Guild Wars 2

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

lol ohh man everytime I see that 1 for 1 trade arguement thieves get when they have something blatantly overpowered and they want something in return I can’t help but smile. Ohh man world of thiefcraft is ridiculous lol. Kudos to the thief community lol I wouldn’t be able to bs that well I actually like this game.

The only thing I’m going to argue the fact is, trying to kill something that’s supposed to be highly survivable(bunker) by boon stripping. Ever thought on the other end being that said bunker? it’s not fun, and not really fair. D/D Eles, i can under stand the LS ability, but to the other classes like warrior, it hurts them more. Bunker Guardians, that rely on boon won’t really ever catch you unless you make very big mistakes, since they lack the big damage to kill a theif outright, and will normally just draw the fight since the thief will just stealth for the majority of the time until thy have initiative again . Spvp sense theives are balanced they’re good no problem. WvW sense you can pretty much have the fight at your finger tips, reset the fight, and or escape. In all tbh, the new LS is very annoying by far, and just completely demolishes a core mechanic of a profession, and even more so if you have more theives running the same weapon set./shrug

@al bundy …… everyclass says thakittens not thief specific. for example let this segue into the next comment.

@lucentfir so basically bunker guardians are as reliant on boons as thieves are on stealth? then can either really complain about the other ? :P pot calling the kettle black. cant ask to nerf something without nerfing yourself fairly.

Travlane.5948:

@al bundy …… everyclass says thakittens not thief specific. for example let this segue into the next comment.

@lucentfir so basically bunker guardians are as reliant on boons as thieves are on stealth? then can either really complain about the other ? :P pot calling the kettle black. cant ask to nerf something without nerfing yourself fairly.

Not really complaining I just find it annoying, and ’m not asking for thief nerfs if you are thinking I am. On the thing about reliant on core mechanic (Guardians=Boons,Thief=Stealth), all you thieves have something that basically that can demolish our core mechanic, while we have nothing conveniently that counters stealth. So you got the damage to kill a guardian on top of stacking even more survivability with their boons + stealth :P

guardian push / pull skills ruin our day…ill tell you that…so does those kitten aegis/retal builds….a great guardian will win 90% of the time against a great thief. that is the truth. this is why they gave LS to thieves. does it ruin your day? yup. is it meta for thieves to run? only in spvp.

let me poke something out there that i think most players dont notice. anyone ever see VITALITY – TOUGHNESS – HEALING armor? no? thats bc its not in the game? now heres the part were all the players should say to themselves? i wonder why they dont have that type?! well lets figure it out could it be bc anet is lazy and/or forgetfull/idiots? they are multi millionaires so i doubt it :P ok ok ok hrm…. could it be purposeful/intentional? yes! eureka! ok now the next step is to figure out why! ok ok ok….what would vit/tough/heal do in the game…..it would make a full 100% defensive/heal TANK that cant kill anyone….. aka a Tr0LL. they dont want a tank build that is meant to be unkillable and not be able to kill. in the same sense why they dont let thieves have good defense. just isnt good for the game. they chose to stay away from the option of tank/tr0ll …..its why they took out shadow form and unlimited range on shadow returns. some dont know/remember gw1 assassin hot join trolls….and the neverending matches we made :P lol. anyway yeah they dont want bunkers….in the sense of 1 v 1 u cant kill me. they want you to be able to be killed. is it annoyign that anyone can spam it? yes. its not OP imo bc its a what like a .5 sec evade on a 1.25 sec move? so that still leaves time to roll and time to give free dmg while they are stuck. the evade is at the first .5 so you ahve to catchthem on the back end i believe. but i do understand the pain in seeing FOTM n00bs come in and spam stuff just to be annoying. its 5 initiative which is fair. id rather see it cost 6 and up the dmg of tactical strike. as of right now its the only reason i dont use TS

Travlane.5948:

guardian push / pull skills ruin our day…ill tell you that…so does those kitten aegis/retal builds….a great guardian will win 90% of the time against a great thief. that is the truth. this is why they gave LS to thieves. does it ruin your day? yup. is it meta for thieves to run? only in spvp.

let me poke something out there that i think most players dont notice. anyone ever see VITALITY – TOUGHNESS – HEALING armor? no? thats bc its not in the game? now heres the part were all the players should say to themselves? i wonder why they dont have that type?! well lets figure it out could it be bc anet is lazy and/or forgetfull/idiots? they are multi millionaires so i doubt it :P ok ok ok hrm…. could it be purposeful/intentional? yes! eureka! ok now the next step is to figure out why! ok ok ok….what would vit/tough/heal do in the game…..it would make a full 100% defensive/heal TANK that cant kill anyone….. aka a Tr0LL. they dont want a tank build that is meant to be unkillable and not be able to kill. in the same sense why they dont let thieves have good defense. just isnt good for the game. they chose to stay away from the option of tank/tr0ll …..its why they took out shadow form and unlimited range on shadow returns. some dont know/remember gw1 assassin hot join trolls….and the neverending matches we made :P lol. anyway yeah they dont want bunkers….in the sense of 1 v 1 u cant kill me. they want you to be able to be killed. is it annoyign that anyone can spam it? yes. its not OP imo bc its a what like a .5 sec evade on a 1.25 sec move? so that still leaves time to roll and time to give free dmg while they are stuck. the evade is at the first .5 so you ahve to catchthem on the back end i believe. but i do understand the pain in seeing FOTM n00bs come in and spam stuff just to be annoying. its 5 initiative which is fair. id rather see it cost 6 and up the dmg of tactical strike. as of right now its the only reason i dont use TS

