Guild Wars 2

so wow… the story finally gets interesting after months of following it, my internet goes down in a way that limits me playing the game for a few weeks, it finally gets back and its finished and I’ve missed out? Seriously?

Well done… you made a free to play game that I actually don’t want to play!

Sebrent.3625:

I don’t see it as a nerf. I see it as a mechanic fix.

No one else says “I used big-hit-X and it was blocked, I’ll just use big-hit-X immediately again because it doesn’t matter”.

well first off no one elses big-hit-x requires positional and pre-use of other abilities to use, also press ` new set of weapon skills for them! which will probably include a new big hit move! wow magic!

Yes not all of them can do that… but wait then whats the “norm”? to have big hitters on weapons that you can swap between or not? should we change it because some do and some don’t have such effects on their weapons as well?

Teamkiller.4315:

Thieves also never had Jon Peters come to their forum say “we know your class is the most in need of help” and then experience mostly nerfs for the 5 months after that.

Rangers lol

You know what? BM rangers (one of two viable builds) are even MORE 1v1 oriented and useless than thieves in group situations. They do gripe a lot but I’ve never EVER seen them posit suggestions to buff their class on the level of absurdity that some of the topics in the forum like remove revealed, give thief 6 utilities, make them steal the entire skillbar of an enemy have.

Also countering dagger pistol requires a pretty specific skill. You need to interrupt their leap with a ranged attack. I know other D/P’s can do it with headshot, and rangers can use SB 5. Guardians can push them out of the circle with shield 5 but tbh they prefer to save that for when the thief SR’s. Mesmer can use GS 5 (although that’s also better for pushing the thief outta SR), etc etc.

Thats only because daecollo generally seems to play thief and warrior

Also it doesnt need to be a ranged interupt for the HS stopping you just have to not stand in the field, melee attacks can reach nearly entirely across the field without standing in it.

we get 2 seconds longer duration and they also lowered the penalty (both by fixing the negative endurance bug and allowing half endurance regen during it) but then so did all the other non elite versions (warriors take half as much extra damage, rangers only reduce healing by 50% rather than completely stopping em etc etc)

it comes down purely to what your built for, that said signet of malice with the right build is generally the best healing in PvE and the one I tend to run with most often in fractals and such.

tbh if they start bring in more and more direct counter mechanics to stealth they need to give stealth(or thieves in general) static and reliable defense to compensate for the fact that good players already all but ignore the mechanics currently before any 1-button counters.

Sebrent.3625:

That’s great … they still got punished for being dumb enough to waste it on an aegis, blind, block, dodge, etc. The thief is not.

Even if the thief was punished, the thief would still have their other sources of stealth, C&D again, maybe stealth on steal, other attacks, etc.

• Locked out of only their stealth attack.
• Thief defense consists of more than just stealth
• Everyone else is punished for noobing an attack, why shouldn’t thieves?

for some sets the stealth attack is a majority share of the damage, I never said stealth was the only defense I said its a large portion of the defense.

And thats just it Thieves already ARE punished for failing the attack specially against a competent person due to limited time frames and requirement to use other skills.

Sebrent.3625:

• Dagger Pistol allow stealth that a foe can’t do anything about.
• So does shadow refuge unless they have some way to push/pull.
• So does blinding powder.
• So does hide in shadows.
• You can cloak and dagger anything nearby, even a critter, and attack your foe from stealth
• So do Mesmer shatters, but they are punished

The fact that you believe dagger pistol and other stealths are uncounterable sort of invalidates most of what you say to me, if you still haven’t figured out the ways to counter them or put pressure on them your going to be terrible regardless of what happens and yet the thief is still using up all their toolset to have another go while your example of rangers opening strikes aren’t. As for mesmer shatters… thats a hole other kettle of fish.

Sebrent.3625:

That is why I compared it to the January patch notes as well as the mechanics of several classes … some of which you thieves brought up and I was happy to oblige.

And yet its still not a valid comparison as your almost always leaving out vital differences or working on false assumptions.

Im not touching that one, someone else can reply to that mess of incorrect maths and assumptions

Sebrent.3625:

@Dasorine:
You’re assuming that they are different mechanics based on the Thief being the only one that doesn’t following the game mechanic.
I’m assuming it based on the fact that 7 of the 8 classes all follow it despite the difference in their skills’ mechanics.

