Guild Wars 2

I pray for my enemy thief to be vault spammer. That’s how bad it is.

ugrakarma.9416:

Ario.8964:

As we all know many of the players here dislike passive counter cc traits as they punish a skilled player landing their cc and rewards someone who didn’t dodge or take any defensive measures.

Speak for yourself.

CC stunlocks chains is a style of play its not mean “skillful player”, not everyone likes this style of play.

Has tons of passive CC, likes Dazes and immobility, that only lose in ease of application for the condispam.

Where did I say “everyone likes to spam cc and faceroll the game”? I said many players (especially ones with only a few choice cc’s I.E s/d thief who has 2 applications of daze/stun) dislike having to time their cc to be meaningful in a fight only to have it turn around and screw them over due to a passive allowing the other player to counter cc because they failed to dodge or block.

The reason this discussion is going nowhere: Everyone thinks this is a direct attack on the weapon set which we have stated it isn’t. Thief has a ton of ways to stack condi that are built into the profession (venoms, potent poison+panic strike, steal, etc.). The condition abilities of the thief combined with the survivability and juking ability of s/d make for the condi build’s opness. S/d alone is pointless as a condi weapon but it has a great deal of survivability when combined with daredevil to allow for a condi spam build to have practical survival and dueling ability. By that I mean it is mobile and fast paced as a set, it doesn’t suffer from the predictability of p/d or d/d so it allows for the thief to outplay to a certain extent.

Are there builds that perform better? Yes there are, the build in question isn’t the best thief build in the game that’s not what’s being said. What is being said is that the build has too much reward for little mechanical skill requirement and risk.

About the mention of the #6 s/d power thief, he made it there cause he’s good at s/d. S/d power being a strong option doesn’t mean s/d condi isn’t a thing too. S/d power is better but it requires more skill and timing to play at a high level than it’s condition based counterpart which is why more people go towards the condition build.

My suggestion has been voiced here many times but idk if anyone actually likes it or not: Revert condi to the prestacking change functionality (burn doesn’t stack, poison doesn’t stack etc.) but now in order to not screw over people specializing in a certain condi for each condi you take the damage of the player putting out the most damage in that condi (In the case that multiple condi users attack a target together like a burn guard, poison thief, bleed ranger, etc.) Then buff their durations so they can be just as damaging as they are now if left untouched and MASSIVELY scale back condi removal while also changing the function of condi removal (Each skill/trait the removes condi removal would specialize in either removing impairing condis like weakness and chill, or removing damaging condis like burn and poison) Now cleansing becomes more mindful and meaningful while conditions are allowed to fulfill a DoT playstyle for those that want it but also not be shut down by infinite amounts of condi removal (also allows for debuff type playstyles with the classes that have lots of debilitating conditions)

As we all know many of the players here dislike passive counter cc traits as they punish a skilled player landing their cc and rewards someone who didn’t dodge or take any defensive measures. But many of us also recognize that for the game to appeal to more than the top 10% of players there have to be easier (maybe slightly less effective) builds for people to learn on and actually get a chance to learn how the game works (If everything is too active then newer players have no chance to get into pvp and learn the mechanics of the game as they are all instantly destroyed). Counter cc as a passive is meant to be one of those failsafes but that’s where my question comes in:

Would the playerbase as a whole be more satisfied with a passive stunbreak/resource refill (could be something like gain endurance, gain prot, gain adrenaline, deathshroud etc.) on cc rather than counter ccs for the classes that have them? Or would adding an indicator on the players toolbar of when the passive is up be a better fix to allow people to play around those passives?

Nice to see you around again Hitzer, I’m glad I haven’t been the only one messing around with core s/d for pvp. The build I ended up coming to however was this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYvTwwJw/EHwElPNij2QnABwu1LsQMRB-TpxHQBXrMQAfAAK7IAowTAgI2fAAHCAA

I went towards this spec for the ability to handle condi pretty well without really sacrificing much damage. My big appeal was the 100% reduction of movement impairing condis while you have swiftness (perma) so dash wouldn’t even be missed within gameplay.

So over the course of the beta (I know it was awhile ago I just took forever to get aorund to making a thread on this) I tried out a heavy burst focused on the overheat mechanic. The idea of the build was to max out heat generation and, when combined, with rifle and rocket boots have massive amounts of mobility to move that burst around the map. The heat generation allowed you to fill the form very fast and then put out a single very hard hitting AoE (upwards of 12k on a crit) which was awesome and really could snowball a teamfight if people were actively trying to res around you. The huge drawback was how much degeneration you were hit with after the overheat itself happened. Often times you’d die to that or be left with about 1k health if you didn’t have a heal up which kinda killed the idea of the build after people caught on to it.

The point of the thread: Would it be worth tweaking the overheat trait to deal less damage (12k is a bit much imo) but in addition to stopping the self damage, have a damage reduction on the degeneration of overheating? I don’t want to fully get rid of it because then there’s still an aspect of self punishment and timing your overheats for when you expect little follow up damage but maybe a 25%-50% reduction built into the trait to make it more appealing in areas of pvp outside of like a full zerk gimmick build.

