Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

Also, you guys are talking assuming that other thief sets are bad.
They are not.
All weapon sets, with the notable exception of P/D and maybe P/P in some environments, are equally viable and good. S/D was overshadowing other sets because it was cheap, effective and accessible (read OP). Plain and simple.

Some of the other sets are bad.

P/P is bad for anything outside a single target PvE boss – and even then results in sub-par performance compared to other classes. P/D isn’t horrible, but it results in sub-par condition builds vs. other classes and it’s not as good as D/x for direct damage builds. S/P isn’t horrible, but it suffers greatly from lack of access to stealth; Warrior for example can offer similar gameplay with superior result.

S/D was quite good, but extremely niche. Even if I can begin to believe you on how popular it was in EU, it would only be in s/tPvP – only 1/3rd of the game. But then again, it has to be good to use something so niche.

Shortbow was a solid offset choice for nearly any build in any facet of the game and generally still is, but it definitely was not overpowered in any form. Shortening the CB range is going to make a lot of folks consider just going extremely specialized melee instead of multi-purpose, which is not a good thing for the game.

D/P and D/D are pretty much the only healthy sets in the game right now. S/D and Shortbow are right on the edge of being just fine and definitely were just fine before the patch. All the others need serious re-thinking.

You can say the same thing with most other classes needing help on poorer weapon sets, but Thieves are fairly unique currently in that they are so limited in useful playstyles right now.

sorrow.2364:

According to you guys, shortbow was weak even before the nerf at 900+ range. But, still, you are making a cut of range of a skill which was anyway not effective a tragedy.
If it was just a matter of “partecipating”, why on this world there are all those cries if they cut out a feature which wasn’t even worthy?
Really. It looks like you are complaining just for complaining’s sake.

Also, why you think that thieves SHOULD have a 1200 range weapon? What made you think that ANet wants all professions to have a long range weapon?

I am baffled how you read previous comments and come to the conclusion I and other recent posters said shortbow was weak before the nerf. Nobody said that, explicitly or otherwise. I did correctly say CB dps was low all the way out at 1200 (its dps scales down with range,) but that in no way means Shortbow is a weak weapon. It just means it’s not capable of wrecking anyone from long distance. Most nerfs come out of needing to tone down something overpowered and unbalanced which is certainly not the case here.

There is a huge difference between being able to bring something to the table and participate in things like wall fighting and having to literally stand around and wait for everyone else to do the work. Every class should have at least an opportunity to contribute in every game situation, even if they cannot all contribute equally.

And that also answers why thieves should have access to 1200 range in some form. Additionally, every other class in the game does – why should thieves bear a unique handicap?

sorrow.2364:

Really? It looks like that people here think that Thief is weak and needs serious buffs to be put on par with other professions.

As I said, the only logical reason behind shortbow nerf is for design.
ANet probably doesn’t want thieves to blast people down the wall in WvWvW. Neither they want shortbow to be a long-range weapon.

It doesn’t seem we are reading the same thread/forum.

Before the range change, thieves could participate in wall fighting (which is a big part of WvW) but weren’t good at it. CB dps at ~1200 ranges is pretty low due to slow refire rate – cannot shoot again until prior shot lands. And the aoe radius is too small too do anything important like attack well placed arrow carts. 900 is not enough to even participate in meaningful situations where people will shoot back – it’s just asking to get focus fired even if you can find a technically reachable target. Nothing about the 1200 range on 1 ability made thieves OP; it just allowed them to participate.

Not allowing shortbow to be long range at all might be fine if thieves had ANYTHING else long range. This argument is only becomes valid after thieves get Rifle or Longbow or something like that.

sorrow.2364:

I actually was seeing about 80% of thieves running S/D in tournaments, hotjoins and WvWvW before the patch. I don’t know in which region do you play in, but in EU S/D thieves were popular as kitten.

Nerfing SB doesn’t make other weapon sets better, but nerfing S/D does. It is no more a must go for every thief who wants to be at maximum effectiveness.
SB nerf, as I said, was probably because of design choices.

I’m in US. S/D is a small scale utility weapon set. It’s not good for large scale or damage/burst. So, obviously it got a lot more use in sPvP settings (although I still saw more D/P), but in WvW it’s just a situational swap set for some – usually troll roamers. In serious PvE, its use was nearly zero because its utility has little value there and damage is low. (The chief driver of S/D in s/tPvP was actually a boon build meta {Eles/Guardians/etc} moreso than S/D being amazing overall on its own – the meta overvalues repeatable boon stripping.)

Nerfing S/D doesn’t make other sets better either…pretty much fail logic there. It might make other sets used more, but it doesn’t make them better. The measuring stick is against other classes as much as it is other weapon sets.

The result of this patch is even more thief focus on playing D/x burst. Is that what the player base really wants? I doubt it, since that’s where most of the anti-thief complaining has always come from.

Shadow Arts is a lot better, but it requires frequent stealthing. In small scale combat with certain weapon sets, this is not even a downside because you’re probably looking to stealth as often as possible anyway.

In large scale combat where you are trying to do multi-target damage or stay active in a group, stealth often ends up being more of a “break in case of emergency” type thing that you hope to not need to use. (Or just using a weapon set that has no stealth.) This is where Acro stays valuable and Shadow Arts doesn’t.

I would agree that Acro needs a little something more so that there isn’t such a big disparity in the usefulness of a Thief between large scale and small scale situations. IMO, it needs a good condition removal trait somewhere that doesn’t require the use of stealth – maybe with aoe ally benefit for large groups.

sorrow.2364:

Thief was strong even before the patch.
They don’t need an huge buff in order to be put on par.
….
You can’t just buff-buff over and over every set to put them on par on the strongest set without having a power creep, which looks like it is what you guys want.

You are making a strawman. Thief players are identifying the CB range change as being poorly justified and having a negative impact on the game with well reasoned arguments. No one is asking for huge buffs to the class; you are arguing against yourself.

sorrow.2364:

Most of the buffs they made had a real impact on Thief.
Before the patch, you were forced to run S/D + Shortbow just because they were the best sets. Running S/P, D/D or D/P was not a good choice just because you were able to run S/D and be more effective, despite the fact that other sets aren’t overall uneffective.

