Guild Wars 2

I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet discovered after 2 more years that this is actually a thing. They have discovered some weird stuff in matchmaking after 3 years so this might take some more time…
In the meantime I will enjoy my non-random loot, because I know I will get the same s*** I was getting since launch.

Apart from the fact that those stats are mostly affected by the size of team fights you are in Anet will never do this. It could hurt feelings of people that are not on top. Why do you think you have awards after match for stuff like most damage taken? So even if you suck there is a good chance you will be top in something.

Get swiftness, get to medium range and run around unpredictably . Laugh at them as they can’t land single Vault/Bound on you. Kill them with AA.
Get to location where they can’t easily dodge to and kill them while they are getting there.
The only way to lose against evade spamming DD is by being squishy and trying to burst him in melee.

Hello,

I am looking for English speaking semi-HC PvE guild of medium size (no 500+ members guild, I want to know people I play with). The guild’s focus should be around higher level fractals (50+) and raids. What I mean by semi-HC:
People know how to play their class.
People know general strategies for the most of the PvE content (mainly fractals)
People run good builds.
People have good gear (mostly ascended) with good runes and sigils.
People use food and oil/stone/potion/… (with appropriate stats).

I am not interested in running world first speed clears but I want to have fun running fractals and raids with people who knows what to do in relaxed atmosphere. I don’t mind wiping while progressing new content (raids) or explaining/adapting to special strategy. I do mind wiping on trivial content because someone cannot do what he is supposed to do.

About me:
I am playing since first beta most of the time on thief, but with changes (and lack of some) in HoT I decided to switch my main to engineer(condi). Both of them are currently well equipped with ascended gear and both are ready for 60-ish fractal lvl, but can get easily higher if needed.
I am interested in playing raids, fractals, dungeons, some open world content and guild missions. I can play 4+ hours almost every day (Prime time CET) if needed for progress otherwise I will be playing PvE at least 4 days per week.
I have no problem using TS3/discord/or any other communication program, quite the opposite I really welcome it.

If you have any more questions on me or you think your guild could be my new home feel free to contact me here on ingame.

Or you can be:
Sergeant of the Master Sergeants Most Important Person of Extreme Sergeants to the Max!

That is esence sap from revenant downed skill (1s slow). The stolen skill https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Essence_Sap_
is supposed to have longer slow. Check Roy’s past post. I think it was him who posted this. Wiki is incomplete an inaccurate atm.

As example of incompleteness of wiki https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Essence_Sap doesn’t even have damage at the time of this post. In game it does.

Anyway slow is a condition. Use condition removal to counter this.

Backpiece item reward from mission Prisoners of the Dragon is not upgrading in following story missions where you receive reward that is supposed to upgrade it. I tried this with item with unselected stats and selected stats and with Order of whisper and Vigil themed backpieces.
Please if you fix this make it unlock all skins retroactively.
Thanks.

We have 1 in game right now if I am correct – for stealth we have reveal applied by opponent. I think it made some sense at the time it was introduced for the first time. Against mesmers it was quite valid option to counter they gameplay without completely destroying them. This was/is different for current meta build for thief (the one that stays at least a bit competitive with other classes) when you got pretty much destroyed by this or you were forced to run.
I don’t want to argue about this, but please remember this point.

I was thinking that perhaps more things that allows “unfair” play could use hard counters or more stuff in general.
Like allow some classes to somehow ingnore invulnerable effects or immunities. Preferable given to classes who don’t have any (necro and thief iirc). Something like “If your target is invulnerable then your next attacks goes through this effect. 5s ICD”.

Or give real meaning to killing rangers pet. Disable all ranger skills if his pet dies for few seconds (like in GW1). Because right now killing the pet means that ranger will swap to other or kill you in the meantime. The best option is pretty much focus ranger everytime.

The list could go on, I bet everyone could come up with something he finds annoying and find something preferably on his class to counter this. No matter if it is one ability, mechanic, or stuff like condition spam, burst damage,…

This lead me to this. If there is something in game that makes you to put hard counter in game for this mechanic/ability/… then this mechanic/ability/… is probably broken or terribly designed in the first place. Adding the counter won’t solve the problem it will just create new ones and makes the original one harder to fix.

I make two examples one with stealth as written above. Reveal is kind of a good counter against mesmer (or ranger and engineer with their limited stealth options) because it is his defense, but not his only defense. For D/P SA thief it is really bad counter because pretty much his whole defensive kitten nal is destroyed with one ability (I would say that engi’s lock on is worst case scenario preHoT).

Outcome is either you take abilities against stealth or you face the danger you will be obliterated from stealth without you knowing about it (yeah vamp rune is quite bad mechanic also).