The only question I have is did their team own mid, was it contested, or did your team own it?

Now onto the response:
Home would be the best option as there’s a few plays you open up once you plus. You can force the enemy off the point and force a ton of their cd’s by putting lots of pressure on them and they will either retreat, die, or kite. If they retreat to mid take 1 or 2 (depending on state of the cap) of your buddies with you and plus mid to take the teamfight. If they die then rotate to mid and win the teamfight while decapping far if they leave it open. If they kite you can either continue putting pressure on them as s/d has strong sustained damage and hopefully kill them (it’s a judgement call, only go for the kill if you really feel you can get it because now you aren’t on a point and not in the important teamfight) or have you and one other guy leave if the other player there is confident enough in the 1v1 to at least hold the point until you take mid and can plus on home again.

Side note: Ignore anyone who complains about thief. The main reason people lose with a thief on their team is because they don’t adjust their style to let the thief roam and capitalize on their mobility and instead try to play 1v1 hero on far or try to handle all the +1ing themselves leaving the thief to teamfight or play home guard. That is not a you error, that is their fault 100%

I’d rather see more of that type of stuff in the introduction of new elite specs: Sacrificing part or all of the old mechanic of the class in favor of the new one (They’ve done a much better job with that this time around than HoT) to prevent especs from being straight upgrades to professions.

Every time i see the words healing and engi in the same sentence I wish my old heal bomb build would come back

Every time i see the words healing and engi in the same sentence I wish my old heal bomb build would come back

I’d be down for that, would help core engineer’s problem with being too easily rooted and cced and then opens up the possibility of taking tools over inventions for clear of those condis rather than straight reduction.

It’s actually quite easy to get high duration of conditions in pvp. You have a few options with poison on condi thief: You can run deadshot and thorn runes and you will have 100% duration on poison which is the only huge spike you have to worry about (the rest are cover condis that are so easily reapplied you won’t have to worry about those falling off) or you can go (As many do) carrion, thorn runes, venom sigs and sit at 98% poison duration. Conditions do not suffer in pvp as you claim they do. Power suffers more in pvp due to the fact that while damage is lower in pvp than in wvw, defense uptime is not. All the prot that people take and all the blocks they have in wvw come straight over to pvp and make power damage much harder to be effective with. Condion the other hand doesn’t get affected by the high defensive uptime as it ignores armor, prot, etc. With carrion and thorn runes you sit easily at almost 1400 condi damage which is a very hefty amount considering the sheer number of condis you can output as well. Also thorn runes raise your damage over time so you end up with a damage level of about 1500-1600 which is absolutely brutal.

Keep in mind s/d condi is not played purely by spamming 2 (anyone who argues “spamming 2 won’t get you much condi and therefore the build is balanced” doesn’t understand how this spec works, you all know very well that there is more being done than afk spamming 2 when it comes to condi application so stop pretending that’s an argument to protect a carry build. Remember WE ARE NOT ADVOCATING A NERF TO THE WEAPON SET) so you have to take into account the use of sb 4 and the whirl finishers from dodging, the extra pressure from steal, the 33% increased poison damage from the trait, etc. There’s a ton of damage that comes from this set and it’s payoff for being so easy is just not okay. Could you do more damage with power? Sure but let’s look at the requirements for doing that say, on power s/d: Every skill has to hit AND crit, can’t afford having it blocked, can’t afford hitting prot, and it requires you to stay in the fray longer exposing yourself to possible damage in order to get off your larger damaging skills rather than a quick burst and dodge style given to you by the condi variant. Also keep in mind the telegraphs for the skills that hit with higher power damage are much bigger and more pronounced than those that burst with heavier condi when specced for it.

S/d is taken for condi due to it’s in combat mobility, the harder to notice animations used for the condi burst, the ability to actively contest a point while fighting due to no reliance on stealth, and the utility on the set providing the thief with a strong defense while they wait for their next burst opportunity. S/d itself doesn’t need to be nerfed and I never asked for s/d to be nerfed. I asked for the condi application of the thief showcased by the build using s/d to be nerfed (yes you get more condi on other sets but they are much more exposed hence why nobody uses them over s/d in pvp)

A build that is this easy to play with that much reward is not healthy for a game and that is a very good reason that s/d condi has to go.

And now I need to say this: We are not talking about wvw here, wvw is a fustercluck of nonsense where balance doesn’t exist so therefore all that bs is not a part of this argument. No more of the “Oh well in wvw you can just run super far away and pew pew from range” or “In wvw, everything is more powerful so because it’s less powerful than the wvw variant it’s balanced in pvp” this is a pvp balance centered discussion (no it doesn’t belong on the pvp forums because it’s thief focused) where the objective is standing on a point and holding it, running far away and pew pewing is not a viable option.

I don’t see why they don’t just remove the spellcast cause none of them are particularly helpful and give a small damage buff or something when swapping into a kit.