Then there is the issue of how it affects the risk/reward or reward/punishment system for playing good/bad. It punishes good non-thief play and rewards bad thief play.

---

@YourOwnFear:
I wasn’t posting that thinking you are complaining about Rangers. I was posting that to emphasize your point by showing how one class mechanic is punished horribly while the other is rewarded in that very same scenario.

So clearly thieves should have cooldowns on all their skills because 7/8 professions have cooldowns on their skills.

Elementalists and Engineers should not get kits/attunements beause 6/8 professions only get access to 2 weapon sets worth of skills.

etc etc etc

The fact that the ranger that just missed with opening strikes still has the rest of their toolset which includes 2 sets of cooldowns, their pet and a full complement of their utilities PLUS most likely still in relative safety of range with any number of their defenses still fresh and ready.

A thief that misses the backstab and subsequently revealed would have lost either a good portion of his weapon skills, a long cooldown/important utility, be locked out of a large portion of their defense and be in a highly vulnerable position.

This is before you even factor in the fact that those opening strikes could have been shot at the edge of the range after edging around a corner while the backstab had a fairly lengthy and counterable set up anyway.

You really cannot compare the two based on a simple thought line of “Oh my opener missed and is on cooldown their opener missed and they get another attempt (unless the enemy was competent to begin with)”

Well the first two strikes of the sword AA chain are equivalent (actually very slightly lower) to that of the last two strikes of the dagger AA.

The final strike is only a bit lower than that of CnD/Mug/HS at 50%

However backstab with its 2.4 rear coefficient on top of the CnD that your generally going to use will offer about 30% more damage (total of 3.9 compared to swords total of 2.9)

In the same way a full pistol whip ends up with a coefficient of 3.42 so it would do more maximum damage (though lower crit rate would put sword ahead).

Of course both those have long reuse times and potentially substantial costs compared to the Auto Attack.

Overall though sword auto attack is pretty nice, though it has to be really due to the lower damage out put of its actual skills compared to other weapon sets (dual skill generally ends up being the only real damage source out of the set)

but there is a bit of an issue all around with that, for starters I don’t think the game can actually tell the difference between an active block and an aegis (which is probably why it works how it currently does on those).

Then you have what counts as a miss and what counts as an evade, its a lot more obviously able to work that out as shown by the fact they put in specific changes to certain skills to allow them to work that way, but at some point this complaint will pop up again but only now its “omg why can a thief spam backstab until they hit when my hundred blades can’t!!!1!” or some variation.

Personally I wouldn’t mind it giving revealed on a proper evade or an active block but with the game systems how they seem to be on top of ALL the other issues thieves actually experience against a competent opponent it currently would only make us weaker and preventing thieves ever being anything more than wvw 1v1 uplevel stompers.

And again sebrent your comparing apples to oranges the mechanics are different they will always be different, if you feel this is unfair then your out of luck because there will always be different things working differently otherwise everyone may as well be one profession and have 1 skill.

YourOwnFear.2743:

Dasorine.1964:

Yeah, except for those that like playing backstab style in a game where your meant to be free to choose your build and style

Considering stuff like P/X needs buffing anyway, nerfing an “ok” weapon set in exchange for a buff to a set that already needs buffing is just exchanging a punch in the face for a kick to the head

What your not getting is this would only be a nerf to bads. Good players will adapt and play better. I also mentioned that the change should come with a damage buff so technically if you are a good player this should only be a buff.

It really depends, yes it would mostly hurt bads, but what about people who suffer from stuff like latency? what about sync issues that are invariably had in mmorpg pvp situations? the fact that those suffering from such issues have most likely already had to work around those issues once with the first skill sending them into stealth they now have to do so again with a far more constrained attack to land.

For what? To keep low level players happy because they think they should automatically counter what basically amounts to an auto attack with special mechanics simply because they stood near a guardian or they spammed V rather than avoid the initial approach?

Of course you can’t really balance the entire game around them, but you also shouldn’t punish them repeatedly for something they can’t control simply because bads are bad.

The fact that the general argument is “oh but other peoples attacks go onto cooldown” generally ignores the fact that those other moves don’t require positional orientation, don’t require utilizing a different ability first, aren’t based on auto-attacks and aren’t the unique stealth attack system which is always going to be fairly different from any other mechanic because its unique.

