Guild Wars 2

Honestly I’m sad with some of the announced thief changes as of course this topic implies and me stating this here is likely redundant. Sorry, I’ll just get on with it.

My first thing is the new Dagger Training, it’s bonus looks like a friggin’ joke. Let me just ask this, who in their right mind is going to give up added burst damage with burst healing on demand for a 33% chance on hit to poison a target for two seconds?

I could understand thieves wanting to take trappers respite over mug … that is before Anet decided to laugh off that idea where you’d place a needle trap on heal which would have honestly changed up thieves from using something other than mug. But it seems that mug is still going to be the #1 chosen adept trait hands down. Boring and disappointing in that aspect, IMO.

Now … I understand changes like a nerf to resilience of shadows, 50% was pretty high and 25% is still a pretty healthy amount and nothing to really scoff at. So whatever, and at least death sentence (Last Refuge) is now something you can opt into if you’re ever feeling masochistic, instead of being forced to take it, and the minor in place of it is nice in a team setting. So not EVERYTHING is bad …

But Anet, let me just say, if you’re going to do any nerfing to thief, please just announce it so all these QQ nerf thief threads that pop up will at least have some satisfaction and maybe there will be some small % less of them for a short duration of the near future, until of course more lrn2play issues happen and again nerf thief threads pop up.

Anyway, one of my favorite things in the changes is the fact hidden thief will no longer be combined with descent of shadows. No blind or blast finisher on steal, hidden thief will just be the exact same as it is. But at least they had the decency to put in parenthesis that (It will automatically work with meld in shadows) which I find amusing because that’s exactly how it works right now anyway.

That makes me wonder if they trying to fool us into thinking that it somehow got buffed? That text is completely meaningless as it is … there was no reason to put it there unless they’re honestly trying to act like that was somehow a big trait change, when it isn’t even a change at all. Please Anet, just please … some of us aren’t just a bunch of idiots who cry on the forums all day because of lrn2play issues and actually want to see their class move in a different direction for once.

So along the lines of nerfs, I’m also a bit saddened at the fact Shortbow #4 is getting a poison duration nerf yet again. I thought these big trait changes were supposed to be overhauling / buffing the classes, not nerfing them further? But oh, I suppose we are nerfing that horribly long 3 second poison duration per pulse because poison will stack now? How terrible that Shortbow #4 could potentially (not realistically) stack poison to 3 stacks by itself, when I’m pretty sure it will be infinitely overshadowed by a warrior using a longbow which will stack an intensively stronger condition that also deals immediate damage, clears condis, has a larger radius and quite frankly, laughs at shortbow #4 in the first place. Shortbow is obviously overpowered and not at all mostly used for mobility more than anything else ;p

And while I’m on the note of poison stacking … ouch to the grandmaster trait nerf for increased poison duration / damage. 50% increased poison damage down to 10%! I’m really wondering now if 10% increased poison damage is ever going to be considered over something such as 20% increased damage against a target who’s below 50% health? Does that really require much thought, if any at all? :l

I don’t know what to say about the trait which allows stolen abilities to be used twice since those are being reworked … so who knows in regards to that. But considering how poor our poison durations are looking to be, that 33% increased poison duration isn’t nearly enough when combined with a measly 10% damage increase to really consider taking over something like executioner.

Also, I’m glad I stopped playing with Acro after considering vigor nerf and the overall acro changes to things such as feline grace. Even though Don’t Stop looks really good, I can’t say much for everything else. I really don’t have much left to say, I was just hoping thief might actually have a chance to branch off towards something other than burst or bust. But it seems we might be doomed to play the same cheesy playstyle that everyone hates except that I suppose now SA will kind of be a thing instead of a mostly laughed at traitline?

All in all I’m disappointed as usual and the patch hasn’t even landed yet. New record for Anet considering this was supposed to be some big great change. Who am I kidding though? I’m amazed I actually had my hopes up for a few weeks and was excited for the upcoming thief changes prior to reading their latest information regarding it. I should have known better, shame on me.

Here’s hoping for some intensive tweaking overall.

I’m not sure why you are disappointed. The changes look solid, at least on paper (in the post).

i love the look of the thief changes, however my absolute favourite build is p/p glass cannon and there is absolutely no mention of ricochet in the patch notes :O

Liewec.2896:

i love the look of the thief changes, however my absolute favourite build is p/p glass cannon and there is absolutely no mention of ricochet in the patch notes :O

As a thief who doesn’t touch p/p very often, my heart goes out to you guys. I found it a bit hypocritical that the devs have stated one of their goals with the new trait system and new traits is to allow for more diverse builds without completely removing existing builds, yet p/p seems to have been completely forgotten by them. I guess, as others have pointed out on this forum, there’s hope that the elite specialization for thieves will include traits that help pistol, but for now we can’t help but be skeptical.

If the weapon set itself isn’t getting completely redesigned and buffed then they are doing the right thing by just deleting it from our kitten nal…. ars….sssssenal… ok

Ricochet being baseline on all skills could be a problem for things like the SW boss that punish AOE unless it’s only on one skill, but that would mean we need more than just 1 damage skill like we have naow since not even our AA does damage. Or they can just simply not make bosses like that. Otherwise it’s either in new Spec or forgotten and murdered.

Part 1:

Am disappointed too
Thats how I’d like it to be rather:

General

Steal: This ability is now split between F1 and F2. F1 beign the Steal Trigger, F2 being the Steal Depot. If you use F1, while you have still something stolen under F2, the next stolen item will replace the Skill under F2.

• Steal Range has been baseline increase from 900 to 1200
• Steal Cool Down stays at 35s, but now baseline steals also 1 Boon.

Skills:

• Haste: This skill no longer removes your endurance. When using Haste, your Initiative Regen is increased also too as long Quickness is up by +25% and critical hits under the effect of Quickness causes your Elite Skill to recharge faster.
• Withdraw: This Skill is now a Trick with increased Cooldown from 15s to 18s.
  Both base and healing power coefficients have been increased by 10%.
  This skill grants you now protection for 3 seconds if you successfully evade with Withraw an attack. Withdraw works now as a Stun Breaker.
• Daggerstorm: This Skill has been changed into a Signet and been renamed to “Signet of the Blade Dancer”.
  Passive Effect: You have a chance of 33% (ICD 15s) to parry incoming melee attacks and to perform automatially an unblockable counterattack cloak and dagger while gaining also Fury for 10s from this.
  Active Effect: You start spinning around yourserf performing your Blade Dance (litterally what Daggerstorm is now), just with the difference, that you gain besides of Stability now also to Resitance every 3s for 3 seconds of Duration for the 9 seconds of maximum duration of the Blade Dance. Your Movement Speed isn’t anymore decreased while using the active effect, like it is currently under Daggerstorm, where you suddenly move 50% slower than normal….
• Hide In Shadows: The Skill is now classified as Deception and has now Activation time of 1 second anymore and will cure now up to 3 Conditions, regardless what they are.
• Signet of Malice: Cooldown increased to 20s. Passive Heal Effect increased by 5% per every Condition on you. Lets you gain Skale Venom for when you activate the Signet now.
• Skelk Venom: Cooldown reduced from 40 to 30s. Your Attacks under Skelk Venom will cause the target now also to lose Boons and your own Boons get replenished by +2 seconds now with successful hits with Skelk Venom on your Weapons.
• All Traps no longer reveal you now when enemies run into then and receive damage from them
• Cloak and Dagger: This skill has been unsplit for all Game Modes and its Damage has been normalized for PvP to do there same as much Damage, as like in PvE, whats equal to a +25% Increase in Damage
• All Dual Wield Skill have now baselined 15% more Damage.
• Deadly Blossom: This Skill is now uninterruptable, its Dodge Effect counts now for its full animation from the moment you start the Skill to the moment you land back on your feet and stand normal. Instead of 3 Stacks of Bleeding will cause this Skill now 1 Stack of Bleeding, 1 Stack of Torment and 1 Stack of Poison, if all 3 attacks hit the target(s) to cause more Condition Pressure to give Dual Daggers a better Skill to be used as Condi Hybrid. Deadly Blossom will cost now 4 Initiative.
• Heart Seeker: This Skill will receive as a QoL now a Line of Sight Arrow Mechanic like the Warriors Greatsword’s Whirlwind Attack, making it easier to make with Heart Seeker quickly changing direction changes . Initiative Cost is reduced from 3 to 2. Range is increased from 450 to 600, if the target is wider away from you, than 900.
• All Venoms: Venoms no longer are based on Charges. Venoms have now unlimited Charges and have Durations instead.
• Skale Venom: This Skill has now a Duration of 15 seconds
• Devorer Venom: This Skill has now a Duration of 10 seconds
• Spider Venom: This Skill has now a Duration of 15 seconds, and its effect is changed from Poison to Confusion
• Ice Drake Venom: This Skill has now a Duration of 10 seconds
• Skelk Venom: This Skill has now a Duration of 12,5 seconds.
• Lotus Strike: Increased the poison duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
• Venomous Knife: This skill now applies 2 stacks of poison for 8 seconds.