Except BM on ranger isn’t nearly mandatory. There are plenty of builds on ranger that don’t use it and plenty that will continue to not use it. Trickery however is just about as mandatory for a pvp thief spec as mandatory can be. Look at ranger without BM: Their pet still functions, hits enemies with skills, activates it’s own skills, the ranger doesn’t lose access to anything, their cd’s stay the same (Except for shouts) etc.
Take trickery off of thief and you lose 3 initiative and initiative regen on steal, add 10 seconds onto the cd of your class mechanic, lose all ability to boonstrip (Outside of s/d 3 and rev sigs), lose a hard cc, and lose access to boons.

TLDR: BM buffs a mechanic, Trickery makes a mechanic work.

Elxdark, Azukas. I’m glad people with sense of game health showed up and realize the fact that something doesn’t have to be god mode to be too strong for it’s needed effort.

Also to the people binding s/d and s/d condi: S/d is a very high skill ceiling set and I would love to see it as meta (My favorite build is s/d) because a build that can compete with d/p while requiring high skill is a good thing for this game (Think back to when d/p executioner and s/d acro were the top 2 thief builds. It was a competitive choice but there was no easier version to play) The condi variant requires little skill IF ANY to play at a plat level. If you need evidence, look at how many people have swapped to thief and play like garbage but end up in very high tiers due to how much the build carries them.

I made a build that I can play that counters it. That’s why it’s not a problem for me. But that’s 1 build on one profession in the whole game without fully gimping yourself to not die instantly to 2 buttons. I go on mes and condi thief is gg. Engi it’s gg.

The payoff is how ridiculously powerful it is in relation to every other build in the meta atm. If you don’t see that 2 buttons being pushed and it being enough to kill anyone not fully specced for condi removal with full cds available is a bad thing for this game then I’m not sure what to tell you. It shouldn’t be that difficult of a concept for people to grasp, it’s a faceroll build that does too much for the skill necessary to play it. Ergo, it should be nerfed. That’s how balance works my friend. If people want to play easy builds then they shouldn’t get very far, if they play a build that requires timing and skill then they get the wins.

It’s not being “That guy” to request a nerf to something that’s obviously broken. I don’t think it’s specifically venom share because it’s not a problem on anything except really s/d condi. Just poison application on thief ought to be nerfed case that is broken. But, people should be in here soon to give the whole “l2p” lecture so they can keep climbing with 2 button builds.

CreedOfGod.9764:

Class standard should be the +3 total initiative and the daze on steal. Since trickery gives two traits that reduce the CD, the base line could be moved to like 25 seconds and one passive CD is removed (and replaced with an unblockable CnD passive ). The other 20% reduction, +2 initiative on hit and boonsteal should remain as traits to trickery I think. The last passive could even be changed to something like rending shade, to turn trickery into a boonsteal traitline. Probably broken but ideas nonetheless.

Agree with initiative. Disagree fully with daze. In fact if the recharge reduction from SoH was baseline but literally everything else on thief stayed the same I’m sure most players would swap to getting ini on wep swap as there’s too much random counter cc in the game and soh procs it every time

For pvp I find s/d more enjoyable and more worthwhile. The evade acts quicker and the unblockable damage is killer vs guards and other block heavy specs atm. If you can avoid 1v1ing d/p you can perform to an extreme level of effectiveness. D/p is beatable but your life gets harder when you have to fight it.

For pvp I find s/d more enjoyable and more worthwhile. The evade acts quicker and the unblockable damage is killer vs guards and other block heavy specs atm. If you can avoid 1v1ing d/p you can perform to an extreme level of effectiveness. D/p is beatable but your life gets harder when you have to fight it.

@alchemyst, in pvp where you can’t just outkite someone playing s/d condi because holding a point matters yes they are. It’s a very strong build that has carried many a player into leaderboards and higher ratings where they obviously don’t belong.

@everyone else telling me how to fight this. I already know how. I do not have any issues fighting condi thief because the build I use is very strong vs them. Sure this build isn’t dictating the way a game goes just by existing but it gives off way too much reward and payoff for the lack of skill required. Steal 2 dodge by itself is enough to kill many players if they are caught without a way to cleanse 6 condis at once and that’s without follow up. It’s like turret engi was, it wasn’t destroying the game as most people with a brain could handle it but it’s payoff was too much for pressing 3 buttons and going afk.

Dawdler, in wvw it’s not likely to appear because people in wvw spec for dueling which means lots of condi clear and such plus s/d condi is not a 1v1 build so it’d get wrecked by 1v1 builds. Also power is dominant in wvw because people have the available stats to make burst builds that have damage beyond what any condi build could achieve whilest being able to allocate a small amount to tank stats as well. This is honestly just a pvp issue and it’s because of the lack of build optimization available as people are stuck with one build they can use because there’s not enough customization options there to change it up and allow for different builds. Condi takes advantage of that because it doesn’t suffer from lack of damage in pvp due to it’s ability to bypass prot, endure pain type skills, etc.
Spills beer … Rip keyboard 2k17

double posted… forum bugs

pls delete this one

Take extra poison stacks off potent poison and if necessary take poison off panic strike (probably not needed after the potent change). This is aids and has gone unchecked for too long. Players are being carried like crazy by this which is obviously a bad thing.