/shrug even if there was Vit/tough/healing stat combos it’d be a stupid stat combo ,something I wouldn’t ever use. Also push and pull(Shield 5,GS 5, Hammer 3) ruins thieves in refuge. Doesn’t stop them from using “HIS” or the usual D/P set I see every other theif and their mother for perma stealth and perma blind afterwards. Also Great thief vs a Great Guardian? No it would be a stalemate, because said thief would just keep stealthing and keep playing smart. Also perma stealth can be a equivalent of trolling like bunkering. /shrug like I said I just find thieves annoying with the new LS, and since FoTM i see the same D/P set every other thief runs, also including S/D from time to time, becoming more frequent.

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

how do you know they are a bad thief?

I think my big issue with flanking strike is the crazy tracking on the skill. The old one was closer serpent’s strike on the ranger sword, the new one sticks to people like glue. Even if you dodge it, the thief is still in good positioning, which isn’t really called for considering infiltrators strike is on slot 2, and that sets up flanking strike → larcenous strike.

The skill is isn’t overpowered by itself, it is when all of its factors are taken into consideration: the evade, the damage, the boon removal, the very strong tracking, combined with no cool down thanks to initiative just make it over the top.

I can’t stress how much of an issue initiative is here, we’ve seen the same issue before on other skills, such as unload, shadow assault, and heartseeker. Anet needs to seriously consider changing initiative and how it works with thief weapon skills. Because unless they decide to give them cool downs this problem is going to never go away, it will just shift to another skill if and when it gets buffed. Strong skills need more prohibitive cost, otherwise they will used repetitively for max gain.

It doesn’t matter if it can be countered either, that doesn’t wholly make it balanced. You can spam aoe at your feat or do a number of other things, but that isn’t skillful high level play. Nor is it a fun, rewarding game-play experience.

RoRo.8270:

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

I know the basics of how HGH works, but am not intimately familiar with what weapons/non-elixir utilities (if any) you’d run with that.

Your post was just extremely general, and basically described 1 fight, kind of. From someone who’s R40 and has played over 1,000 tourneys, I’d have expected you to explain what engi abilities you’d expect to counter the thief, which didn’t work for whatever reasons XYZ, etc… Basically, it sounded like you were describing things “from feeling” rather than “from experience”.

I’m not doubting you, just explaining why I said what I said.

All that being said, I’m assuming you’re either running 2/3 elixirs or 3/3 elixirs (Again, not super familiar with Engi)? If that’s the case, it’s to be expected – you’ve sacrificed all your utilities to boon stack, the specific thing S/D counters extremely well. If you were a bomb or nades engi, I’m guessing you’d have a much, much easier time with all the AoE and conditions, and High vigor uptime (again, if that’s something native to the build I’m describing, I don’t really know).

If it’s any consolation, most S/D builds are in the same boat – my elite is popped more often than not as a mass condition cleanse, I’m running 2 signets to make the build viable, and I’m running double S/D – I’m sacrificing a ton of utility to do 1 thing, really, really well, and it just so happens that 1 thing is very strong against your spec (which also sacrifices a ton of utility to 1 thing really, really well). You can’t expect to do well in a situation where your build is dedicated to generating boons, and my build is dedicated to stripping them as often as possible.

Man, people in these forums complain so much, I wonder when do they have time to play the game.
To all those who say “Thieves are OP”, “World of Thiefcraft”, and “Thief Wars 2”, know that I know a lot of people that laugh when they see thieves, and whenever thieves run away from a fight, keep in mind that they couldn’t kill you or cannot actually kill you. How exactly is that OP, I have no idea… OP is when you cannot counter them whatsoever, which isn’t the case at all.

RoRo.8270:

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

Just ignore that guy. I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing.
That is the same guy who said LS is fine because it can be dodged because it has an obvious animation.

I don’t know how you can define “awful damage” the average 1.5k thief deals per sword hit

sustained damage is pretty much non-existent

As i said, another priceless thread in the thief forum.

I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing

Well, when your “argumentation” is flawed and biased there’s no reason it should lead to anything.
The best you could do is ask a moderator to close this thread, i think it doesn’t really contain anything worth reading at this point.

Feel free to call me stupid again, that just proving my point even more.

As for the topic, i will at least share my opinion.

I indeed believe flanking strike is slightly to strong. I would personally change it to steal one boon, it woud still offer an extra dodge, relatively good damage and a boon steal.
But that rise another issue, which would be the viability of the set as a whole. The problem is that this set is almost only relying on sword skills and fs/ls in order to kill your target, off hand dagger skill being really situational. C&d -> tactical strike can’t really be used as an interrupt which basically make it more an interrupt requiring high degree of prediction (read luck) which often just result in a random daze that pretty much make it a waste of initiative. As for dancing dagger, it simply does terrible damage, is far to slow resulting in it not being able to hit anything sidestepping and the cripple is simply a mediocre bonus, for 4 initiative there is pretty much no reason to use it at all.