Part 2:

• Piercing Shot: This Skill will cause now Torment instead of Bleeding and the Base Damage is increased by 25%.
• Escape: Increased the poison duration from 1 second to 2 seconds. Movement speed adjustments no longer affect the intended travel distance. The Skill has been renamed to “Toxic Retreat” This Skill causes now a new effect – Hallucination that blurs the Screen of players that are in the poison trail of Toxic Retreat.
• Deluge: The Velocity of this Skill has been increased by 50% and its damage has been increased by 33%. Deluge will cause now also to Cripple. The Skill has been renamed to “Seeker Bolts”
• Disabling Shot: This Skill will dazes foes now instead of crippling them.
• Ink Shot: Initiative Cost is reduced from 5 to 4, Velocity is increased by 50%
• Smoke Trail: When using this, is causes now a large AoE Sphere at the place where you shadow step, in which enemies get blinded and weakened every second as long the sphere is there.
• Tow Line: Range is increased to 1200, This Skill now longer interrupts yourself, but instead lets the foe sink for 2 seconds after you have pulled yourself to the foe. Initiative Cost increased to 5
• Shadow Assault: Initiative Cost reduced to 6. Gain now Resitance, while using this Skill.
• Serpent’s Touch: This skill now applies 2 stacks of poison for 10 seconds.
• Choking Gas: Added now a Daze Effect for foes, that stand longer than 3 seconds inside of a Choking Gas Field.

Thief Stolen Skills:

• Healing Seed: The Duration has been reduced from 10 to 7 Seconds. It pulses now every second

• Skull Fear: he duration of fear has been reduced from 3/2/1 seconds to 2/1.5/1 seconds.. Skull Fear activates now 50% faster. Skull Fear has its old duration of fear, if the Target(s) had at the moment no boons.
• Mace Head Crack: Renamed to simply Head Cracker.
  Mechanic changed to disable for 5 seconds gaining Adrenaline, Initiative, Life Force, deactivates Virtues, lets clones/phantasms explode without shatter effects, deactivates Tools and Attunement Changes for that time.

Deadly Arts

Minor

• Serpent’s Touch: Stealing inflicts 2 Stacks of Poison for 10s. All your Non Auto Attack Hits have now a Chance of 50% on hit to cause a Stack of Poison extra.
• Lotus Poison: Weaken Targets for 4 seconds when you poison them. Increases Poison Durations by 33% and reduces Venom Cooldowns by 5 Seconds.
• Exposed Weakness: Deals 10% more Damage if your Target has a Condition. Receive 10% lesser Damage from foes that suffer on Weakness.

Adept

• Dagger Training: Daggers now have a 33% chance to cause Vulnerability for 2 seconds and you gain +1 Initiative every 5 seconds, if you wield 2 Daggers.
• Mug: Gain Life when Stealing, Dealing Damage is now baselined into Steal. Removes two Conditions from you, if you had no Stolen Skill so far.
• Trapper’s Respite: Traps cause 5 Stacks of Vulnerability for 10s. Traps recharge 20% faster and you gain 5 Stacks of Might für 8s when foes run into your traps.

Master

• Ressourceful Trapper: Stealing reduces Cooldowns of recharging Traps and you get healed when foes run into your traps.
• Panic Strike: Striking a foe under 50% health causes Immobilize for 3s. ICD 20s. Striking foes that have over 50% health in melee causes Fear for 2 seconds ICD: 30s
• Revealed Training: Reduces Revealed by 1 second and increases Power by 200, when beign reveiled.

Grandmaster

• Potent Poison: Poison deals now 10% more Damage and using Venoms increases your Condition Damage by +50 per used Venom (max +250 on full venom build)
• Improvisation: Deal 10% more Damage, while you have a Stolen Skill in F2.
  Your last used Utility Skill is immediately recharged, if you use F2 and F2 can be used twice.
• Executioner: Deal 20% more damage, while your target has lesser than 50% health. Gain Health when you kill targets and gain 5 Stacks of Might for 20s on kill of a target.

i didnt read through all of it because thats just ridiculous

that’d incredibly buff thief, want us to be buffed so that anet can laughingly nerf us later gain? was that your plan?

actually when i read your proposed mace head crack change i get the feeling its a troll… a troll that took you a long time to set up

Part 3

Critical Strikes

Minor

• Keen Observer: Increases the Range of the Shortbow and Pistols from 900 to 1200. Trick Shot will bounce now once more at 50% chance, while Pistol Shots gain a 50% chance to bounce to nearby targets.
• Unrelenting Strikes: Gain Fury for 4s, ICD 10s, when you strike foes that have under 50% Health. Your Criticals become unblockable, while under Fury.
• Ferocious Presence: Critical Damage is increased by 10% against targets with over 50% health. Gain 10% lesser Damage from Critical Hits while you have more health than your target.

Adept

• Side Strike: Gain 10% critical hit rate when attacking from the sides. 15% when attacking from behind.
• Signets of Power: Signets recharge 20% faster and let you gain 5 Stacks of Might for 10s on activation.
• Fluid Strikes: Damage is increased by 10%, while your endurance is not full.

Master

• Sundering Strikes: Vulnerability is increased by 33% and your Criticals have a chance to cause Vulnerability for 6s.
• Practiced Tolerance: Gain Vitality based on 7% of your Precision. Ferocity increases by 7% of your Precision too, if your Health falls below 50%
• Ankle Shots: Pistols and Harpoon Guns have a 60% Chance to cripple on Criticals (ICD 8s) and deal 10% more damage against crippled targets, while Shortbows have instead a 60% chance to cause Bleeding on Critical and deal 10% more Damage on bleeding targets.

Grandmaster

• Invigorating Precision: Criticals heal you for 15% of your outgoing Damage. Gain +150 Precision while you have Vigor on you.
• Hidden Killer: Attacks from Stealth are guaranteed Critical Hits and unblockable, except for Aegis.
• Fast and Furious: Criticals let you extend Fury for 2,5 seconds (ICD 2s). While you have Fury on you, you will gain every 3 seconds also Quickness for 2seconds.

@ Tarkan: Thief got nerfed already with nearly every prior balancing patch.
Alot of their skills/traits even never got touched until to day. Its always easier and better to buff a class first a bit too much, cause then its easier to slightly nerf it again down to a point, where it fits, than to constantly nerf a class into oblivion to find then buffs, that are appropiate enough, while all other classes receive at the same time also absurd buffs. itd all fine, when you disagree with my proposed changes, but that doesnt make then ridiculous as logn as you have no god darn clue about it, how they would play out at all, until you could test it :P With my proposed change to Mace Head Crack i just wanted to find a way to differentiate this skill significantly more from the other similar skill Bone Crack, which stuns and is basically the same skill as Daze/Stun is basically the same.
A Steal Skill, that is something that you get only every xx seconds, and i nthis case only from guardians to protect you with it for 5 seconds better agaisnt the other profession’s special mechanics is something, what I absolutely don’t find ridiculous, but absolute fitting as something that I could steal from a “guardian”. Just think about it.

Ok so you are unhappy with the changes to dagger training? Why?

Now for PVE this is more likely a debuff and a try to push thief into condi (rune of thieves may be worth a test)

But you know, if more mobs come who can heal (the modrem already have them) I’m all for more poison and heal reduce. Heck, if I think about all the condi cleanse in PvP I’M ALL UP for testing this instead of Mug. It is not always easy to interupt a heal, but reducing the heal can make all the difference.

