PvP/WvW Balance Patch - What Went Wrong Boys?

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 6, 2018

@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@"thatdarnkatz.7168"

I do believe you speak the truth... which is a quite unfortunate reality. Thank you for the explanation.

To be honest, I do wish there were at least some options given to the Thief to be less "frustrating/annoying" but more effective (at least in PvP). A lot of people complain about Stealth, but as you said, you felt frustration about S/D Thieves, so it seems that even when a Thief player chooses to play the extreme opposite playstyle, they still can't lose the reputation.

I used to love watching

Yishis' Thief videos

where he's completely outnumbered, but still extremely successful because he had so much game knowledge. I especially loved the commentary. But I do believe he stopped making them because the Thief changed so drastically.

For me personally, WvW is what drew me to the game. But being a newbie, I didn't know how to fight... so I would always look for a lone target. Unfortunately, it was quite rare for me to find, and it took so much time between fights, it felt like I would never get enough opportunity to improve. So I decided to try PvP since it was guaranteed to have a lot of combat. I've learned a lot there, and the intention was always to go back to WvW. However, with the HoT launch, there were so many changes and so much community disapproval of the changes, that the motivation to play it died out. Especially with me stuck as a Core Thief, being outclassed by elites that I couldn't even learn how they worked myself made it even more unmotivating.

Hopefully, I'll get remotivated to play WvW again. I must confess that I do enjoy the immediate, achievable goal in PvP (gain 500 points within 15 minutes) that is lacking in WvW. I just wish the Thief had more to do than run away from everyone in Conquest... and more combat ability than to +1.

Oddly enough, I seem to be finding more combat success running with the new Wizard amulet and slotting Thieves Guild... which is a far cry from the traditional Power/Crit Thief. But that's the state of the game today.

Who knows what will happen next? I am rather surprised they gave the Thief lethal long-range capability with Deadeye, though... especially with all the Stealth. It seems to be counterproductive to making the Thief less frustrating to fight. So Anet really does have me confuzzled.

To make matters worse for the thief, deadeye is pretty much easily killed by anyone that is smart enough to, you know, actually attack it. It fits the thief's main "intended" playstyle as far as what we can see their intentions may be. Thief is an annoyance, though if you are dumb, and ignore it, it's deadly. That fits the playstyle that thief currently has, and deadeye just adds range to that. Any time I see them, I laugh and destroy them, but when my team is afraid of them, they literally just sit in 1 spot all game, and control the point because they are ignored. I would argue that it's not a GREAT place for thief to be in, but that's where it fits with the design choices. That being said, if you have a group in WvW (on that topic since you brought it up) It brings amazing spikes to players that are distracted, and plays REALLY well when not roaming alone. It fits the assassination playstyle that I was looking for, but I have to bring friends (or randos much like sPvP) to get that jump on someone. To be honest here, we aren't really talking about thief as much anymore, but the +1 playstyle that the thief slots so brilliantly in, and other classes can do as well.

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 7, 2018

Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.

I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 7, 2018

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 7, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

No, just no. Everything you said is convoluting my completely reasonable statement. Think before you make posts.

I did not say anything about "shaving ALL of the damage". What needs to be done is shaving at least 10% of it's damage, temporarily.
The temporary damage shave is temporary, this is why I did not use the word "permanent" when describing the temporary shave.
When they go to create a proper patch, they can revert the "temporary" shave and restore the state that the Mesmer is in right now as of 4/7/2018. Then create a proper patch fixing flat mechanics.

But right now, the Mesmer needs a quick hot-fix nerf. The easiest nerf to do, would be to numerically reduce it's enormous clone attrition and shatter burst DPS. I'm sure this is something that could be done in a single day, around the arenanet office. There is absolutely no reason, in my opinion, why this has not been done yet, for the sake of the game.

It's that kind of brazen and elongated negligence that makes players leave Guild Wars 2.

witcher.3197 · April 7, 2018

@Rufo.3716 said:Could we just get a test server already and avoid this crap all together?

Why would that make a difference?

Anet did an open beta for HoT and 6 moths before release some players already said that bunker chrono would be broken, no changes were made, not even 2 months after release, and pro league was completely ruined by the build.

Then a month before PoF everyone was calling out spellbreaker and scourge as broken, do you know how many changes were made? 0

Test servers are one thing, caring about feedback is another

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 7, 2018

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

No, just no. Everything you said is convoluting my completely reasonable statement. Think before you make posts.

I did not say anything about "shaving ALL of the damage". What needs to be done is shaving at least 10% of it's damage, temporarily.
The temporary damage shave is temporary, this is why I did not use the word "permanent" when describing the temporary shave.
When they go to create a proper patch, they can revert the "temporary" shave and restore the state that the Mesmer is in right now as of 4/7/2018. Then create a proper patch fixing flat mechanics.

But right now, the Mesmer needs a quick hot-fix nerf. The easiest nerf to do, would be to numerically reduce it's enormous clone attrition and shatter burst DPS. I'm sure this is something that could be done in a single day, around the arenanet office. There is absolutely no reason, in my opinion, why this has not been done yet, for the sake of the game.

So the things that would not make that as easy as some would think would be, and these are just a few examples, players would complain when the mesmer got "buffed" when they do the revert. Yeah, seriously, players don't seem to understand how balance works, not that I expect you to. Second is to find reasonable nerfs that would PROPERLY hit the mesmer. Blindly hitting all of the skills will make mesmer not playable at all minus maybe one or two builds, and those are the ones that people complain about. Another big issue here isn't so much the damage as much as you seem to think that it is. I get topped easily in DPS and total damage charts when with other skilled players. Having the insane spam of crap on the screen, being able to taunt and then they have to play "find the mesmer" and other gimmicks make it too strong, not so much the damage. Yes, sometimes skills hit hard, and maybe too hard, but it's the insane sustain from the good mesmers currently that really puts them over the top. No damage reduction will fix the actual problems. That's how they have been trying to fix thief. It's not fun to play against, so the nerf it into the ground until there are many less of them, then the complaining stops. If that's what we keep getting (and obviously we aren't) then I'd have to finda . new game. That sort of blind balance is not good for the game, and it seems like they are, at least for the most part, going in a better direction. You'll have people scream "This thing OP" every season, and it might be, but there's literally always something OP. You'll never get perfect balance, and someone will always complain. Instead of complaining here, I'll give you some suggestions.

