Guild Wars 2

I play a lot, and I really don’t see many thieves besides ones leveling up who use SoM, once they hit 80 I see most just drop it from there bar in favor of the much better HiS.

Most players who use SoM pair it up with P/P and S/P, both very under-played weapon sets which have no stealth.

I had an idea, why not change SoM so it cannot stealth you, however increase its base healing by 100% so it has the sustain of a thief with stealth?

We all know how easy it is to kill a stealthless thief, however if SoM healed for a lot more (at the cost of stealth.) it would bring thief a new kind of play-style he could play with, kind of like a Tanky-Evasion Thief-Pirate instead of a Stealth-Assassin Ninja one.

SoM is my main heal for pretty much any dungeon except ones with lots of slowing conditions, when I use Withdraw.

SOM would be better if it healed for like 450 per hit….but had an internal timer on it so it couldnt go off more than like 1 time per second. i mean its like a 160 or so per hit right now but also has no limit to hits…so caltrops or trick shot can really boost it up high. but those small hits dont kill. so i would actually use it….and id love to make a signet build but it has no defensive utility. 450 per hit per second would be better i think

Travlane.5948:

SOM would be better if it healed for like 450 per hit….but had an internal timer on it so it couldnt go off more than like 1 time per second. i mean its like a 160 or so per hit right now but also has no limit to hits…so caltrops or trick shot can really boost it up high. but those small hits dont kill. so i would actually use it….and id love to make a signet build but it has no defensive utility. 450 per hit per second would be better i think

The problem is, then they would need to redesign Pistol Whip and Unload (which I think they should!)

There would be no point in using them anymore, autoattack does more damage, is slower, has more conditions, costs no initiative and would heal the same and procs retaliation less.

Daecollo.9578:

Travlane.5948:

SOM would be better if it healed for like 450 per hit….but had an internal timer on it so it couldnt go off more than like 1 time per second. i mean its like a 160 or so per hit right now but also has no limit to hits…so caltrops or trick shot can really boost it up high. but those small hits dont kill. so i would actually use it….and id love to make a signet build but it has no defensive utility. 450 per hit per second would be better i think

The problem is, then they would need to redesign Pistol Whip and Unload (which I think they should!)

There would be no point in using them anymore, autoattack does more damage, is slower, has more conditions, costs no initiative and would heal the same and procs retaliation less.

all they need to do to fix PW is unroot the skill. unload just needs to be faster and about 6 hits for more damage and a bonus of 1 sec KD if all 6 hit. that would fix both. SOM is not playable right now. i guess you COULD squeeze it in a zerg build. but i still th ink HIS is better bc it heals for like 10k if u count conidtions

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

Daecollo.9578:

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

true but i dont consider lvling a “viability” variable. i like the evades on PW….i think thats a decent trade off for weakness/cripple. really u can spam 5 PW in a row before you run out of energy ….. if its unrooted atleast ur not a sitting duck….also needs the dmg reduction taken off from the huge nerf a long time ago. i think sword attack auto attack should also be about 20% faster. its way to slow right now. if it were faster i think it would help us make a viable zerg build.

idea IF 20% faster auto attack and unrooted PW.

sigil of rage(quickness on crit)
rage trait(quickness on crit)
roll for init(6 init 3/4 evade)
Haste(stun break + quickness)
Sigil of paralyzer (15% increased time)
sleight of hand
long reach
bountiful theft
mug
inifl signet
assassins signet
20% recharge on signets and 2 init per
Signet of malice
executioner
7% chance for crit

this makes alot of init alot of evades and allot of heals and alot of quickness attacks

if it were unrooted i bet we could atleast get into a zerk and be a class worth picking when making a specific guild raid team. right now we jsut cant do anything other than blast finish and venom share / stay back.

I use it in my condition build. With 30 in shadow arts and apothecary jewelry my healing power sits around 577 or so. works pretty well for me.

Travlane.5948:

Daecollo.9578:

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

true but i dont consider lvling a “viability” variable. i like the evades on PW….i think thats a decent trade off for weakness/cripple. really u can spam 5 PW in a row before you run out of energy ….. if its unrooted atleast ur not a sitting duck….also needs the dmg reduction taken off from the huge nerf a long time ago. i think sword attack auto attack should also be about 20% faster. its way to slow right now. if it were faster i think it would help us make a viable zerg build.

idea IF 20% faster auto attack and unrooted PW.

sigil of rage(quickness on crit)
rage trait(quickness on crit)
roll for init(6 init 3/4 evade)
Haste(stun break + quickness)
Sigil of paralyzer (15% increased time)
sleight of hand
long reach
bountiful theft
mug
inifl signet
assassins signet
20% recharge on signets and 2 init per
Signet of malice
executioner
7% chance for crit

this makes alot of init alot of evades and allot of heals and alot of quickness attacks

if it were unrooted i bet we could atleast get into a zerk and be a class worth picking when making a specific guild raid team. right now we jsut cant do anything other than blast finish and venom share / stay back.