Yea Trappers Respite… well maybe a Trapper thief is viable now, something to test

Though: WHERE did you see Klepto being nerfed? It is the exact same and with the CD on Steal reduced it is more buffed than nerfed

Yea true SB 4 seems like a nerf, not really dmg wise (as it stacks it damage) but the healing reduce duration reduce is maybe a bit sad (love to spam downed ppl with it xD)

About Executioner and DMG increase on Poison… Well, on Condi DD this might get a HUGE difference. Thinking about dagger dagger bleed/poison. This might turn ugly hehe, but we will see (i think we can easily generate around 15/10 on perma stacks if done right)

The over the board Vigor nerf is a bit… nah. As well some of the Acro rearrangements. No Might for us :/

Part 4:

Shadow Arts

Minor

• Meld With Shadows: Stealth from your abilities last 1 second longer and Shadow Refuge no longer shows enemies when you used it and where you used it exactly.
• Reselience of Shadows: Receive 25% lesser Damage in Stealth and move 50% faster in Stealth. (overrides other Movement Speed Factors)
• Last Refuge: Gain Stealth and Resistance for 4 seconds when your Health reaches 25%

Adept

• Hidden in Smoke: Create a Smoke Screen when downed or being hit with a burst attack that deals more than xxxx damage within 2 seconds . Deception abilities recharge 20% faster.
• Shadow’s Embrace: Remove 1 condition every 3 seconds while in stealth.
• Shadow Protector: When you grant stealth to an ally, they gain 3 seconds of regeneration. This effect no longer has an internal cooldown.

Master

• Hidden Thief: Gain stealth for 2 seconds when stealing from an enemy (automatically affected by Meld with Shadows)
• Leeching Venoms: Siphon life from your foes when triggering a venom. This can only occur once per strike. Gain 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds when activating a venom.
• Shadow Reinforcement: When you summon Thieves, you summon 1 additional Thief and your summoned Reinforcements deal 25% more damage, are summoned with Quickness for 10s and have 50% more Health.

Grandmaster

• Cloaked in Shadows: Gaining stealth blinds nearby foes for 5 seconds. When you dodge roll and avoid successfully being hit, gain Stealth for 3s.
  Fall Damage as like Revive Speed Effects are now moved into a Mastery for this
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation: Regenerate health and initiative while in stealth.
• Venomous Auras: When you use a venom skill, you apply the effect to all nearby allies as well. Increases maximum duration of Venoms by 20%.

Part 5

Acrobatics

Minor

• Expedious Dodger: You can dodge now 3x before your Endurance is out.
• Feline Grace: Gain Health when you successfully dodge Attacks and gain Swiftness.
• Endless Stamina: Vigor is for you 50% more effective in regard of duration and intensitiy.

Adept

• Vigorous Recovery: Gain vigor for 5 seconds when using a healing skill. Lose a Condition when Vigor ends on you.
• Pain Response: Gain regeneration and protection for 5 seconds and remove damaging conditions when struck while below 75% health.
• Guarded Initiation: Remove vulnerability, weakness and slow from yourself when striking an enemy while above 75% Health

Master

• Swindler’s Equilibrium: Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword recharges steal by 1 second. This effect has a 1 second internal cooldown.
• Hard to Catch: Break stun and refill endurance when you are disabled (stun, daze, knockback, pull, knockdown, sink, float, fear, taunt, or launch)
• Assassin’s Reward: Heal yourself whenever you use a skill that uses initiative. Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent plus 1% Bonus Healing Power for every Initiative Point (10-13%).

Grandmaster

• Fleet Shadow: The effects of cripple and chill on you are reduced by 50%, meaning your movement is decreased by 25% and 33% respectively, rather than 50% and 66%. If you would become immobilized, you are instead crippled for 4 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.
• Upper Hand: Gain one initiative when you evade an attack. This effect has a 3 second internal cooldown. When you gain initiative through a successful Dodge, it will recharge your Healing Skill Cooldown by a percentage.
• Martial Artist: Using Deadly Blossom has a chance to stun foes now and you gain Stability on Dodge Rolls for 2 seconds.

Final Part

Trickery

Minor

• Kleptomaniac: Stealing gives you 2 initiative and Steal Skills used remove 1 Condition.
• Preparedness: Increases maximum initiative by 3 and reduces chance to receive Critical Hits by 10%.
• Lead Attacks: Increases damage by 1% per initiative. Steal recharges 15% faster.

Adept

• Uncatchable: Leave behind caltrops when you dodge.
• Flanking Strike: Gain haste when attacking a foe from behind or the side.
• Thrill of the Crime: When you Steal, you and all nearby allies gain fury, might, and swiftness for ten seconds.

Master

• Bountiful Theft: Stealing grants you and all nearby allies vigor. You remove now an additional Boon from your target that you will grant to nearby allies (includes Quickness, Alacrity and Resistance)
• Trickster: Reduce recharge on tricks. Tricks remove 1 condition when used.
• Pressure Striking: Enemies you interrupt are inflicted with 3 stacks of torment for 5 seconds.

Grandmaster

• Quick Pockets: Gain 3 initiative when swapping weapons while in combat. Increases Boon Duration on you by 10%
• Sleight of Hand: Daze enemies for 1 second when stealing. Steal’s recharge is reduced by 20%.
• Bewildering Ambush: Stealing also applies 5 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds.

godz raiden.2631:

As a thief who doesn’t touch p/p very often, my heart goes out to you guys. I found it a bit hypocritical that the devs have stated one of their goals with the new trait system and new traits is to allow for more diverse builds without completely removing existing builds, yet p/p seems to have been completely forgotten by them. I guess, as others have pointed out on this forum, there’s hope that the elite specialization for thieves will include traits that help pistol, but for now we can’t help but be skeptical.

Thanks for the kind words, raiden. And I completely agree with the highlighted statement.

Jesiah.2457:

All in all I’m disappointed as usual and the patch hasn’t even landed yet. New record for Anet considering this was supposed to be some big great change. Who am I kidding though? I’m amazed I actually had my hopes up for a few weeks and was excited for the upcoming thief changes prior to reading their latest information regarding it. I should have known better, shame on me.

Yeah, ANet screwed Thief big-time. I am beginning to wonder if any of the developers even play the class regularly. These are the most shortsighted and incompetent changes I’ve seen yet.

My problem is roughly with the poison/venoms, ricochet, and practiced tolerance.

Roughly the way I see it is its saying they removed the trait to get extra charges/uses out of the venoms. In actuality if you look at it from diminishing returns perspective yes they add it but then since they are making the poisons/venoms duration less its roughly the same thing as just removing the trait altogether.

Yeah for anyone wanting to use pistols it seems pistols have been focused on to take it out of any contention with the meta.

Last is the critical trait Practiced tolerance which ferocity can be a good thing but builds like say running a sinister set becomes useless because that chunk of health you got is roughly in a lot of fights the difference between living and dying on a thief lol.

So they need to come up with something other than a clever way of getting rid of the extra venoms, get pistols viable, and have some way to get that chunk of health back and then if they do all that I am fine with the changes imo.

Rai.9625:

Ok so you are unhappy with the changes to dagger training? Why?

…snip…

Okay, about kleptomaniac. I was under the assumption it was three when using steal. Mistake on my part, I’ll edit that out later.

Now the thing I’m unhappy about with Dagger Training is the 33% chance on hit to poison your target … for two seconds. Honestly, that duration is easily lackluster and I don’t see that somehow being more important than burst healing and burst damage on demand. Is there really any reason to choose that over something like mug? The way I see it, Anet will nerf mug into oblivion to try to make this lackluster trait seem more appealing, because screw buffs to thief while everyone else is getting massive buffs.

Also trappers respite is not going to drop a needle trap on heal, it just buffs using traps. So it’s a trait that’s only good if you bring needle trap or other traps where as mug inherently buffs something you will use often and don’t need to change a utility slot for.

I am disappointed because thieves are pretty much going to remain the exact same, save for acro builds getting completely revamped into something that is seemingly kitten by comparison to what it is now. Where as other classes are getting some insanely nice buffs … we’re actually facing some nerfs and some of our changes are lackluster trash, if not nerfs. Though I’m at least somewhat happy I was wrong about kleptomaniac, my bad.

I need to go edit my garbage now.

You forget that the poison duration of the AA Chain got increased. So with those two seconds we can guess we get almost 100% uptime for Poison even if the enemy uses cleanses.

If you battle against Guard for example I always use my SB for poison fields, makes life so much easier (even on downed ppl), so hell yea: Poison is nice and it is worth a try (for the record I almost never used the 5% dmg boni Trait before, because… why? It makes almost no difference, only in coordinated groups for speed runs)
SO this new Trait let us play with new possibilities: More easily cut the heal of enemies (we will see if more healers will appear in pve, I hope so) and in PvP it is worth a test.
AND for Condi builds this could very well become massive Damage (Dagger/Dagger for example, bleeds + poison is nice)

Trappers respite is just for testing a trap build, i did not say it is powerfull, that I cannot know yet. But it will be fun testing it

What I Agree on: Acro got hit hard and I think our place in the DPS ranking got lowered (I’m not happy with that)
But you know what? We will see so much hate from our enemies regardless, because we, the thieves have one major advantage:
Our play is not limited, we always find something to make the life of our enemies hell. Think about all the debuffs we got, it changed nothing. This Time as well, maybe we will be able to abuse Sinister stats to a degree and more.