The fact that people think thieves can just “spam” 1 and land the backstab even after someone has rolled away or blocked just shows how terrible they generally are, as stated previously the rolling away gives the least feedback but its also generally the most effective generally guaranteeing they won’t have long enough in stealth to really land it unless you spent the first part stood still, against blocking you even get feedback about whats happening thus any follow up attacks are more down to them not working with that feedback than it is the thief is “silly op and unfair”

dont forget our burst finisher! you can’t forget our burst finisher! its apparently so utterly brilliant being able to buff 5 random people with combo fields that its enough to base our entire zerg play on and thus we are good all places because of it!

Yeah, except for those that like playing backstab style in a game where your meant to be free to choose your build and style

Considering stuff like P/X needs buffing anyway, nerfing an “ok” weapon set in exchange for a buff to a set that already needs buffing is just exchanging a punch in the face for a kick to the head

YourOwnFear.2743:

I would welcome the change because after that kind of change there would be 0 whining over backstab thief (or that person would be laughed off the forums by every class) and other weapon sets would get buffed so we can have more viable builds. As it stands right now I have 0 problems perma stealthing into position to engage with backstab. If you are engaging early enough to get countered (other than aegis) then you were outplayed and should be punished.

The thief should be about finesse and outplaying your opponent with our high mobility and how easy it is to change position without being tracked. I do think with that kind of change a damage boost would be in order to reward good play.

Unfortunately the most likely scenario is that it would get the nerf and then something else would get nerfed a long with it and we’d get a token buff a long the lines of “dagger auto attack poison now lasts 1s longer”

Sebrent.3625:

Shemsu.8721:

Sebrent.3625:

We’ve touched on this topic a bit here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-attacking-in-stealth-and-not-revealed/first

• I don’t think a thief missing backstab because they are out-of-range should reveal them
• I do think a thief’s backstab missing because of blind, block, dodge-roll, etc. should reveal the thief. The backstab did not miss. It did “hit”, but was countered so that “hit” is transformed into an “evaded”, “blocked”, etc.

This would make sense, if warriors lost adrenaline when they fail a burst skill. If mesmer had all clone and phantasm abilities put on a GCD anytime they miss a shatter skill. Etc Etc

• What currently happens when the Thief has their backstab blocked, dodged, etc? Oh yeah, the thief immediately backstabs again.

• What happens when a warrior’s burst skill is blocked, dodged, etc? It goes on cooldown

• What happens when a mesmer’s shatter is blocked, dodged, etc? The shatter goes on cooldown and up to 3 illusions now need to be replaced

So currently the Thief doesn’t care at all that they missed while the Warrior and Mesmer do. So why do we need to nerf the other two for the Thief to care about playing badly and making mistakes?

Yay lets play the “compare skills and mechanics that aren’t even remotely similiar” game! I think my necromancer wells should shoot fireballs at targets on the map because elementalists get fireball attacks!

animalmom.1062:

“3). I agree that going stealth and then frantically spamming the 1 key, hoping for a backstab, should be detrimental.”

How do you think thieves backstab?

People are freaking running all over the place. Nobody stands still for your backstab.

It’s amazing how often people want to make it so hard for thieves to be able to actually use their class mechanics.

People complain about the mechanic and then want to make it super hard to actually use it.

Try and apply this logic to other classes and tell me what you come up with.

if Class A attempts to use their class mechanic but fails their class mechanic should fail or cause something bad to happen to them

Just dumb.

If A guardian might blows you and you block it doe they get chilled?

That would be just as dumb.

What classes get penalized for trying and failing to use their abilities?

<awaits the “but everyone else gets put on cooldown” argument ignoring the basis of the stealth attacks being an extension of autoattacks that already have multiple requirements just to even begin to use>

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

I’m not talking about the memory usage, I’m talking about the actual printed lines of text. It would be absolutely out of control. You could literally be having 10-20 lines of text updating on your log every second if you happen to be running a bleeding build.

The combat log only saves a finite number of lines before it starts deleting older ones, so the end result would be that you would also be losing relevant information at a much higher pace, thus negating the effect of adding it in the first place.

Oh, I see. I don’t really run condition based builds, but when I tested with some fire damage, it seems the combat log only shows the first burn… So how do you make use of the combat log in determining how much damage you deal?
Well, just logging the final total damage after the burn would be way better than logging the initial.

Burn is a very simple condition, as it only stacks duration. Bleeds, on the other hand, stack intensity. For example, having 8 stacks of bleed means that the opponent receives 8 ticks of bleed damage every second. And what’s more, this damage can change any moment if you happen to have might stacks.

