Guild Wars 2

Elxdark.9702:

bye xD

? Dp is fine, it’s too bad staff thieves cant spam vaults and bounds anymore though :-(

Bye xD

I’m gonna keep this as short as possible.

Dear Anet

Thank you for finally telling us there will be no more money, it took you awhile but at least we have some closure now.
Everyone understands that, we have all come to terms with it, we are honestly grateful for the effort you put into making this game an esport.

We know PvP isn’t your priority anymore. That’s okay.

BUT

You still have hundreds of players who log into this game purely for your PvP content.

Why not give us another ToL?

it doesn’t cost you a penny, all we need is for you to supply the prizes and your community will do the rest.

The last ToL you did was a major success, It was highly competitive and the top teams were scrimming eachother on a daily basis.

Please give your veteran players who LOVE your game a reason to log in and play together like we used to.

Please give the new players something to strive for

Please give your non PvPers something to be entertained by

Please give your PvP community something other than duo or solo q.

please give this some consideration.

thanks

—Kat

Evan Lesh.3295:

The team has looked over the list of PvP sigils and applied our goals aggressively. We heavily reduced the available options, removed random chance, balanced existing sigils, and added some new options. Let us know what you think!

Passive:
We felt all the existing passive sigils were too niche, or would never be as good as the other effects. However, we felt non-condition damage builds were lacking some viable options, so we added some situational damage increases.

Sigil of Compounding
Deal 1% extra damage per condition on your foe. Maximum 5%.

Sigil of Punishment
Deal 1% extra damage per boon on your foe. Maximum 5%.

Evan, I understand and appreciate the reasoning for removing “rng sigils” like air and fire for example, but you need to provide an alternative that works for classes that are typically not going to swap weapons for an extended period of time in particular like thief.

As has been already said, sigil of punishment and and compounding are really worthless sigils. Force was essentially a 100% better version of these sigils and still wasn’t used, so to have worse versions of force competing with the same condi sigils is just silly.

For example thief, these two sigils do nothing for it, we rarely can apply more than 3 conditions at a time and one of our best trait actually removes boons, so we typically are gaining maybe 5% damage on average from having 2 sigils on. this leaves the on hit sigils which like I said earlier are also worthless for thief.

It’s really important that you buff sigil of punishment and compounding and introduce other damage sigils that work for other classes, I personally would recommend combining force sigil with these two sigils or remove the percentage cap as you rarely would exceed 5% but should not be punished for doing so.

Most importantly, there needs to be sigils that work well for other classes.

For example

sigil of sleight “increases damage dealt from the side or behind by 8%”
which would work nicely for a thief.

sigil of judgement “increase your damage dealt by 3% +1% for every boon you have” ( maximum of 8% )
this would work nicely for revenants

In this way you have control over the damage modifiers you receive, and aren’t at the mercy of whether or not your necro condi bombs a target or if your target is a boon heavy class or not. This promotes more reliable and less RNG gameplay.

OriOri.8724:

Anonymouse.4760:

Why are there only 3 on hit sigils? As a thief main I don’t understand why we get three options all three of which I would never take. Our only on hit options simply do not compete with the multitude of on swap sigils. If you’ve ever watched a single one of the tournaments you hosted that had a thief in it you’ll notice he stays in DP or staff for the entire duration of the fight. So what, we get to have 3 stacks of might and 3 stacks of vuln in a prolonged skirmish? No thanks, guess we have to run some on swap sigils that we will only get use out of once every fight if we are lucky.

You should consider yourself lucky, they initially weren’t going to keep any on hit sigils in the game. 3 is not a great variety, but it is better than none.

I think though that they are trying to gently nudge people away from camping the same weapon. Obviously a better way to go about that is redesigning skills such that it isn’t beneficial to stay in a single weapon set for the majority of the time, but that is significantly harder to do than just removing on hit sigils.

I don’t think you understand. Why would I consider myself lucky when I already said thieves arent going to use any of the three on hit sigils. Staying in the same weapon set
Is part of thiefs design, albeit the purpose of having initiative instead of weapon cooldowns. Thief has taken shortbow off hand because of its utility in conquest since the beginning of the game and that will never change.

Why are there only 3 on hit sigils? As a thief main I don’t understand why we get three options all three of which I would never take. Our only on hit options simply do not compete with the multitude of on swap sigils. If you’ve ever watched a single one of the tournaments you hosted that had a thief in it you’ll notice he stays in DP or staff for the entire duration of the fight. So what, we get to have 3 stacks of might and 3 stacks of vuln in a prolonged skirmish? No thanks, guess we have to run some on swap sigils that we will only get use out of once every fight when every other class is proccing sigils every 10 seconds. Seems good man

Acrisor.8097:

Or have you thought that it took them 4 months for those “minor buffs and adjustments”?

Pre-Patch the majority of the ‘top player base’ agreed that the game was at it’s most balanced state since the release of HoT. I’m not sure why you or others were expecting big changes.
This being said every patch will bring complaints, typically from players who are tired of being countered by another class. That is, however the nature of MMO’s and in this case adds depth to the game, from a conquest perspective at least.

as a thief main I dread skyhammer. any smart player can troll for an extra 5-8 seconds just by abusing the pads, not to mention the no port spots on side nodes.
please either fix teleport pathing on this map & find a fix for jump pad spam or remove from ranked rotation. -

true true very true

Thnx storm
I remember your first time shout casting like it was yesterday. they grow up so fast.
gl with your career

The thing you have to understand at least in the NA tournaments is that the 4 DPS comp of DH, Necro, Rev, Mes, Tempest has a really strong team fight, It counters the 3 DPS comp we saw from PZ, which is essentially the same but with druid instead of DH. This gives them better backnode and 1v2 potential than say a DH would. The downside is this results in a weaker 5v5, which is why we saw most of the NA ToL as a full blown 5v5 in roads.