But for me there are only two real nerfs: to our Acro line (which is hard) and maybe DMG overall (but not sure here, because… well we can go 66006 now, which gives us lead attacks in addition to executioner+ revealed training + ferocity buff including high uptime on fury… nope sorry I think we got buffed there

Rai.9625:

You forget that the poison duration of the AA Chain got increased. So with those two seconds we can guess we get almost 100% uptime for Poison even if the enemy uses cleanses.

If you battle against Guard for example I always use my SB for poison fields, makes life so much easier (even on downed ppl), so hell yea: Poison is nice and it is worth a try (for the record I almost never used the 5% dmg boni Trait before, because… why? It makes almost no difference, only in coordinated groups for speed runs)
SO this new Trait let us play with new possibilities: More easily cut the heal of enemies (we will see if more healers will appear in pve, I hope so) and in PvP it is worth a test.
AND for Condi builds this could very well become massive Damage (Dagger/Dagger for example, bleeds + poison is nice)

Trappers respite is just for testing a trap build, i did not say it is powerfull, that I cannot know yet. But it will be fun testing it

What I Agree on: Acro got hit hard and I think our place in the DPS ranking got lowered (I’m not happy with that)
But you know what? We will see so much hate from our enemies regardless, because we, the thieves have one major advantage:
Our play is not limited, we always find something to make the life of our enemies hell. Think about all the debuffs we got, it changed nothing. This Time as well, maybe we will be able to abuse Sinister stats to a degree and more.

But for me there are only two real nerfs: to our Acro line (which is hard) and maybe DMG overall (but not sure here, because… well we can go 66006 now, which gives us lead attacks in addition to executioner+ revealed training + ferocity buff including high uptime on fury… nope sorry I think we got buffed there

I think this guy is right.

I think the real nerfs are on Acrobatics (the amount of dodges is pretty much halved?)
but that is about it. Personally I think CS is buffed. The new Fury traits are very nice and Hidden Killer and No Quarter are very nice Grandmasters. (I do think that the master traits are not that good though, but I guess you can’t have everything)

I think Poison is also not that bad, since thief has around the most access to poison (aside necromancer maybe) we have poison on our autoattack chain:

Lotus Strike: Increased the poison duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.

People also complain that 33% chance on hit to apply 2 seconds of poison is bad. But you shouldn’t forget that we have this chance on every hit. The dagger autoattack already does around 4 hits in 2 seconds. Which means we can upkeep it by just spamming our auto attack. (not even counting the Lotus Strike poison duration)

But we’ll see what happens.

Acrobatics traits need the most buff ATM they are getting way worse when at the same time all other classes/traitlines get op.
They should strengthen the options in grandmaster slots in all lines i.e.: nobody is gonna take Quick Pockets over Sleight of Hand. No quarter and Executioner are still uncontested too. Also Crit strike traits are too straightforward and have not enough play to them, some utility would be great.
Edit: Improvisation is also good. However, a good player keeps you track of your cooldowns. and improvisation removes counterplay. It is the only trait that is gonna enable doubling up on heal…I’d suggest a removal.

To the new dagger training and the question as to why people would ever choose this over mug.

You have to look at all the traits here. Poison on daggers will also Inflict weakness. Now a Deathblossom on the dagger dagger set will not only inflict 3 stacks of bleeds but odds are against a single target a stack of poison and weakness. Thats more reason to use DB than we had before . If I am d/d and use heartseeker in quick succession on a fleeing foe I can get poison and weakness on him which will hit just as he most likely to use a heal. Preventing 2k on a heal is just as good as getting a 2k hit in off mug every 21 seconds and that blow he retaliates with changed to a glancing blow because of weakness from that poison is like a heal.

Now back to DB . Weakness, poison, 3 bleeds is not all bad but if you manage to catch one of the evades as you DB in and are in the acrobatic line I can get vigor and an INI.

I can see reasons i would use over mug.

babazhook.6805:

To the new dagger training and the question as to why people would ever choose this over mug.

You have to look at all the traits here. Poison on daggers will also Inflict weakness. Now a Deathblossom on the dagger dagger set will not only inflict 3 stacks of bleeds but odds are against a single target a stack of poison and weakness. Thats more reason to use DB than we had before . If I am d/d and use heartseeker in quick succession on a fleeing foe I can get poison and weakness on him which will hit just as he most likely to use a heal. Preventing 2k on a heal is just as good as getting a 2k hit in off mug every 21 seconds and that blow he retaliates with changed to a glancing blow because of weakness from that poison is like a heal.

Now back to DB . Weakness, poison, 3 bleeds is not all bad but if you manage to catch one of the evades as you DB in and are in the acrobatic line I can get vigor and an INI.

I can see reasons i would use over mug.

If you can see a reason to use anything in the adept tier over mug, you need glasses.

Since 6 trickery is a forgone conclusion (for anyone not taking the new spec), it’d be madness to ditch even just the heal on Mug for a 33% chance to poison for 2 whole seconds.

You already have serpent’s touch, lotus strike, and choking gas – trading mug for 2s more poison (33% of the time, no less) is a losing prospect. Sure, you can concoct tons of niche scenarios where dagger training is better, but for the vast majority of realistic scenarios, mug blows DT out of the water.

evilapprentice.6379:

babazhook.6805:

To the new dagger training and the question as to why people would ever choose this over mug.

You have to look at all the traits here. Poison on daggers will also Inflict weakness. Now a Deathblossom on the dagger dagger set will not only inflict 3 stacks of bleeds but odds are against a single target a stack of poison and weakness. Thats more reason to use DB than we had before . If I am d/d and use heartseeker in quick succession on a fleeing foe I can get poison and weakness on him which will hit just as he most likely to use a heal. Preventing 2k on a heal is just as good as getting a 2k hit in off mug every 21 seconds and that blow he retaliates with changed to a glancing blow because of weakness from that poison is like a heal.

Now back to DB . Weakness, poison, 3 bleeds is not all bad but if you manage to catch one of the evades as you DB in and are in the acrobatic line I can get vigor and an INI.

I can see reasons i would use over mug.

If you can see a reason to use anything in the adept tier over mug, you need glasses.

Since 6 trickery is a forgone conclusion (for anyone not taking the new spec), it’d be madness to ditch even just the heal on Mug for a 33% chance to poison for 2 whole seconds.

You already have serpent’s touch, lotus strike, and choking gas – trading mug for 2s more poison (33% of the time, no less) is a losing prospect. Sure, you can concoct tons of niche scenarios where dagger training is better, but for the vast majority of realistic scenarios, mug blows DT out of the water.

I disgree entirely. You are entitled to your opinion but it only that. Choking gas is on an entirely different weaponset . We are talking about what it adds to DAGGERS not shortbows and some people do not want to switch a weapon and wait 10 seconds just to get a 2 second poison off.

Nor should one presume everyone will take trickery or be using a power set. Dagger training will help ensure poison uptime much higher and there more stacks of it ticking and will allow poison/weakness on everything from a DB to a crippling dagger to a CND and backstab. 2 seconds will last right through a mediguards shelter his block coming down just in time to poison him again.

I do recall promoting Venomshare and Improv before everyone started using those and getting the same type of “they are useless” responses. The only thing I see thate would give MUG the edge is that heal but that not because it just a better trait, it because issues Thieves might have with Vitality , which also has a BTW would make IP more enticing to many.

I wonder why most ppl don’t want to see the benefit of poison… I mean, we get 33% or 2s of poison and… holy do we strike fast and often with daggers.
The AA chain poison got even buffed to 6s…
How often did I thought, kitten you CD on Weapon Switch… I could need the poison now, but had to decide against it.

And honestly the heal on steal is nice, but I think Dagger Training is really worth a shot.
babazhook.6805 I totally agree with you

Rai.9625:

You forget that the poison duration of the AA Chain got increased. So with those two seconds we can guess we get almost 100% uptime for Poison even if the enemy uses cleanses.