Take a 1v1 situation with two bleed builds, like a Thief and a Warrior. The Thief will probably maintain 5-7 stacks of bleed on the warrior, while the warrior can probably maintain about 8 on the Thief. Either way, if the combat log shows all the damage you take and all the damage you deal, this would mean that both sides are seeing 13 updates for bleed damage every second.

What’s worse, the sword on a Warrior has some frontal aoe, which means that they could easily be putting those 8 bleeds on 2-3 people at the same time. Now that’ll be 24 updates every second, just for the damage that he’s dealing.

And since conditions are damage over time, it’s really not helpful at all if you get to know your damage after it’s already stopped on your enemy.

I just don’t see how it’d be feasible to report damage for conditions that stack intensity without it clogging the combat log to a point where it’s unusable.

Ideally they could solve that by doing something they should really have done anyway and condense the ticks, we really don’t need to see upto 25 little numbers every second, it would be much simpler if the number you saw pop up every second was the sum of all the stacks from that target, so if you’ve applied 25 stacks of bleed doing 100 damage instead of 25 “100” events you’d get the singular “2500” event, if your being bled by 3 people each doing 5 stacks of 100 damage instead of getting 15 “100” events each second you’d get 3 “500” events a second.

actually missing would be the least reason for the stealth to become visible, first of all these are acrobatic professionals they aren’t suddenly going to fall flat on their face because their stab missed, specially since the whole point of a backstab is not brute force but finesse aimed at the weakest points of a fairly defenseless person.

Throw into that mix the fact that stealth isn’t stealth but actually a magical concealment based on similiar magic to what mesmers focus on and what allows shadow steps then that also adds a degree of failsafe to the “story”

Outside of the “story” of the backstab the actual mechanics are already fairly stringent, yes that thief may have 4 seconds to land that stab but first remove the time its taken for them to get into position (this should be a fair while if you saw them before they stealthed as your in control of that position) then throw in the 0.75 second you gained by your dodge and the second its going to take the thief to get back into position and the stealth should already be nearly gone and of course backstab isn’t instant cast.

Of course they have ways to reapply the stealth starting the whole thing again (if they cloak and dagger), setting themselves up for a big counter (SR/BP+HS) or burning multiple utility/important cooldowns to try and secure a single medium-high hit.

Sure you don’t get the big telltale that someone whos just blocked the stab gets (a big “Blocked” pop up and/or a disappearing boon, but if your good enough to evade it and know you evaded it then you should have been good enough to wear down the thieves stealth duration with evasive maneuvers (stepping backwards for instance).

Also if your going to try and make serious suggestions could you please not throw in obvious over-exaggeration to make a point, if the point requires exaggeration generally its not really a point (or your trying to explain to a 5 year old/troll but you don’t start off a suggestion with that in mind otherwise your just feeding the trolls ;P)

stealth attacks are a class mechanic, stealth is the only way to access that mechanic, there for stealth is utilized as part of the class mechanic thus its a class mechanic, not exclusive but still a core part of the class just like boons aren’t exclusive to guardians but are still a core mechanic to them.

wait until we see that the trap actually does first before introducing troll bait like this.

shame there is no 1v1 pvp mode, only chance encounters in spvp and solo roamers in wvw that think its awesome to run around in full zerker by themselves and then complain incessantly when they die to anyone (though specially if its a thief)

Sebrent.3625:

Hey guys … you know NOTHING about the traps. Calm down. The thief forums have enough overreacting as it is. Another thread on this subject isn’t doing anything.

Your saying that like its only the thief forums that act like this, every other profession forum acts pretty much the same way.

Though they at least don’t get endless threads asking for them to be nerfed in all the other forums also :/ (mesmer gets one now and then but mostly asking how they work not going to the suggestion forum and suggesting they be removed outright because they won in a 1v1 fight against uplevel)

This thread was mainly talking about how such changes can potentially remove the freedom of choice aspect that anet so highly regarded in pre-release ramble.

I do agree that we really have to see what the field is like before we can jump to the conclusion that its complete death to thief, but at the same time letting it be known that its not a happy change (because regardless of how the field turns out to be at some point a thief is going to be less effective for it) gives them feedback to know what sort of things they actually need to be looking out for in its implementation.

