Leger.3724

Ekko has a giant trail telling you where he will be teleporting to so you can pre-position to deal with it. And Ekko's ultimate has a long cooldown. It's not 5-30 seconds. As I have said quite a few times now - Arena Net can put their heads in the sand with you and pretend a peak player count of a few hundred playing pvp is success and "every game has complaints" so why try... or they can look at what popular pvp games do and learn lessons. Arena Net has always seemed to do relatively well in that sense. Guild Wars 1 was a great pvp experience and showed early potential in MOBA esports. But it had its flaws. And then they went hard on pve with Guild Wars 2 and developed great systems for cooperative leveling with events and hearts. And then they added a unique mount system that other games are looking to copy. I have faith that as long as they're looking and paying attention to successful pvp games that attract playerbases... they can offer something uinque and fun if they're willing to put in the time. That being said no sense in doing it with Guild Wars 2. Look to make the change with Guild Wars 3 or the next MMO project they work on, if they work on one.

Yes. Teleportation and stealth are not the only problems in this game. You've just named a few others.

I want good gameplay to be rewarded and when the thief has a bunch of "OOOOOOOOOOOOOPS" buttons for when they get punished by my skilled play... I am going to feel a type of way about that. In League of Legends flash is the "ooops" button. It has a 5 minute cooldown after usage and anyone can bring flash into their match. So if I determine following up on their oops button with my own flash is worth securing a kill, I can do that.

Join a raids team and defeat a boss on wings 1-4. Wing 3 escort (Siege of the Stronghold) is probably easiest as long as some of people know what they're doing and you have a mesmer. Once you have defeated one boss you unlock the raid mastery track and you level it up anywhere that counts for Heart of Thorns mastery. Edit: So the answer to your question is beat one of the Heart of Thorns raids bosses and then you're free to level up the mastery anywhere in Heart of Thorns. And I guess for some more context - your guilds, friends, discord servers for GW2. Reach out and see if you can find people. In terms of the Escort I mentioned up above - you basically escort an NPC so you need 1 experienced player to "call" the NPC to move it around, everyone else should avoid using that skill. Then 1 experienced Mesmer to run portals. And the rest just DPS. Don't get too far ahead of the NPC, make sure to CC/slow the giant wargs and kill them before they get to your NPC. Take the portals up to capture the tower tops raining AOE down on the road. So take the portal, wait for the capture bar to max and immediately take the portal back down and do not fight stuff on the tops of the towers. And then you'll eventually get to the boss and it's essentially DPS and make sure to DPS the same color icon above your head for that 1 phase. That's literally it. Super easy. Watch a guide for some context but it's really easy if you have an experienced mesmer and people keep the NPC in a safe spot (designate one person for this, have the NPC hang back on the stairs before the final boss fight).

That would be Arena Net's job and not mine. All I know is it's too easy for certain classes to do certain things that are either: A) blatantly OP B) toxic And thief falls into category B.

The game is hopeless at one thing - pvp. And that is why I have barely touched it since 2014. But the game is not entirely or mostly pvp. Guild Wars 2 open world pve is by far the best of any game on the market. There is a reason World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online and others are essentially copying things right out of GW2 left and right and have been doing so for years now. I'm here posting in hopes that if and when Guild Wars 3 is developed they can take lessons and come up with a better combat system and better mechanics that can lead to fun pvp experiences and a sizeable pvp community. Edit: And because we're on the thief forum and there are a lot of thieves upset because their profession technically isn't OP in pvp... yeah, so what? The thief is an example of mechanics that are not fun to play against. And my problems with pvp go way beyond the thief. Every mechanic from stealth to teleportation to boons to conditions to invulnerabilities to immunes to whatever else I haven't thought of and the amount of them you have available on one build, the cooldowns on them... it's all one giant problem. And 10 years into the game Arena Net isn't about to start unravelling this problem.