My suggestion would be to slightly nerf fs/ls, give some of it’s current power to off hand dagger skill to promote smart use of the 5 weapons ability instead of mainly the first 3 and especially fs/ls. To further promote the boon stealing mechanic as a result to the loss of the extra ls boon removal, i’d add boon stealing to some utility skills (scorpion wire, infiltrator signet or assassin signet would be some example), those are on relatively long cd unlike fs/ls, and could be used on some other set to help those deal with boon heavy specs.

sorrow.2364:

RoRo.8270:

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

Just ignore that guy. I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing.
That is the same guy who said LS is fine because it can be dodged because it has an obvious animation.

You are funny .You wrote the four pages of absolute nonsense.
Go back to the necromancers forum crying as weak is necromancer and how strong is the thief

Edit: To Puru.4217
Guardian can also reapply boons faster than a S/D thief can take them, If you weaken the FS on removing only once boons so this spell will not be using again=more D/D D/P Thiefs Gl HF =)

BTW: Sorrow like old FS,because old FS is amazing powerful skill

Numot.3965:

Because unless they decide to give them cool downs this problem is going to never go away, it will just shift to another skill if and when it gets buffed. Strong skills need more prohibitive cost, otherwise they will used repetitively for max gain.

Thief weapon-skills are meant to be used repetitively for max gain.

That’s the whole frakin point of the initative system.

1- Do the enemy has boons?
2- If Enemyboon=yes then use Lacernous strike, goto 1.
3- If Enemyboon=no then use next maxgain weapon skill.

Puru.4217:

I don’t know how you can define “awful damage” the average 1.5k thief deals per sword hit

sustained damage is pretty much non-existent

As i said, another priceless thread in the thief forum.

I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing

Well, when your “argumentation” is flawed and biased there’s no reason it should lead to anything.
The best you could do is ask a moderator to close this thread, i think it doesn’t really contain anything worth reading at this point.

Feel free to call me stupid again, that just proving my point even more.

---

As for the topic, i will at least share my opinion.

I indeed believe flanking strike is slightly to strong. I would personally change it to steal one boon, it woud still offer an extra dodge, relatively good damage and a boon steal.
But that rise another issue, which would be the viability of the set as a whole. The problem is that this set is almost only relying on sword skills and fs/ls in order to kill your target, off hand dagger skill being really situational. C&d -> tactical strike can’t really be used as an interrupt which basically make it more an interrupt requiring high degree of prediction (read luck) which often just result in a random daze that pretty much make it a waste of initiative. As for dancing dagger, it simply does terrible damage, is far to slow resulting in it not being able to hit anything sidestepping and the cripple is simply a mediocre bonus, for 4 initiative there is pretty much no reason to use it at all.

My suggestion would be to slightly nerf fs/ls, give some of it’s current power to off hand dagger skill to promote smart use of the 5 weapons ability instead of mainly the first 3 and especially fs/ls. To further promote the boon stealing mechanic as a result to the loss of the extra ls boon removal, i’d add boon stealing to some utility skills (scorpion wire, infiltrator signet or assassin signet would be some example), those are on relatively long cd unlike fs/ls, and could be used on some other set to help those deal with boon heavy specs.

This proves that you did not the read the topic at all, but you don’t hold yourself from spitting judgments about people.

In the same post you said my arguments are biased and then expressed your opinion which turns out to be EXACTLY the same of mine. But yeah, it must be flawed and biased because I said it.

sorrow.2364:

RoRo.8270:

evilapprentice.6379:

RoRo.8270:

Ya it was overbuffed they can take me down pretty easily on my hgh engy they literally spam it 4x and im down to 30% health and all my might stacks are gone then they stealth and wait for initiative or use the shadow step skill. I play hgh engi they shred me apart

It also has a low skill ceiling. The problem with theives is if it’s a bad theif they will still be good because they can stealth or use their ridiculous teleports making them unkillable pretty much

I’m just going to be brutally honest with you – from the tone, writing style, and the way you described things in this post, I’m comfortable assuming you’re not the greatest player, and are not qualified to judge whats OP, has a low skill ceiling, etc…

Don’t be discouraged, that’s not a putdown. You can always get better. Watch some S/D video’s/spectate an S/D thief to get an idea how they work and you’ll start doing much better.

I’m rank 40 I have over 1k tourney games so I have a better idea than most people. Also I didn’t know that someones writing style dictates how they play the game thanks for pointing that out for me

Just ignore that guy. I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing.
That is the same guy who said LS is fine because it can be dodged because it has an obvious animation.

I Said LS was fine for a whole litany of reasons, one of which is that it can be dodged – when combined with all my other reasons, it makes an argument. Again, a hallmark of a weak argument is the need to change the story to fit your desired outcome, rather than the other way around.

We had 2 pages of arguments that amounted to nothing because it’s impossible to warp facts to fit your opinion – you realized this at some point and just started making kitten up. When called on it, you started including one-off points that didn’t really have anything to do with the discussion at hand in hopes that I’d forget that you had to outright lie to bolster your weak and incorrect conclusions (hint – I didn’t). At first I just disagreed with you – now I’m having fun watching you tailspin, discrediting yourself further and further every time you post.

evilapprentice.6379:

I Said LS was fine for a whole litany of reasons, one of which is that it can be dodged. Again, a hallmark of a weak argument is the need to change the story to fit your desired outcome, rather than the other way around.