Thats mostly because thieves effectiveness is already debatable yes we can be strong to the level of perceived overly so against brand spanking new players still running around in full glass, but against people that are experienced we just have to hope were that much better than they are because our mechanics don’t allow for static advantages.

When you introduce things like anti-stealth mechanics it allows those new people to fight back in a way that doesn’t require them actually learning to fight (which in of itself is bad enough) but if those tools then get to be used freely by people that are already beating thieves more than thieves are beating them then you get the situation where thieves are stuck only ever being useful against the new people/terrible people (until they complain more until thieves aren’t even good there in the same way other games have done)

I mean fighting a mesmer can be a challenge, if your fighting someone new/bad who still can’t deal with the illusions then your going to have an easy time, but against someone who knows how to deal with them its going to be a fairly close fight, now what if they introduced an item that everyone could use that instantly destroys all illusions and prevents the use of those skills, the new/bad player now has a close fight with you because a lot of your moves are now gone, the good player just stomps you with little effort because they were already fighting well against you, now they remove some of your toolset to give them an even bigger advantage.

TheGuy.3568:

Here’s the base question please answer it. Is stealth balanced in WvW? No long BS argument yes or no?

you got to specify what you mean by WvW otherwise overall yes it is (its powerful in one area, almost useless in another)

Sebrent.3625:

What’s also amusing is that various boons and conditions have caps on their durations. For example, confusion can only last 10 seconds max. There is a cap on it. Why they didn’t cap stealth to 5s is beyond me.

because they capped it at 15 seconds instead so that skills like shadow refuge would work the way they intended it to.

As for the skill stacking, who knows, perhaps anet decided that it would be balanced to give mesmers who have access to a variety of things “hide in shadows” effect while thieves who utilize something at one of their core mechanics get the “stealth” effect. Who knows.

TL;DR means Too long; Didn’t read.

adept manual unlocks the first 10 points, so you have already used it to be able to place your current number of points, to unlock the next tier of traits you need to purchase and use the masters manual

Volrath.1473:

quite doable, use CC (slow / root), use your stealth often, when he uses black powder you know that a heat seeker is coming your way so dodge it and even know he is stealthed you know exactly were he landed (the place you were standing before dodging so if you have a dagger off hand, use CnD on the place were he is and you will land it 90% of the times, he’s stealth will end before yours.

this is just some tips i don’t mesmerize my rotation or anything like that i play according to what my opponent does, but in general the above works really well.

If you dodge towards the field you also prevent them from quickly turning around and reapplying it, potentially revealing them if your sat there after CnD and they try it anyway

While it staying account bound would have been nice I fail to see how it not being makes it any less useful.

Currently: 1 character gets a permanent pick which can be used to mine materials and put in shared storage (if they can refine the mined materials you can store even more).

If it was account bound: 1 character gets to use the permanent pick at any given time to mine materials that can be put in shared storage (unlikely they are all going to be able to refine em), you can change which character currently has it by taking time to put the item into shared storage and picking it up each time you change character.

I don’t really see much advantage unless you work on a system where you play 1 character for a long period of time before switching to another as swapping would have to come with a daily routine of stopping by the bank on log in and log out.

The only way it would really work much better is if it worked like the deluxe edition items where you get a copy mailed to all alts new and old.

Deamhan.9538:

1420 / 4 sec = 355 hp/s + any additional hp/s from any other sources. CC’ing them in SR is actually doing them a favor since they want to be in it.

Also, the SR skill is for 4 seconds, minus the time it takes you to place AoE DoT. Travel time is as little as already being there up to 2 seconds away for an average of 1 second. Then there is the cast time. Average of 1/2 a second. Then there is reaction time that I would also say averages 1/2 a second (reaction time includes ping as well as the players time to react). 2 out of the 4 seconds of SR is done by the time you get just one AoE down.

The only other tactic that you can counter is Black Powder and Heart Seeker combo which combos both jumping out of and back into the field. Here CC’ing the smoke field would work, oh wait, no it won’t. They just don’t have to jump back into it. It only lasts for 3 seconds and will only stack time if you are traited to stay in stealth for longer than what the combo gives you by default. While the increased time is nice, it’s not something you depend on.

Now they are putting in traps that players can use to create an anti stealth field. Sounds to me like they are coming to realize that they F’ed up when it came to how they worked stealth in and now they are coming up with round-about ways to counter it.