Play a mesmer if it's so OP. Seriously. When you think something is OP, go play it. It's obviously great, so go enjoy it.
Don't play sPvP right now if you don't like the balance. No one is forcing you to play. Spend your time achievement hunting or whatever it is you all do when you aren't (see next number)
Go learn how to counter them. Seriously, nothing is unbeatable. A great thief can counter most mesmers as steal gives you literally every boon. I kill a lot of mesmers on thief. Not that there aren't other counters. One of the staff builds I've seen running around is destroyed by condition damage. Maybe try that. I'm not here to give you the answers, but at LEAST try to give it an honest shot. How do you plan on winning if you aren't going to get better?

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 7, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

No, just no. Everything you said is convoluting my completely reasonable statement. Think before you make posts.

I did not say anything about "shaving ALL of the damage". What needs to be done is shaving at least 10% of it's damage, temporarily.
The temporary damage shave is temporary, this is why I did not use the word "permanent" when describing the temporary shave.
When they go to create a proper patch, they can revert the "temporary" shave and restore the state that the Mesmer is in right now as of 4/7/2018. Then create a proper patch fixing flat mechanics.

But right now, the Mesmer needs a quick hot-fix nerf. The easiest nerf to do, would be to numerically reduce it's enormous clone attrition and shatter burst DPS. I'm sure this is something that could be done in a single day, around the arenanet office. There is absolutely no reason, in my opinion, why this has not been done yet, for the sake of the game.

So the things that would not make that as easy as some would think would be, and these are just a few examples, players would complain when the mesmer got "buffed" when they do the revert. Yeah, seriously, players don't seem to understand how balance works, not that I expect you to. Second is to find reasonable nerfs that would PROPERLY hit the mesmer. Blindly hitting all of the skills will make mesmer not playable at all minus maybe one or two builds, and those are the ones that people complain about. Another big issue here isn't so much the damage as much as you seem to think that it is. I get topped easily in DPS and total damage charts when with other skilled players. Having the insane spam of crap on the screen, being able to taunt and then they have to play "find the mesmer" and other gimmicks make it too strong, not so much the damage. Yes, sometimes skills hit hard, and maybe too hard, but it's the insane sustain from the good mesmers currently that really puts them over the top. No damage reduction will fix the actual problems. That's how they have been trying to fix thief. It's not fun to play against, so the nerf it into the ground until there are many less of them, then the complaining stops. If that's what we keep getting (and obviously we aren't) then I'd have to finda . new game. That sort of blind balance is not good for the game, and it seems like they are, at least for the most part, going in a better direction. You'll have people scream "This thing OP" every season, and it might be, but there's literally always something OP. You'll never get perfect balance, and someone will always complain. Instead of complaining here, I'll give you some suggestions.

Play a mesmer if it's so OP. Seriously. When you think something is OP, go play it. It's obviously great, so go enjoy it.
Don't play sPvP right now if you don't like the balance. No one is forcing you to play. Spend your time achievement hunting or whatever it is you all do when you aren't (see next number)
Go learn how to counter them. Seriously, nothing is unbeatable. A great thief can counter most mesmers as steal gives you literally every boon. I kill a lot of mesmers on thief. Not that there aren't other counters. One of the staff builds I've seen running around is destroyed by condition damage. Maybe try that. I'm not here to give you the answers, but at LEAST try to give it an honest shot. How do you plan on winning if you aren't going to get better?

No

It's that exact mentality right there, that has rendered Guild Wars 2 in a ridiculously awkward state of balance for 6 years now and it is only getting worse. Furthermore, top damage stat has nothing to do with how much damage a character is dealing. Here is one example: Two different 1v1s are happening on two different nodes. On one node there is a Red Bunker Druid against a Blue Firebrand Support who are constantly hitting each other and face tanking damage. One the other node there is a Red Mesmer against a Blue Deadeye who are stealthing, LoSing, invuling, blocking, evading, ect.. ect.. each other's damage to avoid the instant kill bursts. Each 1v1 goes on for 3 minutes until the Red Bunker Druid finally catches the Blue Firebrand with a CC chain to down him and the Red Mesmer finally catches the Blue Deadeye "who has remained relatively unscathed the entire 3 minutes" with a 15k shatter burst and downs the Thief. Who do you think dealt more damage to their opponent during that 3 minutes? The Red Bunker Druid or the Red Mesmer? Oh top damage stat is definitely going to Red Bunker Druid. Does Druid deal as much damage as a Mesmer? Hell no.

In response to your 1, 2 & 3:

I don't like playing Mesmer in the same way that I don't like playing Ryu, so I never select it. Besides that, telling me to just "go play Mesmer" is a cop-out response. It distracts from the issue at hand, which is bad intra-class balance and does nothing but encourage the idea for programmers, that it is OK to leave a game in a poor state of balance. We want them to fix the problem, not shove it to the side as a low priority.
Don't play spvp right now? Go do something else or whatever it is we do when we aren't spvping? That's the 2nd time you've stated some separation between us and you. Are you a developer on an alt or something? Regardless, that is another cop-out response that points the finger in the direction of deviating from the problem, instead of fixing it. Upon that, I already quit Guild Wars 2 about two weeks ago.
So let's say there was a high school state soccer tournament and one of the teams had brought in some full grown man from Brazil who was a semi-pro player who was short enough and young enough looking to fit in and hide amongst the high school kids. All the parents and all of the coaches knew something was wrong with it when they could clearly see how much more powerful of a player he was than any of the high school kids. But rather than get to the bottom of the problem, they decide to just tell the kids to try harder and even go as far as to find more short semi-pro soccer playing Brazilian men to join and participate in other teams because it was an OP thing to do and it felt great. Yeah... that's not balance.

No balance will be achieved with that type of attitude.

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 7, 2018

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

No, just no. Everything you said is convoluting my completely reasonable statement. Think before you make posts.

I did not say anything about "shaving ALL of the damage". What needs to be done is shaving at least 10% of it's damage, temporarily.
The temporary damage shave is temporary, this is why I did not use the word "permanent" when describing the temporary shave.
When they go to create a proper patch, they can revert the "temporary" shave and restore the state that the Mesmer is in right now as of 4/7/2018. Then create a proper patch fixing flat mechanics.

But right now, the Mesmer needs a quick hot-fix nerf. The easiest nerf to do, would be to numerically reduce it's enormous clone attrition and shatter burst DPS. I'm sure this is something that could be done in a single day, around the arenanet office. There is absolutely no reason, in my opinion, why this has not been done yet, for the sake of the game.

