Guild Wars 2

Condition damage doesn’t look native to the Thief. It’s not integrated well.

You can make it work by being stubborn but the Thief weapon skills and traits need a re-work to add real support for it.

Just look at Dagger/Dagger…. Stacking Condition damage wastes Damage from your 1,2,3,4,5 and your stealth skill.

So your “1 and 3” skills can put up DoT’s which can be removed.
That doesn’t really make much sense to do, now does it? Especially when “3” spam wastes initiative, easily can miss, and disorients the player by wildly flinging them around.

Honestly,

How do you balance damage output when you have some people running around with 9k HP and some people running around with 30k.

I think they need to normalize health pools a bit better.

I kind of understand why they put Condition Damage and Power in the same tree. The problem is that there really isn’t much support for a Condition Damage build… it feels like it was tacked on afterwards so all of the Condition damage abilities/traits are in odd places.

I’d really really like to use a Condition Damage build, but I really don’t like the D/D “3” ability and I despise main hand pistol as it is.

I’m not all the way though yet,

But this is bugging the hell out of me. (Just did the stupid “Praise Apatia in Hoelbrak” mission.)

Tybalt = Onions.

Apatia = Who cares.

Tybalt is the real hero here…. Apatia was just a failboat who couldn’t handle a few Krait.

Why is there a ceremony for Apatia….. and almost nothing for Tybalt….? I had no problem shanking Apatia. I’d do it again. I would be sad as hell if I had to kill risen Tybalt. I’d build a zombie house out of my shed and make him play video games with me. (Though I have a feeling I haven’t seen the end of Tybalt, after all he’s the one that built the traps for the Order of Whispers and the Risen got past all of that easily, so clearly Tybalt is Risen now)

Anyways.. why is the story telling and bard songs about Apatia and not Tybalt??!?!?!?!?

Seriously…. Driving me nuts. Tybalt was awesome… and nobody cares that he’s dead. Some random norn hooker dies because she sucks at making bombs, and couldn’t even handle the fake transport group and suddenly it’s a big deal?? What about the like 50 dudes that died outside of Fort Trinity when those huge guys came?? And the guys on the docks???

RAGE.

Well,

You probably have a different play style than I do.

I personally love Dagger Storm too much to use anything else. It’s a wonderful oh kitten button for those times where you just need a few extra seconds before your heal comes up and it can do insane damage to groups.

I also love Shadow Refuge. I’d keep that.

I’m big on the Signets as well. I like things that benefit me passively, and provide good utility. I can’t play without the Signet of Shadows. That’s a must have IMO.

That said, I like the extra power from the Assassin Signet, and the hail Mary rectal discombobulating power it gives you in a pinch. As wonderful as another stealth would be, I know myself, I’d never remember to use it, and when I did want it, it’d be on CD and I’d be sad. I hate things with long CD’s.

Traits.

Okay first off, if you’re going to put points into Acrobatics you better be taking things that give you boons. Boon Duration is wonderful. I don’t see much in the way of self buffing here. I understand you want some vitality / evasive utility. I get that, but you have no real damage output.

Granted Damage isn’t that important to some people.

I’m one of those people that wants to be squishy. I want to get in, deal crazy damage and get out. I go in knowing if anyone gets ahold of me I’m going to get wrecked. I find that to be exciting to see what I can get away with before getting caught out of position.

I was big on FPS’s as a kid, and when I play MMO’s I like that same fast paced, high risk high reward style gameplay. Most MMO’ers like it slow, long and drawn out so they have time to react to the situation though. Nothing wrong with that, everyone has their own taste.

Nice thing is that you can go either way in this game.

Not really knowing how you like to play, it’s kinda hard to really give advice.

Your best bet is to figure out what you like to do, and wrap your build around it.

I don’t see enough support for a condition damage build.

Dagger/Dagger is required for a stealthy Condition damage build, yet your stealth opener isn’t condition damage. For that matter, you really only have 2 reliable ways to apply conditions. “3” and “1”. Dagger storm is amazing but it’s on a 90 second CD. Stacking Condition damage and using Dagger/Dagger is like playing an Enhancement Shaman and stacking only spell damage. It doesn’t make sense.

To be honest, none of the weapon kits really support a condition damage build for the Thief. Sure you can make it work-ish. But your build involves spamming “3” 99% of the time. Even though half the time you miss, and it wastes tons of initiative and displaces your character.

I would love to play a condition damage build, but I don’t see the point until they organize the weapons better.

That’s all I’m saying.
I’m all for balance and making everyone happy.

I just really feel like the weapons are just all over the place.
I should be able to look and go, okay I’m a melee guy and I want to kitten crit faces. So I’ll wrap my build around these melee weapons, and supplement it with these ranged weapons and focus my stats on Power/Crit. Or I really want to bleed face holes from afar, so I’ll wrap my build around these ranged weapons and support it with these melee weapons just incase and I’ll stack Condition Damage/duration.

That way you don’t feel like you should have condition damage/duration AND power and crit and some survivability.

