Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if anyone made a thread about this already, but I find that the stun break of Shadow Return was really useful, the way I used to play at least. Let me quote the patch notes: “Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker.” :’(

EDIT:
Thanks for all that info everyone

Better late that never I guess. That train left long time ago.

Stun breaker is a utility skill thus it was removed from the weapon skill.

And did you notice that Assassin’s Signet active bonus no longer gives you a +50% dmg on next attack ?

Shadow return still ports you back to the original location, it just doesn’t break the stun.

I always thought that shadow return was the compensation for having practically no access to stability on this class.

I mean: “fine, you thieves only have stability with a long recharge elite skill BUT you have an easy access stun-B if you equip swords”, which is not as good as stability itself, but at least it allowed for quick knock-down recovery.

Obviously I was wrong, or simply A-net doesn’t care a **** about it.

Lol you whining cause you no longer have perma Sbs , get over it. That nerf was long overdue , now you either swim or sink and coming here complaining implies you desire to sink —-—————Au revoir!

I can tell you for certain that the last thing I’ll do with my thief is swimming

Kyrion.2749:

I always thought that shadow return was the compensation for having practically no access to stability on this class.

I mean: “fine, you thieves only have stability with a long recharge elite skill BUT you have an easy access stun-B if you equip swords”, which is not as good as stability itself, but at least it allowed for quick knock-down recovery.

Obviously I was wrong, or simply A-net doesn’t care a **** about it.

i have to say. you really hit the nail on the head here. having stun break on a stick really does make up for not having protection….stability….aegis…and invulnerability. well said man. anet…mind explaining?

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Lol you whining cause you no longer have perma Sbs , get over it. That nerf was long overdue , now you either swim or sink and coming here complaining implies you desire to sink —-—————Au revoir!

long overdue? let me ask you. and dont be an kitten here when u answer. you think that thieves shouldnt have stability or protection or aegis or burning or invulnerability now that stun break on a stick is taken away? honestly answer that. and remember that we also have crap defense and lowest HP pool in game.

Travlane.5948:

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Lol you whining cause you no longer have perma Sbs , get over it. That nerf was long overdue , now you either swim or sink and coming here complaining implies you desire to sink —-—————Au revoir!

remember that we also have crap defense and lowest HP pool in game.

Stealth and Evades…remember you can’t hit what you can’t touch…

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

Travlane.5948:

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

but would you trade stealth?

Excalibur.9748:

Travlane.5948:

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

but would you trade stealth?

Some might, some don’t use stealth at all, but in all honestly, that’s like asking a Necro if they’d trade their Deathshroud for evades.

Personally I wouldn’t because stealth and style is why I chose Thief, if I wanted something else I’d hop on my Engie or Guard. Both of which are can do more then any thief I’ve seen, with less effort.

Excalibur.9748:

Travlane.5948:

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

but would you trade stealth?

ummm….protection is ALWAYS better than stealth. unless u have it traited for condi removal …health regen…and init regen…then stealth is better. dont forget we still get hit in stealth. take alot of AOE and wild swings too. point is that we should have stun break on a stick. we lose too much elsewhere and that was kinda the point. sword is slow and can ONLY work with direct dmg. and if u have direct dmg build u have low defense and low hp….which means if u get stunned ur dead fast…which means you need stun break on a stick…which m eans without stunbreak on a stick s/d isnt a very good build….which as you can see not many are playing s/d as before bc they realize that hey…s/d isnt that good without stability/stun break. the end. lol

Dual.8953:

Excalibur.9748:

Travlane.5948:

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

but would you trade stealth?

Some might, some don’t use stealth at all, but in all honestly, that’s like asking a Necro if they’d trade their Deathshroud for evades.

Personally I wouldn’t because stealth and style is why I chose Thief, if I wanted something else I’d hop on my Engie or Guard. Both of which are can do more then any thief I’ve seen, with less effort.

im talking about stun break on shadow return. we shouldnt have lost it. he said well you have evades you dont need stun break. and i went off about armor HP and boons etc so its why we had it in the first place. and i was talking about trading the evades he so eloquently mentioned we had which we dont realloy have THAT much more than other classes. not talkin about trading stealth. never mentioned it.