We had 2 pages of arguments that amounted to nothing because it’s impossible to warp facts to fit your opinion – you realized this at some point and just started making kitten up. When called on it, you started including one-off points that didn’t really have anything to do with the discussion at hand in hopes that I’d forget that you had to outright lie to bolster your weak and incorrect conclusions (hint – I didn’t). At first I just disagreed with you – now I’m having fun watching you tailspin, discrediting yourself further and further every time you post.

The only two arguments from your side were it can be dodged and it does poor damage (which is relative and most likely not true).

The topic deariled when you started to make implicit assumption about myself and the fact that I think FS is overpowered because I have to learn to play, like every thief do when you try to make a discussion about balance. Every discussion leads to personal attacks in this forum.

The only lie I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie, but only a little mistake I made when counting the evade time in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGP64dIwBkM), was the one about Pistol Whip evade time. Period. You made that mistake looks like a giant lie like it is worth something for the argument’s sake.

I never said any lie to support my arguments, despite some other people in this topic did. The 1.5k average damage of sword hit isn’t a lie. Unless you run with no criticals at all.

@Sorrow

- It can be dodged or interrupted via CC (you forgot that part, because apparently most boon bunkers don’t utilize CC in the slightest)
- It’s one of 2 abilities in the set (with the same exact animations) that do -any- damage in the set. Avoiding these 2 abilities (both with per-requisites, one being an AA chain finisher and the other LS) completely nerfs S/D damage – when you only have 1 animation to watch for and the other attacks in the set do not need to be dodged, “Dodge it” is a reasonable counter-argument.
- For S/D to be viable, the thief has to run very, very glassy – your dodges and CC should easily be enough to avoid at least 75% of LS strikes while you punish the thief whenever he goes in for the LS.
- The thief sacrifices his second weapon set,2/3 utility slots, and spec’s in a very specific way to make this build viable – it’s only to be expected that it will do very well in that 1 area (Don’t believe I made this argument earlier, just adding it now).

That’s just the truncated list of my argument that I can recall off the top of my head (with the noted addition) – there’s possibly more if you scroll back through the thread.

Below please find a link to the average S/D build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmSOHcS6E/5Ex2jdKUe6VgsdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNIYRw+j5HA
(Note, my previous link was to my variation on S/D, which sacrifices some init regen and utility for more power, since this build doesn’t hit hard enough for my tastes).
Recall, my argument was “A bunker can eat every swing that isn’t LS or CS because they do crap damage, and save all your dodges for the scary damage/boon steal”, to which your response was “Sword hits for 1.5k Average”.
First, we’ll define average.
From dictionary.com – the mean obtained by adding several quantities together and dividing the sum by the number of quantities:
Then, we’ll do some math.
Slice and Slash (the 2 hardest hitting skills in the set, discounting LS and CS as per my argument, and CnD since double S/D doesn’t gain much from stealth) hit for 540 against a 2600 armor target. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume the thief isn’t at max endurance, and has over 6 init, so we’ll add 20% – 648 damage.
Out of 10 attacks, 7 crit for double damage – 648*7 = 4536*2= 9072. Add your 3 non critical swings, 648*3 = 1944. 9072+1944 = 11,016. Now, lets divide that by the number of swings, 10. 11,016/10 = 1101.6.

So, your average S/D thief, who is always over 6 init and also not at full endurance, using only his hardest hitting abilities outside CS/LS, hits a 2600 armor target On average for about 1101 damage.
But wait, there’s more! That’s for a target over 50%.
For a target under 50%, we need to add 20% more damage. I won’t walk you through all the math, but for targets under 50% your average swing hits for 1285.

So, 50% of the time we do 1101 average damage, the other 50% of the time we do 1285 average damage, so from 100% to Dead, assuming the thief always has over 6 init and not max endurance, the average swing hits for (roughly) 1193.1 damage, which is 20% lower than your estimate…on a 2600 armor target. You know many bunkers who run 2600 armor, and no protection?

Perhaps my math is wrong (being honest here, I don’t claim to have perfect knowledge of how the games damage calculations work), but I don’t think it is. You could have went and done this math, but you didn’t – you decided to just throw a number out there that seemed plausible, and supported your argument. You see, I actually play S/D thief and said to myself “Hmmm, I don’t remember the last time I saw slice crit a bunker for 1500, much less just a regular hit…”

I made no personal attacks, just analyzed your personality from your tone – treating everyone who disagrees with you like a moron while offering erroneous and exaggerated facts and devaluing any ability/boon/whatever that weakens your argument, then on top of that dismissing their opinions makes you seem like a kitten…so I’ll treat you like one.