So the things that would not make that as easy as some would think would be, and these are just a few examples, players would complain when the mesmer got "buffed" when they do the revert. Yeah, seriously, players don't seem to understand how balance works, not that I expect you to. Second is to find reasonable nerfs that would PROPERLY hit the mesmer. Blindly hitting all of the skills will make mesmer not playable at all minus maybe one or two builds, and those are the ones that people complain about. Another big issue here isn't so much the damage as much as you seem to think that it is. I get topped easily in DPS and total damage charts when with other skilled players. Having the insane spam of crap on the screen, being able to taunt and then they have to play "find the mesmer" and other gimmicks make it too strong, not so much the damage. Yes, sometimes skills hit hard, and maybe too hard, but it's the insane sustain from the good mesmers currently that really puts them over the top. No damage reduction will fix the actual problems. That's how they have been trying to fix thief. It's not fun to play against, so the nerf it into the ground until there are many less of them, then the complaining stops. If that's what we keep getting (and obviously we aren't) then I'd have to finda . new game. That sort of blind balance is not good for the game, and it seems like they are, at least for the most part, going in a better direction. You'll have people scream "This thing OP" every season, and it might be, but there's literally always something OP. You'll never get perfect balance, and someone will always complain. Instead of complaining here, I'll give you some suggestions.

Play a mesmer if it's so OP. Seriously. When you think something is OP, go play it. It's obviously great, so go enjoy it.
Don't play sPvP right now if you don't like the balance. No one is forcing you to play. Spend your time achievement hunting or whatever it is you all do when you aren't (see next number)
Go learn how to counter them. Seriously, nothing is unbeatable. A great thief can counter most mesmers as steal gives you literally every boon. I kill a lot of mesmers on thief. Not that there aren't other counters. One of the staff builds I've seen running around is destroyed by condition damage. Maybe try that. I'm not here to give you the answers, but at LEAST try to give it an honest shot. How do you plan on winning if you aren't going to get better?

No

It's that exact mentality right there, that has rendered Guild Wars 2 in a ridiculously awkward state of balance for 6 years now

and it is only getting worse.

Furthermore, top damage stat has nothing to do with how much damage a character is dealing. Here is one example: Two different 1v1s are happening on two different nodes. On one node there is a Red Bunker Druid against a Blue Firebrand Support who are constantly hitting each other and face tanking damage. One the other node there is a Red Mesmer against a Blue Deadeye who are stealthing, LoSing, invuling, blocking, evading, ect.. ect.. each other's damage to avoid the instant kill bursts. Each 1v1 goes on for 3 minutes until the Red Bunker Druid finally catches the Blue Firebrand with a CC chain to down him and the Red Mesmer finally catches the Blue Deadeye "who has remained relatively unscathed the entire 3 minutes" with a 15k shatter burst and downs the Thief. Who do you think dealt more damage to their opponent during that 3 minutes? The Red Bunker Druid or the Red Mesmer? Oh top damage stat is definitely going to Red Bunker Druid. Does Druid deal as much damage as a Mesmer? Hell no.

In response to your 1, 2 & 3:

I don't like playing Mesmer in the same way that I don't like playing Ryu, so I never select it. Besides that, telling me to just "go play Mesmer" is a cop-out response. It distracts from the issue at hand, which is bad intra-class balance and does nothing but encourage the idea for programmers, that it is OK to leave a game in a poor state of balance. We want them to fix the problem, not shove it to the side as a low priority.
Don't play spvp right now? Go do something else or whatever it is we do when we aren't spvping? That's the 2nd time you've stated some separation between us and you. Are you a developer on an alt or something? Regardless, that is another cop-out response that points the finger in the direction of deviating from the problem, instead of fixing it. Upon that, I already quit Guild Wars 2 about two weeks ago.
So let's say there was a high school state soccer tournament and one of the teams had brought in some full grown man from Brazil who was a semi-pro player who was short enough and young enough looking to fit in and hide amongst the high school kids. All the parents and all of the coaches knew something was wrong with it when they could clearly see how much more powerful of a player he was than any of the high school kids. But rather than get to the bottom of the problem, they decide to just tell the kids to try harder and even go as far as to find more short semi-pro soccer playing Brazilian men to join and participate in other teams because it was an OP thing to do and it felt great. Yeah... that's not balance.

No balance will be achieved with that type of attitude.

That's your problem. Being stubborn and not wanting to try something is a player problem, not a balance problem. Until you learn that, there's no help for you. Learning it at least teaches you counters.
Am I a developer on this game? No, in fact, I am not. I do have prior experience in the field though on a balance team, so thank you for noticing that I'm experienced at this. As for you quitting two weeks ago, I appreciate you taking your valuable time to come try to help out a game on it's forums that you haven't watched the massive changes going into for the past 2 weeks, new builds sprouting up, and a vast variety of real new competition thanks to this meta shift had on the game.
I never said that mesmer was balanced, or that it shouldn't be brought into line. But you do fail to realize that there are definitely counters to it. I have been bested by other skilled players that have learned how my build works because we sat down, had some duals, actually chatted about how my build worked, and they eventually beat me sometimes. Not every time, I'm not unskilled completely, however they went from not touching me to a few downs, and at the very least, pushing me off point for a bit. Both are wins in sPvP where it's not always about kills, but controlling points.

Mesmer and thief are classes that are built on deception and confusion. I have seen these posts over and over, regardless of the balance. Until you learn how they work, it doesn't matter how strong they are, or how hard you nerf them. Thieves still jump people because they see damage and panic, then do some dumb things and just die. Rifle thieves hit them for half of their health and instead of going to attack, they run away scared and get shot in the back for an easy kill, leaving the thief unchecked. Mesmers are now hiding in batches of illusions and clones and are hard to spot. A simple learning of taking a target, and recalling to it when needed makes this a lot easier as the number one complaint build now (other than the one shot build, which got nerfed to a fair level) has no stealth, and the target will stay. Condi is a massive counter to many of the Chrono builds that are the ones hitting harder. There are plays to be made, but if you just complain, and in your case give up because it's "too hard" and quit, then I don't see why we should care what you think about balance honestly. Had you actually tried, had you found some counters, had you shared that information for others to learn from, I may care. But instead, your post can be summed up as "Mesmer OP, I can't easily win, had to quit because balance is bad."