Travlane.5948:

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Lol you whining cause you no longer have perma Sbs , get over it. That nerf was long overdue , now you either swim or sink and coming here complaining implies you desire to sink —-—————Au revoir!

long overdue? let me ask you. and dont be an kitten here when u answer. you think that thieves shouldnt have stability or protection or aegis or burning or invulnerability now that stun break on a stick is taken away? honestly answer that. and remember that we also have crap defense and lowest HP pool in game.

geared in full zerker you have a “crap” defense, try to go full zerker with another class against human players and come to talk about crappy defense,

STEALTH is a defense mechanism

MOVILITY is a defense mechanism

FELINE GRACE VIGOR AND DODGE is a defense mechanism

Go to play other classes kitten , try to do 6k damage in a second while still having great defense,

EDIT:

A mesmer // thief in full zerker have more “defense” than a necromancer or a warrior in pure soldiers, this game is about damage avoidance, “defense” is not toughness,

Stop crying, go and roll other class and learn to apreciate what the thieves have,

Engels.8537:

Stop crying, go and roll other class and learn to apreciate what the thieves have,

Nice for you to mention, because of all classes, thieves are probably the ones who value the most what they have…

… Basically because with each patch, they have less, and less, and less things.

Kyrion.2749:

Engels.8537:

Stop crying, go and roll other class and learn to apreciate what the thieves have,

Nice for you to mention, because of all classes, thieves are probably the ones who value the most what they have…

… Basically because with each patch, they have less, and less, and less things.

Oh noes, might fall to the same level as those inferior classes?
I play S/D evasion thief (zerker ammy, 20/30/0/20/0) in pvp, I definitely don’t have “crap” defense.
Shadow return nerf is barely noticeable, can still port back while stunned and since all the stuns are very low duration anyways it doesn’t bother me at all. Still works like a spammable teleport→mesmer staff 2.
<Insert usual l2p comment>

There’s a big difference between Shadow Return and mesmer staff 2 : the former will only move you 2 units away if you fight on top of the white circle.

Battou.7832:

Shadow return still ports you back to the original location, it just doesn’t break the stun.

It has a range of 1200.

stof.9341:

There’s a big difference between Shadow Return and mesmer staff 2 : the former will only move you 2 units away if you fight on top of the white circle.

Don’t fight on top of the white circle? If you get jumped unexpectedly you still have your shadowstep (use utility like regular professions for stunbreak).
If you don’t get jumped by a “backstab” ele or a basilisked thief then there is no reason why you would use the skill in close range. And yeah it is a bit different than staff 2, sword 2 is a reliable in-out button on weaponskill that is both an instant gapcloser that ignores impairement condis and a fake stunbreak and can be used much more often than staff 2. Ah ofc a reliable poison/burning whatever cleanse when you still have long lasting condis on you after a fight.

You can either force the opponent to deal with your constant dancing with sword 2 to autos or if he tries to lock you down he is forced to camp your white circle which still gives you control of the fight. It forces him to move to a specific area and you can swap to sbow and keep kiting him. Mixing dodges, sword 3 and Withdraw gives you enough evades to mess anyone up in close range. And if you don’t either prepare your sword 2 in advance for safe “stunbreak” for unexpected situations or open with it from a safe starting place when going melee range, then it’s the players fault not the skill being bad in any way.

Not to mention that the skill allows Z-axis dancing which is incredibly strong against most professions.

Only “negative” sideeffect of sword 2 is that the enemies can see your return location so a necro can spam it with marks if he wants to.

TL;DR Nothing much changed with the skill, stop whining.

Engels.8537:

Travlane.5948:

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Lol you whining cause you no longer have perma Sbs , get over it. That nerf was long overdue , now you either swim or sink and coming here complaining implies you desire to sink —-—————Au revoir!

long overdue? let me ask you. and dont be an kitten here when u answer. you think that thieves shouldnt have stability or protection or aegis or burning or invulnerability now that stun break on a stick is taken away? honestly answer that. and remember that we also have crap defense and lowest HP pool in game.

geared in full zerker you have a “crap” defense, try to go full zerker with another class against human players and come to talk about crappy defense,

STEALTH is a defense mechanism

MOVILITY is a defense mechanism

FELINE GRACE VIGOR AND DODGE is a defense mechanism

Go to play other classes kitten , try to do 6k damage in a second while still having great defense,

EDIT:

A mesmer // thief in full zerker have more “defense” than a necromancer or a warrior in pure soldiers, this game is about damage avoidance, “defense” is not toughness,

Stop crying, go and roll other class and learn to apreciate what the thieves have,

u know….protection alone is better than stealth. why? here let me show you.

ability—————doing dmg while active?——————stopping dmg while active?
STEALTH—————-NO——————————————————-Some
PROT———————-YES——————————————————-33% of all dmg

ok so while in stealth this means we can recieve dmg and we also take the full 100% of whatever actually hits us. so we cant do crap while its happening. its actually a disadvantage. the only bonus to stealth is backstab and removing condis/health regen from traits…so without traits stealth is really not that good unless u just str8 up wanna run.

other classes have dodge.
other classes have endurance regen
other classes have endurance bonuses
other classes have evades (we onlyu have like 2 or maybe 3 more if u count skills)

i play guardian necro engineer warrior and main my thief. i go zerk in guardian alot and he does amaaaaaaaaaazingly. even other classes can get away with it. but the thing is when a thief goes knights armor he is still squishy. just the way it is. going full knights saves you 1 hit. sometimes 2 if u have a really weak enemy. but going knights also cuts dmg like 75% from zerker. prolly more. :P fail.

