Guild Wars 2

laquito.5269:

Quadox.7834:

Then DP needs nerfs/changes

Wait, what? Yeah lets make CS D/P even less viable. The only thing that needs to be changed is going back to the old Trait System with 7 possible choices instead of 9.

Other than that you’ll need to nerf SA, because – as of now- it completly overshines any other build.

Then CS needs buffs. Remember these are not my Opinions, i am just making a logical suggestions from what others are typing at the moment. I answered someone who said SA isnt too strong at all, apart from when ran with DP. This doesnt mean SA (meta trait spread) is too weak

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Chapell.1346:

the viability of P/p

Clearly player skill issue

topkek.

Chapell.1346:

My declaration of war

War against Thieves in favor of keeping them just as they are? If so then topkek.

Thief is fine in Conquest, rumors says Practice makes perfect.

Topkek.

Thief is fine anywhere but the pvp scene, which is mainly comprised of conquest.
Telling someone to practice when their only gripe is that they dont have the sustainability to do so feasibly is what I can only chalk up as great ignorance.

I’ll say it again: We’re asking for time to fight, not free bags. It’s shocking how many people think that SB #5 should disqualify thieves from being able to do anything -but- port, and even more shocking how people shy away from taking as valid any claims that other classes can be just as mobile without also being trash at 1v1.

And for those of you regurgitating the “But thief is used in hi tier tournaments so it must be fine!” Stop it. That’s stark false cause. Thief being used in any respect does not mean it is fine at all.

Thing is, the meta thief build as it is can’t have more sustain, top players are already calling it unkillable unless they make mistakes. If you mean non meta builds, i agree.

Please do show me they saying that.

Ah wait they dont because they mostly kitten on thieves.

Stop pretending you know anything about thief, stop your crusade, lay down your weapons, forum-warrior.

laquito.5269:

It’s an absolulte Nobrainer to pick SA, because it offers so much passive kitten and is just overall so much better than the other traitlines:
- Passive stealth on rez + increased rez speed
- Passive condi cleanse in stealth
- Passive Stealth increasement (1s)
- Stealth on steal
- Reduced damage in stealth
- HEALING in stealth
.

Some people see passive differently then others, for example I see passive play like panic strike, defy pain, vamp runes, spinal shivers. Stuff does things for you by it self with no activation button. Most of what you have said here still requires an active control. The only 2 things I see as passive is minus dmg in stealth and healing in stealth but even then we have no last refugee (passive) so we still actively go in stealth and can still be interuped, yeah even running up to a freind and pressing [f] to res is still more active then vamp runes.

laquito.5269:

It’s an absolulte Nobrainer to pick SA, because it offers so much passive kitten and is just overall so much better than the other traitlines:
- Passive stealth on rez + increased rez speed
- Passive condi cleanse in stealth
- Passive Stealth increasement (1s)
- Stealth on steal
- Reduced damage in stealth
- HEALING in stealth
.

Ill take a potshot at this. I’m well aware I’m ninja’d

Yes, its a no brainer to take SA.

Few things though.

Gaining stealth on an action cannot be passive, you are performing an action to gain the stealth.

Healing in stealth is low, but agreed to be passive.
Reduced damage in stealth is agreed to be passive, but keep in mind:

-some classes can break stealth on thieves at will, even if they cannot see them

-Thief requires stealth to mitigate any damage at all that isnt outright evaded because
they have no sustain.

So, SA doesnt offer “so much passive kitten” Imo. Id love to take something that reduced CDs or even venoms, but given that the class is melty and that many of the traits in SA that focus more on activity are paired with something counter-intuitive, like creating a smoke field on down, The only traitlines that provide reasonable benefit will follow the course you described.

That doesn’t mean that they still dont deserve a buff though.

Quadox.7834:

Sagat.3285:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Quadox.7834:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Chapell.1346:

the viability of P/p

Clearly player skill issue

topkek.

Chapell.1346:

My declaration of war

War against Thieves in favor of keeping them just as they are? If so then topkek.

Thief is fine in Conquest, rumors says Practice makes perfect.

Topkek.

Thief is fine anywhere but the pvp scene, which is mainly comprised of conquest.
Telling someone to practice when their only gripe is that they dont have the sustainability to do so feasibly is what I can only chalk up as great ignorance.

I’ll say it again: We’re asking for time to fight, not free bags. It’s shocking how many people think that SB #5 should disqualify thieves from being able to do anything -but- port, and even more shocking how people shy away from taking as valid any claims that other classes can be just as mobile without also being trash at 1v1.