Author’s note: I personally have no issues dealing with this build. However just because I can beat it doesn’t make it balanced, it’s still a stupidly easy build with just about no risk and way too much payoff.

I’d say discuss but there’s no discussion necessary to determine that something ought to be done.

Sure nerf daredevil, let’s take away all their mobility because we don’t like not getting free kills. But while you do that give me a thief spec that:
-Has invulns they can spam like everyone else
-Has consistent blocks to spam like everyone else
-Has stab like everyone else
-Has AoE damage to spam like everyone else
-Has bunker abilities that still do a ton of damage so I can be a super tanky damage dealer like everyone else
-Can win 1v1’s on point easily
-Has tons of regen (not the boon) like everyone else
-Has passives that save them from being cced and instead kitten over the person who cced them like everyone else
-Has consistent access to boons that doesn’t require me to take them from people like everyone else
-Doesn’t have to play a dodge spam build in order to not die in 2 hits like everyone else
-Has sustain that doesn’t sacrifice my point presence like everyone else.
-Doesn’t have to be a mobile decap +1 bot to be remotely relevant in the game like everyone else

See a trend? Literally the only reason thief exists in pvp atm is for 1 role and 1 role only. You nerf them out of that top performance spot and it’s bye bye thief forever. And it’s not like people won’t have a chance against daredevil, it’s fairly easy to beat on most if not all of the new especs (partially due to their obscene amounts of condi output, damage output, cc output, mobility to rival thief, etc.)

Also take into account people have had a very long time to practice with daredevil, people know what it does and so ofc it’s going to dominate people playing something new for the first time and having it not be as polished as the daredevil is. All of the specs will be getting changes and polishing to perform better, that’s part of the point of a beta weekend just for trying out the specs. Wait a bit before assuming who the top predators will be. After all, before the beta everyone said scourge and holo would be complete garbage and that weaver would be op… look how that turned out.

Sure nerf daredevil, let’s take away all their mobility because we don’t like not getting free kills. But while you do that give me a thief spec that:
-Has invulns they can spam like everyone else
-Has consistent blocks to spam like everyone else
-Has stab like everyone else
-Has AoE damage to spam like everyone else
-Has bunker abilities that still do a ton of damage so I can be a super tanky damage dealer like everyone else
-Can win 1v1’s on point easily
-Has tons of regen (not the boon) like everyone else
-Has passives that save them from being cced and instead kitten over the person who cced them like everyone else
-Has consistent access to boons that doesn’t require me to take them from people like everyone else
-Doesn’t have to play a dodge spam build in order to not die in 2 hits like everyone else
-Has sustain that doesn’t sacrifice my point presence like everyone else.
-Doesn’t have to be a mobile decap +1 bot to be remotely relevant in the game like everyone else

See a trend? Literally the only reason thief exists in pvp atm is for 1 role and 1 role only. You nerf them out of that top performance spot and it’s bye bye thief forever. And it’s not like people won’t have a chance against daredevil, it’s fairly easy to beat on most if not all of the new especs (partially due to their obscene amounts of condi output, damage output, cc output, mobility to rival thief, etc.)

Also take into account people have had a very long time to practice with daredevil, people know what it does and so ofc it’s going to dominate people playing something new for the first time and having it not be as polished as the daredevil is. All of the specs will be getting changes and polishing to perform better, that’s part of the point of a beta weekend just for trying out the specs. Wait a bit before assuming who the top predators will be. After all, before the beta everyone said scourge and holo would be complete garbage and that weaver would be op… look how that turned out.

I agree it’s fun. I love being that sniper that everyone on the field is afraid of being targeted by and the ensuing panic that comes when they see that mark. However, in pvp I’d say it’s pretty bad as far as optimal choices go. D/p dash daredevil wipes the floor with deadeye due to it’s slow attacks and lack of consistent targeted mobility + d/p blinds removing most of your damage. Condi builds make it rough even with sa’s condi clear because there’s so many burst condi builds out there. So it’s fun and very cool thematically, but imo not competetive without extreme team support and communication.

I ended up pretty, well rating of about 1624 playing s/d power thief soloq. Granted no leaderboard cause I didn’t play enough due to work and other desires in this game.

Getting there? So kitten stressful. It was pure luck of the draw to see who would be on your team and who was on the other team. Same cheese builds were carrying the same bad players and it was very evident when the complete noob carry potential of the builds ran out because you’d start having matches where you had to carry like a madman due to your team being near perma downstate. The worst part was the meta we had to play in imo. It’s so stale and there’s so much bs in this game it just kinda ruined the excitement of fights. Condi thief cancer, pathing bugs, dh (cause hardcounters are annoying), druid, etc.
I could complain for awhile about that but I don’t need to because we’ve all heard it before.

I don’t see this as being hollow at all. Each of the traits influence how the new mechanic will interact with a given build which is what traits are supposed to do. Traits are not there to make something overpowered or remove all the weaknesses it has.

