity to kite out the thief. If you stand still you will be finished. An invisible enemy is not an enemy who won’t take a hit. Invisibility is not invulnerability. I hit enemy DE all the time in stealth. How? I predict their relative position and then hit them. They pop up downed.

If you are worried about range of DE try some projectile hate or line of sight. Works wonders. Otherwise force them to chase you. A kiting DE is probably relying on YOU chasing them to stay in range. Don’t make it easy for them.

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Thief right now is designed to spam stealth, evade or ports or everything together why should you defend a unfun playstlye like that. Call me old fashioned but I don’t think classes should be able to gain stealth that reliable for example with a dodge, or should have access to 7+ ports in the first 10 seconds of the fight, or should be able to use more then 6 evades in 10 seconds and still be able to disengage without any fear of getting caught. It is just frustrating to see a thief engaging and disengaging if he wants to without being able to do anything about it. I’m all for buffing thief but i right now in special thief vs thief looks too much like a DBZ fight to me.

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Pretty much every other profession's defensive mechanics can be used while dealing damage, whether it's shroud, clones, high armor, blocks/aegis, passive heals, etc. Thieves rely on dodging and stealth, which means if it's on the defensive you aren't taking damage. If you can't use that to your advantage you need to l2p. It's a massive setback thieves have.

Also it's easy to figure out where thieves are going in stealth... as said before, aoe or auto attack that spot and you will down them. It's also very predictable when they will break out of stealth and you should dodge.

While a thief is "spamming evades and stealth" he hasn't doing damage and isn't helping the fight so please stop complaining saying that's bad...

Just because you doing like a mechanic doesn't mean that the case for everyone. Some people think it's much more fun even if it's harder, riskier, and tends to lead to dying more. They like the poof poof mobility. Unfortunately thief damage in general is so nerfed and there are so many blocks these days that it is hard to do enough damage between steslths to do more dps than the target can heal without dying yourself. But some of us like the challenge of that balancing act.

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@SlitheSlivier.1908 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

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@mikdepadua.8376 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

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@"Sobx.1758" said:Ok. So it's not about "gunflaming people from stealth" then. And malicious backstab from permastealth has no malice charges, so at that point it's a regular backstab, just saying.

Technically they could run Malicious Intent for a +10% bonus damage to backstab just by marking and going for backstab, but these days, it doesn't mean much.

The problem with DE these days is still the stupid Skirmisher's/Spotter's spam followed by undodgeable DJ thanks to Binding Shadow.And this is in addition to their easy and high frequency stealth access which lets them do this with little to no retaliation.

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DE's issue come from the fact that the thief is designed around the idea of "a burst of damage from stealth". This specific design is at the origin of the complains about thief since release of the vanilla game.

The solution of the simple minded would be to significantly reduce the thief's stealth attack damage. However it would just mean that the thiefs would use the next high damage skill in line.

The smart solution would be to add a significant damage debuff on stealth and reveal. This would solve most of the complains about burst from stealth for all professions. However, it also mean that the thief would be crippled at the very heart of it's design.

The wise solution would be to push the design of the thief out of this idea of "a burst of damage from stealth". However this would need a lot of work (from deciding a new viable design encompassing both defense, offense and support, to making sure skills work properly and that the thematic of the thief is respected) from ANet's side.

Most profession need similar fixs to the broken designs that are encroached at their very core but I guess it's easier for ANet to go the simple minded road and just tweak numbers for a playerbase's short lived satisfaction.

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@"Dadnir.5038" said:DE's issue come from the fact that the thief is designed around the idea of "a burst of damage from stealth". This specific design is at the origin of the complains about thief since release of the vanilla game.

The solution of the simple minded would be to significantly reduce the thief's stealth attack damage. However it would just mean that the thiefs would use the next high damage skill in line.

The smart solution would be to add a significant damage debuff on stealth and reveal. This would solve most of the complains about burst from stealth for all professions. However, it also mean that the thief would be crippled at the very heart of it's design.

The wise solution would be to push the design of the thief out of this idea of "a burst of damage from stealth". However this would need a lot of work (from deciding a new viable design encompassing both defense, offense and support, to making sure skills work properly and that the thematic of the thief is respected) from ANet's side.

Most profession need similar fixs to the broken designs that are encroached at their very core but I guess it's easier for ANet to go the simple minded road and just tweak numbers for a playerbase's short lived satisfaction.