If you battle against Guard for example I always use my SB for poison fields, makes life so much easier (even on downed ppl), so hell yea: Poison is nice and it is worth a try (for the record I almost never used the 5% dmg boni Trait before, because… why? It makes almost no difference, only in coordinated groups for speed runs)
SO this new Trait let us play with new possibilities: More easily cut the heal of enemies (we will see if more healers will appear in pve, I hope so) and in PvP it is worth a test.
AND for Condi builds this could very well become massive Damage (Dagger/Dagger for example, bleeds + poison is nice)

No I did not forget that the duration to the end of dagger 1 chain duration got buffed. What I’m complaining about are traits. I would like to see Dagger Training be an acceptable choice from a thief who’d like to play poison / bleed stacking using D/D as you mentioned.

I primarily play SB and D/D and 2 second poison duration is pathetic, at best. You say “Oh yeah it will help stack the numbers higher” by what, one? If you’re lucky you’ll see it go up to 4-5, very briefly after using steal and a successful 1 chain. And that’s not even considering condition clearing / dodges / blocks / out of range. Two seconds is too short to try to profit using poison duration increase in the build via a Grandmaster trait AND a runeset without sacrificing superior setups for condi like like geomancy + leeching sigil combination (makes for a very strong swap from SB to D/D).

Also, this is further worsened since there will not be +30% condition duration from the traitline itself. If we still had that, I wouldn’t be upset about these changes, but we won’t, so these are honestly unnecessarily low numbers for a trait combination and an unneeded nerf to SB on top of that. It’s like Anet doesn’t want thieves to have viable condition builds and would much rather cater towards pure burst damage, since everything else in the DA lineup looks really solid … for burst thieves. They were generous there to the point of which everyone who isn’t a thief is crying about it but do you see anyone on forums crying about Dagger Training or Potent Poisons? No, maybe that should cue you in a little bit!

Literally, at 2 seconds you’d have to grab the newly nerfed and now crap-tier Grandmaster trait “potent poisons” AND use a runeset with +30% poison duration (which IMO they are lackluster sets compared to many other outstanding sets as it is) to simply bring that 2 second baseline to 3. That’s a lot of investment for simply one tick of poison damage where as Krait runes comes with a 45% increase to bleed duration, bleed stack on being hit, and poison bleed torment on using elite. Might sound silly, but it’s actually quite effective with Dagger Storm, especially vs certain situations.

Honestly, what I’m getting at here is that it should be at least three seconds baseline and they should seriously leave shortbow alone, it’s been nerfed so many times already. This would make this poison stacking you mentioned somewhat possible to see numbers that would even mean something at all compared to straight up burst damage AND healing from something like mug along with a superior burst setup using superior traits.

I wonder why Anet gives thieves condi options when any time they do, they make sure it’s gimpy as hell compared to what they give them in terms of burst. Why have condi weapons, hybrid weapons, and condi utilities if our condi traits are pathetic by comparison to our burst counterparts?

So many nerfs indeed. Feline got nerfed withdraw got nerfed steal cd got nerfed. That trap set on heal trait was removed as well from the trait. Anet is forcing you to choose between klepto lead attacks and preparedness on one trait and on the next tier you got 2 totally useless traits nobody picks and thrill of the crime. I don’t know but the only build that comes to mind that doesn’t have any hard choices to make is p/d condi.

I think the poison nerf on thief is because anet is afraid of the qq stream from venomous aura spider venom abuse.

evilapprentice.6379:

If you can see a reason to use anything in the adept tier over mug, you need glasses.

Since 6 trickery is a forgone conclusion (for anyone not taking the new spec), it’d be madness to ditch even just the heal on Mug for a 33% chance to poison for 2 whole seconds.

You already have serpent’s touch, lotus strike, and choking gas – trading mug for 2s more poison (33% of the time, no less) is a losing prospect. Sure, you can concoct tons of niche scenarios where dagger training is better, but for the vast majority of realistic scenarios, mug blows DT out of the water.

My thoughts exactly. I would like to see something in the adept tier for thieves actually worth taking over Mug, for once, and these new traits aren’t worth it. That burst healing and damage adds so much to so many combinations, I’ve used it in my condi / hybrid builds, up until Anet broke Hidden Thief + Mug combination, AGAIN. (And have yet to fix it, but that’s just how bad they are at what they do)

Seriously … as far as I’m concerned, Anet doesn’t know how to think outside of the box they’re unaware they’re even stuck inside of. They obviously favor burst thief and seriously skimp by on any condi thief traits. I mean a Grandmaster trait, for 5 seconds of confusion on steal compared to 20% Steal CD reduction AND a daze. The latter has amazing synergy with mug, which is a burst combination. Can’t say too much for confusion other than hope whoever you put it on is blind enough to spam a few times while it’s on, or that it doesn’t just get instantly cleared by the near-insane amount of condi cleansing going on. (And the same can be said with dagger training + potent poisons, not worth it compared to mug & 20% increased damage to targets below 50% health)

I would like to see traits that are good enough to replace current meta traits, but knowing Arenanet and their mass incompetence, that this won’t happen. These “big changes” ultimately prove it.

They need to separate spvp wvw and pve builds, Just because you can abuse a lot of things like endurance condi and boon duration in wvw doesn’t mean spvp is at fault as well. Nerf of thieves in wvw is well deserved but they way they do it is soo lazy nerfing the core of the profession to the ground.

On another note confusion is a dot now as well. But interrupt + torment trait might be more worth it still.

Edit: Anyone else remember Anet saying they want thief to be a mobile class? Is that why they nerf steal cd and evades for more burst dmg? Isn’t that the exact opposite?

Seriously Woden, exactly. But that is far too much work for Anet considering they don’t honestly care about SPvP and would rather just deal with PvE and balance around that instead. And even if they did care about SPvP, that’s too much work for them considering they’re now trying to impliment Guild vs Guild in a game named Guild Wars 2. Only took them three years and an expansion to do that.

I guess confusion being a dot now is nice and will make it actually do a little something to people smart enough to just wait the five seconds it’s on them, but it could still pale compared to mug+sleight of hand.

And I don’t know what Anet wants, but I do know they ruined the Acro line and Crit Strikes doesn’t seem very appealing, not by itself anyway. Honestly I think these changes are just going to make the current meta thief even more meta and make an already stale meta even more stale, once the “oohs and aahhs” of the changes wear off.

Torment on steal /interrupt is also another reason to pick sleight of hand. So no hard choices there. I have seen a lot of posts talking bout condi thief not being viable but I was thinking a spider venom venomous aura build might be effective. But yeah it feels we gone back to 3 years ago where d/d 1 shoted you on pvp and then ran and waited for cds.

Also anyone noticed spike trap buff? Seems they trying to enforce trap usage.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Thief-suggestions/first#post5169434

link to my topic which got link to my thougths…

Rai.9625:

You forget that the poison duration of the AA Chain got increased. So with those two seconds we can guess we get almost 100% uptime for Poison even if the enemy uses cleanses.

If you battle against Guard for example I always use my SB for poison fields, makes life so much easier (even on downed ppl), so hell yea: Poison is nice and it is worth a try (for the record I almost never used the 5% dmg boni Trait before, because… why? It makes almost no difference, only in coordinated groups for speed runs)
SO this new Trait let us play with new possibilities: More easily cut the heal of enemies (we will see if more healers will appear in pve, I hope so) and in PvP it is worth a test.
AND for Condi builds this could very well become massive Damage (Dagger/Dagger for example, bleeds + poison is nice)

Trappers respite is just for testing a trap build, i did not say it is powerfull, that I cannot know yet. But it will be fun testing it

What I Agree on: Acro got hit hard and I think our place in the DPS ranking got lowered (I’m not happy with that)
But you know what? We will see so much hate from our enemies regardless, because we, the thieves have one major advantage:
Our play is not limited, we always find something to make the life of our enemies hell. Think about all the debuffs we got, it changed nothing. This Time as well, maybe we will be able to abuse Sinister stats to a degree and more.

But for me there are only two real nerfs: to our Acro line (which is hard) and maybe DMG overall (but not sure here, because… well we can go 66006 now, which gives us lead attacks in addition to executioner+ revealed training + ferocity buff including high uptime on fury… nope sorry I think we got buffed there

This guy nails it. No-one cares about that 5% damage compare to a more consistent and spammable poison which directly counters ele and warrior.
Mug shouldn’t be compared because we’re talking about the dagger training comparison. If it remains kitten damage, do you think it’d be picked over Mug still? Mug has nothing to do with the polishing of dagger training, and dagger training will work better on none trickery builds. (Don’t entitle that everyone should pick trickery)

Overall this is a huge buff to thief, no question about it.