And for those of you regurgitating the “But thief is used in hi tier tournaments so it must be fine!” Stop it. That’s stark false cause. Thief being used in any respect does not mean it is fine at all.

Thing is, the meta thief build as it is can’t have more sustain, top players are already calling it unkillable unless they make mistakes. If you mean non meta builds, i agree.

Again, I have not said anything about builds. I don’t think I’ve mentioned a specific weapon except SB and its #5, because that seems to be the linchpin that is preventing people from thinking that thieves should not be free kills when encountered alone.

I don’t care about meta anything. The class itself needs a way to sustain.

Your first statement intrigues me, though. Who specifically said thief is “unkillable” unless they make mistakes, and was it before or after the recent patch?

The combo of SA and vamp makes them super survivable, but nevermind that, since you don’t care for meta, that’s fine. Thief as a class has way too low sustain for bruiser playstyle outside stealth

I’d still like to address the meta build, even though I am not focusing on it.

SA is nice, ill give you that. It could be better, but its good as is.

Vamp is an external factor that people are looking to have nerfed anyway, so I wouldn’t say that makes thief viable in itself. If they nerf vamp, not even the burst playstyle thief has will be viable.

There’s a lot of little tweaks that could be made to help us just plain live.

SA cannot be better, the traitline is kittening strong man. If anything acro should be the “bruiser” traitline, since daredevil does the dodges.

SA is only acceptable if you are using d/p SE nerf and CiS and SRej next to each other killed it for other sets.

Then DP needs nerfs/changes

So kill d/p,wait till “he who knows his name” makes staff a viable weapon and we have to get HoT not only for Acro 2.0 but also a viable fighting weapon? Double SB thief confirmed!!

I get that some people enjoy playing SA builds as it makes thief a lot more forgiveable to play and probably makes more sense from a WvW perspective, but you need to realize that this traitline is completly shutting down Critical Strikes and Acrobatics. Shadow Arts has just too much good passive stuff. You get free condi cleanses in stealth, you’re healed in stealth enabling to reset the fight at will, especially in combination with shadowrefuge and improvisation and your stealths last longer than a normal thief, making it hard to counterstealth. On top of that steal gets you another stealth, which doesnt even need to hit anything and you even take less damage in stealth.

There is NOTHING, literally nothing that could make me choose another 3rd traitline (besides DA and Trickery) than Shadow Arts. Even if they buffed CS or Acro, people will still use D/P SA, because its easy mode and dumbs down thief. The only thing that kept SA out of PVP was the fact that the old trait system forbid it as your damage would’ve been lacking. Now that stats aren’t tied to traitlines anymore and you’re able to max out another traitline, there is no reason to ever move away from Shadow Arts.

Therefore SA needs a nerf, the most obvious traits would’ve to be Shadow Rejuvenation and Hidden Killer. As long as these two skills aren’t changed or moved to the same tier, no one right in there mind will ever play something else than SA in tPvP. Not to mention the whine that SA causes by resetting fights at ease.

I don’t know why thieves are surprised to receive such firm opposition to their demands for more sustain; they possess already the most annoying, frustrating mechanic ever designed in a MMO : stealth. Their demands become even more ridiculous as they refuse for great part to give up on their access to stealth.

If I’d be you I’d wait to ask anything, it’s crazy to think that mesmers will be left the way they’re now and you don’t want to be there with them when kitten train will hit with its full force

Supreme.3164:

I don’t know why thieves are surprised to receive such firm opposition to their demands for more sustain; they possess already the most annoying, frustrating mechanic ever designed in a MMO : stealth. Their demands become even more ridiculous as they refuse for great part to give up on their access to stealth.

If I’d be you I’d wait to ask anything, it’s crazy to think that mesmers will be left the way they’re now and you don’t want to be there with them when kitten train will hit with its full force

Why would we give up our access to stealth? Just so u know, asside from Blinding Powder and Steal, we need to combo skills/watse ini/be vulnearable to go in stealth.

Mesmers only need to press 1 button, they got better access than us, but less overall.

laquito.5269:

I get that some people enjoy playing SA builds as it makes thief a lot more forgiveable to play and probably makes more sense from a WvW perspective, but you need to realize that this traitline is completly shutting down Critical Strikes and Acrobatics. Shadow Arts has just too much good passive stuff. You get free condi cleanses in stealth, you’re healed in stealth enabling to reset the fight at will, especially in combination with shadowrefuge and improvisation and your stealths last longer than a normal thief, making it hard to counterstealth. On top of that steal gets you another stealth, which doesnt even need to hit anything and you even take less damage in stealth.

