Guild Wars 2

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Odaman.8359:

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Ruufio.1496:

There is no counter or skill involved with this, “skill”.

You mean like staff guardian 5? And hammer 5? Trap a Thief inside this and watch them bounce around. Caltrops isn’t a ground targetable skill. They have to be in the cap. Catch a thief and smash it.

That’d work except dodging rolls right through those abilities without issues. You know dodge right? It’s that thing they’re doing to drop caltrops in the first place. Such a well thought out counter though, perhaps you should skulk away in silence after that idiocy.

Well, if you can’t trap someone with two walls you shouldn’t be playing. Bottom line, they need to be at your feet to dodge and land caltrops. If you can’t stop one player from running through you, how can you stop 5 people running through you figuratively and literally? Perhaps you should stop being a squid. I stop that caltrop kitten all day when I play Guardian. You can, too. Plus, a concecration sanctuary directly kittens caltrop thieves in the kitten hard. And “Caltrops” have a cast time. There’s plenty of opportunity to spot it and knock the Thief about 300 away from the cap.

I read this and all i read was. “If your not playing a gaurdian, and not a gaurdian who is staff/hammer specced you shouldnt be playing.” “I play gaurdian, you can too”

Remarkable.

ITT: Rank 10s thinking they know class balance.

what class balance? oh thats right, the same class balance thats making all the competitive gamers quit and never come back >.< watch them streams shut down.

Sounds to me like you just want everything that counters your build to get nerfed.
Since you’re complaining about caltrops point assault build I can only assume you’re playing a home-point mesmer with 18k hp and you aren’t swapping to null-field, because a standard home-point ele or guard would have very little problem with condi clear even if not specced for it.
When you see a condi thief on the enemy team, know that their ONLY job is to assault your point. They are useless at defending and if they teamfight mid they are hurting their team because a Necro puts out twice the dps they can.

tl;dr: No single build can do everything. Learn your matchups. Swap your utilities. Change your amulet accordingly.

The only class I would consider having no counter to condi thieves would be warrior because of their extreme lack of condi clear (mainly only on heal+shakeitoff). But who mains home-point warrior?

Although I will agree with you however that condi thieves need buffs and they should move some of the dps away from caltrops and onto other areas to help them play viably while not being forced into assaulting an enemy point. Idk maybe it would be great if caltrops lasted for ~65% as long but instead immobilized on cast (much like Engie’s glue-shot). Maybe reduce the cooldown and aoe a bit.

glad we agree.

Caltrops don’t cover the entire node (with the likely exception of Clocktower & Keep). On the majority of nodes, you can safely fight on the periphery without getting the node (de)capped.

OneArmedBandit.7936:

Caltrops don’t cover the entire node (with the likely exception of Clocktower & Keep). On the majority of nodes, you can safely fight on the periphery without getting the node (de)capped.

but that is leaving you only a small place, with no chance of kitting. so while you are avoiding the main source of his damage, he will probalby still deathblossom over you + dodgeroll caltrops on you.. leaving you still same choice

will i leave and let him the point?
will i fight him under his rulez? because i will lost the point for sure or get it neutralized
will i let him kill me?

@Aragiel: As a meditation bunker guardian (30/20/20), I have no problems dealing with blossom thieves. You just need to position yourself correctly (keeping a close eye on caltrops’ casting animation to dodge outside its radius, have a decent idea on its C&D and the blossom thief’s initiative etc.) and manage your condi removals and light field combos accordingly. If blossom thieves are a perfect counter to your build, notify your team before he assaults the point etc. From a team fight perspective, you only need one person to remain on point, so the counter-plays are endless.

Anyone who should be sitting and defending a node should have enough condition removal and defensive stats to deal with a condiion thief. Hell even people with balanced builds should be able to handle one type of condition. I play ranger and elementalist and these unicorn thieves are a joke.

And if you’re not built to deal with conditions then just leave. Condo thieves do next to nothing off a point.

And to those saying “oh I shouldn’t have to build a certain way to deal with thieves” well no ones asking you to entirely revamp your build and having some condo removal helps against almost every class. And these thieves are building a certain way to take a point, you can build to defend one.