If the ~ 30 percent boost to traits applies equally to Runes , weapon and armor one might see more runes that focus on posion/weakness come into play as well.

Just as example I doubt many use Orr now but in a D/D build relying on posions and bleeds.

1): +25 Condition Damage
(2): +10% Poison Duration
(3): +50 Condition Damage
(4): 25% chance when struck to cause Poison for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 20s)
(5): +100 Condition Damage
(6): +20% poison duration; when struck below 20% health gain quickness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 90s)

In Theory a 30 percent boost to condition duration puts poison up to 40 percent. Potent poison at 33 percent puts this at 70 percent base. Now worth considering ? We have a trait for poison duration and not one for bleed duration This rune gets more leverage.

Or Superior Rune of the Afflicted.

(1): +25 Condition Damage
(2): +10% Bleeding Duration
(3): +50 Condition Damage
(4): +15% Poison Duration
(5): +100 Condition Damage.png Condition Damage
(6): +20% Bleeding duration; when you are downed, you create a death nova. (Cooldown: 30s)

More usable?

Rata Sum?

1): +25 Precision
(2): +10% Poison Duration
(3): +50 Precision
(4): +15% Weakness Duration
(5): +100 Precision
(6): +20% Poison poison duration; 50% chance when struck to summon a radiation field. (Cooldown: 90s)

40 percent base added to poison and weakness at 20 percent more not all bad. The Radiation field is on a 90 second cooldown but IS a field that applies weakness and poison and if you use a leap/whirl/projectile finisher all on the dagger (A dagger strength is the variety of finishers) and you can throw on long lasting weaknes or more poison stacks. The Radiation field lasts a full 15 seconds. Precision not a good fit for a condition build unless one wanting ti stack vulnerability on or go hybrid. That said high uptime of poison and weakness in a power build is useful.

That’s actually 30% increased poison duration with 15% increased weakness duration, not 45% to poison.

Compare that to Krait and how much more reliably thieves can stack bleeding, though. 45% increase to bleeding with the runeset alone, not to mention dodge caltrops, utility caltrops, then having death blossom and cluster bomb for bleed stacking through weapon sets.

I can max bleeds reliably using my current build which has krait runes in it. The amount of bleed stacking I’d sacrifice trying to apply poison stacking in the build nets into nothing more than a complete damage loss due to how much harder it would be to stack bleeds. (Not to mention the fact poison damage is a damage loss at one stack, and even with dagger training, we’ll struggle to maintain even two stacks to keep what we previously had, so condi thieves IMO are actually hurt by these changes)

Simply put, the amount sacrificed in terms of stacking bleeds does not even come close to trading off with trying to stack poison, and that’s with a Grandmaster Trait AND a runeset, trying to make another trait in combination with grand master Dagger Training worth anything. And lets not forget the future FURTHER nerf to Shortbow #4, which IMO is completely unnecessary and takes away from other runeset viability. Otherwise Orr might have seemed appealing.

If you wanted to play a build stacking any kind of condi build for thieves then you’re better off fighting with D/P and taking pressure striking and still relying on bleeds and torment, and perhaps bewildering ambush if that suits your fancy over Sleight of Hand. Shortbow is going to be questionable with these changes now that it’s also going to have a completely worthless poison duration.

It’s like Anet went “Hey look, we’re giving you this fun new GRANDMASTER trait! Better nerf Shortbow!”

I find it amusing also that the people who disagree with what I’m saying here are more focused on burst builds and how “powerful” that two seconds of poison is for a burst build / perspective. It’s 33% chance on hit, that isn’t taking into account dodges, blocks, invulnerability and just being out of range. It’s not as powerful as it looks, especially from a condi standpoint.

I don’t understand why that’s such a hard concept to grasp.

Let’s assume we take both Potent Poisons and Runeset of Orr and have a total of 53% increased poison duration. 2 seconds turns into … gasp … 3 seconds. A whole one second increase for 53% increased duration. Woooow~ :l

Now lets look at bleeds, and how much more infinitely effective increasing bleed durations is, in a plethora of ways, and then you tell me again that this poison duration is super uber strong, ’kay?

Death Blossom, 10 second bleed maximum of 3 stacks per attack that actually manages to land all three hits.

Caltrops both utility and trait caltrops have a base duration of 3 seconds.

Cluster Bomb has a base duration of 4 seconds per bleed stack.

With ONE investment, that being simply a runeset, not a combination of runeset AND a Grandmaster trait pushes the numbers up to.

Death Blossom 14.5 seconds per stack
Caltrops 4.25 seconds per stack
Cluster Bomb 5.75 seconds per stack

Now if you go with one further investment such as say, a sigil for bleed duration, you end up with numbers like this.

Death Blossom 16.5 seconds per stack
Caltrops 5 seconds per stack
Cluster Bomb 6.5 seconds per stack

Not to mention if you use geomancy sigil, those bleeds are extended nicely as well. This adds up for some pretty nice bleed stacking and actually makes investing in those worth something. Not that you get the entire duration out of death blossom, but if you go from fighting with a shortbow and use hidden thief like I do, you can immobilize someone in caltrops using surprise shot after stealing, cluster bomb detonate on them, dodge caltrops on them and swap while dodging then try to death blossom them, but at this point they’re already stacked to 10+ bleeds.

Nothing of this sort is even remotely possible with the combination of dagger training, potent poisons AND a runeset focused on poison duration. The value for such is not there and thus dagger training as is, is a garbage trait for a hybrid let alone a condi thief.

These changes are mostly centered around improving what didn’t really need to be improved and of course laughs at thieves who want to try to play something other than burst. Which is the majority of my disappointment with Anet, they do not think outside the box and keep the same lame and stale garbage in the game all the time.

Blows my mind they even offer options that would seem condi-viable, but they really aren’t, not compared to what’s out there that’s actually good

>>That’s actually 30% increased poison duration with 15% increased weakness duration, not 45% to poison.

They stated that the bonuses from gear was going up about 30 percent.

I speculated this would apply to Condition and boon durations.

Thus an existing 30 percent condition duration bonus would jump to 40 percent.

Now to the rest of your points . You seem to suggest that if someone takes Posion duration over Bleed duration damage would drop dramatically. This is not the case. I can easily get 10 stacks of bleed of DB on a dagger dagger set just because the base duration of DB is already high bleed wise. This before durations considered.

1 poison stack is more damage per tick then one bleed stack.

The Dagger Autoattack has a poison. The ONLY bleed on a d/d set is DB whereas one traiting dagger training can get a potential poison off every d/d attack.

So yes using Krait in a d/d condi set a person will stack more bleeds but due to the nature of cleansing and Initiative it will not be THAT many more bleeds. It takes 4 INI to use a DB the one and only source of bleeds in that set. That means after 3 deathblossoms you are out. That is 9 bleeds.

With Zero bleed duration a person will still get those 9 bleeds on.

Now using dagger training along with potent poison in that same DD set and picking a poison duration rune.

For the same amount of INI the person with Orr will inflict the same amount of bleeds PLUS maintain two stacks of poison (mathematicaly) plus Inflict weakness when LP off cooldown.

Long term as Ini regained and more of those bleed stacks added by the person using Krait the total number of bleed stacks will be higher then the person in orr but this presuming no cleansing done in that long term by the enemy. As soon as those bleed stacks cleansed and it a start over the person in Orr is doing more raw damage.

This completely ignoring the fact that ALL other attacks in the Dagger training set have the potential to inflict poison while only DB can inflict bleeds.

Now to the shortbow. A shortbow is used as much for the AOE poison as the bleeds and the Shortbow leaves a poison field which will help generate more poison stacks. Even with the new 2 second base, I think adding more poison duration wherin that 2 second base gets up to 3.4 seconds is more advantageous then getting a longer bleed off Cluster bomb .

I would also point out the advnatge of longer duration poisons when it comes to using Combo fields. There no Combo field that inflicts bleeds. Both projectile and Whirl finishers generate poison stacks in a Poison field.

On a side note, Vuln increases Condi dmg now… and don’t forget Sinister Stats. that can become a quite heavy CDD with alot of Direct DMG

If only thieves had a reliable source of vulnerability. Oh there’s P/D but I’m not sure how many of them are going to be trying to spam #5 to stack poison with Dagger Training.