Make sense? I mean I really see what you were trying to do “Lets find ways to make it so players can use any weapon with any stats and find a way to make it work” I get it… but each attack would need to apply a dot in order for that to really work, and that would be pretty lame IMO.

Anyways, that’s my 2 cents. Run with it or burn it as you see fit!

EDIT: For the record, My ideas could suck. They’re just ideas. The point of my feedback is for the purpose of each weapon to be clear.
EX: MH Dagger=Focus Stat X, OH Dagger = Stealth / Openers
EX: MH Pistol=Focus Stat X, OH Pistol = CC / Defense
EX: MH Sword=Focus Stat X
EX: Shortbow=Focus Stat X

That way I can clearly customize a build around my own style without feeling like I’m not using my class to it’s fullest.

So, I’ve been mostly PVEing it up. I’m just now getting near 80.

I’m pretty casual., did a bit of PVP, it was fun, wrecked some faces, got wrecked by some people who were better than I was ect ect.

I’m going to start with a blurb about PvP in general.
I found that every single profession in the game has the potential to be a face rolling train of ridiculous. I think it’s pretty easy to do on a Thief, but it’s still pretty fun. I couldn’t really say anything is OP or not. The only things that I hate in PvP are chain knockdowns / stuns. I can’t stand it. Nothing else really bothers me.

Okay on to the Thief.
This may be controversial, but I’m just going to lay it out there.
Dagger Dagger is confused. I know everyone is in a big fuss right now about how people popping signets and stacking might for crazy face wrecking burst damage. I get it.

But hear me out.

Most of the Dagger Dagger kit, is all about Big Power and Big Crits. Only two parts are about condition damage. The poison from the “1” skill and the bleed from the “3” skill.

This confuses me. Here you have this awesome kit for a cat and mouse Burst Damage kind of build. Then you have these crappy DoT’s in there. Sure I could stack condition damage and crit% and rack up as many bleeds as possible, then your stealth opener sucks, and your heart seeker sucks, and your ranged slow does low damage, and your cloak and dagger doesn’t hit hard. It’s a massive waste.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to change up the “1” and “3” attack from the Dagger/Dagger combo?

For example, give the Dagger “1” attack the same debuffs that the Sword “1” attack has. Then make the Dagger/Dagger “3” attack like the Sword/Dagger “3” attack,

Then change the Sword “1” attack to apply poison/bleeds, and change the Sword/Dagger to the leaping death blossom, and the Sword Stealth attack into a massive Bleed.

That would give at least those two weapon sets a much more complete feel. I’d actually be interested in a condition damage build if that were the case.

Next up Pistols.
I think Pistol/Pistol is boring. I have less than zero interest in using Pistol/Anything, at all. If I’m going to use a ranged weapon I’d just rather use the Short bow. That’s my personal taste. I probably won’t show any interest in Pistol/Pistol unless the focus changes to bleeds.

Sword/Pistol
Okay right now, for PVE there isn’t any point in using anything else. Massive damage from “1”, with a chain slow / blind. Combined with the “5” skill.. the entire game is easymode. The 15% nerf to Pistol Whip was massively needed, though now PVE is even easier since 3 auto attacks is almost as much as Pistol Whip now. This kit currently gives incredible damage with nearly endless damage avoidance in PVE. This is another reason I feel the Sword should focus on condition damage. I know I sound like a Dagger Dagger fanboy, but I’ve actually been using Sword/Pistol almost exclusively. I think that because of the fact that the Sword does AOE damage, it should do less than the Dagger, or at least do damage in a different way (DoT).

The Sword/Pistol “3” move should be reworked. I would suggest some means of granting a small short aoe stealth without the heal or something. If not that, I suggest an active parry style attack which dazes and causes a tremendous bleed in retaliation.

Short Bow.
I think it’s in a good spot.

Okay so you might be wondering… Hey guy… Why all the crazy ideas.

The answer is simple. I like structure. If I want to build a condition damage build, I should be able to do so without waste. Now I don’t care if Daggers and the Short bow focus on Power/Crit, or if Swords and Pistols focus on power and crit. I really don’t care. But, each weapon should focus on something.

Offhand Dagger is for stealth/cat and mouse. I love it.
Offhand Pistol is for control and defense. I love it.

Mainhand Sword is for big crits, CC and AOE…. okay…
Mainhand Dagger is for huge crits, some dots and a little aoe? okay…
Mainhand Pistol is for ranged mediocre crits with some dots and zero aoe… okay…
Shortbow is for ranged AOE, and mobility. I love it.

See what I’m saying? Why not clean that up.
Mainhand Sword is for AOE / Bleeds and control.
Mainhand Dagger is for Massive Single Target Burst.
Mainhand Pistol is for Ranged Single Target Bleeds.

Give me something that I can really work with here.

Cookie cutter builds are always going to exist. I’m not saying endorse them, I’m just saying.. lets not muddy the water by making people wonder “Why should I care that my dagger applise a laughable bleed?” or “If I need Dagger/Dagger for a condition build, why do I care about cloak and dagger? My backstab is lame… why doesn’t my kit feel complete?”