Again, this is a clear example of you either not reading or not comprehending what all these other people were taking a lot of time to explain. Just declaring a real impact doesn’t make it true.

Also, D/P was generally regarded as the best weapon set even before the patch. S/D was quite good as well, but even then wasn’t getting more than probably ~25% use by thief players.

Nerfing CB range doesn’t make poor weapon sets suddenly better and competitive against other classes. It’s just going to drive players even more into playing melee burst specs that opposing players hate because participating in ranged tactics is even less of an option now than it was before.

Personally, I find Last Refuge irritating even with D/P stealth builds. Invariably I’m queuing up a BP+HS stealth combo….and LR pops the instant before BP goes off, giving me revealed debuff. Normally you want BP to hit the target because it slaps a blind on them making it harder to inadvertantly hit you in stealth or land a CC right before the leap.

OP did a good job… I could pick at a few things, but it’s already a huge multi-page analysis.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Unlike most people on these forums I can see the logic behind the cluster bomb range nerf

I can see it as blind OCD compulsion. Numbers don’t match. Logically, a bow shouldn’t fire a heavy shot farther. Thief SB numbers don’t match Ranger SB numbers. Ranger SB shoots farther than Warrior LB (untraited.) Must…fix….numbers!!111!!!1

In terms of improving gameplay, balance, or diversity, it is completely indefensible.

sorrow.2364:

It has gone too far. I’m not going into a flame war again with some people who can’t argue properly. Every argument with you, evilapprentice, ends with personal attacks.
Are you capable to have a proper discussion without harassing your interlocutor?

Keep thinking you had all nerfs and no buff. Keep complaining. At the end of the day, the fact remains as they are.

If you’re not capable to be effective with your thief, I don’t really care. Reroll another profession you think is OP and leave thief to people who are enjoying it.

If you’re not happy with ANet’s job, just quit the game and stop crying.

Your problem is your arguments are not based in reality. Most of the buffs you tout (while ignoring the nerf list) have negligible impact on the strength of the class. The most common reason for this is because they are changes to traits and abilities that were not used before the patch and will continue to not be used after the patch – and for good reason. Several others have taken the time to explain this to you, perhaps not with the best tact, but clearly and point by point. You refuse to acknowledge the truth.

The real question is whether a thief playing best possible builds before the patch is better or worse than a thief playing best possible builds after the patch.

There are a couple genuine improvements, primarily to steal mechanics and D/D weapon set, however at best the improvements simply make these realistically competitive build options compared to prior best possible builds. They do not result in stronger thieves after the patch, just different thieves.

Meanwhile, certain common elements in best possible builds have clearly lost effectiveness. S/D as a set is not as effective as it was. Shortbow is not as effective as it was. Lotus Poison is not as effective as it was overall, even with weakness being “better.” Bizarrely, Last Refuge is a leading culprit of death in a lot of top builds, and it got “buffed” such that it will result in even more deaths. All of these things tamp down the effectiveness of the class’s best builds, and of all the buffs only the Steal changes likely hold some promise for net improvement in top builds.

Overall, I do not see the patch as a huge deal either way except for the Cluster Bomb range nerf. That one thing cuts down the types of situations that thief can even participate in and makes the class even more one-dimensional. It drives thief players even further into the playstyles that opposing players hate and complain about.

Arguing against the nerf of an ability that has been considered acceptable between now and all the way back into beta is not “asking for buffs.”

I get the impression that with everyone generally considering P/P worthless and them wanting a reasonable distribution of thieves to use it, this is part of their solution.

Make trick shot able to miss moving targets, gut IA targeting mechanics to get on ledges, now nerf CB range… Lotus Poison change I suspect is mainly about Weakness mechanics changes, but it nerfs many SB builds as well.

Body Shot finally gets a bone, but I am not convinced it’s worth spending initiative on for anything other than attacking a PvE boss with a group. Ricochet is better, but still not a good trait.

And now they probably figure people will start playing P/P seriously… Sorry, not going to happen. People will quit the class before they run P/P for a serious build, even after this.

Zero possible range attacks beyond 900 for an entire class is not okay. It’s a huge problem in WvW for wall fighting (from either end) among other situations. It’s also a problem in PvE where long range is important.

The extremely slow flight time already resulted in scaling down dps on the ability appropriately with range. Reducing the range to 900 is just OCD fixing of numbers as there was nothing broken about it to start with.

All the other changes I can live with, but this one is really irritating as a WvW player. It definitely degrades the gameplay experience.

Deamhan.9538:

Kain Francois.4328:

How about a trap removing clones from mesmers, preventing warriors from gaining adrenline, disabled pet on ranger, and locking all the guardian virtues.

Yeah, this is pretty dumb. Why discriminate against such an important feature for a single class?

How about because the traps don’t stop your ability to steal. I know this might be difficult to grasp but stealth is not a thief’s F# ability. It is not the thief’s equivalent to virtues, or adrenaline, or pet.

Steal? Try to discuss with honesty, please.

The analogy is to a class’s central mechanic that allows them to function effectively. Correlation between default keybindings has nothing to do with it.

Having the auto-targeting on or off is just a trade-off with real advantages and disadvantages to both. Which is better really depends on your build, how you play, and how you setup your UI. Saying a player is “bad” for setting it to one or the other is short-sighted – there’s more than one way to play effectively.

That said, a lot more people might run with it set off if the tab targeting mechanics were a lot smarter and/or had more customizable behavior.

BlackBeard.2873:

This is simply not true. I have played a thief and am still one of the most mobile builds without using stealth (I s/d with shortbow, although s/d on both sets works well too for the sigil of energy). I can get around just fine, and survive well enough in fights with all the evades. Sure, its not as easy as an auto-reset button as stealth (stealth, shadow-shot, and then pop up 2500 range away), but there is still more than enough mobility and ports to get away from anyone. Sure, I have a couple stun-breaks on my bar, but that is just par for the course of everyone else. I am telling you guys that most thieves have relied on stealth as a massive crutch for so long. Without stealth, there are still great options there, and it feels a lot more like playing the same game everyone else is.