And there are simple counters to stealth that are easily accessible to everyone in League of Legends. Teleports have long cooldowns or drawbacks so they cannot be spammed. It's almost like one game tries to design so that things are balanced and fun meanwhile we have GW2 where the thief profession and its specializations can travel to the moon and back 90% stealthed up where you have no realistic counter to said stealth. In terms of reworking the thief - this game is completely kittened. There is no realistic rework to be done on the thief. Any rework would be a fundamental redesign of the combat system in Guild Wars 2 and I don't see that happening because it would rightfully kitten off many pve players. Threads like these are something that Arena Net should keep in mind when developing GW3 combat if they want a successful pvp mode. People might complain about things in League of Legends but fundamentally and subconsciously they understand they get a fair shake. They understand it's a game of skill. They understand they can alter their playstyle and make choices to counter stealth or whatever comes up in the match. And that's why they have had 100+ million active monthly users for years now. People understand in Guild Wars 2 that you are not getting a fair shake, you can't realistically adjust your playstyle when you encounter something like say a thief roaming around. You have to endure things. And that's why the pvp playerbase has dwindled from tens of thousands to thousands to hundreds. It is not an enjoyable experience. It's not very balanced. It's not intuitive. It's not based around skill. And so people left. And they never returned.

A total dodge. The number of people who regularly play pvp is in the hundreds. The most successful 5v5 pvp game has over 100 million regular players. And you want to talk about the game allowing experienced players (not skilled, experienced. You are not skilled, you are experienced) a "mild inconvenience". Where has this logic gotten us in 10 years? A few thousand to a few hundred. A masterclass. Nobody wants to play the pvp in this game. Nobody sane at least. And that should tell you all you need to know about these "mild inconveniences" you've memorized to exploit against new players. Arena Net can listen to people like you, the people who have led them down the path of a playerbase numbered in the hundreds... or they can take a look at what successful games do with core mechanics like stealth, teleportation, invulnerability, crowd control, etc... If they want to fail but allow a couple hundred people to feel good about themselves... well I guess that's Arena Net's choice. Personally I'd hope that if and when they come out with GW3 they take the lessons of the poor combat system to heart.

When the game mode is numbered in the hundreds of players maybe it is time to look at what is fun and what is not because the mode has clearly failed. When a thief can determine, when, where, if and how a pvp interaction ends... maybe that needs to be looked at by Arena Net. Maybe that's not a good idea to keep people coming to your game. My issues with pvp go far beyond a thief but this thread was started in general discussion. Some people who casually pvp wanted to show they were upset with the design of the thief and the core mechanics of stealth and teleportation. And thread was interesting enough and good enough and specific enough to be used as an example to Arena Net of why the pvp scene is dead and the wvw scene has been dying for years. The core combat mechanics are just awful. You can paper this over in pve and you don't have to deal with it in casual pve much. But there's no hiding anything in pvp/wvw. The thief was the subject so the thief is what I looked at. If you want to talk necro start a thread. Talk about why you dislike fighting necros in pvp. I don't think thief is the only problem in pvp by any stretch of the imagination. Mechanics cross professions/specializations in this game so the problems with stealth and teleportation aren't limited to the thief though I would say they are the most egregious on that profession.

I'm on NA and got kicked off and being met with: Build: 134370 Error Code: 58:11:5:535

So a dead game and a game with a small pvp community are your comparables? I guess if the definition of success is failure you've schooled me. I was thinking games that actually get played like say League of Legends with 100+ million active monthly users. They seem to understand how to design a game to make fun pvp interactions and they also have stealth, teleportation spells/blinks/whatever you call your character teleporting from one location to another.

I think some of you are missing the point: You escape any losing engagement. Okay fine, you blow your initiative. So what? Your character determines if there will be a fight and then unless you massively screw up you will determine how the fight ends with you securing a kill or with you running away leaving the other player no reward for beating you. Every other pvp game on the planet tries to avoid these scenarios. They try to prevent one player from determining the start and end of a pvp engagement. It's really, really, really bad game design in GW2. My problems with pvp go way beyond thief. But there is a reason the pvp player base is numbered in the hundreds, maybe the 1000-2000 on a great day. People voted with their feet back to games that have well thought out and balanced combat... and that does not describe GW2. They can fix PvE by scaling things up or down, by messing with PvE mechanics. But there is no solution to hide bad mechanics, bad skill design when it comes to PvP.

Here's some pvp context: > I am bad at most video games > I play thief and suddenly am extremely hard to kill > All other games must be bad and this game is good because I am good at it You are completely right. It must be all those other games that suck. This game definitely has things balanced well which is why a ~400 strong playerbase regularly queues for 5v5 spvp. What's that Tobias saying? I just blue myself? No wait, it was "there are dozens of us!".

