Guild Wars 2

The problem hoogley boogley is that rev is extremely easy and forgiving to play. You’re not even that good at it and you’re getting hate.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

IMO, EA should be merged with Driven Fortitude.

Agreed, I would LOVE to be able to take pulmonary impact.

Maugetarr.6823:

Well, it’s not that bad. The offensive lines are largely great but could use a couple of tweaks to individual skills.

SA is largely fine, but could use a few trait reordering and combinations.

Acro is in poor shape, especially considering how much more effective Daredevil is at the few mediocre traits Acro has (Don’t Stop versus Unhindered Combatant for example). I think rolling Feline Grace into Enforcer Training and then just redoing the entire Acro line would be great for both. Acro could be themed to Infiltration Arts and modify stuff like shadowsteps and emphasize some boon stealing/corruption traits.

Trickery is in good shape. Preparedness should be rolled into thief baseline and bountiful theft moved to that minor master position. The CD reduction on Sleight of Hand should also be rolled baseline.

Daredevil is in pretty decent shape.

Traps are horrible (outside of trapper runes).
Venoms are mediocre.
Tricks need adjustments.
Deception and signet skills are good and used by what seems like 99% of thieves.

SA trait wise is in good shape, its just that other classes hard counter the trait line with a button push. There is a lot of reveal flying around making the trait line unplayable.

I would also argue that daredevil has to work much harder to sustain compared to the other elite spec.

Dakarius.3284:

The problem with thief is our survivability, we can’t stay in melee for more than a couple of seconds before we’re downed.

Thieves have always lacked staying power, but in the past it was balanced by our powerful burst and escape abilities. Now our staying power is even less than before and our burst is nothing spectacular compared to other classes. On top of that pretty much every other class can negate our burst multiple times in a fight. So you end up with a class with mediocre burst that occasionally hits in return for the ability to move around the map quickly, which we’ve always had.

The nerfs over the years plus the power creep of the other classes has made thieve in to a 2nd class citizen. Before the June patch we were in an ok spot. After the June patch we lost a lot of viable specs but had at least 1 ok spec. Now I don’t think there’s any reason to take a thief over mesmer or revenant for the +1 ability. They can do what we can do a little slower, but at least they’re useful in a team fight.

I agree on our burst not being burst anymore, too many blocks/invulns, but I don’t think we have as much escape ability now with glint/shiro and reveals. If you try to stealth away they pop gaze of darkness to reveal you and if you try to teleport/non-stealth away phase traversal will hunt you down.

My problems with staff is that I get easily ranged, and don’t really have any defensive options other than burning my dodges. I would have liked staff to have been a defensive weapon, blocks/reflects and then use my utilites (fist flurry, new elite, daggers etc) to be offensive.

I sort of wish we would have just gotten the revenant staff…

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

How we make a class that has so much stealth/mobility be balanced? I feel like it being UP in fights is a good trade off for the map control they offer.

I can’t come up with a way to make thief be amazing without it causing cancerous cells to form.

Wut. Map control? We can decap a point? Map control is not allowing anyone on a node via instant aoe damage that does more than our single target damage (TRAPS IF YOU CAN’T READ BETWEEN THE LINES)

sinject.4607:

move to thief subforum coming soon
less eyes the better

Thanks.
//////////////////////15 charssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Cogbyrn.7283:

EDIT – Is part of the problem that other classes can itemize defensively then might-stack via traits, etc., but Thieves have no real way to might-stack or otherwise gain something like high amounts of % crit from traits to allow them to itemize with more survivability? I don’t think giving every class the ability to might stack is an answer, but I think Thieves should have some way to allow for itemization flexibility.

I think that is a part of the problem. Granted backstab, pistol whip all have high damage coefficients, which is why we lack defensive capabilities, but another class can achieve the same damage via might, while having more defense.

I think another problem is that a lot of our damage is centered around burst and 7/9 classes have a way to become invulnerable/block when that occurs Auto proccing rev shield, endure pain, signet of stone etc.

Edit: I wanted to add, neither stealth or stealthless play is viable atm. Stealth is being hard countered by reveal skills, and stealthless play is hindered by crappy sword autos and lack of actual defense mechanisms.

Cogbyrn.7283:

FeelsAlright.5860:

glaphen.5230:

All evades cost at least 4 initiative for .5 seconds of evasion, 4 initiative takes 4 seconds to regen, skill 2,3,4 and 5 all cost that same resource and Thieves don’t have the godly sword auto attacks of Revenant who also gets more evades per second regen with Shiro.

I know everyone is being sarcastic, but thief sword auto’s is something that desperately needs to be addressed. The aftercast is horrible.