Second example are conditions. They are bad in PvE, but due to the fact that they require 1-2 offensive stats they can be pretty much OP in 1v1 if you don’t build against it. (I know the game is not balanced for 1v1, or you can build against it, but please bear with me.)
They were considered weak in PvP because they were easily cleansed in group fights (in WvW easier than in sPvP). They were changed so almost every class could spam more of them, some cleanses were nerfed or “specialized” for some categories. Then we had too many conditions so more cleanses were added, and we could go like this.

The solution to this should have been looking on the core issue. Too much condition spamming requires many condition cleanses. Reduce spam, but make conditions more meaningful should have been probably the right solution.
No condtions on AA, but on skills 2-5. Buff damage per stack of condition like 5 times, but reduce amount of stacks you apply to 1-2. This way condition build won’t be just about spamming 1 and waiting for trait/sigil proc or one ability landing. You will be actually required to land several key skills like on power build to defeat your enemy.
Then 1 bleed will mean something, 5 of them will be threat, 1 burning will be threat, 3 will be “oh s***” situation. On the other hand dodging the right attacks will mitigate most of the damage (like against power build) and will decrease the need for many condition removers. You will still take some, but you don’t need 4-5 to have a chance.

Another thing are movement impairing conditions. There are skills with very short duration 1-2s cripple, chill immobilize that are pretty much destroyed by trait that almost every class have now (or will have in HoT), that reduce duration of this conditions by x%.

This could easily also solve problem with conditions in PvE. You just buff armor of mobs to reach desired state.

TLDR: My point is that hard counters (those who make one build invalid or extremely weak just because you take 1 trait or skill) are really bad design. You can mitigate problem for a while by implementing them, but you are creating bigger problem in the long run. Without them the mechanic that needed hard counter will be too OP, with them it will be completely mitigated.

PS: I wasn’t trying to solve the problem of revealed or condition stacking in this thread. All numbers are given as example to think about not as definitive number.

And then he realized that dodge is 50 endurance and not 100, that SB5 + Shadowstep is enough get around with perma swiftness on dash and that he dies as easily in team fight when in melee range as before.
The good thing on SB5 is the vertical mobility, you usually need 1-2 for moving close-far, but it doesn’t have big CD like Shadowstep. The vertical mobility if used right will help you much more than leap on staff, you also have blast finisher there and you can attack from distance when it is too dangerous to go close.
There will be some people who will use this, they will have fun with this, but they will be less effective same as thieves running S/D in current meta.

Also stuck in PvP match. I guess it is cause of all that e-sport.

So Daredevil in BWE3:
It is certainly better than BWE2, but still far from perfect state where it should be. Most of the points are from PvP perspective (sPvP and smallscale WvW).

Traits:
Evasive Empowerment – this change is certainly better than what it was.
Weakening Strikes – same as last beta, good adept trait.
Brawler’s Tenacity – really weak, it should restore at least 25 endurance when used considering the CD on skills and that it is applied only once per CD not per activation in case of chaining skills or with skill with charges. Second option Which I would prefer was remove endurance regeneration completely and add unblock-able to physical skills which would greatly benefit all skills except heal.

Driven Fortitude – still not impressed by this trait, either buff it or give it to Escapist’s Absolution or switch this with Escapist’s Absolution.

Staff master – quite weak when compared to other two traits, maybe more endurance regeneration? I am not sure about this one.
Escapist’s Absolution – Pretty much must have unless you want to die to random conditions, not good enough against condition builds on it’s own. Would be awesome if it had 2 charges with separate CD. So you evade once = 1 condition removed. You evade 2+attacks = 2 conditions removed.
Impacting Disruption – quite good in certain builds maybe add +5s CD on interrupted skill?

Endurance thief – Would be nice if this actually removed endurance from enemy as the name of the trait suggests. So stealing endurance not just gaining.

Lotus training – haven’t tried this one in PvP so can’t tell much other than the execution and animation are not good. As someone already stated releasing projectiles should be based either on starting or finishing location only not just spread through whole animation.
Unhindered combatant – I like it now, animation can be better, but you already know this and are working on it.
Bounding dodger – could not really be tested as anything else than reckless dodge this beta. I guess you are aware that when running the leap effect is accomplished few steps after landing, right?

Overall regarding traits I disagree with placing dodges as GM traits. They should be chose-able like revenant’s legends. As new GM traits there can be slightly improved versions of master traits or new ones adding more synergy with other DD traits and other specializations. This is the biggest problem with DD, it has poor synergy with the rest of the thief in case of DD’s traits even among each other. Acrobatics should be awesome with DD, but some traits have same effect or don’t work well together (endurance regeneration, movement impairing effects,…).

Staff:
It is much better than previous beta. I think the main thing it lacks is some kind of combo-field, smoke or dark.