Now that I see build ideas being posted I’m gonna say mine:
Assuming heat is easy to generate and overheating is something you can achieve in a reasonable time I was thinking of doing an overheat spam bruiser type build. Using sword/shield with toolkit and egun to become really tanky in melee range and using spectrum shield to avoid large bursts and have another stunbreak on the build, you can be tanky enough to build lots of heat and do some decent damage before using forge mode to burst with larger skills and overheat to burst a large amount of damage in aoe around you, heal from overheat cooling, and gain a 15% damage increase so you’re follow up combos can finish off any survivors. Probably would run inventions/alchemy/holosmith but could possibly go tools/alchemy/holosmith.

If that happens, a temporary fix is to type “/stuck” and it’ll port you somewhere after 30 seconds of not moving. It’s not ideal but it’s better than 4v5 the whole match or dishonor from a relog.

Huge benefit from s/d is extreme boon hate (One of the many benefits mysto was talking about). It allows you to grow in power off of the many boon reliant builds in the meta while also allowing your allies to do significantly more damage by stripping stability and prot from targets. However, it’s a bit less aggressive and bursty than it’s d/p counterpart. D/p promotes a heavily aggressive playstyle by sticking to the targets and dealing heavy damage while s/d has a bit less damage but is more slippery and has a ton of debuffs which directly support you and indirectly support the team. D/p is significantly better at fighting other thieves due to its on demand stealth option and blinds allowing for counterpressure (plus shadow shot allowing you to stick to the thief can force them out of the game pretty easily). So if you see an enemy thief I’d go d/p. Imo, if there’s no opposing thief s/d is your best option because it hangs in fights better and eats enemy boons easily (plus the lack of opposing thief pressure allows you to essentially freecast which allows you to do damage comparable or sometimes greater than d/p offers in a match) but that part is mostly preference as I’ve had both work and played a ton on both sets.

I’m honestly just curious now as to what the reasoning was behind this being put in over other possible things. Who thought “forget build templates, let’s put in a humiliation system at the end of matches”?

D/P, as stated by the guys above, is the best option on thief for pvp (Not to say you can’t play other sets to a decent level if you’re dedicated and skilled enough but objectively it gives you the most bang for your buck).
When it comes to soloq there’s a very big thing most people don’t get but cynz hit it pretty well: Meta builds are not always the best hyper carry builds. This is because the meta builds are made to be the most optimal when played well together. If you can’t rely on your team to do anything then what’s the use of supporting them? Bring tools to make the game more winnable for you and give yourself the best chance to carry the match solo but still bring maybe 1 or 2 skills for clutch save the day plays to help give you enough momentum to carry.

1v1 as a thief is not really of any importance as unless you win the fight in less than 10 seconds you are getting more for your team by +1ing a fight or getting an empty point if there is one.

Going home imo is the best option for thief at the start. You basi your team before you go and it still gives them the potential for heavy cc openings onto a target for a quick kill but then you can take home and let the teamfighting builds do their thing. Far point rushes are less common and I normally only see them when there’s a ballsy player on a team who wants to try and carry by soloing far all game. In that scenario it’s easy to just rotate mid, win the 5v3 and then snowball to home and far. If no rush occurs then you get the cap, rotate quickly to mid and ideally jump onto a target that’s already been selected and deal the finishing blow to take him down, cleave him out and then either clean up the fight or rotate far for a decap. The nice thing about that opening is it always gives you a way to move so that you can turn the game to your favor.

Breaking the 2nd page bug. You’re welcome

Kuya.6495:

I wouldn’t really pay much attention to official forums on the state or quality of a game. I have never seen an official forum that wasn’t full of complaining. Ever.

Also regarding elite specs, they are only a full upgrade in some cases. Such as mesmer. The reason why they are almost always used has more to dl with the fact that the elite trait line also gives access to utilities and weapons. This is something that isn’t true with core traits.

Every espec is an upgrade outside of reaper really. Guardian to dh just buffs the virtues to an absurdly powerful level and still offers all the same passives and such. Now you just have extra active play options with them. They are also always taken because they cover natural weaknesses in a class. Mesmer had mobility problems and chrono gave them free move speed. Thief lacked a reliable dodge spec and daredevil gave them that plus condi clear outside of stealth and extra mobility. Ranger got a free healing form. I could go on but I don’t need to.

Also of course there will always be complaints. Nobody is ever happy with a game but looking into what is being complained about can sometimes yield answers with what needs to be done and since anet appears clueless in what they should do then maybe there should be some attention paid to the forums.

I’m going to be honest I want sure where to set the radius at for the whole blinds thing because a small radius would let you get farmed by the giant cleave skills we have now but too big would make it so you just have to sit on a point and let your team kill everyone while you permablind them. Do you have a suggestion as to a better solution or radius number for that?

My thought surrounding upping base stealth durations is with the system I put out it would make short terms stealth a much more affordable thing for many thieves but it would make long term extremely costly especially on the side of d/p where they’d have to spend 9 ini for every restealth. Ini values can always be tweaked but I wasn’t sure where I’d put those values so I said nothing.

So if you scrapped the damage reduction and dropped the heal to 1k/sec, how do you think that would be?

That’s disappointing news honestly, jump casts were an advanced skill and took a ton of extra mechanical skill and forethought to really utilize effectively.