Honestly, they just needed to change the combo field on Black Powder to something that doesn’t grant stealth and reduce the stealth duration on SR.

SR heal really isnt all that great, hence why you don’t see everyone leaping in it when its thrown down in a group situation, compared to other classes secondary or even tertiary healing abilities its rubbish (yeah convenient how everyone elses ability to heal is so often left out in these discussions) and while for some it can be difficult to counter SR the simple fact is it IS counterable in a way that no other defensive move is.

And again I think your miss understanding the purpose these traps are meant to take, I very much doubt they are there to invalidate stealth entirely, they will most likely be there to add a bit more strategy to WvW giving groups options to guard area’s against tactics such as mass invis pushes and such.

But then Im not sure why I bother replying to you, you clearly got killed a few times by a thief decided your the best player ever and thus they were cheap and over powered because they killed you and have decided all stealth should be rubbish and have a lot of its access removed, maybe they should lower the duration of all defensive skills and remove all combo fields completely because someone somewhere is getting use out of them!

Fungalfoot.7213:

NinjaEd.3946:

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

If a stealth player deals any Direct Damage they are revealed for 3 seconds. If that isn’t enough for you to react/retaliate thats your own downskilled issue. In spvp, or wvw stealth hardly affects me. In fact, from the amount of posts about this topic, I’d bet a lot of people have found counters to stealth and have no issue with them.

L2p. Or ask H2P. If you cannot counter stealth at this point you have done nothing to help yourself but post a stealth counter thread. Which has lead to nothing, because stealth comes down to player skill.

There is no skill to hitting a completely invisible player. It’s about dumb luck. Will he go right or left? No way to know in an open area. Now if thieves flickered in and out of stealth I’d be more inclined to agree with you but perfect stealth is as the name implies perfect.

The new WvWvW traps directly counter stealth, slapping down AoEs hoping to ensnare the thief obviously does not. As ArenaNet saw it fit to include a direct stealth counter, albeit in a very limited form, they obviously do not agree with your assessment and if you’re so afraid of actual counters being gradually introduced perhaps you are the one who needs to learn to play?

Good thieves will buckle up. Bad thieves will continue being overly reliant on stealth.

But thats just it, its only luck if you do nothing to try and control the thief, you’ll always generally know where they are going, either your back or away from you, you can then control those routes yourself.

If they are going to your back you can move and position yourself in such a way that they have to go the direction you want, if they are running away you again can move and position yourself in a way that sends them in a more specific direction, this is also helped if you keep an eye on your surroundings (which you should be doing in a pvp situation) so you can move to more advantagous area’s in combat (closer to your own side towers/zergs etc, into more confined spaces that limit the enemies movement etc etc)

If it was just “luck” then all the people that can beat thieves wouldn’t be able to do so with the consistency that they do.

The fact that the new WvW traps and tricks are most likely just going to be AoE’s again means your still just “slapping down” aoe’s in the hope of finding them and thats IF they are instant use things and don’t need constructing with supply etc, they are probably not going to be “anti-thief” tools but anti-stealth so you can prevent groups stealthing up with mass invisibility and such and sneaking past all your ballista’s into combat range on points your defending or to prevent groups sneaking in behind you as you take down a gate and such etc. If your not able to handle thieves stealthing currently your still not going to handle it after (unless anet does something really silly) though I could also see them introducing traps that strip off other forms of defense and I bet there would/will be an outcry when the field that removes boons/block/invuln and prevents the skills being reused for a while gets made.

it really depends far too much on how they implement it.

As I’ve said in one of the other posts about this, if its anything like say the arrow cart reveal attack its mostly not going to effect thieves much, the situations where your going to get hit with it are going to be situations where stealth isn’t really going to do much anyway.

It could be a big pain in the back granted but at worst its probably going to solidify the thief image of only there to blast finisher other people and to gank solo people which isn’t a fun thing.

We really need to see what its going to be like first.

wtb ability to weaponswap properly, protection (non stolen) and a large selection of heals please!

And yeah stealth isn’t the thieves only defense, we have around 3: stealth, evasion, blinds.

Stealth has the downsides everyone knows about (not actually reducing damage), evasion isn’t that much different to others, sure we can get a 15 endurance refund on rolls and some utility evasions but little to back up our defenses for those times where we can’t evade (and don’t get me started on weapon evades, only 2 of them are really viable for evasion)

Then we have blinds, handy if we get enough of them going but very sporadic as to whether they work.