Also, please don’t insult me just because I am glad there is a counter-play option to the frequent-stealth. I always considered that cheesy and no fun to play against, so I don’t do it myself.

Good players can make this work; I know I have before. I started this game intending to play a zero stealth thief. Sadly, it really isn’t competitive with other classes running elite quality builds. I can run a lot of other classes and just pure and simple do more/better and simultaneously offer more to my group. I can also do more with a stealth build, and I expect you are also using some amount of stealth yourself if you are using your S/D set as well as is possible.

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

Daeqar.8965:

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

When they first announce the anti-stealth traps and now reading how they work in the patch notes it really does come off to me like A-Net is trying to add a counter to stealthers inside keeps/towers. Which I’m glad to see given the plethora of stuff a thief can CnD off of in a keep. It can be incredibly frustrating to try and chase one down that’s inside. Plopping a stealth trap on top of a dead mesmer is going to be at least one place I always drop them among other places.

That’s my perceived intent as well, and it’s well intentioned.

However, this solution is misguided even for that problem. They have also stated that corpse scouting is a problem they intend to solve. Just make dead characters automatically waypoint rez after 15s or 30s and then dead mesmers in keeps are no longer a threat…then a stealthed thief is no longer a threat either. Fixes corpse scouting, too. sPvP already forces waypoint rezzes.

This trap is just more bad side-effect than it is actual cure.

Well corpse scouting is only one of a few ways mesmers and thieves can do it to my limited understanding. I admit, I’m not an expert on all the ways to hide in a keep. I know one of the servers in my tier has a crew that’s sort of dedicated to stealth re-capping keeps and towers and have done so several times(and posted screen shots to rub our noses in it lol). I don’t think they were corpse scouting though, or at least I dont get the impression they were. And perhaps the stealth traps wont be effective to counter them. Time will tell I suppose.

Corpse scouting has a lot of uses – not just limited to stealth recaps. In the context Anet was talking about it, they were just unhappy with people suiciding or even just innocently dying somewhere and then just camera observing from the corpse as long as they wish and providing unlimited scouting information in voice chat or whatever about wall %’s, build site locations, enemy numbers, organizes for pushes, etc.

A mesmer being able to stay inside a keep as long as they wish while dead was another big problem. Mesmers purposely die beside walls/gates so that someone can rez them from the outside after however long. Once alive, portal right in.

Lots of serious WvW players have stacks and stacks of unused badges sitting around. Karma, too. For them, the cost is entirely inconsequential.

I already have lots of ideas how to make these things very usable in small scale combat even with the 4s channel and 10 supply.

Thinking people are going to stick to the honor system and just use them in keeps against stealth abusers is incredibly naive.

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

When they first announce the anti-stealth traps and now reading how they work in the patch notes it really does come off to me like A-Net is trying to add a counter to stealthers inside keeps/towers. Which I’m glad to see given the plethora of stuff a thief can CnD off of in a keep. It can be incredibly frustrating to try and chase one down that’s inside. Plopping a stealth trap on top of a dead mesmer is going to be at least one place I always drop them among other places.

That’s my perceived intent as well, and it’s well intentioned.

However, this solution is misguided even for that problem. They have also stated that corpse scouting is a problem they intend to solve. Just make dead characters automatically waypoint rez after 15s or 30s and then dead mesmers in keeps are no longer a threat…then a stealthed thief is no longer a threat either. Fixes corpse scouting, too. sPvP already forces waypoint rezzes.

This trap is just more bad side-effect than it is actual cure.

BlackBeard.2873:

Do thieves realize they still have insane mobility if they have to run? You still have infiltrator’s arrow, shadowstep, sword 2, and HS is a leap. Are you saying that you can’t fight at all if your enemies can see you, or you lose the ability to reset fights with a 5-2 combo? Thieves can still get away if they are hit with this trap, you just won’t be invisible (which is close to invulnerability when running – you can’t be detected or targeted with ranged attacks and nobody knows what direction you went). I applaud the WvW for using methods within their capability to try to balance an imbalanced mechanic (I am assuming nobody on the WvW team has a say in class balance).

Thief mobility is “good” when you can bookend it with stealth before and after. It runs out really fast if it’s the only thing you have to fall back on, and some other classes can actually do better in many situations. Thieves are nowhere near a competitive class without stealth.

The idea that this trap is intended to be a counter for “zerg veils” is just wrong on so many levels…

Problem 1 – 30s of revealed. Who cares if you give a bunch of players who can’t stealth anyway 30s of revealed? It’s meaningless. The trap could have 3s revealed and be just as useful for that purpose. It could have no revealed at all and be good for everything outside chained veils. If it was for veils, it wouldn’t have 30s revealed.

Problem 2 – 4s channel is supposed to be dropped in front of a coordinated zerg and they run through it? Zerg veils are most powerful in open field combined with unexpected movements. (Flanking, etc.) You cannot predict where they are going to go, and then get there 5+s ahead of time, drop a rather conspicious 4s channel in front of them, and then expect them to kindly run through it while stealthed.

Problem 3 – who cares if you strip away a couple seconds of stealth??? They’re not going to restealth. It just doesn’t do notable harm. If you knew where they would be well enough to premptively drop a 4s channel, you know where they are well enough to aoe burn them down even without seeing them. I’ve done this all the time with my guild…enemy veil rushes (open field or through a portal/gate door) and all we do is lay down CC and aoe damage right where we expect them to be and they pop out of stealth all laying on the ground downed. Why bother trying to destealth them? Let them have their false sense of security.

Problem 4 – If the intention is nerfing veil, then nerf veil! Put an affected target cap on it. Make it un-chainable somehow.

Problem 5 – This consumable is much more effective against thieves and in small scale situations than it is in large scale veil situations.

This is utterly infuriating.