I think we need to face facts here: you want major changes. That's never happening. The only people left in pvp are the people too afraid to leave for the big boys like League of Legends or DOTA 2. And they are terrified of any significant change that might bring people back and foster a competitive environment. And then there's the 99%, the people who pve and don't want Arena Net tinkering with elite class specializations that make it super easy to spam a billion conditions or block, teleport, immune and snare all with one build. And they also don't want Arena Net spending a ton of time on changing it for pvp. And even if they were okay with that... we then run into the problem of pve and pvp being so different that nobody will want to try pvp. The goal should be to have pve and pvp be as similar as possible like say the early days of guild wars 1. Where necessary tone up or down on some skills but by and large things should feel similar. Anyways the only real "fix" here is to wait for GW3 where hopefully Arena Net takes lessons to heart surrounding the complexity, the number of skills available to individual players, the expansions and how they destroyed any hope of pvp being good via elite specializations that simply gave more BS mechanics to more classes.

When making GW3 Arena Net should read opinions like this very carefully if they want PvP to be successful. The PvP is bad and not-rewarding as this player has experienced with thieves and mesmers simply running away whenever they come out on the wrong side of a trade. There is a reason positioning matters in most other games and any repositioning skills have extremely long cooldowns or significant drawbacks. The goal is to reward a player for outplaying another. The goal is to make interactions matter. Make mistakes matter. Understand nobody is playing your pvp because it's unrewarding and also plain bad, it's not balanced particularly well because of its complexity, mechanics are clunky. If your goal is to have good pvp in your next game take a long hard look at the games people actually play. They have longer cooldowns, fewer skills and things like positioning really matter. Certain "professions" have certain roles and the games are not afraid to shy away from that. Let the playerbase break the mould, don't break it yourself to create something nobody wants or wants to play.

I think they have a katana skin in game don't they? Belinda's Sword or whatever? I wouldn't be against more traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean styles like kimonos as one example.

Yes but the game needs players. And outside of primetime in NA lets say 8pm-10pm EST, very few servers have large populations. It's a challenge to find a group to roll with. I've been with players who had good experiences in recent weeks. They came on during primetime and came across a big group of us taking a tower and they had a ton of fun joining our medium sized blob attacking another medium sized blob and taking the tower. But more than likely these new players will try WvW outside of primetime and they'll experience the people camping spawn camps on the borderlands. And leaving spawn will likely lead to them dying. I think stuff like abilities has compounded the problem. Some Diamond raider on their mount can knock the beginner off their brand new mount and destroy them before they can do anything. Edit: And I do think the mount requiring a collection and ability point spend to earn it is a problem in and of itself. Even if it's not a high barrier, it probably sucks for someone brand new to WvW. PVE, WVW, PVP - they're all going to slowly bleed players over time and they do need influxes to sustain themselves. PVE is pretty straightforward and easy given the nature of GW2 and the hearts/events system. WVW is more difficult and I think some tweaks and decisions could be made to make it easier. PVP there's no hope. MOBAs are simply better and already have the established playerbase.

Notice the common theme here - no one can actually dispute the arguments being put forward. They can only attack me and finish with "stop complaining".

- New player - Joins WvW - tries to take a camp, 3 people show up, one of them was always there as an invisible mesmer teleporting around that you can't hit - die - quit WvW and never play again I play frequently but I do wonder how many people went through roughly this scenario and never played again. It's not fun to play against because even if you win that 1v1, your opponent runs away, heals up and returns and you can't take the camp. WvW is something that could work despite the atrociously bad underlying mechanics of this game if some adjustments were made. sPvP won't work. It's trying to apply a balance and fairness to something broken at a design and mechanics level.