I used to complain about spellbreaker being unkillable. They aren't unkillable, but seem to appear that way, and learned to find when I could attack. Thief used to scare me because I never knew where they were, and had so many teleports. I learned thief, and predict steal now, and know what's likely to follow some attacks. I used to think scourge was just too insane, then learned to deal with them from range, or how to dodge their shades (Yes, they were broken, and a fix came in), but even before that patch that they gave them a cast time, I still didn't just roll over and die. I worked on how to counter them. Yeah, they hit like a truck, and it wasn't easy, but trying SOMETHING is better than complaining and quitting, though that seemed to work well for you. If you do come back, I seriously hope you can learn something from my responses even if you won't admit it as admitting that you are wrong is something that most don't have the ability to do, and that's fine. I post here not because I care about your response, or opinion, but to let anyone reading this that there's options other than complaining and giving up.

omgdracula.6345 · April 7, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo, it's not a huge deal. That being said, I feel that I retain a lot of my effectiveness in +1 situations which is where a thief does it's best work (other than decaps/harass of course, but that's mostly shortbow as you said).

While it is all about perspective, this is exactly the problem from my perspective. The Thief is still relegated to decap, harass, and +1 as usual.

Some Thieves want more abilities to support teammates in team fights.Other Thieves want more ability to ambush/assassinate/duel isolated targets.I don't really hear much about Thieves wanting multi-target destructive capability.

Mobility/Stealth is balanced by lack of normal defenses and mitigation.Glassiness should be balanced with combat potential. Single-target damage is fitting for the Thief.

Again...

Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo

That statement is based on today's game. And just as every patch proves, the game can and does change.The Thief

should

only take on very few fights solo because the current Thief

can

only succeed in very few solo fights.However, that can (and, in my opinion, should) change.

With a single patch, the statement could change so that a Thief

should always

engage in a solo fight whenever possible.I don't believe anybody is looking for that extreme of a change. I believe a fairer statement would be when you can say the following...A Thief

should never

fight in an

outnumbered

fight.

So while I would love to agree with you, it's very hard to. A thief by design has it's defenses from mobility (keeping them off point) and stealth (no point cap contribution). Asking for more power just leads to insane damage when in a +1 situation (Read into the mesmer, though of course, that has other problems). This was very similar to the Fresh air elementalist. It hit hard (much like a thief) but had problems standing on point (much like a thief). The balance was that they could hit from range, and a thief could escape much easier, not giving them 5 points and a respawn timer. It's a matter of role. While many consider it unfair that the thief is relegated to these roles, I want to ask why you play a thief. That's literally what it was built for, and I have to ask why you want it to do things it wasn't built for when there are other classes that could suit that playstyle much better. I multi class, because I like to fit different roles. Node holders, I personally like either sword ele, or mesmer, for +1 I would take fresh air ele or thief, for a tanking or support role, I would take a firebrand or scourge. The problem lies within the fact that some want their class to be able to do any role, and I don't see why. We have the mesmer which can already fill too many roles, and people are screaming about that, and they should. Instead of asking for every class to be what the mesmer is, you should learn some new classes if you don't like the roles that they are built for. It's good for the game for me to see a thief and know that I'm in for a hard dit if they get to me, and if they started hitting like a wet noodle but tanked, I'd have to be asking why a different class didn't fill that role, which could be done better. Classes should feel different or we have just a bland arbitrary choice when we are choosing a class.

When will people stop thinking thieves have super easy access to stealth? We honestly really don't. S/D had 0 stealth. D/P had decent stealth until the camera angle change not affecting heartseeker anymore. So the only skill that gives us stealth without using initiative is blinding powder/refuge if either of those are taken in the build being ran. Other than that we sacrifice being able to deal damage since we have to use initiative with combo fields. Which leaves us to using auto attacks more often, but those got nerfed.

So please stop thinking we have super easy access to stealth and that thief didn't get hit that hard this patch. We did.

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 7, 2018

@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo, it's not a huge deal. That being said, I feel that I retain a lot of my effectiveness in +1 situations which is where a thief does it's best work (other than decaps/harass of course, but that's mostly shortbow as you said).

While it is all about perspective, this is exactly the problem from my perspective. The Thief is still relegated to decap, harass, and +1 as usual.

Some Thieves want more abilities to support teammates in team fights.Other Thieves want more ability to ambush/assassinate/duel isolated targets.I don't really hear much about Thieves wanting multi-target destructive capability.

Mobility/Stealth is balanced by lack of normal defenses and mitigation.Glassiness should be balanced with combat potential. Single-target damage is fitting for the Thief.

Again...

Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo

That statement is based on today's game. And just as every patch proves, the game can and does change.The Thief

should

only take on very few fights solo because the current Thief

can

only succeed in very few solo fights.However, that can (and, in my opinion, should) change.

With a single patch, the statement could change so that a Thief

should always

engage in a solo fight whenever possible.I don't believe anybody is looking for that extreme of a change. I believe a fairer statement would be when you can say the following...A Thief

should never

fight in an

outnumbered

fight.

So while I would love to agree with you, it's very hard to. A thief by design has it's defenses from mobility (keeping them off point) and stealth (no point cap contribution). Asking for more power just leads to insane damage when in a +1 situation (Read into the mesmer, though of course, that has other problems). This was very similar to the Fresh air elementalist. It hit hard (much like a thief) but had problems standing on point (much like a thief). The balance was that they could hit from range, and a thief could escape much easier, not giving them 5 points and a respawn timer. It's a matter of role. While many consider it unfair that the thief is relegated to these roles, I want to ask why you play a thief. That's literally what it was built for, and I have to ask why you want it to do things it wasn't built for when there are other classes that could suit that playstyle much better. I multi class, because I like to fit different roles. Node holders, I personally like either sword ele, or mesmer, for +1 I would take fresh air ele or thief, for a tanking or support role, I would take a firebrand or scourge. The problem lies within the fact that some want their class to be able to do any role, and I don't see why. We have the mesmer which can already fill too many roles, and people are screaming about that, and they should. Instead of asking for every class to be what the mesmer is, you should learn some new classes if you don't like the roles that they are built for. It's good for the game for me to see a thief and know that I'm in for a hard dit if they get to me, and if they started hitting like a wet noodle but tanked, I'd have to be asking why a different class didn't fill that role, which could be done better. Classes should feel different or we have just a bland arbitrary choice when we are choosing a class.

When will people stop thinking thieves have super easy access to stealth? We honestly really don't. S/D had 0 stealth. D/P had decent stealth until the camera angle change not affecting heartseeker anymore. So the only skill that gives us stealth without using initiative is blinding powder/refuge if either of those are taken in the build being ran. Other than that we sacrifice being able to deal damage since we have to use initiative with combo fields. Which leaves us to using auto attacks more often, but those got nerfed.