As many of you know NL lost Mobs ( their dragon hunter ) the day before the ToL to Abjured, and I was picked up as a last minute replacement since my team “ScapeGoats” was unable to play the ToL. What most of the PvP community doesn’t know is that In scrims prior to ToL NA has had more success with Thief comp than was showcased on the stream. hours before the ToL NL was taking games off The Abjured with thief comp. I personally found it did better against the 4 DPS comp than it did the Druid or Scrapper comps.

After the EU ToL far more teams in NA have shown an interest in running thief comp, and I expect next season we won’t see the same 5v5 zergfest we did just a few weeks ago.

Lol two weeks after people start seeing thieves in pro league and thief QQ is already popping up on the forums and hotm map chat

Haven’t really looked to see if there have been any other posts about this but ye plz fix.

Xeyon.6419:

This is a side effect of the steal change made awhile back when they adjusted it’s activation setup. Was back when they briefly made steal only usable with a target, which was then quickly booed out of implementation. As it stands, steal has a build in prevention mechanic to avoid it being wasted on targets out of range, since people complained alot about the 5s ICD for the skill to turn back over. Since using it with infiltrator strike at the same time attempts to queue it up while you are still out of range, it won’t fire, but should you use it a few milliseconds after it should work as intended.

Thanks! It feels pretty awkward but I doubt we’ll see a fix for that

Dagins.5163:

Anonymouse.4760:

LOL
it must suck to suck

I used to be top 3 in solo queue, but what a ,,pro noob’’ like yourself can know. I guess you also play with your eyes closed and hands tied behind chair; teach me master.

so either the sd thieves you have seen are all blind or have the reflexes of a turtle.

Played against this guy who used this build. Simply trying to keep high evade uptime instead of evading only hard attacks, running away or abusing LoS when out of endurance and initiative for evade spam: http://intothemists.com/guides/3740-sizers_build
Of course, that’s a good playstyle, but it doesn’t really take more reflex to play than any other build out there.

Go on, keep posting — please continue to impress me with your astounding accomplishments and flawless logic

Tested and confirmed on 6-27-15 that when generosity sigil transfers a thief’s poison while the thief is traited into Deadly Arts due to the trait “Lotus Poison” the trait works against the user and transferred poison also applies weakness.

This test was done with Zeromis’s mesmer. I used choking gas to apply poison and when he transferred the poison back with generosity sigil weakness was applied to me as well.
I’m guessing though I haven’t tested it — that this bug also applies to other traited conditions.
I was not aware of this bug before the patch but it’s likely that it existed before.

Some interesting ideas in here — not sure how well they’d work together though. Some traits blow others out of the water in terms of usefulness.

I guess i’ll repost some of the thoughts I had for acrobatics here

1. Feline Grace and Endless Stamina are buffed and combined into one trait, it would now grant vigor on dodge and improve vigor potency to 150% but no more endurance restored on dodge.. If these changes are made I would also recommend increasing the amount of vigor received on successful dodge to 5 seconds but also increase the internal cooldown to 6 seconds. This would allow for two things: The first being that the way the trait functions right now with such a small amount of vigor and low internal cooldown it promotes using your dodges up rapidly in order to maintain vigor uptime ( which if the current potency stays the same ) an acrobatics thief cannot afford to do. Secondly it would allow for more rewarding boonstrip counter play, since you are stripping a bigger amount and the thief would theoretically have to go longer without vigor. Mesmers, I’m thinking of you here.
2. This combination of minor traits would allow fluid strikes to be restored or another new minor trait 5 that was on par with shadows resilience to be introduced. My suggestion would be Pain Response as the new minor 5 and replace its spot in the adept tree with Power Of Inertia ( which would also keep might stacking builds around. ) since the new acrobatics survivability is so dependent on vigor this would allow thieves to take vigorous recovery and still have adequate condition cleanse.
3. Swindler’s Equilibrium is made a Grandmaster in place of “Don’t Stop” or “Assassin’s Reward” so that a thief could take for example, Swindler’s Equilibrium and Hard to Catch.
4. Guarded Initiation: This trait needs to be completely reworked. It should function by granting resistance when struck while your health is below 75% Guarded Initiation would be synergistic with a different trait called Pain Response so that when you were hit at or below 75% you’d be cleansed of damaging conditions and receive 5 seconds of resistance. If these changes were made Guarded Initiation could be used over Hard To Catch. The only issue with this is that it would only be effective if you had pain response. Therefore I don’t recommend this change unless also following suggestions #2 and #3 of making Pain Response the 5 minor trait AND making Swindler’s Equilibrium grandmaster because as I said before Guarded Initiation and Hard To Catch should never be picked over Swindler’s as a sword thief.

Dagins.5163:

@Anonymouse.4760
You are making yourself look silly if you say evading isn’t mainly about luck or spam in this game. I’ve encountered many good acro thieves since headstart, and I have yet to see one who doesn’t spam flanking strike and evades empowered with vigor.

It is totally understandable as many important animations are too hard to watch, and instant casts can kill you. It takes to be a computer to evade all of these. Difficulty above human level.

LOL
it must suck to suck

glock.6590:

bloodymarx.9052:

Anonymouse.4760:

I believe the intent of the change to acrobatics and vigor was to punish players like you who dodge without any real thought, though unfortunately they went about this the wrong way and gutted the trait-line in the process.

Personally, I’d like to believe that the intent was to reward players who dodge better than random chance, but be it either way, it doesn’t accomplish that. Even if somebody was so good that they’d successfully evade most of the time (>75% chance), they still wouldn’t get as much use out of the Acrobatics traitline as from other lines.
In short, it’s below par for everyone.