I expect they intended this to be a rarely used counter measure against stealth abusers inside keeps and such. (The “counter a zerg veil” idea posited earlier is complete nonsense.) The problem is the usage will go far beyond that and into lots of small scale fighting. It will translate into a surprisingly affordable shot on auto-killing thieves.

Here’s the thing people have to realize – lots of WvW players have stacks and stacks of badges sitting unused with nothing useful to spend them on. Many of them also have huge amounts of karma sitting around, too. For a new player trying to get outfitted, yes…the cost is prohibitive. But for serious WvW players, the cost is entirely inconsequential. Running around with 10 supply is no big deal either, especially if a person is a roamer and not actively serving as a supply zombie.

So, people sitting around thinking, “Oh, but it’s sooo expensive and sooo inconvenient. No one will actually bother using this unless it’s really important and for wholesome and intended purposes against evil stealth cheaters.” Think again…people will be out abusing this trap and laughing the whole time.

I am one of those people with stacks and stacks of badges and karma. How would another thief ever beat me or even be able to merely run away if I just stealth drop a trap (so that I cannot be interrupted) and then watch them get 30s sitting duck debuff? Thief vs. Thief merely turns into who can drop a trap first.

There should NEVER be a consumable item in game that translates into a free kill on a player, not at any cost. That’s exactly what these traps are – free kill a thief.

There’s a lot of details that would dictate how big a problem this is…

Does it apply “revealed” debuff or just remove stealth?
How big a zone?
How long?
How expensive?
Cooldown?
How many players can chain it?

While it might have a legitimate purpose, like catching a permastealthing thief in Bay hoping to rez their dead mesmer friend… (Although the real issue there is corpse rez/spy mechanics.) It will probably be used much more often as a free kill a thief token or a free thief can’t have a fair fight token.

Most likely, I see this sort of thing just resulting in an environment where Thieves cannot participate in meaningful WvW situations without having the only mechanic that makes the class competitive be completely disabled. It would be just as bad as having a “no clones” field for mesmers or a “no conditions” field for necros.

The only way to make such a consumable “fair” would be to either make it so bad and expensive that it never gets used anyway. If it is good enough value to bother using, then it will break the Thief class in WvW.

On the discussion of damage metrics to use or not use…

Here’s what you want to do:

(abilityDps – autoattackDps) / initiativeCost = [damageAboveAuto/(second*initiative)]

SirWarriant.2319:

oh joy…… well looks like i wont be coming back to the game after all. One of the few viable weapon sets we get and its crap now

Shortbow as a set isn’t completely ruined, but it lost some situations where it’s useful.

Basically, it’s still good for damaging a blob of people that isn’t actively avoiding you. And Cluster Bomb is still the only 1200 range button we have. There’s still the on-demand blast finisher niche to fill. But if you liked to small scale duel with Shortbow…not too good anymore.

So, #2, #4, and #5 are all still excellent. If you are in a situation to need #3, you probably shouldn’t have the Shortbow out in the first place anymore.

JohnnyZero.5619:

Head Shot is fantastic as it is, I’d be ok with it if it dealt zero damage. The quick, ranged interrupt is all you need.

My only problem with it is the skill queue system, where I often times won’t Head Shot in time or AT ALL when I press 4 key. This leads me to want to spam it, and now I’m using 2 Head Shots and wasting initiative.

I like Head Shot, but the problem with it is opportunity cost. Even if a person uses it like a pro, most situations cost the thief more in:

1) Initiative spent
2) Damage lost compared to free autoattack
3) Time spend (arguably double dip on damage lost, but which you would be most concerned about is situation specific)

In most real situations where it should make sense to headshot, it actually ends up being more productive to use other buttons because using it can deny the thief as much or more than the target getting hit.

IMO, they should either make Headshot cost less initiative, or they should make it do substantial damage (more than Vital Shot, including its bleed damage.)

And I agree, it would be nice if Headshot emptied your current skill queue and just executed asap whenever you hit the button. Being off gcd like Steal would actually be the real ideal, but that’s probably too much to hope for (and would also not be compatible with the doing significant damage idea.)

awge.3852:

Simply put, look at longbow straffing if you already haven’t. First you cannot straff any ranged weapon from a close distance, it rarely ever works. But if you are far away enough you can easily straff as long as the projectile is not heart seeking or super fast. This makes for more realistic gameplay, where you can actually try to avoid enemy projectiles from a distance. Now this is very limited and in Gw2 if you try to straff in front of a ranged enemy you will simply eat all those projectiles, which is perfectly fine. Now the thief shortbow not being heartseeking will fall into the -straffing possible- category.

This is why I agree with the current patch to the thief shortbow, I just advocate for more realistic gameplay. If this update does guarantee that shortbow 1 will not be totally nerfed then there is no need to complain, if an enemy is straffing (and by the way you can straff them right back) swap weapons and go backstab their face instead.

I agree with a lot of this, so long as the game is consistent across various classes/weapons in practical senses.

So, now that it’s not heatseeking, it’s more like ranger bows. Except…ranger bows have higher velocity (harder to avoid at a given range) and longer range. Thief Shortbow #1 was actually a copy of Ranger Axe #1…same range, same damage, same target bounce, and same velocity. Except now, Ricochet is still heatseeking.

I won’t advocate that Ricochet have heatseeking removed, because it would result in a sub-par autoattack ability in PvP/WvW settings – same as Thief shortbow for now. The better route would be to stop trying to make them the same or nearly the same, and compensate the loss of heat seeking on Trick Shot by giving it higher velocity and possibly longer range, too.

Another factor in the problem is Thieves have pretty much no choice but to use Shortbow for any sort of balanced / multi-purpose build because it’s literally the only game in town for multi-target damage and large group synergy.

Travlane.5948:

how would intensity stack?

Just that when blindness gets applied to a target that already has blindness, instead of tacking on duration, it tacks on another “stack” of blindness. Each time the blinded player/mob misses an attack, it would remove one stack.

There are situations where that system would be either more and less effective than the current mechanic.

Travlane.5948:

ok your english is horrible for 1. ….

I really wouldn’t advise being the first one to cast stones at someone’s composition skills, if I were you.

