Guild Wars 2

This isn’t the 1 second cooldown. 75% of the time I can Sneak Attack right after tagging a target with CnD. This issue is almost an interrupt. The skill animation freezes, my character spazzes out, and the skill resets with a random cooldown. But it is basic mobs causing the issue even, so I know it isn’t an issue of being dazed. I will try to record it tonight and post a link.

About 1 out of every 4 Sneak Attacks, and 1 out of every 5 Backstabs, I get a weird glitch. It pauses on the skill, resets the cooldown to .5 seconds (I have had it reset it up to a 1.5 second CD before), and then I can use it again. It doesn’t do it every time. It isn’t based on the class or enemy either, it is doing it on basic mobs.

Same thing happens with my Backstabs. I go to Backstab something, it glitches, then puts a hard .5 or 1.5 second cooldown on the Backstab. Is this a known issue? I tried doing some searching for it, but didn’t find anything. It is very inconsistent. Other times I can CnD and Sneak Attack right away.

It is getting pretty frustrating not being able to reliably hit a Sneak Attack through a field, and having to wait upwards of a second to use the ability. And yes, in PvP and WvW a seconds makes a huge difference (between an enemy healing or not).

Anwho, just curious if it has been brought to their attention, or if the change was done on purpose. I did take about 8 months off, but noticed this issue pretty quick after a day of being back.

Since the April 15th patch I have been getting revealed bugs all the time now, and for things that I am not even procing with an attack. It took me a while to figure out what it was, but I finally figured it out.

If you are interrupted with a cast while in stealth (combat skill or not) you are revealed for 3 seconds and the skill is refreshed.

Pre April 15th patch, the skill would get interrupted, but it would not proc a revealed debuff. Had this happen to several guild mates as well. We would be casting NOTHING to do with damage or a damage skill, and would get revealed after an interrupt. Worst is when you are using a heal skill when you are in stealth, interrupted by a hammer warrior, and forced to sit there revealed for 3-5 seconds while your heal got interrupted on top of that.

Try it out, you will see it. And again, try this on non-damage skills, it is still causing the revealed debuff.

Had this happen dozens of times in the last 2 weeks, and it is rather game breaking. Come on ANet… any word on this getting looked at or fixed? A real response from ANet would be great too, because you can’t keep burying bugs like these…

If you want burning in your kit, try running Superior Rune of the Forge. You gain the burning ability, as well as the proc for protection. Not only does it proc off health % (most reliable proc), it gives you protection. This gives thief 2 things in your kit that we sorely need, and you gain a hell of a lot of survivability with this rune set. You also open up that heal slot to run a more appropriate skill.

Other option too is Superior Runes of The Undead. If you are running Dire or Rabid and you need to polish you build of with solid runes, these are IMO the best budget runes in the game. They give you good survivability and condi damage, while helping give you that last little kick.

I ran Runes of The Undead and Preplexity and would rotate on and off. When I had Undead equipped, I would be running about 2.5k condition damage and 3.2k armor. Beefy Cake is all I have to say! :P

Leeto.1570:

Just delete the thread XD why i even bother trying to convince hotjoiners that class that destroys strategy is bad for competetive play.
Go back to hotjoin and keep farming them chests, thats all that matters, you can kill thief in 1v1 so all is gut.
Maybe one day you will try out TPVP and realize what this game is really about.

Truth, haha. And if you do TPvP you will see that Thief is the least of your worries!

EDIT: Pass that stuff you are hallucinating with! It sounds fun!

Played some PvP today for the hell of it, and figured I would see how my bunker build got changed. I used to have a pretty decent bunker condi build pre-patch and could hold a point stealthless against 1 or 2 pretty evenly.

Went into a few matches today and just got 1 or 2 shot by combos from Warriors and Mesmers. I have 14k life and 3.3k armor… and I am getting combo’d down in less than 2 seconds by these two classes. On top of that they are shedding the conditions (5 types and several stacks) in a matter of seconds or even with one skill use.

I also saw a Mesmer use an Illusionary Zerker on a point and combo our entire team down with one go.

What gives, and what changed?! I can take these classes handedly and repeatedly in WvW… yet I just get insta-downed in PvP. I changed hardly anything since the pre-April patch and it is a MASSIVE difference. Anyone else having these issues? Anyone have a good condi thief build? I have yet to even see a condi build yet. Are they even good anymore?

Played 9 games, and saw 3 Warriors or Mesmers in every match. I saw one other Thief, and did not see a SINGLE condition build except for what I was running. I eventually caved because of this to a Power build, and even tried a Zerk build. Both were even worse. At least with condition builds I did damage to the target, if only for a second or two.

Thoughts on the state of Thief PvP? Because IMO it is at the bottom of almost every list now. Stealth is all we have left I guess. :/

OP: I have no idea what you are smoking, but I want some. Because if it makes you think that the thief is over powered… you are high as a kite.

This April patch actually single-handedly destroyed the thief class in every build spec.

I played countless games for several hours, and saw mainly 3 things. Zerk Warriors, Zerk Mesmers, and PvT Everything. I did not see a single condition build and the only thief I saw had to go full bunker to not keep from being 1 or 2 shot by a Ham-bow Warrior.

If you honestly think that the Thief is still over powered after this patch… you need to go play Mesmer or Warrior and pass that hash pipe you have. And if you are dying to thieves that much, you really need to look at your fundamentals… and not nerfing (yet again) one of the toughest classes in the game.

It is the same mis-placed rage that got the Warriors and Mesmers (and Necros) to become the new FotY for GW2. Try playing thief, and when you put your big boy pants back on, then come post here.

That has happened yes, and it has proc’d as it states, but other times it has not. It has been his mark while using the staff. I have a necro as well so know the skill. It also does not explain at all why Warriors are able to do it as well.

I know as well too that it is no the corrupt boon for the simple fact that the switfness and regen that are on the bar are not converted into conditions.

Seen this topic dozens of times over the last year, and still nothing has been done. Fear is STILL stripping stability off of the bar and interrupting skills. This shows itself most with dagger storm against Warrior and Necromancer. No other conditions will be present on my status bar, and one fear will not only remove stability from my bar with 4 more seconds left, it will interrupt the Dagger Storm skill.