So basically you’re both saying they made this change to punish random dodging thieves who were still being succeful on the S/D acro build aka getting carried by an abnormally high amount of evades. So isint reducing the evade up-time supposed to make good S/D thieves untouched and only affect scrubs who were random dodging ???

Nah they made this change to punish random dodging thieves who were SURVIVING on s/d acro, because that’s what people on the forums where complaining about. The intent of the patch was to only reward dodges with endurance on successful evade, i.e. if you played well you would have more dodges than somebody who simply spammed them because they could. But instead of just keeping by this concept they nerfed the vigor return to an amount that doesn’t provide enough survivability especially in this DPS heavy meta. It’s truly comical a critical strikes thief with a 6 second shorter cooldown on agility signet gets as many dodges as an acro thief would.

Dagins.5163:

If you think that you can skillfully evadade attacks and this way gain upper hand in a fight, you are going to hit a wall of reality. In ~80% of cases, evades in GW2 are about luck, what means playing an ,,evade build’’ is not about timing evades, but about keeping ,,evade uptime’’ as high as possible. This is why nerfing feline grace won’t fix the problem, but only make people annoyed.

This sounds like the ramblings of an inexperienced, random dodging thief.
Hate to break it to you but evades aren’t supposed to be 80% luck. Most dangerous attacks are highly telegraphed and with proper matchup knowledge and mechanical skill you can predict and evade attacks with even the shortest of cast times.

For example, pretend you’re chasing a low hp celestial rifle engineer and he pops his healing turret, you run towards him and he tries to blow it up to knock you back, if you know that celestial engineers use the accelerant packed turret trait — it’s easy to anticipate and with proper timing you can use flanking strike to evade the knockback and still hit the target, even though the cast time of the explosion of the turret is near instantaneous and there are no significant tells to alert you that he is doing so

Avoiding instant cast skills takes mind games and knowledge of the skill and its cooldown. Gauging your opponents play style and skill level to determine his next move. One example could be: you find yourself faced with a thief If you think your opponent is a beginner thief, then you may expect him to initiate directly with steal as soon as he is in range. However if you know he is a more experienced thief, you can guess that he might attempt to land some kind of CC or bait dodges with dancing daggers or shadow shots before using his instant cast steal. While I agree theres no way to know for certain, theres still a good deal of skill that goes into things like this and hence shouldn’t be dismissed as “luck”

In short, yes I do think you can “skillfully evade attacks” that is something every experienced PvPer does or strives to do.

As far as Acrobatics is concerned, it’s survivability focused almost entirely on active dodges, instead of passives. As such it had a higher skill-cap than other thief lines. But to say that the timing of evades isn’t important, only the quantity — is simply not true.

I believe the intent of the change to acrobatics and vigor was to punish players like you who dodge without any real thought, though unfortunately they went about this the wrong way and gutted the trait-line in the process.

babazhook.6805:

Odyssey.2613:

Someone, I don’t remember who-but credit goes to them, mentioned cutting Roll For Initiative stats in half, giving Quick Pockets a weapon swap reduction, and Scorpion Wire act as a shadowstep. Those were pretty elegant yet simple solutions to some major problems

Acro needs to be totally rebuilt from the ground up.

Ricochet needs to be merged or added back in somewhere. Their reasoning for removing it is complete BS and everyone can smell it.

I like the suggest change to quick pockets.. I am not too keen on the suggested scorpion wire.

The reason for a pull is so I can pull people down off walls or out of their group and into mine. I do not want a port where I step into a group of enemies.

We have other skills that can do this such as the signet and I am not sure why we need to duplicate this ability. For varieties sake we need a pull.

Pulling someone off an arrowcart that sits on a stack of marks or enemy AOE is very useful.

The original guy who had that Idea ( Maugetarr.6823 ) said it would work basically like an inverse shadowshot, the scorpion wire projectile would be changed to a shadow shot-esque projectile, and instead of dragging your opponent to you, it will teleport them to you.
Essentially the point of this is to prevent all the obstructions, mini pulls, and other issues of the current scorpion wire.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Anonymouse.4760:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer, thief combo has always been broken and easy mode in gw2 pvp. Nerf please

Should probably hide your signature if you’re going to pretend that you know what you’re talking about.

Not sure what a “casual necro” would know about Mesmer / Thief in pvp

I am a balance guru. I did a poll of top pvp players and over 9 in 10 said mesmer/thief combo was brokenly OP

lol’d

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mesmer, thief combo has always been broken and easy mode in gw2 pvp. Nerf please

Should probably hide your signature if you’re going to pretend that you know what you’re talking about.

Not sure what a “casual necro” would know about Mesmer / Thief in pvp

NIKJOLDBHORN.7315:

I’m still playing S/d, and I’ve managed some stuffs to make it batter as before, or I tried!
First of all, let’s say that playing a thief full berserker is now pretty impossible due to really low health, so first thing to do is replace some gear with Valkyrie (or soldier at least). This means lose some critical chance (If u take soldier ferocity also).
I’m still doing some try, but now I’m trying to play in this way:
the main changes comes from replacing Deadly Arts with Critical strike.
With critical strike i have a sort of perma fury, so around 65% , this gives me an improvement of critical damage (due to “no quarter” trait) – Rune of Pack- . I lose 70-80 power only instead of full berserker gear, but i have 1,4k tough, that gives me more survivability.
I tried, and the only thing that we could regret i think is “Mug” .

