Guild Wars 2

So, with the addition of another condi-heavy build (warrior elite) I think a real look needs to be taken at the lack of thief condi clear. Currently we have some small condi removal on our heals, and can trait into via tricks. We have no pure condi removal, and our traits require using multiple of a single type of skill that is severly underwhelming.
Either that, or taking slow condi clear while in stealth, which requires not using the trait that GIVES cooldown reduction to most of our stealth. Genius.
Especially given the number of AoE condi applicators in the game right now, thieves need more condi clear. I’ve been on both sides of the fence in this one-I play a trap ranger and I normally spend half the game laughing as thieves run off because they’ve run out of condi clear. That’s when they don’t simply melt. Burn guardians are another great example, they can just swing wildy and throw down flaming symbols, and if you even try to blink in and out, congrats! Enjoy your burn stacks.
Thieves as a profession are meant to reset and come back when conditions are better suited. However, most of these AoE burns have lower cooldowns than we do.
So, quite simply, thieves need more condi removal, both active and passive traited.

SolarDragon.7063:

Thieves as a profession are meant to reset and come back when conditions are better suited. However, most of these AoE burns have lower cooldowns than we do.
So, quite simply, thieves need more condi removal, both active and passive traited.

I’d support the Guild Wars 1 approach to condition removal and give us a grand master trait that gives condition removal on critical hit in any of the trait lines that aren’t shadow arts, because as you bring up, we have condition removal already on that line. Why on critical hit and not proc on specific skills? To not pigeon hole the profession any further, most builds run some amount of critical hit chance, even by accident (or have the trait that gives 100% crit chance when leaving stealth), which also supports the mentality of pushing foreward and making the best of the situation we’ve created.

Also, I’m not misremembering things and GW1 had a skill that gave condition removal on critical hit, right?

agree.. right now burn is senseless.. burn is now a burst damage :\

Well, burn may or may not be in too good a place right now, but it’s certain that we don’t have the clear to deal with it in any meaningful way. Doubly so if it’s paired with any other condi-such as bled from ranger traps-most of our condi clear is a single condition at a time.

Hidden Killer feels pretty underwhelming as a GM imho, and provides no incentive for any builds aside from D/x looking for reliable stabs to take it, as NQ and IP are strictly better. Obviously the trait is good, but is it grandmaster good? On another class, it’d very much look like “Dagger attacks from stealth have a 100% critical hit chance. Reduced cooldown on dagger skills”, and probably would be a minor or master.

Obviously, since we lack cooldowns on our weapon skills, why not provide CS with a little sustain against conditions? We have IP for pure health absorption, which is great for cleaving groups of raw-damage dealers, but what about more revealed-style benefits for those who don’t play so heavily into stealth/reset but need just a wee bit of sustained cleansing?

Thus, why not promote a new Hidden Killer?

Hidden Killer -> Dance of Death: Lose conditions upon gaining the revealed debuff and gain 100% critical hit chance on your next successful attack when attacking from stealth. Remove fewer conditions based upon stealth duration.
[Stealth] Under 4s or gaining [Revealed]: Conditions Removed: 1
[Stealth] Under 1.5s: Conditons Removed: 2

Why this works:
- Better skirmishing/sustain on non-SA builds.
- Offhand dagger buffed into viability due to better ability to chain this effect repeatedly.
- Promotes leaving stealth more often, a healthy style of play for all parties involved in a fight. Punishes camping stealth.
- Does not de-value the revealed debuff but does not directly punish players for using its effects as counterplay, while punishing misplays. Locking down a thief with conditions and then revealing him will remove a condition, rather than revealing and then locking him down.
- SA builds benefit from SE’s DoT cleanses + Withdraw’s movement cleanses + This effect removing weakness and vuln = all bases covered. Yay!
- Acro builds (S/D) get more options for condition lockdown/DoT cleanses.
- Non-stealth builds (P/P, S/P) taking stealth utilities can capitalize on short duration stealth effects, gain benefits from being revealed in bad play by an opponent, and do not feel locked into NQ/IP.

Do it, ANet. :T
(Oh wait, nobody reads this, QQ)

We are going to face a whole lot more in the way of burning. The -condi duration food WvW will not help a lot given that a condition like burn is so rapidly ramped up in stacks with all of the new spec traits they adding. Flaming fury is 8 stacks of burn in one attack and while only lasting 1 second , that a heck of a tick. Burn is going to have to be something you take off all the time whenever you can.

A lot of those conditions and in particular burn once more are applied at close range. This means of course it can be very dangerous getting up close and personal with a burn guardian or the soon to be flaming warrior yet our ranged weapons are rather underhwhelming when it comes to pumping out sustained damage. Lowering our own condition durations on the SB to 2 seconds makes even less sense given the base of burn stacks are lasting longer.

We are going to see yet more burns from the Guardian spec and will see more Chill from the necro…throw in Chrnomancer using a condtion build , that at your feet AOE and the class might be forced to use ranged exclusively to stay away from all that.

Yep, that’s already the only way to engage trap rangers and specced burn guards. Condi Ele’s are even worse since they’ll engage you whether you like it or not.
Or Thieves could get condi clear worth a kitten …

SolarDragon.7063:

Yep, that’s already the only way to engage trap rangers and specced burn guards. Condi Ele’s are even worse since they’ll engage you whether you like it or not.
Or Thieves could get condi clear worth a kitten …

This gets back to the new boon resistance. This was initially to be provided to the thief via the acro traitline and that was removed and tacked onto healing signet for the Warrior.

The warrior had a whole lot of Condi cleanse and this makes healing signet even more powerful than i was before. I get one of those burn stacks on my warrior I just kick this in and as my warrior designed for boon duration I am immune for 9 seconds. healing signet is on a twenty second cooldown so i can follow up with berseker and have ample time to deliver my own attacks without fear of being burned to a crisp.

