Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I play condi thief, have for a long time and seeing it dismissed here is really puzzling.
In TD today I was fighting HP bosses and meta bosses and had opportunities to stack condis on high health enemies.
I found that my bleed dps never went below 7k once it had built up to that and would spike up to over 10k. Combine this with about 5 torment and near constant whirl finishers that can add extra vuln/burn/confuse/poison, and we have anywhere around 8k to 13k PBAOE! damage every second.
The build I was using wasn’t even min maxed for pve sustained condi (bleed duration about 84%) and I feel that I could still get close those numbers while sharing poison and torment to a party also, by switching out to Shadow Arts.
The damage on Death Blossom is insane in a long fight, my tool tip right now says about 6.5k bleed damage per use, with no might.
Now that Daredevil gives us extra condi damage to our dodges, supplemented by caltrops, we can perma-evade strong enemies while SUSTAINING massive pbaoe damage, and the kicker? Very easy rotations, you are pretty much spamming 3 and dodge and replenishing ini and end wherever you can.

Good point, I think disabling the shine on a lower shader effects setting would be an easy and logical fix, but the biggest problems right now are the spectators calling stealth and the size of the arena.

Obviously, cheating by calling out stealth positions can be fixed by having spectators be the traditional ‘all allies’ pve group and the two participating groups be the second and third hostile groups, therefore all would be enemies and not visible when stealthed.

Also, having a larger arena is a want for all gvg guilds to help with initial positioning and would make the ledge ring around the stage less of a problem.

For Pete’s sake, think of the children Anet!

Hey Jon and team, can we please get some answers on whether Long Reach trait for thieves is getting scrapped entirely, added to a trait or becoming baseline for the mechanic or a trait line?

A LOT of thieves use Long Reach so it is impactful to the thief community as to how this trait is handled.

Due to the current Meta moving toward ranged combat in WvW, Long Reach is an intelligent counter that is in no way overpowered, considering the hard choices a thief must make to pick up Long Reach.

FYI to game design, Reflect on block for warriors does not count as a block.
Tested myself when I tried to merge the two traits (Missile Deflection and Mighty Defences) and discovered I could either reflect OR gain might on projectile block but not both.
Needs to be revised if Shield Master is a merge of these two traits.

+1. I can only imagine the hype GW2 would get at the announcement of a true GvG mode the way the community envisioned it at PAX.
Also, would pay cash for a gvg game mode with 0 trolls, hear that Anet? I WOULD PAY CASH!!! Many others would too.
If this doesn’t happen I will probably stop logging in altogether, the same way the GvG guilds are leaving and my friends are leaving.

Just remember the diminishing returns of increasing an already high armor stat, this is not going to be useful for heavys that already spec for high toughness. You probably will end up staying with Bloodlust.

It seems to be a bug.
I noticed that in the final tower instance, ppl were getting guesting bugs, and parties consisting of more than 3 servers experienced kicks and dc’s.
I guested to DR before patch and it is locked, but I now have unlimited guesting with my second slot.
It’s a bug and will most likely get fixed, whether before or after this Toxic Alliance living story.

eliminate IR cast time could be traitable in SA traitline. There are so many good traits in SA that it would still be a nerf to have to sacrifice one.
And Travlane, some of those traits are so OP. It sounds cool but you would have to dumb down the values.

Actually I just had a good idea. There has been a large cry out about Ini traits, for good reason. I think Jon wants thieves to take some and not as many as possible for max ini, then spam the best weapon skill you can find.

It seems that Ini regen traits will become about 1 ini per 10s, with exceptions like IoS, Opportunist, QP and HR. Two of which are Grandmaster. This means that taking a lot of them will pigeonhole your build.

I would like some feedback on how Ini traits could also be coupled with diverse effects that would be beneficial to specific weapons or combat roles.
Eg. all other classes have weapon skill recharge traits, which is useless to the thief, but are often coupled with other effects, such as mesmer – focus reflects or torch cleanses.
The Ini traits might not have effects, but would now need to meet requirements, Opportunist might grant 2 Ini on interrupt with cd (insert cd arguments :P)
IoS could grant 1 Ini on stealth and 1 Ini when attacking from stealth, rather than the “entering Stealth” differentiation.