Also, trying to stack poison from a base of two seconds on dagger only attacks is just sad as a trait, from a condi perspective anyway. It would actually start to meet reliable standards in spvp at a baseline of 3 seconds, not 2. Then using runeset of orr & potent poisons (which is honestly a huge investment for this ONE thing) would go from 3 seconds to 5, which is enough headroom to actually work and allow you to stack poison.

That’s what I’m getting at here. The duration sucks, end of story. You aren’t going to stack it to meaningful numbers from Dagger Training even with potent poisons (which after nerf is a pathetic GM trait, 10% is negligible) and even after equipping a runeset on top of that. Adept Trait + Grandmaster Trait + Runeset. Three investments to get negligible results.

Where as you can keep Krait Runes, buff your reliable source of bleed stacking, have at least one stack of poison (not to mention another bleed + torment) on demand with elite, and considering you said those durations on runesets are going up even more, it’s a no brainer as to what runeset I’m going to keep running.

If I honestly get 10-15% more duration on bleeds, I’ll just stick with mug.

I’m not going to sacrifice burst healing and damage, as well as 20% increased damage to targets below 50% health to have a 33% chance on hit for 2.75 seconds of poison with 10% increased poison damage thanks to that super amazing GM trait. ;/

Not worth it, hands down.

OH I think the GM trait should be a further 20 percent increase in damage from poisons but that is not dagger training. It a different issue entirely. We were talking dagger training which IMHO will be taken as an adept trait.. No one in their right mind using a power build would choose potent poisons over executioner so your bringing that into the debate is moot. On the other hand a power build based on daggers might wish more uptime on poison and weakness and prefer that over mug,

Dagger training compares favorably with every other classes adept traits of the same type. 1 more second on the duration or a 60 percent chance on hit would be nice and might indeed be warranted once this all goes live but the trait hardly “garbage”.

As to Mug, not every person will take trickery and the extra 2000 damage every 20 or so seconds is not going to make or break a build. Generally a higher poison uptime over 20 seconds will net you more effective damage then that 2k. (which is much lower than that in a Condition build). I found in my p/p build that taking that Sundering strikes in that position output more damage over all simply because I could easily stack and maintain 10+ stacks of Vulnerability which in 20 seconds time was more overall damage. More damage on crits due to those stacks also netted me more healing overall in that build. Obviously this all changes with the new layout but it merely used as an example to show how diffrent traits are better suited to certain builds.

To your krait Runes argument. Your Elite generating those three extra Conditions is predicated on elite skill usage (generally basilisks). When I am speaking of duration increases to conditions I am speaking to the ones that specifically state “Increases XXX durations by XXX percent” and not those flat bonus ones. The torment/poison off krait elite will likely remain the same as they are simply flat bonuses. Since krait has no poison duration increase , there will be no increase to that 8 seconds poison from Krait.
On the other hand if all remains the same and as I speculate it will be number 4 bonus off Orr will trigger 14 seconds poison on a 20 second cooldown.

They are certainly good runes but hardly the be all to end all. Arguing for diversity is not accomplished by insisting all must be in Krait. There are alternatives and the new dagger training makes ones like Orr and the Afflicted more desirable.

To P/D . that is not a good set for poison stacking. P/d using trappers runes and taking trappers respite might be a better alternative either over mug or dagger training if using a Condition build and going the DA line. You can add a lot of Vulnerability in such a build along with oodles of INI free stealth off the trap allowing for more sneak attacks. I would take that over mug any day.

Obviously all of this might change come Tuesday when we see the real thing.

babazhook.6805:

No one in their right mind using a power build would choose potent poisons over executioner so your bringing that into the debate is moot. On the other hand a power build based on daggers might wish more uptime on poison and weakness and prefer that over mug

On the other hand a power build based on daggers might wish more uptime on poison and weakness and prefer that over mug … power meaning burst meaning mug serves the role infinitely better. On demand added damage, not to mention healing which is great for sustain and often necessary for burst thieves in the first place.

Now, when you talk about that increased weakness duration, how are they going to get more? They already have poison dagger 1 chain and from stealing, and if they carry a shortbow on top of that or even that by itself, weakness uptime is easy as hell and does not need Dagger Training.

Unless you were suggesting condi runes with +poison and +weakness increased uptime, which I’d find to be a little … I don’t know, stupid? Honestly, the trait could stand to have a buff on the poison duration.

Also, about potent poison vs executioner. Even as a condi / especially when running hybrid, I would hands down choose executioner over potent poisons. That 10% added poison damage isn’t nearly enough to be any good, and still the same 33% increased poison duration as it was on adept tier.

20% more damage to a low target, even running carrion, is a much more reliable grandmaster trait than potent poisons ever will be. This is especially strong in combination with heartseeker, that added damage will be very useful, where as potent poisons falls lackluster due to the fact poison stacking is going to be hard, if not impossible, for thieves to try to pick that GM trait.

No need to get your panties in a wad. There are more builds other than zerker and carrion, just not many play it / know how to play it well, which doesn’t surprise me considering the majority of thieves I’ve played against in game who also come to the forums thinking terrible changes are good.

\o/

Edit: And let me just add, I don’t use basilisk venom since it has better synergy with burst rather than condi, I actually use dagger storm for a plethora of reasons, and it’s extremely effective in many situations, especially since all three of those stack immediately upon activating DS. So much for predictable considering it’s instant cast, so I guess your argument is moot.

Also, the whole thing about Krait and bleed stacking vs poison stacking is I would love for poison stacking to be a thing for thieves but with these changes, it’s not going to have much of a chance to be a thing, especially not with nerfs to Shortbow #4 and a weak base duration on Dagger Training which I was excited for until they announced the poor duration for it. Honestly it’s just another sign of Anet catering everything towards burst thief and nothing more.

And so I’m going to be sticking with Krait as there really is not going to be any fun new mechanic / poison stacking for thieves which I was previously hyped about, same with traps, which is also now meh. Sure, maybe venom share poison could have a brief moment in team play, but venoms just kind of blow without running venom share.

I don’t really feel that being forced into team play / one build in order to do poison stacking is all that fun or amazing. Maybe it’s just me when it comes to venomshare, but as far as thief by itself goes, nothing will really change.

Except Acro S/D thieves are not going to be nearly as common.

These are my own observations regarding the changes.

Deadly Arts.

I am ok with every added trait at every level outside potent Poison at the GM level. The concept of dagger training with daggers adding poison is sound albeit might need a tweak either in duration or in percentage of strikes when it applied.

Potent Poison : Poison durations increased 50 percent. Poison damage increased 20 percent.

Critical Strikes; The changes from the original proposals are much more solid. I see no real weaknesses in this traitline . My only concern is the disappearance of Ricochet.

Deadly Arts; The main issue here is nothing can really compete with shadows embrace. The other two adept traits just do not have that utility.

Suggestion Add 6 seconds resistance to trait Last Refuge.
Add “gain invulnerability for two seconds” to Concealed defeat.

Acrobatics IMHO needs the most work.

Expeditious dodger Add 4 seconds swiftness when dodging (this warranted because boon duration gone and there less dodges)

Feline Grace Add 3 seconds vigor on 1 second cool down. Warranted because Vigor downtweaked there little access to boon duration with thief.

Guarded Initiation. Add Confusion to Conditions cleansed.

Pain Response . Add Torment to conditions cleansed.

Assassins Reward. Tweak up the heal per IP spent by 20 percent.

Trickery All looks fine here,

Well we’re in agreement here then. I think Trickery is fine too and Acro definitely needs the most work. I’m not going to propose any changes, but I would be a lot happier giving Potent Poisons a shot if it had a 50% duration increase with 20% increase to poison damage, that actually sounds worth taking over executioner.

I’m still not thrilled about Shortbow #4 taking an unnecessary nerf, though. Hardest weapon set to use taking another nerf on poison duration is bringing it awfully close to being nothing more than a mobility tool than an actual weapon.

Guarded initiation should just be what they initially proposed, especially with all the changes they did to acro, it’s like they’re aiming to make it nothing more than an active defense tree but … uhm, if you had all those conditions on you, chances are you are not 90+% health and it is totally useless as it is. I really wonder what they were thinking.

Couldn’t argue against pain response cleansing torment too, it is an acro / “mobility” tree afterall.

Also I too am a bit concerned about the disappearance of Ricochet. Removing it from the game is one thing and seems extremely lame, but I swear if they recycle that trait into the future elite specialization, that’s a new low for Arenanet, but not astonishing for them to pull some kind of garbage move like that. Taking something away from players who already payed for it and then making them pay for the game again to have it back? Gross.