So your suggestion would be have it behave the way it does now with fs being unblockable? (Just want to make sure I understand this correctly)
I can see where that logic is coming from and I agree that’s going in a good direction. Do you think any of the other damage buffs I listed would be necessary given this change or would you scrap those, take some of ls damage and put it on 2nd aa and call that good?

I’ll agree with the cnd changes. I know you said db needs to be reworked but how exactly would you do that? Would you just kinda replace the current skill with an updated version that is more mobile and dodge focused or would you be tweaking the skill with things like I did? DDagger, would it just be a damage and cripple duration increase needed or would you add a different condi onto it?

The cleave of s/p could easily go down, I’m just speaking from experience that the wind up is often too slow to really be useful in a situation where you’d need another evade or some counter pressure. Heck, just make the cleave radius 180 and it instantly becomes better.

Yeah, if I didn’t need to take it for the reduction I’d be using ini on wep swap rn. The daze proccing passives all the time screws you over more than it helps and there’s nothing you can really do about that. Preparedness I argue as being a baseline only because of how ini costs have been balanced. It’s next to impossible to run a serious build that doesn’t use trickery just because everything is too expensive to use as much as you need it up. I think trickery would still be worth taking for boons on steal, boon removal on steal, assuming bt was moved to gm people may take trickster and withdraw as an alternative heal (I definitely would) and possibly roll for ini as a utility. The line offers enough utility that I think it’d stay a competitive pick. Though if it’s not we could see some new builds coming out that don’t utilize trickery and that’s something people have been wishing for for a long time.

I agree on bs changes, condi thief needs options to do damage outside of dodge spam. I think it’d be cool giving them sort of a condi burst type build that utilizes bs and poison mastery.

I agree it was necessary for some things but some were merged needlessly and the way they reorganized traits made it worse. Example would be the thief, because you always needed trickery you would generally only want 1 offensive line so you normally would choose between going into crit strikes and taking executioner for spike damage in ganks or you went da for panic strike to immob targets at low hp so you could finish them off. Trait reorganization happens and they go into the same line, not same tier, just same line so now you can have both of your strong finisher traits and no sacrifice is needed for it.

Well there is one consensus I’ve gotten from the forums: The game is a mess and people want to see it changed. Whether it’s complaints about matchmaking to complaints about balance or rewards people do want to see change. Now that anet has seen prioritizing rewards and matchmaking don’t work I’m hoping they’ll do something with balance.

And if you really want to go ham: Shadowstep+infil sig+sword 2+steal= 4k range port and when done correctly can appear to be nearly instant.

God I miss my cele engi. It helped me to fall in love with the class (Well that and static discharge because who couldn’t love that?)

Choo, I thought the same thing. I remember when like 4k and 5k crits were what the really big burst skills hit and everything else was lower. Now it’s everybody has 4k autos and 10k bursts. Just insane to look at the difference. Plus, heal bombs settler engi was so troll and entertaining. Hold 3 people on a point and deal a bit of damage from condi… I miss the days when engi was fun

Damian.6978:

The problem for me is simple: I left before the end of last season, I come back for the new season and what do I see? Exact same meta as past two seasons. Nothing’s changed except they redid the PvP hub which now looks disgusting and annoying.

PvP feels stale, dead, and uncared for. Nothing ever changes.

This is important feedback to making the game fun. People are tired of the same builds all the time. Anet just needs to acknowledge that we aren’t looking for more god kitten llamas and start making changes to the classes. It doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced at first cause numbers can be tweaked but there need to be changes to the classes so different builds can emerge and new metas can form.

Ralkuth.1456:

Ario.8964:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Celestial was dominant long before the pre-HoT trait overhaul.

It was only used on engi, ele, and war prior to that. The huge overhaul brought it to use in every other prof. Unless I missed something which is possible because early cele era was when I really started getting into pvp. This is just what I saw.

I think I started around when Virtue Bunker Guardians were the kings of Kyhlo with Hammer/Sword+Shield. NA didn’t really go for AH Bunker until later. Then it was Condi meta with Engi + IP, and then Warriors finally get Cleansing Ire and enter the meta with Hammer/Longbow.

After that, it was the Cele stat adjustment (total stat increase of 23-27%?) and Ele/Engi/Warrior the only classes able to take full advantage of all stats. Warriors could pump out 7k Evicerates even in Cele.

Pre-overhaul, I was one of those Cele Eles in queue. 25 Might was not difficult to get and just going through rotations can pressure off anyone in a 1v1 (unless it’s another Cele Ele). I believe the counter was double ranged Power Mes.

I focused on RL after that and had no idea of the overhaul, it must have been rough.

I was playing cele engi during that time. I had started playing a few months before the big cele era and was just learning engi with static discharge cause it was fun while trying to master s/d thief. Then cele engi became my favorite thing to play because of how combo reliant it was and how useful each skill could be. I got to a level where at the time I probably could’ve tried competing in tournies with good success but it was too late because soon after they did the overhaul.