I think my sarcasm tank is about used up, where I’m fairly certain Azure’s is bottomless. I’ll go ahead and throw in the towel.

If Sword’s auto is really that bad, then I’d also like to see it fixed for Thieves. Also, it’s difficult to argue as much against Stealth in the context of sPvP because of the objective mechanics. I’ve never liked how it was implemented in this game, but I don’t think it’s all that bad for sPvP. I also think that if a Thief drops a big red circle next to you that they have to stand in, they should be punished hard for that level of hubris, not given an extra 50% damage reduction.

Rev sword mainhand is at least 1.5x – 2x quicker than the thief autos. It’s why sword thieves end up spamming #3 because its the only way to get decent damage.

I agree with your argument we should be punished for the situation you describe, but I think thief itself needs some sort of extra damage mitigation. Our damage output just doesn’t seem to match the level of damage we are taking.

However, I don’t think non-stealth gameplay is viable. Granted I have huge issues with the daredevil spec itself because the dodges are lackluster for grandmaster level traits. Warrior has a dodgeroll that damages at the end and it’s an adept level trait while we have that at grandmaster. It doesn’t make sense. Also the dodges completely break up the flow of combat. Dash puts you way too far from your target if you need to dodge mid combat, and the other 2 dodges will reveal you.

glaphen.5230:

All evades cost at least 4 initiative for .5 seconds of evasion, 4 initiative takes 4 seconds to regen, skill 2,3,4 and 5 all cost that same resource and Thieves don’t have the godly sword auto attacks of Revenant who also gets more evades per second regen with Shiro.

I know everyone is being sarcastic, but thief sword auto’s is something that desperately needs to be addressed. The aftercast is horrible.

Zoltreez.6435:

the side with more dragon hunters win

thats my experience loool

ftfy

Jana.6831:

You underestimate the amount of QQ thieves had and still have to endure
So DH should be fine, as well as any other class.

Silverkey.2078:

I so disagree with that. Being in a mesmer guild, we often play 5 mesmers. Yes, it is not a good team comp, it has flaws. But it’s fun, and not completely awful.

It makes no sense to restrict by profession for Pugs. On the other hand, a-net should be allowing build templates so that people can swap builds very fast based on their team comp.

It makes little sense to ban profession stacking in tournaments. I would rather they ban “build stacking”. So there can be 5 people of the same profession if they so wish, but they should all run different builds (different amulets and/or trait lines and/or weapons).

A trap dragonhunter is not a bunker guard. All their skills are different, their role is different, etc… A Profession does not really define anything in gw2, a build does.

There’s too many variables to be able to define a “build”. 6 choose 3 (n!/k!(n-k)!) = 20 possible combinations of trait lines. But within each one of those trait lines my rough math gives me 27 different paths. How do you define a build? Does each trait/sigil/rune/weapon need to be the same? Do you just need to select one of the 20 possible combinations? Computationally I think this would be an extremely taxing operation.

Salamander.2504:

Booms.2594:

@nova striker
I kinda disagree I think DH is definitely S tier but not as broken as all the idjits in this forum believe.
I’d say it’s something like
S
Dragonhunter
Scrapper
Herald
A
Reaper
Chronomancer
Druid
B
Tempest
Daredevil
C
Berserker

What I’m interesting in knowing is where the base classes fit in all of this? Are they all C’s? Where do all the elite specs need to be brought down to so that they are on the same playing field as the base specs?

I’d still say daredevil was C with berserker. Anything it can do, another class will do better.

kzar.3079:

FeelsAlright.5860:

kzar.3079:

rchu.8945:

Chokolata.1870:

What people fail to consider is, how Core classes compare to Elites. In most cases, other then Berserker or perhaps Tempest, the Elite is far stronger then the Core.

This is a major issue. Please do not just compare Elites to other Elites, consider the whole picture.

Also, the Celestial amulet is like the Minstrel amulet… ruining the game. I hope for a day when it gets removed or heavily nerfed.

Maybe it’s a business decision? Anet WANTS players both old and new to upgrade to HOT, so they are making the elites stronger. The name “elite” should be self explanatory, why would elite builds not have an advantage over core builds? I dont understand what people are kittening about.

Elites should not be stronger than core classes, only provide each class witth new mechanics and playstyles. That is not an excuse to allow OP elite specs.

Once they’re done selling expansions they’ll nerf it down. No one would have bought the expansion if they weren’t stronger.