Utilities:
Bandit’s defense – good but the 15s seems too long. 10s was too short. 12s might be good without trait?
Distracting daggers – seems quite weak. It should be quick response ability, but the charging and casting, not being projectile, but getting destroyed/reflected/blocked makes it nor worth while. Better implementation of current state: When equipped it put 3 charges on you. Each with separate CD, refreshing automatically, probably slightly longer than now (30s?). Then either make it projectile finisher or make it go through either blocks or reflects/deflects (through traits as suggested above or some other way).
Impairing Daggers – good make it fly a bit faster and/or make it projectile finished (triple)
Fist Flurry – not worth taking in current state. Only way to land on non-AI opponent is to CC them and they are not breaking/using anything. For this setup the damage/reward is too low. Random blocks, evades, moving out of range makes it fail 9/10. Some issues could be solved by increasing range slightly and/or making the attacks unblock-able by trait (suggested above).

Channeled Vigor – cast time still too long not sure if bugged or not. Not very good right now because of it. With 1,5-2s cast time it might see some use in some game-types.

Impact strike – good, but totally ruined by invulnerability in downed. Somehow when playing revenant and using Unrelenting assault on low hp target after putting it in downed there was either one or none “invulnerable” moments per use. Make it ignore this moment, or try to minimize it (I think that’s what somehow happening on revenant) and it will be good.

Overall as I written elsewhere I am satisfied with DD as specialization if it was in current meta. Compared to other elite specialization it is really weak. I am also quite kittened by developer attitude. After BWE2 (first for DD) it was “We are making bug fixes” now it is “We are close to release no big changes only small ones”. This makes the whole process almost pointless because we are lacking some serious balancing.
If developers think that DD is balanced with specializations like Chronomancer, Reaper, Herald(revenant), Druid, Scrapper, then show us proof of this because right now it is clearly far behind and there were none or minimal nerfs from BWE2->BWE3 for those specializations that were there.

DD in current meta would be upgrade for thief for sure. It wouldn’t be OP but it would give him chance in some 1v1 and much better sustain.
In HoT however DD is weak compared to most other elite specs so it will go back to decap bot and +0,5. Yes You won’t be able to count him as equal to other classes. It is sad how some classes didn’t get sensible adjustments between BWE2 and BWE3. It most likely means developers like current state.

I find boot fitting.
You will get kicked if there are more than 1 of you.
Daredevil stinks like old boot.
Daredevil is only good for running away.
…

Poxxia.1547:

Ensign.2189:

Ihales.3820:

I see this is a frequent argument, please tell me builds that would be viable NOW and they are not because of thief? That means they would be beating at least half of the other meta specs. I am really interested in your (or anyone’s) answer.

It’s not ‘thief’ that keeps them out, but D/P thief; it, in conjunction with power mesmers, keep any other sort of high damage but glassy DPS build out of the game – specifically, scepter eles, glass rangers, and sword thieves. Such builds are good tank busters, but simply get eaten by stealth -> burst -> restealth -> burst ad nauseam with very little recourse.

Sort of. But also some engie builds are really having a high skill floor outside highly organised teams. It boils down to mobility and stealth – which ofc several classes have, but only few are able to repeat it in the way thieves are – and to some extend mesmers.
My list would include engies and eles. But also mesmers if they don’t run with stealth. Power-necro is sort of meta, but it really isn’t much fun with so little mobility and being glassy – it builds too much down to a matter of LF.
If you have any doubt about it, just try to roll these builds in solo-Q and be sure there is a competent thieves in the opposing team.

But again: I highly doubt, that the OP is interested in anything but a rhetorical debate. There is no such thing as proof – I might easily turn the discussion and lay the burden on proof on Ihales, but if I had to do that, then it just emphasises my argument: Thieves don’t realise how many builds they are already pushing out – and have don in the past (and yes, the past does matter).

I didn’t ask for proof, I asked for build. You haven’t provided neither of those (btw proof of what?) only bunch of useless excuses. I meant it as serious question as posted above. Still haven’t received single build that is hold down only by thief that would do well in current meta. Remember it was you who said that so I assume you had some builds in mind or were you just repeating what someone else said?

If you want to bring things from past from specific patches then don’t bother. There were so many broken things (on thief and other classes equally) and for many you should be grateful they were hold by thieves in some kind of control.

Ensign.2189:

Ihales.3820:

I see this is a frequent argument, please tell me builds that would be viable NOW and they are not because of thief? That means they would be beating at least half of the other meta specs. I am really interested in your (or anyone’s) answer.

It’s not ‘thief’ that keeps them out, but D/P thief; it, in conjunction with power mesmers, keep any other sort of high damage but glassy DPS build out of the game – specifically, scepter eles, glass rangers, and sword thieves. Such builds are good tank busters, but simply get eaten by stealth -> burst -> restealth -> burst ad nauseam with very little recourse.

Please I mean it seriously, tell me the builds that would be viable in current meta if thief class didn’t exist. That means they are pushed out only because of thief and they would be viable counter to at least half other meta or usually played professions/builds.
I really want to see those builds, because PU mesmers, burn guards, and to some degree few engi builds will counter most builds that comes to my mind.