Of course if you can get all 3 to work in a build then you can survive pretty well, its just to get all 3 to work in a decent fashion it means a lot of sacrifice and we’ll still be squishier than other people if we miss a step. If you don’t get at least 2 of them going well your highly vulnerable and even that your generally going to only be able to trait 1 of them and hope the base levels of the other is enough.

What your suggesting really is a full evade build which would be like a thief suggesting you only go lightning spec D/D so you can spec for more damage because you complain you do less, sure you could probably survive some using just the stuff you get with that but your not going to do just that because otherwise your overall going to be much worse off.

I mean you could compare it to an elementalist but really… how many different ways to defend themselves (reliably) do the elementalists get… I count more than thieves get.

Stealth is as big a part of thief defense as evades is, you can’t rely on just one or the other so in that way it is mandatory, you can minimize the need for the other but at some point your going to need what it brings else your going to die.

if built to take advantage of it thieves do get a lot of access to shadowsteps in combat, however out of combat we are actually fairly limited.

No real swiftness access outside of an acrobat traiting and spamming endurance means we are stuck with Signet of Shadows for the most part, then we only have a few shadowsteps that work outside of combat, one is a long cooldown utility the other is a high cost weapon skill.

Of course we can also heartseeker spam to try and get a bit of extra speed but that generally isn’t all that much faster.

So yes, in combat we do get a fair choice of ways to get into the enemy (although not quite so many to get out) and outside of combat we get some decent mobility but not quite as much as people imagine, before the RTL nerfs ele’s could easily outpace us due to the reuse and range on it (plus it gives them solid protection while thieves shadowstepping are prone to most things unless stealthed)

Just remember fleet shadows only actually gives 33% movement speed (out of combat because its capped, in combat because its bugged)

but thats not the only reason thieves don’t appear in high level sPvP, its mostly because they have nothing static to protect them and at that level the players actually know how to fight against stealth (Heres a big hint: Don’t just stand there doing nothing)

And with the thieves in WvW if they are moving with a group and yet people are complaining how OP they are solo it makes no sense, if its 1 thief vs a group then the group should be able to at the very least chase the thief off if not outright kill them, they really are not hard to deal with if you’ve ever figured it out.

The fact is sebrent you’ve been spewing rubbish all day about what thieves can and cannot do with flawed information behind it to the point where its questionable whether you’ve ever played a thief or any content outside of hotjoin spvp and sitting around the middle of a field in wvw all day.

Sebrents argument: If thieves were terrible you wouldn’t see so many in pvp

Situations where thief is at all strong: Noob stomping WvW roams and Hotjoin PvP

Situations where you don’t see thieves much if at all: High level sPvP play, dedicated zergs in WvW accomplishing what WvW was designed for.

So sebrent… are you still stuck in the lowest levels of pvp?

I like playing thief because the minute I go stealth everyone stops doing anything and absolutely no one tries throwing any more attacks around even though they know the exact location I’ll be heading to, fun times, fun times…

Seriously… people talk like its total invincibility and removes you from existance up until the point you 1 shot an upleveled glass cannon idiot in WvW. The fact that all those bonus on stealth often come out as something other classes get ALL THE TIME, not just around 50% of the time (if the thief has decided they don’t actually want to do damage)

Rafahil.2857:

Again a direct nerf to thieves…..just remake the class into the classic assassin and just maybe less people will moan.

Nah then they’d just complain about how OP the damage is and how shadowsteps are a broken game mechanic that should never exist in the first place etc etc etc.

Really gotta wait and see what the anti-stealth field is going to be like.

seb stealth is as core to the thief defense as evade is, if you trait for one or the other you get better use out of either but your still really relying on both to match other people. The acrobat traits give us good evades but generally not the best.

well its not an anti-thief trap its an anti-stealth field, I assume what this means if a area stealth denial for a short duration which I doubt will gain much use in 1v1 or such and not be very mobile.

Im thinking its probably going to be as much a threat to thieves as the arrow cart stealth removal attack, really good at stopping a thief stealthing in a situation where thief isn’t really going to be gaining anything from stealth anyway mostly to prevent a shadow refuged team sneaking past the defenses.