There is NOTHING, literally nothing that could make me choose another 3rd traitline (besides DA and Trickery) than Shadow Arts. Even if they buffed CS or Acro, people will still use D/P SA, because its easy mode and dumbs down thief. The only thing that kept SA out of PVP was the fact that the old trait system forbid it as your damage would’ve been lacking. Now that stats aren’t tied to traitlines anymore and you’re able to max out another traitline, there is no reason to ever move away from Shadow Arts.

Therefore SA needs a nerf, the most obvious traits would’ve to be Shadow Rejuvenation and Hidden Killer. As long as these two skills aren’t changed or moved to the same tier, no one right in there mind will ever play something else than SA in tPvP. Not to mention the whine that SA causes by resetting fights at ease.

SA is not shutting down acro, acro is just bad ^^
Yes, SA makes D/P a lot easier, especially since the patch (giving us access to the old panic-strike-build + shadow rejuvination, longer stealth, rezzstealth and -25% damage). Btw you got some damage buff through SA cause of might, too (thanks god it got removed, was one of that stealthcamp-rewards). In generally I loved the old panicstrike-build. I was able to make damage and have utility and not forced to use the complete SA line. The only thing needed was Shadows Embrace which for me is the highest advantage the SA line has in front of crit-strikes and acro. I played D/D and S/D with SA a long time ago and never wanted to go back when I shrugged it off. And now I´m back on it cause of the changes :´<
If you want tp play competitive in pvp with your team you need D/P DA/SA/trickery what I never wanted to happen.
Crit strikes just grants damage (and healing, but sacrificing damage to get heal THROUGH damage? wtf?!) and acro got some nice things, but pain response is still crap and the grandmasters partly not good enough.
I don´t think SA need a direct nerf, more some changes.
-CiS back to master
-eliminate last refuge
-eliminate that smoke-screen signal for your enemies to spike there
- change shadow rejuvination to get heal when getting in and out of stealth (you know, rewarding getting in and out, not camping)
-changing something in the adepts, you just can´t take something over shadow embrace cause the condiremove is to important.
I think that would it be.
And of course improving crit-strikes and acro ^^

I honestly think with rev/herald there will be no role for thief. Rev will be able to +1 fights much quicker (spammable phase traversal), while supplying SAFER burst with unrelenting assault and providing the team with way more boons.

laquito.5269:

Please nerf the only defensive traitline that thieves actually use, its too forgiving

toppestkek.

How about instead of making them even more glass you add incentive to run the other traitline?

@ Above

I’m probably going revenant when its released. They get Sword / Sword, evade frames, are heavy armor class and get a blindfold.

> thief as it stands now, immediately. Especially because the only thing people have in their minds regarding the class is “Nerf it more, its still op.”

I find it hilarious that someone actually dares to say that SA is passive considering it heavily relies on stealth: last time i checked only passive way of gaining stealth was either LR (which nobody uses) or through teammate (SA traits work with own stealth mainly). All other ways (which 99%) of gaining stealth actually require some player action (BP+HS, blowing long CDs like refuge)… HOW THE HELL IS THIS PASSIVE? Is pressing sigil of agility to clear condis also passive now?

You know what is passive? Gaining endure pain when your HP reach certain threshold (warriors). When your condis get automatically cleared and you gain might stacks, when you reach 3 condis on yourself (eles). When condis get automatically cleared in periods of time (engis) <<<THIS IS PASSIVE. So don’t throw this absolute horse crap “oh noes SA is soo passive” around.

Reason why SA is picked a lot is because it actually offers team support and crit and acro just suck. Also, all other classes got massive boosts in damage department and we just can’t stay alive longer than 2 sec w/o SA. It doesn’t mean SA is broken and needs nerfing, it means that acro and crit need to be as useful as trickery/SA/DA and other classes need some nerfing to bring them on level of thieves (since non-thieves think the class is “fine”).

I would argue maybe pre-patch that SA is strong (i was big fan of CS) but given how much buffing other classes received and how much nerfing Anet did to thieves i am sry to say but SA is anything but strong in comparison and is frankly needed. If classes lose some of their passive dmg and defensive multiplies, baseline traits (hi mesmers), get rebalanced more around risk vs reward, then we can talk about SA.

P.S. also, pre-patch and FG nerf sd was absolutely brainless, so don’t try to defend that crap. I am glad it got nerfed, it should have been, Anet simply went really wrong way about acro and thieves generally, they pretty much overdid it for the sake of drd.

Supreme.3164:

I don’t know why thieves are surprised to receive such firm opposition to their demands for more sustain; they possess already the most annoying, frustrating mechanic ever designed in a MMO : stealth. Their demands become even more ridiculous as they refuse for great part to give up on their access to stealth.

