Showing Posts For Bitapetrone.7423:
Ran this with two thieves (two man group) without any trouble. The only bug/weirdness we encountered was a single spider that was perma invulnerable.
I feel like you are completely disregarding PVE here.
I love Pistol Whip in PVE. I use S/P when I’m running around alone fighting groups of mobs (that I can bunch together of course). I don’t feel that the 15% damage nerf has harmed my PVE effectiveness to any sort of significant degree.
Clearly you don’t play thief, you show an extreme lack of knowledge on the class.
I may not be the best Thief in the world, but I know enough. The only lack of knowledge I’m seeing is from people completely unwilling to expand and grow with their class as it changes (what do you expect in an mmo?). This little nerf is just breaking people down and it shouldn’t be. Perhaps try playing the class differently and expanding YOUR knowledge of it.
The fact that you know nothing about the thief class still stands and your ignorance is insulting.
Thieves share a resource pool across both weapons, it’s not like other classes where their off weapon set gives them a new set of cooldowns to work with. You switch weapons, and have the same amount of resources to work with.
In almost every case, thieves off set weapon is a ranged weapon, most commonly shortbow.
Shortbow is another weapon set that does rather mediocre damage at best but has lots of utility.
So in a sword/pistol and shortbow weapon set, your highest damage skill, is pistol whip, and the way thief is designed, you are supposed to use the same skill multiple times in succession, that is the point of the initiative system. Your only other option for damage in that set, is cluster bomb, which will do about half the damage of a pistol whip at best.
So if a thief with that setup wants to actually damage an opponent that they’ve immobilized/blinded or otherwise hindered with their other skills… they have to use pistol whip, in succession (if they can land it). Using anything else consumes all their initiative and produces minimal damage.
Do some homework, play a thief, then you can come back and run your mouth.
Getting a bit hostile are we? I actually do play a Thief. I just don’t rely on a single skill to do all my work for me.
Regarding initiative. What exactly are you spamming to use up all your initiative making a second weapon set useless? Pistol Whip? Just because Pistol Whip is your highest damage skill does not mean you should be spamming it and forsaking other abilities more useful for the situation. This AGAIN pushes the fact you completely rely on it! Read what you are typing. And no, you do not have to be spammy with a single ability to be effective unless you are completely built around doing as much damage as fast as is humanly possible before you die from lack of survivability. If that is your case, then you need to deal with the downside of this choice. From your post I gather that you literally are running into people and hammering Pistol Whip over and over hoping they die. Practice. You can do better than that.
Have you even looked at the damage on the other skills in the S/P skillset?
PISTOL WHIP IS THE ONLY SKILL ON THE BAR THAT DOES CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE
do I need to spell it out so that you can actually take it in and comprehend what I’m saying?
it is the ONLY
ONLY
ONLYSkill on the bar that does decent damage.
Every other skill on the bar has great utility, but that utility is situational, and not something you use all the time.
Infiltrator’s strike is good for setting up a pistol whip, or ambushing and then retreating really quickly, or setting up to be able to remove a condition. It does damage equal to the first hit of an autoattack chain.
Head shot does about 1/4 of the damage of the first hit in an autoattack chain, it is useful for when a target is out of melee range and doing something that needs to be interrupted.
Black Powder does 1/4 of the damage of the first hit in an autoattack chain, it is useful for setting up a smoke field that blinds anyone stupid enough to stand in it, and blind 1 ranged target.
The damage from this set is on the autoattack, and pistol whip, and Pistol whip does about double the damage of an autoattack chain (or at least it did).
Looks like you have quite a few things you can do while you’re waiting for the moment to cast Pistol Whip again. Or maybe you could swap to another weapon set, unless for some reason you are running S/P S/P. If you’re struggling to strike a particular person with S/P then swap to something else. The fact you are pushing this so heavy just proves your reliance on that single skill. My point stands.