As for the main topic, I think the guy who suggested that Blind should stack intensity instead of duration is on the right track. It would require a little adjustment to base durations probably, but it would be a more desirable mechanic overall.

Dasorine.1964:

Actually dagger/dagger when built right has the highest sustained condition damage due to the longer durations.

If you have 100% condition duration and the +3 initiative base from trickery

Shortbow opens with 15 bleeds for 8 seconds with another 3 applied every 4 seconds (so with no extra initiative regen after the first 8 seconds it maintains 6 bleeds)

Compared to deathblossom which opens with 9 bleeds for 20 seconds and can maintain 9 bleeds through out the fight with no initiative gain, so initially has less bleeds but over time has more.

If you add extra initiative regen in death blossom gets more and more, if you reduce the condition duration deathblossom still wins etc.

And of course for safety pistol is best as you can do all of your bleeds at a distance that neither shortbow or daggers can match at the cost of being single target only.

I’m looking at overall damage (direct damage done included with condition damage) and since the thread was about shortbow, I also assume you’re going multi-target. (3+ targets) Shortbow wins out there.

Single target, D/D can be better because it’s not hamstrung by only damaging 1 target much of the time (outside of the bleeds ticking.)

Practically speaking, LDB is a lot more vulnerable to condition removal. It hurts a lot more having a 22s bleed removed than rapidly applied shorter duration ones.

And I agree, Pistol is usually a lot more playable as an overall build. Thieves don’t necessarily make the best PBAoE bots, although at least they can provide a blast finisher niche in WvW group strats.

Technically, the condition builds can outpace the direct damage builds in terms of long-term sustained damage – especially against targets with high toughness. The trick is you have to boost bleed durations a lot and running something with boosted initiative helps, too.

With food, a thief can get up to +125% bleed duration, which turns the normal 4 ticks of bleed into 7 ticks. Using point blank CB shotgun (pre-detonate at feet), combine with high condition damage and easily maintained 100% poison uptime and the condition build easily outstrips the direct damage IF there’s not condition removal going on. Dagger Storm is a good companion elite.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea to do, though. There’s a lot more to build value than damage in a vacuum.

One other thing… Shortbow PBAoE pre-detonated Clusterbomb is the highest sustained condition damage the thief class is capable of producing. No, Pistol MH and Leaping Death Blossom cannot do better. So, if Shortbow can’t produce competitive condition damage, then nothing else the Thief class does can either.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In WvW, the aggro table don’t matter.

The stealth mechanics change had a huge effect on WvW play.

In a sense, your statement is true…people typically don’t care which character has active aggro if they were teaming up to attack mobs in WvW, but practically speaking the mechanics still matter quite a lot.

It’s a big deal in WvW when mobs continue to chase or stand on top of stealthed characters. Mobs tip off players which way a thief went. Downed #3… Ambient mobs often play a significant role in the outcome of fights.

Personally, I would happily revert the changes to improve WvW experiences and find the PvE effects largely inconsequential to my game play.

Better yet, I would take advantage of the two points I made earlier to have an “in-between” system that would largely provide the best of both worlds.

Zepidel.5349:

Why does it do way less damage than sword when its single target compared to AoE? It also lacks the cripple the sword chain has.

If anything the single target auto attack should do more damage than the AoE one… or at least add some kind of posistional component to the attack which increases the damage on par or greater than the sword chain.

If you run the numbers, they are really close to each other. Sword does slightly higher direct damage dps, but when you add in the poison damage from Dagger, Dagger pulls ahead in overall dps. That’s just single target, though.

Utility…

Dagger:
2s poison healing debuff
Gain 10 endurance
3s weakness debuff (if you have 15 in DA)

Sword:
2s Cripple
2s Weakness
Capable of hitting multiple targets if they stand right next to each other.

They seem pretty comparable to me, overall.

Two points…

#1, people are assuming all creatures/players have to respond the same. They do not. Champion mobs could be programmed to take longer to drop aggro than trash mobs and player pets, etc.

#2, people are assuming that aggro drop has to simultaneously occur with mob reset. It does not. There can be a time delay between reset and aggro drop.

Weapon Skills:

Body Shot – Very nearly a worthless ability. It does less overall damage than autoattacks (which are free) and the vulnerability doesn’t last long enough to treat it like an investment ability. Possible solutions detailed below.

Head Shot – Conceptually, this is an okay utility ability, but real world it just costs too much for too little return. Opportunity cost to the Thief using it is almost always higher than the control/damage done to the target. The ability either needs to cost less, daze longer (keep in mind dazes don’t stack), or do around 3x current damage.

P/P Set – needs help. It’s not unplayable, but there really is no objective reason to play it in light of there being other classes in the game.

Body Shot + P/P Solutions:

Option 1 – Completely replace Body Shot with a different ability. Make it a PBAoE ability with either a Blast Finisher or a Knockback….Proof Round or Overloaded Shot or something. It gives Pistol MH some multi-target damage, group utility, and helps break Shortbow’s monopoly on thieves a bit. If Blast Finisher, then it gives P/P access to stealth with BPS and would probably need to cost 3 Ini to be comparable to Cluster Bomb and D/P stealth combo. If Knockback, it would probably need to cost 5 Ini and do exceptional damage.

Option 2 – Make Vital Shot/Sneak attack and Body Shot essentially swap roles with vulnerability and bleeds. Essentially, crank up the direct damage on Vital Shot/Sneak Attack, but make them place 1/5 stacks of 6s Vulnerability, respectively. Then, make Body Shot a cheap multi-bleed generator – something like 3x 10s bleeds single target for 3 Ini. (It needs to be significantly better than Cluster Bomb shotgunning and Death Blossom for single target, but clearly not as good for 3+ targets.)

Heal Skills:

Withdraw – Roll direction needs to go in the direction held, just like dodges. It’s just ridiculously clunky controlling direction on this; I can’t stress it enough. (Same with Roll for Initiative.)

Utility Skills:

Traps – They actually look kinda good on paper until you actually try them and it’s a bunch of yuck. I’m really not sure what to do about them, but making them all ground targetable might help. (Shadow Trap would have to require a walking path.)