Well then, is Guild Wars 2 a pay to win game now? Thought Arena Net wanted to differentiate themselves from all the other MMO companies out there. All elite specs should be ballanced to the level of all other core classes with no excuses. And all classes should be viable with or without their elite spec.

NCSoft/ANET’s goal is to make money. They initially did this by saying they were going to be ‘different’. Now they’re doing this by making the elites better than the core game.

kzar.3079:

rchu.8945:

Chokolata.1870:

What people fail to consider is, how Core classes compare to Elites. In most cases, other then Berserker or perhaps Tempest, the Elite is far stronger then the Core.

This is a major issue. Please do not just compare Elites to other Elites, consider the whole picture.

Also, the Celestial amulet is like the Minstrel amulet… ruining the game. I hope for a day when it gets removed or heavily nerfed.

Maybe it’s a business decision? Anet WANTS players both old and new to upgrade to HOT, so they are making the elites stronger. The name “elite” should be self explanatory, why would elite builds not have an advantage over core builds? I dont understand what people are kittening about.

Elites should not be stronger than core classes, only provide each class witth new mechanics and playstyles. That is not an excuse to allow OP elite specs.

Once they’re done selling expansions they’ll nerf it down. No one would have bought the expansion if they weren’t stronger.

Warlord.9074:

Can’t say they don’t know what they put in their own game. They knew exactly what they were doing. Everything was extensively tested.

I disagree. ANET has a history of not properly doing QA. There’s way too many bugs that would be caught if they did, and way too many bugs that have existed since release.

I would also disagree that ANET knew exactly what they were doing. There are far too many variables involved to know what will happen in terms of balance when introducing new traits/skills/weapons/runes/sigils.

I just want the human female animation to be fixed…

Does anyone else wish they would have given us real grandmaster traits for DD? The dodges just seem more lackluster every day.

I feel like if we would have gotten actual grandmasters in those slots we wouldn’t have been pushed out of this meta so hard.

Zdenny.2704:

Bullkitten, Anet made Elites OP only because it will force people to buy expansion. Again hhow it can be esport if you put non hot players into disadvantage?

I ususally don’t agree with you, but so much this. They needed to sell boxes. You forget they need to make money to continue to having jobs. Once sales drop, they’ll nerf it down.

SoulSin.5682:

Then again, has the same issue as the older PU Mesmer WvW build. If no one is attacking you, you can kill anything.
Plus you can get auto-attacked to death.

Agreed with all that. I also think we’re so of pigeonholed into escapists absolution for some sort of condi clear.

Arlowslol.1974:

Nocta.5274:

Daredevil definitely made S/D better tho.
I’m having some success running Acro Trick DrD with Bound, Pack Runes.

Acro + Pack runes gives me enough swiftness on Bound to make it for not having Dash.
Distracting Daggers is pretty neat to help S/D with interrupts since it doesn’t have headshot.

Larcenous Strike definitely could use a damage / utility buff tho. I wish the first attack was also unblockable. Make S/D the unblockable set.

I do think they should bring back the old LS, the franking strike’s skillpath is stupid, even in close combat. sometimes, the enemy dont need to dodge it, just keep running and it hit the air.

every weapon set have an active burst skill except SD, SD became the lowest damage weapon of thief because your only burst skill, larcenous strike ——need to hit someone with the FS, and you need another 1/2 casttime to put out it. That is stupid, DP can use 5+2 or anyother stealth skill to land the backstab, staff has vault, PP has unload, SP has pistol wipe, etc. Only SD, you cant active a burst skill without hitting something.

even FS cost 4 ini and LS cost 2, I can accept the trade with the ACTIVE larcenous strike…

hope Karl will read it..

I think Fist Fury would provide enough burst damage with s/d. but giving up utils is way too hard

Ravoku.1852:

Karl McLain.5604:

P.I. is set to trigger its damage when the mark expires. Currently, the mark removes when the target goes down or dies (by design). As players receive invulnerability when they go down, the damage from P.I. probably just gets negated. I could see allowing the buff to continue on downed enemies in the future.

Any thoughts on a 3 year old Sword bug that adds a ~0.5 second precast to any non-instant skill? I’d normally just let this one sit in its own report/thread, but given the amount of time it’s been in the game, and how difficult it was to pin down, I thought I’d mention it. I can give any additional information you need as to the behavior of this bug, and I’ve got another discussion thread and bug report open with more details.

Also, good to see some presence, keep up the communication.

I’d really like to see this fixed, it would bring new life in the s/x.

Burtnik.5218:

You do realize that sword is our highest dmg wep and that staff “burst” was nerfed already? Nobody will swap to hammer in melee either unless a evade is needed badly cus hammer is too weak in melee. Also i have seen people doing fine vs rev already and its so “hard hitting” ua. Also the game is not really balanced around 1v1 and its easily noticeable by ua nature.. if you want to kill rev bring condi build.