The lack of responsibility in this thread is astounding. While I unfortunately feel it is moot to even mention, it’d be best for most of you to take a moment and really think about what you are saying – and I direct this to people on both sides of the argument.
To ya’ll whining about Pistol Whip being OP:
Pistol Whip can hurt quite badly with haste, but once haste is gone that spec is done. Counter this and you win. And to be honest, if you aren’t running with stun/condition removal you are begging to get eaten by this spec and all specs like it. Complaining about this spec is silly. It’s just plain silly. Don’t waste time whining – go spend it learning how to handle glass cannons. And for the love of god, stop faceplanting into melee range with a Thief you see running at you with S/P. Most of the time I don’t even see people try to get away from S/P thieves until it is too late.
I also notice that a lot of the whining comes from OTHER glass cannons! What do you expect? If you’re sick of dying to glass cannons then spec more defensive. You cannot have it all.
To people whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed:
15% damage? If that hurts you then you are obviously amazingly reliant upon a single skill to kill for you. One hit wonder specs are great if you can sneak up on people silly/inexperienced enough to stay in melee with you. What if they’re clever enough to get away? What exactly do you have once your single skill has been used with Haste? You have over half a minute where you do what? The S/P Thieves I fight spend that half a minute trying to run or dying. If this is to the extent you can utilize your skills then in my opinion you need to practice with your class more. Throwing all of your eggs in a single basket can go well and it can go very very badly. Some food for thought there. There is more to Thief than being a glass cannon if you endeavor to search for it. If this nerf just plain kills it for you then you are doing something wrong.
To the people whining about Basilisk Venom being nerfed (buffed?):
There are two other great ultimate skills. If you just cannot stand Basilisk Venom getting a realistic change then use something else. Or maybe now you people that are whining about Pistol Whip being nerfed can use Basilisk to force your opponent to blow their stun removal. And hey, if they don’t remove it, then no harm done to Basilisk to begin with. In fact, you still have that .5 second buff to the duration!
P.S. Forgot to add this. Stop trying to cast Basilisk Venom in combat with 5 people hitting you. It’s not smart. Go into stealth or something.
(edited by Bitapetrone.7423)
Nobody Poisoned the Water Hole
All I can say about poisons is that they don’t “feel” right. A poison that lasts for 2 weapon strikes is just… lame. Most of them aren’t that powerful, and have extremely long cooldowns. I would rather the poisons actually be WEAKER and last longer (10+ charges). I won’t even mention the abomination that is Basalisk Venom.
TLDR: Buff poisons.kitten
The venoms are very powerful when used correctly and with skillful timing. They are not intended to easily lock someone down for you or stick a perma debuff on them. I agree that Basilisk Venom can be a bit meh. But when used in conjunction with Venomous Aura is is pretty terrifying. If you’re not using Venomous Aura, perhaps use an ultimate better suited to your spec.
Conclusion
*
Guys, look: These are my opinions and impressions after having played my thief for a decent amount of time. I’m not an expert, I’m not a gladiator, and I’m not even level 80. I just came here to talk about how the class feels to me, what my expectations were for a thief-rouge-assassin-ninja-type class, and why those expectations were decimated as I advanced in level and tried PVP. Feel free to disagree, but please know that if you flame or spam one-liners like “lol he thinks thieves are UP what a scrub L2P noob” I’m just going to report you, ignore you, and move on with the thread. I would like this to turn into a good discussion (I’m even open to an advice thread)… But if it doesn’t, I’ll just quit my thief and quietly move on.
I can tell you’re fairly new to the class and I do not mean this in an offensive way. It comes down to simply this. Either you take the time to dedicate to learning the class and becoming familiar with the timing and strategy or you won’t. All I can say is if it’s an archetype you enjoy stick with it through the tough learning spots.