Like I said in the beginning of my post: “Please do not use this post as an opportunity to regale myself and your fellow readers with tales of how Sword Dagger still works great for you as you effortlessly dispatch up-levels in the eternal battlegrounds, or mercilessly crush hot-join hero’s across the nation. I am not saying Sword Dagger can’t be played, only that it isn’t up to par with Dagger Pistol for tpvp.”

In other words, this is an educational thread — explaining why it is likely we won’t see S/D anymore in competitive PvP.
It is also a protest of sorts to raise awareness that in order to protect build diversity we need to get acrobatics S/D back to a level that can rival D/P builds for viability in certain team comps and situations. As such i’d like the comment section to be a place people can voice suggestions for Acrobatics.
Feel free to make your own thread for WvWers like yourself that want to try to make a S/D build that covers trait weaknesses by min-maxing stats.
Good luck!

SoulSin.5682:

Anonymouse.4760:

Changing from optimal runes, sigils, traits and utilities just to come a little bit closer to former dodge uptime isn’t the solution we need as that creates a whole new set of problems.
1. Pack runes needed to supplement both power and precision
2. Air / fire runes make up a huge part of damage, what would you do, run double s/d with energy sigils on each? theres a reason nobody plays jumper spec anymore.
3. Was already using signet of agility
4. Hard to catch competes with swindler’s equilibrium — a must have if an s/d thief decided to trait acrobatics
5. Was already using withdraw ( most builds do now a days, even DP )
6. Roll for initiative would take the slot of either shadow refuge or shadow step, both crucial for survivability
7. Trickster? No sane person is going to give up bountiful theft, the only stability and aegis prioritizing boon rip for a 3 second shorter withdraw cooldown and additional 1 condi cleanse.

Thanks but no thanks. No offense — I’m sure that’d work just fine for trolling in obsidian sanctum or something but it’s not going to stand up to level it needs to in any competitive field.

Define optimal runes and sigils.
last meta “optimal” was a combination of runes and sigils based off past build choices.
From the moment the patch roled out, everything we know about “optimal” are just questions in the air.

Optimal runes and sigils would give stats pertaining to and supporting the class’s primary objective. In the case of a Thief: damage. If you’re having to put your runes and sigils towards defense while running a support oriented line then there’s an issue.
I don’t think the patch has changed that, unless you plan to run a bunker a thief build now?

NinjaEd.3946:

Right to it;

-Feline Grace: I wouldn’t say I’m entirely against or in favor of the change, but it definitely crippled a lot of builds relying on Acro for their defense. Maybe a little longer vigor duration (3 seconds) would help along the vigor modifier.

The issue with acrobatics now isn’t vigor duration, its potency. Even after deleting fluid strikes from our line to buff feline grace with endless stamina we only get a measly 75% potency, compared to 80% uptime with 100% potency post patch — not to mention the 15 endurance returned per dodge.
Basically Acrobatics got gutted and will take some serious buffs to restore it to its former usefulness. There are lots of other good suggestions on how to fix the line if you look around on some other posts for some inspiration.

evilapprentice.6379:

1. The combination of lines was well done, IMO. It feels like traits are in the line they belong, and weaker traits were rolled into more powerful ones to create traits actually worth taking…for the most part at least. There are some real stinkers, but that’s a separate discussion.

2. I -love- the CS line, but there’s some conditions to that statement. No quarter is basically perfect – it’s unique, it gives the thief incentive to stay in combat, and it’s powerful as a GM trait should be. The minors are good, and the adept line has some choices, but the master line is an absolute joke – nothing competes with Practiced tolerance, that should be fixed. I also feel like part of CS’s strength is how underpowered SA is.
When everyone saw SA, they lost their minds, but they didn’t take into account how miniscule the healing of Shadow Rejuv is considering the new damage capacity across the board, the opportunity cost of sitting in stealth, and how useless Shadow’s embrace is if it doesn’t cleanse a condition on entering stealth. CS is basically a default because it adds MUCH more damage than SA adds sustain – if the 2 were more even, CS would still be good, but less attractive.

3. S/D is dead, there’s no doubt to that, even if your personal experience was positive. Acro is a joke in its current state. Ranger and Engineer get better dodge traits, which is strange considering those professions have actual access to protection and stability, blocks, immunity type skills, better condi cleanse, and better sustain across the board. The old S/D dodged like crazy, but because it needed to – no iteration of the thief class has ever had passive sustain or defenses. It’s always been active, and the current acro is basically worthless – 1 mistake means your death. Vigor uptime isn’t even viable without BT from trickery which locks you in two traitlines if you want to go S/D, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to pre-patch dodge capacity, and damage has gone through the roof! Less dodges for more damage doesn’t work.

4. I haven’t bothered with a condition spec. Burning is roughly triple the damage of any other condition, and thief has zero access to it. Their access to any condition that isn’t bleed is middling at best, and without consistent access to a variety of damaging conditions to beat all the cleanses flying around, it just doesn’t feel worth it. Pressure striking is in a weird place, since it looks like a great trait on paper, but has almost no practical use – what thief condi spec has access to interrupts? A condi spec wants bewildering ambush over SoH, and P/D is the only functioning condi spec thieves have (which means no interrupts from Sword MH or Pistol OH). The huge damage nerf to potent poisons was also disappointing – 10% increased damage and 33% increased duration doesn’t compete with improvisation in any spec or format.

5. Executioner, hands down. Improv isn’t a bad trait, it’s just that with damage the way it is currently, thieves don’t have the luxury of taking a trait that doesn’t either make them hit harder or 100% guarantees better survivability. If spec diversity ever opened up to allow a thief that wasn’t 100% focused on downing opponents, Improv might have a spot, but currently executioner is essentially a requirement for being effective.