Venoms – The main problem with venoms is they require too much build investment to be good. Too many traits (and deep traits!) and too many slots to make those traits worthwhile, and then a thief is left with a one-dimensional build. Make Quick Venoms baseline thief, Combine Leeching and Residual into a 20 pt DA trait, and move Venom Share down to 20 pt SA. This way, players don’t have to go all-in on a single mechanic to get decent use out of it.

Roll for Initiative – Direction issue mentioned above with Withdraw, and make it either 4 Ini with 40s cooldown or 3 Ini with 30s cooldown so that it can be used more often without increasing the overall initiative gain. Anet should be encouraging slippery, visible getaway stuff like this in thieves instead of the stuff everyone else complains about.

Scorpion Wire – The buggy behavior wouldn’t be as intolerable if it didn’t go on cooldown when it fails. If the target literally immunes or the casting thief is blinded, that’s one thing. But if it’s LOS or similar failure, it should just report not being possible and stay off CD.

Elites:

I think these are in pretty good shape, actually.

I’ll try to hit traits later… So much to cover.

Having different revealed durations in different game modes would be pretty yucky.

Players drill timings into their subconcious and muscle memory…switching back and forth would lead to a lot of frustrating timing mistakes.

It would be better to keep them uniform, and separate damage numbers or something else like that instead.

Honestly, removal of culling was the huge stealth fix in WvW. 3s vs. 4s mostly just makes weaving cycles with autoattacks really cludgy.

jportell.2197:

If you go to PVP and look at the condition that is most damaging on breakdowns it is bleeding… Which thieves do better than ANYONE…

Thieves are definitely one of the more bleed capable classes, however not “better than anyone” as you say.

For example, a sword+sword warrior built for bleeds can out-bleed a thief by a huge margin, at least against single targets or ones clustered closely enough to get hit by it. They can get 18+ ticks each bleed off sword autoattack even without using food.

As for bleeds vs. burning… It depends on the overall build. Bleeds are much better suited to dedicated condition damage builds as they can scale up better – the ceiling on damage is higher. Burning is much better for augmenting a direct damage build with more damage. Burning does as much damage as roughly 7 stacks of bleed, and can be easier to maintain – but it doesn’t scale as well with +condition damage and is obviously limited to the one stack. Burning also tends to be better against a foe with frequent condition removal because putting it back up is roughly equivalent to getting 7 stacks of bleed back up…it’s just easier to do and the removal ends up being less punitive.

Auesis.7301:

Poison is NOT used for damage.

(and folks chipping in agreement)

While I can agree that situationally (any time opponents/mobs are healing significantly) the greater value of poison is healing reduction rather than its damage, the actual statement takes it to an extreme such that it’s no longer a true one.

In other words, the sentiment is accurate but what you actually said, isn’t.

Poison does as much damage as two stacks of bleeding and is extremely easy to maintain. Generally speaking, the damage per gcd/cd and damage per resource spent on keeping up poison is even better than bleeds for long term damage. It’s highly efficient damage, but extremely limited in quantity since it doesn’t stack.

Even in the complete absence of any healing, a condition thief focusing on damage would be foolish and gimping their own damage to completely neglect keeping up poison. So, clearly, poison is used for damage, but it does have very limited damage potential.

Well, CnD at least needs to do enough damage such that its individual dps keeps up with autoattack dps. Otherwise, you’re going down a yucky road.

CnD burst is basic front load vs. back load damage where damage occurs at the end or front of a cast/cooldown period. Lots of classes have that and it’s not particularly special. Throwing Mug into the mix off CD is special.

I largely agree with OP in defense of why Mug is important to have currently, although I disagree on what to do about it.

Thieves don’t have particularly special burst numerically on their individual abilities. However, stealth mechanics enable relatively safe/reliable delivery, and there is an ability to line up several separate abilities into a small time window – of which Mug plays a big part. At the same time, it’s arguable that sustained damage capability is actually too low, especially from the perspective of PvE players.

So, yeah…if you completely remove Mug, thief builds that rely on burst have a damage problem and half of the few thief builds worth playing possibly go to the scrap heap.

However, I also don’t like that we have such a reliance on a trait for basic direct damage capability; it actually hamstrings design options for the class. Damage oriented builds will always be arguably OP with it or arguably UP without it.

Also, I could stand for some of our other 10 point traits to get buffed up a bit. Some other classes have 3+ 10 point traits as good as Mug – it’s just that a lot of them do something other than raw damage.

So, I would actually prefer for Mug to essentially go away in current form and turn into some sort of utility or not-so-bursty damage, provided that they buff back up damage on abilities in the weapon sets to make up for it. (Which would improve sustained damage for the PvE folks.)

In a world with quickness already nerfed and Mug no longer producing eyebrow raising burst combos, Anet could probably revert nearly all of the ability damage nerfs that thieves have absorbed so far since release.

swinsk.6410:

Daeqar.8965:

I just have a hard time imagining why you think this playstyle is a good idea for trying to help your TEAM win in the most effective way possible, which should always be the goal in tPvP.

Even if you “succeed,” you essentially CC yourself for 40 seconds at a time. You might as well be eating rez timers.

As for your last comment, other classes can technically burst for more, but most can’t hope to deliver it as safely or reliably as a thief. You may not be seeing it, but it exists.

If I succeed at dropping the guy then my team usually wins the fight for the node. If there are still enemies around I use my short bow to hit them for 1-2k (after ricochet i can hit a target for 4k on 1 arrow) a hit depending on class. My shortbow actually does very good damage. So, I help the team by dropping a target almost instantly and then back off and plucking from range for great damage waiting out my CDs. It’s a complete play style change compared to let’s say a D/P thief. Mentally, you think about the map and nodes and skirmishes completely different to remain effective. D/D is only used for burst and SB is used for sustained dps while waiting for burst to become active.

I didn’t mean to give you the idea I thought thief had “more” burst. I meant to say that thieves have the “quickest” burst. That is why you think it’s more reliable, etc. A thief can do damage on steal, cnd, and then back stab. That combo takes 1-2s. Other classes bursts can definitely do more but take more time to land all thier hits.