This happens on other classes as well, including as another Necromancer with stability in your Plague Form.

Is ANYTHING going to be done about this?! Or should I just find new skills to use?

For the last hour and a half I have been falling through the map to my death, or just being insta-stunned and locked into a clipping that throws me through the map. It happens whenever I enter a new zone, and the only way to fix it is through teleporting or WPing. Even then, it only fixes it 50% of the time, or I have to relog.

Please fix this, it is getting old. And it is not just happening to me, it is happening to several guild mates as well.

Yea this bug is getting another unintended effect too… it is kicking me out of Death Shroud when I cast it instantly. It give me a 10 second cooldown and no skill use. Other issue is happening when I use thief too :/ just instantly uses steal and my bundle…

Had this happen several times taking camps in the last 24 hours. When a Veteran Cabalist is present in the camp, and you evade the pull he does, it glitches you out, pulls you toward him, and he proceeds to glitch kick you into the air about 2000 or 2500 units, killing you instantly when you land. And yes… it is kicking me up in the air, almost out of the map sometimes. Anyone else having this issue?!

Went to buy some gems, and noticed a few changes, some not so good. There is about a 2 second delay, and then an error message pops up for a payment selection of Credit Card, PayPal, and paysafecard. Never seen that last one before, figured they added something.

Thing that really creeps me out though is the change of company now when doing PayPal. A disclaimer pops up for approval for payment and ToS for a company called Digital River Inc…. you click the link though and there is NO mention of GW2. Is this a known and confirmed change by ANet, or did I just hit the unlucky hijack version of the black market BLTC?! I am fine paying to a new company if ANet and NCSoft confirm it, but there has been no announcement that I have seen at all, nor have I found a single thing on the forums… :/

Anyone know what the dealyo is?! Just wanting to be safe instead of throwing all my money at some company I don’t know.

Still happening… still no idea why it is not fixed. Been a known bug for SEVERAL months… yet still not addressed. It is horridly rampant with immobilizes followed by CC. The CC doesn’t launch you, and then you just sit there… unable to move for about 5 or so seconds, sometimes longer.

Frankly too this bug is heavily exploited by Hammer Warriors and Turret Engineers. Even with removal negating the immobilize, the outrite spamming that both these classes offer mean even without immobilize on your bar you are sitting there waiting for animations to finish unless you have enough endurance or a stun break. Don’t get me wrong ANet, your make a gorgeous game, but your animations are destroying the foundation of stable gameplay.

These bugs and several others are frankly making parts of this game unplayable. Don’t even get me started on stuns or dazes completely resetting entire cooldowns without properly using a skill.

And yes, been reporting several of these for months through forums, support pages, and in-game bug reporting… yet they are still running rampant. :/

Noticed this a lot over the last several weeks, but it is getting pretty old. There are 2 issues I have been running into.

If the target is not directly in line of sight for a steal, Mug is having a tough time procing. It is getting “iffy” as to whether or not I will gain a heal from it. Having a fail rate on this skills is not good… it sort of destroys the trait. The last few times this has happened too, the target is not in a blinding powder, I am not blinded, and I am not being CC’d in any way. I know if fails for those reasons, but it is not working when it should now.

The last few times I have seen it the easiest is when the target is downed, and I don’t have direct line of sight. I go to steal, get the daze and steal, but no Mug trait is triggering.

The other issue is with stealing in general. I have about a 40% fail rate against stealing from ambient creatures. 40% of the time I steal it doesn’t even heal, do damage, or give a bundle. It just throws the CD on the steal. I still teleport to the ambient creature, but that is it. On a very unlucky occasion it uses the steal and leaves me in place… while providing none of the other effects—that has left me dead several times in the last few weeks too.

Getting really frustrating having cooldowns on skills being sucked up and reset for the full time on stun or daze. This has been happening on and off lately, but I am seeing it more and more lately. It is happening worst with skills that have the trigger animation at the END of the cast time or channeled skills – EX. Caltrops, Doom, Unholy Feast, Empower. My issue with this though is that the dazes are coming in-between the casting animation and the actual casting—leaving the skill used on your bar, but NOTHING actually happens. So now you are stuck with a 20-90 second cooldown in a fight and nothing to show for it.

The channeled skills sort of make sense for interruption depending on how far down the chain you are… if you are 1 or 2 into the chain of 5 blasts, that makes sense. But if you haven’t even gotten the first blast out after the initial animation, it should NOT be sucking up a full 20 second cooldown for the skills. Sadly though it is.

I have noticed this less when it is a launch or down, only because it is a longer time and there is more recovery in the animations. It still happens though.

After testing this a LOT on raptors and moas, I figured something wasn’t right. This is happening against NPCs and players as well, probably on both sides of the board. I play a stun thief, and it is probably annoying as hell to have your CDs used up with nothing happening—hell, even using this build I feel like it is broken and not working correctly.

Again, I know some of this is probably intended by ANet… but a very big portion of this seems like it is not functioning correctly. It seems to me like the correct function is denying use of the skill and resetting the cooldown for 3-5 seconds depending on the stun/daze—not just “ninjaing” the cooldown and skill use.

Anyone else having similar issues?!

Yea. I just flipped a camp. The camp vets and guard died…. but they stood standing. For about 20 seconds. I couldn’t take the camp cause their “zombie state” corpses where there. Then they disappeared after 5 seconds… everything speed up for a sec… and BAM, 2 dolyaks, a vet, and a guard spawned full health. Lol.

This is not just with zergs though if you would all listen to what is being said. This is flat out all of the map. It happens in small 1v1 or 2v2 fights too. The game physically cannot be played as is. Period.

I spent over 30 seconds running and TRYING to use a heal skill. Any of them. Nothing works. Ever.

And don’t say go play PvE. The entire reason I play this is WvW. On top of that I have wasted over 10 hours of my Birthday Buff for only a rough 1.5 hours of actual WvW time.

Hands down, after over a year in live play, I have no idea how a company like this can allow this to go on for so long.