Lucentfir.7430:

Travlane.5948:

guardian push / pull skills ruin our day…ill tell you that…so does those kitten aegis/retal builds….a great guardian will win 90% of the time against a great thief. that is the truth. this is why they gave LS to thieves. does it ruin your day? yup. is it meta for thieves to run? only in spvp.

let me poke something out there that i think most players dont notice. anyone ever see VITALITY – TOUGHNESS – HEALING armor? no? thats bc its not in the game? now heres the part were all the players should say to themselves? i wonder why they dont have that type?! well lets figure it out could it be bc anet is lazy and/or forgetfull/idiots? they are multi millionaires so i doubt it :P ok ok ok hrm…. could it be purposeful/intentional? yes! eureka! ok now the next step is to figure out why! ok ok ok….what would vit/tough/heal do in the game…..it would make a full 100% defensive/heal TANK that cant kill anyone….. aka a Tr0LL. they dont want a tank build that is meant to be unkillable and not be able to kill. in the same sense why they dont let thieves have good defense. just isnt good for the game. they chose to stay away from the option of tank/tr0ll …..its why they took out shadow form and unlimited range on shadow returns. some dont know/remember gw1 assassin hot join trolls….and the neverending matches we made :P lol. anyway yeah they dont want bunkers….in the sense of 1 v 1 u cant kill me. they want you to be able to be killed. is it annoyign that anyone can spam it? yes. its not OP imo bc its a what like a .5 sec evade on a 1.25 sec move? so that still leaves time to roll and time to give free dmg while they are stuck. the evade is at the first .5 so you ahve to catchthem on the back end i believe. but i do understand the pain in seeing FOTM n00bs come in and spam stuff just to be annoying. its 5 initiative which is fair. id rather see it cost 6 and up the dmg of tactical strike. as of right now its the only reason i dont use TS

/shrug even if there was Vit/tough/healing stat combos it’d be a stupid stat combo ,something I wouldn’t ever use. Also push and pull(Shield 5,GS 5, Hammer 3) ruins thieves in refuge. Doesn’t stop them from using “HIS” or the usual D/P set I see every other theif and their mother for perma stealth and perma blind afterwards. Also Great thief vs a Great Guardian? No it would be a stalemate, because said thief would just keep stealthing and keep playing smart. Also perma stealth can be a equivalent of trolling like bunkering. /shrug like I said I just find thieves annoying with the new LS, and since FoTM i see the same D/P set every other thief runs, also including S/D from time to time, becoming more frequent.

if both players are playing to kill the guardian will win. yes the thief can troll invis away and reset….. but they also cant do dmg while trolling…..but the guardian can while they are trolling….thats the difference. bunker trolls deal dmg……stealth trolls deal no dmg.

evilapprentice.6379:

CUT

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

20% lower than my estimations isn’t that much to call this as an incredible and horrible lie and it isn’t anyway that low to be considered “awful”; consider also that 2600 armor is quite high, it is the armor an Engineer has with soldier amulets. I did not made any math before saying that number but only based on my experience in both PvE and PvP. Since nothing in my reasoning is based on that statement, I don’t know why focusing that much on this. I mean, it looks like you are trying to split hairs into finding something to say “everything he said is a lie, don’t trust this guy!”.

So, in conclusions, your only argumenst were “You can dodge it” and “S/D has awful damage”, you just split them into more points to make it looks like you said more, but, in fact, those are your arguments.

As I said, “Dodge it” is an incredibly poor argument. First because you are suggesting to dodge the last hit of an autoattack (yes, autoattack) chain and a skill which is on low initiative, when you are probably going to have no Vigor on because it would be stolen. Also if you succes to dodge any of the CS and any of the LS, your endurance will be finished and you are going to take the next LS hit anyway. Does it look like as a valid argument to you?

Also, dodge should NEVER, NEVER brought into discussion in any balance topic. As far as you bring the word “dodge”, means that you completely failed to get the point of the topic.
We aren’t discussing about how to counter FS thieves, we are discussing if they are balanced or not.

Saying LS is balanced because it can be dodged brings nothing to the discussion. Any skill can be dodged in this game. So any skill can be interrupted by stun/CC/daze etc.

It’s pretty much like you you say that Ferrari is better than a Porsche because it has wheels and a motor.

Sorrow, you dont need to dodge Flanking strike, only larcenous. so save your dodges for that if you are boon dependant. Your also ignoring the fact that any daze, stun, immob, knockback, knockdown will all ruin both the aa chain and larcenous strike.

As a second note, thieves have constantly been told how great a defense evasion and dodge is compared to invuln, mist form, endure pain, protection etc. so learn to dodge since its such a fantastic defense.

I’m an S/D thief but it does seem unreasonable to have to dodge an attack that can be so easily spammed.

I’m not saying S/D is OP, actually it is UP compared to D/P, but I call it like it is.

@Sorrow
Sigh. I’m starting to think that you’ll just never get it.

You had access to GW2skills the same way I did. You obviously have no problem spending 5-10 minutes writing out your opinions, you can spare 3 minutes to provide the correct numbers. You’ve had ample opportunity to correct yourself (I’ve called you out on it multiple times, And in one post you went so far as to defend your numbers), but waited until I posted the math to say “20% off isn’t that much (Um, it is. Are you sure you play this game?), why are you making such a big deal about it”. The thief forums are plagued by exaggerations and outright lies that feed confirmation bias, so you should be more careful to only use facts, or else you’re going to get called out on it. You were perfectly content to ignore the fact that you were exaggerating, meaning you’re either lazy, malicious, or both.

Over-simplifying my argument weakens it. “Just dodge it” is usually a really poor argument because you have to watch out for all the other abilities and utilities the player can throw at you. “Just dodge it” works here because I’m specifically pointing out there are no other weaponskills/utilities worth dodging – LS and CS are the ONLY ONES. When you cut that point as extraneous, of course my argument looks weak, but you know this, because I’ve already said it to you at least once.