The skill still requires no setup.
Has no counterplay (double dodging is not counterplay)
Has no risk.

This is bad design.

Burtnik.5218:

FeelsAlright.5860:

Jekkt.6045:

revenant is close to being unviable.. stop crying just because you don’t want to dodge unrelenting assault or stop attacking infuse light.. and compared to other dps builds dragonhunter is still on a whole different level.

You literally can’t dodge all of UA…. even if you do blow a double dodge on UA or a 1200 range teleport, it will still be off cooldown in 12 seconds. There’s no punishment for spamming UA.

Tell me what else you have to dodge from sword revenants? Also you know the more foes around rev using ua the lower dmg it is? Or that it break on stealth/hard cc? Or that you can interrupt it before it goes off and put it on 12cd? L2p plox.

You realize they can switch weapon sets right? And those weapon sets have things you need to dodge? Double dodging is not counterplay.

The skill is poorly designed. Look at any hard hitting channeled skill. 100b, pistol whip, blurred frenzy. ALL of them root you and require sufficient set up. All UA requires is that you don’t spam it off cooldown when surrounded by people. It’s entirely too strong in a 1v1.

Jekkt.6045:

revenant is close to being unviable.. stop crying just because you don’t want to dodge unrelenting assault or stop attacking infuse light.. and compared to other dps builds dragonhunter is still on a whole different level.

You literally can’t dodge all of UA…. even if you do blow a double dodge on UA or a 1200 range teleport, it will still be off cooldown in 12 seconds. There’s no punishment for spamming UA.

Lévis.5489:

They removed it because the summoned pets trigger dragon hunter traps

And they eat half the damage from unrelenting assault.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Lol, even in the sorry state it’s in, thief is the scapegoat and forever OP. As a former thief that has essentially rerolled Mesmer for serious PvP because it’s 1000 times easier now, learn to kittening play. The bunk god mode might stacking meta is a problem beyond thief, know why? Thief has been gutted in terms of combat ability for nearly 6 months and the meta is still kitten. In fact, it’s filled with more cancer now than ever.

But yeah blame the 66666 burst never die gankerino evade spam permastealth thief.

So true. Because of the might meta you can hit as hard as a thief and have way more survive-ability. Thief hurts the least out of 94% crit chance herald and 25 might any other class.

Dojo.1867:

What makes you think it cannot be salvaged/improved? The layout is not bad even if different compared to the other maps. Don’t forget that you have a very fast extremely safe route to the close cp with the alternate base exit. The only thing the enemy could potentially try to wall you away from is raven but even there you don’t have to move straight through the middle but can go up the little path ways on the side when exiting base (or just also go via close which honestly doesn’t take much longer).

I like the idea of spawning the orb a set amount of times per game but “just fix the orb running abuse abilities” sounds easier than it is. To the point that it is almost impossible imo. Forbidding teleports makes sense due to the vertical layout of the map which makes the distance you can close with them kind of extreme. But leaps/superspeed will just exist and that is fine imo. This is why I suggested not rewarding any points when delivering the orb. Making it a decap mechanic alone is very strong and would actually be some kind of anti snowball mechanic.

The orb needs to be a transform and the player characters gets an entire new skill bar (including skills,heal,utility, and elite).

incisorr.9502:

Hannibal.5739:

@incisorr.9502
You’re kidding right?
If I fail as a thief I am dead!!!…100% easy mode forgiving lmao
Why don’t you go play one in pvp then come back & tell me how easy it is becuz i must be smoking the wrong thing

I have a thief since nearly 3 years m8.

In your eyes a mistake as thief is actually 10 mistakes because getting caught or doing something stupid is not something you consider a mistake since you just stealth out of it.

Bottom lane is that thieves are overpowered and forgiving as hell, you have too many stun breakers, 2 stealths that you can use during stun/always (steal and bomb thingy) with low cd, more stealths with animation/cast time. You have 18k hp or so with marauder which is almost the same as zerker warrior which they sort of need to keep up with dps. Zerker ele has 11k hp so they are forced to run marauder, except, they have only one TP and their stability lasts for such a short time and can be easily kited/waited out, they cant get out without their 32/40 sec TP while a thief always can

thieves and mesmers are insanely forgiving in this game which is hilarious cuz they’re supposed to take skill

You may have had a thief character for 3 years, but you certainly haven’t played it in 3 years.

It seems like you as a player have a problem versus people with stealth and getting stunned. Not thieves.