6. No, BV always wins. Thieves only viable role is still that of the highly mobile roamer, and nothing DS or TG offers makes up for their CD’s in comparison to BV.

Thanks for posting this, I hope my input matters.

This really couldn’t have been said any better so I’ll just try to elaborate on some of the points evil touched on.

1. Nothing to add
2. Really what the critical strike line is lacking now is utility, we only really get raw damage from this line now. I preferred critical haste and the old practiced tolerance to the new adept and major traits.
3. Nothing to add I wrote a pretty comprehensive post on the subject should you want to check it out here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thieves-say-goodbye-to-Sword-Dagger/page/2#post5221925

4. Nothing to add
5. Not much to add, only that improv is more likely to be seen in WvW on shadow arts dueling builds and would have seen use with acrobatics if feline grace and fluid strikes hadn’t been nerfed / deleted.
6. Daggerstorm and Thieves guild still have a niche, but as far as competitive play is concerned basilisk venom is far superior, especially with residual venoms being rolled into baseline.

Shinobi.3240:

Did you try to combine:

Rune of the Adventurer
Rune of Energy
Signet of Agility
Hard to Catch
Withdraw
Roll for initiative
Trickster

Can still dodge like crazy while dishing out dmg.
The rhythm is just different than before.

Best regards!

Changing from optimal runes, sigils, traits and utilities just to come a little bit closer to former dodge uptime isn’t the solution we need as that creates a whole new set of problems.
1. Pack runes needed to supplement both power and precision
2. Air / fire runes make up a huge part of damage, what would you do, run double s/d with energy sigils on each? theres a reason nobody plays jumper spec anymore.
3. Was already using signet of agility
4. Hard to catch competes with swindler’s equilibrium — a must have if an s/d thief decided to trait acrobatics
5. Was already using withdraw ( most builds do now a days, even DP )
6. Roll for initiative would take the slot of either shadow refuge or shadow step, both crucial for survivability
7. Trickster? No sane person is going to give up bountiful theft, the only stability and aegis prioritizing boon rip for a 3 second shorter withdraw cooldown and additional 1 condi cleanse.

Thanks but no thanks. No offense — I’m sure that’d work just fine for trolling in obsidian sanctum or something but it’s not going to stand up to level it needs to in any competitive field.

Maugetarr.6823:

Maugetarr.6823:

Maugetarr.6823:

I think it would balance out though because it would cause the thief to switch to shortbow to maintain the benefits of keeping pressure up. I also think though that Quick Pockets needs to reduce weapon swapping to 5 seconds (returning only 1 initiative ). This would allow for better pressure and the ability to flip back and forth between ranged and close combat. I mean, I want some survivability back in the acro line, but I also want the thief to be able to dive into the fray once an opportunity presents itself. The thief should benefit from keeping pressure up even while backing off and be given the tools to do so.

Edit: Remember also that I think upper hand should have a condi removal on it, so the more pressure you put on someone, the more defense you also start to build up. The condi removal would allow them to go toe to toe with some of the celestial builds if they can keep up their aggression.

ANONYMOUSE.4760 (Sorry for the crappy format of this post, still trying to work out how to use only select portions of quotes.)

Whoops, I hadn’t considered the synergy of a condition cleansing upper hand with your proposed FG change. ( 5 endurance per crit 1s ICD ) To actively gain defense through your offense. . . Man is this a great idea

Unfortunately for quick pockets I don’t think theres a trait in the world for thief that could compete with Sleight of Hand for the grandmaster position — It’s utility is unmatched and is the bread and butter of thief in competitive play. I do like your idea for quick pockets but I think the trait itself needs to be somewhere else, though I can’t think of any spot except for perhaps to replace “preparedness” the +3 max initiative minor trait or maybe flanking strikes in the adept tree.

Still though — I think we are focusing too much on the 1v1 aspect of acro, there will be situations where the right response is not fight but flight, and a survivability based line needs to be capable and excel at that as well. . . Maybe with a condi cleanse upon successful evade as you suggested with upper hand would cover that, but I’m a little skeptical. Sounds like we need some ArenaNet test servers of our own Maug

edit: Apparently the opposite of “soft” is kitten.

Well we did get 25% damage reduction in stealth with shadow arts, but honestly stealth tracking has been around so long that i’m surprised it hasn’t been fixed yet.

Maugetarr.6823:

Anonymouse.4760:

Maugetarr.6823:

This is interesting, but it runs against how i always thought thief fights should go. I liked the old FG because it allowed you to front load an extra dodge and had good return in protracted fights even without vigor (1 dodge every 7 seconds without it). This let it be useful for both bursty and brawler style combat (as much as thief can be a brawler at least). Your change still eliminates the initial extra dodge and with how short fights seem to be going with all the damage flying around, we need that front end back. I would leave ES where it is and replace FG entirely with something that gave you back 5 endurance on a crit with 1 second icd. This would mean you could push your endurance regen up to 13.75, but only if you stay aggressive. This allows for blocks, blinds, range, and evades to successfully counter play the thief. It also limits dodge spamming without really attacking. While this doesn’t quite give back the upfront dodges we had either, I think it’s a decent balance.

I really like this concept, but after the vigor nerf we’d need a better endurance return to bring Acrobatics closer to where it was post patch. I also think having a higher endurance return on a higher ICD would be more reliable then 5 on a 1 second icd.

edit: higher, not lower ICD (lol)

Yeah, more on a higher CD would be reliable, but I feel an aggressive thief should be rewarded more. As far as (5) more endurance per second (theoretical max), when you combine that with ES+FG, you could get a high enough regen for a dodge every 3.63 seconds, so the value seemed fair in my mind. In practice, it would probably be an average of the max and the min (a little over 4.5 seconds) and fluctuate depending on player dodging skill and aggressiveness. SA has always promoted a bit more of a sit back and watch defense while acro has been a forward moving defense. I’d like to keep that going.

