Straegen.2938

Thank you! Pulling my hair out trying to figure out why it wasn't working. This step was not obvious to me... why not just charge 500 coins for one item is beyond me.

It will never be as good or as fun as it was with Ricochet pre-nerf.

Well roaming in WvW I find the axe weak. Dagger off-hand has a nice teleport but the axes are so slow by the time they arrive the target is gone because without ridiculous levels of boon striping few get immob'd anymore. Also the teleport doesn't place me behind the target it just teleports like steal. Pistol off-hand doesn't seem to have any synergy with axe at all. It can kill scrubs but so can every other weapon. In duels, it is getting torn up. Axe is just too slow to stack condi and relies on a gimmick for any burst that is pretty easy to avoid IMO. Absolutely worst thing about Axe/Dagger is that it cannot run anyone down despite having a nice teleport. You can catch them but the axes will invariably be behind you and the target so even the immob is useless in this situation if it works because none of the pre-cast axes will land. Maybe in PvE it will perform better where everything face tanks but as a WvW thief I am not interested in slow projectiles... the class simply does not have the sustain to wait for damage build up at least in WvW.

Staff always needed a built in block capability particularly from ranged attacks. I would even argue it should have block with reflect to help close distances and punish ranged attackers. It needed something even if it was a built in stealth mechanic to really work properly. While it certainly underperforms compared to virtually every other upgrade in every other class, it once had a narrow place before mounts and every class got high movement/teleports. Bound/Staff with D/P was a viable roaming spec in WvW, did OK in PvP and functional in PvE. Outside of staff and before it got nerfed into uselessness, Impacting Disruption on a P/D build was absurdly powerful in WvW and PvP. Next on the amazing list is Bandits Defense which is still one of the better active blocking skills in the game. Nothing else is decent outside of the sheer movement capability of Dash but sadly Dash is meh compared to other class movement capabilities now. Willbender alone is uncatchable by a Dash Daredevil even with multiple gap closers. Although Dash really does make the Speed Relic sing.

The hilarity of this request. Nearly everything beats the thief now in virtually every format of play. It isn't the fastest, doesn't hit the hardest, has near zero multi-target damage and cannot scale damage well any longer. Long gone are the days where a thief of any build variety had an advantage in 1v1 play. Now it is lucky if it can +1 a fight and not be utterly useless doing it.

ANet went down a dysfunctional path years ago in WvW when they prioritized AoE spam and ranged attacks over targeted and melee damage. Some of the hardest hitting abilities in the game mode come from range and many are ground targeted. One would think that over years we would see the rise and fall of classes in the meta as it shifts but the core remains. Guardians have never seen a significant nerf and Necros have been absurd for years now. Any decent design is going to prioritize risk/reward making up close combat more damaging and AoE/Range damage root players or have significantly less damage. It boggles the mind that Rangers still tee off on players from a mile away with ridiculous amounts of sustain and mobility in small battles.

For some reason they have obliterated melee builds in WvW which are high risk and low reward now. Instead ranged damage and ground targeting is the preferred gameplay.

I use the Action Camera and select targets by putting the Action Camera cursor over the target I want to hit similar to a traditional shooter. It doesn't work as well for some classes but works well for the thief. I converted the old CombatMod macro to use ANets built in system. Tab turns the Action Camera mode on/off so the camera works like most other 3rd person view games, left click attacks and right click dodges while in "Combat Mode" otherwise the mouse behaves normally outside of "Combat Mode". The macro also allows for the use of the scroll wheel to be mapped to weapon swap. On teleporting builds such as P/D you can watch opponents get dizzy trying to spin around and select me with a mouse. Even tab targeting sometimes gets confusing for them when there are multiple targets around.

So much this. They could roll thief back 5 years it would be SOOOO much better.

If you are running in a small group, you are going to do best with a glassier Guardian, Necro or Rev. Thief, Ranger, etc are good at solo roaming and such but aren't particularly good in group fights. You want a class that can snuggle with your Eles while pulling, blowing up, etc.

Players routinely misunderstand what balance is in PvP. Balance in the meta means access to meta builds and the ability to counter those builds. Players have access to all the current meta unlike other games where a lot of it is so gear/time dependent only certain players have access to certain builds. There are also counters for virtually every build in WvW. The meta in GW2 remains in a near constant state of balance because of its design. Just because a player chooses to ignore the meta and play something else doesn't make the game unbalanced. What people generally complain about is fairness or equality. Fairness that their class doesn't perform in XYZ scenario as well as others or that some meta isn't equal to others such as condition damage vs power. Different builds and classes aren't meant to perform well in every scenario. I don't take a thief into a zerg fight and call it unbalanced. As for something like condition meta vs power meta, there will always be some top dog build, class, damage, etc. It is inevitable. If they removed condi from the game, players would complain about some other XYZ thing being trash and unfair. If you are getting your kitten kicked by XYZ, counter it or use it but don't bring a knife to a gun fight and cry balance.

All you would see are thieves and rangers. Every other class would become almost unplayable.

Most players in MMOs have little interest in difficult direct competitive encounters which is why PvP in MMOs is generally lackluster. PvP players tend to want to play PvP based games with a relatively balanced meta and fast respawns. RPG PvP really isn't a major genre in the gaming industry.

IMO the easiest way is to head over to gw2stats, click on your server, scroll down to Income Evolution and you can see the patterns of when the server is climbing in "Income". This is your servers peak times. You can also click on other servers and see if their peak times correspond to your play times. This is a bad week to get consistent results using this method because WvW frequently drops in activity during major events.

I server hop to cheap linked servers all the time just to get new experiences with new players. I find that refreshing even after nearly 10k hours mostly in WvW. I suspect by now there are very few serious roamers that haven't fought with me and against me at some point over the years. That said, I am still waiting for a GW2 WvW replacement that is worth making the switch. Unfortunately it just hasn't happened. As for players spamming in chat, just block them. There are typically a half dozen jokers on every server and the game has a block function.