Would it be a lot better to go S/D and HiS with that run?

Cruuk uses SoM on a d/p build and he does well. I’ve used a similar build with good success but I still like HiS more overall.

SoM is a great heal. The three thief heals are pretty well balanced as a whole, they’ve each got their own synergies, weaknesses, and strengths.

The main problem is one of perception. Namely, the majority of thieves stick to a single archetype play style (heavy stealth high-offense “assassin”). This desire to play the thief one particular way versus the myriad of options means that their analysis of what constitutes a good ability is entirely flavored by its relevance to their particular playstyle.

In short, SoM is extremely bad at filling the role HiS fills, and that is a good thing. HiS is great at what it does, there isn’t a need to reduce the viability of other thief playstyles in order to support what is inarguably the most popular one.

If you approach every situation with the idea that you’re already >15 points deep in shadow arts and using full ‘zerker gear, of course skills aren’t going to make sense to you.

What SoM does have going for it, if you’re willing to look beyond the assassin archetype:
-Sustainability far exceeding any other heal, particularly if you have the toughness/healing power to back it up.
-Fastest CD, particularly with signet traits, allowing it to be used for “on heal” activations
-Signet synergy traits, making it play nice with things like SoA and therefore Acrobatics as a whole
-Great AE potential, particularly with things like dodgetrops (up to 2000~ HP healed per dodge), Choking Gas, and Sigils of Fire.

SoM already got a boost a little while ago, and the kind of build the OP speculates about is indeed possible, just not popular. Frankly, another 100 % boost would break it.

Travlane.5948:

Daecollo.9578:

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

true but i dont consider lvling a “viability” variable. i like the evades on PW….i think thats a decent trade off for weakness/cripple. really u can spam 5 PW in a row before you run out of energy ….. if its unrooted atleast ur not a sitting duck….also needs the dmg reduction taken off from the huge nerf a long time ago. i think sword attack auto attack should also be about 20% faster. its way to slow right now. if it were faster i think it would help us make a viable zerg build.

idea IF 20% faster auto attack and unrooted PW.

sigil of rage(quickness on crit)
rage trait(quickness on crit)
roll for init(6 init 3/4 evade)
Haste(stun break + quickness)
Sigil of paralyzer (15% increased time)
sleight of hand
long reach
bountiful theft
mug
inifl signet
assassins signet
20% recharge on signets and 2 init per
Signet of malice
executioner
7% chance for crit

This is a classic case of going by how things “feel” instead of the numbers. Sword auto attack is already one of the thief’s best damage abilities. It might “feel” slow because you’re used to dagger auto attack, but it matches dagger auto’s damage while having AE capability and debilitating conditions. Furthermore, Sigil of Rage is pretty terrible unless you’ve got strict control of combat uptime that allows you to fight in short bursts with long periods of recovery. These are the same ideas that were brought up shortly after release, but quickly dispelled as people came to understood how the game worked beyond how things “felt” at face value.

Dredge are the classic enemies for SoM. You can’t use blind to reduce incoming damage so a boatload of passive healing from a dredge army marching over your caltrops is very welcome. It does work and it doesn’t need any boost in PvE.

recently i’ve stopped using HiS and use mostly withdraw, ocassionally switching to SoM

Yeah, but for the traits mostly. It’s good enough to take be nice if it removed a condition but that’s probably just my reaction to the amount of conditions that have been flying around as of late.

Daecollo.9578:

Travlane.5948:

Daecollo.9578:

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

true but i dont consider lvling a “viability” variable. i like the evades on PW….i think thats a decent trade off for weakness/cripple. really u can spam 5 PW in a row before you run out of energy ….. if its unrooted atleast ur not a sitting duck….also needs the dmg reduction taken off from the huge nerf a long time ago. i think sword attack auto attack should also be about 20% faster. its way to slow right now. if it were faster i think it would help us make a viable zerg build.

idea IF 20% faster auto attack and unrooted PW.

sigil of rage(quickness on crit)
rage trait(quickness on crit)
roll for init(6 init 3/4 evade)
Haste(stun break + quickness)
Sigil of paralyzer (15% increased time)
sleight of hand
long reach
bountiful theft
mug
inifl signet
assassins signet
20% recharge on signets and 2 init per
Signet of malice
executioner
7% chance for crit

this makes alot of init alot of evades and allot of heals and alot of quickness attacks

if it were unrooted i bet we could atleast get into a zerk and be a class worth picking when making a specific guild raid team. right now we jsut cant do anything other than blast finish and venom share / stay back.

Would it be a lot better to go S/D and HiS with that run?

this was under the hypothetical that PW was unrooted and dmg was normal …not nerfed. and som was different. but s/d would work just not as well with SOM

Tulisin.6945:

Travlane.5948:

Daecollo.9578:

Even if PW is unrooted, it still does less damage then autoattack and does not apply weakness and cripple.