Wanze.8410:

Zaron.1987:

Wanze.8410:

Ihales.3820:

for example 200g vs 1000g out of TP

say hello to mithril and elder wood at vendor prices and a couple of copper for t5 fine mats.

yay, that would be so awesome….

remember you can only do prec crafting one time ….

there will be more than enough that still play the flushing toilet game

the OP wanted to have precursor prices at 200g instead of 1000g, at those prices, no one would flush anything, removing the biggest sink for mithril elder wood and t5 mats.

I see my point wasn’t clear enough suggesting 200g instead of 1000g was just example to show real difference between price, because if it will be like 1000g from TP and 900g through collections + additional 200 hours of specific gameplay I don’t find it an upgrade to existing acquisition methods. It could easily be 400g vs 1000g or 600g vs 1000g even 800g vs 1000g if the additional grind wasn’t over the top. There should be some advantage when you are limited once per account and it is timegated through activities and mastery training and account bound.

I don’t really like the previewed system. It is basically same as the current one with added extra grind on top. Gold-wise it will be almost same but you will be forced to do some other stuff too. I guess pretty much everyone except gold sellers hoped it will be much cheaper way to get precursor (for example 200g vs 1000g out of TP), but with added time gate/grind etc. So in the end proposed system will be even more time consuming and for people not playing all game types equally even worse than current system. I know we are not losing the old acquisition methods, but this is not what we were waiting for 2 years since this was announced.
(Do you remember that announcement new legendaries and precursor crafting in 2013? Yeah they are 2 years late and you have to buy expansion for it too. source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/ )

Poxxia.1547:

You cannot argue with thieves who don’t realise how many builds they have forced out – both in the past AND present.

I see this is a frequent argument, please tell me builds that would be viable NOW and they are not because of thief? That means they would be beating at least half of the other meta specs. I am really interested in your (or anyone’s) answer.

I have to agree I feel cheated as thief now and even more in HoT. Thief is getting indirect nerfs through anti stealth mechanics, Daredevil is so bad in comparison with others that even if they doubled all effects in his traits it still wouldn’t be on par with some other elite specs. I am sad and disappointed.

If they launch league system when expansion hits, it will be the biggest fail anyway. Druid and scrapper will have only 1 beta weekend to be tested and even the classes that were already in BWE2 will be probably tuned poorly. Now take into account usual problems we have even with smallest patches plus expansion launch problems and we are looking on huge catastrophe.

So with all this, despite me disliking cele ele and other builds with same effort/reward ratio, situation you are describing is my last concern.

A lot of those things are over the top. Chill on AA? That is really too strong.

Ragarding n.2 I would agree with slight speed change to missile speed to make it faster. (30%?) It would also be nice that undetonated cluster bomb causes 1-2s burning (1stack), instead of bleeding which you can get with detonation.

n.3 could use slight increase in dodge duration, but it should be handed carefully, spamming disabling shot shouldn’t be perma evade (for those few seconds). +1s cripple would be great.

n.4 Should get back to 3s poison per hit. 2s is really weak even with grandmaster trait increasing poison duration. Spamming Choking gas with all initiative even on stationary target doesn’t become dangerous atm at all. Damage component at start is fine otherwise it allowed some stupid strategies. 1 think that I don’t really like, is that it is considered like projectile, so it gets absorbed.

n.5 is fine as it is. Just some pathing problems, but that’s the problem of maps and not of the skill.

Stealth attack is imo fine too.

Regarding the black lion chest I completely agree with the statement there is terrible price/reward ratio, but I think the nerf to key farming is a good thing. Now they can seriously buff the drops from the chest to make them good. (For example 2-3 scraps from every chest and the rest random)
Regarding the rest of the post, I agree with some, but not all. Cool thing would be that specific items would drop more on specific places. Flame skin like Volcanus could drop as low chance drop from CoF. Low chance, but much higher than other skins. For example there is 0,1% to drop random exotic, but 1%chance to drop Volcanus.

On the other hand there will be a lot of people who are happy with the system as it is, because they can do whatever they want and have a chance to get the stuff as opposite to system where specific stuff has chance to drop on specific places.

Then at least post on profession forums because:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Has there been any progress on finding profession specialists?

At the present time, the developers are discussing whether having profession specialists will be a viable inclusion in the program. So at this point, applications are on “hold” with another view planned in the next week or so.

This post is from March and no progress since. And to be honest profession forums are suffering most atm.

We were told many times that developers are checking forums and that they are reading feedback, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. The best thing that can happen as proof is post from developer. It is a sign that he read the topic, that he thought about it. The problem is that this doesn’t happen often enough. Some examples would be profession forums where wasn’t single developer post in several months and last one was about merging threads or something like it. (Examples could be found in necromancer and thief forums but probably in other places as well.)