No, they're subsidizing a dying mode by forcing players from another mode to participate if they want a reward. That's all this was. Nobody wanted to play sPvP. Arena Net naively though "maybe if we force people to do it, enough will stick around". And they're wrong. Unsurprisingly. The problem is not that this one singular event will cause people to quit. That's disingenuous nonsense but par for the course in this thread where people will argue the strawman and not the reality. The problem is this is a pattern. It's a consistent pattern of Arena Net locking PVE content behind PVP. They need to stop doing this. It's time to make a decision. There is a reason WvW is so afkable. There is a reason you can buy memories of battle and shard of glory. There is a reason Seasons of the Dragons was added to give a legendary amulet. Arena Net looked at their internal numbers and understood what was going on. And despite these lessons, here we are again where the best things you can say about the 10th year anniversary are: free mount skin and the achievement for a cape skin involved a2 hour grind of content I did not want to do and have not touched since finishing it. Why are they shooting themselves in the foot here? Why have they once again locked content behind PvP? I guess the grind isn't as bad as it was with the legendary stuff. But players have already voted Arena Net. They didn't want to do PVP. Force feeding it in smaller doses than you did 6 years ago is not going to help a kitten thing.

Forum regular? You have 1.7K posts. So you're right in a sense. They should stop listening to the people on the forums. People like you, not me. Yeah well it's about time there's some dissent on here so they can understand how people who don't have 10.4K posts on this forum feel. I've played since beta. I played Guild Wars 1 (mostly PvP btw) since it launched in 2005.

Yes, when you gate a reward behind something, people will do that mode to get the reward and then leave. I played my 10 matches. I haven't played since. Before that my last games were in 2014. I played League of Legends for years. I peaked in Diamond 3. I tried GW2. It's an awful system. After the expansion packs, it's worse and not better. I'm not interested. Arena Net needs to ask themselves: is pissing off your largest group of players by forcing them into content they do not want to feed a tiny group of players worth it? The obvious answer is no.

No, you just have to hate yourself to play the game mode. Literally every MOBA pvp game out there understands basic concepts like: range characters shouldn't be super mobile and able to keep melee at distance.They should be vulnerable. Does Guild Wars 2 understand this? Of course not. Since weapons aren't bound to your skills you can run around with swiftness, you can blink 500000 feet away from a melee character, you can cripple them. Oh and if that's not enough invisibility, block, invulnerability, blinds and many other fun little parts to the game. This game is poorly designed and does not create a fun pvp experience. Almost every pvp interaction in this game is going to come out unsatisfying for one of the players involved. And for the new players that's usually going to be them. And from there it gets worse. Lets say that new player gets the upper-hand. Mr experienced just runs away. Another unfun experience. The new player did something right and they're not having fun. Amazing system. Just 10/10 game design. And pvpers wonder why their modes are dying, lmao. Players voted with their feet. They voted again with their feet after this stupid achievement. Nobody stuck around for the awful experience that is pvp. The problem isn't willingness to learn. The problem is the pvp system is bad. It's REALLY bad. It's complex. It's frustrating to learn. And it's not even well put together once you learn it. It's all about pressing the correct skill rotations. It's a horrible, horrible system. It works for casual PvE and with scaling you can make it sort-of work in fractals, strikes and raids. But it has never and will never work in PvP which is why the queue is literally always dead. I mean they launched it by having that DJ starcraft guy announce games. Everyone quit anyways and went back to League of Legends. The system is bad. This isn't the fault of new players. This isn't the fault of the balance team at Arena Net. The core systems of this game suck for PvP. They create unfun experiences. Sure, I'll get those stupid confused emotes next to my post by a bunch of people upset their scene is dying and they can't press their rotation as easily as before. Those people if they were any good would be playing a MOBA and showing us how good they are instead of sitting on here complaining that PVE players might not want to spend 1-3 hours doing pvp content for what is supposed to be a 10 year anniversary celebration and reward.

The game is dog. It was barely passable at launch but as that other user said - as soon as new classes were added that could stack might, conditions, spam invisibility and character-teleportation skills... any minor control they had at launch was completely lost. There is no undoing this. There is no fixing PvP with a balance update. No significant group is going to suddenly start playing PvP when they can pick one of a half dozen MOBAs with a larger player population and simpler mechanics that allow for skill differentiation instead of "hurr durr I memorized my combo and if I'm WvW I have the right food applied". Some people want to mistake rotations for skill. Nope. It's not. This is a casual PvE game and that's all it will ever be. And that's fine. The sooner everyone accepts that, the better. Edit: I wanted to add I'm not trying to say people should quit GW2 PvP by any means but lets understand there is no path forward and there is no reason Arena Net should invest further resources into it.

Lmao. You absolutely can. The only argument that holds any validity is it's cheaper and easier to game the system in wvw. I'm fine with looking at making WvW faster and increasing its difficulty.