Guild Wars 2

will you stop writing wall’s of text. i cant quote you as easily.

Which would then be: “You’re wrong.” “But why?” “reasons.” – good idea!

ETA: DrD has got an extra dodge, heal on evade (as a minor, you don’t even have to sacrifice anything for it) and some other strong stuff (WS, ID..). These are free cards. Every Elite has got these. And that’s the problem. SRej coupled with D/P is a free card as well (not so much after HoT, but after the trait merge) SA coupled with DrD lets you mess up plenty of times, same as Acro and DrD. “The times have changed” doesn’t really apply when the game you loved is dead and has been replaced by a faceroller’s paradise – and it is: all Elites have got too many free cards.

TL;DR: Reasons

:P

Hey Jana, I’m picking up a D/D-P/P build atm and enjoying the flexibility in combat (if not the mobility).

Basically the hope is to D/D someone down and then swap to P/P and range them down. This avoids some of the issues of localized knockdown and allows someone to build up a lot of might (using the boon duration swap sigil) before jumping back in to kill more people.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

(Cut for length)

1.) The point I’m trying to prove is that I’m not dying running around with a massive handicap to my opponent when doing this. 25% less stats on a weapon set I never play that’s seen as easily-countered still running CS/Tr, and I can perform better. Mind you, that 25% isn’t actually 25%, either; that’s 25% before factoring in all of the damage modifier reductions as well that come with working with lower base stats. Basically, it’s taking an sPvP build into WvW, and we all know how poorly the thief does in sPvP solely because of these stat reductions based on the nature of the profession. Now give your enemy more stats, too.

2.) I don’t think it had much to do with the game being new later on. Permanent 14 might is pretty stupid on anything. SA with Assassin’s Signet (after the changes) was breaking the 15k stab mark, and still would, meanwhile never leaving stealth aside from making an attack, having healing signet levels of sustain, and roughly the same damage as pure-offensive builds. It might not be OP these days because of the power creep from HoT, but it definitely was absurd then, when Sic’ Em didn’t reveal and there were no revealing skills in the game, either. I spoke metaphorically.

3.) I personally never saw RfI used by anyone but P/P players. The S/D players I encountered went IS/SS/[BP/SR/SoA/DV] with maybe some slight variations, since RfI effectively was purposeless both before and after the changes to FS/LS for different reasons.

4.) I don’t have a style on my build. It just deals huge damage when I want it to. I play it from solo to small group havoc as a means of priority-elimination to zerg frontline.
You’re missing a few details on how D/D signets functions, so I’ll clarify:
– RT is pointless since the power gains are negligible, and it only has value if you continue spamming after a failed burst. That will get you killed in most cases, and even Executioner has little purpose for the same reason, since if after the CnD the target is > 50% it’s not activating for backstab, and if the target is below half from CnD, the benefits are wasted since they’ll be put in downed state from the backstab anyways.
- The extra damage modifiers on DrD offset the lost damage from Mug or the inconsistency issues clarified below.
- Mug matters on the context of BV because passives and auto-procs often cause CnD to not hit when the target is inflicted with CC and the unblockable attack is wasted. Even with SoH forcing the proc, the loss of mug enables CnD to get the unblockable attack, netting more consistency for the follow-through backstab.

5.) The skill matters when playing against good players and tankier builds when the build fails, and that’s when it’s most fun. You have to massively out-play them if and when the burst fails, since you’re stuck then with no utilities, cleanses, stunbreaks, teleports, and are down on initiative. This is what makes the build fun, especially when being first to enter combat against multiple enemies, since you take the all-in panic damage coming from them and need to respond with just weapon skills and the two normal dodges. No cleanses, no stunbreaks, unlikely stealth; you need to get creative on how to stay alive. It can end a 1v3 in a matter of seconds without needing to chain stealth and reset etc., but the demands of perfect play in these encounters are much higher. It might be “cheesy” if the opponent isn’t running a stunbreak, doesn’t have stability, and is slow to react to losing a substantial chunk of health out of nowhere. But if all those conditions are met… what exactly is the justification why they should win, then? I mean yea, if all you do with the build is gank half-braindead solo players who are unaware, there’s not much room for growth and it’s a relatively easy build to play, but I can’t really think of an excuse as to why that’s not the case on virtually any thief build, considering P/P would be just as effective since Unload and PW do almost the same damage as CnD and Backstab combined.