Spirit watch needs two things to fix it: Decrease the spawning of the orb. The rate it spawns makes it really hard for uncoordinated teams (solo queue) to play effectively.
Set it to spawn 3 times a game (at set time intervals) for 50 points each and it would be a solid map. Then all you have to do is fix the ability for certain classes to run the orb easily.

Leeto.1570:

You forgot mentioning that they should change/delete thief first and only then change/delete celestial, the reason why noone can play zerk builds hasnt changed, people have just been playing celestial so long that they have forgotten.

Leeto stop. Thief’s damage is nothing compared to DH traps, 94% crit chance Herald, or perma 25 stack might anything.

Xillllix.3485:

It feels like everything has to be re-balanced from scratch.

I agree with this. I think the game design is fundamentally flawed from the beginning. There are too many variables and not enough developer attention to create a balanced system.

I don’t think we have enough access to might.

Raizen.7981:

Zanyu.2017:

Elite specializations give you a different way to play the class. It’s 1/6 of the options.
just because of one different specialization.

Total options in our case: n!/k!(n-k)!
k in our case= 3(you can combine any 3 specializations)
old n= 5(when we had 5 specializations) so total “old” options: 5!/3!2!= 10 different specs
new n=6(since +1 from elite) so total choices are 6!/3!3!= 20
that means theres 10 different specs that include the elite, from a total of 20
that’s 1/2 not 1/6, get your math straight

kitten the burn is so real.

So we’re remaking this thread in pvp just to sleight them right???

Kolly.9872:

Kolly.9872:

I’m just waiting for some dev to come around and hide this topic in the thief’s subforum.

And here we are

QUOTED FOR THE kittenING TRUTH

Gunlaugr.2716:

No buffs for thieves. Cut back on the power creep instead. Overall damage is out of hand. Once again..

IsilZha.3608:

Was this intentionally lacking in detail and just outright wrong? I’ve never noticed deflecting shot to be unblockable. You’ll have to provide more detail or definitively show that it can’t be blocked. (Which I do agree should be blockable.)

GS pull has always been blockable. If you were already tagged with it, you missed your block. Stability or breaking tether range are counters for it at that point. IE: pay attention.

If OP is right its probably the trait not the skill.

Again I’ll reiterate thief is balanced, gut every thing else.

I would say the main sources of problems for thief are:

-Every class except necro (and thief of course) has invulnerabilities via traits or skills to negate our burst.
-This includes traits that proc fear, taunt, counter-stun when we stun them (our burst is highly reliant upon mug + backstab/pistol whip. But the class itself is dependent upon sleight of hand/trickery).
-Lack of might. All classes have some way to stack might to increase their damage and thief has 0 access to it. Backstab may have a high damage coefficient, but it does not hit as nearly as hard as other classes because we cannot scale it via might.

tl;dr: reduce access to invulnerabilities and reduce the access to might so you cannot wear a tanky amulet while still hitting hard.

Sagat.3285:

Kolly.9872:

I’m just waiting for some dev to come around and hide this topic in the thief’s subforum.

Nah thief is the only balanced thing in the game. Gut everything else.

jayson.6512:

I knew someone will post UA here and ask for nerf but first try that in spvp you will see Rev is like a wet noodle.

It doesn’t matter if Rev is a ‘wet noodle’. The skill is gamebreaking. You can’t triple dodge it. Block it. Or even use your teleports to escape the damage.

Whoever thought pistol whip that follows you was a good idea needs to send the drugs my way.

Inflames.8026:

Revenants, scrappers and reapers top 3. Followed by guardian, mesmer, warrior, ele, thief and at the bottom you have the ranger. With the same broken core mechanics.
A gutted elite spec that brings almost nothing. We got some cool pets tho. Guess its too strong when the pet actually does some damage.

The only elite spec that brings nothing is daredevil. 1 additional dodge.

Josh Davis.6015:

Courtyard is no longer in unranked (or ranked) queue. Your options are “Conquest” or “Stronghold”.

Come on Grouch, you know just as well as we do that 90% of the population do not want to play Sky Hammer or Spirit Watch. There’s a reason those maps aren’t in any competitive setting.

Rym.1469:

FeelsAlright.5860:

Speaking of Revenant down state..

It’s #3 downstate skill that has obvious tell and charge time. How did you manage to get hit by it, no idea.

Slowed by stomping, plus the cluster kitten of people/minions/pets/illusions all on a point.

Unrelenting Assault in general was a bad idea. Pistol Whip that follows you. You can’t even double dodge it.

Speaking of Revenant down state..