The Glass Cannon That Didn’t Fire
Without the above “blow everything and spam skill X” strategy, thieves have absolutely nothing going for them. I’ve tried every conceivable build to no avail. I’ve tried stacking survivability and utility skills… and did absolutely no damage. I’ve tried being evasive and Traiting into Acrobatics and such… and did no damage, AND died in 2 seconds.
From my experience (and I could be missing something here), the thief is just not survivable enough. This largely results from the stealth problem listed above. “But Paw, mesmers and elementalists are super squishy too!” Right… but squishiness =/= survivability. While mesmer clones are usually easy to distinguish, mesmers have enough utility skills (slows, stuns, confusion stacks, etc.) to keep themselves alive while still doing silly damage. Also, ever faced a water/earth elementalist? They can quite literally tank 3 or 4 people for a minute or more with their shields, mist form, heals, and crowd control.
What’s missing from our kit? A real way to INSTANTLY dodge damage. Even during Death Lotus, for example, the thief will catch damage from AoE, those fking spin moves everyone and their mother has, and condition damage… and that’s IF the target stands perfectly still so you can keep using Death Lotus and actually HIT them.
TLDR: Our utility survival skills, evasion and stealth, aren’t effective enough.
Thief has the most amazing dodge/endurance gain potential out of any class I have seen. If played correctly the thief can dodge/evade nearly every attack thrown at them if they are set up to do so. Cheese builds can’t touch me and I have very nice survivability. I am able to remove conditions on stealth and gain vigor/initiative on heal. I almost never run out of endurance and I can dodge attacks like a maniac. No, I do not hit as hard, but I do not get hit nearly as much either. Is this more balanced setup a bit harder to learn than running in yelling “GLASS CANNNNOOONNN!!!”? Yes, perhaps. But overall being a complete glass cannon will not get you wins against more skillful players. If I play my part correctly I win. If I mess up I lose. It is not necessary to be a glass cannon as a thief!
Possible solutions:
-Fix Flanking Strike/HSS/Death Lotus/etc. to actually STICK ON your target so that they can be used properly as both damage and survival tools.
-Give stealth an AoE damage reduction. I’m sick of casting Shadow refuge only to have ele’s/rangers/engineers pelt the relatively small circle with area damage and kill me.
HS/Death Lotus/etc already stick to targets pretty darn well. It seems you are basically requesting that all timing/aiming be removed completely. If you want things like that handed to you on a silver platter thief is not the class for you. This, again, comes down to learning how to play the class effectively.
Yes, AOE hurts badly. It is best to not drop the stealth circle near where someone is about to AOE, or near where someone has the capacity to do it. It is one of the counters to the shadow refuge skill. If there was no counter to it it’d be pretty insane.
Gimme Less Gimmick
Heartseeker spam was stupid. And guess what? It got nerfed. Rightly. And guess what other thieves are doing now? Coming up with other stupid, spammy builds designed to 100-0 people in three seconds (Pistol Whip spam anyone?). People will complain, and that will get nerfed too. RIGHTLY.
There is no doubt that thieves should be bursty. LOTS of classes are bursty (why are Guardians impossible to kill yet can pretty much global me?). But piling all your 60 second utility skills on top of each other and then spamming a single skill until you’re out of Initiative is NOT ideal. It’s the result of poor design.
See, there are no combo points here. Fine. There’s no “rotation.” …Slightly less fine, but workable. But the reason people are piling all their cooldowns into one skill is that half the weapon skills are underwhelming. You won’t get “combo’d” by a theif because Flanking Strike is worthless and he’d rather use auto-attacks. THAT IS NOT OKAY.
TLDR: Spamming moves is the result of poor design with regard to thief weapon skills, and we will continue the cat-and-mouse game of “how many of Skill X can I spam when I pop Haste” until a real re-work occurs.
Possible Solutions:
-Take a look at some of the more worthless Theif skills. Then buff them.
-Change Haste.