So please stop thinking we have super easy access to stealth and that thief didn't get hit that hard this patch. We did.

Ok, please think a little more before responding to me at least. S/D thief has no access to stealth? I mean, I personally bind cloak and dagger, but maybe you don't? Additionally, this build has insane mobility for it's survivability with roll for initiative, withdraw, and sword 2 to move out of attacks when you know how to use it. AS for D/P thief, I still have no issue getting stealth even after the change. Maybe you could use a bit of practice? I actually play thief, and if you look at some of the top players right now, there are several thieves, so you can say you got "hit hard", but people with skill are still doing well on a thief.

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 8, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Mesmer just needs a quick fix damage shave.
I don't want to hear any of this "they don't have what they need to correctly fix Mesmer", that's a cop-out response/excuse. No reason why they can't hot-fix in a temporary damage shave now and then work on a proper patch later.

So if they shave all of the damage now, then decide to do something like limit clones to 3, then the mesmer would be overly crippled and underpowered. Things need corrected, not just lazily throwing things at it. If you break your arm, you don't put a band-aid on it because it is technically better than nothing. You go get your arm fixed and don't waste time looking for band-aids. Let's not waste their time to throw things at it, just for them to probably have to undo their work later.

No, just no. Everything you said is convoluting my completely reasonable statement. Think before you make posts.

I did not say anything about "shaving ALL of the damage". What needs to be done is shaving at least 10% of it's damage, temporarily.
The temporary damage shave is temporary, this is why I did not use the word "permanent" when describing the temporary shave.
When they go to create a proper patch, they can revert the "temporary" shave and restore the state that the Mesmer is in right now as of 4/7/2018. Then create a proper patch fixing flat mechanics.

But right now, the Mesmer needs a quick hot-fix nerf. The easiest nerf to do, would be to numerically reduce it's enormous clone attrition and shatter burst DPS. I'm sure this is something that could be done in a single day, around the arenanet office. There is absolutely no reason, in my opinion, why this has not been done yet, for the sake of the game.

So the things that would not make that as easy as some would think would be, and these are just a few examples, players would complain when the mesmer got "buffed" when they do the revert. Yeah, seriously, players don't seem to understand how balance works, not that I expect you to. Second is to find reasonable nerfs that would PROPERLY hit the mesmer. Blindly hitting all of the skills will make mesmer not playable at all minus maybe one or two builds, and those are the ones that people complain about. Another big issue here isn't so much the damage as much as you seem to think that it is. I get topped easily in DPS and total damage charts when with other skilled players. Having the insane spam of crap on the screen, being able to taunt and then they have to play "find the mesmer" and other gimmicks make it too strong, not so much the damage. Yes, sometimes skills hit hard, and maybe too hard, but it's the insane sustain from the good mesmers currently that really puts them over the top. No damage reduction will fix the actual problems. That's how they have been trying to fix thief. It's not fun to play against, so the nerf it into the ground until there are many less of them, then the complaining stops. If that's what we keep getting (and obviously we aren't) then I'd have to finda . new game. That sort of blind balance is not good for the game, and it seems like they are, at least for the most part, going in a better direction. You'll have people scream "This thing OP" every season, and it might be, but there's literally always something OP. You'll never get perfect balance, and someone will always complain. Instead of complaining here, I'll give you some suggestions.

Play a mesmer if it's so OP. Seriously. When you think something is OP, go play it. It's obviously great, so go enjoy it.
Don't play sPvP right now if you don't like the balance. No one is forcing you to play. Spend your time achievement hunting or whatever it is you all do when you aren't (see next number)
Go learn how to counter them. Seriously, nothing is unbeatable. A great thief can counter most mesmers as steal gives you literally every boon. I kill a lot of mesmers on thief. Not that there aren't other counters. One of the staff builds I've seen running around is destroyed by condition damage. Maybe try that. I'm not here to give you the answers, but at LEAST try to give it an honest shot. How do you plan on winning if you aren't going to get better?

No

It's that exact mentality right there, that has rendered Guild Wars 2 in a ridiculously awkward state of balance for 6 years now

and it is only getting worse.

Furthermore, top damage stat has nothing to do with how much damage a character is dealing. Here is one example: Two different 1v1s are happening on two different nodes. On one node there is a Red Bunker Druid against a Blue Firebrand Support who are constantly hitting each other and face tanking damage. One the other node there is a Red Mesmer against a Blue Deadeye who are stealthing, LoSing, invuling, blocking, evading, ect.. ect.. each other's damage to avoid the instant kill bursts. Each 1v1 goes on for 3 minutes until the Red Bunker Druid finally catches the Blue Firebrand with a CC chain to down him and the Red Mesmer finally catches the Blue Deadeye "who has remained relatively unscathed the entire 3 minutes" with a 15k shatter burst and downs the Thief. Who do you think dealt more damage to their opponent during that 3 minutes? The Red Bunker Druid or the Red Mesmer? Oh top damage stat is definitely going to Red Bunker Druid. Does Druid deal as much damage as a Mesmer? Hell no.

In response to your 1, 2 & 3:

I don't like playing Mesmer in the same way that I don't like playing Ryu, so I never select it. Besides that, telling me to just "go play Mesmer" is a cop-out response. It distracts from the issue at hand, which is bad intra-class balance and does nothing but encourage the idea for programmers, that it is OK to leave a game in a poor state of balance. We want them to fix the problem, not shove it to the side as a low priority.
Don't play spvp right now? Go do something else or whatever it is we do when we aren't spvping? That's the 2nd time you've stated some separation between us and you. Are you a developer on an alt or something? Regardless, that is another cop-out response that points the finger in the direction of deviating from the problem, instead of fixing it. Upon that, I already quit Guild Wars 2 about two weeks ago.
So let's say there was a high school state soccer tournament and one of the teams had brought in some full grown man from Brazil who was a semi-pro player who was short enough and young enough looking to fit in and hide amongst the high school kids. All the parents and all of the coaches knew something was wrong with it when they could clearly see how much more powerful of a player he was than any of the high school kids. But rather than get to the bottom of the problem, they decide to just tell the kids to try harder and even go as far as to find more short semi-pro soccer playing Brazilian men to join and participate in other teams because it was an OP thing to do and it felt great. Yeah... that's not balance.

No balance will be achieved with that type of attitude.