What I propose is very simple:
At least 1 developer post per week in major forum sections. What is major forum section you might ask? All profession subforums, PvP, WvW, Dungeons&Fractals and general discussion.

I know there isn’t always something important going on or you can’t talk about things, that’s why I am not asking for super serious post every time. Developer can pick anything. Thread with a lot of feedback? check. Some funny thread? check. Community event? check…

I know that developers are busy, but don’t tell me that writing 3-4 lines per week would be too much to ask for.

What it will bring in return? Less toxicity in forums and more feedback, happier community, better connection to players and with that better insight into things.

I don’t know what drug you are on but I want it too

Silverkey.2078:

Now that the devs introduced a checkbox for conquest or stronghold, they may as well add one for “team death match”. I really believe that the reason which pushed separating conquest from stronghold hold true for courtyard too!

^This. There are many people who wants to play TDM only, so let them have their fun. Both groups profit. Those who dislike it don’t have to play it and don’t have to play with people who are not interested in conquest/stronghold. Those who like don’t have to play modes they dislike.

same here. I got to 12 stacks and no reward. Seems like another untested event where Anet haven’t learned from past – DC = no reward, rewards awarded only to few people,…

Are those only the duels you won or were all opponents that bad? That thief blinded you twice in two duels. Second video is pretty much same. Those thieves never heard about 3rd and 4th skill on DP, only the last one accidentally pressed headshot once. Seems to me like all were WvW players relying on lucky backstabs to win, unfortunately in sPvP they don’t hit that hard so their strategy didn’t work.
No offence but I haven’t seen anything that would persuade me that staff is good in it’s current state.

Stealth is nice counter considering revenant has AoE reveal. People just don’t realize how hard you will be able to hit with this attack. Damage is really too high considering it is evade, shadowstep burst skill that follows you now matter how far you get with 10s CD.

Seabreeze.8437:

Now that the beta weekend is pretty much wrapped up, I’d like to give my opinions/criticisms of the specialization, mainly in the animations. I’m gonna skip the combat stance and the auto-attack chain for now since it’s been well noted (but I will come back to them with my ideas for them later). This is going to focus on skills 2, 3, 4, and 5. …

This is so much better than what we saw. Only helicopter vault is over the top. If you spend only few hours on this it makes me wonder how long they spent on whole class. 30 minutes?

All new dodges are affected by camera angle. Some of them even stay in place not moving anywhere. Seems like lazy design of new dodge- instead of modifying dodge, dodge is replaced by skill with evade.

So Daredevil as elite specialization…
Does it offer new playstyle? No. In PvP you are still decap bot and +1. 1v1 and in team fights you are still terrible compared to other classes. You are also sacrificing usually more than what you gain. There is no reason to take this specialization in PvE either unless there will be some dodge intense fight, where other classes will use their invulnerability and thief has to dodge. Signet of agility can replace this whole specialization and you don’t have to sacrifice trait line. It can work in WvW, but in WvW can work pretty much anything thanks to food buffs and people running terrible builds, still it will be worse than average build.

Is it fun to play? No, pretty much all animations are clunky and unresponsive. Staff skills have insane telegraphs. The only thing I can say is good is Elite skill, but that is because other elite skills are quite weak outside off very specific situations (except BV). In general there is nothing atm what makes me want to slot this specialization.

Does it change existing builds? Yes. You have to sacrifice 1 trait line so even playing with 2 trait lines instead of 3 would change build. Leap on dodge can offer stealth to x/p builds, but you can’t dodge much in stealth because you are risking to be revealed. The rest of the abilities and traits don’t have much impact.

How is it compared to other elite specs? It doesn’t feel like elite spec at all. When looking at other classes, then spec is weak and uninteresting. Boring animations which are usually too long. Skills with high risk no reward. If I was new player and no-one told me it is elite spec I wouldn’t even know. I would rate it even worse than some current specs from thief (and those are worse than a lot of specs from other classes). You could make all DD traits except GM baseline for thief and it wouldn’t still be OP, which is sad thing.

Traits:
Adept:
Evasive Empowerment: ok-ish trait, but using dodge to get 10% more damage doesn’t look like anything interesting. It can be a choice in non-crit builds, but those won’t get much from this trait.
Weakening strikes: probably the best trait in adept line. It still weak in comparison with weakness application from other classes even when paired with deadly arts, but it is better than other 2 traits here.
Brawler’s tenacity: this is clear loser in this line. 10 endurance is a joke and 20% reduction considering the skills you can apply it to is not interesting.