This is flat out unplayable. For over 5 minutes I had a fight in a 3v3 and we spent the entire 5 minutes singing 1’s from out keyboard cause that is all it allows. On top of that the skill lag is NOT effecting both parties at the same time. Repeatedly I have ran into groups that use entire combos flawlessly while I, and my other guildies, are forced to resort to spamming 1s or SITTING there for 15 seconds just to start a heal.

Hands down this is unplayable in any way, shape, or form. And if you all complain about how it only effects some of you, or to get a better computer?!?! Remember it is all about location, location, location. You are closer to a server access point or closer to a server hub—so please just shut the hell up and move along.

For the rest of us that are not this lucky… and to those that say adapt…. it is not an issue of map location either. The ENTIRE map is like this. It is physically unplayable.

I am having the same issue. I had a condi Warrior come in and hit me for 4 attacks that were barely over 3k. I have 20k health and I died in the time of those 4 attacks. Unless his burns are hitting me for over 2k, and his bleeds are hitting for 2k a tick… there is not really any reason that it should have hit that hard.

He was running around too with 4 of us chasing, me on a guardian even and it is still nuking through the heal, block, and 3 meditations/heals (4k a second about). He proceeded to down 2 of us and almost down me and the other guy before we got him too.

And no confusion was not on the condition list.

I can’t tell if this is happening anywhere else, but the stun breaks are NOT breaking animations of launches to return control the player. I get control of skills but am still having significant lag between actually having skills activate after stun break. The animation takes about 2-3 seconds sometimes on my char. My bar is clear, I can click stuff. but nothing happens and I cannot move.

This shows itself most in PvP on the Skyhammer map and the panes of glass. I stun break off a launch… but just SIT there for 2 seconds on the glass as my char “picks himself up” to walk around or use a skill. By the time he finishes his animation 2 seconds have past and I am falling through the air to my death. I used Stand Your Ground, Save Yourself, and Contemplation of Purity and NONE of them give clear stun breaks after a launch. I get my bar back and CDs are gone… but I cannot activate skills. I died 5 times in Skyhammer to this, and even got a few kills because of it.

Try it you, you will see the delay.

If this is happening anywhere else feel free to post it. I have had it happen here and there in WvW and other PvP maps, but it is REALLY EASY to recreate the bug on the Skyhammer windows/glass.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Everything I talk about is wvw and pvp related.

If thieves want cleansing, they basically have to spec into stealth cleansing. This makes most non-stealth thief builds… useless. Things like pistol/pistol are heavily penalized because they can’t stealth reliably.

Just off the top of my head I thought of a trait for pistols that could be something like:

Grandmaster: Every 8th pistol strike cleanses a condition.

Just trying to brainstorm some ideas that would make more non-stealth thief builds viable. I’m very tired of being pigeon-holed into running stealth skills and traits just so I can sustain.

A… freaking… MEN! I have 2 thieves right now, one crit and one condition. I frankly can’t stand stealth trees on either of them (or stealth in general) yet I have to go stealth to get the ability to even go heads up with 1v1s or solo camps in WvW. I would prefer a class set that has a 2nd version of thief that focuses on manipulation of a target (stuns, immobilizes, shifts, teleporting the target places) that is non-stealth.

Hell, give us access even to a tree that gives MASSIVE cooldown to shifts and traps with even more immobilizes but no health. Even give us a trap that when triggered heals us (make that the heal). Or give us a trap that fears when triggered.

On that point too, talking about the other non-stealth feel of the class….

Stealth Fix:
-Stealth is now a camouflage skill giving you 70% transparency like in most FPS games.
- In this form add a declared chance (50%) to cause an opponent to miss, YET attack while you are in this stealth form. Still allow them to target you or even see you, but add the ability of a chance to miss. They can swing all they want then, they just need to know the miss chance is there too.

Combat:
- For damage or stealth triggered abilities, add a combo scaler to them. Upon first successful stealth and attack combo in 5 seconds, you get +10% damage (next one +25% damage, followed by +50% damage, up to the normal +100% or double damage).

This would work like…. Stealth > attack (3 second reveal timer). For combo timer to trigger for new ability or higher DPS, you must stealth within another 5 seconds. Upon that the timer resets to 3 second reveal after you attack. If you stealth again within 5 seconds of the reveal timer being done, then you get access to the Tier II, ect., ect… I hope that makes sense. This would negate a lot of the drama people have with HS spammers right now, nukes from stealth from thieves, and most thieves who enjoy playing for skill would like it more for the challenge. People would be more inclined to not complain at thief dps too, due to the fact that the initial stealth would be making it less potent.

You could then spec into a very interesting tree resulting in a few fun traits like….

- When a target misses an attack against you, they are blinded for their next attack.
- Increase your miss chance by 15% while in stealth.
- Going stealth also applies protection for 3 seconds (5 second cooldown).
- When attacking from stealth, there is a 5% chance the duration will not be interrupted.
- When you are hit for more than 20% of your health in one hit, your targets chance to miss is increased to 100% for 5 seconds (60 second cooldown). (Make it like the warrior block chain, or engi shield skill, or the guardian heal combo.)
- When you are stealthed, gain toughness (180 max toughness at level 80).
- When you attack from stealth, your next attack is unblockable (15 second cooldown).
- If you are hit while you are stealthed, your attacker is weakened for 15 seconds and blinded (60 second cooldown).
- REWORK SIGIL OF SHADOWS – On activation grants 15 seconds of swiftness. Passive—Take 10% less damage from successful attacks while stealthed.
- NEW HEAL [Sheltering Shroud] – Heal for X amount (self) and allies for X (.4 of original X) in 250 radius. You gain protection for 7 seconds your enemies are blinded. This skill protects allies in a radius of 250 for 3 seconds if you are already stealthed upon activation.
- One more fun trait … Critical hits from stealth reduce your reveal timer by 2 seconds (10 second cooldown).

If they did this along with an increase in the base health pool, I would FREAKING LOVE my thief again. They might not simply be insta-hated too :/

More fun ones too, haha. Anyways, all that being said, I truly think that a rework of stealth to be more of a “shroud” with a chance to miss, would work MUCH better than the current system… for both sides of the spectrum.

PART II

It is getting there with the last few patches. But it has a way to go.