Agreed, actively dodging attacks will always be a more active play style than sitting in stealth watching shadow rejuvenation bring your HP back to up to full. However S/D acro was already an extremely active weapon set in PvP since there is less damage, and more celestial classes. Here there would be less of a need for a trait that motivates thieves to maintain pressure — and they would miss the benefits of being able to keep endurance up while on the run. In WvW however it’s a completely different story, because of the insanely high damage with food and min maxed gear ascended gear — thieves could just hit and run with S/D acro. Burst and retreat, dodging about until they are ready to burst again which was not acro’s intended usage. This is where an endurance return on hit would root out passive play styles.
I think we’d need to find a balance between the two, enough survivability for those in PvP being trained down, and a system that rewards active and consistent gameplay for WvW.
How could this be accomplished? Thoughts?

EragamerLG.2390:

How can you guys forget the fact that it blinds when you go into stealth, with no ICD? It’s pretty good, and has saved me quite a few times. Especially now that it’s burst or be bursted.

Since the blind doesn’t reapply while you’re in stealth anymore an ICD may as well be the same as the duration of the time you spend in stealth, your reveal timer, and the amount of time it takes you to get back into stealth.
But hey if when granting stealth a blind saved you more then 300 hp per second and 1 Initiative every three then good for you! Can’t say I or most others have had the same experience though — especially now that you get 25% damage reduction in stealth instead of might in stealth ^^;

EremiteAngel.9765:

Anonymouse.4760:

Yup, Mesmers can one shot you with a mirror blade mind wrack combo.
But I don’t see why there are so many Thieves complaining and cowering in fear —
Mesmer is one of the most highly telegraphed classes in the game. If you miss a steal or eat a mirror blade it’s almost always your own fault.
If you’re having difficulty fighting them, create a Mesmer and get a feel for its weapon skills and animations, as well as its traits and cooldowns. This should help you vastly with the matchup.

it is no longer THAT telegraphed when they have such high stealth uptimes.
they burst you from stealth and it is a burst that can’t even be predicted because thieves you can dodge like 2-3 seconds after they stealth but mesmers they can stay in there for up to 40+ seconds if they want to so you have no idea when the burst is coming

I thought somebody might say that — However Mesmers typically open with mirror blade out of stealth, the projectile can be seen. And if they do it point blank just dodge as soon as the first bounce makes contact with you, that way you will evade the other bounces and the mind wrack. Don’t try to random dodge against a Shatter Mesmer in stealth, just try to get yourself into stealth with DP or kite with infiltrator return on SD.
Hope this helped!

Yup, Mesmers can one shot you with a mirror blade mind wrack combo.
But I don’t see why there are so many Thieves complaining and cowering in fear —
Mesmer is one of the most highly telegraphed classes in the game. If you miss a steal or eat a mirror blade it’s almost always your own fault.
If you’re having difficulty fighting them, create a Mesmer and get a feel for its weapon skills and animations, as well as its traits and cooldowns. This should help you vastly with the matchup.

Maugetarr.6823:

This is interesting, but it runs against how i always thought thief fights should go. I liked the old FG because it allowed you to front load an extra dodge and had good return in protracted fights even without vigor (1 dodge every 7 seconds without it). This let it be useful for both bursty and brawler style combat (as much as thief can be a brawler at least). Your change still eliminates the initial extra dodge and with how short fights seem to be going with all the damage flying around, we need that front end back. I would leave ES where it is and replace FG entirely with something that gave you back 5 endurance on a crit with 1 second icd. This would mean you could push your endurance regen up to 13.75, but only if you stay aggressive. This allows for blocks, blinds, range, and evades to successfully counter play the thief. It also limits dodge spamming without really attacking. While this doesn’t quite give back the upfront dodges we had either, I think it’s a decent balance. [/quote]

I really like this concept, but after the vigor nerf we’d need a better endurance return to bring Acrobatics closer to where it was post patch. I also think having a higher endurance return on a higher ICD would be more reliable then 5 on a 1 second icd.

edit: higher, not lower ICD (lol)

Scootabuser.4915:

Anonymouse.4760:

oiseau.6481:

“grandmaster” doesn’t mean anything now, you have to choose between 3 minor, 3 master and 3 grandmaster

as long as the builds are usable, i wont mind it being anywhere.

+1scootabuser

So you don’t mind the fact that cloaked in shadow competes with the strongest SA trait available? Interesting.

I think you underestimate how powerful cloaked in shadows is.

Not stronger than 300 hp per second in stealth and one initiative every three unfortunately.

oiseau.6481:

“grandmaster” doesn’t mean anything now, you have to choose between 3 minor, 3 master and 3 grandmaster

as long as the builds are usable, i wont mind it being anywhere.

+1scootabuser

So you don’t mind the fact that cloaked in shadow competes with the strongest SA trait available? Interesting.

Three cheers for ArenaNet!

Doggie.3184:

BFMV.3198:

After playing with it for the last few days, it is really kitten irritating not being able to remove imobolize and blind mostly, but also things like fear.

Just revert the change

Yeah, Necro fearlock even more annoying.

Hey, I know it isn’t a great solution but it will help you deal with fear
Try slotting signet of agility over blinding powder. Since most necros fear and instantly try to cast DS2 or DS1, popping your agility signet will instantly clear the fear if that was the last condition applied to you, and give you dodges to get out of the way.
It won’t be as nice as having your old shadow’s embrace back but at least you’ll have some counterplay to fear combo’s if your stun break is on cooldown.

evilapprentice.6379:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello thieves! Take some time from instagibing me and talk about the new specializations! Either answer my questions directly or simply post about what you feel is important for the devs to know about the new changes.