As others have pointed out, dodging the last hit of an autoattack (Yes, an autoattack) is not automatically a bad idea, and you’re being rather narrowminded for just assuming it is – in this specific instance, where CS and LS make up the vast majority of S/D’s damage, combined with the fact that there is absolutely no incentive to dodge any of the weaponsets other swings, AND the fact that the thief will not be running any other utilities that need to be dodged, it makes complete sense to dodge the last swing of the AA chain. Did you even play S/D pre-patch? Crippling strike and CnD were the only skills anyone ever dodged, because CS was the only DPS, and CnD was the only utility.

The ability to reasonably counter or avoid an ability IS part of a balance discussion. Seeing how easily the ability can be interrupted with CC or Dodged, dodge bears mention. All your interested in talking about is FS->LS’s strengths – anytime someone brings up a weakness, you either dismiss it or ignore it.

We haven’t even mentioned how Soft CC (like snares) would allow you to just walk out of the swing, or how Blind would force the the thief to either SR/IS to cleanse the blind (reducing the init pool for FS/LS), or leave himself vulnerable and waste time while trying to connect a swing to consume the blind while that precious 5s LS trigger ticks down.

You’re basically rehashing the HS spamming tears, and are for some reason surprised when people tell you to L2P. No one really cares because we all know HS spamming is pretty useless against anyone who’s not facerolling their keyboard, the same way FS/LS spamming is.

So yes, I concede that when you completely ignore half my points and underplay the value of the others, my argument looks weak – but that’s true of any point really.

FS+LS have same damage as autoattack chain.

6 sec combat vs heavy golem with 2347 power 62% crit dmg all attacks were critically

auto attack chain:

1890 Slice
1855 Slash
2643 Cripling Strike
1891 Slice
1858 Slash
3171 Critpling Strike
2278 Slice

Total: 15586 DMG

FS+LS
1657 Flaking Strike
3188 Larcenous Strike
1663 Flaking Strike
3192 Larcenous Strike
1774 Flaking Strike
3608 Larcenous Strike
1787 Flaking Strike

Total: 16869 DMG

wow thats alot of crits. how did you get 100% crit rate?

im kidding but i see your point…just a side by side comparison

LS/FS is basicly the same damage as autoattack. The move was made to steal boons.

Evilek.5690:

FS+LS have same damage as autoattack chain.

6 sec combat vs heavy golem with 2347 power 62% crit dmg all attacks were critically

auto attack chain:

1890 Slice
1855 Slash
2643 Cripling Strike
1891 Slice
1858 Slash
3171 Critpling Strike
2278 Slice

Total: 15586 DMG

FS+LS
1657 Flaking Strike
3188 Larcenous Strike
1663 Flaking Strike
3192 Larcenous Strike
1774 Flaking Strike
3608 Larcenous Strike
1787 Flaking Strike

Total: 16869 DMG

you forgot to summarize. so allow me. so what this tells us…GRANTED is authentic data…….is that the auto attack and FS/LS combo are roughly the same dmg per time/attack. this means there is on fundamental difference: initiative. auto attack is free. so what did you just get for spending 4 initiative? a 1/2 sec evade on a 1 sec animation and steal 2 boons if they even have any. so again. 4 init = steal 2 boons (maybe) and 1/2 sec evade on a 1 sec animation. seems fair to me.

Evilek.5690:

FS+LS have same damage as autoattack chain.

6 sec combat vs heavy golem with 2347 power 62% crit dmg all attacks were critically

auto attack chain:

1890 Slice
1855 Slash
2643 Cripling Strike
1891 Slice
1858 Slash
3171 Critpling Strike
2278 Slice

Total: 15586 DMG

FS+LS
1657 Flaking Strike
3188 Larcenous Strike
1663 Flaking Strike
3192 Larcenous Strike
1774 Flaking Strike
3608 Larcenous Strike
1787 Flaking Strike

Total: 16869 DMG

Wow Sorrow, look at that, if you avoid the 2 crippling strikes you reduce the damage dealt by 38%.

Travlane.5948:

wow thats alot of crits. how did you get 100% crit rate?

im kidding but i see your point…just a side by side comparison

67% crit chance and 30 minutes in Mists Video comming soon on youtube

and if u avoid 2 LS you reduce the dmg by 40% too. :P i dont get ur point

Travlane.5948:

Evilek.5690:

FS+LS have same damage as autoattack chain.

6 sec combat vs heavy golem with 2347 power 62% crit dmg all attacks were critically

auto attack chain:

1890 Slice
1855 Slash
2643 Cripling Strike
1891 Slice
1858 Slash
3171 Critpling Strike
2278 Slice

Total: 15586 DMG

FS+LS
1657 Flaking Strike
3188 Larcenous Strike
1663 Flaking Strike
3192 Larcenous Strike
1774 Flaking Strike
3608 Larcenous Strike
1787 Flaking Strike

Total: 16869 DMG

you forgot to summarize. so allow me. so what this tells us…GRANTED is authentic data…….is that the auto attack and FS/LS combo are roughly the same dmg per time/attack. this means there is on fundamental difference: initiative. auto attack is free. so what did you just get for spending 4 initiative? a 1/2 sec evade on a 1 sec animation and steal 2 boons if they even have any. so again. 4 init = steal 2 boons (maybe) and 1/2 sec evade on a 1 sec animation. seems fair to me.