Honestly I feel as though it is easy to try things, but difficult to truly go against the meta and win. Maybe that is what ANet wants, I am for that. I am still on a daily basis re-traiting 5+ times. But some classes seem to have more tools. They say they wanted the ability for classes to not be truly defined by roles…. then give us the ability to use all the tools that are in the game, not some. And I am not saying give every class access to everything at once, but at least give us the ability to reasonably trait into every boon or every condition in each class.

Hell, rename the title of this then to Boon/Conditions for EVERYONE! Maybe even put an Oprah gif with it… it might get a better point across than I can. But if I want to paint happy trees like Bob Ross told me too, and I don’t have green paint… then I can’t paint happy trees can I?

Sorry if I am frustrating to deal with, and sorry if you don’t feel the same way. Let me know your thoughts, cause I would love to hear. But at the same point too, I know some of you can agree… I like a certain class, so let me play it the way I would love to. And help me find a way that is rewarding for it.

And example of this can be how a Condi Thief using Perplexing runes has access to 4-5 conditions if he uses venoms too. The one (and the most powerful) that is missing is burning. And it breaks my heart. I have a burn/tanky warrior who rocks face. Yet he is just flat out boring in my opinion compared to thief. Yet, against what they stated at the beginning of the game release, I as a thief do not have access to the top 3 tools a warrior or necro does—fear, burn, and chill.

Obviously I don’t think that the class should flat out have all the skills a necro does, but give is a Venom called Firefly Venom. Make it burn the target for 5 seconds per a hit, with 3 stacks. Then we get our burn, and another fun venom.

Back to the boon discussion. The thief class, plus others, do not have ANY access to protection. Protection on a properly balanced DPS class with 3.5k armor and 25k health can make for a VERY good build and amazing character. (And yes, next time you all say “I CAN TANK LIKE MADZ!”… look at if you have protection up… you would be surprised how often you do.) So if as a thief I wanted to sacrifice almost all my pure DPS for conditions and tankiness, let me. Reward me for wanting to. As of right now there is a reward partially for both, but it leaves a lot to be desired with a nearly max life pool of 18k.

To the haters out there too for stealth, frankly I could care less about it. I think it should be reworked entirely. I know, I play thief, and yes… I said it. REWORK STEALTH! Now that that is out of the way…

With the above boon missing from our build though, I feel as though going toughness and vitality is not rewarding. At the same point, I have 4 pieces of toughness and vitality missing from my Warrior (and big ones too—chest, legs, amulet, and weapon) yet I am still a TON more tanky than my thief… simply because I have access to regeneration (stacked) and protection. I would love to play my warrior though too, but sometimes I feel his lack of poison in his kit makes him weaker than my thief in a way.

Anyways, I know that might open a big conversation, and I hope it does. I hope to hear back from you all soon. And thank you for those of you who gave me some solid and great responses.

-Icarus

PART I

As I have stated before in other posts, the toughness build is not rewarding. I built 2k+ of it on several characters with 1600-2k+ vitality, with no avail of stopping 5k, 7k, 8k, 9k single shots or even 15k+ combos.

Yes toughness does negate it, a little bit. I played a full zerk thief and full zerk warrior for several months. I did see a very marginal difference in their ability to deal out big damage and also receive it. The issue is that the negation of those numbers, in WvW specifically, is not negated retrospectively for the % it states it SHOULD be in the full armor bar. It negates a little bit, but at the most 10% of the actual critical builds. Sure it negates about 50%+ (at least it seems like that) of most average attacks (NPC and players both). The issue is that there is still a massive ceiling here. I have 3.5k armor on 3 of my characters, and in the past 2 days I have been hit for a combo of 15k and 25k—with dozens of average crits landing for 5-7k for a spike. That negation is there; yet at the same point, some classes spam those 5-7k hits, constantly.

I played most of those classes for a while as well. I have an 80 in every class, I know how they work. I still have full zerk gear on my thieves, and warrior. The issue is the fact that there seems to be no reward for going truly tanky in WvW for some classes.

Anet has not adressed this because its not an issue. toughness is not meant to keep you alive when 20+ players are attacking you. bruizer builds crush zerker builds with skill. tanky support builds make your team redicuously more powerful. you just underestemate toughness.

I have been in SoR from launch up until this last month. I understand zerg mechanics, and got sick of it to move to a lower tier sever for smaller battles. Much happier down here. Issue still does come up in large fights with zergs. I agree that this is a bigger issue, but it still shows it’s ugly head even in 1v1 2v2 or 3v3 fights in WvW.

Cruril Darksbane.2318:

Funny because my T/V/P Guardian quite happily tanks all the DPS and heals to full every burst while happily killing anyone who is stupid enough to get in range or unlucky enough to get caught.

What class are you playing out of curiousity because that plays an important part of what set you choose. Not to mention your trait line.

And this my friend is the perfect way to put this…. the simple fact that since release ANet has made it a majestic selling point that the “holy trinity” of roles is gone. They wanted to grant all classes the ability to have a stable and even chance of success without having to be pigeon-holed into a role. I feel that they have done this fairly well but have really suffered in some ways. The main reason that some classes such as Mesmer, Elementalist, Warrior, and Guardian have gotten such success out of the use of toughness and vitality is not just the 2 single state bases… but it is because of boons as well. The two main ones being Regeneration and Protection.

These classes listed above have access to nearly and endless array of boons depending on your spec or builds. They can gain protection and regeneration on a whim, and sustain it for a while. I have a regeneration protection warrior that is condition. He can currently regenerate 1500 health a second without crit procs. If the crits proc, he can gain close to 2200 health a second. That is just stupid. I find it funny and play the class when I get bored. He can take 4-5+ people in WvW and not break a sweat. The reason is vitality + toughness + regeneration + protection. And he can have endless regeneration with nearly endless protection. But I find the class boring. I am more intrigued by a bow Ranger that goes condition, or a thief that is all condition and toughness/vitality.

The issue though lies in the fact that my Guardian at 3.5k armor can tank far more than my thief also at 3.5k. The simple reason in my opinion is the access to the array of boons—mainly protection too.