OneArmedBandit.7936:

@Aragiel: As a meditation bunker guardian (30/20/20), I have no problems dealing with blossom thieves. You just need to position yourself correctly (keeping a close eye on caltrops’ casting animation to dodge outside its radius, have a decent idea on its C&D and the blossom thief’s initiative etc.) and manage your condi removals and light field combos accordingly. If blossom thieves are a perfect counter to your build, notify your team before he assaults the point etc. From a team fight perspective, you only need one person to remain on point, so the counter-plays are endless.

as i said in previous post, when our team is facing caltrops thief – we usually send ele to deal with him.. which is quite fine.

But the fact that i know what class to send doesnt mean its fine. I have no issues with caltrops thieves at all, but i dont agree with the spec too.. its to much evasion and hard to hit build.

Don’t effect on dodge traits usually have a ten second cooldown or so?

The caltrops utility is extremely strong, but the traited version only lasts 3-4 seconds and is INCREDIBLY tiny.

It’s still good however, best use of it is dodging away from someone while you were pretty much on top of them to stack 2-4 extra bleeds. That’s all it’s good for.

on a side note, I just wish necros could have it as easy as thieves. Running a pure bleed build you put everything(runes, sigils, traits, and weapon selections) into maximizing bleed potency and duration. At most after hitting six different weapon abilities, swapping sets, and using most of your utilities you still only have a 19 bleed stack. To be able to lay down a caltrops and spam death blossom and hit 25 stacks seems a tad unbalanced.

Ellimist.2619:

on a side note, I just wish necros could have it as easy as thieves. Running a pure bleed build you put everything(runes, sigils, traits, and weapon selections) into maximizing bleed potency and duration. At most after hitting six different weapon abilities, swapping sets, and using most of your utilities you still only have a 19 bleed stack. To be able to lay down a caltrops and spam death blossom and hit 25 stacks seems a tad unbalanced.

And of course on the other side of that argument (From a PvP standpoint at least), focusing all of our DPS into the 1 damaging condition we can apply reliably means its ridiculously easy to cleanse.

Ellimist.2619:

on a side note, I just wish necros could have it as easy as thieves. Running a pure bleed build you put everything(runes, sigils, traits, and weapon selections) into maximizing bleed potency and duration. At most after hitting six different weapon abilities, swapping sets, and using most of your utilities you still only have a 19 bleed stack. To be able to lay down a caltrops and spam death blossom and hit 25 stacks seems a tad unbalanced.

Necros’ bleeds are more potent.
Also, its not about getting to 25 stacks. It’s about stacking them a bit at a time in accordance to your enemies’ condi clear.
Ex: against necros I frontload most of my bleeds because I know most of them only run a clear on their heal and they wont use it till they’re half hp. When they hit half hp I’ll keep 3 stacks and play defensively until they heal. Then I can start 6-9stacking them. If you spam 3 (25 stacks) and leave no initiative left for stealth the necro will clear it then melt you within seconds—it’s basically a suicide rush attempt.
Hybrid builds don’t work for thieves. Thieves’ only have bleed dmg but most necros spec so they dish out bleeds equal to thieves as well as incredible power damage eg. Wells.
tl;dr: condi thieves do half as much dps as necros (unless the target stands in caltrops and takes 25 stacks all at once and doesn’t use a condi clear) and are easier to manage via condi clear.

I think part of the problem is when you put down the utility then start using dodgetrops there is no way to see where the dodgetrops’ smaller radius ends.

Dodgetrops needs to either not stack with caltrops, or it needs to have a different visual effect that makes it obvious which is which and any overlap.

Jumper.9482:

ITT: Rank 10s thinking they know class balance.

ITT: Rank 50 lifetime thief Jumper with superiority complex trying to invalidate valid balance concerns from others.

Every other class that gets an offensive AoE ability on a dodge roll has an internal cooldown. Explain why this one shouldn’t have an internal cooldown of 10 seconds like the others.

You are wrong… utility caltrops stacks alone 10+bleed +dodge caltrops

Go into mists, drop caltrops under a golem and watch, it was so hard thing to test amirite?…with 3×3x affliction/krait 15%15% bleed duration runes, I get to 8 active stacks max.

oh look more cry nerfs about thiefs

There is alot of false information in this thread.
First, the Uncatchable trait is horrible compared to the utility skill. The Caltrops from this trait last for roughly 2s and the AoE is alot smaller. The effective hit rate on an enemy is incredibly small to even take this trait into account for any “Thieves are op” argument. To get at least a noticible effect from this trait you’d have to run a build that highly relies on primary dodges (using stamina). This will kitten your char’s potential to stack more conditions.
The Caltrops utility skill doesn’t instantly stack 20 bleeds on its own. In fact the skill itself can keep up ~8 stacks of bleeds by itself unless you run with massive condition duration which again is terrible for almost every possible situation in the whole game.