I get that a lot of people hate the feeling of fighting an opponent who can Stealth, but COME ON. We’re not talking WoW style Stealth where you can stay in it indefinitely until you open on your terms with ridiculous CC (with there also being several abilities that reenter this ‘stalking’ state, of course). Stealth in GW2 is, on average, for around four seconds at a time. That makes it more of a repositioning or escape tool than the power to engage on your terms at any time like in other games.

People can complain—and make no mistake, 90% of people’s anti-Thief rhetoric is just poorly concealed whining about Stealth—but there’s nothing unbalanced about going invisible for an average of FOUR SECONDS at a time, especially with all the counters to it nowadays. The Thief is squishy, and you can hit the Thief with AOEs while stealthed, nevermind the multitude of reveal effects that now also exist.

Stealth is fine, and people need to stop being such babies over something just because they don’t like going against it. Believe me, there’s plenty of things OTHER professions can do in the current meta that I don’t like going up against, but I’m not calling for THEM to be nerfed into the ground or made useless.

laquito.5269:

Wow, I didn’t realize that most of you seem to be monkeys that are overwhelmed by doing anything but BP + HS spam. SA is passive as kitten, all you need to do is go into stealth and reset your fights at will, which can hardly be considered active play considering you’re playing with blinding powder, shadowrefuge, stealth on steal and D/P.

We’re talking about the state of thief in PVP here, not WvW and certainly not about other classes. Anybody claiming that SA got “nerfed hard” in comparison to pre-june is a hypocrite, nothings basically changed for d/p SA, they even got another goodie being stealth on steal. If you’re still dying with D/P SA in PvP, you’re just straight out garbage or to put it into Helseths words: “You should never die as a SA thief”.

Noones ever gonna go for Critical Strikes or Acrobatics as long as Shadow Arts remains the same. Low Risk High Reward. Looking at the thieves main mechanics for damage mitigation, evading and stealth, no buff to Acro will ever help to challange SA’s status of being the best defensive traitline.

This whole discussion is a perfect reflection of the increasing casualness of this game. Thief used to be high risk high reward, the current meta spec is just another copy of D/D Ele, Shoutbow, PU Mesmer, Burn Guard etc. – Low Risk, High reward and ridiculously easy to play. These builds take away any skill depth of a class and just promote kittening casualness.

If thats what ANet wants, fine then so be it, but I certainly won’t support or cheer for this bullkitten. You also seem to mistake class balance and meta balance. I never said that thief wasn’t balanced or underpowered in the current meta, but thats solely due to the fact that many other classes are just overpowered. I said that – in comparison to Critical Strikes and Acro – SA is ridiculously overpowered, which noone can denie. With that being said, simple buffs to acro or CS won’t change the D/P SA meta, cause it has no drawbacks at all.

Edit: Being able to max out 3 full traitlines is the worst joke this game has ever seen. Almost every class got access to a build with virtually no weaknesses. I’m sorry but thats just bad balancing, but I guess the casuals will still argue in favor of that, because GW2 got a lot easier, lulz.

I’ll deny it go play SA in PvP with everything but d/p then come with screenshots of foes saying you were OP. If you want to know what is passive Acro is at least the okay-ish traits are.

Thief is fine in pvp than some minor tweak. Anyone that say otherwise is blind.

Supreme.3164:

I don’t know why thieves are surprised to receive such firm opposition to their demands for more sustain; they possess already the most annoying, frustrating mechanic ever designed in a MMO : stealth. Their demands become even more ridiculous as they refuse for great part to give up on their access to stealth.

If I’d be you I’d wait to ask anything, it’s crazy to think that mesmers will be left the way they’re now and you don’t want to be there with them when kitten train will hit with its full force

I find things like double endure pain, double elixir engie, distortion mes full healing eles and guardians way more frustrating than stealth. Remember, we can’t do anything to you in stealth except run away or reveal ourselves.

i use D/D i cant really duel anyone i have to stalk someone or steal around corner to melt them in 2 seconds but as soon as they dont die i retreat

ArcanistSeven.8720:

i use D/D i cant really duel anyone i have to stalk someone or steal around corner to melt them in 2 seconds but as soon as they dont die i retreat

Guys look! See i told you. Please multiply

Chapell.1346:

ArcanistSeven.8720:

i cant really duel anyone

thief is fine

???

The high need of mobility, limited condition removal, and low base health make thief a challenging package. Just because thieves have a high skill bar, does not mean they don’t shred when played properly. Some of the most difficult encounters I have ever faced have come from a thief.

Not everyone should play every class.

good luck vs reapers once HoT hits.