That's your problem. Being stubborn and not wanting to try something is a player problem, not a balance problem. Until you learn that, there's no help for you. Learning it at least teaches you counters.
Am I a developer on this game? No, in fact, I am not. I do have prior experience in the field though on a balance team, so thank you for noticing that I'm experienced at this. As for you quitting two weeks ago, I appreciate you taking your valuable time to come try to help out a game on it's forums that you haven't watched the massive changes going into for the past 2 weeks, new builds sprouting up, and a vast variety of real new competition thanks to this meta shift had on the game.
I never said that mesmer was balanced, or that it shouldn't be brought into line. But you do fail to realize that there are definitely counters to it. I have been bested by other skilled players that have learned how my build works because we sat down, had some duals, actually chatted about how my build worked, and they eventually beat me sometimes. Not every time, I'm not unskilled completely, however they went from not touching me to a few downs, and at the very least, pushing me off point for a bit. Both are wins in sPvP where it's not always about kills, but controlling points.

Mesmer and thief are classes that are built on deception and confusion. I have seen these posts over and over, regardless of the balance. Until you learn how they work, it doesn't matter how strong they are, or how hard you nerf them. Thieves still jump people because they see damage and panic, then do some dumb things and just die. Rifle thieves hit them for half of their health and instead of going to attack, they run away scared and get shot in the back for an easy kill, leaving the thief unchecked. Mesmers are now hiding in batches of illusions and clones and are hard to spot. A simple learning of taking a target, and recalling to it when needed makes this a lot easier as the number one complaint build now (other than the one shot build, which got nerfed to a fair level) has no stealth, and the target will stay. Condi is a massive counter to many of the Chrono builds that are the ones hitting harder. There are plays to be made, but if you just complain, and in your case give up because it's "too hard" and quit, then I don't see why we should care what you think about balance honestly. Had you actually tried, had you found some counters, had you shared that information for others to learn from, I may care. But instead, your post can be summed up as "Mesmer OP, I can't easily win, had to quit because balance is bad."

I used to complain about spellbreaker being unkillable. They aren't unkillable, but seem to appear that way, and learned to find when I could attack. Thief used to scare me because I never knew where they were, and had so many teleports. I learned thief, and predict steal now, and know what's likely to follow some attacks. I used to think scourge was just too insane, then learned to deal with them from range, or how to dodge their shades (Yes, they were broken, and a fix came in), but even before that patch that they gave them a cast time, I still didn't just roll over and die. I worked on how to counter them. Yeah, they hit like a truck, and it wasn't easy, but trying SOMETHING is better than complaining and quitting, though that seemed to work well for you. If you do come back, I seriously hope you can learn something from my responses even if you won't admit it as admitting that you are wrong is something that most don't have the ability to do, and that's fine. I post here not because I care about your response, or opinion, but to let anyone reading this that there's options other than complaining and giving up.

Every time I see postings like this, the lyrics of the "silver & gold" song pop into my head for some reason.

Here it is:

bLind.6278 · April 8, 2018

@Rufo.3716 said:Could we just get a test server already and avoid this crap all together?

They'd just ignore it. 100%

omgdracula.6345 · April 8, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo, it's not a huge deal. That being said, I feel that I retain a lot of my effectiveness in +1 situations which is where a thief does it's best work (other than decaps/harass of course, but that's mostly shortbow as you said).

While it is all about perspective, this is exactly the problem from my perspective. The Thief is still relegated to decap, harass, and +1 as usual.

Some Thieves want more abilities to support teammates in team fights.Other Thieves want more ability to ambush/assassinate/duel isolated targets.I don't really hear much about Thieves wanting multi-target destructive capability.

Mobility/Stealth is balanced by lack of normal defenses and mitigation.Glassiness should be balanced with combat potential. Single-target damage is fitting for the Thief.

Again...

Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo

That statement is based on today's game. And just as every patch proves, the game can and does change.The Thief

should

only take on very few fights solo because the current Thief

can

only succeed in very few solo fights.However, that can (and, in my opinion, should) change.

With a single patch, the statement could change so that a Thief

should always

engage in a solo fight whenever possible.I don't believe anybody is looking for that extreme of a change. I believe a fairer statement would be when you can say the following...A Thief

should never

fight in an

outnumbered

fight.

So while I would love to agree with you, it's very hard to. A thief by design has it's defenses from mobility (keeping them off point) and stealth (no point cap contribution). Asking for more power just leads to insane damage when in a +1 situation (Read into the mesmer, though of course, that has other problems). This was very similar to the Fresh air elementalist. It hit hard (much like a thief) but had problems standing on point (much like a thief). The balance was that they could hit from range, and a thief could escape much easier, not giving them 5 points and a respawn timer. It's a matter of role. While many consider it unfair that the thief is relegated to these roles, I want to ask why you play a thief. That's literally what it was built for, and I have to ask why you want it to do things it wasn't built for when there are other classes that could suit that playstyle much better. I multi class, because I like to fit different roles. Node holders, I personally like either sword ele, or mesmer, for +1 I would take fresh air ele or thief, for a tanking or support role, I would take a firebrand or scourge. The problem lies within the fact that some want their class to be able to do any role, and I don't see why. We have the mesmer which can already fill too many roles, and people are screaming about that, and they should. Instead of asking for every class to be what the mesmer is, you should learn some new classes if you don't like the roles that they are built for. It's good for the game for me to see a thief and know that I'm in for a hard dit if they get to me, and if they started hitting like a wet noodle but tanked, I'd have to be asking why a different class didn't fill that role, which could be done better. Classes should feel different or we have just a bland arbitrary choice when we are choosing a class.

When will people stop thinking thieves have super easy access to stealth? We honestly really don't. S/D had 0 stealth. D/P had decent stealth until the camera angle change not affecting heartseeker anymore. So the only skill that gives us stealth without using initiative is blinding powder/refuge if either of those are taken in the build being ran. Other than that we sacrifice being able to deal damage since we have to use initiative with combo fields. Which leaves us to using auto attacks more often, but those got nerfed.

So please stop thinking we have super easy access to stealth and that thief didn't get hit that hard this patch. We did.

Ok, please think a little more before responding to me at least. S/D thief has no access to stealth? I mean, I personally bind cloak and dagger, but maybe you don't? Additionally, this build has insane mobility for it's survivability with roll for initiative, withdraw, and sword 2 to move out of attacks when you know how to use it. AS for D/P thief, I still have no issue getting stealth even after the change. Maybe you could use a bit of practice? I actually play thief, and if you look at some of the top players right now, there are several thieves, so you can say you got "hit hard", but people with skill are still doing well on a thief.