Caltrops don’t cover the whole point as some people suggest. The field covers ~70-80% of it. When it comes to graveyard@foefire it’s almost useless.

The funniest about this thread is that some people bring up necros here. They got per se more survivability, have a more reliable way to apply bleeds and apply way more conditions than thieves which makes it alot harder to remove their bleeds.

People whining about Caltrops or condition thieves in general should just try them and run some tournaments to get a better insight. Playing condition thief is comparable to playing BS thief player skill wise. You can achieve good results on low to moderate skill level but it takes alot to master it due to lots of condition counters in the game.

Braxxus.2904:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m led to believe people just don’t like playing against thief style mechanics

Well, yeah. You haven’t noticed this in EVERY mmo that’s had some kind of silly “lulzinvisible/cc/evading/stabbystabby/1001escapes/conditionstealthattrition” class? Rogue, thief, assassin, etc.

WoW – Rogues: People hate them
AoC – Assassins: People hate them
GW2 – Thieves: People hate them
SWtOR – Operatives AND Assassins: People hate them

Hmm, sensing a trend here. Could be that most people hate these types of classes except the ones playing them and getting giddy about trololo ganking people.

I’m actually being somewhat serious here. These are the class types that the majority of complaints in mmo’s are about. They’re annoying and irritating. Regardless of how powerful, either over or under, they are they’re just an unfun pvp experience for most people on the opposite side of them. Unless there are blatant balance issues going on, like the whoopslolretpally buff of TBC end and early WotLK era people are generally ok with other types of classes overall.

• And yes, for the record, I make one of these in every game specifically to trololo around and gank people in open world until they rage log. In hotjoins and wvw here I get on my thief specifically to trololo people and stealth away until cd’s are up, or /laugh at them as they swing wildly in that oh so fun game of whack a mole that is the “counter” to stealth.

You can pretty much say this about every class that seems OP. Mages & Locks in WoW were not hated? The list is pretty long .. latest I heard in that game was, that hunters were hated, but whatever
Witch-elves were hated in WAR were hated initially, but Witch hunters were not .. until they got buffed, then it was the reverse. Bright Wizards were hated beyond anything ever. I played an Iron Breaker in WAR among other things, and the build I used had loads of knockbacks … hardly popular either.
In short: I don’t think you can narrow it down to just stealth-types; it is more like being cheated for a real battle by either being rolled before the fight actually begun (because you didn’t notice it) or by being CC’ed until you are as good as dead.

I am not saying what is right or wrong here, I just think it is a bit more subtle than you made it out to be

Chriswck.6490:

Perhaps remove bleeding, since the point of the caltrops are to hinder enemy movement. Not the Caltrops skill per se, but the trait that gives caltrops upon dodge.

This would be bad as it has detrimental effects to condition thief builds. Particularly in PVE. Caltrops are an enormous part of my DPS, and i do not PVP. Doing this would break my build and I’d be forced to look for a new one.

Trevos.6473:

You are wrong… utility caltrops stacks alone 10+bleed +dodge caltrops and the kitten thief not even touched his weapon skills and now tell this is fine when that stupid class can force out anyone from the point while evading all attacks and stacking insane amount of bleed. In the beta i could do the same with ranger but only on single target and they nerfd them to the ground(or below) now time to do the same with the thief

Seriously, you should get your facts right before posting something – pure caltrops (utility skill) doesn’t stack more than 6-8 bleed. Make yourself a Thief go to HotM, equip caltrops and check it. If you use sigils and runes with + bleed duration later on, you’ll be able to stack 10 bleed (at least I never exceeded 10). Also there is no such thing like a stupid class, just not very bright people that should learn how to play instead of crying on forums.

Ember.4326:

You are wrong… utility caltrops stacks alone 10+bleed +dodge caltrops

Go into mists, drop caltrops under a golem and watch, it was so hard thing to test amirite?…with 3×3x affliction/krait 15%15% bleed duration runes, I get to 8 active stacks max.

Did you try 2 afflicted/2 krait/2 centaur runes? You should be able to get around 10 stacks with this set up.

10 AOE stacks for one click…wtf…necro has to spend 5-10 seconds just to get 10 stacks on 1 target, then has to click epidemic.