I can go with that strategy at least, although whether it’s entirely competitive with other high-end team strats is debatable. Also, it’s pretty risky as any semi-determined effort to kill you from classes with decent mobility will generally succeed without much trouble because you have so little utility and escapes built in. People are pretty accustomed to chasing down a shortbow thief, and it’s not very hard to do unless they have a deep bag of tricks to go with it. For example, I run a balanced build with high mobility that would be able to chase you down and solo kill you pretty quickly. Your only chance would be having all your cooldowns and hoping to kill me first – which is a real possibility, but so far burst thieves cannot usually accomplish it without help.

My point is just that the build design primarily leads to break-even scenarios against similarly skilled opposition.

swinsk.6410:

<Insert Comment about my build>

I know it’s very kamikaze, but once you practice with it you will understand why it owns.

First, if you own them with the burst and they die, then great. For the next 45s you should have your shortbow out almost exclusively and avoid getting in melee range.

If you fail your burst and let’s say they stun break basilisk, you have to stop bursting immediately and focus on defense. I know it sucks that you just blew all your abilities, but it’s only another 45-30s before they come up.

This build in tPvP from my experience works better there. People don’t expect you to drop them in a second. There are less people on the map which means you aren’t engaged all the time so you should have all your abilities up for a lot of the fights.

This build does not hold points. I literally run from everyone at all times. I only engage when I know I have the element of surprise or I have to engage and kill to avoid death.

I was in tPvP fighting a team call SymH and this warrior was chasing me around. I played it like I didn’t see him. I let him get in steal range, and boom! He dropped so quick it was hilarious.

My point is that builds like this are very good but you need to play very well and very smart.

You cannot just enter a melee fight. You have to be on the outskirts and using your bow. Once you find a target that is hurt or just used a cool down. That’s when you pop all your stuff, steal, and boom!

Every time I kill someone with the combo I have to do /say lol. It has nothing to do with the other people. I am /lol @ how fast they just died.

I have never seen another class with as much burst as a thief.

I just have a hard time imagining why you think this playstyle is a good idea for trying to help your TEAM win in the most effective way possible, which should always be the goal in tPvP.

Even if you “succeed,” you essentially CC yourself for 40 seconds at a time. You might as well be eating rez timers.

As for your last comment, other classes can technically burst for more, but most can’t hope to deliver it as safely or reliably as a thief. You may not be seeing it, but it exists.

To be a PvE dungeon player and reasonably justify playing Thief, you pretty much have to just really find a lot of personal enjoyment in the Thief class and also not care much about objective performance.

Otherwise, you’re honestly best off developing your skills with some other class.

I’m not necessarily arguing for a change, at least not without knowing what the alternative would be.

Although, the current system is obscure, arbitrary, and excessively rewarding to exploit or excessively punitive to not exploit.

Lets examine two scenarios – one where a group ignores the obscure system and another where they exploit it.

A guild with 30ish people perfectly executes a surprise attack on an enemy borderland Garrison that has a waypoint. They aren’t seen/scouted en route and quickly melt down both water gates without producing any orange swords on map. However, the enemy server sees the white swords for contested that aren’t normally up, and quickly starts running in defenders that meet the attacking guild in the lord’s room. The attacking guild is able to kill the lord and defeats the defenders as they stream in on foot, but they aren’t able to fully cap the circle quickly enough. Since they are fighting all in the lord’s room to finish the cap (as contested as anything ever should be able to be in truth,) the Garrison defense event ends – and since no one is hitting a door or wall then the waypoint goes back up permanently and an endless stream of rezzing defenders flows in and eventually defeats their attempt to capture Garrison. Total failure.

A guild with 30ish people lets a couple thieves continually do drive-bys on Garrison doors (place has 5 outer doors, no way to stop it) for over 40 minutes. White swords on Garrison and nearly useless waypoint are just a fixture on the map for the defenders, so when the surprise attack occurs, it appears exactly the same on map as if there is no attack at all. When the attacks reach the lord’s room, they find very little response waiting for them – and they send a couple thieves out to attack random doors just to keep the waypoint contested, just to be safe. The few defenders and lord are quickly defeated and Garrison captured easily. Total success.

The thing to keep in mind here is that the difference in tactics/execution has little to do with realistic or even intuitive activities. It’s just a matter of being steeped in obscure details of map and waypoint mechanics – nearly arbitrary code. Who really wants to be the designated door contester for hours on end or the designated door sentry? Might different arbitrary code produce results more intuitive, less obscure, and more fun?

Personally, I think limiting contests to structural damage done only by siege weapons makes a lot of sense intuitively. On the other hand, I also think keeping waypoints 100% locked out between chained contest events makes a lot of intuitive sense, also. Also, attacking a lord or having a contest circle active counting to trigger a defense event and lockout a waypoint seems fairly intuitive as well.

Raf.1078:

Kalkz.5297:

Keep with a waypoint shouldn’t show under attack unless there’s a Ram or any kind of siege is hitting it, i think Having 1 person running around all day hitting gates to stop your enemy from spawning is just wrong, Basically it it Shows (UNDER ATTACK) while its NOT (UNDER ATTACK), Same thing goes with towers, my whole point is, things shouldn’t show (under attack) unless somehow its under serious attack, opnions ?

Having a sentry at your keeps and towers would put a stop to that tactic.

Not likely. It’s pretty easy to do a drive by on a door and then escape the few angry defenders that give chase – at least for some classes.

phor.7952:

Daeqar.8965:

I’m just disputing the “33%” dps loss figures getting tossed around.

P/D pre-patch, rotation stacked up to 12 bleeds single target.
Post patch, 8 max.
8/12=0.66 33% nerf to bleed damage.
With a condition damage build, the direct damage is fairly insignificant compared to the bleed damage.

Caltrops Duration cut by 1/3 = damage per cast cut by 33%

So while you may dispute that D/D or S/D lost as high as 33%, P/D actually did.