They made this the biggest selling point in the game when it started… the breaking of the holy trinity for any class to fulfill the roles of the player. Yet I feel as though there is not reward for building outside of critical for DPS, or for building toughness/vitality on classes that do not have access to the boons you need to make it worth while.

PART II below…

Still no point to toughness or any sort of armor or vitality in WvW. What is the point of this stat set at all when Critical Damage builds are running rampant. Honest question for ANet staff ONLY… When are you fixing or addressing the issue of a one-sided build type? You constantly set waves of information saying that you work to reward build diversity, yet there is still no reward for anything outside of Critical Damage.

I even have a Critical Damage build on 2 characters, a Warrior and Thief… it’s old. So when is the reward coming for something else? On top of that what the hell is being done about toughness? As I can see it, having 3.5k armor means nothing right now, especially when you get hit for over 9k on a single BS or 11k on a single Churning Earth.

Give us rewards for thinking outside your box please. Because at this rate this game isn’t doing anything, myself and 25+ others of us in my guild, will be out by December—uninstalled and moving onto a game that doesn’t reward one type of build.

Trolls (kitten ragers && L2P’ers), go ahead and post comments, I will either flag them to be removed or not even read them. If you post meaningful and mature discussion back, I am happy to talk. To the rest of you who have known of this issue, let me know your thoughts. I have tried posting this issue several times on forums only to have trolls take over. I know there are those of you that agree, I talk to you in game all the time. Now is the time to speak up!

And yea, ANet staff, this one is for you specifically. Why have you not addressed this yet?!

JKFlipFlop.7123:

dank.3680:

Icarus.1728:

Joey.3928:

Did a little roaming in SBI BL and ran into some [XOXO] (Dank and a couple others). You guys are really skilled and gave me advice that I will heed and iterate on my build a bit more to pump in some more damage.

Next time we meet, hopefully you will see a difference

And to that D/D ele I was dueling, we will have to continue next time. Sorry you dc’d >.< You finished my daily though

Lol, yea… the only [XOXO] I have ran into so far fight at towers and run inside at 10% health (tower-hump), or wait til they are 5v1 against me. They specifically are some of the wrost BM players I have seen yet actually. Made some guilds on JQ look like the popes royal guard.

Oh well, here is to hoping there are some actually honorable players in SBI…. ugh :/

lol wut.. #1 XOXO are not tower humpers, the only time I will run into a tower is if I am alone getting ganked by 5 ppl..

2. judging by your post a few up, aren’t you on NSP? Much like XOXO?

LOL, he’s on NSP and BMing XOXO, what xD

There were 3 guys in SBI this afternoon specifically that have no backbone. Tags were [XOXO] [RISE] and [LEXS] that were horrid tower-humpers and runners. If XOXO is just trully NSP… they should recheck their rosters. Cause someone is running around in SBI Invader giving their guild a VERY VERY bad name. Hell all of those 3 guys from SBI are giving those guilds a very bad name lol.

Joey.3928:

Did a little roaming in SBI BL and ran into some [XOXO] (Dank and a couple others). You guys are really skilled and gave me advice that I will heed and iterate on my build a bit more to pump in some more damage.

Next time we meet, hopefully you will see a difference

And to that D/D ele I was dueling, we will have to continue next time. Sorry you dc’d >.< You finished my daily though

Lol, yea… the only [XOXO] I have ran into so far fight at towers and run inside at 10% health (tower-hump), or wait til they are 5v1 against me. They specifically are some of the wrost BM players I have seen yet actually. Made some guilds on JQ look like the popes royal guard.

Oh well, here is to hoping there are some actually honorable players in SBI…. ugh :/

Lol, I was going to hopefully fine some finally good IoJ and SBI players… sadly none of you have grown a spine yet. Enjoy you tower humping and zergs I guess. If you are going to do either at least do it well. If anyone from IoJ or SBI actually has some balls and wants to 1v1, I would love a fun fight.

If not, then to IoJ or SBI: if you are going to tower-hump or zerg… at least do it well. My word, lol. Sometimes it’s like watching a pack of cats being directed by a rat dressed like a bird smelling of catnip… the better part is when that rat goes off a cliff and you all follow.

Oh well, here is to an actually good match-up next week!

@OP – I apologize for a majority of the thief community that doesn’t just troll L2P. Saldy that is mostly all you will get on the forums here.

I am in the same area as you though. Rampant issue is the fact that even building toughness and vitality mean absolutely nothing. The same is true for any class building any critical/zerk in any area. I have 2k toughness and 600 vit on my thief, and I still get hit for over 11k on a C/D combo, 6k+ on a HS, and 12k+ from a rifle warrior. Oh, don’t forget the elementalist hitting me for 8.5k using churning earth, or 5.7k using dragon claw.

Again, I agree with you OP. Just the tip of the crap iceberg that is the Wild West Shootout … ugh, I mean WvWvW. :/

Best of luck though, and know that there are those of us that feel your frustration. Sadly a majority of these trolls on this thread just love to pitch a tent on their number “2” key.

In all honesty too, I agree, raise the cost to 5 int. On top of that, make toughness and vitality worth a kitten again.

And yea… this bug… along with the C/D “Immune” bug has been getting me killed… A LOT!

Guess I should just go back to D/P spam… :/

A simple concept, I posted once before, and I state again.

Toughness and Vitality are doing nothing to solve the power creep outside of pure crit and glass canon builds. Building over 2k toughness and 600+ vit, makes me really wonder what the point is when I get hit for 14k by a rifle warrior.

Honestly it has boiled down the one simple mechanic and though. WvWvW is about who crits first, nothing less. If you think differently, than you either don’t play that often, or are running one of the crit builds and are pulling your gun first (quite literally).

What is honestly and truly being done to remedy this? Most classes health pools are trash too, not even beginning to remedy the power creep that has happened on ascended gear.

Full zerk builds or even blended zerk builds can get anywhere between 60-80% crit chance and 85-115% crit damage without really trying. What is the point though as a defensive builds or stats when on a Guardian even, I am getting hit for 8k Backstabs and Churning Earths? And yes, still getting hit for 10k+ by rifle warriors.

