Guild Wars 2

Skills that tether players together now apply Revealed to provide a stronger window of opportunity to players who can successfully land them.

Aaaand they give reveal to nearly instant spells that have no tell whatsoever. Apparently landing instant spells is extremely hard in dev’s opinion. I am dying here.

DHs apparently need stronger window of opportunity vs thieves… OMG HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, are we playing same game?

The Daredevil staff functions as a fairly strong AoE weapon, but core thief lacks good ways to deal with large groups, so in this update we’re tuning up the short bow to be a stronger ranged AoE weapon.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA, the reason why thief can’t deal with large groups is lack of tools to survive in said situation nor HAVING ANY FLIPPING GROUP SUPPORT TOOLS. Did they even try to play core thief recently? Someone help me here.

we’re also looking at updates to the Deadly Arts line that emphasize poison use to help establish more defined ways to play based on the traits that you select.

Yeah man, buffing some poison that nobody in their right mind would use (because it is garbage) but trapper thief and adding more reveal to braindead spells in the same patch will TOTALLY motivate players to use SA. Somebody is in real need of reality check.

I can’t decide whether this patch is a sick joke or display of….. let’s not go there.

On side note: Sigil of generocity is OP guize, they had to remove it /facepalm.

Cynz.9437:

Yeah man, buffing some poison that nobody in their right mind would use (because it is garbage) but trapper thief and adding more reveal to braindead spells in the same patch will TOTALLY motivate players to use SA. Somebody is in real need of reality check.

Poison builds on the thief are strong thanks to high base condi damage and the heal offset. Problem was that most thieves typically couldn’t stack enough without compromises. The new changes make dumping 10+ stacks of poison on an enemy easy and that may also make the new Choking Gas a real problem with Impacting Disruption and Pressure Striking traited. Panic Strike and Body Shot are also a nice strong combo.

Straegen.2938:

Cynz.9437:

Yeah man, buffing some poison that nobody in their right mind would use (because it is garbage) but trapper thief and adding more reveal to braindead spells in the same patch will TOTALLY motivate players to use SA. Somebody is in real need of reality check.

Poison builds on the thief are strong thanks to high base condi damage and the heal offset. Problem was that most thieves typically couldn’t stack enough without compromises. The new changes make dumping 10+ stacks of poison on an enemy easy and that may also make the new Choking Gas a real problem with Impacting Disruption and Pressure Striking traited. Panic Strike and Body Shot are also a nice strong combo.

I don’t see people running it in pvp. Maybe in wvw, but it is still absolutely useless at any half decent levels in pvp.

People are so quick to cry whenever there is change. Notice how thief wasn’t the only class nerfed. Pretty much everything is getting normalized which is much more healthy for PvP (i wish the changes applied to WvW as well, but we have to start somewhere ig). The only big thing is that DH counters thief even more now, which i don’t understand. The shortbow changes are also interesting.

alchemyst.2165:

People are so quick to cry whenever there is change. Notice how thief wasn’t the only class nerfed. Pretty much everything is getting normalized which is much more healthy for PvP (i wish the changes applied to WvW as well, but we have to start somewhere ig). The only big thing is that DH counters thief even more now, which i don’t understand. The shortbow changes are also interesting.

My problem is not even the nerf (whatever really, nothing new here) but contradiction in what they say and what they do.

I’ve been running an acrobat daredevil death blossom build lately – kind of a unicorn build (I know…). I play almost exclusively WVW. The boon to SB poison is fantastic. I can already run front line zerg very well (dose em hard and shadow step out). But – I’m often just laying down that poison with SB. I know the focus and most players stick to the meta power build (I frankly find DP stealth tedious) – but this is a big help to us condi players that like to zerg.

You know, I feel they missed an opportunity to address some key issues with thief, but at least this patch was a little different in that they actually touched non meta weapon sets. Hopefully it becomes more of a trend to try to bring other weapon sets into the fold.