You’re basing your numerical analysis on anecdotal evidence of a peak bleed count. A highly skewed and incomplete numerical analysis at that.

No, P/D didn’t lose anywhere near 33% overall dps either. Of course it lost a meaningful amount – probably more than D/D – but like I said earlier, if you’re complaining about losing max dps throughput, you’re complaining about the wrong things.

I don’t think gutting initiative regen as an indirect attempt to attacking stealth mechanics is a good idea. It’s another one of those “unintended consequences” things where you end up breaking or nerfing all sorts of things in the class that have nothing to do with stealth.

I don’t like 4s revealed either, but I consider 3s revealed even when stealth drops naturally to be even worse.

Although, why does revealed debuff have to be the same duration even if you do have it for dropping stealth naturally as it is for attacking? I would be able to prefer something like 3s revealed for attacking with 1.5s revealed for natural drop.

Generally speaking, I find dazes superior to stuns because dazes generally last long enough to be more meaningful and have fewer counters. A dazed target is completely defenseless other than being able to move. As long as you can continue to damage them either on the move or with ranged….it doesn’t really matter that they can move. Let them move; they’re going to die anyway.

The exception is when you’re instead trying to kill them with attacks requiring the target to stand in a tiny damage zone. Hundred Blades, Pistol Whip, AoE zones, etc. Then, daze isn’t so good. However, in this case I tend to still find superior options with Immobilize abilities over stun abilities, again because they usually last longer and/or are more repeatable.

It’s not that stuns are bad. After all, their durations are so short and there’s so many stun breakers exactly because they are powerful. It’s just that I usually find it easier to build dependable and repeatable team strats (or individual play builds) out of the other effects.

dirtyshame.1863:

You’re assumptions are incorrect if you assume this is only a DPS loss. Many of the stealth attacks and the process of being in stealth is part of the utility of the thief. Example: s/d will allow you to daze a target, extremely strong in against vets and players.

I never said it was only a dps loss. Quite the opposite actually, if you look at all my posts. I also clearly agree, this is a significant nerf to the class.

I’m just disputing the “33%” dps loss figures getting tossed around.

People are complaining about the wrong things. Instead of complaining about perceived massive dps losses in PvE rotations, people should be complaining about losing utility and survivability, and ability to safely deliver damage.

Kryshade.6075:

To answer your question I never use tactical strike. The only time I ever stealthed was from heal or shadow refuge. Basically the burst goes like this: PW, steal, haste, PW, PW, infiltrators strike (remember it has an immobilize on hit) auto attack, target dead.

Now against a good player they will pop stun break. Opposing thieves would shadow step away so it’s pretty easy to counter. Infiltrators strike in, PW – when they shadow step, steal to them, PW again. If they shadow step back double tap infiltrators strike to teleport back to them, pop haste, PW and dead thief. Can also use your own shadow step to get back in range of them if you’re running low on initiative. The stuns from pw and the immobilize from infiltrators strike are plenty to lock someone down. It’s about movement, lockdowns etc. Rarely used headshot as not worth the initiative unless it was to stop a heal. Beauty of this build is its MUCH better in a team fight as you are not only doing crazy damage you are setting up the rest of your team to spike since the enemy pretty much can’t move.

Normally, I can’t imagine getting a high proportion of those Pistolwhips to land against a skilled player. Too many durable builds with lots of dodges, teleports, stun breaks, etc…or even just counter CC. A lot of thieves running lots of both stealth and evades and shadowsteps can avoid a lot of that while PW drains 5 ini a pop. Some thieves running SoA for endurance refill can even chain 6 dodges all in a row and they haven’t even dipped much into their tool bag.

As part of a comprehensive team strategy, I can definitely see it working…just imagine three S/P thieves focusing one target a chain immobilizing/stunning/crippling it into oblivion by taking turns. You wouldn’t even have to coordinate all that much because of duration stacking and everything adding in small, frequent increments if they condition clear.

The thing there is, when you open it up into team strategies, you’re competing with all kinds of different stuff various classes can bring. Lots of people can bring various forms of immobilize or other CC or utility. And other classes that can deliver a lot more burst damage when presented with a stationary CC’d target. S/D Thief w/ venomshare and Devourer+Basilisk teamed with a warrior that does the actual killing can do some pretty fun stuff.

Raine Akrune.8416:

One day perhaps, it’ll be fun to teach another cookie cutter thief about thinking outside the box. =)

My build is definitely not cookie cutter, heh… It’s fairly unique, and I’ve never seen anyone run anything quite like it. There are certainly some common elements to it, but I also get a few “wtf, how are you doing that” type comments, too. I don’t share it though; everyone else can figure it out for themselves if they want.

Mackapacka.9462:

s/p deal no dmg

I wouldn’t say that, as Pistol Whip still does quite a bit of damage. Although, delivering it successfully against a skilled player who doesn’t want to stand in it is another issue.

Kryshade.6075:

You guys are crazy if you think S/P isn’t a viable build. I play strictly high level tPvP and I can assure you a well played S/P thief will destroy any other build on tournament play. Most thieves run d/p or d/d. S/P is a fantastic counter to that as the dazed,lockdowns and teleports will destroy most backstabbing thieves. After the haste nerf not so much unfortunately but saying that s/p isn’t viable is just noobish.

S/P has no stealth, so you can’t get the daze from Tactical Strike unless you count a rare, long cooldown utility ability stealth here and there. Head Shot is situationally useful, but you definitely can’t lock someone down with a 0.25s daze at 4 ini per pop. D/P has the same thing available, too. If your intent is to lock someone down, S/D is better at it.

As for tournament play… A skilled player can make pretty much anything work. And you could make an argument that stealth builds are bad for s/tPvP regardless because they can’t contest points effectively. That makes weaponsets like S/P and P/P a lot more attractive than they otherwise would be if you take that viewpoint. The huge problem remaining is if you’re running those weaponsets for tPvP, you shouldn’t even be running a thief in the first place. You’d contribute more to your team if you ran a different class like warrior using greatsword or rifle – and have a lot more build options while doing it.