I mostly agree about why it's considered problematic (tl;dr: class x is good because of a particular mechanics, take the mechanics away and the class is not worth picking or has no meaningful distinctions from the others), but lets not pretend that there is a possibility to swap a mechanic to the one that will magically stop whining and crying on the forum. There will always be "the optimal way" to build a class, there will always be classes that are stronger in certain aspect than the other classes and because of that people will always cry about some aspect of the game/class and demand nerfs as long as something can have an edge over what they currently chose to play. It doesn't matter that thief is garbage in zerg fights compared to -for example- necro, but somehow it's UNBELIEVABLY UNFAIR that the same thief can roam better than the same necro. I will gladly read about someone's "perfectly balanced mass class rework" that would stop all the tears from all of the 9 professions. Mainly because I don't think that's even remotely possible without taking 10 steps back in a freedom of picking your own builds and general class diversity. Duh, we can already see many unusable traits/weapons and the general forum population seems to be as whiny as always.I'm not saying we should just abandon any balancing attempts (moreover I think with proper involvement from the devs, the more-or-less-number-tweaks, including things like hard limits on time/stacks in case of something like stealth, should be enough to fix most of the issues), but removing mechanics while claiming it will fix the game and stop the complaints on the forum seems naive to me.

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@"Sobx.1758" said:I'm not saying we should just abandon any balancing attempts (moreover I think with proper involvement from the devs, the more-or-less-number-tweaks, including things like hard limits on time/stacks in case of something like stealth, should be enough to fix most of the issues), but removing mechanics while claiming it will fix the game and stop the complaints on the forum seems naive to me.

I'm not saying that removing mechanism is the thing needed, I'm saying that there is a need to reallocate power or, in the case of the thief, find a way to make stealth attack attractive out of the plain damage way. And that to do so, it's needed to spread damage on the other abilities of the thief. Ultimately it's bound to be a complicated process and create disatisfaction in the thief community (because a lot of thiefs, if not all, are used to going all out on the burst out of stealth and adapting to new gameplay isn't an easy task.)

You take the example of the necromancer and this profession face the same issue in a different way. To put it simply the necromancer's design philosophy is to put everything onto the shroud, be it defense, offense or support and nearly starve the profession while out of shroud. In the necromancer there is a need to lessen the power put on the shroud and redistribute it on the out of shroud state. There is no way around defensively for this profession as the shroud is the main defensive mechanism so some amount of damage/ damage bonus have to be redistributed from the shroud skills/traits to the out of shroud state. Like for the thief, this kind of balance is bound to create disatisfaction in the necromancer community but is a necessary way to truly balance the necromancer.

The mesmer is also in a similar situation. Actually I think they even are in a worse situation. It's original design was to rely heavily on the burst of damage created by shatters and slowly but surely traits have been cumulated to reinforce this idea. It's to the point that right now shatters have become "rigid" and ANet can't work around them without breaking a few traits. This is mainly why the profession e-spec have nonsensical and crippling trade-offs. When ANet pushed more sustain damage onto the profession with their rework of fantasm, they didn't touch the shatter and, even worse, they pushed further onto the shatter burst with even more shatter traits. Their lack of flexibility regarding the shatters burst created the mesmer mess.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:I'm not saying we should just abandon any balancing attempts (moreover I think with proper involvement from the devs, the more-or-less-number-tweaks, including things like hard limits on time/stacks in case of something like stealth, should be enough to fix most of the issues), but removing mechanics while claiming it will fix the game and stop the complaints on the forum seems naive to me.

I'm not saying that removing mechanism is the thing needed, I'm saying that there is a need to reallocate power or, in the case of the thief, find a way to make stealth attack attractive out of the plain damage way. And that to do so, it's needed to spread damage on the other abilities of the thief. Ultimately it's bound to be a complicated process and create disatisfaction in the thief community (because a lot of thiefs, if not all, are used to going all out on the burst out of stealth and adapting to new gameplay isn't an easy task.)

You take the example of the necromancer and this profession face the same issue in a different way. To put it simply the necromancer's design philosophy is to put everything onto the shroud, be it defense, offense or support and nearly starve the profession while out of shroud. In the necromancer there is a need to lessen the power put on the shroud and redistribute it on the out of shroud state. There is no way around defensively for this profession as the shroud is the main defensive mechanism so some amount of damage/ damage bonus have to be redistributed from the shroud skills/traits to the out of shroud state. Like for the thief, this kind of balance is bound to create disatisfaction in the necromancer community but is a necessary way to truly balance the necromancer.