Otherwise CS doesn’t seem too bad. I mean, practiced tolerance hopefully grants vitality, otherwise zerker thief > assassin’s thief any day simply because of the massive health pool difference.

I’d have to agree on SA, nothing really contends with shadow’s embrace, it’s the same with adept tier traits in DA, IMO. And as far as Last Refuge, I really think it needs some kind of 1/2 second immunity to reveal or else it’s just a death sentence for SA thieves who CnD at low health trying to get away, only for it to pop during CnD, or a hidden thief mug combination when low, only for it to pop right as you steal and thus reveal yourself on top of someone (when it’s actually working right, anyway). Anyway, 6 seconds of resistance is a bit much for an adept trait though, don’cha think?

I’m still peeved at Anet for listing Hidden Thief as if it got any changes at all. They might as well have listed (Reverted changes to Hidden Thief) instead of putting (Automatically works with Meld with Shadows) as if it’s somehow different, because it’s not different, it’s the same thing now as it will be post patch. It’s like they put that in there to “beef up” the listed thief changes because as it is, they’ve skimped by on ours so far IMO. :l

I seriously don’t think Dagger Training would be terrible as 3 seconds baseline at 33% chance on hit. Otherwise leaving it at 2 with a higher chance on hit is the only way it’s really going to have any chance to shine in anything other than burst format.

Bah, I don’t even want to think about Acro. I just wish thief would get some meaningful changes in more than just a burst or bust field of play. It’s really disheartening to see thief receive nerf after nerf, even with these “big buffs” we’re getting nerfs, like to one of our condi applying weapons, shortbow. Like, please … does Anet even thief?

I mean, when I think about Engineer Trait “Lock on” or whatever … that is nothing more than their generic passive gameplay which is overly rewarding for minimal / no effort at all (Maybe a 3 second reveal is okay, but 6 seconds, on a 20 second ICD, are you serious?). The active gameplay in this game is hardly rewarded, I mean, look at the new “buffed” acro tree and tell me I’m wrong. :l

What they COULD do perhaps is give Last Refuge 5 seconds stability two stacks and make Stability counter reveal if resistance too much. This another way to counter a counter which would be interesting.

That said they took resistance out of Acro from one of the classes least able to deal with Conditions and added it to Healing Signet at 6 seconds to a class that has all manner of ways to deal with conditions. I really do not know why Warrior got resistance.I was really disappointed to see Resistance go as it seemed ideal for the acro line.

The intent of my adding Confusion to GI was you do a heal to get over 90 then attack and get those conditions cleared. Dropping the 90 to 80 might work better. There can also be some synergy with P/P as example using IP wherein the PP unload heals you over that threshold and then wipes those conditions. Assassins reward could also coem into play here if that healing can push you over that threshold and cleanse conditions.

That all said they are not that far off on the traits IF one looks just at thief. The issue is of course the other professions and how the changes to each will work out balance wise. This will only REVEAL itself in time.

I have every profession to 80 but since day one found the Thief the most fun. I tend to that class in virtually every like game I play. Well over 3/4s my time is on this profession and no matter those changes I will continue to tinker and persist and try and make it work.

That’s disgusting that they’d give warrior resistance on top of their built-in-rotation powerful condi cleansing if what you said is true. They are already a completely passive healing condi clearing class and then adding resistance on top of being able to use utilities to go immune to condi applications AND physical damage, geeze…

That is just overkill … yet it’s too good for thieves to have? I’m not saying your suggestions to that trait are bad or anything, but that’s far too hard to try to utilize in combat compared to simply what guarded initiation was initially. It’s initial idea was actually good, the current one is just bad. It’s yet another example of how active gameplay is barely rewarded while passive gameplay such as lock on is rewarded with little to no effort involved. Things like this are why this game is mocked in terms of being anything professionally related.

And I get you, traits are fine if you only looked at thief, but compared to what other classes are getting, we’re getting nerfs to go with our traits, which turn out to not even be buffs at all and purely nerfs if you don’t take traits that caused the nerfs in the first place. It’s pretty sad, really. Other classes are power creeping where as the only thing that really got any buffs for thief whatsoever is DA and SA, which SA will be shut down by passive gameplay that requires little to no skill at all.

Also, I SEE what you did there … ;p

Having resistance in the acro line is the only thing that would salvage the line as it is currently listed. There’s no damage bonus in acro anymore and the dodging mechanic (which is how acro would sustain) got an incredible nerf. If you’re going to try to take Acro over SA as a filler for sustain, then that resistance needs to be in there. It made sense, and makes even more sense with the fact it will have no damage modifier anymore, because fights will inevitably last even longer, making conditions even more difficult to deal with.

Crit strikes got huge buffs. It’s gone from a trait line that saw next to zero recognition to one which is seeing a lot of support, and the ability to spec into three lines fully to get some of the high-impact traits from trickery and SA without making many sacrifices are what really buffed the thief. You compare the strengths of some of the masters/grandmasters from the thief to those of other professions, and I think we have some of the most potent out there.

Acro and the damage aspects of SA got nerfed pretty hard, and I think acro could use some more love, but SA’s traits are very balanced; the traits themselves are extremely strong for the class and bring crazy amounts of defensive utility per their design, not 12 stacks of might on engage with passive healing better than war’s healing signet.

Outside the acro line and some small handful of traits elsewhere I am ok with most of the changes. The issues will arise when we compare relative to other classes. As example i think Engineers buffed way to much.

They have an ADEPT trait that adds 50 percent to all durations when using a pistol just as example and saw poison volley which is up to five poison stucks buffed from 2 seconds to 4 even before that adept trait. With that used as in example it hard to get a grip on dropping the SB poison to 2 seconds will having a GM trait that adds 33 percent to durations on ONLY poison (along with 10 percent to damage done)

Other issues arise when looking at the Warrior boosts to various healing skills such as gaining resistance which they do not really need with all that Condi cleansing on hand or +25 endurance on a heal.

Again thief on its own did not do too badly and the way skills laid out WILL change much of the meta in my opinion. I expect months and more of balaning issues and a whole lot off crying from various professions of nerfs.

It important to keep in mind while some nerfs seem unwarranted, others are.

Yeah, our changes for burst seem fine. DA and CS are okay, but P/P thieves won’t have ricochet, seems pretty lame to take that out entirely in favor of traits that brought nerfs … Trickster, for example. Though CS did get one trait that was poorly thought out, and wasn’t even given a negligible damage buff such as Potent Poisons. Sundering Strikes going from adept tier in DA to master tier in CS, with no buff considering tier placement.

SA also got more than a might nerf, Shadow’s Embrace will only remove damaging conditions now … which is really bogus. Yeah the plus side is that it will only remove damaging conditions so they will be the first to go through that trait, but if you have something with a long duration on it like a five year cripple, have fun with removing that … so stupid, especially if you don’t play S/X. -.-

And Baba, yeah … this is what I’m talking about, our changes are bogus when it comes to things like Dagger Training and Potent Poisons when considering other changes coming in. Like, it’s hilariously sad that a GM tier trait won’t even bring our 2 second poison duration up to 3 seconds … meanwhile Engineers get a 50% duration increase to pistol conditions from an adept trait and a buffed 2 second poison duration going to 4, so 6 seconds with multiple stacks? Wow … :/

Thanks Anet, seriously, thanks.

Lets not forget about the enormous fire aoe that warriors can put down that deals immediate damage and clears conditions. Also, while I’m on the note of warriors, Shadow’s Rejuvination does not heal for more than a warrior’s Healing Signet. Even with a celestial amulet on it does not heal for more than a current / pre-changes zerker warrior using healing signet, and then they have adrenal health on top of that along with access to regeneration.

And we only heal with Shadow’s Rejuvination while in stealth as their Healing Signet is always active. So no, Shadow’s Rejuvination does not even come close.

Jesiah.2457:

Lets not forget about the enormous fire aoe that warriors can put down that deals immediate damage and clears conditions. Also, while I’m on the note of warriors, Shadow’s Rejuvination does not heal for more than a warrior’s Healing Signet. Even with a celestial amulet on it does not heal for more than a current / pre-changes zerker warrior using healing signet, and then they have adrenal health on top of that along with access to regeneration.

And we only heal with Shadow’s Rejuvination while in stealth as their Healing Signet is always active. So no, Shadow’s Rejuvination does not even come close.

It’s too late for that – I tried to change the “SA is OP” tone on this forum, but I failed. And this is what we got because of it – thanks a lot, fellow thieves

Did they nerf acro thief?