(short bow is non meta for damage lol)

There no doubt the changes to the DA line will help core builds albeit it a bit of give and take which hard to measure the outcome of.

CORE thief with a condition or hybrid build using d/d p/d and sb in some combination see a significant boost to poison apps. Dagger mastery in d/d should be much more usable. The ability to get an extra strike of poison on the steal and on the trap off panic strike and the trappers respite trap is noticeable.

Without this change a d/d build trying to use the poison off the AA would generally find it not worth the effort. If each attack has the protential to generate 2 strikes poison even with those short durations it can build up in a hurry. (you can in theory get as many as 7 poison apps per AA chain if all “take”). While true those of Dagger mastery only last 4 seconds if maxed in poison , they mix in with longer poisons and the person on the recieing end can not just assume he can wait out the duration.

The SB changes have to be tested but I expect poison will stack a lot more quickly and especially if one leverages the combo attacks off the fields.

The LOSS is to the SA line with it even easier to get a reveal> P/D thief relies on stealth to stack additional bleeds and stealth will become harder. My P/d build relied on stealth to cleanse especially when facing a DH with burn and the changes to the spear will make this harder to do. That said body shot is more robust wih the added half second (Theoretical cap of 3 sec immob you can stack is very nice).

P/P I am going to welcome the changes. With my P/P and staff build I use QP so as to ensure there some sort of INI pool left for when I swap to staff after my might stacked. This should ensure I have even more left when I do so.

Condition shortbow is now…let’s just say in limited testing I am pleased.

I AM going miss my seaweed salad. That stuff was awesome with my p/p d/p build. I am going to try Ghost pepper popper full time for a bit and see how it works. The theory is during day just more and faster might stacks even as I get some ini back if a full chain hits off unload and at night the chill should allow for more full chains to hit.

I have just been playing with p/p in WvW. Works real nice on siege and it nice to have some INI left after you have been flipping a camp and someone shows up just after you have used a few unloads. I think P/P users will like this and you can use body shot to help ensure you get the full chain.

:( Traps weren’t buffed. The patch notes must be fake.

Zero Day.2594:

:( Traps weren’t buffed. The patch notes must be fake.

I am getting an extra strike off the trappers respite trap of poison. It provides one more poison strike then the trap itself from the utility tree. Given a trap also procs a strike of damage you can in fact get 5 stacks poison off the respite trap when it triggered if you have preloaded a spider venom.

Now obviously you can not have Dagger mastery and trappers respite at the same time, however I have found trappers respite tends to work better with p/d and dagger mastery with d/d. D/d would then take panic strike and p/d deadly trapper.

saerni.2584:

Condition shortbow is now…let’s just say in limited testing I am pleased.

Yeah I just focused on that with my p/d SB build in WvW. Even without venomshare was getting some real nice poison ticks and yes it very usable in Zergs at chokepoints. They just can’t ignore it.

how much was the tick? what build did u use?

Limodriver.4106:

how much was the tick? what build did u use?

On each of my P/d and d/d condition builds that rejigged to focus poison I was getting ticks as high as 4000 with poison without shares.(The d/d build can get higher) I am pretty sure I can get both higher. I was using both d/d and the p/d in conjunction with the SB and poison field. The DAZE on the choking gas is a significant boost to that weapon. Get your 5 stacks of poison on and you can get those dazes in quite easily. One issue I always had using pressure strike is the weapons that were suited to condition had no interrupts.

This is just the poison mind you. The bleeds did not suffer at all and pressure strike for more torment not factored in either. I might go back to using that.

P/d SB build is core. Da/SA/ trickery. Traps traited trapper runes . Build uses BT and RS for boon stipping. Now RS steals entire stacks of boons unlike BT. Stability was changed to provide more up front stacks and no longer pulse. In theory (and this has not been verfieied) RS should be able to steal those entire stacks of stability so If a Ranger as example loads up his 10 stab stacks for 8 seconds, The thief using RS should be able to steal the whole stack.