Master:
Staff master: could work as decent trait, problems are it is applied only to staff and it is applied to staff. Staff is terrible in many ways.
Escapist’s absolution: it is ok trait, far from OP which I thought it will be from POI presentation. It offers good defense against no-skill condition application builds like burn guardian or cele ele where you apply easily high stacks of burning. Against other conditions heavy builds it is not sufficient to make them weak (necro, engi). Might be interesting if it was 2 conditions removed, but the problem is that is some builds this might be too strong while in other builds it will be ok.
Impacting disruption: From POI presentation I thought this will be strong (again). In reality it doesn’t that good. It can work like +damage trait in S/P builds, but using interrupts only for damage is weak. If thief had AoE interrupts like mesmer, it might be decent option, otherwise it is just poor option.

Grandmaster:
In general they are all clunky and don’t feel like dodge at all as others wrote before me. The problem is in my opinion the fact that they are not coded as dodge, but as skills with applied evade to them. You can make them shorter, even non-existent if you watch your character from top. 2 of them roots you and reveal you with damage which is annoying even outside of combat when travelling in PvE/WvW.
Lotus training: Looks like deadly death-blossom, reveals while in stealth, hard to say when and where this dodge ends. Feels weak outside of condition builds, but that’s intended.
Unhindered combatant: Feels good compared to other two, because it least changes current dodge. Thanks to camera trick it won’t get you out off Shadow refuge and swiftness allows to actually keep up with classes with almost infinite swiftness like eles without spamming heartseeker or shadow shot. It is only one I had least issues with which makes it from terrible trait to OK trait.
Bounding dodger: This one is tricky. The animation is terrible and doesn’t feel like thief at all. The telegraph makes it easily dodge-able, but I guess it is fine, dodge shouldn’t feel like you have to dodge from it all the time and unlike for example mesmer’s GM trait for generating clones, this one has some counterplay. Leap allows you to get stealth on x/p builds which is nice, but that’s it. So it is OK in some builds but nothing super good.

Minor:
Driven fortitude: I am not sure if this trait was even working, but it could be merged with Escapist’s absolution or the heal can be much higher, considering requirement to actually evade attack compared to guardian’s trait.
Endurance thief: With sleight of hand it is ok trait, without it, it is weak for grandmaster minor. Steal CD would need to be like 20s base line but that’s well-known fact that steal as profession mechanic is weak without traits compared to other classes and with them it is on par.

Skills:
Channeled Vigor – ok heal for PvE world bosses if you fail to dodge large telegraphs, other than that it is not good enough to be used with this profession.
Fist Flurry: seems like joke. Interesting in design, but even moving out of it is easy and the damage is weak to sacrifice other utility skill to make this one work.
Impairing daggers: I heard it uses initiative to fire daggers which is bug I hope. otherwise it is decent skill for some builds and unlike venoms for example it is usable without heavily traiting for it.
Distracting daggers: This skill could work with some changes. If it worked like mantra with shorter CD it could be great. Or one use with higher damage, longer daze and very short CD without need of preparation – pretty much just the throw part of the skill. Or making it unblock-able and ignoring projectile destruction/reflection with 1 charge and slightly lower CD. Current state is weak even for interrupt heavy build.
Bandit’s defense: OK skill same as Impairing daggers usable even without traiting for it. I had only one issue with it, it seemed unusable when hit by Executioner’s scythe by Reaper. The second part – Reflexive strike is wierd. Does it strike everything around thief? If so then change description, if not, than the strike is sometimes performed at random target when there are more enemies in range.
Impact strike – decent choice for PvP in PvE is is weaker, maybe the new mechanics in new maps make it viable choice too. Slight number changes like cast time/CD/damage might be needed, but overall it is in better state than most of daredevil.

Staff:
Best for last? No, quite the opposite. Staff is just horrible. Slow many-hitting auto-attack makes it feel quite clunky. Terrible against retaliation. It really doen’t impress, either make it hit a bit harder, lower animations slightly, add some effect like destroy projectiles on the last chain move,…
Hook strike: weak damage, would be good otherwise. It is really hindered by the lack of stealth on staff.
Weakening charge: This one could be good, but… Current skill queue makes it terrible, you are locked in one direction you can’t change other than stowing your weapons. Make it lock on target or the direction dependable on your camera direction in moment when skill start executing, not when it was put in skill queue.
Debilitating strike: feels like 3 on shortbow, but with mandatory use of some gap closing skill to get you back in combat.
Dust strike: This is terrible. Similar like Dancing dagger on x/d. It is overpriced for what it does. If it was traveling smoke combofield (for example the carpet style which looks like very popular among devs for HoT) it could have place on staff.
Vault: Nice on paper terrible execution. When I used it first few times in PvE against small group of weak enemies, they killed me from 70% HP while I was performing the animation before landing. Either it has to be much quicker animation or slightly quicker with the last part of animation being evade.