That’s a fantastic way to put it – Thanks Trav.

Travlane.5948:

and if u avoid 2 LS you reduce the dmg by 40% too. :P i dont get ur point

Aimed at Sorrow. If you like walls of text, scroll up for context (its a bit convoluted to re-hash here)

Can we please let this topic die please.

Flanking Strike is fine.

evilapprentice.6379:

@Sorrow
Sigh. I’m starting to think that you’ll just never get it.

You had access to GW2skills the same way I did. You obviously have no problem spending 5-10 minutes writing out your opinions, you can spare 3 minutes to provide the correct numbers. You’ve had ample opportunity to correct yourself (I’ve called you out on it multiple times, And in one post you went so far as to defend your numbers), but waited until I posted the math to say “20% off isn’t that much (Um, it is. Are you sure you play this game?), why are you making such a big deal about it”. The thief forums are plagued by exaggerations and outright lies that feed confirmation bias, so you should be more careful to only use facts, or else you’re going to get called out on it. You were perfectly content to ignore the fact that you were exaggerating, meaning you’re either lazy, malicious, or both.

Over-simplifying my argument weakens it. “Just dodge it” is usually a really poor argument because you have to watch out for all the other abilities and utilities the player can throw at you. “Just dodge it” works here because I’m specifically pointing out there are no other weaponskills/utilities worth dodging – LS and CS are the ONLY ONES. When you cut that point as extraneous, of course my argument looks weak, but you know this, because I’ve already said it to you at least once.

As others have pointed out, dodging the last hit of an autoattack (Yes, an autoattack) is not automatically a bad idea, and you’re being rather narrowminded for just assuming it is – in this specific instance, where CS and LS make up the vast majority of S/D’s damage, combined with the fact that there is absolutely no incentive to dodge any of the weaponsets other swings, AND the fact that the thief will not be running any other utilities that need to be dodged, it makes complete sense to dodge the last swing of the AA chain. Did you even play S/D pre-patch? Crippling strike and CnD were the only skills anyone ever dodged, because CS was the only DPS, and CnD was the only utility.

The ability to reasonably counter or avoid an ability IS part of a balance discussion. Seeing how easily the ability can be interrupted with CC or Dodged, dodge bears mention. All your interested in talking about is FS->LS’s strengths – anytime someone brings up a weakness, you either dismiss it or ignore it.

We haven’t even mentioned how Soft CC (like snares) would allow you to just walk out of the swing, or how Blind would force the the thief to either SR/IS to cleanse the blind (reducing the init pool for FS/LS), or leave himself vulnerable and waste time while trying to connect a swing to consume the blind while that precious 5s LS trigger ticks down.

You’re basically rehashing the HS spamming tears, and are for some reason surprised when people tell you to L2P. No one really cares because we all know HS spamming is pretty useless against anyone who’s not facerolling their keyboard, the same way FS/LS spamming is.

So yes, I concede that when you completely ignore half my points and underplay the value of the others, my argument looks weak – but that’s true of any point really.

What you said would be true if the skills we are talking about were on cooldown. They are not.

The problem of dodging isn’t to paying attention to a specific movement, because most of the skills worth dodging have an evocative animation, which leads in most cases to an automatic reaction. It is a problem of the endurance limit. We are talking about skills that can be used once every 5 seconds with normal initiave regen.

While “Dodge it” is ALWAYS a weak argument when talking about balance, no matter what you say, in this case it is even a weaker argument because dodging that skill does not grants you enough timespan to let your endurance regenerate and to be ready to dodge the dodgeworthy skill again.

Talking about counters makes no sense. Balance is a comparison between what that specific skill can do in the environment it is placed. Every skill has the implicit counter to be dodged or interrupted, what you have to do isn’t looking at the counters or the weakness, which is a marginal factor, but how this skill performs compared to other similiar skills and how this skill is effective against some professions.

As I said before, and I say it again, the statement about 1.5k damage had no importance for the argument, so there was no reason at all to mathematically check what I said with precision. I were not exaggerating. As I said, you hit 1.1k average on 2600 armor characters. In daily experience it happens you succed to hit for even 2k with sword hits with vulnerability, might stacks and so on. That statement, as I said, is based on my personal experience about sword thief in both PvE and PvE and it isn’t rare that you can hit for higher than 1.5k damage in both cases. Anyway it isn’t worth arguing.

Normally I would be supporting you but… It just so happens that my thief can dodge strait until his healing skill recharges without initiative spend on s/d skill 3

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

Uhm, you did, even before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

Uhm, you did, even before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

Where exactly I had an aggressive behavior toward anyone on this topic who treated me nicely? Because I fail to get what post you are referring to.

sorrow.2364:

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.
Check the last 4 pages and check who started to raise the tones here.

Uhm, you did, even before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

Where exactly I had an aggressive behavior toward anyone on this topic who treated me nicely? Because I fail to get what post you are referring to.

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

frans.8092:

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

What does aggressive means to you, exactly?

The “you can dodge it” argument is indeed retarted. If warrior killshot would have instant cast time, it could still be dodged, but how balanced would it be?

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

That’s not agressive. He just pointed out that he doesn’t agree with someone’s vision of balance.

sorrow.2364:

frans.8092:

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

What does aggressive means to you, exactly?