The d/d build is d/d SB that I just dusted off for these changes again I went core. This one still in flux.

I went DA/Acro/trickery and took Dagger mastery panic strike and Potent out of DA. This one is going to try out pressure strike in trickery line along with confusion. Acro is PR , GI and don’t stop. Runes of thorns used so poison durations are 100 percent. Again SB is used in conjunction .

Keep in mind that with Potent combined with lead attacks, you are getting a 33 percent boost and a boost that can hit 15 percent out of lead attacks on that poison.

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

My Thief has been an alt for a long time, and I’ve kept a Shortbow on him just for Infiltrator’s Arrow for the traveling I use him for. Whenever I encounter serious combat, I switch to his main weapons.

Now the Shortbow is awesome. It took the way I always wanted to use it, and now that actually does something. I think it might have even been chewing through enemies faster than my old tactic as long as I was trying to make the most of Choking Gas.

~2,5k dmg x5 targets, unblockable attack – why complain

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

Several? I have only ran into one High level Condi thief at least in PvP and I ran into her last night when we were both playing similar builds to test out the changes in Unranked, I have found out if you aren’t careful with the use of Choking Gas you can trap yourself with very few defenses, I ended up running D/P as my secondary set and SB as primary the D/P was there just for repositioning and to move undetected most fights used SB and kiting techniques

There are a few good condition thieves I run into periodically. But usually I can out do them in team fights and out rotate them on the map.

With new changes I expect I’ll see a few more (but not too many just based on the power damage meta thief preference).

Don’t know, the update suits me well. I’m playing P/P Staff Thief anyway, and now I can Unload 6 times instead of 4 before getting low on initiative. With the might stacking, that’s awesome, and against mobs/bosses, they usually all hit the target and you get 2 initiative back.

6 Unloads, switch to staff, swing it for a bit, before the weapon switch cool down finished, you have max initiative. Switch back to P7P, Unload again. Only annoying thing is if someone in your group gives some kind of haste boon. In that case you Unload too fast and cannot chain 6 of them. If that happens, the might stacking doesn’t work as well and you actually deal less damage because the chain is broken.

Fact is my build became more powerful with the update, and the additional damage is quite visible.

There’s no room for a shortbow in my regular build, maybe I’ll test it at some point. Not talking about PvP here.

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

When i first saw the changes, while I thought they would be good, I underestimated what that Daze add could do. As an interrupt this superior to headshot as it unblockable , costs the same mana, ignores stability and is unblockable along with hitting multiple targets. A viable hybrid with PI and Pressure strike might work with SB.

babazhook.6805:

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

When i first saw the changes, while I thought they would be good, I underestimated what that Daze add could do. As an interrupt this superior to headshot as it unblockable , costs the same mana, ignores stability and is unblockable along with hitting multiple targets. A viable hybrid with PI and Pressure strike might work with SB.

How does it Ignore Stability? And it has two separate built in ICDs one on pulse and one on daze.

Sly.9518:

babazhook.6805:

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

When i first saw the changes, while I thought they would be good, I underestimated what that Daze add could do. As an interrupt this superior to headshot as it unblockable , costs the same mana, ignores stability and is unblockable along with hitting multiple targets. A viable hybrid with PI and Pressure strike might work with SB.

How does it Ignore Stability? And it has two separate built in ICDs one on pulse and one on daze.

Sorry. I am talking about the damage portion from the poisons I should have been clearer. IE if you use headshot and the guy got stab up you do next to no damage for the INI spent. if you use Gas for that same INI you are getting the unblockable poison damage. Thus my thoughts that this might work Hybrid given SB raw damage off the cluster bomb is not all bad.

I found I was staying in SB much longer then is the norm last night as it just more effective with that change.

babazhook.6805:

Sly.9518:

babazhook.6805:

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

When i first saw the changes, while I thought they would be good, I underestimated what that Daze add could do. As an interrupt this superior to headshot as it unblockable , costs the same mana, ignores stability and is unblockable along with hitting multiple targets. A viable hybrid with PI and Pressure strike might work with SB.