TLDR: Even though some skills and traits work on their own, it doesn’t work much together. Daredevil looked like it is supposed to be about dodging, but staff and utility skills are not. Traits feel like “what can we add here to fill this slot, let’s recycle something”. After trying Revenant I can say that with right combination of stances (shiro+glint/malyx) it feels more like thief than daredevil. A lot of things on daredevil doesn’t and won’t work because of poor state of thief in general. Thief can’t be much bruiser type only with dodges with offensive amulet (he is forced to go in and out) and with defensive amulet his damage is laughable compared to any other profession in game.

wow… eh… meh

I wanted to say something similar, but I wanted to wait after stream. I think I am not only one who feared this elite specialization will be weak, based on thief’s past updates. You proved us wrong and I am so glad for it. So…

Good job Karl! The specialization really looks awesome. There will be probably some minor changes but overall solid design offering new possibilities.

I just have one request to make. Please don’t forget about thief after HoT release. There are still some specializations, skills, weapon sets that need some dev’s love. Take a look at those once you have free hands after tuning Daredevil.

EU or NA? You should also change the title from all CAPS, just in case some mod got lost and went to this forum section.

Make most of the skills without bugs, viable and competitive especially utilities. Not new ones, old ones. There are many skills I haven’t used after unlocking them and trying them once because how weak/buggy they were.

f) use some actually good looking skin

The major problem with rifle will be it usefulness. sPvP? No way it will be viable or good. WvW? yeah, I guess even SB is more viable in blob fights, for roaming same as sPvP. Dungeons? No way. World bosses? yeah here it can be viable if you like shooting from max distance not doing anything else. Totally boring and unnecessary.

Now you might ask why it would be useless in sPvP and Dungeons. Anet design melee damage>range damage will make it undesirable in dungeons and outside of decaps and stealth the only thing you want thief for is spike damage.

So that’s why me and many others don’t want to see (maybe) cool looking design which will be useless outside of RP. On the other hand melee elite spec. could bring some much needed buffs to thief in it current viable builds.

There are 3 areas which could bring something missing.

Survivability for thief (blocks, evades, lifeleech) Some of them are already there but usually not in versatile form. You either have to play this one traitline and one weapon set or you can’t have them.

Reducing effectiveness of enemies. Either enhancing CC (longer duration, reward for interrupting and not just spam) or conditions (for example blind has 2 stacks).

Team support through active play. Something like “mark for death” when all allies will do more damage for few sec on some target, target gets revealed debuff or strips all boons from target.

Those are just some wild ideas some of them probably OP, but I guess some of them would be more interesting than skills and traits no-one ever takes because they are useless (yes there is plenty of them even after recent trait shaving).

Edit: Interesting idea would be traits changing damage component of old skills, like with this trait Heartseeker will do only 40% damage but applies 2 stacks of torment. Pistolwhip does less damage but applies vulnerability. Shadowshot teleports enemy towards you (like buggy scorpion wire). Cluster bomb flight speed increased by 50% but can’t be exploded anymore,…

Dear OP

Kukchi.6173:

Seeing how you play mostly warrior and very little of the other classes your opinion is very biased and unwelcome.

Thank you and have a nice day.

just disable option to join winning team. You can only join losing team when the game has already started. Simple solution for one problem. Perhaps increase maximum team size difference to 2 so the losing team will have advantage, but not overwhelming one(but this should be tested for sure).

Disrupting trap – after triggering applies 30s debuff which can’t be cleansed. Every 5s causes 1s daze.

Retaliation trap – after triggering all targets hit by enemy are considered to have retaliation. Possibly if target already has retaliation attacker can take double damage.

Cleansing trap – after triggering crates area which cleanses one condition every 5s. Duration 20s.

Hey Anet,
I didn’t believe I would say something positive about your recent work but here it comes. This last Ready Up was actually best (ever?) for one simple reason. It was informative. If I take a look at each class then it makes sense where they are and where you want them. I am not saying everything is perfect, but it makes more sense than the state before. Just few tips for future:

• Sometimes start from the “end” of the list of professions. In this ready up it was better but usually it feels like you spend a lot of time on first professions (ele, engi) and then you run out of time for the other classes (can be seen on patch notes, etc.)
• These professions characteristic should be sticky post in profession’s and balance subforums so people whine less about something what won’t change. (I am realist here, a lot of people can’t/won’t read, but at least some will.)
• More interaction with players. You should be discussing more the state of things (professions, game modes,…) where you feel the current state is and where you want it to be, how to reach this state, etc.
• Do not only discuss but also change things. I know you had WvW tournament recently, sPvP tournament ahead, but there should be patch ready to roll out as soon as those things ends. For example I was very disappointed there was no WvW update after season. It feels like “WvW abilities project” is dead, you are still happy with the state where unrewarding jobs in WvW (scouting, defending,…) are not rewarded properly,… Same can be said about sPvP and PvE. Are you happy with current state? If yes tell us if know tell us what (if anything) you are doing to change it. We had many CDI on different topics, but no results can be seen. If you change something based on CDI please tell us so we can see the feedback is not lost.
• Improve patch notes. In past there were some nice examples where you even gave reason why you are changing this or that. There is plenty of hidden stuff changed, but not in patch notes.
• Weekly forum replies. It would be awesome if you had some goal like at least 5 – 10 replies in profession forum, sPvP forum, WvW forum,… So we can see it is read. The reply doesn’t need to be novel. It can be 2-3 sentences if written well. Something like: “I am keeping eye on this thread. Can you give me more feedback on XY?”