Anything you do basically. :p

But seriously, just about each of your posts contains a form of (verbal) aggression, this was just the first, and posted long before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

Btw, you changed the wording from ‘treating bad’ to ‘aggressive’

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.

but it matters little, it’s good you recognize it as aggression.

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

frans.8092:

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

What does aggressive means to you, exactly?

Anything you do basically. :p

But seriously, just about each of your posts contains a form of (verbal) aggression, this was just the first, and posted long before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

Btw, you changed the wording from ‘treating bad’ to ‘aggressive’

sorrow.2364:

I did not treated bad anyone in this topic, at least not first.

but it matters little, it’s good you recognize it as aggression.

Seriously, are we in the forums of Hello Kitty Online Adventures? Because sometimes it looks like that here.

Master of Timespace.2548:

The “you can dodge it” argument is indeed retarted. If warrior killshot would have instant cast time, it could still be dodged, but how balanced would it be?

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

That’s not agressive. He just pointed out that he doesn’t agree with someone’s vision of balance.

No, he doesn’t, if you just point out you don’t agree you just do that, basically by giving a neutral variant of “I don’t agree with what you say”, what he does is actually a form of hidden aggression where he says, “because you say X you must be Y” where Y is a negative, or implies a negative about a person

Master of Timespace.2548:

Seriously, are we in the forums of Hello Kitty Online Adventures? Because sometimes it looks like that here.

Well, maybe you should go elsewhere then. Aggression is aggression, whether it’s subtle or not. There is no need for it, after all nobody was threatening him, it doesn’t serve the primary goal of a discussion forum (discussion of and the exchange of ideas), but only invites more aggression and distracts from the actual discussion. This thread was slowly decaying, as many before it.

sorrow.2364:

Wolfield.9812:

Dont spam the skill.

Glad i could help you, please enjoy the rest of your day.

That’s not the point.
The point is that I can spam the skill and get good results, so there is no point into using it properly.
The game should encourage players to get better and get skilled to win, not spamming. Am I right?

If mindlessly spamming gets results, then that is using it properly.

That’s what needs to change, it’s far too forgiving to bads who abuse spamming it without thought

frans.8092:

Master of Timespace.2548:

The “you can dodge it” argument is indeed retarted. If warrior killshot would have instant cast time, it could still be dodged, but how balanced would it be?

For example, on page 2, “Looks like that, for you, “balance” is some sort of punishment” which was before evilapprentice posted in this thread.

That’s not agressive. He just pointed out that he doesn’t agree with someone’s vision of balance.

No, he doesn’t, if you just point out you don’t agree you just do that, basically by giving a neutral variant of “I don’t agree with what you say”, what he does is actually a form of hidden aggression where he says, “because you say X you must be Y” where Y is a negative, or implies a negative about a person

Master of Timespace.2548:

Seriously, are we in the forums of Hello Kitty Online Adventures? Because sometimes it looks like that here.

Well, maybe you should go elsewhere then. Aggression is aggression, whether it’s subtle or not. There is no need for it, after all nobody was threatening him, it doesn’t serve the primary goal of a discussion forum (discussion of and the exchange of ideas), but only invites more aggression and distracts from the actual discussion. This thread was slowly decaying, as many before it.

Is it negative to have a specific vision of balance instead of another? I mean, that was a consideration to someone who pointed out that every nerf should be accompained with a relative buff. I said that it looked like that for him balance = punishment. I see no way someone can be offended by that statement.

Aggression is when someone comes into the topic and start saying “another average topic in the thief forum, l2p baddie”. Aggression is when someone makes assumptions about you and your skill level in a game forum. I don’t feel I had this behavior before someone else had it toward me.

sorrow.2364:

I said that it looked like that for him balance = punishment. I see no way someone can be offended by that statement.

Which is exactly the negative implied about the other person.

Aggression is when someone comes into the topic and start saying “another average topic in the thief forum, l2p baddie”. Aggression is when someone makes assumptions about you and your skill level in a game forum. …

Agression is, also, stating a negative, implied or direct, about someone.

I don’t feel I had this behavior before someone else had it toward me.

Well, you started it. And even if you feel you didn’t, it’s not an excuse to do it yourself.

frans.8092:

sorrow.2364:

I said that it looked like that for him balance = punishment. I see no way someone can be offended by that statement.

Which is exactly the negative implied about the other person.

Aggression is when someone comes into the topic and start saying “another average topic in the thief forum, l2p baddie”. Aggression is when someone makes assumptions about you and your skill level in a game forum. …

Agression is, also, stating a negative, implied or direct, about someone.

I don’t feel I had this behavior before someone else had it toward me.

Well, you started it. And even if you feel you didn’t, it’s not an excuse to do it yourself.

Seriously?
Saying that I think that for someone balancing is a punishment is a some sort of offence?
Sorry, I didn’t know people get offended by that. I wonder how many people I’ve offended unintentionally here, then.

Dahkeus.8243:

For us mortals, however, protection means that your enemy has to do 33% more damage to kill you, which is easily the difference between whether you survive to use your heal when it comes off cooldown or whether you can live until you have the endurance to dodge that next shatter from the mesmer or whether that next backstab will drop you, etc.

Actually, Protection means you have to do 50% more damage to kill someone. So it’s equivalent to 50% more effective HP.