Every one please listen to jumper he knows his kitten. he used to run or is still running (not sure jumper only played you a few days ago :P) the bleed point harass build and is rank one thief.

Akumetsu.8591:

Every one please listen to jumper he knows his kitten. he used to run or is still running (not sure jumper only played you a few days ago :P) the bleed point harass build and is rank one thief.

all the more reason he wouldnt want things changed. no offense. but we’re not talking bleeds here, we’re talking caltrops.

Lol, now ppl start complain about caltrops, and when devs fix caltrops will be another skill ppl want destroy.

Leave this place and let thieves their skills. If u can’t move out of caltrops you are a noob. Let them the point for a 5 sec, so u can kill them in ranged. L2P your classes before ask for a nerf of ALL of thieves skills.

well ideally we’d get caltrops nerf along with a slight buff to other condition application abilities

nerva.7940:

well ideally we’d get caltrops nerf along with a slight buff to other condition application abilities

Caltrops is fine, the Uncatchable trait not having an internal cooldown of 10 seconds is the issue.

nerva.7940:

10 AOE stacks for one click…wtf…necro has to spend 5-10 seconds just to get 10 stacks on 1 target, then has to click epidemic.

Errrr, it’s not an instantaneous 10 stacks, you need to stay the whole duration on the aoe to achieve that.

Fynd.4890:

nerva.7940:

well ideally we’d get caltrops nerf along with a slight buff to other condition application abilities

Caltrops is fine, the Uncatchable trait not having an internal cooldown of 10 seconds is the issue.

Why is that? It last 4 seconds and has an small aoe.

inb4 nerf Unload

Warriors can cover the cap point with Combustion Shot doing burning damage I’ve seen up to 6,000 pulses for 4 seconds and gives the entire team a massive Fire Combo Field. A warrior can apply this to any point every 8 seconds from a distance via longbow. How is that not broken?

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Warriors can cover the cap point with Combustion Shot doing burning damage I’ve seen up to 6,000 pulses for 4 seconds and gives the entire team a massive Fire Combo Field. A warrior can apply this to any point every 8 seconds from a distance via longbow. How is that not broken?

Come on now, at least compare apples to apples. You’re comparing a dodge proc with no cooldown to a weapon skill with a cooldown.

Fynd.4890:

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Warriors can cover the cap point with Combustion Shot doing burning damage I’ve seen up to 6,000 pulses for 4 seconds and gives the entire team a massive Fire Combo Field. A warrior can apply this to any point every 8 seconds from a distance via longbow. How is that not broken?

Which weapon applies Uncatchable caltrops and when does it apply evade immunity?

Come on now, at least compare apples to apples. You’re comparing a dodge proc with no cooldown to a weapon skill with a cooldown.

They need to be directly on the point to use the utility and the dodge. A warrior doesn’t even need be in the point and can cover more ground than caltrop. With beserker utility and shorter cooldowns on burst skills/less adrenaline cost you can out damage caltrops without doing half of the work. You can almost mindlessly spam it like cluster bomb. Would it be easier to stop a caltrop thief if they weren’t perma stealth? Well, yes I believe so since they have no direct access to stability besides dagger storm. But, if you get caught in caltrops and dagger storm you’re already in loads of trouble.

Wut? Burning does a maximum of about 700 dps if you gear for full condition damage (which few warriors would). Combustive shot puts one 2s burn on every 2 seconds. At max adrenaline it’ll do 8s of burning. I dunno how you are getting 6k pulses from that. Each pulse does about 1500 damage over 2 seconds even with full condition gear.

ele + shocking aura + stand in caltrops

TGSlasher.1458:

ele + shocking aura + stand in caltrops

haha yeah, it’s hard to believe that’s intended but it does make shocking aura even more overpowered in certain situations.

as a condition thief using 45% bleed duration, dodge caltrops are extremely small range, and short lived but can supply 6 stacks for a few seconds, utility caltrops can do about 14stacks in total for a longer time, however 20 stacks or so is easy coupled with sneak atk, vital shot, etc, that being said, it does last a long time but, there are the only point defence skill thief has, and its not targetable, and most points are actually larger, so unless ur a bunker guardian QQing cos u cant just stand on the exact centre of the point like you usually do, i dont see the problem. and since other classes can deny entry via ridiculous force fields, knockbacks,fears,push backs, i think thief having an aoe cripple which can be walked out of at any point??? is it really that bad.. if your getting hit by caltrops. it was basically your choice to stand in them..