There would be much more I would like to see, but I believe at least some of these would make me and some more players more happy.

I guess we can expect this in another feature patch in 18 months.

Seems like this won’t be fixed for months. If it was on any other profession you could see fix in matter of days.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Ihales.3820:

Because it is their defense mechanism. They don’t have protection, stability, immunity, blocks, invulnerability, high armor and HP or any other damage mitigating ability most other classes have. And their dodging was already nerfed, they were first with engineers and rangers iirc.

Hmm… what’s that thing thieves have lots and lots of access to that allows them to escape, restart fights, gain health, remove conditions… oh yeah – Stealth.

No stability? Lyssa Runes every 45 seconds says, ‘hi’. Consume Plasma says, ‘hi’. Dagger Storm says, ‘hi’.

And armor? Please. Thieves are a medium armor class. Elementalists and Mesmers are light. So no points on that argument, either.

For all those things related to stealth you need to trait and not everybody wants to play (against) “perma stealth” thief. If you do not trait for that you will get same stealth engi or mesmer has access to as well.
Also being in stealth all the time doesn’t conquest points neither kill enemies.

Lyssa runes? Available to every profession and it is not class specific.
Consume plasma only against mesmers. Both of them has cast time in example mentioned with basilisk venom.
Daggerstorm has stability of course on 90 sec CD, 8sec of stability. It is on par with guardians or warriors stability, isn’kitten Using it to immediately cancel it or being big target shouting kill me with melee in two hits isn’t always the best idea, but that is off topic, so sorry for that.

And ele and mesmer both have invulnerabilities, ele can also have quite good uptime of protection (around 90% with specific runeset, 30%+ without). Please read before you decide to release your frustration next time.

/edit: I am not saying it is ideal state but it is like Anet designed it. I disagree with many things on that topic. I would much rather see removal of stealth and moving thief to more assassin like class like in GW1. Where combo chains were used instead of spamming one button, but this is completely unrelated to this thread.

Because it is their defense mechanism. They don’t have protection, stability, immunity, blocks, invulnerability, high armor and HP or any other damage mitigating ability most other classes have. And their dodging was already nerfed, they were first with engineers and rangers iirc.

There are also other option to apply chill-like effect on thief’s weapon skills.

• Remove some of thief initiative – not very good option because removing chill would probably not restore initiative back.
• Decreasing maximum amount of initiative for the duration of chill – this could be pretty close to chill on other classes. When chill will be applied you can still use all your initiative but after using it it wouldn’t regenerate above certain point.
• Already mentioned and most obvious one, decrease initiative regeneration rate. This would either have to be significantly reduced rate (like those 13-20% suggested) or there would be other changes tight to it. Like separate initiative for different weapon sets and probably much more condition removal for thief.
  At the moment thief’s condition removal is on par with other classes when traited for condition removal on stealth. Without using stealth thief has the worst condition removal afaik. According to Anet’s post from 12/2012 thief and warrior should be vulnerable to conditions. Nothing was changed for thief, but warrior got many condition cleanses and immunities and more are comming with new patch. So unless you want to see every thief running stealth spec Anet would need to do something in similar style they done to warriors.
• Increasing initiative cost for skills used while under effect of chill. Perhaps some variation like first usage: normal cost, second usage: normal cost + 1 initiative.

Welcome to Grind Wars. Do you want meaningful rewards for your time?
PvE: Dungeon speedruns (of course berserker only), champion trains
WvW: PvD
PvP: Skyhammer farm

There were many suggestion how to fix those issues, to make whole game rewarding. More rewards for when you do dynamic events alone/in small group, redesign of bossfights from one hit KO to sustained damage. Rewards for defending in WvW, splitting zergs. Rewarding skillful play and securing balanced matches (no 4v5 or 3v5) in PvP. Anet just decided to ignore them all.
They were unable to do even simple stuff like making useful guild roster with “last seen” and other features you see in every other MMO. I doubt they would be willing to just adjust values in database. It so “much” work. Instead of fixing old stuff they will just throw new bone aka Living Story to players to forget about old issues. New zergfest every 14 days.
That wouldn’t be so bad if the game could handle it, but they are promoting those zergfests although there is 1-2 sec skill lag.

TLDR: Do you want rewards? Join the zergfest because that’s obviously how Anet wants the game to be played.

1. Ranger
2. Thief
3. Engineer