I know other people are having these issues, and are having a frustrating time. Please speak up.

Possible fixes:
- Increase health pools.
- Provide more weakness procs or protection procs for classes outside of the crit builds.
- Reduce overall ascended gear critical hit percentage buffs (the roof has raised over 25% since January, yet toughness and vit have not risen to scale), or raise the stat ranges on toughness and vitality.
- Reduce damage combos and procs for the known outrageous 1-hit combos – EX. Thief = Basalisk – C/D – BS – HS spam // I do play crit thief, and yes, even I think this is just 1 example of many outrageous combos (in this class and in many others).
- Provide better passive trait rewards to those of us wanting to build AWAY from critical builds and zerk.

Playing a few of the classes and having an 80 in every class but Engineer, I can tell you that minus 2 builds in 2 classes, every other build is far out weighed by just going flat critical & zerk.

This teamed with the issue of zerging still, it makes for a very sad steam-rolling wild west shoot-out.

Please feel free to leave comments or ideas as well. Comments with trolling, harassing, L2P spamming, and a just plain rude nature will not be addressed. And yes, ANet, please do feel free to chime in. You know this is an issue as well, so what is being done to fix it?

-Icarus

Best of luck on your shoot-outs!

I like your posted build, and think it is running in the right direction. I would recommend a few things to tweek it into the right direction. Hope this helps you!

The biggest thing for you is I would commit to a damage type. Sadly thieves are not the best to split build with. We do okay rounded out with stats, runes, and sigils, but we are not rewarded as nearly as much as Necromancer, Guardians, or Elementalists.

Your build seems to be going into some power traits on your weapons and armor. You have +728 into power combined in all your pieces. I like the thought of splitting for runes in bleeding, and think you should commit to doing a solid bleed condition build. If you do that, I would recommend dropping carrion completely from your build.

When you drop Carrion, you have 3 ways you can roll. You can go more traditional and standard for the Rabid, or you can do a blend or Rabid and Carrion. The last is going the super tanky condition path of Apothecary (I call my build the witch doctor, and it uses the Apothecary set). If you go Rabid or Apothecary, grab some Runes of the Undead, as they are a backbone of the build in my opinion.

For thieves, since we are so poor at condition stacking with basic skills, we need to overcome this by either stacking more condition application options, or stacking more condition duration. In regards to the above applications, we have a few choices that really do help and give us a fighting chance against high removal classes—venoms, sigils, and at least 20 in deadly arts. Sadly as a class, thief does not benefit from condition duration in Sigils—our stacks are removed to quickly for how few we put on. Instead I would focus on keeping food buffs up and running +40% condition duration, as well as the X% you get from how ever much you put in Deadly Arts.

I would recommend dropping Acrobatics and adding it to either Deadly Arts to gain Mug (one of my favorite traits for thief!), or adding it to trickery to gain more condition damage and buffs from stealing.

Now from here, we go to weapons. Get some on-crit or swap Sigils for your weapons. I recommend going Sigil of Earth if you use Rabid weapons and the V trait from Trickery. With about +45% of crit chance, you will see stacks going up rather quickly (2 second cooldown for the Sigil). I enjoy using Sigil of Doom as well. The free poison proc is never a bad thing—it stacks nicely!

The would highly recommend going trait II in Trickery as well. This will help compensate for your low health. It helps against zerk classes, and does give you a slight edge in getting out alive.

Lastly, drop Shadow Signet. Run NOTHING on your bar that shows you are a thief. I know it sounds stupid, but not knowing what class you are in WvW helps a ton. If you have a Signet or buff that spoils your surprise before the fight even starts… you will have a tough time winning fight. If you play chaotic condition thief using C/D > Unload > Shadow Strike > AA until C/D is up or stealth is ready—people have a tough time sticking to you, you can evade, and your conditions are doing damage (a lot).

Also, look into Skale Venom and Spider Venom. They are better than you think!

Keep your Refuge or Shadowstep… but not both. Not if you trait into II in Trickery and stack some regen/healing power.

Hope that helps! Good luck! If you need any more help just PM me or find me in game.

-Icarus

I have been running a tanky condition thief for a few weeks now and love it. My main weapon set is P/D with +10 condition per a stack and poison on swap.

My issue is that the off-main weapon flat duration sigils aren’t cutting it. I just feel like they are wasted. I have 1 or 2 slots to work with. Any suggestions? I swap off-main weapon between S/P and SB.

I am open to suggestions on off-main weapon combo, as well as sigils. Thanks!

What is the point of Toughness and Condition Damage?

Currently I see none, when I stack 2k of toughness, with Vitality, Condition, and Healing and am still getting 2 shot in fights. I got hit for 6k every single fight tonight that I was in. What is the point of weakness too? Even with targets weakened… why even put toughness in the game? I also see no point condition damage either when I can stack 7 conditions and see them all gone in 2 seconds.

On top of that, what is being done with the rampant amount of removal for conditions in the game right now? I have seen this both in my favor greatly, and in the favor of my enemies. As it is right now, I can stack regen, and healing over 5 ways on my build, and have 6 passive de-buffs with a specific de-buff of 7 different conditions + healing + regen. I see no point really of condition, both defensively and offensively. As my build is too right now, I can stack 7 different conditions in 1.5 seconds including 4 torment, and 10 bleeding, with 90 seconds of poison. Yet… someone can remove all of that in less than 5 seconds and heal all damage done. Difference, they use 1-2 skills… I use 4 and an elite.

On top of this issues of toughness, that I stated before, it seems to be rewarding 2 classes specifically… Warrior and Elementalist. I really do hate to say it that way, but they are the 2 who are rewarded the most from not having to build it. I have had an Elementalist clear 7 different conditions, heal 70% health, and turn around and crit me for 7k using Dragon’s Claw or Churning Earth—this was against my 2k toughness, vit, and healing build as well. Or why even build toughness when a Warrior comes in to stun lock you for 6 seconds, and hit you for over 18k in 1 combo of Hundred Blades (Screen below…)

*[ Yes, I did have only 15k health and 1.8k toughness with 2.9k armor at the time. Not godly at the time, but still pretty decent for having 110% crit and 45% crit chance still. For a thief that is pretty tanky as well. With 18k worth of damage getting through, and me not even denting 15% of his health on my combo, what is the point? ]

As the way it stands right now, this is an issue of a wild west shootout most of the fights in WvW… who can crit first?