SoM is playable for leveling actually… just once you get 80 it doesn’t heal enough to be useful.

true but i dont consider lvling a “viability” variable. i like the evades on PW….i think thats a decent trade off for weakness/cripple. really u can spam 5 PW in a row before you run out of energy ….. if its unrooted atleast ur not a sitting duck….also needs the dmg reduction taken off from the huge nerf a long time ago. i think sword attack auto attack should also be about 20% faster. its way to slow right now. if it were faster i think it would help us make a viable zerg build.

idea IF 20% faster auto attack and unrooted PW.

sigil of rage(quickness on crit)
rage trait(quickness on crit)
roll for init(6 init 3/4 evade)
Haste(stun break + quickness)
Sigil of paralyzer (15% increased time)
sleight of hand
long reach
bountiful theft
mug
inifl signet
assassins signet
20% recharge on signets and 2 init per
Signet of malice
executioner
7% chance for crit

This is a classic case of going by how things “feel” instead of the numbers. Sword auto attack is already one of the thief’s best damage abilities. It might “feel” slow because you’re used to dagger auto attack, but it matches dagger auto’s damage while having AE capability and debilitating conditions. Furthermore, Sigil of Rage is pretty terrible unless you’ve got strict control of combat uptime that allows you to fight in short bursts with long periods of recovery. These are the same ideas that were brought up shortly after release, but quickly dispelled as people came to understood how the game worked beyond how things “felt” at face value.

the point was to have many ways of quickness and many ways of stun breaks and many ways to give stuns to the opponent.

3 ways to get quickness
4 ways to stun
4 ways to gain init
5 stun breaks.

I use it on my P/D build in WvW. I have lots of healing while stealthed, and I use CnD a lot. Signet of Malice just keeps me topped off with 150 heals x 8 or so between stealths, and 700 or so health per second while stealthed.

When running with a zerg, I switch to shortbow and clusterbomb spam…that hits a max of 15 targets per cluster (3 bombs x 5 targets), this keeps my health up as I spam. I also drop caltrops and get heals every tick of damage. And then there’s daggerstorm…

Basically SoM is a good heal for weapons that hit a lot (s/p, p/p, p/d, shortbow, d/d-death blossom) and for aoe. You sacrifice some utility and burst healing in those sets for a superior amount of healing over time. In other sets it’s probably not worth it, since you can probably get equivalent or better healing with the other two heals. The biggest downside is that the bulk of the healing requires attacking, so you need to have a build that can handle staying on the attack – or gets healing from diverse sources – like stealth. You also run into trouble if you get burst down, since you can’t easily get back up (except after some careful attacking / stealthing).

All this skill need is reducing the caste time or best of all remove the cast time and make it instantly.

I gauge each heal skill as follows;

small group or less – Hide in Shadows
large group or less – Signet of Malice
zerg or less – Withdraw

I use HiS the most since I seldom go in large groups, but when I was running with a large group in the bazaar killing champions, I brought SoM. Only in WvW I would use Withdraw because it creates a large gap between you and the opponent’s zerg.

Depends on your build. All three of thief’s heals are situationally useful for any game mode.

Siva Mira.3546:

All this skill need is reducing the caste time or best of all remove the cast time and make it instantly.

That would remove the point, why not make withdraw better instead?

SoM is meant for the passive, however I believe it deserves a no-stealth powerful passive effect for non-stealth thieves (P/P, S/P, SB)

Stooperdale.3560:

Dredge are the classic enemies for SoM. You can’t use blind to reduce incoming damage so a boatload of passive healing from a dredge army marching over your caltrops is very welcome. It does work and it doesn’t need any boost in PvE.

And at the same time, the fact that blinds on dredge don’t trigger it makes it worse (no heal from Black Power or Smoke Screen) :l

SoM is fantastic when you’re using AoE fields that “tick” like Caltrops and poison fields. SoM heals per person standing in the field up to the AoE cap, so the 194 I get out of it per tick is now close to 1k per tick when pitted in a 1v5, or a 1vX with NPCs/minions. I’ve found that Signet of Malice isn’t viable on its own due to our lack of sustained Hits Per Second, so you either need to couple it with Shadow’s Rejuvination or Assassin’s Reward. Think Lowell’s Unicorn build.

Recently, SoM also received a 33% base heal buff. There’s no excuse to think it not viable, especially in Shortbow and Ricochet builds where you’re hitting up to 3 targets each autoattack, tripling your heal.

I haven’t tested it myself, but rumor has it that Thieves Guild and Ambush minions also tick your HPS, giving you more leeway in a fight.

Hope I helped!

Not sure if serious…but you gave no context so ill bite and say som has no place in any PvP setting. It is the best dungeon heal ninety nine percent of the time. Pw damage is much greater than the auto is, sundering strikes negates the need to feel like you have to keep up vuln throughyour auto, and there is nothing wrong with Pw lockin you in place.