Questions:

1. A lot of thief builds got rolled into one (Panic Strike + Exe + Shadow Arts + Venom + Trickery Thief is possible!). How do you like the fact that thieves can do this?
2. I’ve heard some people say they don’t like the critical strike line. Do you agree and why?
3. I’ve also heard some people say that S/D is dead and that acrobatics sucks. I tried out a build with Don’t Stop and Hard To Catch and had trouble dying but still got some kills! How do you feel about S/D and Acrobatics? Have you tried the line?
4. Thief got some new condi traits. Have you tried making a condi build and how did it go?
5. Improvisation vs Executioner. Which wins for you?
6. Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild got turned into a trick and a deception. Are you taking them now that they can be traited?

1. The combination of lines was well done, IMO. It feels like traits are in the line they belong, and weaker traits were rolled into more powerful ones to create traits actually worth taking…for the most part at least. There are some real stinkers, but that’s a separate discussion.

2. I -love- the CS line, but there’s some conditions to that statement. No quarter is basically perfect – it’s unique, it gives the thief incentive to stay in combat, and it’s powerful as a GM trait should be. The minors are good, and the adept line has some choices, but the master line is an absolute joke – nothing competes with Practiced tolerance, that should be fixed. I also feel like part of CS’s strength is how underpowered SA is.
When everyone saw SA, they lost their minds, but they didn’t take into account how miniscule the healing of Shadow Rejuv is considering the new damage capacity across the board, and how useless Shadow’s embrace is if it doesn’t cleanse a condition on entering stealth. CS is basically a default because it adds MUCH more damage than SA adds sustain – if the 2 were more even, CS would still be good, but less attractive.

3. S/D is dead, there’s no doubt to that, even if your personal experience was positive. Acro is a joke in its current state. Ranger and Engineer get better dodge traits, which is strange considering those professions have actual access to protection and stability, blocks, immunity type skills, better condi cleanse, and better sustain across the board. The old S/D dodged like crazy, but because it needed to – no iteration of the thief class has ever had passive sustain or defenses. It’s always been active, and the current acro is basically worthless – 1 mistake means your death. Vigor uptime isn’t even viable with BT from trickery, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to pre-patch dodge capacity.

4. I haven’t bothered with a condition spec. Burning is roughly triple the damage of any other condition, and thief has zero access to it. Their access to any condition that isn’t bleed is middling at best, and without consistent access to a variety of damaging conditions to beat all the cleanses flying around, it just doesn’t feel worth it. Pressure striking is in a weird place, since it looks like a great trait on paper, but has almost no practical use – what thief condi spec has access to interrupts? A condi spec wants bewildering ambush over SoH, and P/D is the only functioning condi spec thieves have (which means no interrupts from Sword MH or Pistol OH). The huge damage nerf to potent poisons was also disappointing – 10% increased damage and 33% increased duration doesn’t compete with improvisation in any spec or format.

5. Executioner, hands down. Improv isn’t a bad trait, it’s just that with damage the way it is currently, thieves don’t have the luxury of taking a trait that doesn’t either make them hit harder or 100% guarantees better survivability. If spec diversity ever opened up to allow a thief that wasn’t 100% focused on downing opponents, Improv might have a spot, but currently executioner is essentially a requirement for being effective.

6. No, BV always wins. Thieves only viable role is still that of the still highly mobile roamer, and nothing DS or TG offers makes up for their CD’s in comparison to BV.

Thanks for posting this, I hope my input matters.

+1
Couldn’t have said it better myself

lollasaurus.1457:

RIP SD

Even with the changes you proposed though, I still don’t think it would compete with all the damage flying around now. It really needs something else to be worth taking over DP.

Maybe, I think had they not nerfed feline grace and fluid strikes that perhaps with Swindler’s Equilibrium and the changed Improvisation trait it could have pushed itself back into the meta.

yolo swaggins.2570:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Questions:

1. A lot of thief builds got rolled into one (Panic Strike + Exe + Shadow Arts + Venom + Trickery Thief is possible!). How do you like the fact that thieves can do this?
2. I’ve heard some people say they don’t like the critical strike line. Do you agree and why?
3. I’ve also heard some people say that S/D is dead and that acrobatics sucks. I tried out a build with Don’t Stop and Hard To Catch and had trouble dying but still got some kills! How do you feel about S/D and Acrobatics? Have you tried the line?
4. Thief got some new condi traits. Have you tried making a condi build and how did it go?
5. Improvisation vs Executioner. Which wins for you?
6. Dagger Storm and Thieves Guild got turned into a trick and a deception. Are you taking them now that they can be traited?

3.) s/d and acro is not dead. Those players are the kind that let their build carry them and they only say that because they were dependent on Feline Grace’s endurance regeneration. They don’t understand that essentially get the same amount back. And while I havn’t been on in the past month, I can say that Don’t Stop and Hard to Catch look amazing. I wish that was done sooner.

Heres the math on Feline Grace and Endless stamina done by Maugetarr.6823
“Yeah, it wouldn’t really feel different if you’re already in trickery. With bountiful theft and SoH, you already have 50% uptime on vigor. Assuming you start from 0 endurance, you’ll recharge about 3 dodges in the CD of steal or 130 endurance total. With endless stamina alone, you get 142 endurance. Since you start with 0 endurance in this example, the most you could activate FG is 3 times, keeping vigor up for 16 seconds receiving a total of 165 endurance in the 21 second period. Assuming you do everything perfectly, feline grace and endless stamina result in only 35 more endurance every 21 seconds.”