With this “who crits first” issue, it is my strong opinion that toughness is not working… specifically in World vs. World. My main character has 400+ into vit, 2k toughness, 3.2k armor, 1.1k healing (and all of the listed removal/regen/healing above), and I still get dropped in 1-2 crit attacks by nearly every class but Necromancer and Ranger. Specifically I am getting hit by attacks for 5k, 6k, 7k each fight I have. The last time I ran into a condition build was a Necromancer over 2 days ago.

Power creep has happened, plain and simple… so the true question is ANet:

“How are you going to fix it?”
“How are you going to remove the seemingly endless amount of cleanse?”
“How are you going to truly make builds other than zerk worth it?”
“What is being done to reign in those ‘spikes’ of crits way outside of your normal damage output?” Yes, we have all seen this happen, both in our favor and against us.

Sure this was fine and dandy for the very minimal changes 3 weeks ago with the overhaul, but the creep is back. People just found ways to stack not only tanky zerk builds, but add removal too. Before you get holier than thou on me too, I have a critical hit build on both my warrior and thief, and yes, they are flat out too strong. It is pathetic that I can build 2 pieces of zerk on my PVT warrior and hit for 8k with my adrenaline skills. What is the point of diversity then? As I can see right now, there is no reward outside of PvE for diversity outside of zerk or crit. This shift is just swinging back to what it was before the patch. I have seen less and less condition builds every day now, and more and more zerk builds again.

Anyways, I do look forward to the honest and thoughtful comments and will address them accordingly. And yes, ANet, I truly hope you do see this—even with all the flak, kitten, and L2P comments I will surely get.

EDIT: Edited for spelling and verbage, as best as I could at least.

Flat out, stability is not working. Something is wrong. On both my Guardian and Thief, my stability skills grant me 10 seconds of stability. I can see the stun-break offered on the list of traits as well.

Continually and without fail… most of time I have used stability I have gotten: stunned, feared, immobilized, rooted, or knocked down… stability is still present on my tab of buffs… but I am getting CC’d hard. I have tried 2 times to post this in past bug reports as well, and nothing has happened. PLEASE FIX THIS! It is driving me nuts not having my “break stun” work on the Guardian, and getting feared/stunned/immobilized/rooted in Dagger Storm.

I have even been having it happen in my favor as well from time to time. I will get immobilize, stun, fear, or root on other people on my Necro and Thief against people with stability ALL the time.

I know others are having issues with this as well, so please speak up. Won’t go away until they realize it is a big enough issue.

Yay a full venom/condi/tank build! 30/0/30/0/20

What last few traits would you add?!

Here is to hoping 10 more trait points in an expansion!

K, thanks for the tip, now my thief can 1 shot Keep Lords too! Errr ma gad…. no-clip is pretty lame… very old school and out of style, go back to CS.

Yea, sad thing is, it was hacking. I do play thief too, trolls. Played it since release, hence I could tell something was up—like landing cloak and dagger with no target to hit. Thanks for giving a frak though. Glad the community here is so leet. Makes League of Legends looks like sunshine and unicorn farts.

Yea, just ran into a thief going stealth through reveal timer, cleansing 9 conditions and gaining full health (from 10% left) from 1 C/D, and stealthing from S/D Cloak & Dagger with NOTHING anywhere near him. Oh, and some how hitting for 8-10k through 2k toughness and 1.2k healing build?!

What the hell?! New exploit I didn’t get the memo on? Oh, and he is 1 shoting Dolyaks, as well as full toughness/healing Guardians.

Come on… why don’t I get filled in on fun exploits like this?!

1. New Particle Effects – Bind on armor pieces individually as well—IE. I can put an ice effect on my medium armor or heavy armor.
2. Condition Damage / Removal Balance
3. Team/Guild PvP Ranking & Play

And… a 4th/5th for the hell of it…

4. Guild Halls
5. Real-life PvP Tourney Prizes

Any though or ideas being thrown around about fixing condition removal? Not only is completely over-powered for 2 classes in specific, but it is seemingly non-existent in others.

I honestly dread playing my condition Memser or Thief in WvW for the simple fact that condition removal is about as prevalent as the flu in Mid-January. I feel like condition removal on skills need a rework or a cap.

For the last 3 weeks I have had nothing but failure with condition builds in WvW against other classes, especially against Guardian and Elementalist. Every fight I stack at least 8 conditions on them, only to have it removed in 1-2 seconds and have continual removal for upwards of 10 seconds.

Honestly the concept of a condition build in WvW is nothing short of a pipe-dream and a joke. But there are some solutions in mind, IMO.

1) Remove insta-removal of entire stacks, or board-wipe abilities. A class should not be able to remove 8 conditions, heal full, and turn around to hit you for 8k in less than 2 seconds.

2) Condition removal skills should have a personal % cap, or flat # cap, for stacks removed. EX. I use a heal skill that removes bleeding/poison, allow me to remove 50% duration, or 50% stacks—not everything at once. Bleeding is nothing short of a joke in regards to the skills and energy needed to reach even 15 stacks, yet it takes 1 second and 1 skill to remove all stacks, and negate all the damage done?!

3) Add accessibility to all conditions for classes. Even if this means 1 trait or something, at least have access to it if we would like to build it.

4) Adjust damage on Torrment to be truly movement dependent. Think of it as a massive laceration in your leg… if you ran with that, you can be kitten well sure that you would loose a LOT more blood if you ran. In my opinion too, this would add a far more interesting effect to the ability, than just the plain ol’ 2x bleeding duration. Make it to where it is more representative to the distance traveled. This would sure as hell make fights more interesting. Allow base damage to be a 1:1 ratio to bleeding, if you don’t move then it stays that way for the duration. If you move though, it adds 1% damage for every 25 units traveled, but it stacks intensity for every time a flash/blink/teleport/shadowstep is used. EX. I get hit with torment and move 250 units over the duration, I would then be taking an extra 10% damage from torment. Instead though lets say that I run and use 2 shadows steps and make it 2500 units. I would then be taking an extra 100% damage, plus 2x intensity stacks for using 2 shadowsteps. Make the skill not last as long, or cut down initial damage, but regardless, make it worth us using.