I still disagree on the SA might stack.
That was changed June 23th 2015 and not somewhen in 2013 btw.
No one could run around with 14 stacks permanently, not even D/P.
And it was stupid they destroyed SA as that’s what got us the stealth attack cooldown.

Caius.8094:

Other than players that use the ANET design, am I the only player that thinks attacking while stealth’d and staying stealth’d is stupid? GW2 is the only MMO where someone can attack from stealth, go back to stealth or stay in it due to kitten poor programing and exploits… do the dev’s even know this.. do they even play anymore?

Perma-stealth is an absolute kitten and should be removed.

In Everquest 2, you could remain in stealth until you attacked. Then there was only one very short-term in-combat stealth available which you might be able to use to get enough distance to get out of combat and stealth if you did it right. Any stealth dropped as soon as you took ANY damage (e.g. DoT), so you couldn’t re-stealth until you had no dots on you.

Also everyone had the exact same movement in combat (no exceptions), so once you committed to a fight it was very difficult to get away, but if you didn’t want to fight, you could generally out-distance people who had attacked you (if you didn’t hit back).

Everquest WvW worked very very well.

It was much more balanced than the absurd GW2 classes which zoom in, take off half your health, vanish before you can even target them AND escape whenever they feel threatened. Broken game and boring!

Snowpea.5469:

Caius.8094:

Other than players that use the ANET design, am I the only player that thinks attacking while stealth’d and staying stealth’d is stupid? GW2 is the only MMO where someone can attack from stealth, go back to stealth or stay in it due to kitten poor programing and exploits… do the dev’s even know this.. do they even play anymore?

Perma-stealth is an absolute kitten and should be removed.

In Everquest 2, you could remain in stealth until you attacked. Then there was only one very short-term in-combat stealth available which you might be able to use to get enough distance to get out of combat and stealth if you did it right. Any stealth dropped as soon as you took ANY damage (e.g. DoT), so you couldn’t re-stealth until you had no dots on you.

Also everyone had the exact same movement in combat (no exceptions), so once you committed to a fight it was very difficult to get away, but if you didn’t want to fight, you could generally out-distance people who had attacked you (if you didn’t hit back).

Everquest WvW worked very very well.

It was much more balanced than the absurd GW2 classes which zoom in, take off half your health, vanish before you can even target them AND escape whenever they feel threatened. Broken game and boring!

GW2 stealth is so overpowered it knocked you into last decade.

kash.9213:

Snowpea.5469:

In Everquest 2, you could remain in stealth until you attacked. Then there was only one very short-term in-combat stealth

GW2 stealth is so overpowered it knocked you into last decade.

They don’t make em like they used to =/

I love that stealth has been in the game since the beginning and most of these generic complaints—lacking a specific complaint about a particular ability—are basically “change the entire game that has been around for 4+ years because I don’t like how it does stealth.”

I’m sorry but…no. This game embraced stealth in designing an entire class around it. Thief special attacks are based entirely around stealth. No other class gets an additional ability when attacking in stealth.

In exchange thief was made extremely fragile. Extremely. Thieves normally run around 16-17k hp and between 2200 and 2600 armor—mostly trading off ferocity to get there. Defensively thieves had blind to prevent some hits from landing and dodging. If you play glass thief gets 11k hp. HoT is where power creep made every class a lot more defensive and changed the balance of power—suddenly that stealth was an additional advantage and not a necessity. (This goes hand in hand with other classes that traditionally were tankier getting regular access to stealth i.e. druid).

With HoT and related balance changes around that time thief was buffed to increase dodging/evade, granted a low cooldown block and stunbreak, and made more durable through gear that allowed better max-min in favor of survivability while putting out damage—including much better access to everyone’s favorite boon, Might. This meant that stealth was not as necessary. Anet contemporaneously reduced the effectiveness of the stealth based attacks and buffed, of all things, autoattack.

That is the problem with saying “get rid of stealth” or “change stealth.” If you do there will be massive power creep. Thief could conceivably get the ability to backstab outside of stealth if it was removed completely. Thief would also need more blinds and evades to compensate…already a huge annoyance to those fighting them. Be careful what you wish for is all I’m trying to convey.