How does it Ignore Stability? And it has two separate built in ICDs one on pulse and one on daze.

Sorry. I am talking about the damage portion from the poisons I should have been clearer. IE if you use headshot and the guy got stab up you do next to no damage for the INI spent. if you use Gas for that same INI you are getting the unblockable poison damage. Thus my thoughts that this might work Hybrid given SB raw damage off the cluster bomb is not all bad.

Ok that makes more sense, it does feel slightly Overtuned currently, I think they could increase the Daze to once every 2 secs since that means at most only two dazed on the same target, and the poison Damage is easily negated through cleanses or resistance as well as stepping out of the field. Since it applies on pulse and it’s only 1 stack every second max 4, so unless the Thief is using multiple skills 1 Choking Gas isn’t going to be doing much for dazes.

Straegen.2938:

Cynz.9437:

Yeah man, buffing some poison that nobody in their right mind would use (because it is garbage) but trapper thief and adding more reveal to braindead spells in the same patch will TOTALLY motivate players to use SA. Somebody is in real need of reality check.

Poison builds on the thief are strong thanks to high base condi damage and the heal offset. Problem was that most thieves typically couldn’t stack enough without compromises. The new changes make dumping 10+ stacks of poison on an enemy easy and that may also make the new Choking Gas a real problem with Impacting Disruption and Pressure Striking traited. Panic Strike and Body Shot are also a nice strong combo.

10 stacks of poison is a minimum one should expect off these changes for a poison based thief. You can easily get more and as importantly , lead attacks (15 percent) potent poison (33 percent) and Impaling (10 percent when running) is a huge boost to the damage from those base stacks.

This discounts the might a person has stacked which can be considerable or the vulnerabilty that might be on a target. (My P/d trap build has ample access to both might and vuln)

Sly.9518:

babazhook.6805:

Sly.9518:

babazhook.6805:

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

the shortbow changes are INCREDIBLY good, especially for condi thief. Choking gas is insane. And there are several high level condi thieves in the game; just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t good.

When i first saw the changes, while I thought they would be good, I underestimated what that Daze add could do. As an interrupt this superior to headshot as it unblockable , costs the same mana, ignores stability and is unblockable along with hitting multiple targets. A viable hybrid with PI and Pressure strike might work with SB.

How does it Ignore Stability? And it has two separate built in ICDs one on pulse and one on daze.

Sorry. I am talking about the damage portion from the poisons I should have been clearer. IE if you use headshot and the guy got stab up you do next to no damage for the INI spent. if you use Gas for that same INI you are getting the unblockable poison damage. Thus my thoughts that this might work Hybrid given SB raw damage off the cluster bomb is not all bad.

Ok that makes more sense, it does feel slightly Overtuned currently, I think they could increase the Daze to once every 2 secs since that means at most only two dazed on the same target, and the poison Damage is easily negated through cleanses or resistance as well as stepping out of the field. Since it applies on pulse and it’s only 1 stack every second max 4, so unless the Thief is using multiple skills 1 Choking Gas isn’t going to be doing much for dazes.

Speaking in the context of WvW the fact a person might step out of the field is really not an issue as there many reasons you would want to use this skill. Just as one example, the poison field on the old choking was not all that powerful and if I was shooting at a person manning a cannon they would often just remain in the field and fire away. They can not do that as readily now and are often forced off it.

With the daze component if a person has resistance running there a chance you can peel that off if a pulse manages a daze and you are using an absorption sigil.

Most AOE type attacks that persist can result in the enemy player leaving that area. This is not a bad thing as they are used in such a manner to control space. Not only will a person sitting in that field now have to deal with those poisons (unblockable) but he will have pulsing Dazes that can apply and work in conjunction with PI or pressure strike. You are giving him more reasons to retreat from the field which is why it now more valuable to a group.