Other ideas are secondary conditions for some things.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to freeze your target solid for 5 seconds. Available to chilled/targets.

Add a 5% chance to hit (120-second cooldown) to roast your target, spreading the burning condition to all enemy allies in a 300 radius of target. Available to burned targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to infect your target, causing them to spread their current conditions to 5 enemy allies in a 300 radius of target. Available to poisoned targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to enfeeble your target, causing them to fall down for 3 seconds. Available to weakened targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to disorient your target, causing their next attack to hit enemy allies. Available to confused targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to detain your target, causing one of their skills to be unusable for 15 seconds. Available to immobilized targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to lacerate your target, causing them to take damage for every skill used for 3 seconds.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to knock your target prone, knocking them down for 5 seconds. Available to dazed targets.

Add a 5% chance on hit (120-second cooldown) to sunder your target, removing -33% armor bonus and toughness for 5 seconds. Available to dazed targets.

Anyways, you all get the idea. Just trying to find a way to mix things up a little bit, and give the condition users of the game a fighting chance. Sadly the single torment addition was no where near enough, nor did it begin to address the rampant issue of condition removal.

Yea, that about explains the crap parts of our class. We are horrid in PvE and so-so in WvW. Honestly though too, sad they didn’t have a vote for WvW Group Function… Thief would have placed first by a landslide in that one.

Glad they keep chopping chunks off our class. Pretty soon we will just be a moving target for other class in WvW too.

Been trying a few different builds even too, but since this latest ANet kitten patch, even our last 2 viable builds are crap now. S/X is horribly slow now, and D/P P/D condition is nothing short of a joke. Had an elementalist take 1/4 health from my 1300 CD combo with 8 conditions… in 2 seconds he healed full and removed every condition with continual condition removal for 10 seconds.

But hey, congrats to you if you can get thief to work against a player who is not brain-dead. Cause if the person has even half their head out from between their legs, our class is crap.

Tried your build, and it seems fun. Worked amazing against first few kills yesterday and a few today. Issue I am running into is the fact that mobility is crap, and the condition removal in this game is way over the top. 90% of my fights I do the combos and they just remove or are immune to the damage from them. After about 5 second the combos are gone and I am left doing a bleed tickle-fest for about 30 seconds.

Ran into a thief that was d/d too that healed through all the stacks of conditions in 1 stealth. o.O Same thing with Ele and Gaurdian, insta-removal in 1-2 skill combos, then they just nuke your face.

Any ideas on working around it? Love the build idea, just getting frustrated at the seemingly endless amount of healing and condition removal.

Edit: I am running full Apothecary and a combo of Givers and Apothecary on weapons. I added some Runes of the Undead to get more toughness and re-roll the heavy push of toughness into the build again. Currently at 15.5k health, 1.7k toughness, 800 condition (1200 buffed – 1500 in fight) and about 700 healing. I can hit people hard and take a beating because of the healing, just getting face rolled against 2-3 people or against condition removal like Ele.

This whole thread makes me laugh. Anet asked us about changes for the class, positively and to get some input for how the class feels and plays. Instead this turned into what 90% of what the rest of the forums are… thief hate.

Just close this thread, it is turning into the general forums again. After reading this, I honestly feel like a nerf is coming this next patch, instead of a buff/fix.

So long my favorite class, I <3 you!

Tried my venom build for almost 3 weeks now in WvW… my K/D spread is down about 70%. Venoms are just useless, plain and simple. Unless they buff traits with them, or remove the un-godly amount of evade, immune, dodging, or stability—venoms will remain pointless. It’s sad though too, one of my favorite builds, or at least it is when the venom hits the 2% of the time that someone is NOT evading or immune.

Here is to hoping we will have a game to play and look forward to on Tuesday… :/

kinetik.8679:

counter to my understanding would mean to counter it’s effects if you are under the effect of fear before using dagger storm, it will not prevent the fear ability from working half way through your dagger storm unless the tooltip for dagger storm says “prevents/immune from fear effects while in use”.

it can be a little hard to understand i suppose, but there is a difference between countering and preventing/immunity.

There is a difference yes, but the stability is not for breaking stun, it is for specifically providing immunity during duration. In this case dagger storm DOES provide immunity, or at least it should but is not.

The breaking an immobilize/stun/fear is from the actual “break stun” feature on skills. Immunity should provide full immunity for duration excluding falling damage, damage dealt leading to a down, or having the book ripped from you.

Same thing just happened 3 times in a row. Fear does not get stopped by stability—plain and simple. Should be fixed or removed. Same issue happens DAILY for immobilize both FOR and AGAINST me. I do immobilize against stability says immune. Play my shout Gaurdian and get immobilized, feared, stunned through stability ALL day long. Just getting really old that this has been out for months now and they don’t fix it.

Would is be possible to assign or set Key Binding Profiles to a character, instead of the account? I play several characters and rotate them quite often, but the downside is that they keyboard/mouse layouts are all over the board. My mouse button for my Memser/Engi is drastically different than my Thief or Gaurdian.

I currently just learn or change the key bindings on my own, but would LOVE if you could all incorporate a way to change the key binding profiles per a character. That way it could just be seamless from character to character. Thanks!

Ah, thank you. Sad day, hope they change that :/ because I really like that Risen Knight.

I am playing on my level 7 Asure Engineer, and everytime I have unlocked a k [specifically] in my tree (while holding W-walking forward, so I am walking as I unlock a skill), my game has crashed. The crash is a freeze though, leaving me with no game log/crash report to send in.

This has happened for both Grenade Kit and Mekittenit. I will post more if it happens with other skills/kits as I progress.

Anyone else having this issue with other classes/races?

This mini is having a few bugs I have seen so far. It disappears after you move ahead of it from speed buffs, and don’t respawn most of the time. It also disappears instantly if you start to swim.

Anyone else running into these issues or others?