Cloak and Dagger is the most unreliable fucking skills for access to stealth. You're also not going to waste the initiative on it. You should also re read what my main point was. Mesmer has super easy access to stealth as where thief has to actively use initiative and sacrifice skill usage for it. Which in turn results in the first two auto attack nerfs affecting us more. We actively have to give up damage in return for stealth.

Hell Black Powder and 1 Heartseeker are 9 initiative, and if you go for two that is pretty much your entire pool.

That was my point. You act like I said we have 0 stealth. If you go back and read I said we have no easy access to stealth as we have to give up skill usage to gain it. S/D cloak and dagger is unreliable as shit due to it being blockable.

Kageseigi.2150 · April 8, 2018

@omgdracula.6345 said:Cloak and Dagger is the most unreliable kitten skills for access to stealth. You're also not going to waste the initiative on it. You should also re read what my main point was. Mesmer has super easy access to stealth as where thief has to actively use initiative and sacrifice skill usage for it. Which in turn results in the first two auto attack nerfs affecting us more. We actively have to give up damage in return for stealth.
Hell Black Powder and 1 Heartseeker are 9 initiative, and if you go for two that is pretty much your entire pool.
That was my point. You act like I said we have 0 stealth. If you go back and read I said we have no easy access to stealth as we have to give up skill usage to gain it. S/D cloak and dagger is unreliable as kitten due to it being blockable.

Pretty much this.

Cloak and Dagger is unreliable and quite unwise to use when going up against AoE-heavy specs like Scourge.
Stealth (especially BP+HS combo) being so initiative heavy along with the AA nerf pushes the Thief even more into taking Trickery.
Core Thief really is lacking combat-effective Stealth. D/P is too initiative heavy. D/D has no inherent teleport to even land a CnD. P/D is a ranged set, but requiring a melee attack. P/P has no Stealth at all without getting locked into Shortbow for 10 seconds. S/D is the only one that even seems decently built for sustained combat-Stealth (reliability and cost-effective), yet it also requires a successful melee strike which is not guaranteed even on a stationary target.

Perhaps if CnD was a very quick 2-strike attack. The first does damage and applies Vulnerability. The second is unblockable and grants Stealth. Similar to how Shadow Shot's projectile (Blind/Teleport) is unblockable, but the dagger attack is blockable.

Personally, I wish Blinding Powder (or even something similar without the Blind/Blast) were an F3 function for the Thief. Perhaps 3-seconds of Stealth on a 20-second cooldown. Maybe give the Thief incentive to use it offensively, so if a Stealth Attack is successful, and the F3 is on cooldown, then reduce the cooldown by 10 seconds. The Thief still has to deal with 3-4 seconds of being Revealed.

omgdracula.6345 · April 8, 2018

@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:Cloak and Dagger is the most unreliable kitten skills for access to stealth. You're also not going to waste the initiative on it. You should also re read what my main point was. Mesmer has super easy access to stealth as where thief has to actively use initiative and sacrifice skill usage for it. Which in turn results in the first two auto attack nerfs affecting us more. We actively have to give up damage in return for stealth.
Hell Black Powder and 1 Heartseeker are 9 initiative, and if you go for two that is pretty much your entire pool.
That was my point. You act like I said we have 0 stealth. If you go back and read I said we have no easy access to stealth as we have to give up skill usage to gain it. S/D cloak and dagger is unreliable as kitten due to it being blockable.

Pretty much this.

Cloak and Dagger is unreliable and quite unwise to use when going up against AoE-heavy specs like Scourge.
Stealth (especially BP+HS combo) being so initiative heavy along with the AA nerf pushes the Thief even more into taking Trickery.
Core Thief really is lacking combat-effective Stealth. D/P is too initiative heavy. D/D has no inherent teleport to even land a CnD. P/D is a ranged set, but requiring a melee attack. P/P has no Stealth at all without getting locked into Shortbow for 10 seconds. S/D is the only one that even seems decently built for sustained combat-Stealth (reliability and cost-effective), yet it also requires a successful melee strike which is not guaranteed even on a stationary target.

Perhaps if CnD was a very quick 2-strike attack. The first does damage and applies Vulnerability. The second is unblockable and grants Stealth. Similar to how Shadow Shot's projectile (Blind/Teleport) is unblockable, but the dagger attack is blockable.

Personally, I wish Blinding Powder (or even something similar without the Blind/Blast) were an F3 function for the Thief. Perhaps 3-seconds of Stealth on a 20-second cooldown. Maybe give the Thief incentive to use it offensively, so if a Stealth Attack is successful, and the F3 is on cooldown, then reduce the cooldown by 10 seconds. The Thief still has to deal with 3-4 seconds of being Revealed.

I like that idea of giving us another F Skill for sure.

Kageseigi.2150 · April 8, 2018

@omgdracula.6345 said:I like that idea of giving us another F Skill for sure.

Personally, I would prefer the Shortbow becoming an F3 function so I can take D/P and S/D without losing the sole reason for the Thief in PvP.

But an F3 Shortbow and F4 Stealth... that would be quite amazing :-)

omgdracula.6345 · April 8, 2018

@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:I like that idea of giving us another F Skill for sure.

Personally, I would prefer the Shortbow becoming an F3 function so I can take D/P and S/D without losing the sole reason for the Thief in PvP.

But an F3 Shortbow and F4 Stealth... that would be quite amazing :-)

That would be the dream!

thatdarnkatz.7168 · April 8, 2018

@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo, it's not a huge deal. That being said, I feel that I retain a lot of my effectiveness in +1 situations which is where a thief does it's best work (other than decaps/harass of course, but that's mostly shortbow as you said).

While it is all about perspective, this is exactly the problem from my perspective. The Thief is still relegated to decap, harass, and +1 as usual.

Some Thieves want more abilities to support teammates in team fights.Other Thieves want more ability to ambush/assassinate/duel isolated targets.I don't really hear much about Thieves wanting multi-target destructive capability.

Mobility/Stealth is balanced by lack of normal defenses and mitigation.Glassiness should be balanced with combat potential. Single-target damage is fitting for the Thief.

Again...

Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo

That statement is based on today's game. And just as every patch proves, the game can and does change.The Thief

should

only take on very few fights solo because the current Thief

can

only succeed in very few solo fights.However, that can (and, in my opinion, should) change.

With a single patch, the statement could change so that a Thief

should always

engage in a solo fight whenever possible.I don't believe anybody is looking for that extreme of a change. I believe a fairer statement would be when you can say the following...A Thief

should never

fight in an

outnumbered

fight.