This thread was created by Jon to discuss the top five topics he has seen in other pages. If all of you are currently confused about which topics to discuss, check his page 1 post and pick 1, or more.
I personally am very passionate about discussing thief changes and don’t want to have to read through so many conversations that skew further off topic.
I am not attacking anyone, this is just a ‘fed up’ with these types of posts from page 1, day 1.
What I wanted to say was, OMG I can’t believe i missed this one:
evilapprentice.6379 said about Sword builds; “…reduce the amount of time before IR flips back to IS…”
Perfect nerf IMO. Skill is still powerful, but skill rotation will have to change, used less often, or you’ll lose Ini and get bursted. I could see Sword builds become quite bursty with an ‘in and out’ style. If vigor get nerfed too much tho, sword builds need some other form of sustain or may not be playable.

One more thing in addition to the other reasons, killing ambient in WvW is a guaranteed crit, a thief annoyed the hell out of me one day by doing this while I was out evading him. Works real well with PVT types.

I would also like to add a reply on the thief getting nerfed a lot.
I agree that when the thief gets a buff, it gets a nerf to go with it. Then the buffed area gets nerfed again later.
I understand power creep but the counter to that has been overused in the thief’s case.
Thief could use a little power creep in weaker areas, such as overlooked traits. Remember you are locked to 3 Major traits per line, having 100 powerful traits is not any better than having 10.
In short, maybe look toward seriously buffing less used traits, (little by little to better control it and avoid unwanted OP builds) instead of over-nerfing the other side of the problem, strong traits used in strong builds. At least for now, you can always re-balance later.
I hope that this happens now that perma is basically dead, and good point Travlane, you made me see that if a thief perma stealths, I win.

First off, wow so much reading.
There is so much justification for everything Anet is doing, I main a thief and am aware of the powerful cookie cutter builds at the moment.
1 thing before my 2 cents is that the strong builds, such as high evade s/d power thief reward Skilled players that understand how to properly manage aftercasts etc, rather than a more faceroll war or guard tank build.

I noticed that you are leaning toward less evasive melee thieves, using the vigor and ini changes, but to do Both to the lowest HP class (Buff HP?), while other classes can upkeep vigor is too much. Your 6s VR vigor and 12s BT vigor was somewhat acceptable, meaning that on a 21s steal and withdraw, a thief can only upkeep vigor by taking both.
Remember that thieves have limited block/stability/protection access, so having evades is not OP, especially when melee evade weapon skills have high aftercast. Also keep in mind, vigor upkeep is maintained by spamming your heal and steal, which is a BAAAAAD idea.
Cond removal lacks in the sense that taking a lot of it means you must have at least 10 SA, 20 AC, Shadowstep and Hide heal meaning you may sacrifice your desired traits and skills, mainly bc of high cds.

My change ideas would be:
-No vigor change yet, vigor upkeep by taking 2 traits is not OP, when other classes have access to it on minor traits.
-Nerf Roll for Initiative’s Ini gain, lower cd to balance (4 Ini, 50sec?)
-There was a good idea about condi transfer (maybe a venom Trickery Adept Major trait? 10s cd), this fits the flow toward party support if it worked with sharing, and makes taking 1 venom more viable without sharing. Venom share not OP at all with no break stun or defensive utility.
-Another good idea posted was a Shadow return chained skill on Steal, I would add an Ini cost or slightly longer steal cd if used. If not used, it is wasted when steal cools down. This may also lead to removal of Shadow return on Shadowstep, for a huge cd cut.
Thank you JonPeters and team for communicating, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort by just introducing the changes with no feedback response.

Hey guys, it seems like everyone is saying basically the same thing. Dungeons are too hard for most and the wp idea will make it less fun. I like the idea, but only if it will be coupled with less boss damage and maybe aggro tweaks.
I can’t see most people agreeing with my less damage idea, but maybe at least for lower level dungeons or story modes.
If enemies did less damage, and also bosses had a bit more health to compensate, I would definitely enjoy dungeons more and actually decide to play them, right now i avoid them because of the amount of time it takes inexperienced parties (me too) to finish one, I instead just do map completion etc, cos it levels me FASTER.
BTW, less damage doesn’t mean complete nerf, I never specified a value. Don’t fight me on this topic I won’t reply.