The overhaul was where the powercreep began. It took a ton of traits from all the classes and either made them baseline or merged them. It effectively eliminated the need for sacrifices when building and then when HoT came out it finished the job by patching weaknesses within each prof so everyone could have their “perfect build” that does everything with no sacrifice.

Now that I think back, I know I’ll probably get some hate for it but I wish I could go back to the cele era if not just to play my engi again. That build just had such a nice flow.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Ario.8964:

Celestial was only dominant after they did the massive merge the kitten out of traits change and gave everyone might stacking for free.

Celestial was dominant long before the pre-HoT trait overhaul.

It was only used on engi, ele, and war prior to that. The huge overhaul brought it to use in every other prof. Unless I missed something which is possible because early cele era was when I really started getting into pvp. This is just what I saw.

Celestial was only dominant after they did the massive merge the kitten out of traits change and gave everyone might stacking for free. Cele ele used to not be a huge problem because they sacrificed the utility and stats of runes to max boon duration. The giant patch where they remade every rune and gave out a ton of boons allowed celestial to grow in power indirectly because everyone could get a bit of everything and cover weakness in damage with might stacking without sacrificing stats or utility from their runes as well. Cele was never the problem, anet balancing stuff pre hot by just adding boons to it was the reason for the “Cele meta”. Yes every pvp era had their overperforming builds but imo around that time the game was still less spam heavy and passive because everything was still combo based in order to accomplish stuff not 12345 12345 12345 until your passive procs a passive that makes a passive do something with another passive that crashes the game for everyone.

I got a bit ranty but hopefully there was a point to be made in there somewhere.

Dawdler.8521:

Zintrothen.1056:

It’s humiliation and nothing else. Perhaps a replay of any finishers used against the losing team during the game would be more appropriate.

Yeah like Overwatch, play of the game showing what won the match!

epic music playing
camera zooms in from above the battlefield
epic text with the player name
…
15s of a bunker guard standing on an uncontested point while there is cricket noise

Not gonna lie, that’d be pretty funny to watch the first few times.

Awe.1096:

Adrenalin.5719:

There is no elo hell. If you can’t get into Platinum you are simply bad.

And here we go. Random quote of the day. Aside from that, cant you tell me what is the problem with being “bad”. Game should be equally enjoyable for poeople playing in all divisions.

If you are in top 100 or so, you may as well call everyone in platinum as trash or bad or whatever. The point is, diamond players should not play vs. silver players. It doesnt matter what skill level the bronze player posses. He should play vs. other players of skill similar to his and be completly irrelevant to people in platinum (and vice-versa).

I see prevalence among some elitist players, that people with lower skill level (where lower skill level is mostly defined as “lower from mine”) should not have anything to say about this (or any other) game and they may as well uninstall or whatever. Which is an absolute hogwash. A good PvP game should incorporate players of all skill levels. Have fun in a world of GW2 where everyone below plat are being told to GTFO.

Finally someone gets it. Fun=/= skill. Yes, competitive balance and such should be discussed by high elo players as they generally have the best concept of it but the gameplay itself being fun or not is something every player should talk about. Take league for example (Yes I get it’s a different type of game but that has nothing to do with this comparison) players from all skill levels are encouraged by riot to give feedback regarding the fun aspect of the game. Changes are made so everyone is able to have fun but competitive balance still remains intact. Your ability to have fun in a game you bought isn’t about how good you are at it or your inability to climb a division, it’s about making enjoyable mechanics and worthwhile gameplay which is stuff everyone has a very valuable opinion on.

I mean if it’s really that big a deal you could either look at the pvp menu which obstructs your vision of that or you could leave the match so you don’t see it. I’m not exactly a fan of straight humiliation to an already volatile playerbase but there are ways right now to deal with it if it’s a problem.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean with the stealth skills being obsolete. If it’s only shifting to a blind aura on point then we still have escapes and such when off point. You still have access to stealth skills and such, it’s just the way stealth is displayed and interacts with other players is changed (If that was a point of confusion my bad). It just means positioning is key when it comes to utilizing our stealth effectively. If we want to burst with a stealth skill it may require moving off point to do it undetected or just require faster moving on point. It also means that when we want to be undetected visually we have to remain off point which generally is what ends up happening anyways. I may just be misreading but could you possibly try to explain it a different way if I’m not seeing it correctly?

S/d already cycles on hit but there’s so many random blocks in the game it just ends up costing a silly amount of ini to land once which was why I put in the possibility of cycling off blocks but I could see how that is not a good idea looking back on it. I didn’t see the problem with it cycling every time like it used to because it opened up a higher level of decision making on the set which was “Do I preload and go for burst or do I save the defensive part of the skill in case I need it?” If ini costs need to be rebalanced around that functionality then do it but it felt more stable when it was like that than it does now imo. (This coming from someone who mains s/d in pvp so my feel for the set is based on that background so any influence in wvw or pve is kinda lost on me)

In terms of d/d I think 3 ought to be an evade skill for the set. Given that it has to be able to get close to stealth it needs the ability to survive outside of stealth and that’s why I like the evade on 3. I just know the condi needs to go so we can not only the cheese evade spam condi but then we can actually balance the set as a power one. Do you have any thoughts of what could be done to the d/d set to make it a better choice? I’d be interested to see your thoughts on the matter as I’ve run out of solutions to that problem.

