I used to be a consumated player since GW1 (GWAMM and that stuff, looooots of hours put in both GW1 and GW2) but I have been on a long abscence from the game, at first because I couldn’t play it while finishing my studies (living story was getting exhausting, I know you guys also adressed it over time so thanks for that too) and then because I lost the interest a bit and except for a couple of log ins to check some stuff or sell something it has been around a year or more since I was so active.
But I was thinking about comming back and after reading the patch notes I’m sure I’m comming back strong.
I used to be a condis/support oriented P/D Thief, with venom share and a lot of “help your friends” stuff, like Shadow Refuge to keep resing everyone and focusing on combo enders with the Shortbow and that stuff.
It was a build that gave me GREAT results, I used to end on top of the points lists (not saying this for bragging, just to point that I got really used to that build) in most of my PvP games even if it wasn’t a meta build and it still made me win a lot of 1 vs. 1 duels despite being a support build, and after reading the latest articles about future changes and today’s patch notes… woah!!
First of all: Hide in Shadows and Thieves Guild, 2 of my favorite skills (when you have a support build it’s good to be able to generate your own allies) now have a subtype (a dream come true) and it turns out that both of them are Deception skills and I can make them recharge faster with the same trait (in the case of Thieves Guild you get a lot of time back).
I’ve been seeing some posters claiming that this trait is bad when it has to compete with removing conditions on stealth, but to be honest, I was a succesful stealth oriented Thief and I never needed the conditions trait so on top of that being able to reduce the cooldowns of 2 of my favorite skills (one of them removes all damaging conditions and now does it at a higher rate) is awesome.
That trait is rounded with a free smoke screen, that some are claiming makes it worse because it signals your location, but smoke screen means that they can’t put the banner on you because they’re blinded and only some ranged attacks will get you so you’re harder to interrupt (not to mention how it protects others resurrecting you). You can always teleport away when downed and leave the screen as a decoy if you think it makes your location too obvious to compensate for the pros.
Then we also got last refuge removed from the “autoasigned traits” which by itself is a buff, and we got a +10% reviving speed PLUS stealth for both instead of it (this is going to keep my Shadow Refuge ready for more important stuff).
As a venom sharer the merging of traits is awesome. Even if Poison as a mean of reducing healing isn’t as strong now, I’m really liking what I’m seeing so that’s great too.
The change into a 30-30-30 model (yep, I left before the change from 30 to 6 lol) is awesome too and now I can go all the way on Trickery for more support stuff that before I couldn’t get because I had to invest in Deadly Arts to get more venom traits. I know I’m going to enjoy sharing all those boons with my teamates everytime I steal.
Being so used to my support build, having developed a sense of the best time to support my team, res guys or pressure my opponents by myself, I know I’m going to love everything about the new Thief, I’m going full on SA and Trickery for sure, third tree will be a pick between DA and whatever the specialization is if it’s better than DA for my playstyle.
So thanks A-Net for making my profession of choice more interesting just when I wanted to return to you fulltime like my old GWAMM days.