We just can not do that on a thief. We allow burning to get on us and with lower health it game over pretty quick and there no window of opportunity to lay our own damage down.

Now in theory our mobility and stealth should help us here. In order for that to work in practice we have to stealth where there no AOE being laid down and our dodges and evades have to be long enough and plentiful enough to avoid that source of damage. With reveal being added to more classes, with all that AOE , with less dodges due to feline grace changes and with our poor evade frames on our weapon sets that works less and less in practice.

Resistance would have helped here but it was not to be and I still can not forget out why .

I do not PvP so am not sure if in relative terms it better or worse there but there going to be a whole lot of adjustments in our playstyle that we will have to make and I really believe that as these new specs continualy added little consideration is being given to classes that are already poorly equipped to dealing with them.

Overworld.9613:

SolarDragon.7063:

Thieves as a profession are meant to reset and come back when conditions are better suited. However, most of these AoE burns have lower cooldowns than we do.
So, quite simply, thieves need more condi removal, both active and passive traited.

Also, I’m not misremembering things and GW1 had a skill that gave condition removal on critical hit, right?

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Remedy you prolly were combining this with http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Way_of_Perfection in your memory.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_Malice was another condi removal though if i recall the usual play was to blow them up before they could do anything and get out of there.

With the current status of Shadow’s Embrace, it should be a baseline condi clear on stealth. Clearing 2 condi in 4 seconds of stealth is hardly game breaking.

yiksing.9432:

With the current status of Shadow’s Embrace, it should be a baseline condi clear on stealth. Clearing 2 condi in 4 seconds of stealth is hardly game breaking.

It would be three conditions, and arguably it might. Even 2 per 4s is the best in the game. Condi builds do need ramp up, and SA would make thieves pretty much invincible to conditions, as this would cure 2 conditions immediately and then one 3s later, providing only a few ticks before probably shutting said damage source down.

As a mention to the above, NVM, go ahead with baseline cleansing on stealth gain, seeing as warrior/berserker can cleanse 12 conditions every 15 seconds at a rate of 3 every three seconds + an additional 3.

We just need more condition removal in the form of our 3 key defenses. We already have 1 sort of, stealth (SE) but the others are too unreliable or not even close to sufficient. The way I can see it for traits,

[Feline Grace] Gain vigor when you evade. Lose 1 condition when you apply vigor(includes BT). (trait line defense covered)

[Pain Response] change to apply resistance for 4 seconds + regeneration for 10 seconds instead of remove conditions, same paramters. ICD increased to 25 seconds (since baseline acro will have suitable condition removal)

[Revealed Training] Gain power and lose 1 condition when revealed. 200 power, 1 condition removed (optional defense for offence)

[Trickster] Increase condition removal to 2 (brings it more in line competing with BT)

[Quick pockets] Reduce initiative gain to 2, add effect to transfer 1 condition on your next attack when swapping weapons. (that trickery! Hard to compete with SoH and BW in current state).

And for skills,

[Ice drake venom] delete, make [Karka Venom] transfer a condition with your next 3 attacks. (venom support and would be strong base line to be slotted without needing traits)

[Signet of Agility] Change condition removal to remove 1 condition for each bar of endurance filled (since you can’t really stay at 0 endurance, this would work as 2 conditions if you are below 50% endurance as it technically gives you the full bar. Rewards good timing but can be harmful if a thief doesn’t spend atleast 1 dodge before using this.)

[Shadow Refuge] Add effect to reduce incoming condition duration by 50% while active (this skill is already a giant marker for AoE’s).

NinjaEd.3946:

[Shadow Refuge] Add effect to reduce incoming condition duration by 50% while active (this skill is already a giant marker for AoE’s).

Hmm, or perhaps an opportunity to grant the Thief the mythological boon Resistance? :-P

DeceiverX.8361:

As a mention to the above, NVM, go ahead with baseline cleansing on stealth gain, seeing as warrior/berserker can cleanse 12 conditions every 15 seconds at a rate of 3 every three seconds + an additional 3.

I am not sure where you got those numbers but will assume they accurate.

I wondered why it was the Warrior got the boon resistance added to healing signet even as it was removed from the original acro line that was proposed for the thief as the warrior already had oodles of condition removal. Now they are getting yet more so even as they made conditions more beneficial by increasing the stacks that could be applied and making poison a source of damage , they neuter that by making classes with the highest armor and having the highest health pools gain ever more access to cleanses.

The reaction of many thieves was to go condition in order to survive in the current meta but that route is closed again with 12 conditions cleansed every 15 seconds. It really hard to get a grip on what goes on.

The Berserker’s adrenaline changes cause its single bar of adrenaline to count as 3 bars all the time. Cleansing Ire currently cleanses 1 condition for each bar of adrenaline full, and it was stated by the dev doing warrior/berserker that the adrenaline bar will be considered full as three bars rather than one when berserk, allowing for 5s cd adrenaline skills to constantly always max out their cleanses, and the berserker also has an additional cleanse on a 15s cooldown.

There is absolutely no reason to give warrior this much cleansing, passive healing, resistance, and base high health, and have the thief have so little.

Sword skill 2 is the easiest way to kill a condi guardian.
You can active it really frequently and also use it to hit-and-hide from the guardian attacks. The guardian inflict only burn, then you don’t need more than 1 condi cleaned x skill to win against him. Then there’s the sigil of generosity, a very good sigil, that can help you.

But yes, the thief is a class without good condi clean skills and I hope that the new Specializzation will add something in that way.

Sword 2, which most people say is a kitten weapon since the Acro trait changes? Lovely.