What sutcliffe said, the sigil of accuracy IS working it just isn’t shown in your hero stats window

if you move enough yes, though for those big hits you definitely want to expend endurance on dodging (default key V or double tap but I highly recommend disabling double tap and utilizing V or rebinding it to a button your comfortable with)

Katsumoto.9452:

You manage to play vs players that don’t see death blossom coming a mile away? It’s unreliable. So obvious to dodge. It’s a waste frankly, 9 stacks of bleed if everything connects for my entire initiative bar. Playing vs anyone competent you will not beat them with a death blossom spam build. I’m more likely to lose to a berserker thief using off-hand light dagger than DB spam (which raises a point, wtf is the point of off-hand light skills?).

well pvp is another kettle of fish, though still death blossoms really not designed for 1v1 encounters, if you can get through a zerg with it (which you should as its designed to patch its vulnerability with the brief evasion as you pass over) yours looking at 15 bleeds per blossom across 5 people. Its just like most other AoE’s, your generally not going to do much with it 1v1 but in a group situation or a situation you’ve set up to take advantage of it then they work fine. Complaining that it doesn’t work that well 1v1 when they have full endurance is like complaining heartseeker doesn’t work against people with full health in the middle of an enemy zerg, its not meant to.

Offhand light skills basically just for that first mission before you get a second weapon (though would love to see offhand light being a viable option just for variety)

leave my deathblossom alone! (unreliable? seriously? your missing with a slightly homing AoE attack?)

I suspect the intentionally put different types of abilities across the weapons so your not stuck with “x/x is a dps weapon! y/y is a condition weapon!” only situation, while I won’t deny that pistol mainhand could use some love the fact that its auto is condition and its dual is direct is not much different to daggers situation (albeit dagger currently much more usable in basically all its use variants)

Heck it would be nice if they where the polar opposites: D/D = single target direct damage and area of effect condition damage at melee range P/P = single target condition damage and area of effect direct damage at long range but probably wouldn’t happen, though would love the activation times to be more an accurate representation of how fast you can get the moves off.

The Fskill system for thieves is another that I can live with but would love to see additional stuff though would rather they keep it based around what it already is compared to what some others are suggesting, my own suggestion was f1: steal f2: stolen item f3: improvise f4: improvised item f5: pouch.

Steal would work how it currently works but the stolen item would go to f2 (so we can see steal cooldown and not have to waste a skill) if already have a stolen item when you steal the old item goes to the pouch new item takes the f2 slot.

F3 takes a random store item from pouch and puts it into f4, f4 uses the item but the item has its own cooldown instead of relying on the fskill cooldown, so stolen items cooldown = steal cooldown, improvised item cooldown = item cooldown (so things like consume plasma can’t be stocked and spammed etc)

F5 opens a window listing stolen items upto say 10 stolen items (each item can stack 3 of them) and maybe allow for some non stolen improvised moves their (possibly even introduce store buyable skills for the pouch such as purchasing the improvised weapons from Skritt)

As for stuff like the deadly arts traits, the main issue really comes down not to the traits being bad but the stuff the traits are for being bad, the improvisation trait would be awesome if there was any reason to run with a trap and venom on the bar and not just tricks/deceptions and signets. I think redoing the traits would have to wait until all the utility types are at a level of usability.

theres one or two good racials around that are an interesting choice (think all races tend to have at least 1 thats interesting) but mostly you just need to decide on what looks you prefer.

As blackbeard stated, the race doesn’t really effect the actual gameplay much (beyond story and the few racial move choices) specially if you end up using your profession skills.

Personally I went with human for elementalist, norn isn’t a bad choice as they look similar however the size can get annoying at times (gorram jumping puzzles!). For me humans are generally seen as the average flexible race and seem to have the best affinity for utilizing all the different elements rapidly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/first

;)

it would make thieves more OP then they already are!

;P I’d love a /facepalm

I would even go one better and suggest that scouts show all possible event area’s with some form of time frame on them (so active and renown hearts show up like they would on map if you where near, inactive events show up as grey circles with “soon, sometime, long time” style tags)

Would be fun, though I’d say rather than make them resource nodes give you the option to loot them normally (as in same way you can now with all the same possible items)

Or to “Harvest” them for a higher chance at obtaining specific salvage items (such as chunks of ore that can drop from certain mobs) and an increased chance at getting fine -> rare crafting components (bloods/fangs upto cores/lodestones)

This allows those wanting crafting mats to have a better chance at them at the cost of less other loot and less overall money but without making the resources overly abundant (as a simple make them into nodes system would)