That definitely isn’t the same amount back, before the patch acro gave 80% vigor uptime with bountiful theft at 100% potency, and 15 endurance back upon dodge roll.
Hard to catch was a good change but don’t stop is a gimmick.
I think you should probably log on and check the patch out for yourself. You will find your initial impressions aren’t as accurate as you thought.
As far as relying on feline grace — you are right acro thieves did rely on it to be viable in competitive situations. But how a trait line that requires extensive knowledge on other classes and good reaction time is supposed to “carry you” is anybodies guess.

You can random dodge all you like but thieves like that were never relevant in the first place.

Elxdark.9702:

Anonymouse.4760:

Elxdark.9702:

heyeheyehey without insults buddie, calm your kittens.

The second WTS was still cele meta as far as I know.

You don’t get it. they lost BECAUSE it wasn’t a cele meta anymore — that’s why they changed their comp. . .

orng won 4-0.

comp?
shoutbow warrior(cele)
d/d ele(cele)
engi(cele)
thief(zerker)
guardian(zerker)

wut

Abjured’s current comp:

Necro ( Zerker )
Thief ( Zerker )
Medi Guard ( Zerker )
Shoutbow ( Celestial )
Engineer ( Celestial )

in NA the cele meta ended.
It will take awhile to see what the new one is now.

Just jump dodge and hope you don’t get mid air immobed
we already get a fancy blurr when we dodge.

Elxdark.9702:

heyeheyehey without insults buddie, calm your kittens.

The second WTS was still cele meta as far as I know.

You don’t get it. they lost BECAUSE it wasn’t a cele meta anymore — that’s why they changed their comp. . .

Elxdark.9702:

Anonymouse.4760:

Elxdark.9702:

I agree they messed up with the acrobatics line, FG is basically useless but imo s/d is even better now obviously not in the meta(and it wasn’t in the cele meta actually), it also does all you say it doesn’t, +1, hard to kill, peeling dps.

I agree they need to buff acro line but this is too much qq, I mean all these “s/d cry threads” are about the dodges we lost LOL.

no more free dodges s/d still useful, it’s not meta(it wasn’t in cele meta either), if you want to play it then play it for fun if you want to win play d/p like it was in cele meta.

buff acro line, dodges are fine.

I’m sorry for my horrid English grammar.

I’m guessing you didn’t read my thread very thoroughly, or maybe you just didn’t understand, because right at the start I talk about how Abjured ( thats the number 1 tpvp team in NA btw ) used sword dagger in the cele meta. So yeah, I would say it was in the cele meta. They happened to win the world tournament series with it after all.
I wouldn’t recommend posting on topics you’re clueless about.

woah dude but that was like tooooooo loooong ago, then in the 2nd WTS they got rekt by a d/p thief.

I’ll say this again but if you played around your dodges then it’s your own problem frand.

Yea, the first WTS was the cele meta, thats why they changed their comp after the meta shifted. three zerks instead of one + a carrion.

Elxdark.9702:

I’m still acro, keep whining I’ll grab my popcorns.

You make no sense at all.

Elxdark.9702:

I agree they messed up with the acrobatics line, FG is basically useless but imo s/d is even better now obviously not in the meta(and it wasn’t in the cele meta actually), it also does all you say it doesn’t, +1, hard to kill, peeling dps.

I agree they need to buff acro line but this is too much qq, I mean all these “s/d cry threads” are about the dodges we lost LOL.

no more free dodges s/d still useful, it’s not meta(it wasn’t in cele meta either), if you want to play it then play it for fun if you want to win play d/p like it was in cele meta.

buff acro line, dodges are fine.

I’m sorry for my horrid English grammar.

I’m guessing you didn’t read my thread very thoroughly, or maybe you just didn’t understand, because right at the start I talk about how Abjured ( thats the number 1 tpvp team in NA btw ) used sword dagger in the cele meta. So yeah, I would say it was in the cele meta. They happened to win the world tournament series with it after all.
I wouldn’t recommend posting on topics you’re clueless about.

Elxdark.9702:

Anonymouse.4760:

Elxdark.9702:

lol im the only thief who thinks s/d is better post patch?

I mean ok Felice Grace is nerfed af but still I think if you use the proper s/d build its pretty strong.

About you video, nothing new to see really…

So you think its better now, but also admit its nerfed? Makes sense

As for the gameplay, can’t wait to see your S/D video bud. You seem like a real star player.

hahaha, re-read what you just said

I said Feline Grace was nerfed not s/d.

If you played around your dodges that’s not my problem friend.

Most people would consider acrobatics to be the “proper s/d build” But hey if you liked shadow arts or critical strikes because learning what classes actually do was too difficult for you then great — glad you found a build that worked for you.

Elxdark.9702:

lol im the only thief who thinks s/d is better post patch?

I mean ok Felice Grace is nerfed af but still I think if you use the proper s/d build its pretty strong.

About you video, nothing new to see really…

So you think its better now, but also admit its nerfed? Makes sense

As for the gameplay, can’t wait to see your S/D video bud. You seem like a real star player.

Heres the math on Feline Grace and Endless stamina done by Maugetarr.6823

“Yeah, it wouldn’t really feel different if you’re already in trickery. With bountiful theft and SoH, you already have 50% uptime on vigor. Assuming you start from 0 endurance, you’ll recharge about 3 dodges in the CD of steal or 130 endurance total. With endless stamina alone, you get 142 endurance. Since you start with 0 endurance in this example, the most you could activate FG is 3 times, keeping vigor up for 16 seconds receiving a total of 165 endurance in the 21 second period. Assuming you do everything perfectly, feline grace and endless stamina result in only 35 more endurance every 21 seconds.”