it’s a brainless mechanic that gives high rewards for zero risk, in addition to actually being effective in denying points for non-bunkers. what makes it broken is that you can do it to no end. there is no tangible/noticeable cooldown.

alot of skills are brainless.. or at least require very little effort apart from the initial strategic placement of the skill. however.. 14second, and 30 second cooldown, unless traited, just for a comparison rangers have the muddy terrain skill which is a 20second immobilise field that cripples on pule is 30 second cooldown and 24 traited (and lots of good survival spells), having long duration aoes isnt just thieves.. not to mention that caltrops are only useful for condition thieves, who are a spec built around attrition and stalling. its a perfect weapon for them that fits into there playstyle.. just how guardian knockbacks are piss annoying when used by guardians who can just stand about and tank a super saiyan.. and necros who can spam well which are in many ways far more annoying then caltrops. caltrops is a awesome skill dont get me wrong. but i wouldnt call it broken. just useful.

Agree, this need an immediate nerf, the caltrops on dodge plus the casted one is just overpowered, cond damage thieves are ruining spvp like that its impossible to capture a point. They just stealth and do this thing.

Yukishiro.8792:

Wut? Burning does a maximum of about 700 dps if you gear for full condition damage (which few warriors would). Combustive shot puts one 2s burn on every 2 seconds. At max adrenaline it’ll do 8s of burning. I dunno how you are getting 6k pulses from that. Each pulse does about 1500 damage over 2 seconds even with full condition gear.

Sorry, yeah total damage can get up to 7,900 I think. As it pulses. I’ve been playing condition damage with two 1handers with longbow. It’s a blast if you like stacking conditions. Kinda refreshing after kitten blading.

I’ll say one thing… I wish a warrior bleed condition could stay that high for a while instead of rapidly depleting after flurry is done or trying to get high stacks.

Akumetsu.8591:

Every one please listen to jumper he knows his kitten. he used to run or is still running (not sure jumper only played you a few days ago :P) the bleed point harass build and is rank one thief.

Right listen to someone that plays one of the most overpowered classes in the game and farm just with that class.

I would give his input a glance if he also had a few hundred Tourny wins on a Necro or a ranger.

I made the change to OP classes I dont farm like nuts but my win rate is better in tpvp with stuff i just started playing then Necro that I know very well. The more I play OP classes the more I see how bad the balance is in this game and the more I want to flame all the so called top pvpers in this game that Anet is wasting time listening too.

Go with the data who is playing what and what is the win rate. Thiefs are doing very well in Tpvp no matter what bad thiefs that want to ruin game balance like to claim.

Brutalistik.6473:

I’ll say one thing… I wish a warrior bleed condition could stay that high for a while instead of rapidly depleting after flurry is done or trying to get high stacks.

Warriors are far better at single target bleeding. On my sword my autoattacks bleed for 15 seconds. With a bit of crit and an earth rune i can keep a very high bleed stack just with autoattack.

I’m guessing this has been spurred by all of the talk about caltrops, but I played several different matches tonight. Most went something likes this…

Caltrops. Caltrops everywhere.

To be honest, even with as much condition clearing I can build for, this seems out of hand. Two Condi-theives can take a point by themselves by just planting those caltrops. I wish I could do that with another Necro and myself, but we simply wouldn’t be able to outlast them.

I’d love to learn what more I can do to counter them. I normally try to throw their conditions back at them, but they can cleanse quite well. They’re also not very squishy. Stealth ensures that it’s hard to land attacks. I’m kind of confused as to how this might be balanced, but I understand that I am not an expert.

Any thoughts on how to combat these Necro-wannabies, since they’re going flavor-of-the-month now?

OP does not like thieves.

We get it already.

It is (imho) not so much caltrops, but the endless vigor and initiative regen combined with the healing and overall sturdiness that makes unicorn-builds annoying. It makes them able to be untargetable and/or dodge almost everything and on top heal the little damage they do take. And on top they can opt for solid healing and toughness … it is a win/win with little to no downside … and easy to execute on top. That imho classifies as being cheesy (and yes, I have ofc tried it, and yes it is a fun build).

It can be dealt with, but it is far from as trivial as some ppl make it out to be … it is not like these thieves are glasscannons.

@Gintoki: Necro’s spamming wells? Was the cd lowered? I don’t recall any build that made you able to spam wells … ever.

try staff+ scepter dagger + wells… in utility…. you can cast some AoE non stop all of the time.