So while I would love to agree with you, it's very hard to. A thief by design has it's defenses from mobility (keeping them off point) and stealth (no point cap contribution). Asking for more power just leads to insane damage when in a +1 situation (Read into the mesmer, though of course, that has other problems). This was very similar to the Fresh air elementalist. It hit hard (much like a thief) but had problems standing on point (much like a thief). The balance was that they could hit from range, and a thief could escape much easier, not giving them 5 points and a respawn timer. It's a matter of role. While many consider it unfair that the thief is relegated to these roles, I want to ask why you play a thief. That's literally what it was built for, and I have to ask why you want it to do things it wasn't built for when there are other classes that could suit that playstyle much better. I multi class, because I like to fit different roles. Node holders, I personally like either sword ele, or mesmer, for +1 I would take fresh air ele or thief, for a tanking or support role, I would take a firebrand or scourge. The problem lies within the fact that some want their class to be able to do any role, and I don't see why. We have the mesmer which can already fill too many roles, and people are screaming about that, and they should. Instead of asking for every class to be what the mesmer is, you should learn some new classes if you don't like the roles that they are built for. It's good for the game for me to see a thief and know that I'm in for a hard dit if they get to me, and if they started hitting like a wet noodle but tanked, I'd have to be asking why a different class didn't fill that role, which could be done better. Classes should feel different or we have just a bland arbitrary choice when we are choosing a class.

When will people stop thinking thieves have super easy access to stealth? We honestly really don't. S/D had 0 stealth. D/P had decent stealth until the camera angle change not affecting heartseeker anymore. So the only skill that gives us stealth without using initiative is blinding powder/refuge if either of those are taken in the build being ran. Other than that we sacrifice being able to deal damage since we have to use initiative with combo fields. Which leaves us to using auto attacks more often, but those got nerfed.

So please stop thinking we have super easy access to stealth and that thief didn't get hit that hard this patch. We did.

Ok, please think a little more before responding to me at least. S/D thief has no access to stealth? I mean, I personally bind cloak and dagger, but maybe you don't? Additionally, this build has insane mobility for it's survivability with roll for initiative, withdraw, and sword 2 to move out of attacks when you know how to use it. AS for D/P thief, I still have no issue getting stealth even after the change. Maybe you could use a bit of practice? I actually play thief, and if you look at some of the top players right now, there are several thieves, so you can say you got "hit hard", but people with skill are still doing well on a thief.

Cloak and Dagger is the most unreliable kitten skills for access to stealth. You're also not going to waste the initiative on it. You should also re read what my main point was. Mesmer has super easy access to stealth as where thief has to actively use initiative and sacrifice skill usage for it. Which in turn results in the first two auto attack nerfs affecting us more. We actively have to give up damage in return for stealth.

Hell Black Powder and 1 Heartseeker are 9 initiative, and if you go for two that is pretty much your entire pool.

That was my point. You act like I said we have 0 stealth. If you go back and read I said we have no easy access to stealth as we have to give up skill usage to gain it. S/D cloak and dagger is unreliable as kitten due to it being blockable.

I can link you to some tutorials for thief at high level if you like. Simple answer to this especially on sword dagger thief is steal. Steal at the last instant before any cast is done and get a land. This can seriously seperate a good thief from a bad one, but hey, what do I know. Just suggesting tips from some of the best thieves on both NA and EU. Meh. As for initiative spent, I actually am glad it uses so much (got lowered actually by 1 in the latest balance). I goin more damage when I spend more, and don't spam skills like a noob, so I have quite a bit of initiative left to spend. Managing initiative is a skill, and part of the class. If you think a single C&D uses too much, you are mashing too much. I'm also traited for double steal, so not really a huge issue to land important skills with them, and is usually better to.

EDIT: For those complaining about blocks, you would be dumb to use it into a shield block, and I'm traited to steal boons on steal, so I get the block, and they don't, I land it, and then block the next attack thanks to them trying to defend with boons. I'm failing to see the real problem here.

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 8, 2018

@"thatdarnkatz.7168"

Yo, not sure if you're trolling around or being serious but incase you're being serious, someone needs to point out to you that your posts/responses are:

Coming off as a silver or low gold player who trained a few times and now thinks he has mastered all knowledge of Guild Wars 2 ranked spvp. Better have a real good reason to flat out attack and argue with another user, and you better be right if you are going to point at them and tell them they are wrong. Arguing opinion vs. opinion gets no where man.
Condescending and patronizing. Every single post I have seen you make, has this hint of "You're dumb and I'm smart" in it. You will never have a single positive response from anyone by posting such statements.
Overly optimistic, as if balance issues weren't a problem in Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is notoriously recognized as a game with serious issues concerning competitive intra-class dynamics and even the match making system. When you act like these are not problems, people aren't sure if you're trolling, if you're a dev on an alt encouraging positive feedback of the system, or if you lack personal experience with Guild Wars 2.
Completely embellished with injected statements as if you are trying convolute other user's posts on purpose, and off topic in general. Example: Someone may say "I prefer a good pizza over sea food." then you respond with something like "Why do you hate sea food so much?" and then go off on tangent about why he's wrong to hate seafood. You're actually doing this so often that other forum users can't hold a normal conversation with you. They have to respond and correct your statements in attempts to redirect the conversation back to the original discussion.
Transforming into something that is neither opinion/argument/statement on the topic, but rather some regurgitated testimony towards your own credentials and why other people are wrong and why they should be listening to you. I understand that "sometimes" this is important to do, but it is just laughable when people see you doing this to mid plat or higher players, who have 15,000+ games played, who are 6 years deep into Guild Wars 2 spvp, some of which who used to play professionally for money.

Will all due respect and with no harm intended, my advice to you is:

Relax and think before you post "does it make sense?" "is it productive?"
Consider the credentials of others when they state their opinions and not just your own
Ignore being caught up in trolling, but if you have to, only ever troll if you are trolled first

I'd also like to state that Thief is not "OP" in my opinion, nor is its stealthing under par. Pretty sure the real problem is just Mesmer in comparison being disgustingly over tuned across the board in all attributes concerning conquest at this given point in time. Have any of you recently played a game with no Mesmers on either side? It actually feels quite balanced between other classes when Mesmer is not present.

omgdracula.6345 · April 8, 2018

@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@omgdracula.6345 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:
@Kageseigi.2150 said:
@thatdarnkatz.7168 said:Considering there are very few fights that the thief should take solo, it's not a huge deal. That being said, I feel that I retain a lot of my effectiveness in +1 situations which is where a thief does it's best work (other than decaps/harass of course, but that's mostly shortbow as you said).