So I’ve been thinking for awhile (I know that’s dangerous but it had to be done) and I think I’ve finally come up with a few possible suggestions to change the way thief is allowed to be played and increase our build options without directly nerfing d/p (Nerfing it won’t magically fix diversity, it just makes us unviable). Here’s my thoughts, feel free to give feedback, agree, disagree, call me a noob, etc.

1) Stealth functionality changes:
So we know one of the biggest hindrances to our build diversity in pvp is the fact that stealth is not a viable defensive option due to its inability to contest points in combat and its generally slower approach to combat. I took some time just trying to think of a solution because it’s a big problem and you can’t just let stealth contest points because we have been there before, it’s not fun. So my proposal is this:
-Make stealth behave the way it does off point in pvp
-When you are on a point stealth switches to being a pulsing blind aura around you (Radius anywhere from 450-600 as deemed appropriate by balance people).
You still retain all of your stealth effects (I.E. regen, damage reduc, etc.) but you are “visible” as a shadow running around on point with a blind aura pulsing every second (Unblockable btw, we don’t need guards and scrappers to counter us more) This now allows you to capture/contest points in stealth so you can utilize it as a defensive tool in builds.
- Stealth no longer stacks in pvp. It would be applied at a 4-5 second base (Upgraded to 5-6 seconds with shadow arts) and if stealth were re- applied it would only reset the stealth timer.
- Shadow refuge would then be changed to constantly apply the 5 second stealth until you leave in which case you would lose the stealth or it ends and then your stealth timer counts down. In order for the skill not to be complete garbage after the change it would become a more supportive skill giving a 33% damage reduction to all allied units inside it and pulsing a 1.5k heal to 2k heal every second and have it’s radius increased slightly so that you have a little more wiggle room while utilizing it’s positioning. and while inside SR you would be unable to be revealed except through dealing damage. (Scrapper reveal and dh trap reveal would not work until the refuge was gone for example)

2) Weapon skill changes

a) Sword/Dagger
-AA 1 and 2 of the chain buffed by 5%
-Infiltrator’s strike damage buffed by 5%
-Infiltrator’s return is now instant cast but cannot be used while cced (This is done to prevent it from being a “perma stun break” tool so counterplay is still heavily existent, but thief’s quick reactions are rewarded by actually avoiding stuff by porting away)
-Jump cast on sword 2 made a function of the skill to increase the versatility of the set and the skill. Forces people to make the decision of leaving a safe return point or chasing aggressively and possibly getting caught out with no escapes.
- FS now cycles into LS after casting every time (It’s basically just reverting the nerf that imo was completely unjustified for the set) If that’s too much just have it cycle off of blocks and hits (Your still technically hitting something when you hit a block, your damage just doesn’t go through)

b) Dagger/Dagger
- 3 has bleeds removed and replaced with weakness for 3 sec on each hit. This allows the set to focus on a combination of evades, weakness, and stealth as its defenses. Skill damage is still kept low so it doesn’t become a spam to win button for thieves.
- CnD has a blind attatched to it on a successful hit (This is just for oh dag in general but I thought it best to put it with this change list)
- 3 Given a 1 second stealth after the skill to help the set drop targets and aggression easier (This is optional, I thought it may be a cool tool but if you all think it’s a bad idea I can scratch it off the list)

c) Sword/Pistol
-PW wind up reduced to 1/2 second from 3/4 (I don’t know much of what to change for this set outside of that as it will be buffed by the changes to other parts of the kit.)

3) Trait changes
-SoH recharge reduction made baseline on thief and the daze moved to replace preparedness as a minor trait
-Preparedness baseline (Initiative costs are already balanced around that anyways)
-Bountiful theft moved to GM trait
-New master trait added to increase damage done to foes by 1% per boon

I will probably add to this list later but for now I need to go. Have at it, if there’s stuff you like in here let me know so we can push some changes for thief. If it’s just lots of bad ideas, give me some alternatives or feel free to tweak some to a more balanced approach. Either way, let’s try to be constructive and have a meaningful discussion.

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

If the power-creep was mostly pre-HoT, why do we see so few core builds?

We see so few core builds because HoT specs gave upgrades that, when paired with the easily selectable optimal traits in each line, gave everyone their “Ideal build”. Just to define what I mean so there’s no miscommunication:

Ideal build refers to the build on a class that gives a kittenload of everything needed to be successful without having to make sacrifices. Lots of healing, support, damage reduc, mobility, damage, cc, aoe, blocks, invulns, etc. In well designed and balanced games, you could always wish for one but it’s never achievable. Anet through their trait merging made this possible once HoT was introduced because people already had 2 lines that gave them either ridiculous utility and sustain or utility and damage and then HoT depending on spec finished the job by offering ridiculous sustain or ridiculous damage.

So if you only play core then you will have most of your ideal build but not the last bit. Because of that, core will not be playable on equally skilled playing fields.