Would it really cause dissatisfaction in necro community? Shroud seems to be a gating mechnic to some degree, which opens some windows for different gameplay decisions. Pulling power from shroud to out of shroud would just make the dmg easier to deal (FOR necro, not TO necro), while the defensive capabilities remain pretty much the same in the form of shroud. I'm not entirely sure how that would be inconvenient for the class itself. Where's the dissatisfaction? Less burst? Do we want skills to not be bursty at all? Just slap 1.0 coefficient on all of them and we're suddenly happy that we need to press 50 buttons of homogenized skills to kill something? Sounds boring to me. Meh.Maybe I just misunderstand the changes you propose, in that case you can explain :p

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I'm not going to read the walls of text but the problem with changing the heart of thief is that it's an all or none situation.

If you go halfway then thief "has everything and no counters!".

If you go all the way on change you potentially drive away those still playing thief.

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@SlitheSlivier.1908 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

Run Aoe, cleave them and the clones. The real one is the one with signets, food buffs, banners, various XP modifiers etc. If you run Berserker you can double Arc Divider in the area you are sure they are in and down them and remove all the clones, any similar AoE bursts on other classes will do the same thing. Otherwise save hard CC for when you think they are complacent and CC/burst them, like if you are a Soulbeast use Hunter's Shot while merged on a clone, swap to GS, move in, Hilt Bash -> Maul -> Worldly Impact. Mesmer is one of those classes that once you get a bead and CC them you can generally knock a large chunk of health away quickly before they slip away. Taking a ranged weapon also helps.

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@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

Run Aoe, cleave them and the clones. The real one is the one with signets, food buffs, banners, various XP modifiers etc. If you run Berserker you can double Arc Divider in the area you are sure they are in and down them and remove all the clones, any similar AoE bursts on other classes will do the same thing. Otherwise save hard CC for when you think they are complacent and CC/burst them, like if you are a Soulbeast use Hunter's Shot while merged on a clone, swap to GS, move in, Hilt Bash -> Maul -> Worldly Impact. Mesmer is one of those classes that once you get a bead and CC them you can generally knock a large chunk of health away quickly before they slip away. Taking a ranged weapon also helps.

I meant as a DE. I can do a decent job on my necro. By the time i determine which is the real player in out of stealth.

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@SlitheSlivier.1908 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

Run Aoe, cleave them and the clones. The real one is the one with signets, food buffs, banners, various XP modifiers etc. If you run Berserker you can double Arc Divider in the area you are sure they are in and down them and remove all the clones, any similar AoE bursts on other classes will do the same thing. Otherwise save hard CC for when you think they are complacent and CC/burst them, like if you are a Soulbeast use Hunter's Shot while merged on a clone, swap to GS, move in, Hilt Bash -> Maul -> Worldly Impact. Mesmer is one of those classes that once you get a bead and CC them you can generally knock a large chunk of health away quickly before they slip away. Taking a ranged weapon also helps.

I meant as a DE. I can do a decent job on my necro. By the time i determine which is the real player in out of stealth.

Berserker was an example. The Soulbeast was another. If you are a DE, find the real Mesmer, build Malice on the clones, then stealth ->pew pew 1 key -> dead Mesmer. If you can't find the real one, then try to bring AoE for cleave.

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@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

Run Aoe, cleave them and the clones. The real one is the one with signets, food buffs, banners, various XP modifiers etc. If you run Berserker you can double Arc Divider in the area you are sure they are in and down them and remove all the clones, any similar AoE bursts on other classes will do the same thing. Otherwise save hard CC for when you think they are complacent and CC/burst them, like if you are a Soulbeast use Hunter's Shot while merged on a clone, swap to GS, move in, Hilt Bash -> Maul -> Worldly Impact. Mesmer is one of those classes that once you get a bead and CC them you can generally knock a large chunk of health away quickly before they slip away. Taking a ranged weapon also helps.

I meant as a DE. I can do a decent job on my necro. By the time i determine which is the real player in out of stealth.

Berserker was an example. The Soulbeast was another. If you are a DE, find the real Mesmer, build Malice on the clones, then stealth ->pew pew 1 key -> dead Mesmer. If you can't find the real one, then try to bring AoE for cleave.