All of these cheese builds are easily countered if one knows how to do it, especially by another thief. I have enough utilities and evasive maneuvers to dance around those cheese builds til kingdom come. I’ve only ever died to them when I either screwed up or I was already being bombed by a group of people and could not get away (in which case honestly I was done regardless before the thief came along). Again, this comes down to practice and becoming skillful at the class. You have to be willing to do this or you will continue to be destroyed by these builds.
Possible Solutions:
-Take a look at some of the more worthless Theif skills. Then buff them.
-Change Haste.
I won’t go into the whole “which thief skills are bad” etc discussion. That pretty comes down to play style preference and situation. What is worthless in one area may be wonderful in another.
Haste is fine. Just counter it. The thief’s endurance will be gone and they will most likely have 0 initiative from spamming skills at air (this of course implying that you should move when you see them coming/appear). They’ll be sitting ducks at that point.
Apparently there’s a rather harsh limit on post length. Gonna try to smoosh this into two or three posts I suppose.
When Stealth Isn’t Stealthy
I cannot express to you how much it disappointed me to realize that stealthing was so inefficient in this game. Cloak and Dagger is impossible to hit in PVP due to the incredibly mobile nature of EVERY CLASS compared to the thief. It’s not a skill you can use in a pinch or… well… ever, really. It costs a ton of initiative (even if you miss!!!) and is just really clunky in general. Your healing skill that stealths you has a long cast time and can be interrupted. Shadow Refuge rarely seems to work correctly, and you get popped out of it for doing anything but just standing there.
The biggest problem with all this is that I don’t FEEL stealthy. I feel like I can go invulnerable for 3 seconds at a time on occasion. No, I didn’t play a rogue in WoW; I played a feral druid. At first I thought the in-and-out stealth system of GW2 looked promising, but after experiencing it for myself I can honestly say it feels awkward, clunky, and terrible.
An aside: I was told by one friend on the opposite PVP team that stealthing does not make you invisible in PVP, but rather camouflages you. He claimed that he could see me in stealth. I have yet to experience this phenomenon versus other thieves, but if it’s true I will definitely quit the class.
Stealthing in GW2 is not meant to be what it was in WoW. It is not a free trip to safety – it is something that has to be executed well to be effective.
It is very possible to land Cloak and Dagger in PvP. I do it very often and I do it successfully. It simply takes practice to get the timing and positioning right. Once you have the feel of it it is not that difficult to perform. The same goes for the stealth heal. It is not an “Oh Shiz” button. It is meant to be timed appropriately. Use it when you think something nasty is coming, not when it has already hit you.
Short story: If you practice and become good at it, you can be very very very stealthy. You just need to learn how to do it.
Possible solutions:
-Create a utility skill that simply and instantly stealths you for a moderate period of time (5+sec).
-Remove the cast time from the heal skill.
-Change Cloak and Dagger to cloak you whether or not the skill hits.
We already have a skill that instantly stealths us. It is called Blinding Powder and not only does it stealth us, it stealths all allies near us as well as blinding foes in the area.
If the cast time was removed from the heal skill it would be way too easy to just slip into stealth with it repeatedly. The timing is, again, something that needs to be practiced.
Cloak and Dagger stealthing regardless of whether or not the skill actually landed would be insanely OP. In theory we would be able to stealth anywhere at any distance from a target, or even if there was no target at all every few seconds. Way too powerful.
“Ah nope don’t press that key, it’s not even worth it anymore until he’s at 50%”
I have to quote this because this is the point of the skill!. It is meant to be an execution – not something that can be spammed repeatedly for high damage. If anything this change will make the people who were spamming it think twice about the viability of the option. All of the skills were meant to be used in harmony with one another (and this goes for every class) and at the appropriate time/situation.
Pretty much, if someone’s game was built around heartseeker being effective all-of-the-time then something is wrong. Even without the high damage when the opponent’s health is high it can still be used to close gaps.
This change will not hurt players who were already adept at Thief, nor will it hurt people still learning. It will only hurt people who don’t want to take the time to learn the class to its fullest.