Psybunny.8906:

Kyrion.2749:

Engels.8537:

Stop crying, go and roll other class and learn to apreciate what the thieves have,

Nice for you to mention, because of all classes, thieves are probably the ones who value the most what they have…

… Basically because with each patch, they have less, and less, and less things.

Oh noes, might fall to the same level as those inferior classes?
I play S/D evasion thief (zerker ammy, 20/30/0/20/0) in pvp, I definitely don’t have “crap” defense.
Shadow return nerf is barely noticeable, can still port back while stunned and since all the stuns are very low duration anyways it doesn’t bother me at all. Still works like a spammable teleport->mesmer staff 2.
<Insert usual l2p comment>

inferior classes? you mean superior. only inferior classes are thief/ranger….they accel at nothing. NOTHING. you can go check the survey! THEY UTTERLY SUCK! nobody cares about 1 v 1. it has nothing to do with the game. hate when people say really dumb things like this. you guys say thiefs are fine/op or w.e. the case you MAY THINK it be but are so utterly wrong its disgusting. you dont even know what you base your thoughts on…u just think without thinking. i guarantee anything you say about thief being fine/op has to do with 1 v 1? am i right? of course. good game. if you wanna be REAL and compare classes according to effectiveness in game then guardian is grossly overpowered! GROSSLY! they accel at EVERY format/mode in game! PVE= GODS WVW=impossible to win without them SPVP – plz just run by and try ignore bc u have no chance TPVP same as spvp 1 v1 very strong but not the strongest Dungeons All but COF p1 run guardians . thief fits in nowhere near the top 75% of any of those. wierd huh. thief was fun to play. still kinda is a little but be real.

I had the feeling that this was a pvp discussion, since you know this is the only gametype where spammable stunbreak matters.
Anyways, Travlane are you kidding me? You can say in a straight face that thief is worse than a warrior in pvp?
Thief has the best mobility ingame in tPvP (Sbow and Shadow trap y u so nice), very strong as a roamer/good duelist and still has one of the highest bursts ingame. It’s still the best direct damage roamer who can prevent a stomp 100% with SR. Stop kidding yourself that the profession is weak it’s incredibly strong in the right hands.

P.S Protection vs Stealth = Protection can be stripped, corrupted and the person is targetable all the time, Stealth is a targetdrop that allows for smart positioning, gives you a tactical advantage, ability to ignore most of the downed states and ignores every single target skill (and backstab pew pew). If you like protection more, play the fotm “backstab” ele spec.

Psybunny.8906:

I had the feeling that this was a pvp discussion, since you know this is the only gametype where spammable stunbreak matters.

Ha ha… It’s precisely the opposite.

I hardly use the stunbreaker portion in sPvP, since I always blink out BEFORE getting hit. You know, there’s is nothing to stunbreak if the stun doesn’t hit you in first place. And if the stun is instant or unblockable, it’ll also have a very short duration, so precisely, is in sPVP where the stunbreak doesn’t matter at all.

And that’s why you hardly notice a difference, as you said before.

However, in PvE, the stuns and knockdown from mobs tend to have a much longer duration, and are AoE, instant and many times unblockable. I do definitely miss the stunbreaker portion in several dungeons and events.

You want to remove stunbreak in PvP? fine. I rarely ever use it there… but please gimme back my stunbreaker for PvE.

You just killed the premise of this whole thread. Not sure if on purpose or not, but gj.

Anyone else wanna say how weak they are now?

P.S I haven’t run a single stunbreak for ages in PvE, everything is 100% reliably dodgeable and scripted there.

Battou.7832:

Shadow return still ports you back to the original location, it just doesn’t break the stun.

This.

Just like new Ele Lighting Flash or the Mes Phase Retreat, the skill allows you to move away while stunned – but do not break the stun.

On the other hand, the gap you can create (and SR gap is by far the largest of the 3) is usually enough to let the stun wear off while getting out of the spike, so it requires a precast and some clever positioning, but the effectiveness of the skill in matter of getting out of stuns is still strong.

Psybunny.8906:

P.S I haven’t run a single stunbreak for ages in PvE, everything is 100% reliably dodgeable and scripted there.

You probably haven’t played PvE for ages too

Kyrion.2749:

Psybunny.8906:

P.S I haven’t run a single stunbreak for ages in PvE, everything is 100% reliably dodgeable and scripted there.

You probably haven’t played PvE for ages too

Tournas have gotten more focus lately yeah, but I’m still a PvX player (wubwub gets the least attention) dungeons haven’t changed at all since I last played and I do occasionally jump into PvE for some runs.