Any good player will dodge the 1 stealth attack tho. I never manage to hit with it due to the long obvious non-stealthed pre-animation. I didn't know you could build malice on the clones, but makes sense. I'll give that a go. Some of them seem to stealth more than me haha...

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@SlitheSlivier.1908 said:

If the 10k hit is what you are angry about, then why are you arguing about thief? Mesmers can do more damage than that almost instantaneously through creating phantasms and quickly shattering them. The difference is, thieves need a lot more set up and are easily dodged and in the end deal less damage.

I agree with everything except this. Poor choice of class to compare with as power mesmers are dead in the gutter in WvW nowadays. And you cant quickly shatter phantasms. They have to revert into clones. Even before, Deadeyes has a much simpler setup compared to Mesmers when it comes to burst.

I need to learn how to fight mesmers...i stuck against them so bad.Also 2 rangers running around wvw this morning kept killing me. Tho i didn't run with any food/utility boosts

Run Aoe, cleave them and the clones. The real one is the one with signets, food buffs, banners, various XP modifiers etc. If you run Berserker you can double Arc Divider in the area you are sure they are in and down them and remove all the clones, any similar AoE bursts on other classes will do the same thing. Otherwise save hard CC for when you think they are complacent and CC/burst them, like if you are a Soulbeast use Hunter's Shot while merged on a clone, swap to GS, move in, Hilt Bash -> Maul -> Worldly Impact. Mesmer is one of those classes that once you get a bead and CC them you can generally knock a large chunk of health away quickly before they slip away. Taking a ranged weapon also helps.

I meant as a DE. I can do a decent job on my necro. By the time i determine which is the real player in out of stealth.

Berserker was an example. The Soulbeast was another. If you are a DE, find the real Mesmer, build Malice on the clones, then stealth ->pew pew 1 key -> dead Mesmer. If you can't find the real one, then try to bring AoE for cleave.

Any good player will dodge the 1 stealth attack tho. I never manage to hit with it due to the long obvious non-stealthed pre-animation. I didn't know you could build malice on the clones, but makes sense. I'll give that a go. Some of them seem to stealth more than me haha...

Malice depends on who you have marked and you CAN mark a clone, and depending on the build you may just be using it for M7 and not care for when you sneak attack. You can always not mark the Mesmer before the stealth attack for less tell, then follow up with whatever general DPS your weapon bar has. If the OHKO method isn't working then use it to fish out dodges and DPS them hard otherwise.

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@"kiranslee.4829" said:So im not sure how much you are aware but after killing most of roaming builds (especially for war mains) anet didnt do much to do same for already broken DE. Class that daze and hit for 10k from hide, and able to go hide insta after is still promoting bad unfun play. Rise of de is showing that clearly. Any chance that anyone is looking into this ?

For years they tweaked thief to remove such bonuses and abilities. After all, they gutted acro to put it into a paid expansion (daredevil). Then nerfed it's steal range, and other aspects of that specialisation... reintroduced prior nerfs into _another _paid expansion. Quelle surprise it's done bit by bit to slowly herd people towards paid content.

The "rise of DE" (if there indeed is one? Not noticed) would align with their desired outcome.

People pay money. It'll get nerfed for the year during/after the next specialisation (if there is one).

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After extensively playing DE, it needs small buffs, not nerfs. Rifle+kneel+2 needs to be faster and do bare minimum 20% more damage to not be a downgrade to rifle 2. Deaths retreat needs to cost less initiative... no one uses it. Even with that, there is so much block and projectile hate (and need to maintain LoS) that DE still doesn't have a chance against decent Guardians and Warriors without something that provides "your initiative skills are unblockable for 2 seconds when you are revealed". Revs and rangers will still be an issue and for those it comes down to DE's really bad burst.

The other problem is that since players who aren't good don't know how to handle stealth at all, it seems impossible to kill to them even tho it's far far far from true. Those are the players with the largest voice in these forums.

I switch to my necro when i want to win a higher % of time or at least have a chance against a greater number of builds, but use DE when i get bored of the necromancer because it's exactly the playstyle i enjoy the most.

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Are thieves steam-rolling everyone one-on-one or in small group battles?Are they effortlessly picking up kill after kill zerg-sailing?Are they making it impossible for other classes to do "roaming?"

No, but, you see, they're annoying.

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